greg Stephens, the counting system did make it across the water. I will have to look it up, but it and a couple of others were reported in "Journal of American Folklore" many years ago.

There already is a thread on this, but I am too lazy to look it up.

Annie Proulx knows Wyoming well; katlaughing just doesn't like her story of two itinerant homosexual saddle tramps.
(I agree, it ain't the straight-shootin' upright cowhand way; but the bums of her story ain't cowboys or ranchers in the hard-working sense of her (and mine) antecedents). All this was in the older thread as well.

Peace, that divide by four, I think, in the West was taught to every unsuspecting kid by his parents, about the time he was getting out of diapers. The kids perhaps even believed it for about 30 seconds.