Then in the bank of the small arroyo we excavated the "house"' about eight by twelve feet. In front we put up cedar posts and covered the top with posts, cedar boughs and dirt. Later I boarded the room up from the bottom about four feet and used common shiplap lumber for a floor. The balance of the walls and the ceiling were covered with muslin. The front was of shiplap with a board door and one window of four 8x10 glass. The furniture consisted of a bed built across the back part of the room, a sheet iron stove of small camping dimensions, a cracker box that served both as cupboard and table and the bed with one nail keg served as chairs.

The stable was also a dugout and we dug off a pathway so that we could easily descend from the mesa above to the door of our cabin and to the stable. This was my first claim home and we lived there -- Hendricks and I -- part of the time and part of the time in Hackberry.

We bought a team of pintail old age bronchos of Harvey Ransier with harness and wagon and were to pay for them in getting out one hundred houselogs and I don't know how many posts. We had no money -- the grubstake we had raised at Sidney was less than twenty dollars. We had worked six days at $1.75 per day each and paid out for our board so together we had about eighteen dollars to buy our axes, shovel, pick, and winter's provender as far as it would go.