One day we had got through loading cattle and I was in the hotel and he told me he had just bought two fine dogs, Canadian stag hounds, and he was anxious to try them out and see how fast they were, and asked me to borrow one of the cowboys’ horses for him to ride and we would take a ride with the dogs and maybe jump a coyote out on the range. Well, we got the dogs lined up and started. He also had a bull dog and a fox terrier. They couldn’t run but just trailed along. We hadn’t went very far until we jumped a jack rabbit and away went the hounds, the bull dog and the terrier bringing up the rear—all dogs barking, Marsh hollering and laughing at the bull and terrier. The hounds were making a pretty run and Marsh was trying to keep in sight of them and his horse was running his best, when he stepped in a badger hole ... and down they went. This was an unusually big saddle horse and Marsh was a very big man, and when they piled up it looked like a box car had jumped the track. Marsh must have fell on his head, as he had lost $80.00, his watch, pocket knife, and everything—it was all scattered around the wreck. He was not hurt bad any one place, but was jarred all over. While I was picking up his stuff I was so full of laugh I could hardly hold myself. In the meantime, the bull dog and the terrier had caught up and was licking his face and he was cussing them. Then I exploded and laughed ’til I cried—I don’t think he ever quite forgive me for that but I couldn’t help laughing at the pile-up. [Illustration: Con and Claudia Price at the time of their Marriage, December 26, 1899] [Illustration: Roundup Camp—Fall of 1896—DHS and CK Outfits On the Big Dry near Oswego, Montana] CHAPTER VIII WITH THE DHS OUTFIT In 1892 I went to Wyoming and broke horses there for a couple of years. Then I heard of the Cripple Creek gold stampede in Colorado. I sold my rig and went to Cripple Creek and it looked like everybody in the world went there. There was two railroads in there and every passenger coach would be loaded with people. The roads were lined with people of every description—some walking, some riding donkeys and some with wagons. About every other house there was a saloon and gambling house. Of course, there wasn’t work for everybody and lots of them were broke when they landed there—that was in the month of November and shortly after the weather turned bitter cold. I have seen men lay down on the floor to sleep in those saloons which kept open day and night, and when the house man started to clean up in the morning he would find dead men under the tables and on benches. The altitude was very high. Those people had no place to sleep—and nearly all of them contracted mountain fever and that went into pneumonia and they would sometimes die in a few hours after taking sick.