Bonners Ferry herald. [volume] (Bonners Ferry, Idaho) 1904-current, 1907-03-30
LONELINESS OF RANCH uFs.
Woman Tell. How Ii Feels &c de
Eight Mile. from n Netkhbor.

wom-n Tell. How IL Feels &c de
Eight Miles from a Heikhbor.
Being a ranchwoman on a Montana
cattle ranch isn't all beer and skittlex.
II the experience Of a New York news
paper woman who kept house on one o.
them for five days is a sample. Going
out to Custer County to visit friends
partly for her health and partly for
good time, she found herself at the
expiration OF six weeks obliged to run
the shack and mother" her host and
the cowboy. while her hostess consulted
the nearest physician, who was 1--WE
days" away.
The hardest part about It all to the
newspaper woman was not the work.
though that was hard, nor yet the heat,
though 1t was very hot, but the horrible
loneliness. or course, II never oc-
CURED to those ranchmen, four OF i've
miles away on the prairie, that a WON
an fresh from n town OF 100000 could
be lonely or afraid on a ranch eight
miles from the nearest neighbor.
But l was" writes the amateur
ranchwoman In a recent number of the
Outlook.
mo sooner had the hayrack disap-
peared from sight than the loneliness
bore down on me like a weight-tne
miserable, Intangible, silly nervousness
that won't stand analysis but paralyzes
Just the same.
"Oh, for something human, something
living felt grateful to the foolish
cows for coming 70 water and to the
horses for pressing around the front
door In their affectionate quest for
sugar
mot Sister Anne herself peered more
eagerly out Of her orloled easement for
anybody coming than | out OF my
kitchen window. But the sun. mount
Ing high in a peerless sky, kept on
drenchlng the Montana landscape with
light. Bald and bare, the yellow-brow
prairie rolled gently AWAY and away
and away In grassy knobs to where the
Bad Lands broke on the violet horizon
like city Of dreams, all rose and burnt
orange and maroon and amethyst
Not a butterfly fitted by, not bird
trilied. Eight miles westward to the
nearest neighbor. Twelve miles north
ward. Forty miles, maybe fifty, to the
east. And to the south-why, a man
might travel three days on horseback
to the south and never see the blue
UnOke curling from a chimney. Some
times, for a minute, horse perched
high on a rampant OF buttes would sill
bouette itself against their utmost pur-
there were others, for horses are gre
garIous, and that he and his friends
we're only q few OF the creatures
horses and cows and sheep-that were
drifting about by thousands, week and
month and year, grazing whore once
the Iordly buffalo had roamed- Never
had nature seemed so grim, so dra-
matte, or so relentless"
But II Is a long lane that has no
turning, and eventually several Of the
neighbors called anu relieved the news
paper woman's loneliness. They must
have Increased her labors, however, for
on the morning of the third day, as he
watched her begin her 'matutlnai duel
with the dirty Dishes" her host asked,
do you find the work very hardY'
mo" replied, truthfully enough,
but everything that Is done Is done
In the hardest possible way. II ever
became ranchwoman for better or
worse, should expect my ranchman
to give me sink and an ice house for
a wedding present And he needn't
hope to lead me to the altar unless all
the doors and windows had fly screens
that fitted. And l should want a
stove that would bake without being
sworn at, and"
"Oh you want too much" laughed
my host mo ranchman would stand
such imposition"