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Show n0 You Remember? . . . Tn,vs bring baok mom-T mom-T . true ry Wo wore told t chdbyUr fath0r" f,r ' T Hatch. TsdJ0 ,,hv ISfiO's, as a boy of In ""rt'thor herded sheop along ' In the Ogden Pioneer Day sec- tion of the paper today appears this article: "Worried about the rubber shortage? You should have lived in pioneer times when rawhide raw-hide served as rubber. And rubber today (what there is of it) is totally to-tally devoid of elasticity compared compar-ed to the super-rawhide of pioneer times. Most any old-timer can tell you so. "If you don't believe it, he'll tell you about the freighter, or farmer, or pioneer, who was caught in a rainstorm when he had a team hooked up with a rawhide harness. The wagon stuck in the mud, but that" didn't stop the horses. The rawhide tugs stretched, and the nags walked about six miles home with the freighter, or farmer, or pioneer, sloshing along beside them. He turned them into the barn and hung the harness on the hook. Next day the sun came out bright and warm, and shortly before be-fore noon the wagon came jingling into the yard at a brisk trot!" Quite a whopper, but shows how far the imagination may be stretched! Congratulations, Springville, on your way-over-the-top rubber quota. quo-ta. Shows the spirit of the entire community! Do you remember? tlu shores of Utah Lake. At that time the Indians wore very hostile- making n fearsome thing for the early settlers In what is Utah county. Day after day little Thad watched watch-ed the sheep, always a llttlo bit afraid, always watchful for the Indians who loved to frighten children and women while the men were away from home at work. One evening, as Thad rounded up the sheop for the homeward drive, an Indian, in war paint and feathers, carrying a wicked looking look-ing tomahawk, stepped out from behind some willows near where the boy was standing, whistling to keep up his courage. Thad, almost paralyzed with fear, remembered his mother's warning never to show the Indians In-dians that you were afraid, so he walked along toward the path that led to home, two miles away. Never Ne-ver looking backward. He had gone only a short distance when he heard the soft padding of moc-casined moc-casined feet in the dusty path behind be-hind him. Almost at the same moment mo-ment the Indian stepped on the boy's barefoot heels. Each step Thad took the Indian kept pace and brought his feet down on the boy's heels. Thad kept eyes straight ahead, his heart beating like a trip-hamper, and scalding tears of pain rolled down his cheeks. Yet never a backward glance did be give the Indian who waved his tomahawk and peered around at Thad's face with a wicked smile on his painted, paint-ed, bold countenance. In perfect agony of fright and pain, Thad sensed that his heels were now bleeding yet he dared not run, now show fear! When he reached a point where he could see home and his mother in the doorway. Thad hastened his steps which the Indian matched with his own. On reaching the dooryard, his stepfather, appeared on the scene. This gave the Indian In-dian pause, but walking up boldly, he said: "Heap brave boy! No hurt 'em, scare 'em mebbe!" Meanwhile Thad ran sobbing to his mother's outstretched arms for comfort. in Utah, when Indians were on the warpath. By the way, this story won first prize in the 1937 Pioneer Days story contest in the Ogden Standard-Examiner. The prize was "Whitney's History of Utah," which is one of our best histories, and much prized by the writer. Utah is so filled with historic landmarks and there are so many thrilling and interesting incidents yet unpublished that we wonder why much more is left untold than has ever been told. In this column we should like to have many of the early day incidents inci-dents of times and places, and things that have occurred in and around' Springville. We are sure that many of the readers have stories they would like to see published pub-lished stories that could be kept as records of ' their pioneer ancestry. 1A few days later the little boy again herding the sheep, had hidden hid-den his lunch pail in the willows, and when he went to get It, no lunch pail was there. Looking around, he saw the same Indian who had stepped on his heels a few days before, standing by the willows wil-lows eating his lunch, and grinning grin-ning at the lad in a fiendish glee. Thad started to run but remembered remem-bered in time, and stopped dead still facing the Indian who drew his arrow, pointing it at Thad's heart. Thad said in a quavery voice, "All right, come on, shoot; I'm not afraid of you!" This incident is only one of many father told us of the early days |