His field has always been Wyoming, although at the time this ii written (1916) he is in a hospital in Denver, attended by his present faithful and charming wife. I say "present" for the reason that he has been married four times. Once before his uniting with Mrs. Moore, and twice since. The first two died, and the third, who was an excellent woman and the daughter of Big Alex Swan, is divorced because of incompatibility of temperament.

Mr. VanTassel came with the Union Pacific, and he took a contract to supply that company with a million and a quarter ties at a million and a quarter dollars, in 1867. These ties were to be taken from the land grant and government lands in the Medicine Bow mountains, and delivered at a station called Medicine Bow. to be located on the railroad near the edge of the Laramie Plains.

During the winter large camps of wood choppers were maintained, and they piled up the ties along the gulches and frozen streams to await the spring freshets. Then came the work of "booming ties," one of the perilous, daring and strength-testing undertakings in the west. Men were detailed to keep the ties from jamming, and to break jams should they occur. At Medicine Bow, a string of ties fastened together stretched across the stream, and workmen pulled the floating ties ashore and piled them up in great ricks as fast as they came down to this obstruction. A man was here detailed to mark them and two men kept tally of