Early Married Life

A funny thing happened the next winter. We had a bad blizzard one night and the snow had drifted clear over the roof of the shack and clear over the door -- the only door by which we could get out. There we were' Absolutely snowed in. What to do. Finally George decided he would take the little window out and I would crawl out through the window, go to the stable, get the shovel and shovel all the snow away so he could get out. He was too big to get through the window, and I was commissioned, and though I was tall and skinny, I had to wiggle through.

That first summer on the homestead was very quiet. George broke forty acres with the walking plow and three oxen. I used to walk along beside him and watch the sod turn over. It looked so nice and the earthy smell was so invigorating. The furrow was one half mile long.

We had three oxen, Dick, Bill and Lazarus, so named because he used to lie down whenever he didn't want to work. He would lie there, refusing to get up, though George would lash him most unmercifully! But finally one day, George won. At last, Lazarus rose to his feet (he hadn't had that name until this occasion) and George named him Lazarus; said he "raised him from the dead." Lazarus never offered to lie down after that when he was supposed to stand up. Occasionally when George was away, I would have to tether these oxen out to graze, or maybe change them to a new spot to graze. Dick and Bill were quiet and easy to handle, but Lazarus was a wild one! He would put his head down and rush at me and would I run! But in the end, I always managed to control him.

Mrs. Freethy came over one day, bringing us a hen and a dozen chickens. Then we had my little pony named Silver. She was the daughter of Bess, a beautiful grey mare father had bought from Kerr and Buifer, ranchers in the Valley. Poor Bess! When my brother Reuben was taking the cows out one morning to pasture, he had left a tether rope dragging on one of the cows and Bess stepped on it, falling and breaking one of her legs. That was before I was married. George and I were going to a picnic that day and he had just arrived. Well, he made a splint for poor Bess' broken leg, but at that time when an animal broke a leg, they shot the poor thing, and Father was sure it was the only thing to do, so he had George shoot her. Poor Bess! She was so beautiful, so easy to ride and so gentle, and what a loss!

One Sunday morning George and I were going out to change the oxen to a fresh place, when a big jackrabbit hove in sight. George exclaimed, "Give me the axe, give me the axe." I was carrying the axe - as usual - he grabbed it, threw it and killed the rabbit. He took it back to the house, after tethering the oxen out, cleaned it and cooked it for his dinner. I wouldn't touch the thing, but he enjoyed it.

There were a couple of bachelors living over in the bluffs who said they ate so many rabbits the first years they lived there that they could never walk after that; they had to go on the jump ever after!!

There were some funny people living there in that new country. These two bachelors and two other Irish men and one day after a big thunderstorm, they were digging a big hole along side a road, and a man going by on horseback stopped to ask what they were digging for, wondering what could be their incentive. "Shure," one of the Irishmen replied, "there was a big thunderstorm a while back, and bedad a great bolt of lightnin' struck right here in this verruy spot an' buried itself. An' bedad we are going to dig 'til we find the bolt." Did they ever find it? If they did, no one knows! Har!

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