A rope was placed about the horse, the team attached to the other end, and he was hoisted to the surface ; but, through some miscalculation, he did not get into the clear. The gray team commenced to back up when Mrs. Wilmot, thinking they would be drawn into the well, and being one of their most valued possessions, seized a sharp butcher knife, rushed out and drew its edge across the taut rope, severing it, which precipitated the old horse to the bottom of the well a second time. This was his finish. The injured man raised himself on his elbow and said, "Dot was a horse on me."

Another and fatal accident occurred in putting down a well northeast of Hemingford, when a colored man named Lewis, while placing some curbing in a strata of sand at a depth of about a hundred feet, the curbing gave way, precipitating him to the bottom of the well, a further distance of fifty feet, with tons of the caving earth burying him there. It was too dangerous to attempt the rescue of the body, so the surviving wife mortgaged the homestead for about four hundred dollars, made a contract with some experienced well diggers, who sank a new well some ten feet away from the old well, tunneled from the new to the old, rescued the body, brought it to the surface, and it was given decent interment.

Box Butte

The county derives its name from a large butte, located in the east central part of the county, which rudely resembles a box. The early French trappers named this Box Butte, pronounced "bute." butte being French for hill or elevation. The early cattle men called the country contiguous thereto the Box Butte country, to distinguish it from the White Clay country, and similarly named localities.