"Won't you take her back and give me another?" I asked. "Yes, I will give you that red cow (one I had rejected as unfit), but not one of the others." "Then, what is this cow worth to you?" Back came the response, "Thirty dollars," and so I dropped ten dollars (having paid him forty), lost the better part of a day, experienced a good deal of vexation. "Oh, if I could only have Twist back again."
The fact gradually dawned upon me that the loss of that fine ox was almost irreparable. I could not get track of an ox anywhere, nor of even a steer large enough to mate the Dave ox. Besides, Dave always was a fool. I could scarcely teach him anything. He did learn to haw, by the word when on the off side, but wouldn't mind the word a bit if on the near side. Then he would hold his head way up while in the yoke as if he disdained to work, and poke his tongue out at the least bit of warm weather or serious work. Then he didn't have the stamina of Twist. Although given the long end of the yoke, so that Twist would pull fifty-five per cent. of the load, Dave would always lag behind. Here was a case where the individuality of the ox was as marked as ever between man and man. Twist would watch my every motion and mind by the wave of the hand, but Dave never minded anything except to shirk hard work, while Twist always seemed to love his work and would go freely all day. And so it was brought home to me more forcibly than ever that in the loss of the Twist ox I had almost lost the whole team.
Now if this had occurred in 1852 the loss could have been easily remedied, where there were so many "broke" cattle, and where there were always several yoke to the wagon. So when I drove out with a hired horse team that day with the Dave ox tagging on behind and sometimes pulling on his halter, and an unbroken cow, it may easily be guessed the pride of anticipated success went out, and a feeling akin to despair seized upon me. Here I had two yokes, one a heavy ox yoke and the other a light cow's yoke, but the cow, I thought, could not be worked alongside the ox in the ox yoke, nor the ox with the cow in the cow yoke, and so there I was without a team but with a double encumbrance.
Yes, the ox has passed—has had his day—for in all this State I have been unable to find even one yoke. So I trudged along, sometimes behind the led cattle, wondering in my mind whether or no I had been foolish to undertake this expedition to perpetuate the memory of the Old Oregon Trail. Had I not been rebuffed by a number of business men who pushed the subject aside with, "I have no time to look into it"? Hadn't I been compelled to pass several towns where even three persons could not be found to act on the committee? And then there was the experience of the constant suspicion and watch to see if some graft could not be discovered—some lurking speculation. All this could be borne in patience, but when coupled with it came the virtual loss of the team, is it strange that my spirits went down below a normal condition?