Part One

At home on the Range

The Roll Away Saloon

This is quite a notorious story on the Arizona Strip because it involves liquor. As far as I can remember, all the cowboys liked to drink alcohol. Oh, boy, they'd drink home brewed, they'd drink lemon extract and vanilla extract. The freighters couldn't get it in there fast enough. The stores would sell out right away. That's a fact.

So they built this little saloon and it was right on the Arizona-Utah line four miles south of Kanab and four miles north of Fredonia about seven or eight rods to the west of the present highway. It was just kind of a two-room affair, with a bar at one end and the barkeeper's bedroom at the other end. It wasn't very large, maybe twelve by eighteen feet, but it created quite a bit of disturbance among the Mormon housewives of Fredonia and Kanab because their men would come staggering up home on their horses, too late for dinner, unable to take their saddles off. So the men of these towns, fearing their women, built this saloon on rollers, log rollers that went clear under the joist.

Well, one day when the women in the Relief Society up to Kanab got together sewing and having a quilting bee, they decided among themselves that too many of their men were going down imbibing at this Roll Away Saloon. So they organized a posse to go and burn the thing down. And their plans were all kept a secret from their husbands, of course. So when the men all went out on the range or out in the fields or doing something, the women saddled up their horses, a lot of them rode, and some of them took their white-tops and they headed for this saloon.

Just fortunately for the saloon keeper there, there's a little raise of land to the north about a quarter mile from the saloon, and on the south side there's also a little incline up to a little ridge there, what we call Halfway Hill. And sure enough, this saloon keeper saw the dust coming from these women on horseback and these four or five white-tops as they came over the rise. And he got the crowbar and rolled the saloon back into Arizona. The women got down there and were all ready to light their torches, they had their bundles all ready, when the saloon keeper said, "You can't touch this business; it's in Arizona. We don't belong to Utah at all. There's the line."

It was well paved, the line was, and it always had been. So they had a little confab, then said to the saloon keeper, "Well, if you sell our men any more liquor, we'll get you next time." So they went back home all disgusted that they couldn't go over into Arizona and wreck that place, and went back to their quilting.

Well, anyway, in a few days or a few weeks maybe, why the women down in Fredonia would be doing the same thing, quilting and making things for the needy and so forth. They would find out that their husbands had been spending all the spare cash up there at the Roll Away Saloon, so they'd organize a posse and here they would come. They'd come over that little ridge down there a quarter mile from the saloon and the saloon keeper'd see them coming, and it'd just take a few little pushes on those crowbars under the logs under the saloon, and over she'd go, over into Utah. The women would come up and the same thing would happen. "You can't touch me, I'm over here in Utah. Look there, there's the line." So the women would give up, threatening, and go back to Fredonia. And this went on for years.

Well, now, that's the Roll Away Saloon story and I guess I'm the only one that ever told it. And I think if you want to take a picture, you might find a few of those old rollers still rotting over there.

S'n' Ostrich

Well, I'll tell you one more funny little story. We had these roundups in the spring in which all the cowmen in the country joined. It was necessary because it was a common drive and the territory was tremendous. We started up under the red ledges up there at Kanab and went all the way over to the Paria. We would drive these cattle, but they had been driven year after year so all you had to do was dash up to a bunch of them and hit your chaps with your quirt and let out a few war whoops and give them a start in the right direction. All those trails went like a tree backwards from the watering holes, branching out as they went. So all we had to do was ride the head of those trails and give the cattle a boot and there they would go. And you could see the dust for miles because of the cattle going toward Pipe Springs where the turnover was made, where the buyers came to buy the cattle. And that old Roll Away Saloon was there on the way.

I had as my riding partner that day, next to me, a cowboy from Missouri. His name was Amos, but he was the slowest man in the world and we all called him "Swift." He'd light a cigarette and before he would take the second puff it would be burned down so that he couldn't puff the second time. Well, Swift turns to me and says, "I've got to get a drink, Rowland." And I says, "Come on, Amos, you can't do it. We've got to keep the end of our line up." And he says, "It won't take me a minute. I haven't had one for months." I knew that this was true because he had been in the outfit that long and there was no liquor. So I says, "All right, if you'll only take one so that we can join the rest in the line." We went in and I went with him to see that he didn't stay too long and he drank one and put it down and drank another one before I could get hold of his arm. I said, "Come on, Swift. We have got to go." But by the time he got in his chaps to get the money out, why we'd got behind a little bit and so we jogged along.

About a mile from the saloon there was a colony, and there has been for many years, a colony of ground owls, beautiful owls about the size of a pigeon with little ears and they look just like Siamese cats, except they have a beak instead of the cat's nose, and they got the ears stickin' up there and a big round face and, oh, boy, they are beautiful things. They build their nests in the springtime in the badger holes. The badger drills down there about three feet and it's there these owls nest. They build their nest down in these badger holes and the female sits on the eggs down in there, but the male sits on top and he's the guard, seeing that no rattlesnakes or anything can...