On the back of this broncho we packed our belongings consisting of our beds, bacon, flour, beans, coffee, cooking utensils, axes, picks, shovels, and clothing, and started over the divide for Pumpkin creek -- our promised land. In a little over a day -- one leading the horse and the other walking behind to prod it along -- we reached Hackberry canyon, and here in a grove by the spring we built our first cabin.

Three sides of it were of log and the back was against a rock. The roof was of the

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HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

well known materials as was the floor -- just dirt -- resting on poles and pine boughs. Up the rock side of the cabin we improvised a fireplace, made of stones gathered near by, and laid in mud from the spring and creek. Then we rigged our bunk in one side of the cabin and hung a blanket for the door.

Out of the elements at hand we had made the rudiments of a home and security prevailed, although without the coyotes and grey wolves howled, and the winds whistled through the treetops. It was a pleasant moment when all complete we were preparing our first meal ; the bacon odor filled the cabin, the coffee was steaming, the bread was baking in a skillet that leaned so that the heat from the fire would cook it one side at a time. The art of turning it when one side was done is familiar to all people of the west -- tossing it into the air and then catching it in the skillet as it came down.