Father soon began to gather property around him and after two years he traded for a nice ranch adjoining ours to the south. This had a nice four-room house and a lovely young orchard on it and from that time on we did well and enjoyed life. Mother lived there and had two more children born to her: Phoebe, born May 22, 1891, and Leon, born April 12, 1895. In the winter of 1896-97, father took a contract on the railroad being built from El Paso, Texas, into Colonial Dublin, and took mother out there to cook for the men. It was in May 1897, that mother had to quit because she was very ill. In September, father took her to Utah where the doctor [diagnosed it as] cancer, and she died October 19, 1897 and was taken to our old hometown of Panguitch for burial.

I was ten years old when we arrived in Mexico and I worked with father on the ranch most of the time and got very little schooling. Father needed my help and schooling was not compulsory there. We lived about three miles from town and I walked to and from school some of the time and rode a horse some of the time. I only got a half-year in the eighth grade in the Juarez Stake Academy and that ended my schooling.

I helped father on the ranch, riding the range most of the time, looking after our cattle. Father had brought quite a herd of cows and together with mother’s, we had about 200 head of stock. I did considerable hunting in those early days. The deer, turkey, cougars, lions, bears, ducks, and many kinds of wild game were plentiful and father gave me a .44 caliber Winchester rifle when I was eleven years old. I soon traded for a good .45 colt six-shooter and a fine dagger, which I wore all the time when I rode out, either hunting or after cattle, and I kept the family pretty well supplied with wild game.

I became quite handy with a lariat and delighted in riding wild horses. Many of my friends would bring their broncos to me to have them ridden and I used to enjoy riding bucking horses and breaking wild horses to work in the team. One time when I was 14, two of my friends and I went hunting deer and turkey. We spied a large brown bear high up on the side of a mountain and we climbed up on the opposite side of a small ridge until we got within 50 yards of him. I shot him, the bullet passing within three inches of his heart. The beast roared until the mountain seemed to shake, and he rolled like a big ball all the way down the mountain into the canyon ravine on our side of the canyon. The brush was so thick, the only way to get through it was to crawl on our hands and knees into a small opening about four rods in diameter. There he was! Seeing us, he made ready to fight, standing up on his hind feet, his mouth wide open! Being in the lead, I fired twice, quickly, and he dropped dead. The other boys had not fired a shot. They seemed to be timid, not used to hunting as I was. Another time, a moonlight night, I killed thirteen ducks with one shot, using a double-barreled shotgun.

During the 24 years I spent in Mexico, I had many interesting experiences hunting and prospecting in the mountains.

In my younger days, I learned to swim very well and many times when the river was very high, bringing down large trees and drift wood, and boiling, I would swim out for a mile down the stream. Many times I had to ride my horse into it and make him swim the river. Sometimes the stream was so swift it would carry us hundreds of yards down the river and sometimes I’d be compelled to dismount and swim with the horse, catching the saddle horn and helping the horse to keep his feet down and his head up to keep him from drowning.