Identifier: sdbutcherspionee00butc (find matches)
Title: S.D. Butcher's pioneer history of Custer County : and short sketches of early days in Nebraska
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: Butcher, Solomon D. (Solomon Devore), 1856-1927
Subjects: Frontier and pioneer life
Publisher: Broken Bow, Neb. : (Merchants Pub. Co.)
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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strung across his saddle, and a little further alonganother cowboy who was carrying a saddle on his shoulder. He told us thathis horse had fallen and broken one of its legs and that he was obliged toshoot it and return to camp on foot. The next place we struck was a verysmall dugout belonging to an old trapper by the name of Jeff Hooley. Therewas nobody at home, but a card on the door bore this inscription: Helpyourself, but for Gods sake shut the door. The shut the door part wasin a good deal bigger letters than the rest of the sentence. We had not yetbeen educated up to the point of walking into a mans house during his ab-sence and helping ourselves, so did not accept the kind invitation. But wedug about a dozen potatoes out of a patch near the dugout, put them in thebuggy and drove on. We wanted to get to some settlement where we couldspend the night, our guide assuring us that we would come to one not veryfar ahead. We traveled as long as we possibly could, it being very dark, and
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AND SHORT SKETCHES OF EARLY DAYS IN NEBRASKA. 377 still no sign of any house could we diseover. All at once our horse came toa sudden stop and could not be urged to go a step further. My father gotout of the buggy to investigate and found that we were on the brink of a deepgulch or canon, with a camp-hre burning away down below. We thought ofIndians, of course, and wondered how we were to get across, as the bank wasalmost perpendicular and appeared to be at least seventy-five feet high. Weunhitched the horse, and by looking around a little found a place where wecould descend, and were soon beside the camp fire, which consisted of a fewdjing embers, but with no signs of any human being about. We were con-siderably scared, not knowing but that a band of Indians might be lurkingabout somewhere in the darkness ready to spring out upon us. But we werethere and must make the best of it; so we got our potatoes and proceededdown the gulch about two hundred feet to a big cottonwood tree which

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