My granddad was one of the greatest storytellers of all time. Here is one of his tales. I considered all of his life stories as truth – well, truth with a bit of embellishment.
Just before I left for the war the neighbors started calling me ‘Doc’. This is how it came about.
I was up there working for Gus Tank. There was a big canyon which came down out of the hills three or four hundred yards from old Gus’s corral. There was a saddle horse trail there which was used in the summer. It wasn’t a winter trail.
About the last of March most of the snow was gone. However, the canyon was still drifted with snow and wasn’t passable yet. A little lady from up around the flatland had been riding across the hills. She and her husband, Bud, would come down that way to pick up the mail that the stage left. It was mail day.
Gus Tank’s cabin was halfway place between Leedy and Content. The stage driver would stop there, leave off the mail for the neighborhood, feed his horses, eat something and pick up any mail that was going to Leedy. Four or five people had been by that day to eat dinner and pick up their mail. Then here came the old lady down to get hers. She lived three or four miles back up there on the hill. And she was pretty well loaded with that old black and white that they used to get out of Canada. She was used to alcohol and so was Bud.
When she got to the canyon she rode right across the drift. The melting water had ran under the drift, which had settled and caked over. It was hollowed out underneath and would not hold a horse. The horse fell through. Well, he got out all right, but she got stuck and could not get any footing to get out.
Well, I’d been out riding the bluff along Alkali Creek. Three or four head of cows were down there and I’d pulled one out of the bog. The day was getting a little late – close to sundown. I rode up to the corral. The horse kept looking toward the canyon trail. Pretty soon old Jug stiffened up. I was just ready to pull the saddle off him. I looked up and saw the lady’s horse come up over the bank. He was nasty and all wet.
I had a thirty foot rope for pulling cows out of the bog. I jumped on and rode to the mouth of the canyon and there was the old lady stuck in the snow. I got that rope around her shoulders. I couldn’t pull her out by hand, so I tied her on to the saddle horn and backed out of there. That pulled her out, and I got her up to the barn. I threw some feed and turned the horses in the corral. Then I got her on my back and carried her up to the cabin.
Old Gus had a bunk seven or eight feet wide. He slept on one side and I slept on the other. So I rolled her out there on my side and on my tarp and started the fire good. I put on some coffee and warmed up a pot of soup which I’d put out there for the mail day crowd.
She was just about numb and coughing. I rubbed her feet and I asked her, “Now can you get out of these wet clothes?”
She shook her head. No, she couldn’t get out of those clothes.
“Well.” I said, “You’ve got to get out of these wet clothes or you’re going to catch pneumonia and you’ll die right here.”
She wouldn’t do anything. So I said, “All right”, and rolled her over on her back and unbuttoned her clothes from top to bottom – sheepskin, a couple of shirts, long handles and everything else. Then I turned her over on her stomach and got hold of her clothes and just stripped her, by gosh. I had a big old wool blanket on my bed. It was about a quarter of an inch thick. I just rolled her up in that and told her, “Now you’re going to have to stay right in there because I’m going to go get Mrs. Doaney.”
So I got her all fixed, stoked the fire good and got back on the Jug and went down to Doaney’s as quick as I could get there.
They seen me coming and Mrs. Doaney said, “I knew that there was something the matter somehow and told Joe to get the horse ready.”
I told her I had Mrs. Elkhart up there and she was about froze to death. She’d jumped off her horse and sunk in the snowdrift. Mrs. Doaney was right ready and had a little bag fixed up and piled on her horse and away we went.
We got back up there. She went over and felt of the old lady’s face. She was still pretty blue. I had rubbed her feet, lower legs and her hands and wrists and rolled her up in that blanket and left her. Mrs. Doaney looked down in there and saw she didn’t have any clothes on and she says, “Did you do this?”
And I said, “Yes, I had to. she was freezing to death.” I said, “I just unbuttoned her and pulled that thing up over her shoulders and rolled her over on her stomach, took a hold of the collar, turned everything wrong side out, skinned her alive and rolled her up in that blanket. That’s all that saved her life, I guess.”
So we got the old lady kind of comfortable. She was sober by then. And I took a couple of blankets and went down to the barn and went to bed.
The next morning, well, Mrs. Doaney got breakfast and the old lady got up. She didn’t even catch a cold. She went home, and the next day or two she and Bud came down and asked me how much my doctor bill was.
The neighbors heard about it. When the first ones came by they’d say, “How are you Doc.” Pretty soon everybody in the country was calling me Doc. This lasted all summer.
Come fall I quit and went up to Great Falls to sign up for the army. I never came back or saw any of them again until the war was over. Then I saw her and old Bud in town. He was still grateful to me for saving her life out there on the snowbank.
My favorite picture of my granddad