Edmunds County Tribune -

From the Ipswich Tribune Thursday, May 30, 1935 edition

LIFE IN SHANTY ON CLAIM

STORY OF PIONEER LADY

Part II

All the water we had to use until some time in June was what we dipped up out of sloughs and low places and as soon as the days began to get warm it was necessary to strain and boil all the water we used. I remember a bad storm we had that spring, I think it was the last days of April and the first day of May. The storm came on in the afternoon a sort of misty rain which turned to snow toward night. That evening three teams and five men drove up and asked for shelter for themselves and their horses but it was shelter for their horses they wanted most they could “sleep any place.” Now we had improvised a shelter for our stock by building a frame of lumber and stretching a large tarpaulin that we brought with us over the frame, so we told them yes they could stay and they got their horses all in. Horses were quite a question that spring whether they were abused, had an epidemic of some kind or just that they had to be acclimated or a little of all. Anyway all along the trail there were to be seen dead horses. When the horses were all in there wasn’t any place for the men, so I moved out the table and trunk and those five men slept very comfortably, as they said, on the floor of our shanty, some of them had their feet under our bed. For three days and nights that storm lasted and I cooked for and furnished a place for those men to sleep and the funny part of it all is I did not think anything of it. I am sure I could not do it now. They were headed for the Missouri River, every one seemed to be going west that spring. I have sat in my shanty door in the afternoon and counted eighty teams all going west. We seemed to be on the highway from Aberdeen to LeBeau.