Mollie Adams Diary of her Journey in the Canadian Rockies, August 31, 1908

Swift Camp.

Monday Aug. 31.

               Laid over, and W. spent the morning taking the shoes off the horses.  M. and I ambled back and forth between our house and the Swift shack, as Mrs. S. was finishing a buckskin coat embroidered with silk work for M., and it had to be tried on a good many times.  The old man came over to our camp fire in the evening and edified us with lurid tales of the days in the ‘70s in Wyoming when the Deadwood stage was held up regularly every night, and the “bullion wagon” was robbed even in the daytime; and “Wild Bill”, “Persimmon Bill,” “The Lone Star” etc., ran around shooting up the towns.  We sat gaping and petrified or else struggling to smother our giggles, for his language was sometimes even more lurid than the stories he was telling.  We decided that Swift’s yarns were quite near enough the real thing for us, and that is was just as well we had not become better acquainted with Bill Spitel of the stubby red beard (he has a red complexion according to Swift) for Swift says “Bill is a rough talker”, and what he would call a rough talker must be something rather more than we would bargain for.