Letters of a Woman Homesteader | Page 2

very comfortable situation and Mr. Stewart is absolutely no trouble, for
as soon as he has his meals he retires to his room and plays on his
bagpipe, only he calls it his "bugpeep." It is "The Campbells are
Coming," without variations, at intervals all day long and from seven
till eleven at night. Sometimes I wish they would make haste and get
here.
There is a saddle horse especially for me and a little shotgun with
which I am to kill sage chickens. We are between two trout streams, so
you can think of me as being happy when the snow is through melting
and the water gets clear. We have the finest flock of Plymouth Rocks
and get so many nice eggs. It sure seems fine to have all the cream I
want after my town experiences. Jerrine is making good use of all the
good things we are having. She rides the pony to water every day.
I have not filed on my land yet because the snow is fifteen feet deep on
it, and I think I would rather see what I am getting, so will wait until
summer. They have just three seasons here, winter and July and August.
We are to plant our garden the last of May. When it is so I can get
around I will see about land and find out all I can and tell you.
I think this letter is about to reach thirty-secondly, so I will send you
my sincerest love and quit tiring you. Please write me when you have

time.
Sincerely yours, ELINORE RUPERT.

II
FILING A CLAIM
_May 24, 1909._
DEAR, DEAR MRS. CONEY,--
Well, I have filed on my land and am now a bloated landowner. I
waited a long time to even see land in the reserve, and the snow is yet
too deep, so I thought that as they have but three months of summer
and spring together and as I wanted the land for a ranch anyway,
perhaps I had better stay in the valley. So I have filed adjoining Mr.
Stewart and I am well pleased. I have a grove of twelve swamp pines
on my place, and I am going to build my house there. I thought it
would be very romantic to live on the peaks amid the whispering pines,
but I reckon it would be powerfully uncomfortable also, and I guess my
twelve can whisper enough for me; and a dandy thing is, I have all the
nice snow-water I want; a small stream runs right through the center of
my land and I am quite near wood.
A neighbor and his daughter were going to Green River, the
county-seat, and said I might go along, so I did, as I could file there as
well as at the land office; and oh, that trip! I had more fun to the square
inch than Mark Twain or Samantha Allen ever provoked. It took us a
whole week to go and come. We camped out, of course, for in the
whole sixty miles there was but one house, and going in that direction
there is not a tree to be seen, nothing but sage, sand, and sheep. About
noon the first day out we came near a sheep-wagon, and stalking along
ahead of us was a lanky fellow, a herder, going home for dinner.
Suddenly it seemed to me I should starve if I had to wait until we got
where we had planned to stop for dinner, so I called out to the man,
"Little Bo-Peep, have you anything to eat? If you have, we'd like to

find it." And he answered, "As soon as I am able it shall be on the table,
if you'll but trouble to get behind it." Shades of Shakespeare! Songs of
David, the Shepherd Poet! What do you think of us? Well, we got
behind it, and a more delicious "it" I never tasted. Such coffee! And out
of such a pot! I promised Bo-Peep that I would send him a crook with
pink ribbons on it, but I suspect he thinks I am a crook without the
ribbons.
The sagebrush is so short in some places that it is not large enough to
make a fire, so we had to drive until quite late before we camped that
night. After driving all day over what seemed a level desert of sand, we
came about sundown to a beautiful cañon, down which we had to drive
for a couple of miles before we could cross. In the cañon the shadows
had already fallen, but when we looked up we could see the last shafts
of sunlight on the tops of the great bare buttes. Suddenly a great wolf
started from somewhere and