Stories Told by My Father

Old Bill and Young Bill Robertson

I came to America from Scotland with Old Bill Robertson and his son Young Bill in l920. I was only 17. Young Bill and I were good friends even when we were youngsters, so when Old Bill asked me if I would like to immigrate to America and work for him herding sheep, it wasn't like I was going someplace where everyone was a total stranger.

I also recognized an opportunity in the offer. America was a place where the future was not bound by circumstances of birth or class. One was free to carve out his own life in a country so vast that opportunities for success seemed limitless. So when Old Bill asked the question, I scarcely faltered in making a response. Wait until I ask my mother, I said.

I ran to the house and explained the offer to my mother. Even though she didn't like the idea of me leaving Scotland and home to go to America, she scarcely hesitated to give me permission to go with the Robertsons. I didn't ask my Dad. He and I were not that close. Prospects in Scotland at the time were not the brightest for me. My older brother George would most likely inherit the family farm, and an old uncle I worked for, even though he would most likely have turned his farm over to me when he got too old to work, was not the best of employers. At the end of my first summer of work he gave me a lamb for my wages. I immigrated. Looking back, I made the right decision in choosing not to wait for my uncle to leave me his farm. When my uncle died he was more than100 years old.

The Robertsons and I came to the United States on the same ship, the Britannia. On the voyage I met two Scots from the north Highlands, Donald and John MacDonald. We quickly discovered that we were all going in the same place, Lander, Wyoming, or at least, to Fremont County. Including the Robertsons, there were numerous Scottish families living in the area; some of them had been there for many years.

I worked mostly for the Robertsons when I first came to Wyoming. I was working for Old Bill when I got Tick Fever, a disease also known as Rock Mountain Spotted Fever. I was caring for about 2000 head of sheep on Tin Cup Mountain, located above Beaver Rim, and had been there alone for some weeks when I got sick. Wood Ticks hatched in great quantities that spring, so many, in fact, that after the first day of herding, instead of picking them out of my long underwear, I burned them in the sheep wagon stove.

But eventually one of the ticks carrying the parasite bit me and gave me the disease. I grew sicker by the day, and by the time Old Bill Robertson drove his team of horses out to resupply me I was lying face down in the creek trying to break the fever. Old Bill hauled me into Lander in the wagon and checked me into the hospital where I lay in bed for six weeks before recovering. In those days there were no antibiotics and those who survived the disease did so because of their constitution. Even though I survived, the old timers understood the truth of getting the disease; no man was ever quite the same after recovering. Not only did it sap my strength, but it left me stiffened in the joints. I never let it get the best of me though. After I got Tick Fever, I also got Tularemia, again from a tick that had bitten an infected rabbit. There was no real medicine for that either at the time. But I survived.

Young Bill and I had some great times together. In the early days Old Bill sometimes had his sheep out on Antelope and Muskrat, two drainages in the desert part of Fremont County. One spring, Young Bill and I were taking supplies from the town of Riverton out to Muskrat to the herders. We were driving a team of horses and when we came to the boggy creek, Young Bill figured that it was probably full of quicksand, and that to cross it he would have to hit it at full gallop with the team so as not to get stuck. So, he slapped the reins on the backs of the two horses, Monty and Clyde, putting them into a full gallop. They entered the bog with a great splashing of water and mud. But we were wrong; the horses had solid footing all the way across. With the speed the wagon was going when it entered the creek with raised banks on both sides, it bounced wildly throwing nearly everything out of the wagon. Bill and I were lucky to have been able to stay in the wagon ourselves.

Another time Young Bill and I were herding the sheep ourselves, and Old Bill drove the team and wagon out to us to resupply us. This time, Old Bill brought several dozen eggs for us to eat. Young Bill heated up the frying pan and began to breaking eggs into it. The first egg that hit the pan had a broken yoke, as did the second, third, and so on, up until he had broken two dozen or so eggs, finding every yoke broken. He figured the eggs were all spoiled, so he threw them all out to the sheep dogs.

After Old Bill left the eggs with us, he left to do other business. A couple of days later he dropped back in on us and saw all the egg shells lying outside the sheep wagon door. He wondered how the two of us could already have eaten all those eggs.

"We didn't eat them," Young Bill said. "They were all spoiled."

"They couldn't have been spoiled," Old Bill replied. "I picked them up fresh at the store the day I brought them out here."

"But, the yokes were all broken," Young Bill explained.

"Well, sure," Old Bill said, "Thirty miles bouncing across the prairie broke the yokes, but the eggs were still good."

Needless to say, after that incident, Young Bill and I didn't get any more eggs for a while.

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