I know little of how my family members came to homestead an area I was to become well acquainted with--the remote range land of Central Montana.
    My uncle, Andrew "Jack" Hemsing, of Seattle, settled in Fergus County around 1915. His mother, Olene Hemsing, homesteaded adjoining property a few years later.
    I recall my mother, Gertrude Hemsing Cornwall, describing the difficulties Uncle Jack had making it to Lewistown, the county seat, to register for the draft when the U.S, entered World War I.
    My Montana experience began Thanksgiving Day, 1935. We were gathered around the dinner table at the Cornwall family home in LaConner, Washington when the phone rang unexpectedly. It was bad news. Uncle Jack had died.
    That night it was decided that my mother and I, then all of 15, would drive to the Montana community of Roy to settle Uncle Jack's estate. The next morning we loaded up the '34 Dodge for our great adventure.
    I didn't have a license, but I was going to be behind the wheel. No driving exam could've matched what we encountered on the trip. It was foggy, snowy, and icy all the way to Montana.
    What an adventure for a grandma, mother and son! Greenhorns all. We didn't intend to rough it; thought we could come and go as we pleased. Little did we know that we'd be there nearly a year.
The cabin, (12 x 24 feet, but to a 15 year old from the city, it felt like 8 x 16), was hardly ready for its new boarders. There was no food, no bedding, no clothing, no utensils. No anything. I only had the street clothes and shoes that a kid would wear in the Northwest, where winter temperatures rarely dropped to freezing. And here we were in Montana, a place where what water there was had already turned to ice.
    The ground was bare, and cold prevailed. Remember, too, this was the era of the Midwest Dust Bowl, one of the most devastating drought periods in our nation's history. It was also the height of the the Great Economic Depression.
    The first lesson, of my off-campus education, had to do with cutting firewood, Uncle Jack had been cutting burned pine over in the breaks when he contracted the pneumonia that took his life. I drove the Dodge through the sage brush to where Uncle Jack had been cutting trees and there I found the tools of my new trade; a bucksaw and an axe.
    When the job was done, I began heading back. Then boom! I hit something! It was a large "hidden rock" that had been behind some sage brush. The collision tore off the bottom of the oil pan.
    There I was with no telephone, no transportation and no car tools. So I went to the cabin of John Umstead, a nearby homesteader. Cabins in central Montana seemed to be paired together for a mutual support, since other neighbors were often 10 or 20 miles away in any direction.
    John, his wife Roxy, and two year old son, Billy, provided great comfort for we tenderfeet. John told me that Tom Cope, whose cabin was a 10 mile horseback ride away might have a tool to take off the pan bolts. Sure enough, he had a hex J bolt wrench with six sockets. One of them fit the bolts.
    My next problem was how to get to Roy, or Lewistown, some 75 miles away. John said someone would be

 coming from the river to town, one day, and that I could probably ride in with them. It was almost a week before someone did show. I spotted a car headed our way, and flagged it down. The driver said his name was Joe Bell. His ranch was on the north side of the river, but he kept his car on the south side so that he could drive into town.
    "C'mon kid," Joe said. "We'll get you fixed up. I'm comin' back right away."
    Those were the best words I could've heard. This was going to be a great day.
After we got to Roy, Joe said he'd find me before we headed back. So we parted, and I headed to Wass Mercantile to use the telephone. The car dealer I called in Lewistown quickly brought me back to earth. He said it would take a month or two to get a new oil pan.
    My other option was to find a welding shop. But there was none in Roy. What I did find was a livery stable. Luckily, the blacksmith there said he could solder a suitable patch with a piece of tin. So I was back in business.
    By mid-day I had a wheat sack loaded with six quart cans of oil, and was sitting alongside the road with the solder-patched oil pan, waiting for Joe Bell.
    An hour passed. No Joe Bell. Two hours went by. Still no Joe. Three hours later Bell was nowhere to be seen. I got nervous. I told people that I was going to walk home, but they said to wait. That was advice I later wished I'd taken. About 10 that night I made it to a cabin, having evaded range cows and other wildlife.
    I knocked on the cabin door, and a man answered. "What do ya want?" he asked.
    "Will you lend me a horse?"
    "Nope, but I'll take you home."
    We arrived at the homestead about 2 a.m. A week later none other than Joe Bell stopped by. "I told ya I was coming right back," he said. That was when 1 realized that time on the prairie has a different dimension.
    I remember making many trips to Roy and Lewistown regarding Uncle Jack's estate and to stock up on winter provisions. Among those provisions were sacks of coal, which I was to learn were real luxury items.
    We were fortunate to have had good friends helping us settle in. Ralph and Bertha Jensen, her son Jess Woodcock and his wife Mable and their son, Billy, took us under their wings. They were sheep ranchers on Sand Creek, about 10 miles east on the trail toward Little Crooked.
    Jess told us we would need meat, meaning venison. He volunteered to take me hunting. The winter weather was getting cold, but the sky stayed bright and pleasant for our hunting foray. I was wild to go on my first ever big game hunt.
    It took us a day to get our rifles from another ranch. That was yet one more lesson in time. What followed the next day was a lesson in prairie hunting.
    Jess walked a few minutes, surveying what he called "the signs". Then he decided to lie down in the sun and take a nap, which puzzled me. A short time later, though, we crawled over to about 75 deer. Some were lying down, as we had been. Others were grazing. So we got our deer, and drove right to them. How convenient it was! No dragging. I was certainly impressed. We were to hunt in this fashion several times before spring. We spent the Christmas Holiday Season at the McNulty Ranch, on the river. On New Years we visited Joe Bell. It was so cold we were able to drive the car on the iced-over river. That was great excitement for this dude.
    Jensen and Woodcock advised us our next need was a load of ice for drinking water. It was to last well past Easter that winter, supplying both the Umstead and Hemsing families. I worked on the pond, cutting and loading huge blocks 18 inches thick.
    In January the weather was cold but clear and calm. During the second cold week a bachelor homesteader, Darrell White, from nearby rode in on his gray mare "Sweetie". He arrived just before dinner, which proved to be no coincidence. He was a skilled survivor. He feigned sick. This man asked me to drive him to Hilger, saying he had a family there to see. Turned out, he had a battery radio in his shack, and the weather report he heard indicated a blizzard was heading our way. So he was headed for Hilger. After I dropped him off he told me to hurry home.
    The blizzard, needless to say, was news to me. I got lost in a prairie dog town, the snow drifts making it impossible to know exactly where I was. Somehow, around 3 a.m. I made it back to the homestead.
    Grandma told me to bring the car battery inside, and to jack up the car in the morning since the cold weather could compress and flatten the tires. But by morning the tires were already well down. So I had to put the car up on blocks, and it didn't move again for three months.
    Day by day the weather got colder. The wind got stronger and the snow flew faster. There was no shadow in the daylight, just a gray blue. It was brighter many nights than it was during the day. So we dressed fully for the outdoors 24 hours a day. We were stuck and didn't realize the situation.
    The snow made the whole country flat. The coulees disappeared. The corral, barn and cabin became just odd shapes in snowdrifts, charting with the relentless wind and driving snow.
    Grandma had experience in this country. "Now," she said, after the snow piled up, "we have wash water." She told us to melt the snow on our stove. All day we packed snow into the wash tub on the stove.
    The problem was the snow was so dry it was hard to get water into the tub. It evaporated as fast as it melted. It made the job nearly ridiculous. To melt our ice for drinking required that we keep a metal container on the stove.
    After several weeks there was still no break in the weather. It just got colder. I spoke with Umstead and decided to make the more than 10 mile horseback ride

  to the Jensen Ranch to see if there was any news of the outside world.
I discovered a mailbag was delivered by pack train from Roy out the Little Crooked route, another five miles beyond. So I made that ride, meaning we could communicate to the family back home on a weekly basis -- weather permitting.
    Often picking up the mail, for the Jensens, Umsteads, Hemsings, Cornwalls, and McNultys, brought no news but I was happy to have the activity and contact with the nonworld outside.
    Along the mail route I would stay at Jensens or the Woodcock cabin, as the weather dictated. The trip to the river was great. The McNulty Ranch had feed for cattle and a rare stock of supplies. I made pack trips to McNultys when the river hill was not driveable.
    One difficult part of feeding cattle on bare, unsheltered ground was that a poor cow could freeze and topple over while eating. A gun was always handy, so that the cow could be shot and dragged out if it were to die that way.
    It was a tough situation. We could only guess what was happening to the stock out in the breaks, as ours and Umsteads were, along with many others.
    The thermometers we had bottomed out at 52 below. So when the mercury plunged to the limit we had no idea just how cold it was that winter. Later I learned that minus -60 degrees was frequently recorded in the area. The warmest it got for ten to twelve weeks, at least, was minus -20.
    After a month of these conditions our supply situation looked pretty grim. We needed food, firewood and kerosene for lighting. And there was no sign of a let-up. In February I rode into Roy with Al Snook, a boarder at Umstead's Ranch, to obtain staples such as sugar, flour, bacon and canned milk.
    When the temperature "rose" to minus 20, it seemed like springtime. The morning Al and I left the ranch it was a balmy minus -24. Off we were to Roy, some 25-30 miles away.
    About mid-day, halfway to town, the weather deteriorated. Our horses' breath froze to their sides, making them ghostly colored. We had to make frequent stops, holding their noses inside our jackets to thaw the huge ice balls on their nostrils. The ice would get so heavy on their noses that they couldn't breathe. The poor things. Of course none of us had anything to eat or drink.
    Somehow we made it to Ray, arriving between 7 and 8 p.m. We faced a howling blizzard the final 8 to 10 miles. Any exposed skin was frozen black.
    In town we rousted out the fellows who ran the livery stable so that we could take care of our horses. I'll never forget how great it was to feel the warmth in the barn and the smell of the animals.
    The livery owners, truly life-savers, flagged down some folks to cook for us, and gave each of us a cot and blanket for the night.
    The livery was a small building next to Chef Birdwell's saloon, across from Wass Mercantile,
    The next morning we packed our supplies from Wass's Store. I was hungry for fresh fruit and stuffed my waist with apples and oranges, keeping them in place with my belt. That made for bulky riding, but it was the only way to keep them from freezing -- or so I thought.
    Returning home we made shorter rides with more frequent ranch stops. That night when it was time to rest ourselves and our horses, we stopped at Curley Willmore's place, and it was there I discovered to my great dismay that my precious fruit had frozen solid like a belt around my waist. There would be no treat of apples and oranges. I was very disappointed, but everyone got a chuckle out of it.
    The third day on the trail Al Snook headed for our place on the King Trail and I took off to the Jensen Ranch, on Sand Creek, by way of the Jakes place. I rested a night at Jensens, dropped off the mail. I then stayed an extra day to rest my horse, then headed home around mid-day.
    Wouldn't you know it, a storm popped up so I didn't get in til dark. I had been five days on the trail. Mom and grandma were upset because they'd had no word of my whereabouts.
    As I walked into the corral shed to put away my gear, I was to discover that magpies had taken to roosting beneath the roof. As one magpie swept by I reached for it, but it broke my grasp and its tail feathers broke off. Many weeks later I would see that poor bird flying up and down like a roller coaster.
    I was to make my long trail ride twice more that winter, the last time late in March. At the Jensen stop-over I stayed a day extra to help buzz firewood.
    After lunch that day Ralph Jensen, Jess Woodcock and I set about to work. Suddenly a warm wind cropped up. The three of us looked at each other and howled in unison. The eagerly awaited Chinook breeze -- signaling a break in the bleak winter weather -- had arrived. I had never known such a feeling of relief.
    However I was not to use the precious automobile quite yet. Gumbo was new to me. What an experience!
    After a brief spring break, the reservoirs filled, and the cattle, horses and wildlife finally had plenty of water to drink. Then winter struck again, an event making it possible for us to stay the summer.
    John Umstead, Al Snook and I cut eight inch thick ice blocks from the reservoir, filling the ice house on Easter Sunday. When spring came for keeps, we were able to begin settling the cattle and estate business, hopefully by fall.
    A winter as harsh as that of 1985-86 seemed to go on forever. It is difficult to describe the power of 40 MPH winds at -40 temperature, day after day. Many things occur which continue to be etched in one's memory. For example, the McNultys filled their ice house with river ice between 30 and 36 inches thick. That was quite impressive.

 Another example: the crystal-like nights of the Northern Lights. They were so brilliant and powerful that winter. They had an indescribable quality making me seemingly able to feel their electric charge. Their crackling sounds were so sharp it was like they were but an arms length away.
    I remember hearing coyotes dragging down a weak deer outside our cabin door, then awakening in the morning to find bits of hide and a scattering of bones outside when I got up.
    There were the trips into the breaks with Al Snook, and checking coyote trap sets, using dead or dying deer or cattle to set the traps. (The formidable fact of trapping in this environment is you must skin the animal cleanly and stretch the hide to be suitable for market --no small task.)
    It was a thrill to hear a low, powerful howl amid the yapping, giggling coyote sounds. That, of course, was the howl of a wolf. I made one positive sighting, coming within 50 to 75 yards of a wolf in company with three coyotes at the base of Gumbo Ridge at Armells Creek.
    I remember how sound can travel at -30 to -60 degrees below zero; everything is so brittle.
    Then there was the time I heard my grandmother cry out from her bedroom. The stove lid lifter had frozen to her hand.
    Spring of 1936 did arrive. It was a short transition from winter to summer in Fergus County, Montana. The first of May saw a faint green coat on the prairie. Less than a week later the ground had turned brown, and would remain so the rest of the year.
    Frank Jakes was engaged to help us check the condition and number of our 4H brand cattle that survived the winter, Jakes, a husky, good looking man in his 20's, came to live with us. He knew the country. And he knew cattle.
    Jakes had much patience and put up with me, this dude kid from the coast. From him I was to learn much about cattle, horses, people, and patience. Jakes also taught me to use a rope. He showed me a backhand cast, which he called a Hoolihan. I sort of got the knack of it and amuse myself to this day with the loop.
    We rode the country from the river, south, a number of miles to Armells Creek and along the various coulees. On one occasion during this "scouting period" an excited cow ran bawling out of a coulee. Frank gave me the sign to sit tight and watch. Soon after an unknown rider came along with a slick calf on his rope and a running iron on his saddle. Frank corrected the rider's manners. He ordered the man to turn loose the calf, then offered to drag him to town with another rope.
    I don't remember the count but I know that winter and others took quite a toll on the cattle.
    Branding, of course, was necessary. Around late August or early September there began a general round up of all the area's cattle. Branding separated them by owner, clearing the way for cattle drives from the river to the stockyards in Roy. Both cattle and horses were frequently bunched together at the river because there wasn't a drop of drinking water for man or beast to be found anywhere else.
Summertime in eastern Montana meant being in the saddle nearly every day. There were calves to brand, bog lines to ride, and fences to tend. I once spent a long 10 days on Armells' Bottom, near McNultys, putting up a drift fence to keep the stock in line. Then there was the bog chore -- pulling out stock stuck in the mud of dried up water holes.
    The heat that summer was almost unbearable. I often had to gather stock that had strayed off to hunt for feed and water.
    One day we received a letter saying a heifer with our brand had strayed to another water hole, on a ranch 20 miles away, and had calved. We were asked to come and pick up our stock since water there was growing scarce. It took me four days of hard riding to get that pair to the river to join our other stock.
    I had heard of a fellow named "Dutch Fred", a character of some notoriety, who lived somewhere south of Armells'. One day I came upon him as he sat beneath a tree in a creek bottom. His "dwelling" was a dugout in the bank. I didn't know people lived that way.
    Since my horse and I were very thirsty I asked for a drink of water. "Dutch Fred" was a man of few words. And this day one of those words was "nope". He pointed to the alkali buildup and went into his dugout. He returned with a can of tomatoes and my drink of a lifetime. I was impressed.
    By late August and early September nearly all the cattle from the ranches were trailed into Roy to the railroad stockyards. One impressive drive was a herd of nearly 500 head from the north shore of the river, which had to swim or ford across. The trail boss was Larry Jordan, whom I met 53 years later at the Roy Centennial. At that time he recounted this very drive for Warren Willmore and me, so you know it wasn't something I dreamed up.
    The Hemsing cattle (4H) were gathered by myself, Frank Jakes, Johnny and Elna Wright and Tommy and Jenny Link. Tommy tore off a finger roping one ornery critter. But Tommy was tough. His only remark was a sharp "dammit!' We had a car at camp so Tommy was driven all the way to Lewistown to get sewn up. The next morning he was back in the saddle. Wow!
    It was a hot three day drive to the Roy stockyards. The first night was a dry camp. The second night the stock was given water. (I'm not sure but I think we watered at Cimrhakl's Ranch, it being the only liquid for miles around.) There weren't many fat cattle at the stockyards that year; the best cow and calf pair drew $20 $25. The top two year-old heifers brought $15-$20. "Sharky", the herd bull, went for just three cents per pound.
    I was to bring a carload of cows by train home to LaConner, in western Washington, a trip taking five

 days to Seattle and one day more on to Skagil County. I rode in the caboose the entire way.
    Federal regulations at that time were to water and feed stock on the train every 24 hours. Our first stop was at Deer Lodge where I listened to a prison band concert. I got acquainted with "commercial travelers", hobos on the freight ears.
    My sister came east to Roy and drove our mother and grandma Hemsing to Washington. And here our story ends for half a century.
    November of 1935. I was just 15 years old. Had just started my sophomore year at LaConner High School. Then all of a sudden I was off to Roy, Montana. I told my school superintendent that "I would be right back." (Later I couldn't help but recall how that fit Joe Bell's definition of being "right back").
    When I returned to LaConner I was but a year older, though having undergone a maturation that easily outdistanced the calendar. My school records show that I weighed out in 1935 at 175 pounds. When I started my junior year in 1936 I was a slimmed down 150!
    The world was hot and dry that year. I didn't see a raindrop until I got back into Washington State! Eleven months.
    I have the fondest and most vivid memories of my homestead experiences and of all the wonderful people in the Roy area, especially my good friends, Warren Willmore, Margaret Umstead and Jenny Link, whom I was to meet again at the 1988 Roy celebration.
    I also maintain a great appreciation of Illa Willmore, who moved me to recount my stay in Montana.