...Don't make them like this anymore..

[ironglowz]

  In some ways I find this good..other ways, doubtful..  https://www.pearland.com/msg/widow-elk-creek-trappers-wife.php?p=1890378


 
Beartooth Mountains, Montana Territory, 1886-1887
She came west for love.
She stayed alive for spite.
When the snow came early and the grizzlies stayed late -
she loaded the rifle, boiled the bones, and kept the fire going.
The Edge of Civilization
The Beartooth Range was no place for comfort.
It was:
9,000 feet up
Weeks from the nearest town
A place of ice winds, rockslide paths, and silent forests
Trapped between grizzlies, wolves, and starvation
Most who lived there were fur trappers or seasonal hands.
But in 1884, Elizabeth "Elsie" Macklin, age 24, left Kansas to marry a trapper named John who built a two-room cabin at the mouth of Elk Creek.
For two years, they ran traplines and traded pelts for flour, bullets, and coffee beans.
Then in October of 1886, John went upriver to hunt beaver.
He never came back.
Alone Before the Freeze
Elsie waited. A day. Then a week.
By the time she lit out to search, snow had already begun to fall.
She found his pack torn open near a frozen bend.
No body. Just blood.
Just claw marks in the tree bark - ten feet high.
Six Months of Silence
From November to April, Elsie:
Re-set his traplines herself
Boiled pine needles for vitamin C
Shot and butchered a bear that tried to break into the smokehouse
Burned the pages of an old Bible for firestarter
Fixed her snowshoes three times
Patched a frostbite-blackened toe with bear grease and muslin
She spoke aloud only to the wind.
Her dog, Tuck, froze to death in February.
She wrapped him in flannel and buried him under the cabin floor.
Rescue Comes Late
A pair of traders stumbled onto her cabin in late April, expecting it to be abandoned.
Instead, they found:
A woman 20 pounds thinner
With a loaded rifle across her lap
A line of smoked beaver pelts hanging above the stove
And a bear skull nailed to the door with the words "I stayed."
Legacy
Elsie returned to Kansas that summer.
She never remarried.
She opened a general store, where she sold snares and taught girls how to skin rabbits.
Locals called her "The Elk Widow."
When she died in 1919, her coffin was lined with fur she'd trapped herself.

[DDZ]

In the 1800's women were certainly a lot tougher. Then so were men.  Even those that are considered to have very little today, live a life of luxury compared to then. Easy available food, running water, and instant hot water. Warm, and cooled home. Soft beds, clean clothes often. There are even a great number that don't even have to work for those luxuries today. They just fill out paperwork and turn it into a government agency, and they get all those luxuries for free.     

[moamonkey]

Can’t say she’s my kinda woman… but hell yeah! What a woman! Thanks for the story IG.

[Bob Riebe]

     Forty years ago I read a book on the women on the wagon trains going West.
The trains did not stop to bury the dead, and from a women's diary she wrote: " Our good days are determined by the number of bodies left on the road."

     

[Dee]

I've got a friend I met here in west Texas about 2 1/2 years ago. He's 78 years old, married to his high school sweetheart, and other than a livestock detective for a short period of time in the early 70s, has been a ranch cowboy in Texas and New Mexico his entire life.
When I first met him and his wife I thought they were a little odd. After got to know them, I realized that they're different now, but go back 70 or 80 years, and they're what you see is what you get.
I've  done ranch work off and on, all my life, but Bob is the real deal. A real rancher all the way to the bone. He knows about everything there is to know about cows and horses. Every disease, every common cow, or horse problem, and every vaccine, or antibiotic known to the cattle and horse business. He knows every grass, every weed, and which one is best, or worst, for cattle and horses.
He raised a family on deer and turkey meat killed in and out of season, and makes no apologies for it. You can quote a scripture from the Bible, and he can tell you what it means, and where to find it.
He buttons his long sleeved shirts all the way to the top button like they used to, wears suspenders (me to) tall tops cowboy boots (me to), and a BIG cowboy hat with a crease popular 100 years ago everywhere he goes.
He can de-nut a bull calf in under a minute with very little blood, and ain't afraid of the heat or the dirt. He can still  set a horse as good as the younger guys, and catch both back feet on a calf with his rope on the first throw.
He ain't a wannabe, he is the real deal, old time cowboy. He doesn't wanna stand out in a crowd, but he does.
He's a pistol toter, and a real friend. He told me that when he retired that he wasn't gonna work long ranch hours anymore, and he doesn't. He builds ranch fences part time, (and according to him, part time is 40 hours a week). I'm lucky to have met Bob. They really ain't makin'em like him anymore.