Living on sourdough bread and coffee…

     Con Price has a long recollection of spending the early winter (1890) with Charlie and three others. He wrote:

     “They throwed together a log cabin on Warm Spring Creek, in the Judith Basin country… It had a dirt roof, dirt floor. Our cooking utensils were a frying pan and a coffee pot, and very little grub, as we were all broke when the winter came on.

     “No stove, we cooked on a kind of fireplace we built. No table, a few tin plates, empty corn cans for cups. We lived on sourdough bread and coffee, and once in awhile we’d find a maverick. We had one horse among all of us, and we would take turns saddling that horse, and go out and look for some meat.

     “There were thousands of cattle everywhere, and I don’t think we looked too close to see if an animal had a brand or not. We called it a maverick, no questions asked. The cowmen weren’t too severe about a cowboy eating a piece of their meat once in awhile, as long as they didn’t make a business of selling it.   read more