He was driving by, and stopped to watch me turn over the sod with my grasshopper breaker. , In the course of our conversation I said that it would be a mighty good thing if the grangers and the cowmen could dwell together in harmony. John exclaimed that I was the first granger that he had ever heard say such a thing, and asked me why I thought so. I told him that I thought the cowmen would furnish a home market for the product of the granger, to which he agreed.
We were marked for good friends, Wright and I, and we always were glad to meet each other. I am sure that it was a sincere friendship.
About the first event of any consequence that occurred after my coming into the west was a cowboy wedding.
Miss Alice (Dude) Wright was John Wright's oldest daughter. Ed A. Boots was with a cow outfit for the Bay State, and he and Miss Wright were married at the home of the Wrights, on Pumpkin creek. The event brought friends for five hundred miles.
Elder Stephens was then located at Sidney, and he was retained to perform the ceremony. "Retained" is probably a legal expression, but when you bring a minister sixty or seventy miles into a country, I take it that it is proper to "retain" him.
The Wrights had some homemade rhubarb
HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA
wine, and in the early prodigal way of the west, a dish pan full of this was set out on the table for use of any who desired to partake. It was said that they even insisted that the Elder take some, and that he did touch it to his lips. This was taken as evidence that he did not hold himself above his associations, and there were few boys on the range that would not swear by Elder Stephens.