Those who knew them have said that Elizabeth’s daughter Josie was just like her mother. In this situation we can imagine Elizabeth using the methods her daughter later used, to convince Herb to return to Brown’s Park even against his wishes. She would not have begged or pleaded, nagged or raged. Her tools would have been a contagious optimism, an enthusiastic description of what lay before them, a serene brushing aside of any objections, and an irresistible self-assurance. In a flood of soft Southern words, Elizabeth would have contrasted running their own profitable ranch with Herb’s job as a timekeeper at the mine for the gangs of Mexicans and Chinese. Herb hated his job, for it was unpleasant work, poorly paid, and demeaning to a man of his capabilities. If Herb mentioned California as an alternative, she would have reminded him that his brother Sam had been right—that the dry air had already improved Herb’s health immeasurably. She could prophesy in good conscience that his asthma would undoubtedly disappear completely once he got away from the blowing coal dust in Rock Springs. She would have painted such attractive pictures of their future as she sat smiling at him, eyes sparkling in anticipation, that Herb would forget momentarily that he was forty-six years old, still suffered from asthma, and hated the idea of being a pioneer again.
Elizabeth’s campaign was won, perhaps, through the intervention of A. B. Conway, that previous benefactor who had produced a milk cow for Ann. When Conway had first gone to Brown’s Park he had staked out a beautiful piece of ground at the eastern end of the valley near the claims of the Herrera brothers. It lay up against the hills below Cold Spring Mountain across from the Gates of Ladore, those two towering precipices between which the Green River leaves Brown’s Park. The property had an excellent spring pouring out just where the hills started their gentle slope down to the valley floor, and its flow was so strong and dependable that it had created a meadow in the land beneath it.
Conway had never done much with his claim and now his law practice and political efforts were so successful that his future was in Green River City. He came to the Park only because he loved the place and enjoyed relaxing there with his old friends the Herreras. He offered to relinquish the site to Herb and Elizabeth, stipulating only that they would help him care for his thoroughbred horses if the Herrera brothers were ever to leave the Park. Here was the perfect opportunity, then, to acquire one of the choice spots in the valley, far better than their first location on Willow Creek. Under the pressure of Elizabeth’s enthusiasm, Herb acquiesced.
RANCHERS AND RUSTLERS
The Bassetts returned to their old cabin only to pick up their belongings; then they went back down the valley to their new homesite. On the way, the children broke out in measles. Elizabeth bedded them down under the massive cottonwoods bordering the spring and started to help strip the logs that Sam and Herb were hewing for a cabin. When she was not chopping firewood, cooking meals, washing clothes, feeding the chickens, milking the cow or helping Josie care for the smaller children, she was grubbing out brush for the vegetable garden. After the cabin was far enough along that the family could move in out of the open, there was the chicken house to be built, then the corral for the stock and the sheds for supplies.
After the essential buildings were completed, one can imagine Elizabeth suggesting that an extra supply of logs be cut before winter set in, “for the bunkhouse we will need in the spring.”
Bunkhouse! They had no cowboys. For that matter, they had only a handful of cattle. This would not have deterred Elizabeth. She had a clear and constant vision of what must be accomplished and, with gaiety and good humor, she pushed her husband toward the goals she had set for them. (Only occasionally would her violent temper transform the Southern gentlewoman into the brassy-voiced slavedriver.)
If she pushed Herb, she also pushed herself with her need for success. Josie said of her, “My father didn’t know how to brand a cow—neither did she, but she tried . . . . “ Until her anticipated cowboys arrived, Elizabeth managed the cattle herself. When she was not working at the cabin or in the garden, she was in the saddle—a sidesaddle, of course, as befit a lady—taking salt blocks to her precious cattle, keeping a watch for mavericks, moving her herd to better pasturage, perhaps shooting some game for the dinner table, while Herb and little Josie took care of things at home.
She had her first experience with the casual way in which property rights were treated in cattle country when they first returned from Rock Springs and found that the cattle they had left with Uncle Sam were missing. According to Josie:
My father bought twenty head of heifers just before the Meeker Massacre and he branded his heifers with “U P.” . . . on the ribs. Great big “U” with the “P” connected. But while we were away in Wyoming a man came into the country . . . his name was Metcalf . . . and he branded with “7 U P.” He had a “7” in front of our “U P” all over those cows. My father didn’t know what to do, he was stranded . . . but my mother did. She said, “I know some of those cows, and I’m taking them.” And she took them! She and Mr. Metcalf had some kind of set-with . . . she didn’t use “U P” anymore, she had the cattle rebranded.
Once the decision to return had been made, Herb undoubtedly responded with good grace and enthusiasm. While he was neither physically nor psychologically prepared to learn the cattle business, he made contributions of his own to the growth of their homestead. He piped the spring to bring water close to the cabin and to provide irrigation for crops. He established hay fields, becoming the first man in the valley to do more than just mow the natural grasses for winter forage for their horses. He planted an apple orchard. He brought in four-strand barbed wire—another Brown’s Park first—and fenced the home fields. When they started summer grazing their cattle in Zenobia Basin up on Douglas Mountain, he built a three-room cabin and a corral with closely placed upright cedar posts to protect the horses from wild predators. (Bears and mountain lions were so thick in the high mountains that horses were belled for protection, and ranchers went on organized lion hunts.) His granddaughter, Edna Bassett Haworth, recalls Herb experimenting with seeds and new plants in a special plot and grafting new varieties of fruit onto existing trees in his orchard.
In addition to cattle, the Bassetts raised horses, and eventually made themselves a local reputation as good breeders; not in vain was Elizabeth the granddaughter of a breeder of thoroughbreds. Esther Campbell’s notes describe the day when Ann Bassett first saw Esther’s buckskin horse. Ann immediately recognized it as one of a “Nugget” breed that had originated on the Bassett ranch:
They owned the original mare, the “Tippecanoe” mare, and raised many good colts from her. Her father [Herb] bought the mare from some people traveling through the country from Tennessee. She was high-lifed and they had a wire tied around her tongue to control her. Her tongue was almost cut in two. Mr. Bassett felt sorry for her and bought her. Her colts were always full of life and willing to travel. Ann had a team of buckskins [Tippecanoe’s colts] for a buggy team. She drove them from Douglas to Craig from sunup to sundown, and they would be pulling at the bits when they trotted up the last hill to Craig.
Breeding good horseflesh to use on the ranch and for an occasional sale was valuable, of course, but their success depended on their cattle. Elizabeth soon learned that even in her remote valley there were intruders.
In earlier days, when the only cattle in Colorado were the Longhorns driven up from Texas, cattle drovers had used Brown’s Park as a safe wintering place for their herds. Grass and water were plentiful, and snowfall was normally light because the valley was sheltered by its ring of mountains. Even in a “killer winter” which destroyed herds on the plains, cattle usually survived in Brown’s Park. Yet the Park was never large enough to accommodate huge herds. As the land in the Park was homesteaded, continued attempts of outsiders to winter there caused serious overgrazing problems for the full-time inhabitants, who watched their range anxiously for signs of overuse.
As if the damage to “their” range was not enough, cowboys running a large herd often collected local cattle which then were driven out of the area and often lost to the local ranchers. Every rancher expected to lose a few cattle to