AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
RALPH JOHN WESLEY HOWARD

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a trunk with camping equipment, rolled our rifles in our bedrolls; boxed our tent, stove and tools and hired them stored. We took the trunk and bedrolls to the station, bought tickets to Lethbridge, via Edmonton and Calgary, checked our baggage and boarded the first train going west.

We had trouble getting our baggage transferred from Edmonton across the river to Strathcona. There was no rail connection across the river at this time. We spent a couple of days at Lethbridge. The coal miners were on strike, they thought that we were hunting for a job. We couldn’t find any horses for sale at a price that we could pay. Frank and I took the train to the Montana border, and stopped at a sidetrack and store, which was run by a settler. We told him our troubles, he hitched a team to a democrat and said, "Get in, I know a rancher, his name is Ross. He lives two miles from the railroad and eight miles back from Lethbridge. He had 750 head of cattle, 100 head of good horses and the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, and lives alone on his ranch". We made his acquaintance, he said he didn’t have any broke horses for sale, but he had a man breaking some for him and it would only take a couple of weeks to have them ready.

We selected a team of three-year-old mares, paid him one hundred dollars and told him to get busy.

They were putting up sheep corals at the railroad opposite his house, preparing for the annual shearing. We passed by and spoke for a job and got accepted. We bought the running gear of a wagon, some boards to make a box for it. What grub we had bought at the store, put the boards on the wagon, loaded up our baggage and the next day hired his boy to haul our wagon up to the shearing pens. Frank, eighteen husky Brighamites and I got busy. They could shear two sheep to our one, and lie faster than they could shear. When this herd lost its wool and half its hide, more arrived. In two weeks, the last herd was nearly finished when Mr. Ross came over to see how we were getting along. He said the man had backed out on the breaking the horses and would we come over and help put up some hay when we were finished the sheep. Of course we did. Mr. Ross was on hand with the team to haul our wagon and us. The first thing we did was to catch our team and put them to stake, rope and halter break them. That day, a man came to the ranch, looking for men to put up hay in Spring Coulee. He wanted Frank and I to come up as soon as we could. Mr. Ross had a patch of fox tail hay in the swath, one half mile from the house. Frank and I slept on the