Around cow outfits, at night he loved to get strung out with his yarns, and get the "boys agoing." But the foreman always settled matters when his stories reached too far into the night. He would roll up in his "tarp," and if "Henry County" failed to take the hint, he would say : "Ark, you better catch a horse, and go on night herd tonight," and that meant an order, and it also meant no more stories for that night.

On lower Horse Creek, at the crossing of the Overland Trail, there was an old sod structure used by the hurrying pony express riders. It was just northwest of this station, that John Sparks, in 1872, built a sod house for his men.

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

About the same time he built a similar place on the Lodgepole near Potter.

This Horse Creek ranch house, from descriptions given by many old timers, and particularly by L. J. Wyman, who made it his headquarters for years and who owned the land until 1919, cannot fail to be of interest and historic value.

It was twenty-four by twenty-six feet inside, and the walls were thirty inches thick. It had three windows and a door. The door was made of plank, and the windows had shutters made of plank, which were hauled from a sawmill located in the Laramie mountains. This was the same mill that supplied much of the material used in the buildings at Fort Laramie. The floor and roof board were double, and on the roof was placed several inches of dirt.