--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Sharp, James P. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 32 number: 11 published: 1929-09 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "James P. Sharp, “The Great Out of Doors,” *Improvement Era* 32, no. 11 (September 1929): 934–938." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera32011unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera32011unse start_page: 934 end_page: 938 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1929-09) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera32011unse publication_year: 1929 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1929, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Great Out of Doors The Great Out of Doors By James P. Sharp Some time ago I read the following poem and was reminded of the times I had spent in the "Out of Doors." That night I went to Mutual and was asked to speak to the Scouts upon some of my experiences as a boy, when I was on the western desert, and after the story was finished, one of the hard- est boys to manage asked where I had read it. When ] told him it was just a story from my own Book of Life, he asked me to write it and let him take it to his parents to read. I pre- faced my narrative with the verses written by Edgar A. Guest: GET OUT OF DOORS Get out of doors! 'Tis here you'll find The better thanks of heart and mind, Get out beneath some stretch of sky And watch the white clouds drifting by. And all the petty thoughts will fade Before the wonders God has made. Go wade a trout stream in the spring, And brother with the birds awing; Know what it means to wander far, Your guide the sun or evening star, Who sleeps beneath the open sky Soon grows too big to tell a lie. Get out of doors, the fields are clean, The woods will teach you nothing mean. Who toils beneath the summer sun Sleeps soundest when his work is done, If splendid manhood you would know Get out where you've a chance to grow. Read deeply kindly nature's books, Familiarize yourself with brooks, And with the majesty of trees The constant industry of bees. And all that shapes the Master's plan. They'll teach you how to be a man. Sometimes when you have read an appealing story or poem, you will stop and think it over and turn back the pages to some part that was particular- ly pleasing and read it over again. To- night I am going to turn back some of the stories written in my Book of Life, and will read to you some of the pages of that book. It will be told in lan- guage you can understand, for it is simply what happened to me when a boy of your age, so will turn back these pages for the space of from thirty to thirty- three years. Our story begins in the south end of Tooele county at a small town where I was born and reared. This town is situated on the edge of the Great American Desert, as it is called, and it was about the middle of May. For days we have talked about the first spring round-up of wild horses. The boss comes out and tells us that tomorrow we will have to have two or three riders ready to leave; so if you boys want to go with us, you will have to seek employment from one of the other outfits, as this is a general round-up and all the ranchers send two or three men, and as there are six or eight different outfits you see there will be quite a few riders. He picks out the men he wants to go, and tells the one in charge what horses to take. The riders go over their outfits to see that there are no broken saddle strings or cinches and to see if their ropes are all strong, for we may have to use the ropes several times. The next morning you are awake early, and each man sees to getting his own outfit ready. This means he must see to his saddle, bridle, rope, "chaps," or leather riding breeches, and his spurs, slicker and gun, as all cowboys carried guns in those days. The man in charge of the outfit goes to the storehouse and gets a pack-sad- dle and bags and sees that the brand of the outfit we are riding for is on Sept., 1929 THE GREAT OUT OF DOORS 937 the saddle as well as on the bags. He then gets as much flour as will be needed of what we called the "self- rising" variety. All it needs is to be mixed with water and baked and it makes good bread. He then cuts off some bacon and some fresh beef and gets soap, towel, a few cups and spoons, some knives and forks, a few matches, salt, pepper and sugar. Some- times he puts in a can of syrup, but seldom, as this generally gets spilled and is a regular bother, so we leave it this time. All of this he puts into onei of the bags and into the other he places a bake-oven, frying pan and coffee pot. I will tell you why we take tea and coffee. In that part of the desert we are going to, water will be scarce and some of it will be bitter or have a salty taste which makes you feel like you had been taking castor- oil; besides, it makes you sicker than does the oil. This pack is now put on the horse with your bedding on top. and with a long rope and a lash cinch you learn to tie what we call a "diamond hitch." If you do this properly your pack will arrive at camp all safe. We are ready to leave and the extra saddle horses are driven in. Each man is given from five to eight horses to ride, so you see when we get all the fifteen or twenty riders together, and each man has as many horses as we have there are more than one hundred horses to start with. But we will need them all before we get back. The riders are to gather at Point Lookout. This is the last water we find before going on the desert proper, and is the old station of the Overland Stage, as it was called. It was the scene of more than one hold-up in early stage days when the mail went through these valleys to California. Some other time I may tell you of the stages and hold- ups, as I learned the stories from my father, but not now. We ride up to the house and see a sign, "Water One Cent a Gallon. Horses 15c," and we wonder how we will get along. Just then Horace Rock- well, a relative of the much talked of O. P. Rockwell, appears, looks us over and then seeing the brand, the Jew's harp, on the horses we ride, says cheer- ily, "So you are the Sharp riders? Well, give your horses all they can drink. That sign is for strangers. Go and camp by the corral. You will find the Wine Cup and Pot Hook D. boys there already. I've been expect- ing you boys for some time, and have kept the horses out of the north pasture and the feed is fine. Turn in." We meet the other riders. They are a rough but jolly and good-hearted lot. The head men of each outfit get to- gether and appoint a boss for the round-up. It may be any one of you, but before you can expect to be the Big Boss, as we call him, you must have been on many of these trips, as there is a lot to do that you never dreamed of. Each outfit starts to get supper. Someone is asked to mix bread. He is willing but can't find the bread pan. This is easily explained. As no boys like to wash dishes, we left it behind on purpose as there is always some dough left in the pan and this is a waste. So one of the older hands at the business takes the sack of flour and makes a round hole in the flour and pours in a cup of water and stirs it up and soon has a nice ball of dough which he places in the bake-oven, and ties up the sack. There is no pan to wash and no waste of flour. Soon supper is ready and eaten and you go to bed soon after, knowing that from now on it will be hard work. Your bed is made on the hard ground and you wonder how it will be possible to sleep; but it is always cold on the desert as soon as the sun sets, so you pull the covers up and look at the stars and think, and before you know it, are asleep and you heai a voice calling, "Breakfast," as the bosj has a cook appointed for the outfit. 938 IMPROVEMENT ERA Sept., 1929 You open your eyes and see that day is breaking. After a hasty toilet and breakfast, the horses are brought in and work begins. The boss leaves two men with the cook. These are to follow with the saddle and pack ani- mals, and here is where the brand on your outfit helps, for as soon as you are up you roll your bedding and put it in a pile with your pack saddle on top, and the men left to pack up know which horse to put it on. It is nineteen miles to the next water and it will not be reached before night- fall, so the boys have filled their pockets with chaparral leaves to suck, as this will help to keep them from be- coming too thirsty. Nothing happens today, and as you ride along on the desert, all in a string about half a mile apart, you think, "What a snap." The distance here is deceiving. Gran- ite Mountain, about forty miles to the west, looks but a short distance away. Surely at scout pace could be reached in an hour, but as you ride it gets no nearer. We now turn south and head for Simpson Springs, where we arrive about sundown, having rounded up possibly fifty horses. These are put with the saddle band for the night and all turned up one of the draws to the east. There are no corrals and only the remnant of the once Overland. We are in Uncle Sam's pasture and it is a big one. To the south about eighteen miles is a spring of bad water; west it is forty-five miles to Fish Springs and north I can't tell how far to water. but to the east there are numerous springs. There is not a ranch on this range of forty by sixty miles. The next day we ride and make it back to camp by noon, but as we can see some of the boys way out west having trouble, the boss has us change horses and go out to help them. One thinks it is only a short distance, but we ride mile after mile before we reach our companions, whom we help back to camp with the wild band. By this time we are so tired we can hardly move, besides our legs are chafed con- siderably from not having ridden be- fore, and as we watch some of the older riders rubbing their chafed legs with salt and flour or bathing them with salt and water, we try it, and as soon as the salt touches the chafed part we make for the spring to wash it off, but by the time we get there, we decide to let it go as it has partly quit. We lie down exhausted on the bed for a moment when supper is called, so we get up and, after a bite, return to bed and are all prepared to turn in for the night when the boss comes along and says, "You are on grave-yard shift." You reply that you are dead tired, but not dead. It is explained that you are to night herd from ten until relieved by the day herders next morning. Here is where your partner comes in handy, for a good boss never has the two that bunk together work together, so while you doze your chum gets your horse ready. At nine-thirty you are called and go out with the other men and relieve those on watch and thus spend your first night in the saddle and will have plenty to think of. If it's moonlight you sit on your horse on one side of the band assigned to you, the other riders doing likewise; but if it is dark, you ride around the herd all night trying to keep just so far from the rider ahead, not an easy thing to do. Well, after years, as it seems to you, the first light appears in the east, the birds begin to sing and you are not so lonesome, and think only of get- ting to bed. Soon you are relieved, then you get breakfast and to your dis- may the boss tells you where to ride today. You determine that when you are boss you will let the night herders sleep all day. Some days, when the horses you are rounding up are exceptionally wild, a man will ride as many as four horses, so you see why there are so many in the saddle band. Now let me tell you of the many things the boss has to know. Some Sept.. 1929 THE GREAT OUT OF DOORS 939 of the riders have been out south and drunk some of the bad water. When they reach camp it has either affected their kidneys or bowels and in either case makes them very sick. If it af- fects the kidneys the boss sees to it you are given the gum off the pinion pine. This you chew and swallow all the saliva caused to flow, and swallow as well some of the gum. Generally you will be all right by the middle of the next day; in fact, I have never seen a case this treatment would not cure, but have heard of some, and to these was given a tea made of the juniper berries. However, I never saw this tried. If the bowels are loose get some slippery elm and make a tea or if this cannot be found, get the root of crow foot and if none is handy, take some tea made from the root of the wild rose which can always be found. Some drink the tea made from mountain rush or, as it is also called, joint brush, or Brigham tea, as I have heard that Pres. Young recommended it to the early settlers. I would not advise this, however, until you know how it af- fects you, for to some it is the greatest physic they can take and to others acts exactly opposite. If the bowels don't move properly we will drink a tea made from the black sage or else from the wild grape root, but riding con- stantly and with only coarse food, this will hardly be needed. If one of the men has had a bad spill which fre- quently happens, and is all bruised up, bathe the bruise with strong sage tea into which quite a bit of salt has been added and soon the soreness and swell- ing will disappear. For toothache I have seen the cavity filled with sage brush ashes and also have seen dry tea leaves used and the toothache stopped, whether through the belief or some curative property, I cannot say. One man in the hills came in contact with poison ivy, and to cure this, a tea was made of the shad scale, which is a small salty bush, and the parts that were smarting or burning were bathed and soon the smarting stopped, Besides being a boss he has to be doctor and everything else. You no- tice this morning as you are getting up a night rider comes in and speaks to the boss who immediately mounts a horse and rides away. You all sit and wonder where he has gone. Soon he appears and, calling to one of the best men, tells him to take as many men as he will need to get that band of horses to the nearest place where they can be corraled, and to get them there before night. He adds that the men have begun "stringing" the band, which means that one rider has led out and the others are slowly starting the band to string after him. As there are possibly five hundred horses it will take a long time to start them. The riders leave, and one man follows with the pack animals. The leader must also be a peace scout able to read the signs. This one has read the sign which tells him that a storm is brewing. You will not be- lieve it for there is not a cloud in the sky and besides it seldom storms on the desert, but when a storm breaks it is generally an electrical one, and the lightning and thunder are something awful, though we usually have little rain. We are not asked to go with the band and therefore can rest, as it is use- less to gather more horses until after the storm. Ten times the men we have could not hold a band of desert horses in a storm at night. The boss is uneasy all day, but as night comes on and no storm, he feels easier. He knows with good luck the band is safe in the large corral at the ranch twenty miles to the east. You go to bed and laugh at the boss's mistake, for you have not thought so much of him since he made you take your turn at night herding. Sometime during the night you are awakened by the awful crashes of thunder, and as you open your eyes you are nearly blinded by the flashes of lightning that keep the whole country 940 IMPROVEMENT ERA Sept.. 1929 lit up with the strange blue cast seen so plainly on the desert. The storm leaves as suddenly as it came without any rain, and as you lie and think it over, you rather ad- mire the boss, feeling sure that had the band not been sent to some corral the work of the past would all be undone and no horses left to show for all the riding. The boss had read the signs of the approaching storm in the actions of the wild horses, as anyone long con- nected with live stock can generally tell when a change in the weather is com- ing by the actions of the animals. Th? next day we start to ride again and by night the boys are back with the horses and we ride as before. There is not much change, only today one of the boys may kill a deer with his pistol or another rope a young antelope or coyote. One of the boys has had a sore hand for a few days and has not been able to sleep for some time. Now his hand is all swelled up and a small kernel comes in the arm at the elbow and soon another comes under the arm pit, and he may be delirious, so the boss orders one of the men to make a strong sage tea, bathes this sore hand for an hour or so. He has also sent a man to hunt for some birds eggs and busies himself mixing soap and sugar and melting these with a little water into a thick paste. A cotton-tail rabbit is shot, cotton-tails are generally found near these desert springs. The boss sharpens his pocket knife on his boot until it is like a razor, and then he dips the blade in the hot sage tea, lets it boil and everything is ready for what? The boss takes the hand firmly and, with a swift stroke, lances the swelling in the dark spot in the center. It reminds one of the boy who said he liked to stub his toe, for it felt so good after it quit hurting. As soon as the cut was made, the matter and corruption came and with it some blood that was nearly black and very thick. The boss now took some of the white from the birds' eggs, mjxed it; with his soap and sugar and warmed it. The rabbit was skinned and the soap, sugar and white of egg was put on the cut and the rabbit skin, flesh side next to the man's skin, was wrap- ped around and held the poultice as moist as does the oiled silk that doctors use now. The man was soon asleep and all went well. Now we start to the ranches with our horses. We have from six to eight hundred. The boss is still worried, for any time something may go wrong and cause a stampede, but we arrive safe and now the round-up is over as we turn the band in the large pasture at the home ranch and the boss takes a long free breath, the first for many days. Now let's turn back these pages to the present time and here we are in the meeting with a few minutes to spare, and I am going to tell you that about this time a man from Salt Lake came to our ranch and tried to get us to move to a more desirable country. He said the Lord would never own a country where the water was bad and where there was nothing but sand and clay with wild horses and coyotes ev- erywhere, and behind most of the bushes were rattle snakes and lizards. Now what is the difference between the desert and the city? Not much, as I see it, only here the sand and clay are built into houses and there it is not. Here we have drug stores where by paying an enormous price we can get a substitute mixed up with a lot of sweet syrup that tastes good, while there we have the real medicine. As to the snakes, coyotes, lizards and such, don't you have them here, only in a different form? Out there they are in their natural state and element, and all are taught to look out for themselves, while here we have them but of more deadly kind, and they are dressed up and parading around as men. That to me is as much God's country as any I was ever in and I would sooner trust a snake there than here.