Nobody sent boys to school when they were needed at home to help with the plowing or planting, so when it got down to where only four girls and I were left, school closed for the summer. The day after it closed, Mrs. Corcoran came to see Mother about getting me to work for them. They had about thirty milch cows, and used to take cream to Fort Logan every day. In the summer they pastured the cows on the quarter section south of us. Because there weren't any fences, somebody had to herd them to keep them from getting into Aultland's and Carl Henry's grain fields. She said she would pay me twenty-five cents a day, and I would only have to work from seven in the morning till six at night. I guess Mother thought they herded cows on foot in Colorado, as they did in New England, so she said I could do it. I didn't have any such ideas at all and was all excited about being a cowboy. My biggest worry was that I didn't have a ten-gallon felt hat, instead of a straw one from the grocery store at Fort Logan.
