Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1916-07-22

lin the present article James Kine
relates how he and Scott Erwin spen,
the night and following day away from
the wagon outfit after their exciting
fight with band Of wild horses led by
a beautiful roam stallion which took
place in the afternoon, as described in
his preceding letter.)
The narrative follows:
When we went into camp for the
second time that night Erwin prefer.
red to sleep and said that we were lost
| and had been travelling in the wrong
direction. But lost or not I was going
to have my nap. A deathlike stiffness
! prevailed, the monotony of an Egypt
ian night being broken only by the
browsing of our saddlers nearby. While
Scott Erwin remained awake turned
into blankets and was soon in the
land of sweet, sweet dreams.
was awakened by Erwin to find the
crescent moon hanging In a cloudless
were cleaning above the desert waste.
We took an invoice OF ourselves and
found everything in swimming order.
We ate cold snack of skillet bread,
rabbit and water. We still had our
five gallon key OF water intact and
some still In our canteen 50 we gave
our horses one gallon each, pouring
the water into Erwin's hat and allow
ing the horses to drink therefrom. We
then took to our saddles and we're soon
speeding northward.
Here luck was with us for soon we
ran plump onto the trail and the
tracks of our horses made the previ-
Gus day. We were now Of an unde-
cided mind as to which course to pur-
sue, whether to continue westward or
return to the outfit. We chose the
former course and soon reached the
spot where we had first seen the
fighting roam and his followers. Here
we carefully examined the tracks
made by the wild horses and found to
our surprise that one of the animals
wore a shoe on one of it's hind feet,
thus showing that formerly one of the
wild rovers had been in domestic SER
vice Of some kind. We continued our
way westward and about noon came
to much rougher country where we
found small grove of 1ronwood.
Some of the trees here were about
four inches in diameter.
Here we left the trail and rode or
rather led our horses down a steep
incline to the north and landed in
beautiful valley which stretched away
toward the snow capped Rockies, our
glasses failing to reveal aught but an
unbroken waste. The grazing, how
ever was good, the grass not being of
the buffalo variety but more like
meadow grass back home What En-
win and I wanted was water for our
stock and in this it appeared as if fate
favored us once more for soon we
spied a small drove of deer a short
distance to the west, travelling leisure
ly toward the uplift which we had but
recently descended. We drew the
little animals close in with our field
glasses and found them to be the same
kind Of animal which we had met at
| the water hole the day previous, de-
scribed in a previous letter. We
watched the deer pass into a ravine
or opening in the uplift, apparently
oblivious to the proximity of human
beings.
Erwin and approached the opening
through which the quarry had passed,
when l dismounted and climbed in a
circuitous route to the summit Of the
uplift. From here I could see the
deer shaking their thirst from the wat
er of several springs which gushed
from the hillside forming a nest Of