Over the years, I had read many Louis L’Amour books. Always wishing I could have lived the cowboy life. Now I was to do just that. The ranch was a substantial spread, covering thousands of acres. Most of this was a lease. The owner had bought the natural hayfields that were in a line along a 15-mile valley, then, as he had the only source of hay, he was able to lease the entire valley. I would be working the back end, about 15 miles from the main ranch.
I was told to be at a Dude Ranch on a specific date. On that day, I drove out the Bella Coola Road to Alexis Creek and stopped at the Pigion General Store for directions. Very cool old store, I had stopped here often on my trips in and out of Bella Coola. Following the directions they gave, and six hours of driving on an old, rough road, I was able to find the Lodge. This was a working dude ranch; it was located at the end of any drivable road. I stayed the night at the lodge, where they put me up in the bunkhouse so I could get an early start the next day. From here on in, it would be a full day’s trek into the main ranch on the old wagon road.
The lodge was pretty cool, the owner and his wife were awesome folks, as were all their cowboys, the spread was a working dude ranch, people would come stay and get to do cowboy stuff, and they paid well to do this. The owner’s wife was a guide for these folks. She told me many tales about taking guests out. One tale had me laughing pretty hard. She used to buy large orders of fake arrowheads and scatter them in the creeks around the ranch.
Then she would take the guests out looking for them, and when they would find them, she would say they were so lucky to find an arrowhead. The guests would take these trophies home and display them for all to see. She was a real hoot.
In the morning, I found the ranch had left a horse and a pack horse for me to use. After breakfast, I saddled up my riding horse, packed the other with my gear and headed into the ranch, just me, the horses and my pup. There were no drivable roads from here on, only an old winding wagon road. The wagon road was now quite overgrown and had sections of corduroy road through the swampy areas. You would go over ridges and down through wetlands as you made your way along. In the high country, you rode past majestic giant fir trees surrounded by grasslands, and travelling through the wetland valleys with their beaver ponds and pine trees was incredible. Ducks and geese were in abundance, while there seemed to be at least one moose in each pond.
On the way in, you have to go through a ranch owned by a cantankerous old cowboy. He would eventually become a friend, did I say friend? That would be an exaggeration. He would nod his head my way if he saw me. The first time I met him, I was on the road that goes right past his cabin. He came out with his six-gun in his hand, which was now pointed at me as he came up to my horses. I had been informed that he did not like people much. I could see that. He wanted to know who I was, and once I told him who I was and where I was heading, he grudgingly let me through. His eyes said that they would be watching me.
This old guy was pretty tough. I remember when he was 83, he gave himself a bad hernia clearing land, but he also had hay that had been cut and was drying in the field that had to be put up. He was too proud to ask for help. So he took an old inner tube, wrapped it tightly around his belly and spent the next week putting the hay up. He then headed to Williams Lake to see a doctor, and he was immediately sent to the OR for a hernia operation. Like I said, one tough old guy. Sad to think that this old timer, whom I had the pleasure to meet, was from another era and is long gone now.
My home was a one-room cabin with a sod roof, a wood stove, and a spring outside the door for water. (We did need to replace the roof, requiring me to stay in a tent during this. A table, a couple of chairs, a jug of kerosene with a lamp, a metal frame bed and mattress, and several supply boxes were brought up by wagon from the main ranch, and all was good to go. There were a few cases of jarred food in the supplies. Two types of canned moose meat, one just meat and one, meat with veggies. There were dried stuff as well, flour, coffee, sugar, a few spices and several loaves of bread. I had a few goats for milk, some chickens for eggs. Butter and bread would be brought up weekly from the main ranch.
One really cold winter, second year in, it had been 40 below for weeks, and the snow was deep. My meat supply had been eaten, and getting down to the main ranch for supplies was not in the books. It was getting serious, and I was thinking I might need to butcher one of my milk goats for meat. I had been out hunting every day, looking for a moose, but could only cover so much ground on snowshoes. Then one day, I opened my cabin door at first light and there, right in front of me, not more than 50 feet away, was a moose. It was eating hay with my horses, one shot with my Marlin 35 repeater, and I once again had meat. I quartered it, hung it up and left it outside to freeze.
The next day, I took my meat saw, a small power saw with the oiler disabled and started to butcher the quarters up and wrap the meat. I had an outdoor freezer box where the meat would stay frozen until the spring thaw. It was weird, but whenever the saw was not running, I would think I could hear its echo far off in the distance, but it was strange; it would get loud, then quiet, then loud again. This went on for an hour. Finally, I realized it was not an echo of my saw, but was a couple of snowmobiles, and they were heading my way. Sound travels a long way in the cold north, and it still took a while for them to arrive. As they got within sight, I saw to my horror that the snowmobiles had an RCMP officer operating one, and the other had a Game Warden running it. I was wondering in my head just how they had known that I had killed a moose before I had killed it. I mean, we were 2 days from the nearest road, and I had shot the moose only yesterday. It did not add up.
After feeding them and letting them warm up around the stove with a hot cup of coffee, we got to chatting. Seems they were not here over the moose but were out trying to find out if any of our cattle had been rustled; it seems some rustlers were working in the area. They had come up from Redstone, stopping at each spread along the way.
The reason the game warden was there was that he was also the range manager for our area, and he knew all the ranch locations. While the constable was writing up his report, the game warden and I were standing on my porch chatting about the extreme weather. I tell him we had been snowed in for a while and things were tough, I point at the moose head and remains, casually saying, “We were out of meat and had to butcher one of my goats.” He smiles and replies, Yup, I can see that, that’s all that was said about that moose. They got back on their snowmobiles and off they headed to the next ranch.
It was nice to see visitors, even if it was a short visit; it could get lonely up at my cabin. One time when I was craving human conversation badly, I decided to ride to another ranch that was about 20 miles from my place. There was an old timer there who had settled here back in the 30’s, he was a pretty cool old cowboy. He had bought a small herd of cows in the prairies and drove them out to here, put up a claim and has been here ever since. He lived alone. When I knocked on his door, he was having a nap on his couch and nearly fell off, as he would hardly ever get visitors, even in good weather times. He put coffee on and fed me while we chatted. I stayed for a few hours before I said it was time for me to head back; the evening was coming on.
He thought it was too late and said I should stay the night. But I wanted to get home, and with the ground being snow-covered and a full moon coming up, it was like daylight, and the ride would be easy. So I got up on my horse, called my pup and off we went. We got back after midnight, and it was good to warm up. It was good to see someone.
Sometimes I would randomly run into this old cowboy out and about, as our two ranches were bordering each other. We would ride along until we came to a creek. I would get a fire going, and he would pull a coffee pot and the fixings out of his saddlebags and make coffee. We would relax, have a coffee, smoke a bit and visit. The coffee always tasted like cowboy coffee, thick and strong. With whatever creek we had stopped at, providing a relaxing gurgling sound, the old timer would begin to narrate a tale or two. He had many tales he would tell, stories about aliens, sasquatch, and all manner of content. I always enjoy these wonderful yarns. I think we both enjoyed these occasional moments of companionship.
Not long after I started working on the ranch, I had to journey to town on court business, after taking care of my obligations, I headed back to the ranch and as I arrived at the lodge I saw that the old cowboy who lived past our spread was there loading up a wagon with supplies, he said he was heading out the next morning. He hoped I would travel with him, so I said sure. When I bunked down for the night in the bunkhouse, I had pulled off my 2 pairs of wool socks, but then did a stupid thing and did not separate them. The morning temp was about -25, and I just pulled those socks on as I dressed, had breakfast and then hitched my horse to the old timer’s wagon, and we headed out. About an hour out, my feet began to hurt. It seemed my inner socks were still a bit damp from driving into the lodge in my truck with the heat on.
The old cowboy stopped right away and built a big fire, had me remove my socks, and we dried them by the fire. My feet were white and all wormy-looking. As they began to warm up, they began to hurt. Each time the pain was too bad, he would have me stick them in the snow. Eventually, they stopped hurting and got some colour back, my socks were put back on, dry and warm, and we headed on with our trip. If I had not been with this old cowboy, things could have been pretty bad. I felt like a real dude.
The fall is the time to get out hunting birds, like grouse, geese and ducks. When the geese would migrate in the fall, sometimes thousands of them would stop for the night in the meadow in front of my cabin. I would go out before daylight and quietly lie down at the edge of the meadow. It was flat, and if I lay in the right spot, I could aim for head level, fire and bring many geese down with one shot from my Marlin 35. I would wait till I could see before taking the shot. As soon as I shot, the geese would fly up in one huge flock, honking loudly and flying off. Lying in the field would be many geese, all shot through the head by the same bullet.
One fall day, I was out hunting grouse, which were one of my favourite birds to eat. As I rounded a curve on the trail I was walking on, I spotted one up ahead, so I took aim with my 22 and was ready to fire. I noticed that there was something wrong with this bird. Its wing appeared to be broken. I found that I could not shoot it now and spent the next ½ hour catching it. I took her home to my cabin and tried my damnedest to get her fixed up. Spent the night looking after her, but in the morning, she passed on. I buried her gently and even shed a tear about it all. Funny how that works.
Later that winter, I was out moose hunting on a series of natural meadows not far from my cabin, and the snow was so hard that I could walk on it without snowshoes. As I walked along, trying to make as little noise as possible on this crunching snow, I kept my eyes on the meadow edge, looking for signs of moose, or perhaps a whitetail deer. Then all of a sudden, the snow directly in front of me exploded with a burst of noise and flapping wings flashing past my face. I fell back, with my rifle going off. The whole event scared the crap right out of me. Turns out it was a pair of grouse that had been startled by the sound of my boots on the snow above. I found some pretty good humour in this and still laugh about it. The grouse will build tunnels in the meadow’s long grass that become trails for them to travel once the snow covers the meadows. Allowing them to find feed.
One summer day, I was asked to come down to the main ranch to construct a new outhouse for them. I built it out of logs, and it was skookum. I had dug a new pit a few meters from the old one and used the dirt to fill in the old hole. Then I built a log deck over the part of the floor that was not over the pit hole. I covered this with boards. Next came the log structure and roof, which I covered in tar paper. I then added a proper toilet seat for comfort. As I said, it was pretty well built.
Later that night, the rancher’s daughter, who was 13, went out to use the new outhouse before bed. I was in the kitchen having a hot drink before I hit the couch, where I would spend the night, as it was too late to head back to my cabin. All of a sudden, there was loud screaming coming from the outhouse. I ran out with my gun, thinking she was being attacked by a cougar or bear, as the scream was quite bloodcurdling. As I rounded the corner of the goat house, she was standing in front of the outhouse, shaking. I asked her what was wrong. She said something very cold had touched her butt while she was sitting on the seat. I took her lantern and looked down the hole, and to my surprise, there was one of the milk goats down there, and when she sat down, it reached up and touched her butt with its very cold nose. From what I could figure out, when I dug the hole, some roots were sticking out. I could see that the roots at the top of the hole had been chewed back, but the roots lower down were still sticking out. The goat must have found the door open and thought the roots looked tasty. She must have been reaching for some of the deeper roots and fell in.
Damn, but here was this momma goat looking up at me from the hole, crying out for a rescue. It was the funniest thing I had seen in a long time, her looking up all forlorn-like. We tried to get her out through the hole, but found it was just not working out. She was destined to stay in the hole all night. The next morning, I had to disassemble the whole outhouse to remove her. Rebuilt the outhouse again and put a bungee cord on the door to pull it shut. The goat was pleased to be out.
There was always lots of fencing to do on the ranch, cattle to feed, hay to put up, and cattle drives. It was like being in one of the Western books that I liked to read so much as a young man. The ranch was a big place, and the fencing was only put around hay meadows; it seemed that by the time you had one meadow fencing repaired, another one needed work. There was a hay meadow about 6 km from my cabin that needed fence work. I was on my horse Dexter, a big horse, my favourite horse and had gotten off to open the gate. As I tried to lead him through the gate, he refused to go in, and as he was quite big, you could not pull him in if he said no. So I got up on his back to ride him in, he got to bucking and the next thing I knew I was on top of the fence, my ribs hurt like hell, and all I saw was Dexter running in a gallop in the direction of the cabin. It was a long walk back with my ribs just killing me, and Dexter was waiting for me, looking all worried about how I was going to react. I let him know how ticked I was as I struggled to remove the saddle with my sore ribs. I spent a few days healing and then took my other horse, Penny, back to the meadow, looking around the gate. I could see signs of a grizzly bear and a recent bear scat, and figured out that the smell must have spooked Dexter.
Grizzlies could be dangerous, but there was another animal on the ranch that would always try to kill you. These were our mossyback bulls that would travel the backlands solo throughout the year. Come fall, these bulls would service our herds. These guys always seemed to be in a bad mood. You could be just riding along, minding your own business, when all of a sudden one of these guys would come crashing out of the forest, looking to gorge you and your horse. You always had to keep an eye out for these beasts.
Besides my horses, I had my pup Cody, a big malamute and wolf cross. He had been my companion all these years, and he was a good friend; his mom was owned by my friends, and I had been there the day he was born. I was completely taken by this pup and claimed him on the spot; he was the runt, like I had been. But he grew up to be the biggest of the litter. At 6 weeks, he came home with me and was still a youngster when we moved to the ranch. After four years on the ranch, he had become a bit wild and would disappear for days at a time, sometimes for more than a week, thinking he might have been running with the wolves, as there were many around. I would go to sleep at night listening to them. We were both getting bushed, so my mind started to think that maybe it was time to head back to the world. It had been 4 years since I came to the ranch. It was spring. Perhaps we both had become a bit wild.
Being a cowboy was pretty cool, but I was getting pretty lonely, so I saddled up Penny, packed up Dexter with my gear, and we all headed to the main ranch, where I informed the boss that it was time to head out. He was not happy but understood. Spent the night, and in the morning, I headed out. It was a day ride out to the lodge and the start of the road to civilization. I left my horses with the lodge, knowing they would be in good hands until a ranchhand could come by to collect them, loaded up my truck, and then Cody and I headed into Williams Lake to purchase some insurance for the truck so we could head back to the island and Campbell River.
After moving back into society, I found it hard to deal with people and got myself into lots of trouble with the police for fighting on numerous occasions. If someone said boo in the wrong way, I was known to just flip over bar tables and start pounding on whoever it was like a madman. I was hurt and feeling like some kind of prick for not keeping in contact with my family. This not only stopped me from saying goodbye to my mom, but also cost me my family. I would not talk to some of my siblings ever again; they have passed away, too. Several of the others took 50 years to reconnect.