After a few months in Deadwood my folks moved to the little town of Galena, where Colonel Davey owned the Sitting Bull mine, and my folks started a store and boarding house and I went to school for a short time. There was two Irishmen run a store there by the name of McQuillian and Finnegan. They also had a cow ranch about 75 miles east of Galena. Finnegan run the ranch, McQuillian run the store. Finnegan used to come to Galena sometimes on horseback. His saddle, chaps and outfit was something wonderful to me—and his stories of the range made me feel I wanted to be a cowboy. I asked him for a job and he laughed at me, told me I was too young. Also my folks wanted me to go to school. But the spirit of the wild country had got in my blood and one day I run away from school and started for the Finnegan Ranch, caught a ride when I could and walked part of the way, but finally got there, and told Finnegan I was going to stay. So he gave me a job close herding some cows for breeding purposes. The first thing he learned me was to read his brand which was “F M.” There was thousands of brands on the range those days, and I was supposed to keep all other brands of cattle out of his bunch. The old man had several cowboys working for him, but he was chief cook, bottle washer and boss. He used to tell me he was the best cowboy of them all. But the fact of the matter was he couldn’t do much of anything in the way of a cowboy, and the men used to make fun of him behind his back. But I learned pretty quick that he liked to be swelled about what he could do and I sure poured it to him, and he liked me fine. He used to tell me what a fine cook he was—his cooking was rotten and consisted of bacon and beans and sourdough bread. I remember he had an old knotty pine log in front of the cabin, and I don’t think he ever started to cook a meal that he didn’t grab the axe and hit that old knotty pine log a few licks. He never got any wood off of it, but would try it every time, then throw the axe away, and hunt up some chips, or anything else he could find to start a fire. When he made bread, he had flour from his eyebrows to his toes. In 1879 the country was sure wild. Deer, antelope, buffalo and bear were very plentiful; very few white people, but lots of Indians and some of them were still on the warpath in them days; also quite a sprinkling of road agents. I remember one old road agent named Laughing Sam. He was very polite in his holdups. He held up a freighter one time and all he had that Sam wanted was chewing tobacco. The freighter begged Sam to not take all his tobacco, as he could not get any more until he got to Sidney, Nebraska, which was about 200 miles, but Sam said he was sorry on account of the law he could not go to Sidney, so took all of the tobacco.