In 1892 I went to Wyoming and broke horses there for a couple of years. Then I heard of the Cripple Creek gold stampede in Colorado. I sold my rig and went to Cripple Creek and it looked like everybody in the world went there. There was two railroads in there and every passenger coach would be loaded with people. The roads were lined with people of every description—some walking, some riding donkeys and some with wagons.
About every other house there was a saloon and gambling house. Of course, there wasn’t work for everybody and lots of them were broke when they landed there—that was in the month of November and shortly after the weather turned bitter cold. I have seen men lay down on the floor to sleep in those saloons which kept open day and night, and when the house man started to clean up in the morning he would find dead men under the tables and on benches. The altitude was very high. Those people had no place to sleep—and nearly all of them contracted mountain fever and that went into pneumonia and they would sometimes die in a few hours after taking sick.
New Year’s night in 1894 was sure a wild night in Cripple Creek. Every man that filed on a mining claim prior to that time had to have one hundred dollars’ worth of work done in order to hold it by law and, of course, there was the usual contention when people are crazy for gold, some claiming the required amount of work was not done—and others claiming they had fulfilled the requirements of the law. The results were that every man owning a claim was on his ground at midnight with a gun to protect what he thought was his property.
I was in a good spot that night to get a view of the Big Mountain around Cripple Creek, and the lanterns moving around from claim to claim looked like a bunch of stars. There was reported nine men killed that night over claims and I didn’t hear of one arrest.
I had a little money when I landed in Cripple Creek but soon lost it all gambling and then took down with mountain fever. An old prospector took me into his cabin and he took sick, too. We were both broke and had nothing to eat but a half sack of potatoes, but had plenty of wood and kept warm. We took turns, when one was a little better than the other, going out and gathering mountain sage and making tea out of it—and I am sure it saved our lives, as it broke the fever. When I got a little better I made a little money to buy food, gathering that sage and selling it to sick people.
When I got a little stronger I got twenty dollars for digging an assessment hole on a fellow’s claim, so I got in a poker game with that and won about a hundred dollars. I will never forget that night. People were being help up every night—sometimes hit on the head—sometimes killed, and the amount of money didn’t mean anything, as some of them birds would hold you up for five dollars.
This night when I had won that money quite a crowd gathered around me in the gambling house. I didn’t know any of them but bought a drink for everybody and thought I would slip away. There was one big tough-looking guy persisted in shaking hands with me and gave me some kind of a sign that I did not understand, so I was rather nervous when I got out of there.
I had to walk about a mile to my cabin following an old mining ditch. I had got about half way home when I saw a man’s head raise up out of the ditch just in front of me. That sure scared me. I turned the other way, back towards town. The farther I went the more scared I was ... and the faster I ran. I think even if a jack rabbit had seen me he would have admired my speed, and I didn’t stop until I got into town where there was light. I could not get a room in town, so sat in a chair all night in one of the gambling houses. I kept my hand on that hundred dollars and sweat with fear.
A few nights afterwards I was going home late. I had to go by a lot of wagons—a freighting outfit. Just as I got opposite the wagons I saw a man in the dark coming towards me. I had a gun that night so I got it in my hand and backed up against one of the wagons. This fellow came up about twenty feet from me and stopped—neither of us spoke for several minutes (but seemed to me to be an hour)—finally he said, “Hey, there.” I said, “Hello.” He said, “What are you doing here?” I thought quick and said, “I am working for the man that owns this outfit,” and said to him also, “Who are you?” He said, “I am the night marshal.” I believe I would have kissed him if he had been close to me because I sure had him sized up as a hold-up.
I stayed around there a few days longer and hung onto the hundred dollars, but decided it was no place for a moneyed man, so took the train for Denver and lived quite respectable for awhile until I was pretty near broke and started for Montana. I rode box cars the most of the way and saved my little money to eat on.
When I got to Helena I heard Charlie Russell was in Cascade and as I was badly in need of money, I headed for there and found him batching in a cabin with plenty grub—and he sure looked good to me.
After my experience in Cripple Creek I decided that I belonged back on the range among the cows, and wrote to the foreman of the DHS outfit at Shelby, Montana, for a job. I had known him several years before and he told me to come on, he would give me work. So after being outfitted by Charlie, which meant everything a cowboy needed, including some money, I went to Shelby.
I worked for the DHS outfit the first time in 1889 for only one season. They were one of the pioneer cow outfits of Montana and was owned by Granville Stuart and Reese Anderson, and were located near Fort Maginnis and ranged on Flat Willow country in the year of 1887. They moved all their cattle north of the Missouri River on what was known as the Little Rocky Range. They swam this big herd across the Missouri River at an old steamboat landing called Rocky Point.
The cowboys had a dance while I was in Shelby that I believe there is a record of in the files of some of the old newspapers of that day.
There was an opera troupe on their way to Spokane, Washington. For some reason they were sidetracked at Shelby and as they were from New York, some of the ladies had never seen a cowboy, so they said (I guess they thought cowboys eat grass and were only half human). Anyway, some of them left the train and went to the hotel where the dance was going on and mingled with the crowd and as those cowboys were very easy for a lady to get acquainted with and as there was considerable liquor consumed, the dance was a great success and the ladies found the boys much nicer than they had anticipated and invited some of them over to their train.
Now the male population of the troupe did not take to the cowboys too well and finally ordered them out of the car which, of course, insulted the boys and a fight started. But some of these fellows in the troupe were good boxers and the cowboys didn’t have a chance in a fist fight, so they brought their guns into the play. They didn’t shoot anyone but made the car very smoky, and the troupe quit the car and most of them scattered out in the sagebrush, Shelby being a little cow town on the Great Northern Railroad.
It seems that the worst thing that happened was one of the cowboys shot a lantern out of a brakeman’s hand. So in a few days there was railroad officials around there, thick as flies, but they couldn’t get any information and there wasn’t a cowboy in fifty miles of Shelby. The railroad sent several detectives there at different times but the population of the town was all in sympathy with the cowboys and nobody knew any cowboy’s name that attended the dance. So they could not get any evidence and didn’t know where to find anyone to arrest, and had to drop the matter.
My old boss was one of the leaders in that mix-up and he, of course, made a couple of days ride away from Shelby. It happened he stayed a few days in a locality where there was considerable stock rustling going on and he didn’t go to that part of the country very often, so his presence there created quite a commotion and fear among those fellows living there, as they thought he was after them. But the old man was simply dodging the railroad officials and was more frightened than they were.
At that time the DHS ran two outfits—one at Shelby and one at Malta on Milk River about two hundred miles apart. Those big outfits in the course of a few years all accumulated quite a few spoiled horses for different reasons, sometimes from bad breaking and sometimes on account of putting strange riders on them so often, sometimes from getting away when they were half broke, and maybe not finding them for a year. They would then be harder to handle than a green bronc and would buck a few riders off. They would get pretty tough and the average cowboy could not ride them. So the boss would hire a bronc fighter to ride the rough string. A strange thing about it was that most of those kind of horses were the best ones in the bunch when they were thoroughly broke.
The DHS had accumulated about twenty head of those kind of horses. So the boss sent me to Malta to ride some of those horses. They also hired another fellow to help me. The only name I ever knew for him was “Red Neck Davis” and he was a good bronc fighter.
The outfit was getting ready to go on the spring roundup and we went to their horse ranch on Milk River and gathered all the saddle horses—maybe two hundred head—and there was quite a lot of those horses needed touching up before we went to work on the roundup. The first day Red Neck and I caught two of the worst horses in the outfit. The boss had put two men to help us and herd for us (they are called pick-up men nowadays).
One of the cowboys had put his bedding out to air that day and had a nice woolen blanket laid on a pile of poles on the ground. When I mounted my first horse, he went up in the air and landed right in the middle of that blanket, and the poles being hard all four of his feet went through it. I believe the blanket belonged to the fellow that was herding for me, so I laid the blame on him.
Shortly after Red Neck mounted his horse, a big buckskin. He had quite an old man herding for him and rather cranky. He caught the best horse in his string that morning, one he was sure was gentle so he could pick up Red’s horse if he stampeded. As soon as Red hit the saddle the buckskin went in the air and let a roar out of him like a lion, which scared the old man’s horse and he stampeded. We were only about fifty feet from Milk River and it was time of high water, and into it he went and swam across. The old man was sure wet and mad, and cussed the whole outfit—horses and men—and said he wouldn’t have any more to do with such a damn wild west outfit.
That year—I believe it was 1896—our outfit was cleaning up their Malta Range on Milk River with the view of closing out their holdings in that part of the country. A fellow named Tom Daly and I worked with all the different outfits owning cattle in that part of the country. We were representing the DHS brand and all cattle we gathered we shipped to Chicago. We had orders to clean the range of our cattle the best we could, as they had missed several steers from year to year. We found steers 12 to 13 years old and some of them were sure wild and hard to gather and bring to the railroad for shipment.
It was quite comical and interesting to outsmart some of these old renegades. We usually found them in the roughest country. They would try to hide when they saw you, and when you got too close to them they would fight and as most of them had bad horns if you crowded one of them in a rough place he could easily kill your horse.
The outfit had a big old steer that had made his home in the Missouri River Badlands for several years, which was pretty rough and when the cowboys would find him with other cattle and he got a glimpse of the riders he would quit the bunch. As he was plenty fast, he would get somewhere and hide, and as the outfits only worked this part of the country about once a year on account of not many cattle ranged there, this old steer had gotten by for several years without being brought out and shipped.
I was repping with a wagon that worked that part of the country this time that I write about and we knew the day that we would camp and ride the locality that he was ranging in and several of the boys knew this steer, as he had gotten away from them at different times before. They were joking me about him several days before we got to this place and called him “Con’s steer,” and made me a small bet I wouldn’t get him.
We camped the chuck and bed wagon on a nice level spot of about 200 acres, just on the edge of the Badlands, and rode from there to the river, which was about 20 miles. Coming back we found him in a long canyon that led out to the camp and the rodeo ground. We put riders on both sides of the canyon on top of the ridges and some stayed behind. We had about 200 head of cattle, so we just drifted the band along slow. I told everyone to keep as far away from this old steer as possible so he wouldn’t break or get on the fight. When we got out to the roundup ground, some of the other boys had gotten in off their ride and had found quite a lot of cattle. We had about a thousand head in all. We bunched all the cattle together as easy as we could so as not to give this old fellow any excuse to break.
Now we had to cut out the cows and calves (to brand the calves) and also cut out the beef steers to ship, and turn the rest loose, and we knew as soon as anyone went to riding among those cattle this steer would break for the Badlands and we would lose him. He was going through the bunch ringing his tail and hooking everything that came in his way, as he was getting suspicious that everything wasn’t just right.
So we left about ten men to hold the cattle. The rest of us went to camp to catch fresh horses to work the cattle and cut out what we wanted.
I had a little Spanish horse in my string, didn’t weigh over 900 pounds, built kind of squatty and close to the ground, about 15 years old, but he knew more about working cattle than lots of men. I caught him. We went back to the roundup and started to work. I stayed on the outside of the bunch with my eye on this old bird. The boys had gotten out about 50 head when someone got too close to this old steer, and here he comes as fast as he could run, headed for the Badlands! I had a big grass rope about 40 feet long and had one end tied hard and fast to the saddle horn and when he came out of the bunch my little horse was watching him and went right along with him. I run him about 50 yards. He was going down a hill. I dropped my loop over his pretty horns and let him jump over the slack with his front feet, and turned my horse the other way as fast as he could run. When that rope tightened that steer went about 10 feet high and hit the ground with his head doubled under his body. One of his pretty horns was broken off right close to his head and he was bleeding badly, and he was bawling like a calf—where otherwise he would only snort when you got in his way.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the boys that I had made the bet with had framed on me—and it was understood among them that nobody was to help me—just to have a joke on me if the steer got away.
So after a few minutes, when nobody came to help me, I let him up with the rope still on him. The fall had taken most of the sap out of him. He made a kind of a weak attempt to get to my horse, so I busted him again. The next time he got up I led him back to the roundup and into the bunch where I wanted him, throwed him down, took the rope off, and he never made a break to get away. We took him to the railroad and shipped him to Chicago. He was a rather funny looking old fellow with one of his long pretty horns gone and blood dried all over his face. I don’t think he made very good eating but I tallied him: “One beef steer shipped to Chicago.”
In the year of 1897 the Circle Diamond outfit turned loose 5,000 head of Arizona yearlings on their range on Milk River in Montana and instead of settling down and locating there they kept on going north until the outfit heard of some of them 200 miles up in Canada.
So they sent an outfit of about 20 men with horses and bed and chuckwagon to bring them back and try to locate them on their own range.
The DHS outfit sent me with them, thinking some of their cattle had drifted with the Arizona’s.
The country was all open—north, south, east and west—for miles (I don’t know how far) and no ranches after we crossed the Canadian border. We didn’t know any particular place to go to find those cattle, so we just wandered around for days, first one direction, then another. After we got as far north as Moose Jaw, which is well north in Canada, we began to see some signs of cattle, and would pick up a few each day. And those cattle hadn’t seen anybody for four or five months and were plenty wild and, of course, we had to nightherd those cattle every night. And badger holes were so thick in that country you could almost compare them to a saltcellar—and the grass was thick and tall so a horse or man couldn’t see the holes. Somebody would get a fall every day and night.
One morning we were making a circle, looking for cattle, and we saw two animals standing on a butte. We got close to them—could tell they were two head of cattle—and away they went like a couple of antelope. We finally got ahead of them and got them stopped. They ran around in a circle for awhile, just like they might be tied together. One wouldn’t get no distance away from the other. When we got them to the roundup and could get a good look at the brands, we found they both belonged to the DHS outfit, and we knew from the Arizona brand on them and the year the outfit bought them as yearlings that they were 13 years old. They were pals and had ranged in that part of the country for several years alone, as we did not find any sign of cattle anywhere within several miles of them.
It was quite a problem to get those two old fellows to the railroad. They were easy to hold in the daytime but at night it took all of one man’s time to watch them two. We would bed the herd down at night and those two would lay down in about the middle of the bunch—and sometimes they would lay ten minutes when they would come slipping through the herd, heading back the way they came from. They wouldn’t make any noise and reminded one of two big cats trying to steal away. When they got to the edge of the herd, the man watching them would holler at them—they would shake their heads and go right back into the herd and lay down for a short time and then try again, and would keep that up all night. We finally got them to the railroad and shipped them to Chicago.
The man that had charge of that Circle Diamond wagon, or that part of the outfit that year was Win Cooper. He came from Jack County, Texas, and was a wonderful cowboy. He used to carry a 45 Colts six-shooter and had the trigger filed so it wouldn’t stand cocked, but fanned the hammer with his thumb. He told me the reason he had his gun fixed that way was for quick action. He could fill the chamber with bullets and start a tomato can rolling and keep it going until his gun was empty. He used to tell me about the gun fights they had in Texas a long time ago ... and I think he sometimes got lonesome for those old feuds and would like to go back and have a little excitement.
As I remember, Tom Green County, Texas, and Jack County were enemies and had a lasting grudge at each other. Win said the reason for that was Jack County had the better men and always beat the Tom Green County men in a fight.
Win didn’t have any education and couldn’t read or write—and when he paid a man his wages he had to send him to the superintendent and tell him how long the man worked.
This year I am writing about was election year in Valley County, Montana, and the Circle Diamond ranch was supporting a man by the name of Kyle for sheriff. They had put up a black flag with white letters which read: “VOTE FOR KYLE FOR SHERIFF.” Now Win had been up in Canada with his outfit for about six weeks looking for those cattle that had drifted north and hadn’t had any news as to the happenings around home. So when he had got the cattle back on their range and turned them loose, he started for the home ranch with his outfit, but he started several hours ahead of the men, horses and chuckwagon—they were to follow. But when Win got close to the ranch and saw that black flag (and he couldn’t read) he got scared and turned back and stopped the outfit and said it wasn’t safe to take the outfit home, as he thought that some sort of an epidemic had broke out and the ranch was under quarantine. So he sent a man to town to find out what was the matter.
I worked with several of those old-time gunfighters from Texas and some that had left Wyoming during the Johnson County war between cattlemen and rustlers, and found most of them pretty decent fellows. Some of them were under assumed names and it seemed to bother them to have to carry that load—and usually when they did talk and tell me about their trouble most of them were victims of circumstances.
The old man that run the DHS that I worked several years for was the finest old-tune cow boss I ever knew. Jim Spurgeon was his name. He always looked tough and hard and was about as good-looking as a bank robber, but he sure had a kind heart and would never let you know he sympathized with you.
I never knew him to fire but one cowboy. That fellow was supposed to stand second guard on night herd, but when the first guard went to call him, he was not in camp—had went to town and had not come back. The boy that came to call him woke Jim up and told him what had happened. Jim got up and stood the guard himself.
About the time Jim came off guard, the boy got back to camp. He had a bottle of whiskey and asked Jim to have a drink. Jim refused, which the boy knew was unusual for Jim. So he was suspicious things wasn’t just right and didn’t want to get fired. So he came into the bed tent about twelve o’clock at night, woke Jim up and said, “I believe I will quit.” Jim said, “Go to bed. You have been fired for three hours.”
Old Jim looked at him very pitifully next morning and I believe if the truth was known it hurt him worse to fire him that it did the cowboy. But he seldom ever talked much and few knew how tenderhearted he was.
One time we had lost about forty head of saddle horses on the roundup and Jim sent a man to look for them. He was gone a few days and came back without any horses.
Now Shelby was the great cowboy town of that time, and whenever a cowboy had any chance he went to Shelby. There was usually a dance or some other doings that a cowboy enjoyed—and maybe he had a sweetheart there.
So the night this boy got back from hunting the horses, we all gathered in the sleeping tent to get the news of Shelby from this boy, and it was quite interesting to the rest of us. I can see old Jim yet, sitting there smoking a big pipe, saying nothing, but listening to everything.
So he sent another man out on the range next day to look for the horses. He was gone a few days and came back without any horses ... but plenty news about Shelby.
The next morning he told me to catch a saddle horse and go and see if I could find those horses. I said, “Where will I go?” He said, “Damned if I know where to tell you to go, only there is one place there is no use going and that is Shelby. I have sent two men to hunt those horses and they both went to town and didn’t find the horses. So I know they are not in Shelby!” You could have heard a pin drop among those boys. They didn’t know the old man had been listening.
I remember one time the old man hired a stranger from Oregon to ride a rough string. Nobody knew the boy but he claimed to be a bronc fighter. The first horse he rode very near throwed him off. When someone caught the horse he was in a bad way, had lost both stirrups and his bridle reins. Someone made the remark he thought that fellow would ride that horse and whip him. The old man said he could if he had another hand, as he had to use the two he had to hang onto the saddle horn.
In those days the way we caught our saddle horses, when we made camp we pulled the bedwagon up behind the chuckwagon and tied a long rope to the front wheel of the chuckwagon and one to the hind wheel of the bedwagon. Then a man held up each end of those ropes and the horse wrangler took care of the gap. In that way we could corral quite a large bunch of saddle horses. But there was always some broncs in the bunch and the boys had to be careful in catching their horses that they didn’t scare them and cause them to break through the ropes.
So the old man gave orders for one man at a time to catch his horse—but Jim had hired a new man that was very fond of roping and he didn’t always obey orders, and he used a loop half as big as the corral. So naturally, when he throwed his big loop in among those horses he caught something. Sometimes two or three head of horses at once. Sometimes he caught one around the body and would cause the horses to stampede. The old man had told him several times in a nice way to be careful of that big loop.
This morning Jim was in the corral trying to catch his horse. It wasn’t quite daylight yet and the fellow didn’t see him. So he throwed that big loop in there and caught two broncs, the brake on the bedwagon and the old man—all in one loop. And believe me there was some commotion—the broncs jumping and the old man a-hollering. Charlie Russell helped Jim get out of the mix-up and he said Jim bucked worse than the broncs. He lost his hat and his big pipe and hurt his foot.
When he got straightened out, he went hunting this fellow. He said, “Where is that big loop S.B.?” and when he found him he told him plenty. He said, “I don’t think you are a cowboy at all. I think you are a damn sailor the way you handle a rope. If I ever see you throw another rope in that corral, I will shoot you. Somebody else will catch your horse from now on.” But he didn’t fire him, and the fellow was pretty tame afterwards.
There was a great friendship existed among those old cowboys of those days. They would quarrel among themselves and sometimes one would think they were bitter enemies, but if one of them got sick or hurt, even with their small wages they would soon raise a few hundred dollars for him, and as there was no compensation law those days it meant a great deal to them.
Old Bill Bullard, the fellow that used to put bacon in everything he cooked to give it tone, had a partner that he thought a great deal of, but when they were together they were always quarreling and when they were separated they would be lonesome. I believe they enjoyed their quarrels.
One time they made a trip together up in Canada. On their way back they had to make a long ride without water, and the weather was very warm. So the morning of their long ride, Bill told his partner to not put much salt in their food, as they wouldn’t get any water that day. But the old boy was out of sorts that morning and said he wanted plenty of salt—water or no water. All their breakfast was in one frying pan. So Bill got a knife and run a line through the breakfast and told his partner to not salt only half the grub. That made the old fellow very mad and he put plenty salt on his side of the frying pan. Bill said his partner nearly choked for water that day and it was dark when they reached Milk River and instead of stooping down to get water he walked right into the river so he could drink standing up.
Tom Daly and I worked together for several years and I liked him very much.
One time we went from the DHS ranch at Rocky Ridge close to the main range of the Rocky Mountains to the ranch the outfit owned at Malta, which was in the eastern part of Montana. We had two strings of horses, which was about twenty head. We had our beds packed on two horses on that trip. One day Tom’s pack slipped and got down on the horse’s side. We roped him and fixed the pack, but while we were doing so we turned our saddle horses loose with the bridle reins on the ground (which is the way Montana horses were broke to stand). Mosquitoes were very bad that day and was worrying the horses, and when we turned the horse loose that we had been fixing the pack, we turned around to get on our saddle horses—they both run off and into the loose bunch, which got scared and away they all went, leaving us both afoot and I think it was at least 20 miles to any ranch and the day very hot. I never saw Tom excited before as he was very easy-going, but when I looked at him and asked him, “What are we going to do now?” his lips trembled and he said, “Damned if I know.”
Well, a lucky thing I had my rope that we had caught the pack horse with. So I picked it up and we started after the horses on foot. They run about a mile and stopped and went to feeding—but when we caught up with them, one of our saddle horses would drag his bridle reins around some of the horses’ legs and scare them—and away they would go again. Finally we got the bunch in between us and one of the pack horses had his head down feeding—I made a run at him and when he put his head up to run I throwed my rope and caught him. We unpacked him and I got on him bareback, with a rope around his nose, and rounded up the bunch and brought them back to where Tom was. He had made a loop in the pack rope and caught his saddle horse. And after a good many trials of roping, we caught my horse.
When we got our horse packed again and on our way, we were sure a couple of happy boys. Tom told me I sure made a lucky throw when I caught that pack horse.
In my younger days as a cowboy I had a hobby on saddles. I always wanted a light saddle with as little leather on it as possible. I used to use a Clarence Nelson saddle, made in Visalia, California, which was about the smallest and lightest stock saddle made in those days. Then after I had got it, I would trim and cut off all the leather I possibly could get along without. Tom Daly always rode a double rig saddle and wanted it quite heavy. He was always making fun of my saddle and said I might as well ride bareback.
One time a big prairie fire broke out and the best thing we used to have to fight those fires was a “green” or fresh cowhide. We could tie a couple of ropes to it and with our saddle horses drag it along the fire line. If the blaze wasn’t too big, it would smother the fire out completely. This fire broke out close to our roundup, and we had a big jaw steer in our roundup and he wasn’t any value as a beef steer. So the boss told the boys to catch him and kill and skin him and use his hide for a drag to put the fire out.
Everybody got their ropes down in a hurry. Tom roped the steer by the head and I caught him by one hind leg. He weighed about 1,500 pounds and Tom was riding a big strong horse, and when he saw I had the steer by the hind leg he never looked back but was spurring his horse and pulling on the steer to try to throw him down so we could cut his throat, as nobody had a gun. My horse wasn’t too well broke to roping, but I got my rope fast to the saddle horn and Tom was pulling so fast and so hard, it must of hurt my horse and he went to bucking. I couldn’t get my rope loose from the saddle horn and I hollered at Tom—but he kept right on going and pulled me—saddle and all—off the horse. The boys joshed me plenty about my little saddle. I asked Tom why he didn’t stop when I hollered. He said he didn’t know I was riding bareback or he would.
Another time Tom and I were gathering saddle horses for the spring roundup. When we left our camp in the morning we went different directions and I got back to camp quite a while before Tom did. I had loosened my cinch and tied my horse to a post and went in the cabin to cook dinner. I heard someone holler and looked out and saw Tom coming with a bunch of horses. Those horses were sometimes very hard to corral. So I run out and got on my horse but forgot to tighten my cinch. Those horses came by me pretty fast and I run my horse in ahead of them to try to turn them. They dodged by me and when I turned my horse to head them off my saddle turned and, of course, I hit the ground and my horse got away and went with the wild bunch.
I got Tom’s horse and followed them. After a little distance he quit the bunch and took off across the country by himself. I followed him about ten miles and finally run him into an old roundup corral and caught him. The saddle was under his belly and there wasn’t a thing left of it—only the saddle tree and the cinch—he had kicked it all to pieces.
When I led him back to camp I felt like crying and called Tom out to show it to him. In place of sympathizing with me, he smiled and said he didn’t see any difference in it than it was before.
I had to ride 40 miles to town to order another saddle. I tied a rope on each side of the saddle tree to use for stirrups and rode that distance. Tom went with me—I think he had the time of his life that day laughing at my rig.
We worked together on the roundup that year and slept together. We worked pretty late that fall and the nights got very cold. We were holding quite a bunch of cattle and, of course, that meant we had to guard the cattle at night. Each man guarded three hours and then woke up another cowboy. One night was very cold. When I came off guard my feet felt like chunks of ice and I had noticed Tom’s underwear was wore out where he had been sitting in the saddle. I pulled off my boots and went out in the frost—then slipped into bed with Tom. He was asleep and didn’t hear me. I got into bed easy and found that bare place on his body and planted both feet right on it. He hollered and went clear out of the tent. He said afterwards he thought somebody had burned him with a hot iron. I think I got even with him for making fun of my saddle!
Most of the big Montana cow outfits moved their herds north of the Missouri River between 1888 and 1894. The point of crossing on the Missouri was an old steamboat landing called Rocky Point where Jim Norris had a saloon.
When I crossed the river there in 1889, there was no one living there but the little old man. He had an old hand ferry boat that he took people across the river with. The night I stayed with him, he told me he had some fine gin and gave me a drink, which I found out was straight alcohol and the one drink nearly strangled me, but old Uncle Jim, as he was called, drank it like water and seemed to do quite well on it. Every little while he would go to the bank of the river and holler at the top of his voice, “Do you want to bring your wagon over?” There would not be anybody in sight, but he seemed to get a great kick out of make-believe.
I worked with Kid Curry that summer on the roundup. He worked for the Diamond outfit and I worked for the DHS. Both outfits worked the range together. Kid was a fine fellow at that time and a good cowboy—that was before he became an outlaw. I have read where some writers told what a cold-blooded killer he was and where he had held up banks and so forth, and I know from some of the dates given that he was blamed for a great many things he did not do.
I am not trying to make a hero out of the Kid or say that I approve of some things he done, but the public at large does not know all the circumstances leading up to where he first got into trouble.
Charlie Russell knew Kid Curry and has given me his analysis of his character (and he seldom made a mistake in the reading of human nature). Charlie figured any normal man might have went the route the Kid did.
I am going to set down some of the facts regarding the Kid’s becoming an outlaw. His name was Harvey Curry. He had an older brother, Henry Curry. They had a little ranch in the Badlands of the Missouri River and ran a few cattle and horses. Both the brothers were fine boys at that time and would give anyone the shirt off their back if they were in need.
Now there was a little mining town sprung up in the Little Rockies not far from the Curry Ranch. The outstanding character in that town was a man by the name of Pike Landusky, a prospector who had found some fairly rich prospects, and as there was some excitement about the find quite a lot of people went to the mining camp and Pike being about the first one on the ground, the town was named Landusky.
The town was about fifty miles from the railroad and farther from the Sheriff’s office, so Pike was appointed a Deputy Sheriff. Now Pike was not a bad sort of a fellow as a rule, but had a reputation as somewhat of a gun-fighter and was rather proud of it—he didn’t have much education and very little intelligence—but was proud of his authority as a Deputy Sheriff.
The Kid was in town one night with some friends, having a few drinks and celebrating in the ways of the early West, when Pike decided Harvey had violated some law and arrested him, and not having any jail in the camp, handcuffed him for safekeeping. During the time he was handcuffed, the Kid said Pike abused him shamefully and cast reflections even on his mother, who was dead and whom Pike had never known or seen, which burned very deeply into the Kid. During the abuse the Kid told Pike, “I won’t always be handcuffed, Pike, and when I get out of this trouble, you are going to get a licking you will remember.” Pike said, “I will be ready.”
Some time after this incident Pike and the Kid met in the saloon in Landusky and had a fist fight. Of course the Kid started it and Pike got a bad licking. When the fight started both men had guns on. Neither one knew the other had a gun. Pike’s gun was in a holster under his arm. Kid’s gun was fastened to his pants. In the fight, the Kid’s gun fell on the floor. A friend of the Kid’s picked it up and when the fight was over handed it to him. Both Pike’s eyes were pretty well closed, but he raised up on his knees and was trying to get a bead on the Kid—so he shot Pike and killed him.
Of course this was a very serious offense as he had killed an officer of the law, and the sentiment of the people was divided—and the Kid did not know whether to give himself up or not. Anyway, he and a few of his friends went to the ranch and talked the matter over and decided it would be best for the Kid to cache himself in the Badlands for a while. And his friends would bring him food—and, of course, the longer he stayed a fugitive, the less chance he had of getting acquitted if he did give himself up. So after dodging around for a while and having lost his older brother, Hank, as he was known, who had died and was always the leader and adviser, the Kid and a couple of his friends held up the Great Northern Railroad train which had a shipment of currency—they got away with it all right and got the money, but it was new money and had not been officially signed, so of course it was not much good to them. However, they did pass some of it. The Kid had two half brothers who come to Montana from Missouri. Their names was Lannie and Johnny Logan, and they tried to pass some of the money without much success. Lannie was caught in Kansas City and killed with $10,000 of it on his person. Johnny was killed in the Little Rocky country in a gun fight with another cowboy.
The Kid was caught in Tennessee after several years and sent to the Knoxville pen—I believe for life. However, he didn’t stay there very long. The papers said he roped a guard and tied him up and got away. My personal opinion is he got help in some other way. I was told by a very reliable party that he went to the Argentine country. Anyway he has never been heard of since. If he is alive now, he would be about 70 years old.
Fred Reid was one of the old time deer and elk hunters in the early days of Montana. He told me the first bear he ever killed when he was a young boy, that he was so scared he didn’t go near it after he shot it until he saw some flies flying around its mouth. He said, he knew then it was dead.
Fred hunted for the market and said he often followed elk all day on foot until they got tired, then he would make the kill.
After his hunting days were over, Fred went to work as a cowboy and took charge of quite a big outfit. The man wanted a new range and sent Fred out to locate one. Fred found what he wanted and moved the outfit to the Judith Basin. Then he located his headquarters down in the Badlands of the Missouri River. It was surely a tough country, to get in and out of—had to pack in everything on pack horses.
I asked Fred one time why he picked out such an ungodly country. He said he wanted to be alone where nobody would bother him and he sure found the ideal place for that.
During the winter of 1891 he hired me to go there and ride what he said was some half-broke horses—about twenty head. He wanted them for the Spring roundup so he could use them to work cattle. Those horses were like Fred—plenty tough. I don’t know how he got so many mean ones in one bunch.
I never saw so many mean horses—they would buck, strike, kick, bite, or run away. Shortly after I went to work for Fred, very cold weather set in and I sure had a tough time with those horses. There was snow and ice everywhere and it was hard enough for a gentle horse to stand up. These broncs didn’t care whether they stood up or not when they made up their minds to buck or run away. The camp was on a ridge with very rough gulches and canyons on both sides. The ridge averaged about a mile wide and a good many miles long, and when I would get one of them lined out on this ridge I would sure speed him up and didn’t give him any time to think of his tricks. I had to dress pretty heavy in that cold weather and a lot of clothes on don’t go very good with riding broncs. But the worst trouble of all was, I would get two or three of them going fairly good and the weather would turn so cold I couldn’t ride at all, sometimes for a week and those horses would get bronco again and I would have all my work to do over again. I rode most of them with draw reins and I could always double or pile them up in a snow bank before they would get to a cut bank or a gulch, but one day I was out riding one without draw reins and the horse stampeded heading for a cut bank. If one went over it he would land in the Missouri River. I couldn’t stop him and that bank looked to be a million feet straight up and down, so when I saw I couldn’t stop him I quit him and that’s a hard thing to do when a horse is running away. I just let all holts go and fell off but he didn’t go over the bank as soon as I quit him. He turned and went to camp which was about four miles that I had to walk.
One morning one of those horses bucked pretty hard. Fred was there and saw it. He said, “I saw a lot of daylight between you and that saddle. Looked to me like you was about gone.” I told him, “Oh no, that’s the way I ride, kind of loose.” I don’t know if he believed it or not but the fact was I was just about thrown off.
The headquarters consisted of a dugout for a home, no floor in it and a couple of bunks made out of cottonwood poles, and a corral. We melted snow to make coffee and cook with as the water hole was frozen and about all we had to eat was sour dough bread and black coffee. Of course, Fred being a great hunter, we had plenty of deer meat. Soon after I came there the sugar was all gone so we didn’t have any sweetening the rest of the winter. As soon as the weather broke so I could get out I quit Fred and left that part of the country.
Some time afterwards I was back in that locality and went to his camp. There was nobody home. It looked like nobody had been there for some time. I looked around and found some grub. It was a very warm day in the summer so I picketed my horse and laid down on Fred’s bed in the dugout to take a rest before getting something to eat. While I was lying there I saw a snake’s head appear out of a hole in the dugout. It looked as big as my hand and when he got his whole body out he was a monster. He was about four feet from me and saw me. He stuck his tongue out at me a few times and crawled across the dugout to where there was a grub box and got about half of his body in it and stopped. I raised up on my elbow to see what he was doing. He had his head in the sugar sack. I was twenty-five miles from where I could get anything to eat. I saddled up and beat it out of there. That was a bull snake (Gopher Snake) but he sure didn’t look good to me and he took all of my appetite, eating out of the grub box. I saw Fred some time afterwards and told him of my visit and of my leaving without eating. He seemed very much surprised that that should bother me any. He said the big fellow had been with him a long time and that they were great friends. He also said the big fellow didn’t allow no rats or mice to come near the camp.
I had quite an experience with another couple of old timers—two brothers that had a ranch and quite a large bunch of cattle. They had this ranch for some forty years, did their own cooking and washed their clothes, in fact, lived in real pioneer style. Their names were Frank and George. I was working for an outfit several miles from where those old timers lived. They sent my boss word that we had some cattle strayed on to their range and he sent me over there to help them gather the cattle and bring them home, and while working with them I took a very bad cold. One night when we got home I was quite sick and went into the room where they slept and laid down on one of the bunks. Later George and Frank came in and started getting supper. Now, they had a kind of an old box fastened on the wall of the cabin. They called it their medicine chest and in there was every kind of a bottle and little pill boxes imaginable and they were so old and dusty that the description and contents of each bottle was unreadable. While I was lying down I heard George say to Frank, “Con is pretty sick,” Frank said, “Why don’t you give him some bromo quinine?” George said, “Where is it?” “Why, it’s in that thar medicine box.” So George went looking for it. Pretty soon I heard him say, “I think this is it.” Frank said, “Yes, I think it is.” George started in where I was, but Frank stopped him and said, “Wait a minute, let me look at that again.” There was a little pause and I heard Frank say, “Hell no, this is coyote poison, don’t give him that.” “All right,” George said, “I’ll go back to the medicine box and look again.” Soon he came into the room with several different kinds of packages but I told him I didn’t think I needed anything now. In fact, I felt much better.
He was very much disappointed that I wouldn’t try some of the medicine. But, oh boy, he couldn’t have gotten any of that stuff down me with a ten foot pole.
In the year of 1886 Chief Sitting Bull of the Sioux tribe got permission from the agent at Standing Rock Agency in North Dakota to make a visit to the Crow Agency in Montana to visit the Crow Indians.
So he collected about fifty Sioux warriors and made the trip, and went to the battle ground where General Custer and his army was massacred in the year 1876, which was a short distance from the Crow Agency. He asked the Crow agent for permission to have a war dance on the battle ground. He said he wanted to recall old times. The agent refused.
So sitting Bull collected a bunch of Crow warriors and had a party on the Little Horn River adjoining the battle ground. The party progressed very nicely until Sitting Bull got on his feet and declared he was the greatest warrior that ever lived, stating the fact that he had killed more white men and stolen more horses than any other chief living. That statement insulted the Crow chief and the party turned into a fight. Crazy Head, the Crow chief, pulled his knife, grabbed Sitting Bull by his long hair and throwed him down and made him smell his feet, which was the greatest insult one chief could offer another, as in the language of the Indian it made Sitting Bull a dog, which is the worst name an Indian can call anyone.
The party broke up, and the next night Sitting Bull, to get even, stole a bunch of Crow horses, and with his fifty warriors started back for the Sioux reservation.
But there was an old squaw man living with the Crows that was plenty smart in the line of stealing horses and he collected a bunch of Crows and followed Sitting Bull and overtook his party on the Little Horn River, and took the horses away from them and killed two Sioux bucks and scalped them. Sitting Bull and the rest of his party got away and beat it back to their reservation.
Now the Crows got very uneasy over this affair and were afraid the Sioux would go on the warpath and steal away from their reservation and come back and clean up on them. So the Crow chief, Crazy Head, called all the Crows together, which at that time was about 2,800, and made a blockade by putting all their lodges and tepees on a big fiat on the Little Horn River covering about 20 acres, and at night they put all their horses inside this enclosure, and put guards all around it at night. Also inside this enclosure about two hundred of these warriors had tom-toms and they beat them all night and sang war songs. I want to say here that all the noise they made was to keep their spirits up, as they were deathly afraid of the Siouxs.
The old squaw man was in this big gathering, all dressed up like the Indians with britch cloth and head-dress with all kinds of feathers in his bonnet. I recall a rather amusing incident about him. A few years prior to the time I am writing of, the railroad ended at Miles City, and the administration at Washington, D.C., had notified the Crow Indian agent to send several chiefs to Washington to try to make a peace treaty and give them certain portions of land if they would become civilized. The agent called this squaw man to the Agency to send him with the chiefs as an interpreter. Now the old man had never seen a train or railroad and thought he had to ride horseback all the way to Washington. He told the agent he thought he could make the trip all right, but would have to have a new saddle. When he returned from Washington, the Indians were very anxious to know what he had seen and some of them still thought they could beat the white men at war. So they asked the old man how many whites he saw. He picked up both hands full of sand and throwed it in the air. Said he, “The whites are just like that wherever I went.” It was said that this demonstration by the old man made it seem useless to most of the braves to carry the fight any farther.
They also had the scalps of those two Indians they had killed hung on a tripod and some of the young braves sure put on a real war dance around the scalps.
Another man and myself went there one night. It sure was some sight. We put blankets around us like the Indians wore. This man I was with could talk Indian and they told him they knew we were white men even in the dark from the way we walked. This man’s name was Herb Dana, and he lived on Tongue River in Wyoming. If he is alive yet he can verify what I have told about this incident.
That winter a man by the name of Ed Town and myself started across the reservation with a freighting outfit, which he owned. He lived at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains. We had forty head of work cattle (which was Texas steers) and six wagons (which was two teams, three wagons hooked together—ten yoke of cattle made a team). It was in the month of January and the weather turned bitter cold.
We were near froze to death one night. We made camp and unyoked the steers, turned them loose without any feed except a few willows that grew on the creek. We finally got the tent up and I was kicking around in snow up to my knees, trying to find wood enough to build a fire, but there wasn’t any to be found. About the time I had given up, an old Indian came up to me and made signs he had a good lodge and no grub and that we had plenty food and no fire, and invited us to bring our food to his tepee. We were sure glad to make the trade.
His lodge was about 200 yards from our camp. We took all the bacon and flour the three of us could carry and went with the Indian. That was as cold a night as I ever saw and am sure we would both lost our lives if it wasn’t for that Indian.
I don’t think they had ate for a long time, as the squaws made bread and fried bacon all night. There was ten Indians in the camp and did they eat!
The lodge was round with a hole at the top. The fire was in the middle of the lodge. They cooked the bread in a frying pan.
We stayed there three days during the blizzard and outside of a little smoke we were fairly comfortable, but I think when we left there we were two of the lousiest men ever walked. I traded an Indian a $12.00 Stetson for a muskrat cap—I could brush lice and nits off it in swarms.
When the storm broke we found enough steers to pull one wagon to the ranch. As far as I know the rest of them died.
The winter of 1886 and 1887 was the toughest winter of my life and I believe it will be verified by all cattle men of that period. There was men in Montana and Wyoming that had 5,000 cattle that didn’t roundup 100 head the next spring.
My boss paid me off when we got to the ranch. I met up with another kid about my age. We had about $20.00 between us and no place to go. So we made a dugout out of cottonwood poles and dirt. We had no stove, so built a fireplace to cook on—and on the coldest days it always smoked the worst. In the spring we smelled and looked like Indians. We rustled a quarter of beef, a few beans, a little sugar and coffee and lived on that until spring. We got a little tapioca somewhere for dessert. We cooked that with water but we couldn’t spare much sugar—there was no place to get any more (that was on the line of Montana and Wyoming and was 100 miles from the railroad).
That winter the Indians suffered terrible from hunger and after we set up housekeeping squaws and papooses would come to stay until we cooked our meal with the hopes of getting something to eat. We fed them for awhile but we were getting low on food and had to quit, but they would come every day and stay all day and we wouldn’t eat while they were there.
One day my partner said he wanted to eat, but didn’t know what to do with those damn Indians. They were all huddled around the fireplace. I told him to make a lane through them as if he wanted to put some wood on the fire. I had a 45 six-shooter under my head on our bunk. When he made the opening I opened fire on the fireplace and took a fit. I hollered and bucked like a bronc. I throwed ashes all over the Indians and they nearly tore the door down getting out. Then we cooked and eat, and wasn’t bothered with Indians for a long time.
About a week after a buck Indian came by there looking for horses. It was very cold and my partner asked him in to get warm. He looked at me for a while and shook his head and made signs I was crazy. I guess the squaws had told him about me. We had put out some poisoned meat for coyotes and the Indians found it and was going to eat it but was suspicious and tried it on a dog and it killed him, which didn’t raise us much in their estimation.
I will always think those Indians got even with me. That following spring I wanted to leave that part of the country, and I didn’t have a horse. So I got to talking to some Indians. They said they had a fine horse running in their bunch. It was a stray—nobody claimed it and I could have him. I made a date with them when they would corral their horses. I was there with my saddle. They showed me a beautiful big sorrel and told me to catch him, which I did. He trotted right up to me when I roped him and seemed very nice to saddle. I was wondering all the time why those Indians were so kind to me, but oh boy, when I mounted him I found out. After the first jump I never saw anything but a little piece of sorrel mane in front of the saddle. I have been bucked off a good many times and often thought I could have rode most of the horses if I had got a break, but there never was any doubt about that Indian gift horse—I never had a Chinaman’s chance.
I saw several of those Indians in years afterwards. They would think awhile before they would remember me—they would laugh and make signs with their hands how the horse bucked me off.
The Crow Indians’ name for me was the White Man Chews Tobacco—Masachele Opa Barusha.
One time an old Crow Indian told me quite a story about the Tribe that I don’t believe many people know (and I have seen some evidence of the truth of his story).
I was riding line for a cow outfit on the Crow Reservation and an old Crow Chief came riding into my camp one morning about daylight, and asked me for something to eat, as he said he was making a long ride on some important business. I knew him—he was the same Chief that pulled a knife on Chief Sitting Bull, grabbed him by the hair and made him smell of his feet. This old Chief’s white-man’s name was Crazy Head—his Indian name was Ah Shumoch Noch, which means “Curly Head.” His hair was curly (which is unusual for an Indian) and he had very thick lips, which made me think of the story the old Indian had told me. He said a great many snows ago, a Negro showed up among the Crows. Nobody knew where he came from or how he got there, but he lived with them for many years. The Crow name for a Negro is Masachele Sha Pit Cot (which means White Black Man). While this old Chief was enjoying his breakfast (and he was plenty hungry) I asked him in Indian if he didn’t have some Nigger blood in him, and it sure made him mad. I believe if he hadn’t been eating in my camp he would have done something to me, but he said “Barrett” in a very loud voice, which means NO, but I insisted that he must have a little Negro blood. Still his answer was NO, with an oath, but I kept on teasing him about his curly hair and thick lips. He finally stuck out the end of his little finger with his thumb on the other hand to measure with—ecosh cota, which meant about the size of a pin head. He sure hated a nigger.
There was another old Indian visited our camp sometimes, that was quite a character. But he could peddle the bull as good as any white man I ever knew. Sometimes when he came to our camp—we wouldn’t have much food cooked and wouldn’t give him anything to eat, and he would silently sit on the ground watching us until we got through eating. When we put our cooking outfit away, he would get up on his feet, hitch his blanket over his shoulders and go out of the tent and call us all the mean dirty names he could think of, such as dogs, skunks and snakes. Well, maybe the next time he came we would feed him and it was sure wonderful to see the change in him. He loved bacon and coffee. Sometimes we would give him a big plate of bacon and sour dough bread. He would sit on the ground, cross his legs and boy, how he would eat! He would get his hands all bacon grease and rub them through his hair, and get a few shots of that strong coffee into him—it seemed to stimulate him like a shot of hop. Then he would open up with his “bull.” He would talk part Indian and part English. His favorite line was how much he loved the white man, such as, “Me no steal em White Man horse—White Man he my brother—My heart very good for him” (and I know he would steal the coppers off of a dead white man’s eyes). He said the Piegan Indian and the Sioux was very bad and all the time steal white man’s horse, but he was always watching out for the white man and wouldn’t let other Indians steal white man horse.
I recall another Indian I knew several years later, his name was Christmas. I always thought that he had stolen my saddle. One time at Big Sandy, Montana, we had shipped a train load of cattle out of Malta, and as usual after the cattle were all loaded out, we proceeded to celebrate before we went back on the range to gather some more. I think there were about twenty of us when we started the night celebration, but sometime in the night I must have took a nap, anyway I came to about two o’clock in the morning and as it was late in the month of October it was quite cold, in fact I thought I would freeze to death, everybody was gone to camp, my horse was tied to the hitch rack, the saloons were all closed, and not a light anywhere. I was working my way around trying to find my horse. When this Indian showed up where my horse was tied, he evidently had been drunk too and seemed very glad to find someone to talk to or steal something. He came up to where I was and said, “By golly Con Price I sure glad to see you, you my brother.” I guess I must have got some bad whiskey and felt pretty mean for while Christmas was talking to me I thought it would be a good joke to swing on him. His hands were both hanging down by his sides, so I was not taking any chances. I braced myself and gave him all I had, right on the point of the chin. It turned him half way around and he fell on his stomach. He weighed about two hundred and twenty-five, he had on a pair of heavy cowhide boots, that must have weighed five pounds each. He had no sooner fell down than he was up again and running like hell, he didn’t look back or say a word, but with those big boots and his weight, it sounded like a bunch of horses running away. I saw him about a month afterward, he didn’t say anything, but smiled. I guess he thought it was a good joke too.
After Christmas left I got on my horse, and started for camp, of course there were no roads so I started out across the prairie, and it was very dark and I got lost. I finally landed in some heavy sage brush, I got off my horse and tied him to some brush, by that time I had got awful thirsty and couldn’t find any water. I felt something in my chaps pocket, and found it was a bottle of tomato catsup (where or how I got it I never knew). I couldn’t get the cork out so I broke the head off of it with a rock, and drank nearly all of it. I layed down and went to sleep but woke up in a short time with a terrible pain in my stomach, the first thing I thought was that I had swallowed some of the glass from that ketchup bottle and I was sure scared. It was getting daylight about that time and I knew where I was, and I got on my horse and started for the old DHS horse ranch. There was no one home as the boys were all on the roundup. I heated a tub of water and got into it and had a big sweat, after that I felt much better, I cooked something to eat and went to bed and stayed there until the next morning. As I knew about where the roundup would be, I found camp that day, nobody said much to me about my absence, as it was a legitimate excuse those days for a cowboy getting drunk to be late on the job.
In the days of open range, everybody had great freedom. A cowboy could change countries every spring if he wanted to and they were always drifting from one range to another—not only to different ranges but to different states. For instance, maybe he would be in New Mexico one year and on the Canadian border the next.
Every cowboy had a private horse of his own, pack horse and his own bed, which consisted of a tarpaulin and some blankets. And according to the custom of them days he could stop at any cow camp or ranch and was not under obligations to anyone, and if he wanted to stay a week and rest his horses that was O.K. too. If there was no one home, he always found grub and helped himself, so he was quite independent—and it did not take much money to travel. Nature provided him with new scenery every day, such as unclaimed land, rivers and creeks, and in my day plenty of wild game of all kinds. I don’t believe the tourist of today with his automobile has anything compared to what we had.
I am going to make a statement here that almost sounds fishy, but I can prove it. I worked for a cow outfit that run twenty-five thousand cattle and three or four hundred saddle horses to handle the cattle with, and they didn’t own one foot of deeded land. The land was unsurveyed and belonged to the government. They usually built a big log house, some corrals and a kind of stable, and called it their ranch, and no one disputed their title—even a sheepman must not get too close with his woolies. They paid no taxes on this land and as it would be impossible for the assessor to count the cattle in an area of two or three hundred miles, I would say a good honest cattle man might give in one-third of his number. An outfit the size I speak of, would hire about twenty-five cowboys during the summer months and keep four or five during the winter. That was the only expense they had, outside of buying saddle horses to mount their cowboys—which was ten or twelve to the man.
I have been asked quite often what a “Rep” was by people that was hatched at a later day. Well, for illustration, Tom Jones has a ranch at San Francisco—Bill Smith has a ranch at Los Angeles. Both run several thousand cattle. There are no fences between those two places, so, naturally, in the course of a year quite a number of both men’s cattle would drift out of their range where they worked their main range and it wouldn’t pay to send a whole outfit so far for what cattle had drifted—so they picked out a very reliable cowboy that knew their brands. He cut out his string of horses, packed his bed and started for one of those ranges to represent the outfit he was working for. There might be six or seven reps with each different outfit.
Now, when one of those outfits started to work their range, they started what they called a “Day Herd”—that was for the purpose of holding all cattle that the reps, or the home outfit wanted to hold—sometimes beef cattle, sometimes some outfit changing hands—those cattle were held by home range men and driven from one roundup to another and each day, and each roundup; anybody that found any cattle they wanted to hold or take home, they were cut out and put in that day herd.
This herd sometimes got pretty big before the roundup was over and was bunched up at night and held on what they called the bed-ground. Those cattle were night herded by all cowboys that worked during the day, by shifts of two or three hours each, the hours depending on the length of the nights—spring or fall—sometimes two men on shift, or more, depending on the size of the herd or how hard they were to hold.
The rep never done any day-herding as he was supposed to see all cattle rounded up so as to pick out the cattle he represented, as other cowboys didn’t know his irons as well as he did. There was also a little cowboy etiquette extended to the rep—he didn’t have to stand night guard unless it was absolutely necessary.
When this roundup was over and the range all worked, lasting from a month to six weeks, the big herd was worked and every cowboy that had any cattle in the herd cut them out in a bunch by themselves, or some other fellow that had cattle going home the same direction as he was, then they throwed in together. If a cowboy didn’t have help enough to move his cattle to their home range, the outfit he gathered them with sent some men to help him. This custom was practiced in all the outfits. Another fine practice in the early days by honest cowmen was if a cow was found in a roundup with a calf belonging to her and nobody claimed her, the captain of that roundup branded the calf with the same iron that was on the mother and turned her loose where she was. This was done with what was known as a running iron, which was a small bar and a small half circle—one can make any brand on an animal with those two irons. Now if that was a steer calf and nobody claimed him until it was grown and fit for beef, that same captain or any captain of any roundup had a right to load and ship that steer to any market with his cattle, say Chicago, Omaha or Kansas City, which were the principal shipping points in those days. There the stock inspector got a record of what state the steer came from and when he was sold. It was his duty to see that the money was sent to the stock association of that state, they having a record of the brand and the address of the owner. A check was immediately forwarded to the party.
For instance, Charlie Russell and myself got a check for a steer I had not seen for six years and had been loaded on the train four hundred miles from where I turned him loose. He was shipped to Chicago, sold and the money sent to Helena, Montana, where we had our brand recorded.
This incident I write about was known as the Johnson County War in Wyoming in the years of 1893 and 1894, and I presume some of the old-timers of today remember those days when those things happened.
The way it first started, some of the cowboys working for the big outfits bought a few cattle of their own and branded them and turned them loose on the range. The cattle barons objected to this, and passed a resolution that any cowboy owning a branding iron could not work for them—for the reason, them days there were a great many mavericks on the range and the cattlemen divided them up among themselves. This caused considerable bitterness, as the cowboy claimed any animal without a brand belonged to the first one that found it. There may have been some justification on both sides; at any rate it developed into quite a feud. I heard one old cattleman remark that he knew cowboys that even their grandfathers never owned a cow, had more cattle than he did.
This feeling between stockmen and cowboys got to be very serious, as each side took the law in their own hands to a great extent, and there was quite a few people killed. The rustlers got so bold they took a contract with one of the construction contractors to supply them with beef. They would go out on the range, and butcher any animal they found, regardless of what brand was on the animal.
The stockmen appointed a stock detective. His name was Chris Groce, who was very capable and absolutely fearless, and for a while held the rustlers somewhat in check, but as time went on the sympathy of all the little ranchers and cowboys were with the cattle rustlers.
I remember two boys that the cattlemen wanted put out of the way but could not catch up with them, so they formed a posse and went out after them. They finally run those boys into an old cabin out on the range and tried to get them to surrender without any success. They finally backed a wagonload of hay up against the cabin and set it on fire. When the cabin caught fire, the rustlers made a break to get away, and the posse killed both of them.
There was another ex-cowboy I knew that decided to go into business for himself. He would go out on the range, shoot a steer, butcher it, bring it to town and sell it. He went by the name of Spokane. He got along pretty well for a while, but one day the Sheriff was trailing some horse thieves across the country and run on to Spokane with a steer shot down and was butchering it. The Sheriff told him to throw up his hands, but instead Spokane crouched down behind his steer and opened fire on the Sheriff with his six-shooter and made it hard for the Sheriff to get him, but the Sheriff had a Winchester and could reach him at long range. He finally shot him in the arm and Spokane came up and surrendered. The Sheriff told me afterwards he sure hated to shoot him, as he was plenty game. I was in the hotel the night they brought Spokane in and the doctor dressed his arm without any anesthetic. He lay on the couch and smoked cigarettes just as unconcerned as if everything was all right and in no pain. They sent Spokane to the Pen for three years and when he got out he straightened up and made a very good citizen.
These conditions seemed to go from bad to worse until things got so bad the cattlemen took it on themselves to hire a bunch of Texas Rangers to come to Wyoming to protect their interests. That fact created more bitter feeling and anybody taking sides with either group was sure in danger of their lives at all times. I remember a bunch of rustlers and cowboys, went to an old deserted ranch and built a kind of temporary stockade. The Rangers followed them there and tried to arrest them on their own authority. One of the boys in the stockade told me afterwards that siege lasted several days, and they had to go to a spring for water, and every time they did so there would be considerable shooting from both sides.
Finally conditions got so bad that it got out of control of the local authorities and the militia was called out to settle the trouble. They arrested everybody—cattlemen, cowboys, rustlers and Rangers, and took them all to Cheyenne. That broke up the feud and nobody gained anything. Most of the cowmen lived in the East and they were sick of the whole affair. Some of them sold out and never did come back to Wyoming. The cowboys and rustlers drifted to parts unknown, and things in Johnson County got on a more legitimate basis. I met several of those cowboys afterwards in Montana. Most of them were under assumed names, and some of them had very good jobs, such as stock inspectors and foremen of big outfits. They generally made pretty good men, as they had had plenty of experience.
At the time those conditions existed, I was breaking colts for the PK Cow outfit on Soldier Creek, close to Sheridan, Wyoming, and Buffalo Bill Cody sent notice to Sheridan that he would be there on a certain day and wanted to buy a carload of wild horses to ship to Boston for his show, also he wanted to hire some Wild West riders to take back to Boston. That is a long time ago and there wasn’t the bronc riders there is today. Some rode with tied stirrups, some with buck straps. There was a quite a number of riders but only one boy qualified—his name was Scotty. I tried for that job, but Bill hurt my pride very much, as he told me I might make a rider but wouldn’t do at that time. The only consolation I had was to say to myself that Bill didn’t know a good rider when he saw one.