MARGIE CLOE ELLIOTT/SANKEY

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     One day back in 1911, a warning came to her while she was housekeeping for a sick sister’s family. They lived in the forested limestone country of the Black Hills. The warning read “Honyockers want to shoot your horses.”
   The postcard had been mailed at Haley, ND, Where Margie had a claim, soddy, and where her seven horses were pastured.
   Summer drought was making the farmers panicky. The claim-shackers had farming ideas and thought a grass rancher was foolish. Now, they thought grass was valued enough to shoot wandering horses to keep it. Margie decided to rescue her horses at all cost. “What can you do?” her relatives argued. “Move them down here,” she said “There’s feed here.” “Don’t be silly.” was the retort. “Who would help you trail horses 250 miles? They’re not worth it.”
   Nevertheless, Margie put her money(about $50) in her purse, packed a few things in a war sack, and decided to make a try.
   Since she was determined, her brother-in-law said: Would you stop at the Mitchell place and pick up Shetland pony for the kids’ She agreed. Another man ask her to fetch a team back with her.
   A buckboard took her to the railroad. She rode by train to Belle Fourche, and traveled overland 150 miles by wagon stage. Coming from green woodlands, Margie was shocked at range conditions. The hot July weather had turned the prairie grass into gray dust and water holes into beds of dried cracked mud. Homesteaders had reason to make war against wondering stock. Such horses would starve anyway.
        Arriving at her soddy, Margie, a tall, resourceful young lady borrowed a mount, put on a divided skirt, and swung into the saddle. Complaining settlers told her where they had chased the bothersome horses.  Margie found them. They were gaunt and in poor condition. Margie couldn’t find anyone to help her. People though she was daffy to even think of moving the useless nags overland to the Black Hills. The horses wouldn’t make it. So Margie, made desperate by their scoffing, decided to trail the horses the 250 miles by herself.
   Being ranch-raised provided her with a lot of know-how. Her favorite mount was Ruby. She saddled the mare, strapped her war sack with slicker behind the cantle, and with a lunch and bottle of water in the saddle pockets, she was ready for the adventure trail. To prevent her horses from scattering as they trailed along, She used Red Cloud a good leader, for pointer and hitched a horse on either side with  neck ropes. The colts tagged along. Onlookers watched her take off in skeptical silence.
   Her route lay southward, over the boundary in to South Dakota.  in a direct approach to the Grand River,
   At the river the horses watered , then stated to crop riverbank grass. Margie eat her launch with her back to a cottonwood tree and weary from exertion she dozed off.
   She awoke to find two bearded strangers looking down at he. She stared back. Finally she found her voice and explained  about the horses. “ You trailing’ broomtails to the Black Hills by yourself?’ One of the men said in disbelief. “What fer?”
   The men were homesteaders with homes down by the south forks.  Their wives were in town for a few days. They said Margie could make it to their place by dark  and she could pasture the horses overnight in their sage pasture. She could occupy one cabin while they doubled up in the other.
   Margie hesitated She had hoped to benefit from range hospitality , but this was bargained for.
   “tell yah what.” one added, “ you can have the bulldog and the shotgun.” The dog was friendly, and the shotgun was loaded. She slept soundly that night. The next morning the men drove in her horses. She baked pancake for the three of them , then resumed her journey. By following their directions. Margie reached the Mitchell ranch on Rabbit Creek and Mrs. Mitchell made her an overnight guess.
   The Shetland pony turned out to be a rambunctious little stallion that fought the horses he was neck hitched to.
   Margie was following a trail that would take her to the top of the Slim Butte range where recent rains made the grass somewhat better. She had to quirt the stallion as he disrupted the movement of the whole herd. The real trouble came when the trail go too narrow for the neck-hitched bunch to maneuver. Margie then switched the4 line-up to a tail-hitch , with one horse behind the other, with Red Cloud in the lead, the chain of horses proceeded up the winding trail and finally topped the butte’s flat.
   Margie let the horses graze awhile. She laid down to reflect on her growing worry. Could the horses make it? Was she foolish for trying? What would people say if she failed?
  The squeal of horses brought Margie erect in her boots. She clutched the quirt. That stallion was going to behave or take a lashing. The little stud saw her approaching on foot, and to her surprise, came to meet her with a friendly nicker. He wanted to be petted. It turned out that he like people not horses as company on the trail. Margie took him in lead on a saddle rope  while she herded the others ahead of her. Soon they were off the flat and down a gulch trail. The butte’s ridge fell behind  and the barren prairie stretched ahead. Red Cloud broke into a trot and the others followed. The horses smelled water. It was a deep worn gumbo puddle half filled by recent rain. By the time Margie arrived, her string of horses were bogged down in the mud hole. Being tied together, they hindered each other from getting out. Margie halted her mount back from the trap and shook out her lariat to render what aid she could. Looping the rope on the saddle horn, she dismounted and, hanging to the rope , lowered her self down the steep, slippery mud bank, in an effort to get  near enough to untie the horses. One was freed and scrambled out of the pit. The other horses also tried, and there unexpected lunges yanked Margie headlong into the puddle with them. “Was I a mess,” Mrs. Sankey relates, “ and that’s when I missed my purse.
   She recalled she had laid it down under a sagebrush up on the divide. She remembered getting up to quirt the stallion.
  Viewing the skyline ridge of the Slim Buttes, Margie had no idea which ravine she had came down. Unless she found the right trail, she would never find the place where she left the purse.  Tackling he predicament first, she untied the horses and they got out of the bog hole. She helped herself out of it in a hand-over-hand climb up the bank on the saddle rope.
  Riding back toward the ridge, she let the horse have her own way, and Ruby took the right turn that brought them back on the flat and to the purse under the sagebrush.
   That night she reached the Robinson spread on the upper Moreau River. Western hospitality was appreciated for she had a chance to clean herself up.
  The next morning she faced a 50-mile stretch of barren, sun baked, desert with the Peterson Road Ranch as he goal. Margie dragged in late that afternoon. The western sky was filled with thunder crashing clouds.
  The lightning was striking with nerve taunting regularity. Gray mist fogged the horizon. “I was never so glad to find shelter in my life. “ Mrs. Sankey declared.
   But the women at he ranch turned hostile at the sight of Margie “You can’t stop here, she declared grimly.” “I don’t know you. I’m not taking in any strange female that’s herding horses by herself. Keep moving girl.”
   Margie dreaded the prospect. Thunder already had her mount jittery. But what could she do? She reined Ruby around to pick up the horses at the water tank. Then a man came from the barn to take a hand in the affair.  “Mom,” he told the women, “We ain’t turning no girl away in the face of this storm.” His words decided the matter.  The horses were corralled . The women accepted Margie as he guest.
   That turned out to be the worst storm Margie had ever seen.  The next morning the prairie was  a sea of mud. It was twenty-five miles to Belle Fourche, Handicapped by slippery footing and flooded creeks to ford.  She made it, but Margie wonders how the horses survived.
   Having friends in Belle Fourche, Margie visited a couple days while the horses rested and grained for the rest of the trek. She took a cross-county route into the Black Hills, as meeting with a vehicle would crowed the neck roped horses in to gullies. That evening a cowgirl drove  her bunch of horses down Deadwood’s main street and people stopped talking to watch her. She got the use of a corral and the animals were penned for the night. Margie lugged her war sack into a restaurant. A white-mustached man visited with her over a cup of coffee and said he was going down to look at her horses.
   On the street, after supper, Margie met a kind lady and her daughter who were horse lovers, too, They invited her to stay over night at their home.  It was a lovely place on one of the upper streets. They treated Margie like a queen.
   Before leaving town the next day, Margie stepped in to the same restaurant  for lunch on the road, and the manager ask if she were traveling south toward the limestone country. He had a letter that a party had  left to be forwarded to it’s address by anyone headed in that direction. (Before routes were established, mail often traveled in this manner to out-of-the-way destinations). Margie took the letter. It was address to her brother-in-law. She put it in her saddle pocket. Following directions she journeyed up the gulches and up a trail that is now identified as Strawberry Hill.
   The weather was cooler in these green wooded hills. Horses eagerly cropped grass a they drifted along. Margie halted in a green park to let the horses graze while she ate lunch and laid back to rest. Again she fell asleep and yet coming half awake  she fancied she heard voices. At he touch of a cold slobbery kiss she snapped wide awake and sat up to find herself staring into the big eyes of a gentle milk cow.
   The men she heard were down looking at her horses. When Margie joined them and stated where she was going it made everything right. The men knew her brother-in-law.  A shower in the afternoon had got the letter in the saddle pocket wet and it’s flap became unsealed. Margie out of curiosity, read the contents. The letter was from the white-mustached man, who was a former postal inspector, and stated that he was suspicious of the girl taking the horses to the limestone ranch. The horses all had different brands. A sheriff in Wyoming had told him there was a gang of thieves running stolen horses from North Dakota to Cheyenne and a woman was keeping them posted on what the local sheriffs were doing.  Was she a relative or was she a renegade? Did the rancher know anything about her or her horses? That gave Margie a new worry.
  She bunked at a mountain ranch that night with people that knew her sisters family. Margie lay awake most of the night reflecting on he position. Should she deliver the letter? Would her brother-in-law resent the suspicions already aroused? Might a scandal develop from this horse stealing activity in which she seemed to be involved? (Back in 1911  a girl’s reputation could easily be tarnished by adventuring into a man’s world).
  Just seven days from the time she started from her claim in North Dakota, Margie pulled into the limestone ranch.  Her relatives were worried. No word had been heard from her since she left. She brought out the letter and explained its origin. The brother-in-law wrote Mr. White-mustache and assured him that he was mistaken about Margie. She owned the horses and she was a fine girl.   The old Romeo wrote Margie a letter of apology and ask her for a date.  Of course she never saw him again.  
                                                 by Edna Elliott/Sankey(1885-1976)
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