era and the Sterling & Cheyenne branches of the Burlington drew heavily from the granges of western Nebraska for the help needed to build them. Young and Hiersche brought in from Colorado the few sheep that was the nucleus of their later large herds.

Irrigation in the North Platte valley was in its infancy. A few of the smaller ditches were in operation, and others had been crudely surveyed. There was plenty of man power, and there were harness broken bronchos for horse power, but there was no equipment, and no money with which to buy it. Men would take their payment in stocks and bonds, but these had no fixed value. They were hocked about, and traded and exchanged for provisions at low figures, or swapped for anything else of value. I furnished some tile for culverts and outlets for the Gering canal, and had to take my pay in bonds, at about two-thirds par. The bonds were sometimes as low as fifty cents on the dollar, in exchanges.

When the spud pickers were over on the South Platte and the Cache le Poudre, they noticed occasionally abandoned "slushers," or road scrapers, of the wooden back and Mormon tongued variety, lying by the road side, and inquiry failed to locate the owners.

On returning to the North Platte valley, they hooked up their grass-fed broncs, and returned to the location of the find. We are told that they again sought for but could not find the owners, and as they had apparently been abandoned for a long time, no doubt for better equipment, the old ones were loaded in the wagons and brought into western Nebraska. It is yet an open question if they sought very diligently for the owners, and also what they would have done had they not found them for they had no money to buy the scrapers.