Sam O'Meara

Sam O'Meara was an old bachelor who had a cabin near Atlantic City. Like most of those old recluses back then, he seldom took a bath. Well, he didn't have any running water in his cabin, so the only time he got wet was when he was caught in the rain. His cabin was right along the sheep trail, and Bill Robertson would let Sam have any stragglers that had a hard time keeping up with the herd. Out of the goodness of his heart, Bill also gave Sam some canned goods every time he trailed the sheep to the mountain from the their winter range east of Riverton. So, Sam always had four or five old ewes in a shed he built near his cabin. I guess he ate them when he needed fresh meat.

Some people thought Sam's cabin was sitting on a gold mine. Everyone knew that he built it over an abandoned mine shaft, but as time went on some people got suspicious about his motives. They thought he was working the mine from inside his cabin and hiding the gold he found. I don't know of anyone who tried to rob him though. In those days the stage carried mail from Lander to South Pass. One day,the stage driver realized that Sam wasn't coming outside as usual. The driver called out to Sam, but Sam didn't respond. He thought, maybe Sam was sick, so he went into Sam's cabin. Sam wasn't there. He went outside and checked the outhouse. No Sam. Then he figured he'd better look in the shed where Sam kept his sheep. There he found old Sam, lying dead among his sheep. He had been dead several days. Had a heart attack, I imagine. After Sam was buried, the folks who thought Sam was sitting on a gold mine went into his cabin to see what they could find. They found a trapdoor in the floor over the mine shaft, but when they lifted it, instead of finding Sam's gold mine, they discovered that Sam was dumping his garbage down the shaft. Instead of gold, they found tin. What a joke Sam played on those people who thought that after he died they could get his gold. All they found was a mining shaft full of tin cans.

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