Ferral Young, Young Ranch, Pierce County, Utah, January 2.

I never had no trouble with them boys from down at the yurts. They's always been respectful and mostly we don't see them when they come through. First time they come up to the house I stayed half behind the door because not often do people come this far in and with their buckskins and beards and darned sandals and big knives I had no idea what to expect. I always got the .30-30 leaning there and I wanted it in reach when them four come knocking, but pretty soon they put me at ease -not so much as I invited them in, but so's I took a step out on the porch and we talked ok. They introduced themselves all by first name, which here we do not do to strangers, so I made a point of calling myself Mr. Young, being older and unacquainted. Anyways, they was real polite, and all they wanted was my permission to walk through to the tanks at the top of the canyon. Unless you got a helicopter, you're not getting there except through my land, less you walk maybe five days off of 144 around back of Black Bear Mesa, which they was hoping to avoid. I told them to watch for my one grumpy angus bull out there in the junipers and big cats at the tanks and let them go. I never been all the way out there without a rifle and horseback, but if they wanted to walk in sandals and carry just the knives that was their business and not mine.

Irregardless, it blew hard that night so's I had to get up and wire down the cowshed roof and out there in the wind and cold I got to thinking about them boys and headed out after breakfast to see where they'd got to and if they was ok. I go to church most Sundays, but tell you what: riding out in the pines of a clear morning sipping coffee, seeing that there's maybe enough grass to get the cattle through the winter is where I most feel the Holy Ghost. Coffee's not what the bishop wants me drinking, but it sure helps put me in the mood for winter riding.

I rode out maybe two hours, out to where the pines stop, and the whole way I was flushing mulies and cows. Cows looked pretty good for January. Out at the first spring I found where they camped, up on the ledge away from the cow mess. They had swept up their fire, which I appreciated, and left the place as it was except for a stack of juniper. I figured they was ok. I don't know what motivates them boys to sleep on the ground in winter. Me, I had to when I was cowboying before 144 was paved, but I couldn't wait to get out of that line of work and back in a warm bed. The way I see it, some people grow up with all the comforts and later need to prove they can put up with the hardship. If you lived in hardship when you was young, you grew a taste for comfort later, not having to prove nothing to yourself or others. Or maybe they like being out of a sunny morning as much as I do, but they don't have neither horse nor coffee.

Right after they paved 144 is when them two New Yorkers bought the upper half of the Wilson ranch and put up the first yurt. They was the first new arrivals except Vermillion brides in Kolob in our whole history, going back 140 years. All these years we been swapping young Kolob girls for young Vermillion girls, so's these two towns have a look all our own, like one big family. Old Lyman, Radar's daddy, brought home a French girl after the war, but she didn't last long and took the baby, so it's been pretty much just Kolob and Vermillion out here below the mountain swapping brides. Then along come the New Yorkers with their money and their yurt, and Wilsons unload that good-for-nothing scrubland for cash, and suddenly we have some new blood, but as outsider as they come: them long-haired boys had no place here, really, though we was ready enough for them so long's they behaved. We joked that the only people's ever moved into Kolob since Brigham Young sent us here way back is long-haired: all them Vermillion brides and now these two pansies. But face to face most of us was cordial, and mostly let them alone.

When them boys first really got a good welcome here was when we had one of our big blizzards, maybe in '90 or so and the Lymans were out doing late roundup and two of their boys got snowed in out to Flat Top. It got so my pond froze to the bottom, only time it ever did that, so it was cold as sin, too cold for skinny boys out all night. We got about a dozen of us together and rode out when the moon came up, and it wasn't ten minutes before my feet was frozen past pain and I was shivering like a aspen. That's when them two New Yorkers jogged by us in the snow looking like old-time Piutes in their skins and blankets. We all thought we'd have to rescure them, too, after finding the Lyman boys, but what happened later that night corrected some miscomprehensions of ours: them two tracked the boys down to a wash we never went in because a ledge kept the cows out, got a big fire going, blanketed their horses, and then jogged right back out and found us and led us back to the boys, who were warm and asleep when we got there. We are a self-taking-care-of people and we take some real unspoken pride in not needing help, but we had to admit these long-haired New Yorkers was tough and smart and knew how to move in the woods and weather, and from then on I kept them in high regard though I did wish they'd stop play-acting the Piute and join the rest of us white ranchers where they belonged. Anyways, it was a good introduction for us to people not from below the mountain, and I think we'll get along fine even though they look like Piute hippies and live in yurts and talk like goddamned college boys, excuse my French.