Andrews Tyler and Helen Dodge
History
I, Andrews Tyler, born November 7th, 1886, at Hebron, Washington County, Utah, was the seventh child of Daniel Moroni Tyler and Sarah Elzina Pulsipher Tyler the biggest baby born to them. Being born quite young, I don’t remember much of the first few years. While we lived in Dixie, Utah I only remember it as a mountainous country with nice gardens with melons and corn and Indians coming around for something to eat. Father would trade something to them for pine-nuts. That was the nuts all us little nuts used to get in our socks for Christmas. We left Dixie in the spring, (I think of the year 1891) and went to Huntington, Emery County. There I started school at the age of seven.
We went to school the year I was six, but the kids were coming on faster than they could make room for them, so all six year olds were sent home until the next year. I and my brother Nathanial, (we called him Nate) herded cows for some of the townsfolk. We were paid a few cents a head per, day. We would go out on the hills in the morning and stay all day. I think the days were a lot longer than they are now. My brother Dan got us a little jackass to ride to herd on, and what a help it was. When we would try to make the thing hurry, it would kick up and we would fall off or else it would lay down. I think that was when I learned to swear.
Brother Nate would run after the cows while I stayed and cussed that jackass. I will always remember the day my brother John and I went to get it. We both rode the one horse out after it. We went out to a sheep ranch ten or fifteen miles from home. John caught the donkey, but it had a baby donkey and it didn’t want to leave the rest of its family so it wouldn’t lead. We worked with it for quite a way trying to make it lead by the horn of the saddle. Finally I decided to ride it and I got on.
John was still trying to make it lead on a long rope from his saddle horse but that old donkey would not move. I kicked it in the ribs with my heels and gave it a lash with the whip at the same time. Up came its back end and little Andy lit up in head on the rope. We worked most all the afternoon and got it a mile or so farther, then John decided he would try riding it. He put the saddle on the donkey and I rode the horse. That worked a little better for awhile. Then it laid down with him and we couldn’t get it to go any farther. So John said for me to start out and maybe it would follow. So I started toward home. John didn’t say how far ahead to go so I kept going and looking back but he hadn’t started to come when I went over the hill and out of sight, so I went right on home and left them out there about ten or more miles from home. Mother asked me where John was and I said he was trying to follow me. He came in at dark with the donkey. Now days you would say he “told me off” for leaving him out there alone.
Times were very hard all the time we lived in Huntington and father was sick most of the time. My folks had talked of going to Idaho as land was open for homestead. Father and my brother Dan could have each taken 160 acres. My father didn’t know if it would be wise to try a new country with a large family, so he asked his father’s advice. He advised him not to go at that time. Father only lived a short time after. Then, I think it was only a year or so later my brother Nate died. I can remember how sad and lonesome we all were. Mother said she couldn’t stay there any longer, so she and Dan sold our house and lot and we started for Idaho. That was on May 19th, 1897. Also my sister Ruth and husband and some of Melvin’s and Ruth’s uncles, Sam and Hyram Hill came with us. Our outfit was two covered wagons and four of the best trained horses that I have ever seen. Melvin Cook’s was the same. The Hill brothers, a single wagon each. Mother and the children rode in the trail wagon and Dan drove the four horses. John and I drove the cattle. There were about fifty or sixty head, as all three families had a few. Somewhere on the road near here, the Hill brothers left us and went to Wyoming and we came on to Idaho Falls. We had a nice time and no trouble at all.
A few days out of Price, Utah the canyon road was washed out and the wagon train couldn’t get through, so John took Dan’s place on the wagon and they went around a better road that took them through Provo. Dan and I took the cattle and a pack horse and went the short way over the mountains and met the wagons at Heber City ——and was little Andy glad to see his Ma
This is what we saw while going over the mountains: We went through the Strawberry Valley. It was a big, green valley with a big creek running through and hundreds, maybe thousands, of fat cattle feeding there. That was the prettiest picture I have ever seen. We camped in that valley one night and was worried all the time that we would lose some of our cattle in that big herd. (We did lose one we called “Grandma” but found her after a short while.) While we were coming across the Indian Reservation John and I were a mile or so behind the wagons with the herd, and we saw three Indians coming right straight for us riding fast. Yes, I was scared Just then the big handkerchief that I had around my neck (like cowboys wore) blew off and I had to stop and get it. I think I got off and on that horse quicker than it ever had been done before or since. The Indians had gotten to us by then and wanted the “boss” to pay them for driving cattle over their land. We sent them on to the wagons to talk to Dan and Mel. Of f they went on a fast lope. Then I started to breathe again.
While we were camped somewhere south of Blackfoot, the train killed one of Mel’s steers that got on the tracks. A few days later we arrived in Idaho Falls, then known as Eagle Rock. We took our cattle and the wagon through the street of Park Ave. but there were no paved streets and few buildings. We got to our destination the 19th of June 1897. Just thirty days from the time we left. I had ridden a horse all the way except a day or two that I was sick, then Marion tried to take my place, but being only six years old he had to get back in the wagon and sister Esther and Dan would take turns helping John with the herd.
In the summer of 1897 I hired out to Ray Huffaker as a pig herder. He had a large head of hogs and I would herd them like cows on a field of hay. I think it was the same pigs that the Bible speaks of, only they didn’t drown, but they did act like the devil was in them. That winter I went to school at Leorin, as it was called then (now Milo) and in the spring of 1898 I went to work for Mr. Nowlin. He had a stock ranch on Antelope Creek. We left for the hills in the spring as soon as the grass was green on the foothills and worked the cattle back as the snow went off. By May, the snow was gone so we could get the cattle on to Antelope Flat. There we kept them until the weather got warmer, then we took them farther up at the head of the creek. By then two other outfits had joined us. As it was all free range we run all the stock together making some one thousand head. Up until then, two of us had seven hundred head, but now there was four of us.
I have always liked that kind of outdoor life and natural things. I still like to go out in the hills and see things just as God left them. That summer of 1898 is a time I will never forget. Although I got very homesick, I think I only came home one day for the 4th of July and one day to go to a circus at Idaho Falls. We brought the cattle back about October 15th then I stayed home a few years and went to school.
When I was about 16 years old I went out in the hills with sheep. At that age boys think they are pretty smart and want to try things (that they think make men of them) so I started to use tobacco, although my mother had talked to me before I had gone out for the summer and told me to be a good boy and not form bad habits. So the day I started home I made up my mind to quit tobacco knowing how bad mother would feel if I came home with the tobacco habit. As I came to a creek I stopped and got off my horse and took off my vest that smelled of tobacco and had a sack of Bull Durham in the pocket, and threw it in the creek. As it floated down stream and out of sight I asked my Father in Heaven to help me stop that habit. I have never had another smoke since that day.
But a few years after that I was herding sheep with a southern boy from Tennessee that chewed tobacco. One afternoon we were sitting on the edge of an old hole that had been dug by prospectors. While we were watching the sheep he started spitting tobacco juice across that hole about 20 or more feet across. He did very well. I thought I could do that too so he gave ma a bite of his tobacco. I started to chew, then spit. The first few squirts went out quite a way across that hole, then it got so it would hardly drop off my chin. About that time that big hole began going around and around ——I had to get back before it got me. I felt sick to my stomach, dizzy, weak, drunk, and everything else that one could feel bad with. I started for the camp a very sick boy. That time I didn’t ask God to help me stop chewing tobacco. I was sure I could do it all by myself.
A few years later, John was married. That left me the oldest boy home, so I was to take over our little farm. That made me feel more like a man. I hadn’t finished school and was a big, bashful boy. Grammar was my hardest subject. I just couldn’t see through it. Idah Elgg was my teacher and she tried her best to help me with my diagramming. She would do it over and over to show me. Still I couldn’t get it. Then her eyes would fill with tears and she would say, “No, no, Andrews, not that way.” I got so disgusted with myself that one day after grammar class the window was open and she was busy in the other end of the room with her back toward me so I crawled out the window and went home. That was my last day of school. From then on I tried to be a farmer. You see, I started out as a pig herder, cowboy, sheep herder, and now a farmer.
In 1908 I wanted a new buggy, (you had to have a horse and buggy if you wanted a girl friend) so I went to Idaho Falls and went in debt $165.00 for a new Studebaker buggy with lap robe and whip thrown in. I got it paid for that fall. Well, I had a new buggy and a nice pretty pony to drive. I found a girl or two that would ride with me but I didn’t like them too well. Only the last one. One Sunday evening I was driving down the road and I met Helen Dodge walking up the road. I asked her if she wanted a ride. She said, “Sure do, but we won’t get to church going that direction.” We turned around and went to church. That was the summer of 1909. On March 23, 1910 we were married in the Salt Lake Temple. We farmed that year here in the valley. Dry farming was just started so I found a dry farm of 160 acres and in 1911 moved in a tent and started to homestead. All of this against Helen’s wishes. I spent that summer plowing and killing rattle snakes while my good wife spent her time crying to come home and making baby clothes. Our first baby was born September 13, 1911. We moved in one room of my mother’s house for the winter. In the spring we would go back to the dry farm. One late afternoon brother Charles came up on a horse to tell us that Mother was worse. (She had been sick a long time) and we had better come home. We hurried and left and what a dark night We came with a horse and buggy. We got to mother two or three hours before she passed away.
Mother had given me a corner of her little farm to build on for a winter home. Zina, Murray and Jay were born while we were dry farming. In 1914 we sold the dry farm and bought the farm here. All of the other children ——Phil, Jean, Madge and Mary were born on the old farm near Ucon.
In my earlier life I enjoyed going to the hills for wood and to see the beauty of nature, the forests and wild animals. How a man can kill a deer is a ???? to me. They are the prettiest picture ever. The howling of a pack of coyotes makes prettier music than any brass band I have ever heard. Even the twitter of the birds and the mooing of a bull on the evening summer air sends a feeling through my bones that I can’t explain. And here I am tucked up in a little old city.
November 20, 1962 ——Several years have passed since I have written in this book and I am still in this little city of Ucon. I haven’t farmed since 1943 but I have worked for Bonneville County for twelve years. I have worked from the county line on the north to the county line of the south and from the west to the state line on the east. The last few years most of my work was in the forest and Swan Valley and Grays Lake areas. And the mountain creek roads and canyons. I have enjoyed the work, especially in the forests. We saw deer and wild life about every day. Even rattle snakes. I think I will have to quit that work now as the fumes from the poison spray is affecting my health. We have built up a few cattle so Mother and I can get along pretty well from their income if the price stays good and we don’t live too long. (ha, ha). I have lived 76 years now and I still like it. J.D. has been our cowboy the last few years taking cattle out on summer range. I have enjoyed going up there and riding a horse around with him. Even if I did have to take my meals standing up for a few days.
May 20, 1966 ——Well I am 79 years and 7 months now. I will add a little more to this book. This is some of the ups and downs that we have gone through in our lives: Along in the years about 1916 and 1918 World War I was on and prices were pretty good for livestock. Also farming prices were good and Mom and I were young and wanted to try our wings. Sheep were a good thing as there was money in the sheep business, so we decided to get some sheep. We went to the bank and borrowed quite a lot of money and bought a small band of sheep to add to some that we had. Things went pretty good until the World War I ended then all at once prices went down. There was no sale for wool. I had three years of wool that I couldn’t sell at any price. Lamb prices went down five cents a pound. Through the years I had built the herd to twice the amount that I had bought and sold the whole band for less than the note at the bank that I had borrowed. I still paid the balance of the note with farm produce. We sold potatoes for 35 cents for number ones for 100 lbs. and number twos for five cents for 150 lbs. We had a lot of worry but no money.
We had a family of seven children at home but we were blessed with good health and got our debts all paid with the help of the Lord. I am sure he was watching over us for which we are very thankful.
I have been thinking how this valley was when my Mother came from Utah. It was mostly sagebrush. Very few farms between what is now Ucon and Rigby. There would be a sheep camp every few miles apart in the springtime. In the winter the jackrabbits were so plentiful we would have rabbit drives to kill them off. All the people would come out, some would come in their sleighs with all their family that was big enough to carry a big stick. Some men on horses and some walking. We would form a big circle of a mile or more across and come together and drive the rabbits before us to a big corral in the center. Sometimes we would get as many as 2,000 or more rabbits in one drive. There would be several drives each winter. The farmers would load the dead rabbits in their wagon boxes and take them home for their hogs. Those hogs would eat so many rabbits before spring I’ll bet their insides were fur lined. Our fuel was cedar wood that we would get out on the lava beds west of Idaho Falls. I t would take three days to make the trip for a load of wood. We would take a barrel of water for our horses and ourselves. We would cook our meals on a camp fire and clear the snow off and make our bed down and crawl in the shiver it out until morning.
I, Andrews Tyler, born November 7th, 1886, at Hebron, Washington County, Utah, was the seventh child of Daniel Moroni Tyler and Sarah Elzina Pulsipher Tyler the biggest baby born to them. Being born quite young, I don’t remember much of the first few years. While we lived in Dixie, Utah I only remember it as a mountainous country with nice gardens with melons and corn and Indians coming around for something to eat. Father would trade something to them for pine-nuts. That was the nuts all us little nuts used to get in our socks for Christmas. We left Dixie in the spring, (I think of the year 1891) and went to Huntington, Emery County. There I started school at the age of seven.
We went to school the year I was six, but the kids were coming on faster than they could make room for them, so all six year olds were sent home until the next year. I and my brother Nathanial, (we called him Nate) herded cows for some of the townsfolk. We were paid a few cents a head per, day. We would go out on the hills in the morning and stay all day. I think the days were a lot longer than they are now. My brother Dan got us a little jackass to ride to herd on, and what a help it was. When we would try to make the thing hurry, it would kick up and we would fall off or else it would lay down. I think that was when I learned to swear.
Brother Nate would run after the cows while I stayed and cussed that jackass. I will always remember the day my brother John and I went to get it. We both rode the one horse out after it. We went out to a sheep ranch ten or fifteen miles from home. John caught the donkey, but it had a baby donkey and it didn’t want to leave the rest of its family so it wouldn’t lead. We worked with it for quite a way trying to make it lead by the horn of the saddle. Finally I decided to ride it and I got on.
John was still trying to make it lead on a long rope from his saddle horse but that old donkey would not move. I kicked it in the ribs with my heels and gave it a lash with the whip at the same time. Up came its back end and little Andy lit up in head on the rope. We worked most all the afternoon and got it a mile or so farther, then John decided he would try riding it. He put the saddle on the donkey and I rode the horse. That worked a little better for awhile. Then it laid down with him and we couldn’t get it to go any farther. So John said for me to start out and maybe it would follow. So I started toward home. John didn’t say how far ahead to go so I kept going and looking back but he hadn’t started to come when I went over the hill and out of sight, so I went right on home and left them out there about ten or more miles from home. Mother asked me where John was and I said he was trying to follow me. He came in at dark with the donkey. Now days you would say he “told me off” for leaving him out there alone.
Times were very hard all the time we lived in Huntington and father was sick most of the time. My folks had talked of going to Idaho as land was open for homestead. Father and my brother Dan could have each taken 160 acres. My father didn’t know if it would be wise to try a new country with a large family, so he asked his father’s advice. He advised him not to go at that time. Father only lived a short time after. Then, I think it was only a year or so later my brother Nate died. I can remember how sad and lonesome we all were. Mother said she couldn’t stay there any longer, so she and Dan sold our house and lot and we started for Idaho. That was on May 19th, 1897. Also my sister Ruth and husband and some of Melvin’s and Ruth’s uncles, Sam and Hyram Hill came with us. Our outfit was two covered wagons and four of the best trained horses that I have ever seen. Melvin Cook’s was the same. The Hill brothers, a single wagon each. Mother and the children rode in the trail wagon and Dan drove the four horses. John and I drove the cattle. There were about fifty or sixty head, as all three families had a few. Somewhere on the road near here, the Hill brothers left us and went to Wyoming and we came on to Idaho Falls. We had a nice time and no trouble at all.
A few days out of Price, Utah the canyon road was washed out and the wagon train couldn’t get through, so John took Dan’s place on the wagon and they went around a better road that took them through Provo. Dan and I took the cattle and a pack horse and went the short way over the mountains and met the wagons at Heber City ——and was little Andy glad to see his Ma
This is what we saw while going over the mountains: We went through the Strawberry Valley. It was a big, green valley with a big creek running through and hundreds, maybe thousands, of fat cattle feeding there. That was the prettiest picture I have ever seen. We camped in that valley one night and was worried all the time that we would lose some of our cattle in that big herd. (We did lose one we called “Grandma” but found her after a short while.) While we were coming across the Indian Reservation John and I were a mile or so behind the wagons with the herd, and we saw three Indians coming right straight for us riding fast. Yes, I was scared Just then the big handkerchief that I had around my neck (like cowboys wore) blew off and I had to stop and get it. I think I got off and on that horse quicker than it ever had been done before or since. The Indians had gotten to us by then and wanted the “boss” to pay them for driving cattle over their land. We sent them on to the wagons to talk to Dan and Mel. Of f they went on a fast lope. Then I started to breathe again.
While we were camped somewhere south of Blackfoot, the train killed one of Mel’s steers that got on the tracks. A few days later we arrived in Idaho Falls, then known as Eagle Rock. We took our cattle and the wagon through the street of Park Ave. but there were no paved streets and few buildings. We got to our destination the 19th of June 1897. Just thirty days from the time we left. I had ridden a horse all the way except a day or two that I was sick, then Marion tried to take my place, but being only six years old he had to get back in the wagon and sister Esther and Dan would take turns helping John with the herd.
In the summer of 1897 I hired out to Ray Huffaker as a pig herder. He had a large head of hogs and I would herd them like cows on a field of hay. I think it was the same pigs that the Bible speaks of, only they didn’t drown, but they did act like the devil was in them. That winter I went to school at Leorin, as it was called then (now Milo) and in the spring of 1898 I went to work for Mr. Nowlin. He had a stock ranch on Antelope Creek. We left for the hills in the spring as soon as the grass was green on the foothills and worked the cattle back as the snow went off. By May, the snow was gone so we could get the cattle on to Antelope Flat. There we kept them until the weather got warmer, then we took them farther up at the head of the creek. By then two other outfits had joined us. As it was all free range we run all the stock together making some one thousand head. Up until then, two of us had seven hundred head, but now there was four of us.
I have always liked that kind of outdoor life and natural things. I still like to go out in the hills and see things just as God left them. That summer of 1898 is a time I will never forget. Although I got very homesick, I think I only came home one day for the 4th of July and one day to go to a circus at Idaho Falls. We brought the cattle back about October 15th then I stayed home a few years and went to school.
When I was about 16 years old I went out in the hills with sheep. At that age boys think they are pretty smart and want to try things (that they think make men of them) so I started to use tobacco, although my mother had talked to me before I had gone out for the summer and told me to be a good boy and not form bad habits. So the day I started home I made up my mind to quit tobacco knowing how bad mother would feel if I came home with the tobacco habit. As I came to a creek I stopped and got off my horse and took off my vest that smelled of tobacco and had a sack of Bull Durham in the pocket, and threw it in the creek. As it floated down stream and out of sight I asked my Father in Heaven to help me stop that habit. I have never had another smoke since that day.
But a few years after that I was herding sheep with a southern boy from Tennessee that chewed tobacco. One afternoon we were sitting on the edge of an old hole that had been dug by prospectors. While we were watching the sheep he started spitting tobacco juice across that hole about 20 or more feet across. He did very well. I thought I could do that too so he gave ma a bite of his tobacco. I started to chew, then spit. The first few squirts went out quite a way across that hole, then it got so it would hardly drop off my chin. About that time that big hole began going around and around ——I had to get back before it got me. I felt sick to my stomach, dizzy, weak, drunk, and everything else that one could feel bad with. I started for the camp a very sick boy. That time I didn’t ask God to help me stop chewing tobacco. I was sure I could do it all by myself.
A few years later, John was married. That left me the oldest boy home, so I was to take over our little farm. That made me feel more like a man. I hadn’t finished school and was a big, bashful boy. Grammar was my hardest subject. I just couldn’t see through it. Idah Elgg was my teacher and she tried her best to help me with my diagramming. She would do it over and over to show me. Still I couldn’t get it. Then her eyes would fill with tears and she would say, “No, no, Andrews, not that way.” I got so disgusted with myself that one day after grammar class the window was open and she was busy in the other end of the room with her back toward me so I crawled out the window and went home. That was my last day of school. From then on I tried to be a farmer. You see, I started out as a pig herder, cowboy, sheep herder, and now a farmer.
In 1908 I wanted a new buggy, (you had to have a horse and buggy if you wanted a girl friend) so I went to Idaho Falls and went in debt $165.00 for a new Studebaker buggy with lap robe and whip thrown in. I got it paid for that fall. Well, I had a new buggy and a nice pretty pony to drive. I found a girl or two that would ride with me but I didn’t like them too well. Only the last one. One Sunday evening I was driving down the road and I met Helen Dodge walking up the road. I asked her if she wanted a ride. She said, “Sure do, but we won’t get to church going that direction.” We turned around and went to church. That was the summer of 1909. On March 23, 1910 we were married in the Salt Lake Temple. We farmed that year here in the valley. Dry farming was just started so I found a dry farm of 160 acres and in 1911 moved in a tent and started to homestead. All of this against Helen’s wishes. I spent that summer plowing and killing rattle snakes while my good wife spent her time crying to come home and making baby clothes. Our first baby was born September 13, 1911. We moved in one room of my mother’s house for the winter. In the spring we would go back to the dry farm. One late afternoon brother Charles came up on a horse to tell us that Mother was worse. (She had been sick a long time) and we had better come home. We hurried and left and what a dark night We came with a horse and buggy. We got to mother two or three hours before she passed away.
Mother had given me a corner of her little farm to build on for a winter home. Zina, Murray and Jay were born while we were dry farming. In 1914 we sold the dry farm and bought the farm here. All of the other children ——Phil, Jean, Madge and Mary were born on the old farm near Ucon.
In my earlier life I enjoyed going to the hills for wood and to see the beauty of nature, the forests and wild animals. How a man can kill a deer is a ???? to me. They are the prettiest picture ever. The howling of a pack of coyotes makes prettier music than any brass band I have ever heard. Even the twitter of the birds and the mooing of a bull on the evening summer air sends a feeling through my bones that I can’t explain. And here I am tucked up in a little old city.
November 20, 1962 ——Several years have passed since I have written in this book and I am still in this little city of Ucon. I haven’t farmed since 1943 but I have worked for Bonneville County for twelve years. I have worked from the county line on the north to the county line of the south and from the west to the state line on the east. The last few years most of my work was in the forest and Swan Valley and Grays Lake areas. And the mountain creek roads and canyons. I have enjoyed the work, especially in the forests. We saw deer and wild life about every day. Even rattle snakes. I think I will have to quit that work now as the fumes from the poison spray is affecting my health. We have built up a few cattle so Mother and I can get along pretty well from their income if the price stays good and we don’t live too long. (ha, ha). I have lived 76 years now and I still like it. J.D. has been our cowboy the last few years taking cattle out on summer range. I have enjoyed going up there and riding a horse around with him. Even if I did have to take my meals standing up for a few days.
May 20, 1966 ——Well I am 79 years and 7 months now. I will add a little more to this book. This is some of the ups and downs that we have gone through in our lives: Along in the years about 1916 and 1918 World War I was on and prices were pretty good for livestock. Also farming prices were good and Mom and I were young and wanted to try our wings. Sheep were a good thing as there was money in the sheep business, so we decided to get some sheep. We went to the bank and borrowed quite a lot of money and bought a small band of sheep to add to some that we had. Things went pretty good until the World War I ended then all at once prices went down. There was no sale for wool. I had three years of wool that I couldn’t sell at any price. Lamb prices went down five cents a pound. Through the years I had built the herd to twice the amount that I had bought and sold the whole band for less than the note at the bank that I had borrowed. I still paid the balance of the note with farm produce. We sold potatoes for 35 cents for number ones for 100 lbs. and number twos for five cents for 150 lbs. We had a lot of worry but no money.
We had a family of seven children at home but we were blessed with good health and got our debts all paid with the help of the Lord. I am sure he was watching over us for which we are very thankful.
I have been thinking how this valley was when my Mother came from Utah. It was mostly sagebrush. Very few farms between what is now Ucon and Rigby. There would be a sheep camp every few miles apart in the springtime. In the winter the jackrabbits were so plentiful we would have rabbit drives to kill them off. All the people would come out, some would come in their sleighs with all their family that was big enough to carry a big stick. Some men on horses and some walking. We would form a big circle of a mile or more across and come together and drive the rabbits before us to a big corral in the center. Sometimes we would get as many as 2,000 or more rabbits in one drive. There would be several drives each winter. The farmers would load the dead rabbits in their wagon boxes and take them home for their hogs. Those hogs would eat so many rabbits before spring I’ll bet their insides were fur lined. Our fuel was cedar wood that we would get out on the lava beds west of Idaho Falls. I t would take three days to make the trip for a load of wood. We would take a barrel of water for our horses and ourselves. We would cook our meals on a camp fire and clear the snow off and make our bed down and crawl in the shiver it out until morning.