Several people not familiar with horses have asked me what a bronco-buster means, and they seem to think all cowboys are bronco riders, which is not so. I sometimes talk to an old-timer that once rode broncs and broke horses, and like most all old-timers in every line of work they claim the younger generation cannot compete with them the way they did it in their day. But the old boys are only kidding themselves when they think those young fellows can’t ride a bucking horse. They have made a profession of it and keep in practice. Another thing, the old-tuners never flanked a horse like they do in contest today—that’s putting a strap around his kidneys and cinching it up to make him buck—and it does make him buck harder than without it. He gets in a twist when he is up off the ground. That the horses of the old days never did. I have been judge at several bucking contests and shows and I would venture to say that no old-timer could ever have rode those horses with that rigging on him without first getting used to it.
Another thing, in the old days of the range the good riders tried to keep their horse from bucking, whereas today they train and teach them to buck for the shows. So naturally the horse and rider have more practice.
There is a great difference between a bronc-rider and a horse-breaker, or a regular cowboy—and still they are classed as the same by a great many people. Not saying anything against the modern bronc-rider, but all he knows about a horse is to ride him while he bucks. I have seen some the best riders that didn’t have any idea what a horse should do after he quit bucking, from the fact he saddles him in a chute and gets on him in there—then he is let out and the skill he uses is to stay on that horse a few seconds until the whistle is blown by the time-keeper and the horse is caught by the pick-up man—and many a time that whistle has saved many a boy when he was all in. But the poor bronc-fighter has a hard time at best. He has plenty of competition and they can’t all win and most of them, if they follow it long enough, wind up broken physically and financially. So the old saying still goes ... “all it takes to make a good bronc-buster is a strong back and a weak mind” ... as all it requires is plenty courage and practice.
But a good horse-breaker really does something. He uses intelligence and studies the disposition of his horse, as every one is different and requires different methods—and I wouldn’t attempt to say which is the best. Some cowboys are natural horsemen and seemingly without taking very much pains get wonderful results, while the other fellow will try ever so hard and never get nowhere.
Nearly every state has a different way of starting a young horse. In Montana the first thing we did with a wild horse was to catch him by the front feet and throw him down, and take one hind leg away from him by tying it up so he can’t touch the ground with it (that way he can’t hurt you or himself). He stands on three legs and if he tries to kick or fight he usually falls down. After a few falls he will stand and let you rub him all over his body and legs, and you can saddle and unsaddle him until he finds he can’t get away from you and that you aren’t going to hurt him. That was the system I used and I thought I got very good results.
However, I have seen cowboys use a blindfold on a horse that worked very well, too—using a soft piece of leather or a piece of cloth to put over the horse’s eyes and in that way learned him to stand while they saddled him and got on and off until he gets used to it. But I always preferred the way of letting the horse see what was going on from the first lesson.
But that is just a small part of breaking a horse. In the first place he may have a notion of bucking no matter how careful you have been in handling him, as there is no doubt some horses inherit those different bad habits from their ancestors just like humans do, and if bucking happens to be the favorite way of your horse’s showing his meanness, the cowboy must be able to ride him, as every time a horse bucks his man off he is getting that much nearer to being an outlaw. Then another thing—seldom ever any two horses buck the same. One will have some different twist from the other one. I have seen good riders get on a horse that didn’t seem to buck so hard and would get throwed off. When I used to ride, the hardest for me was one that bucked and whirled around and around.
But the bucking is usually the small part of breaking a horse or at least to make him valuable as a cow horse. Most horse-breakers first start the horse with a hackamore and sometimes never put a bridle on him for a couple of years and then sometimes he is not finished, depending both on what kind of a horse and man they are.
I think in the early days in Wyoming and Montana they got much quicker results with a horse, as they started working cattle with a young horse as soon as a man could pull him around at all, and there is no doubt but that is what makes a good horse. They are like people. One can read forever about learning to do something and will never learn much until they actually do the work themselves.
There is no doubt California turns out some of the best broke horses in the world, but the breaking sometimes costs the owner as much as two hundred dollars. So it can be readily seen that a big cow outfit like they had a few years back, that had a couple of hundred saddle horses and worked 25 or 30 men, couldn’t put in two years breaking a horse or pay two hundred dollars to break him. Even at that I have seen just as good, if not better, practical cow horses that never had that much time or money spent on them—but they worked cattle every day during the six months of the season—and I contend that’s what makes cow horses and cowboys.
Another difference in the professional bronc-rider is he has his horse in a chute to handle and saddle him, with plenty of help. The old-timer had to rope his horse out of a bunch of horses and saddle him alone and get on him without any help. Then maybe he would stampede, run over a cut bank or fall down—and he had to be able to take care of himself.
In the days that I write of there were very few women folks in the country and a less number of girls, but there was one family who had one girl of about seventeen years and I thought she was very attractive. I worked about twenty miles from where she lived and used to go to see her quite often, but she had two brothers about eight and ten years old and they were wild as Indians and their main sport and pastime was riding wild calves and yearlings. The girl was about as wild as them and usually joined in those bucking contests, so when I went courting her she wanted me to join in on the fun. As my every-day work was riding and handling cattle, this kind of sport didn’t interest me. I was serious and wanted to make love, so those boys were a great worry to me, as when I wanted to court the girl the boys wanted to ride calves. One time when I was particularly interested in talking to the girl they wanted me to go out to the corral and ride calves, and of course I wouldn’t go, so one of them suggested I act as a horse and he would ride me. To get rid of him I consented. He was to get up on my shoulders, put his legs around my neck and hold on to my shirt collar with his hands. Then I was to start bucking, which I did. When I got to bucking my best I bent over forward and threw him off pretty hard and hurt him some. He got up crying and the girl was laughing at him for being bucked off. He said, “Well, I would have rode the S.B. if he hadn’t throwed his head down.” Anyway, I got rid of him for that day and had a chance to court the girl.
As most any story is not complete without some love and courtship in it, I am going to write my experience in that matter.
I was married to Claudia Toole in the year 1899. She was a daughter of Bruce Toole, who was a brother to Joseph K. Toole, Governor of Montana at that time. Now Bruce Toole was a very fine aristocratic Southern gentleman and knowing that a cowboy didn’t usually climb very high on the ladder of culture he didn’t think I was desirable company for his daughter. So, we had to carry on our courtship secretly from the old gent, and as about the only amusement of those days was country dancing and as we all went to them on horseback (which usually was 15 or 20 miles) we would ride to a dance. As I could not go to my girl’s home to get her, we would designate a certain rock or creek out on the range to meet at and would go from there to the dance. That is where I would leave her the next morning after the dance. Her father thought she went to those parties with her brother, who was in on our secret, so in all our courtship it was unknown to him and it was the shock of his life when we slipped away and got married.
My wife had a pinto horse of her own that her father had got from the Indians and given to her and he must have had some fine breeding back in his ancestry somewhere as he could run like a blue streak. I usually rode the same horse every time we went out together and the two horses became very attached to each other. One time I had taken my wife to a dance and ventured a little closer to her home than usual. I unsaddled her horse and turned him loose in the pasture and rode away. Her horse ran along the fence and put up a terrible fuss about being separated from my horse. My wife’s father saw him acting up and wondered what in the world was the matter with him, but he hadn’t seen me. That was one time we nearly got caught in our secret courtship.
I was working for a large cattle company and we had a great many saddle horses. They used to stray away from the ranch quite often and I used to ride the range hunting them. There was an old German who had quite a large ranch about ten miles from us, and a good many cattle and horses. He used to try to keep in contact with me as much as possible to find out if I had seen any of his stock and to tell him where they were. So, he used to tell me whenever I was anywhere near his ranch to come there and eat and feed my horse.
About three miles from this old man’s ranch was an enormous big rock that one could hide a couple of horses behind very easily and my wife could get up on the top of the rock and see the whole surrounding country. That was one of our meeting places and we had a date one day to meet at this rock at a certain hour. I could always see her and her pinto horse coming for several miles, so I was at the rock this day waiting for my girl and the old German was out riding this day looking after his stock and saw me quite a distance away and came to where I was. He spoke very broken English and of course was glad to see me and inquire about his stock. He said, “Veil, Con—vot you look for?” I told him I had lost a horse and was hunting for him. He wanted a description of the horse, so if he found him he could hold him for me. Of course I had to give him an imaginary description and I wanted to get rid of him as I expected my girl along at any minute, but he insisted that I should go to his ranch with him and have dinner and feed my horse. I used every excuse I could think of—told him I was in a hurry to find the horse—thought he might be sick and would die if I didn’t find him right away—but he said, “Come on with me and have dinner and I vill go mit you and hunt the horse.” Of course, that was just what I didn’t want. I had a hard time, but finally got rid of him and went and found my girl.
Some months afterwards, my girl and I were at another rancher’s place and quite a crowd of people had gathered there that day. The old German came and in the general conversation he said, “Con, didth you findth that hos you vos looking fo’ and vos he sick?” I told him I had found the horse and he was fine. My girl was listening to the conversation and her face turned as red as a firecracker—of course I had told her about the meeting with the old man at the rock.
I think everybody has more or less trouble in their courting days, but it seemed to my wife and I that we had more than our share. As I said before, my wife’s parents didn’t know we were keeping company at all—in fact, didn’t hardly know me. There was a very noted dance coming off about 20 miles from her home that we had planned to attend, when, lo and behold, a few days before the dance a very wealthy and refined gentleman (and an old friend of her father’s) with a fine team and top buggy (which was very rare in those days) came to her father’s ranch to ask her parents to take her to the dance. They at once gladly said yes and she in order not to tip her hand had to consent, and mind you, we were engaged to be married at this time. Of course, with me not knowing anything about this transaction it placed her in a very precarious position, and she had a terrible time getting in touch with me to explain to me what had happened. It didn’t set too well with me, but in order to keep everything under control we agreed that she would go to the dance with this man and I would go alone. I guess the fellow must have had some suspicion of the way things stood, as he told her the next day when he was taking her home that he noticed she and I seemed to feel very much better when we had our first dance together. He tried to question her about me and told her I didn’t even own a cabin. She acted very innocent and unconcerned about the matter, but he must have figured he was out of the race, because he never came to call on her again.
When we got married we had to steal away like we did when we were courting. I borrowed a team and spring wagon and we had to drive forty miles and the snow was about belly deep on the horses. Then we had to wait over in Shelby until the next day to go to Great Falls. The job of getting her away from the ranch was the hard part of it. My wife’s room was upstairs in her home and we agreed that she would throw her stuff out the window about eight o’clock at night and I would pick it up and carry it to the wagon I had parked about 100 yards from the house. I didn’t have any idea how much stuff she had until she began throwing it out—clothes, suitcases, shoes and everything else that a woman ever wore, and besides, she used to play the piano and she had great bales of sheet music and every time one of those bales of music hit that frozen ground it sounded like someone had shot a high powered rifle and the stuff fell right in front of a window down stairs and the window curtains were up. Her father sat reading about ten feet from where I was picking it up. I would take all I could carry on my back to the wagon and came back for another load, and as she was still throwing stuff out while I was gone there would be a bigger pile than ever when I got back. I believe she would have thrown the piano out too if the window had been big enough, and the worst part of it was her father had two bloodhounds and they bellowed and howled every time she threw out a fresh cargo. It was a very cold night and I wore a big fur overcoat and every time I bent over to pick up a package they would howl louder than ever. They thought I was some kind of animal. I tried whispering to them to get out and keep still and that would bring a bigger howl than ever. I was watching her father pretty close through the window and every once in a while he would cock his head sideways to listen and acted like he was going to get up and come out, then would settle down and go to reading again. During those intervals, my heart was sure pounding and I was all sweaty with fear. I have often heard of people being very nervous when they placed the bride’s ring on her finger, but I know that is nothing compared to the ordeal I went through. I forgot, and left a lot of things around where I loaded the wagon and it snowed a lot after that. Every time my wife missed something of hers, we would go to that spot and shovel snow. Neither one of us had any idea of what it took to set up housekeeping and it is amazing what we bought. One thing we both agreed on was a carpet, as we intended to move into an old cabin that had big cracks in the floor. When we got home and checked our Outfit, it seemed to be mostly carpet. Then I think every friend we ever had gave us a lamp for a wedding present, so we had a whole wagonload of carpets and lamps. We had hanging lamps, floor lamps and lamps to throw away, but hardly anything else in the way of housekeeping. When we arrived back in Shelby there were about 25 cowboys in town that had come to celebrate Christmas (it being Christmas week we were married) and they were all at the train to meet us. Most of them had a good sized Xmas jag on and the different congratulations I got from that bunch would sure sound funny today if I could remember them all. They were all old time cowboys that I had worked with for years. We all went to a saloon to celebrate the event. Each one would take me aside to pour out his feelings and congratulations, and give me hell for stealing away to get married without telling them. Some of the names they called me wouldn’t look good in print but that was their way of showing their true friendship. One old bowlegged fellow that I had known from the time I was a kid had a little more joy juice aboard than the others. He didn’t have much to say, but stood at the end of the bar and drank regularly while the celebration was going on. He had one cock eye and kept watching me all the time until he got an opportunity to attract my attention. He nodded to me to come over to where he was. I went over to him and he looked at me silently for a moment and said, “Well, you’re married, are you?” I said yes, and he asked, “Did you marry a white woman?” I answered yes, and he said “You done damn well, but I feel sorry for the girl.” In the meantime, while we were away getting married, my wife’s father wrote her a letter to Shelby where we had our team and wagon and told her all was forgiven and to come home, which we did.
I went to work for him and as he owned plenty of cattle and horses I seemed to be just the kind of a son-in-law he needed, but we sure had a supply of carpet and lamps that we didn’t know what to do with.
A few years after my marriage we settled on a squatter’s right on the head of Kicking Horse Creek in the Sweet Grass Hills in Montana. The land was unsurveyed at that time and one did not know where his boundary lines were. So one staked off what one thought was about right and it was respected by most stockmen.
I lived seven years on that squatter’s right and when it was surveyed I proved up on it at once. The government allowed me from the time I established my residence. I also had fenced in about three thousand acres of government land, which I had the use of for ten years without any cost.
It was quite easy to borrow money those days. So I soon was in the cattle business for myself.
After some years Charlie Russell came to see me and in our conversation he asked me if I would like a partner. That suited me fine, as that would give me some money to work on. So I told Charlie I would gather the cattle and horses, and he would come to the ranch and we would count the stock and appraise the outfit.
He said, “You know what there is. You count the stock and appraise what other stuff you got, and send me a bill, and I will send you a check.” And when we dissolved partnership and sold out, we settled the same way. He had great faith in mankind.
Charlie and I built up a very nice little ranch. He and Nancy both filed on some land adjoining my old place and we run about three hundred cattle and about sixty head of horses.
Our cattle brand was known as the Lazy KY. Our horse brand was the letter “T.” It was very hard to get a desirable brand at that time, as the recorder of brands would not give you a brand you asked for, but would pick out a brand for you, and if what he sent you didn’t suit, you sent two dollars more until you got the kind of iron you wanted.
We had a great deal of trouble getting a horse brand until we got the letter “T.” Governor Joseph Toole owned this brand in the days when Montana was a territory, and he had not used it for many years. A great many people tried to buy it from him, but he would not sell it, but through his brother, Bruce Toole, who was a cattleman, he agreed to let us have the iron, and as he admired Charlie’s work would not accept any pay for it. Also the recorder of brands, in courtesy to the governor, transferred the brand without cost. So we owned one of the oldest brands in the state, and as we never transferred the iron to anyone I believe it still stands on record in our names.
But Charlie and I started in the cattle business too late to get the full benefit of the open range. The cattlemen were like the Indians. At one time they had everything they wanted—free range and free water—but the sheepmen soon began to squat on the watering places and it wasn’t many years until they had outnumbered the cattlemen.
There was a general hatred between them, as the cattle wouldn’t graze or water where there were sheep and the sheep would go everywhere. That was bad—but was nothing compared to when the farmers came from the East and homesteaded the land. I seen that country change in two years from where there was open range everywhere to where there wasn’t a foot of government land left, either in Montana or across the Canadian line, and in 1910 we had a very dry year and had to gather our cattle and bring them home. So decided to sell out. The farmers filed on every water hole in the country and they all had dogs, so the cattle didn’t have a chance. Some of the old-timers hung on for awhile and reminded me again of the Indians, as they said the farmer couldn’t last and would starve out and the country would all go back to open range. But when I seen those farmers raise fifty bushels of wheat to the acre on that virgin soil I could see the handwriting on the wall.
Course that land soon wore out for raising grain and most of those settlers sure had a hard time to get by but they are still there. It never will be a good farming country, but they have ruined it for the cattleman. They have even drove the sheep out.
One time when the sheep and cattlemen were at war, I knew two cattlemen that was very hard put by the sheep. They had monopolized all the free range and water, and as it has always been commonly understood that saltpeter would kill sheep, they decided to work on the sheepmen. So they sent away and got one hundred pounds of saltpeter and as it was a very serious crime to poison the range, they were very careful. They took the saltpeter in front of a band of sheep that was grazing on their range. One of them rode next to the sheepherder so he couldn’t see the sack the other one had on his horse. Then they cut a hole in the sack and rode slowly in front of the sheep and distributed the one hundred pounds. One of those fellows was quite a large cattleman and after the job was completed he got scared and left that part of the country for about a week so that in case of an investigation he would have an alibi that he was not at home at the time of the poisoning.
When he came back he hunted up his partner in crime to know what luck they had had. He told him the sheep had eat all the saltpeter and hadn’t killed one of them. He said, “I’ll be damned! I give up. Those sheep are too much for me.”
The range war got to be very bitter in that locality and I was very glad to get out. Whenever anyone lost a cow or horse, he blamed someone for killing it and the feeling got so bitter that it looked like it was leading up to where someone would get killed, and they did.
Charlie and I sold out to a man by name of Peter Wagner, and we had a neighbor by name of Al Pratt. He was very quarrelsome with everybody. Wagner was quite an old man. Pratt was a young man. He had chased the old man on horseback several times and once had beat him over the head with a wet frozen rope, another time had knocked him off his horse and run over him.
The surveyed road to town went between our house and barn, and in wintertime the snow drifted so deep it was impassable, and I had left about an acre of ground open where people went around the snowdrift.
About six months after Charlie and I had sold out to Wagner, one morning Pratt started to town on this road with a team and buckboard. When he came to this spot, the old man was there on horseback, standing on the detour. Pratt started to drive on Wagner’s land and he told him to follow the county road. Pratt said the road was impassable and tried to force his team past the old man, but he grabbed one of the bridles of the team. Pratt struck Wagner in the face with his buggy whip. Wagner jerked out his gun and shot Pratt once in the neck, once in the back and three shots hit the buckboard. Pratt fell out dead.
At the trial I was called as a character witness. The prosecuting attorney asked Wagner how many shots he fired. Wagner said, “One, to save my own life.” When he asked him to account for the other four shots, he said he was riding a hardmouth horse and he tried to run away at the first shot, and in pulling on his bridle reins with his left hand he forgot what his right hand was doing, and thought he must have kept pulling the trigger on his gun. It was an automatic and, of course, as long as he kept pulling the trigger it kept shooting, but he couldn’t explain how the gun kept pointing towards Pratt’s body.
The corpse laid there in the snow for twenty-four hours before the sheriff and coroner arrived and there was a gun found by the body. Wagner claimed self-defense. I testified that Pratt had pulled a Winchester on me once and threatened to kill me—which I think helped some.
Wagner was quite wealthy when this happened. He got free but he was flat broke when he got out.
He had told me several times prior to this incident that he was deathly afraid of Pratt, which I believe makes a very dangerous man when he is afraid of another man.
One thing about our neighborhood I never could understand was as long as the people were very poor they were peaceable and neighborly but when they got a little prosperous some of them were in court the year around.
We had a justice of the peace nearby and he sure had plenty business. I listened to one case that seems very amusing to me now. The judge liked to play poker and when he wasn’t busy with court duties he was usually in a poker game. This case was between two ranchers over the cutting of a wire fence. The trial was held in a little store. Each one acted as his own attorney, also testified in his own behalf. While one of them was testifying, the other one was sitting on the store counter, swinging his legs and listening, and when the other fellow made a statement he didn’t approve of he said, “That’s a damn lie.” The judge jumped to his feet and said, “Damn you, you can’t talk that way in this court.”
After the trial the judge took the case under advisement for a few hours.
Late that night I met the judge and asked him how the trial came out and when he told me I expressed some surprise. He said, “Hell, that other fellow couldn’t win in this court with four aces!”
Charlie used to come to the ranch quite often and enjoyed riding horseback, but I always had a hard time to convince him the horses were gentle. We kept about ten head and as I was the only one who rode them, they were always fat and rarin’ to go, and as when he and I worked together in the past, I was nearly always riding colts. He said he didn’t believe I ever owned a gentle horse.
So one time he came to the ranch to file on some land and we had to ride about fifteen miles. He told me to be sure to give him a gentle horse and I thought I did. I saddled his horse next morning and gave him the bridle reins and turned around to get on my horse, when I heard a terrible noise. I looked around and Charlie was down on his back with his foot fast in the stirrup, and the horse jumping and striking at him. I ran and caught his horse and got him loose. He had lost his hat and his clothes were dirty. He said, “This is another one of them damn gentle horses you have been telling me about. Now I have got to ride him fifteen miles with a hump in his back. I will feel good all day.” I don’t think I tried to get him to gallop but he said every time he tried to hurry that horse he would hump up like he was going to buck until he would pull him down to a walk.
He wrote me a letter when he went home and painted a picture of himself down on his back with his foot fast in the stirrup. He said it reminded him of a friend of his in Great Falls that sold a man a horse and told the fellow it was a regular lady’s horse, but had killed two men in Butte afterwards.
For thirty years, Charlie Russell owned a pinto named Monte that could almost talk. I don’t believe Monte was ever in a stable until he was twenty years old. When Charlie quit riding the range and went to living in town, he built Monte a stable but Monte didn’t like civilization and would not stay in the stable unless he was tied up, then he would be very nervous and would never lay down. But after some time Charlie found out there was only one way Monte would compromise and that was to leave the stable door open and Monte would lay down with his head out the door—he took no chances on being shut in.
Charlie and I had about fifty head of mares at the ranch. That was of the Mustang Stock. We raised some good tough saddle horses but in general they weren’t much to look at—pintos, buckskins, all kinds and colors.
So I began looking for a better grade of a stallion to improve our herd. I finally contacted a fellow by the name of Jake Dehart and he told me he had a fine stallion to sell, so I went to look at the horse. He was a terrible looking sight. He had been neglected, was sick and badly run down. His legs were swelled up almost as big as his body. He hadn’t shed his winter coat of hair and looked like anything but a horse. Dehart showed me the registered papers of the horse and they were O.K., in fact, he was an imported horse and of fine breeding. I didn’t know whether I could save the horse or not. Looked like he might die any time, so I told Dehart I would trade him a bunch of horses for the stud. We set a date when he would come to the ranch to look at the horses that I was to trade him. I told Dehart I thought I could give him about 20 head of horses for his stallion. Our horses run on the open range and it took several days to gather them.
When I got them all gathered and in the corral, they were sure a tough-looking bunch but when I would think about Dehart’s stud the Mustangs looked the best of the two so I began culling out the worst ones for Dehart, but he didn’t come on the day agreed on and looking the culls over I figured there was some too good to give him. Dehart didn’t come for several days and when he did arrive they were sure a sorry looking bunch of horses. Some of them crippled, some of them had been cut in barbed wire, some blind in one eye, some with their hips knocked down and some locoed. When Dehart did come he walked up to the corral and looked over the fence at the horses. He said, “My God, I thought you had better horses than those things. Where are the rest of your horses?” I told him that was all I had. Of course, I had got the rest of them out of sight.
Poor Dehart was in a bad spot. He had a lot of money in the stud and he was afraid he was going to die and it was either take this bunch of junk or nothing, so we traded. Shortly after I had made the trade Charlie came up from Great Falls to the ranch to see how things were getting along and didn’t know I had made the trade. There was nobody home the day he came. I was out on the range riding after cattle. This big terrible looking animal was standing in the corral. When I got home Charlie asked me where I got that mountain of “beauty.” I told him about the trade. “Well,” said Charlie, “he is sure a good sleeper. I watched him for an hour in the corral; he never moved an ear.” Charlie said Dehart must have got me drunk when I made that trade. I told him if he saw what I had traded for him he would think Dehart was the one that was drunk.
I doctored that horse and brought him out of his sickness and he produced the best colts in that country at that time and I later sold him for $500.00. In another way the trade proved to be very profitable. I wanted to vent the brand on the horses when Dehart took them but Dehart said no, he was going to ship those horses out of the country and didn’t want any more brands on them as it would hurt the sale of the horses. Instead of doing that, he sold them all at the railroad station where he had intended to ship them from. It was about 20 miles from our ranch and in about the middle of our range where our horses run and where I turned loose the rest of our horses, after the trade was made and the people that bought the horses from Dehart turned them loose on the range without either branding them or venting them. Consequently those horses in a few days were back on their range mixed up with our bunch without any way to identify them and all branded with our iron. I told those people about the matter and tried to get them to get their horses but they didn’t give it any attention so in a few months I sold all our horses on the range with the iron. When I sold the horses with the brand they sure put up a howl. They threatened me with court action, said they would have me arrested, but they couldn’t do anything about it as it was their own fault so I figured I got the stallion for nothing.
One time when Charlie Russell and I were in partnership in the cow business, I lost some yearling colts and as the country was all open in those days and no fences, our stock would sometimes stray two or three hundred miles away from home. So, after about three years after I had lost those colts I heard of some horses up in Canada which had my brand on them. I had a neighbor who had lost some colts about the same time as I had, so we decided to go up in that country and try to find them. We each took a couple of good saddle horses and started out. That country was very thinly settled those days, just a little stock ranch here and there, sometimes twenty-five or thirty miles apart. As it was late in the fall and the weather was getting quite cold, we had to make some of those ranches to camp overnight, on account of horse feed and a place to sleep.
One evening we rode into a ranch that a couple of Irish brothers owned and asked them to stay overnight. They said, “Sure, you’re welcome as the flowers in May.” Neither of them had ever been married and did their own housekeeping and cooking. The evening we got there they had just butchered a beef. We helped them hang it up in the barn and went to the house to cook supper. It was sure a dirty looking joint and the brother that cooked supper had his hands all stained with blood and dirt from butchering the beef. He had to make bread for supper and didn’t wash his hands, but mixed up the bread with his hands—blood, dirt and all. But we hadn’t had anything to eat all day and were plenty hungry, so we ate it and thought it was fine. We hunted horses all next day and along in the evening came to what looked like an old deserted ranch where nobody was home. After making a lot of noise and shouting, a man came out of the cabin. He was a Mormon and was living alone on this old ranch. Said he was sick and had been in bed three days and that there was no food on the place and that he couldn’t keep us overnight.
It looked like a bad storm coming up and we didn’t know any place to go. We told the man we were going to stay anyway, and as we both had six-shooters he didn’t argue too much with us. We put our horses in the old barn and went to the house. The Mormon went back to bed. We went to the kitchen to see if we could find anything to eat. It was the dirtiest looking outfit I ever saw in my life. The frying pans and kettles didn’t look like they had been washed for six months. We got a fire started and cleaned up things a little and looked through all the old boxes and found some beans, dried apples and flour. By ten o’clock that night we had what we thought was a pretty good meal. I went to the Mormon’s bedroom and asked him if he wanted anything to eat. He didn’t answer me, but began getting out of his dirty blankets. He hadn’t even taken his clothes off. We got him to sit down at the table and he ate more than both of us. After we got him filled up on food he got to talking quite friendly. He said he had been a Mormon missionary in some jungle country and had spent several years converting natives into the Mormon religion. In listening to his experience as a missionary I couldn’t help wondering what kind of a job he did, because if there is anything in the old saying that cleanliness is next to holiness he was sure a flop.
The next morning was very cold and stormy, but we were anxious to find our horses and our quarters were none too comfortable, so we bade our Mormon friend goodbye and rode away. He was about 40 miles from any town and we didn’t see any means of transportation around there, so we often wondered what ever became of him.
Well, we headed for a big lake about twenty miles from this Mormon’s place. We heard there was a lot of horses ranging in that part of the country and there found our horses, so we drove the whole bunch to an old roundup corral that we had located that day. I had three horses in the bunch and my partner had one. Those horses were three years old and were not halter broke. In fact, they had not had a rope on them since they were yearlings and then were only caught by the front feet and thrown down to brand them. So, we had to catch them that way now. We necked them to the extra saddle horses we had with us and turned them out of the corral and headed them towards Montana. Just before dark we spotted a ranch and some corrals so we headed for there. We found a man there who had come from Michigan and taken up a homestead out on the Canadian Prairie. He evidently was a man of some wealth as he had spent considerable money fixing the place up. He wasn’t very keen about letting us stay overnight. He kept sizing us up and I guess he had heard a good deal about cowboys and rustlers and thought we were a couple of horse thieves. We explained our condition to him and told him the circumstances and that we were a long way from home, so he finally decided to let us stay.
While this fellow looked like he had considerable wealth, he didn’t have very much to eat. As he didn’t make any excuses about it, I think we had his regular bill of fare. He didn’t have any meat, no butter or sugar or coffee. My partner was a coffee fiend, and this fellow gave us cold milk for breakfast. My partner was very blue all that day and said he felt very queer, like the world was coming to an end or something terrible was going to happen. But that was because he missed his coffee.
This man charged us ten dollars for very little to eat and a very poor bed, and as it was not the custom to charge anyone those days for food it made my partner very mad. When we got our horses saddled and ready to go next morning, my partner went to the barn and as he was gone quite a while I asked him what he was looking for. He said he was looking for something he could steal, to get even with that old guy, but he said this fellow was so stingy he didn’t have anything worth taking.
Well, we finally got going back towards home. If the weather had been good it would have been about two day’s ride, but about ten o’clock a bad storm came up and by noon it was a real blizzard and out there on the plains you couldn’t see a thing or know what direction you were going in, but after wandering around for some time we came to a coulee that we recognized (Verta Grease Coulee). It was about 25 miles long and we knew it put into Milk River which was the direction we wanted to go, also we knew there was a ranch on Milk River at the mouth of this coulee. We followed this ravine all day and about night came to the ranch. They welcomed us in and gave us a good supper and a feather bed to sleep in. It was a terrible blizzard and I think we would have lost our lives if we hadn’t found this ranch.
My partner was rather a spooky fellow and had some kind of a phobia. He was always worrying about a cancer or some other dreaded disease, so while we were lying in that good warm bed and talking how lucky we were to find this ranch a funny thought came to me to give my partner a scare. He had his head covered up and was about to go to sleep. I nudged him and said, “Bill, I forgot to tell you that this place was quarantined for Smallpox a short time ago,” and he made one jump and landed out in the middle of the room and said, “My God, I would rather go right out into the blizzard than stay here!” Then I had a hard time to convince him I was joking and I don’t think he rested very well the rest of the night. He told me afterwards I gave him the worst scare he had ever had in his life.
We got home the next night and it was a very profitable trip, as I had found three head of horses I didn’t know I owned.
Somewhere on the trip I had got lousy and I believe I had more lice on me than any man that ever walked in public, and big ones too. My wife threatened to make me sleep with the dog, but finally took pity on me and let me sleep in the house, providing I would sleep in a room by myself. I don’t know if all Canadian Greybacks are as big as those were, but I had to boil all my clothes about three times to get rid of those big tough babies.
I first met Charlie Russell in the fall of the year 1888. He was night herding beef cattle on the Judith Basin and Moccasin Range roundup. Charlie was very modest and never claimed to be a great cowboy, but I noticed the bosses always gave him a very responsible job, as the cowmen of those days were very particular how the beef cattle were handled.
We usually started the fall roundup about the first of September and the gathering and driving to the railroad sometimes took until the 15th of November. Now from the first day we worked the range, we cut out some steers fat enough for beef, and those cattle were under constant herd night and day, and the men were supposed to handle those cattle so they would gain in flesh while we were holding them—and any cowboy caught running or roping those steers was fired at once—and great care was taken to keep the cattle from stampeding. When we got all through we would have 2,000 or 2,500 head of cattle in the herd.
I remember a rather amusing story Charlie told me in years after we had quit working on the range. We were talking about people we liked and disliked. I said to Charlie, “I always thought you liked everybody.” He laughed and said, “No. There was one roundup cook I have never forgiven for what he done to me.” He said, “I was night herding cattle. One dark night the cattle were very nervous and kept trying to stampede. Just before daylight my horse stepped in a badger hole and fell—right in a nice patch of cactus and prickly pears!” Charlie said he didn’t miss any of those cactus. When he got up his body felt like a small cactus field. His partner caught his horse and stayed with the cattle, and Charlie headed for camp. The cactus was distributed in his body so he couldn’t sit on the saddle, so he walked and led his horse.
When he got to camp, the cook was starting breakfast. (I knew this old cook and he was plenty brave.) None of the cowboys were up yet. Charlie went in the cook tent where there was a lantern and took off his clothes to doctor himself and pull out some of those cactus. This old cook never spoke to anyone if he could help it, and as nobody had any right to come in that cook tent unless the cook called them to eat, Charlie was taking a privilege contrary to custom. Anyway the cook evidently did not notice him until he had all his clothes off and was disgracing his cook tent by undressing in it. He walked over to where Charlie was, said, “What the hell you think this is ... a hospital?” He had a big butcher knife in his hand. He throwed Charlies’ clothes outside and told Charlie to get the hell out of there too.
Charlie told me whenever he met a new acquaintance and he said he was a roundup cook by profession, he looked on him with some doubt as to his being human.
I was associated with Charlie for a good many years and I think I knew him as well as anybody could, and I think as a man and a friend he had very few equals. He was a fine Western artist, but Will Rogers said Charlie would have been a great man if he couldn’t have painted a fence post. I thing that told the whole story.
Charlie enjoyed telling jokes on himself, which very few people do. He told me about one time the Captain of the Judith Basin Roundup sent another cowboy and himself to the Moccasin Roundup to rep (that was to gather any cattle that had drifted from their home range). The other man took a violin which he played a little, and Charlie took some paint and some brushes. The next year the boss of the Basin Range met the boss of the Moccasin Range and said, “What was the matter last year? I had a lot of cattle over on your range. I sent two men over there and didn’t get hardly any cattle.”
The other boss said, “What the Hell could you expect? You sent a fiddler and a painter over there to act as cowboys.”
All during Charlie Russell’s life as a cowboy he drew pictures for pastime—sometimes with a lead pencil and sometimes with a paint brush and even in his earliest and rough work, one could always recognize the man or horse that he had used for the picture. We used to wonder at those pictures but he (or us) never dreamed that he was the making of the greatest Western artist of his day, which I believe has been conceded by art critics.
The last riding for wages that Charlie did was for the Bear Paw Pool at Chinook on Milk River. They were a combination of the Judith Basin Pool that he had worked for several years, but had moved their cattle across the Missouri River into the Bear Paw country. Charlie told me the reason he quit punching cows. The last winter he stayed in Chinook him and some other boys had a cabin that they wintered in and it was so cold they put on German socks and lined mittens to cook and eat breakfast, and nearly froze at that. I think it was in the year 1892 he bid goodbye to the range and saddled and packed his horses and headed for Great Falls to try his luck at painting. He told me he had tough going for quite awhile as he did not know the price to ask for a picture.
I have seen some of Charlie’s pictures that he sold for ten dollars at that time, that afterwards he sold one to the Prince of Wales for ten thousand dollars that I couldn’t see a great deal of difference. I think this money difference was due to his business manager—his wife, Nancy C. Russell, who certainly deserves great credit for making Charlie’s name famous. She is in very poor health at this time (1939) and has suffered for a long time but she has a great fighting heart and has never said “Whoa” in a bad place.
As a cowboy Charlie Russell was sure strong for cowboy decorations. As I look back on him now, I can see him, seldom with his shirt buttoned in the right button hole, and maybe dirty with part of one sleeve torn off, but his hat, boots, handkerchief and spurs and bridle were the heights of cowboy fashion. Of course those were the days when we didn’t get to town only two or three times a year, but when we did go to town we dressed like millionaires as long as our money lasted.
When Charlie quit riding and started painting for a living, some of his friends advised him to change his way of dress and get some city togs. That he would not do. He never liked suspenders or shoes and never wore them. He disliked fashion and said it was just an imitation of someone else. He always wore a good Stetson hat, a nice sash, and a good pair of boots—even after he had quit the range.
It reminds me of two city men I knew had come to a cow ranch on business and had an old-time cowboy taking them around. One day they were discussing the beauties of nature and when each one decided what he thought was the most beautiful thing he ever saw one of them asked the cowboy his idea of beauty. He promptly answered, “The prettiest thing I ever saw was a four year old fat steer,” and he may have been right, as nature had given the steer everything it had to make it beautiful in its class, and he knew he was a steer and was satisfied with his lot and didn’t pretend to be anything but what he was.
That was the way I knew Charlie. He loved nature and the West and was Western from the soles of his feet to the top of his head and had the finest principle and the greatest philosophy I ever knew in anybody.
Charlie told me one of the worst troubles he had was some fellow would rush up to him and say, “Hello, Charlie, I am sure glad to see you.” Charlie would say, “I am glad to see you, too,” and to save his life he couldn’t place him. He would talk to him about everything he could think of, hoping the fellow would say something that would refresh his memory but usually without any success, and he said he had to be very careful to not say “No” or “Yes” in the wrong place and give himself away.
I remember, when I went back to Montana from Cripple Creek, Colorado, in 1894, I came into town (Cascade, Montana—where Charlie was living) in a box car, but didn’t tell Charlie how I arrived. In the few years I was away from Montana, Charlie heard I had been killed by a horse. I didn’t know anything about that report. So when I walked into his cabin we shook hands and had quite a talk—and, of course I thought he knew who I was. He was sitting by the stove frying bacon and I caught him looking at me in a sort of a puzzled way and I knew at once he didn’t know who I was. So I said to him, “You don’t know me.” He said, “Yes, I do.” “Well, who am I then?” He said, “If I didn’t know Con Price was dead, I would say you was him.”
While I was with Charlie that time, just in fun he had me pose for him in a stage hold-up. I had a sawed-off shot-gun, big hat and my pants legs inside my boots. We found an old Prince Albert coat somewhere that I wore and a big handkerchief around my neck. I surely looked tough. He sure got a kick out of that model.
Well, he painted that picture in a rough way and didn’t give it much attention and never gave it any consideration as to value. It was more of a joke than anything else. I think about two years after he was married, he went to New York, and in some way this picture had got mixed up with the rest of his stuff, so it landed in New York with him.
He said New York was sure tough then for an artist breaking into the game. He said there was only two classes of people there: paupers and millionaires, and he had a hard time to keep out of the pauper class.
But some artist friend loaned him the use of his studio and Charlie was trying to do a little work and took this old picture there.
One morning a foreign nobleman came in and was looking the studio over—mostly the other artist’s work—and he came to this old picture. After examining it for some time, he said, “How much is this picture worth?” Charlie said he needed money pretty bad just at that time and wanted to ask him one hundred and fifty dollars, but didn’t know whether the old boy would go for that much or not. While he was hesitating Nancy, his wife, stepped over to where the old fellow was and said, “This one would be eight hundred dollars,” and the man said, “Very well, I’ll take it.” Charlie said he nearly fell off his stool with joy.
After the fellow left he told Nancy, “I’ll do the work from now on—you will do the selling,” and I believe that bargain held good until the day of Charlie’s death.
Charlie didn’t like the new set-up. He was a child of the open West before wire fences and railroads spanned it. Civilization choked him even in the year 1889 when the Judith country was getting settled up with ranchers and sheep had taken the cattle range. He hated the change, and followed cattle north to the Milk River Country trying to stay in an open range country. He said, “I expect I will have to ride the rest of my life but I would much rather be a poor cowboy than a poor artist.” He didn’t know he was graduating from nature’s school and the education frontier life had given him.
In the fall of 1891 he got a letter from a man in Great Falls who said if he could come there he could make seventy-five dollars a month painting, his grub included.
It looked good to Charlie, as he was only making forty a month riding, so he saddled the old gray and packed old Monty, the pinto, and hit the trail for Great Falls.
When he arrived in Great Falls he was introduced to a guy who pulled out a contract as long as a lariat for him to sign. Charlie wouldn’t sign it until he had tried the proposition out. This fellow gave Charlie ten dollars on account, saying he would see him later.
After a few days he met Charlie and wanted to know why he hadn’t started on the work. Charlie told him he had to find a place to live and get his supplies.
The contract read that everything Charlie painted or modeled for one year was to be the property of this man and he wanted him to work from early morning until night. Charlie argued with him that there was some difference between painting and sawing wood and told him the deal was off.
He hunted up a fellow he knew and borrowed ten dollars and paid this fellow that had advanced the money to him. Charlie said he wouldn’t work under pressure so they split up and Charlie started out for himself.
He put in with a bunch of cowboys (I was one of them), a roundup cook, and a broken-down prize fighter. We rented a shack on the south side of town. Our bill of fare was very short at times as Charlie was the only one that made any money and that was very little. We christened the shack and gave it the name of Red Onion. We had some queer characters as guests. Broken gamblers, cowboys, horse thieves, cattle rustlers, in fact, everybody that hit town broke seemed to find the Red Onion to get something to eat. Among them all it was hard to get anyone to cook or wash the dishes but at meal time we always had a full house. Along about spring time I got a job in a cow outfit and I told Charlie. So he said if I was going away he had an announcement to make to the gang—and in effect it was that the Red Onion would be closed and go out of business.
I believe it was the Spring of 1889 we met at Philbrook in the Judith Basin for the Spring roundup and a lot of the boys were celebrating at the Post Office and store. The postmaster told us someone had sent him a piece of limburger cheese through the mail. He didn’t know what to do with it as he didn’t know anyone civilized enough to eat it, so he gave it to the cowboys who put in a lot of their time rubbing it on door knobs, the inside of hat bands and drinking cups. They had the whole town well perfumed. When someone noticed an old timer that had come to town to tank up on joy juice and had got so overloaded he went to sleep in the saloon, his heavy drooping moustache gave one of the boys an idea. A council was held and it was agreed that he should have his share of the limburger rubbed into his moustache under his nose. Being unconscious, old Bill slept like a baby in a cradle while the work was done.
Next day Charlie Russell saw him out back of the saloon, sitting on a box and looking very tough. He would put his hands over his mouth, breath into them, drop them and look at them and shake his head. Of course, Charlie knew what was the trouble as he had helped to fix him up the night before. Charlie went over to him and asked, “How are you stacking up today?” Old Bill looked at him in a kind of a daze and shook his head. “Me? I’m not so good.” Charlie asked, “What’s the matter, are you sick?” “No-o-o not more than usual, I’ve felt as bad as this a thousand times. But—oh God—” then he covered his face again with his hands. After a few seconds he slowly lowered them, shaking his head and groaning, “Oh, it’s something awful, I don’t savvy.”
Charlie very much in sympathy with him said, “What seems to be the matter, Bill?” “Damned if I know, but I’ve got the awfullest breath on me. ’Pears like I am plum spoiled inside. You can tell the boys my stay here on earth is damn short. Nobody could live long with the kind of breath I’ve got on me. Oh, oh!” Then he would breathe into his hands again, saying, “Oh God!”
I believe he would have died if they hadn’t told him what was the matter.
All the years I knew Charlie, I never knew him to go to church (although I know he was a real Christian at heart) but there was an old time preacher, a Methodist by name Van Orsdell. He preached in cow camps, school houses or anywhere that he could get even a few people.
Brother Van told me when he graduated from the ministry he came up the Missouri River on a steam boat to Fort Benton. He had a very good voice. He said he sang hymns to pay his fare. That must have been in the early 1870’s. When I knew him first, he used to ride horseback through the country and hold services, and he was sure loved by everybody. I listened to one of his sermons in the cow country and there was quite a sprinkling of cattle rustlers in that locality and I remember in his talk he told us if we would do as God wanted us to do we wouldn’t need a fast horse and a long rope.
He told us he overtook a bull whacker (a freighter) pulling a big hill out of Fort Benton one time. Brother Van was riding a horse and he followed along behind this fellow and the language he used for those cattle was sure strong. He said the fellow called each steer by some religious name with an oath after it, such as Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and so forth.
When the bull whacker got to the top of the hill, Brother Van asked him what was the idea of giving those cattle such religious names. The man said, “It’s appropriate. For instance, there is old Methodist—when I unyoke him he walks out a little distance and paws on the ground, gets down on his knees and balls and bellers just like a Methodist preacher. Then there is that old steer I call Baptist. If there’s a water hole anywhere, he will find it and get into it and throw water all over himself—and old Bishop there, he leads all the other steers.” He had a religious name appropriate for each steer. Brother Van got a kick out of that.
Brother Van was a very devout Methodist and one time he and Charlie were discussing religion, Charlie said he didn’t believe in so many branches of religion and said he thought the people should have a general roundup and make them all one. Brother Van said, “That’s a fine idea, Charlie, and make it Methodist.”
One time at Malta, Montana, when we were shipping cattle, a cowboy got killed. He was riding a young horse and the train came by and this horse got scared and run away with this boy. It ran into a wire fence and hit the wires just high enough on his legs to cause him to turn a somersault and land squarely on top of the boy and broke his neck. Brother Van preached a sermon over that boy’s body. When I look back at it now, it seems to me the boy’s body was laid out in an old store and I think there were about twenty cowboys with their chaps and spurs on and the old time cowboy was a rather queer kind of a mixture of human nature. Sometimes he drank whiskey to celebrate and have a good time; other times he drank when he was blue. I guess to try to raise his spirits. Anyway, this morning quite a number of them had taken on quite a load of the old joy juice. When the sermon started, Brother Van preached a very forceful sermon and the tears rolled down his old cheeks like rain drops and in looking around after that sermon was over there were very few dry faces among that tough old bunch of waddies and they were all as sober as if they never had a drink.
Speaking of batching, some people of this day may not know what it means. But for us cowboys it meant this: four or five of us would get together in the fall of the year and get a cabin in some little town, buy some groceries and go into winter quarters, and everybody cooked according to his liking and if anybody didn’t like the way one fellow cooked he could cook to suit himself.
I remember one winter a bunch of us batched together and there was a great variety of tastes. One fellow loved maple syrup and lived mostly on that and a little bread ... but mostly syrup. Another old-timer wanted to put bacon in everything he cooked. He said it gave the cooking “tone” (he meant flavor). He spoiled most of his cooking for the rest of us. I believe if he would try to make a cake he would have put bacon in it. I liked hard-boiled potatoes; nobody else did, so that was my specialty. Charlie Russell was the coffee and hot cake man. We all agreed he had no equal in those two things.
One time we had a Christmas dinner and in some way got a chicken (I don’t want to remember how we got it) and we held council as to how it would be cooked and, of course, the old-timer came forward at once with his bacon idea. But we told him the chicken was old and tough and we would have to boil it. That didn’t make any difference to him, as he said any way a chicken was cooked it had to have bacon in it to be good and to give it tone. Anyway he won out and the bacon was put in. Really I think there was more bacon than chicken.
Charlie Russell volunteered to make some dumplings, which sounded good to everybody, but for some reason unknown to all of us, the dumplings turned to gravy and we had to eat them like soup with a spoon. Charlie himself didn’t boast about those dumplings but his alibi was Bill’s bacon ruined the whole mixture. I don’t know as to the truth of that statement as I never knew Charlie to make dumplings again.
One time I was in Great Falls, Charlie was circulating a petition to get an old-time cowboy out of the penitentiary. He had been sent up for rustling cattle and had served about four years. Charlie asked me to go with him on his rounds, and I did.
We called on people for several days and there was not a man or woman turned us down, until we met one of the wealthiest men in Great Falls. He read the petition and handed it back and said, “He can rot in the pen as far as I am concerned.” Then he began to criticize Charlie for circulating the petition. There was where he made a mistake and the things he told him must have cut pretty deep into his feelings.
Charlie said, “If you don’t want to sign the petition, that’s your business, but don’t you roast me. I knew this man. He was once my friend. I don’t approve of what he done, but he has a wife and two children praying for his release and he has been punished enough already.” Then he looked him in the eye and said, “You know, Jim, if we all got our just dues, there would be a big bunch of us in the pen with Bill.” I thought I could see the old boy’s whiskers tremble because he knew what Charlie meant.
I have never forgotten what Charlie said when we left this fellow. He said justice was the hardest, cruel word that ever was written. He said if all the people that were crying for real justice got it, they would think they were terribly abused and would not want it and would find out they wanted a little mercy instead.
While Charlie and I were partners, he got an attack of appendicitis and someone told him to stand on his head and walk on his hands and knees and it would cure him. He said he tried that cure until his head and knees were so sore he couldn’t perform anymore.
So he finally made an appointment with the doctor for an operation.
The morning he went to the hospital his wife, Nancy, was with him. When they dressed him for the operating table (he called it putting a set of harness on him) Nancy was very much frightened and looked like she might break down under the strain. So to quiet her, he began to tell her how simple the operation was and that he didn’t mind it at all and started to roll a cigarette, but his hands got to shaking so bad the tobacco all fell out of the paper and, of course, Nancy noticed that and it really made matters worse than if he had said nothing.
After he had gotten over the operation, he had some very severe pains. One day when the doctor came to see him Charlie asked him if he had lost any of his tools. When the doctor asked why he thought so, he said he was sure he had some of them sewed up inside of him.
There was an old doctor in Great Falls told Charlie and me a rather amusing experience he had about that time.
There was a fellow came through the country and camped in several places around Great Falls and one day he murdered a whole family and throwed them in the river. The officers finally arrested him and had him in jail awaiting trial. During that time he killed himself and he was buried in the paupers’ graveyard.
This doctor told us he had a great curiosity to know what a human brain and head was like that would kill those people without any known motive. For some reason, Doc could not get the body and as he didn’t like the idea of prowling around the graveyard at night, he chose one cold, rainy morning to go out and dig this fellow up. It took him quite awhile to get him out of the ground, and as he had just a small buggy to carry him in, he had to break the coffin open and put him in a gunny sack.
Doc said while he was working on the corpse the sun came out and the weather cleared and he thought everybody in Great Falls went for a ride or walk. There was people all around him and looking at him rather queer, and he was afraid he would be arrested for a grave robber, but he finally got to town without anybody seeing what he had.
Doc’s entrance to his office was on Main Street, and no other way to get in. So he drove into an alley back of his place. There was a Jew running a pawn shop there facing onto a side street. So Doc took his sack with the corpse and went in the back way of the Jew’s store and dropped it in his woodshed, and went into the front where the proprietor was standing behind his counter.
Doc slipped up to the counter and whispered, “Sol, I left a stiff in your shed back there. I will get him when it gets dark.” He said the Jew’s eyes began to grow large and said, “Vat’s a stiff?” Doc said, “A dead man.” The Jew began to scream and was attracting people on the street. He said, “My God, my God, take him out of here! I will be arrested for murder!” Doc whispered to him to hush, but he hollered still louder, so Doc picked up his sack, put it on his shoulder and walked up the main street into his office. He told us he was sure relieved when he got that corpse in his back room.
He had the skull on his desk when he told us the story and said whenever he looked at it, it reminded him of one of the most strenuous days of his life.
While I was working for the DHS outfit, I think it was in 1896, I got a letter from Charlie Russell telling me he was married. He said the gospel wrangler had caught him and necked him. The word “necking” didn’t mean then what it does now. We would sometimes have a wild horse that we couldn’t hold in the bunch and every chance he got he would run away and we would lose him. So it was the horse wrangler’s job to catch this horse and with a short piece of rope tie him to a gentle horse, and the old horse would lead him wherever he went. He had to eat and sleep and go where the gentle horse went.
So Charlie said he was necked and didn’t think he would get away for awhile, and gave me a pressing invitation to come and see him, and I wrote him the day I would be there and the train I would be on.
But something happened and I was a day late. Charlie met me at the train. After we had visited for a little while several other boys joined us and we were enjoying our general talk. Charlie turned to me and said, “What happened you didn’t come yesterday?” He said, “When the train arrived I was at the depot and looked on the blind baggage car, on top of the train and down under the cars and the brake rods.” The conductor knew Charlie and said, “What are you looking for, Russ?” Charlie said, “I told him I had a letter from a friend of mine that he would be on this train and I come to meet him.”
That was the first time I knew he knew I had got out of that box car several years before in Cascade.
I recall one time I was breaking horses close to the town of Cascade, Montana. I would ride a colt into town nearly every day.
A blacksmith and a barber got heckling each other about riding broncs. The blacksmith bet the barber four dollars he would ride the first horse that I rode to town. Charlie Russell was stake holder.
I didn’t know anything about this bet until I had come to town and both parties tried to find out the merits of the horse—whether he would buck or not, and as I knew the stake money was going to be spent for drinks, I told each one a different story—the blacksmith he wouldn’t buck, the barber he would, so as to be sure to have the bet go as the blacksmith was a little scared, but he was a big, powerful young man and the horse was rather small, he took a chance.
The bet was he had to ride the horse to the livery stable and back, which was about two blocks.
He got on. With a death-grip, with the reins in one hand and the other on the saddle horn, he started and was getting along fine—going slow—when a stock man by name H. H. Nelson started by him going home. He had a big canvas overcoat on and could not resist the temptation to shake his coat as he rode by the bronc—and down went the bronc’s head. I think the first jump the saddle horn hit the blacksmith in the eye, and the next jump he was on the ground. Somebody caught the horse and helped the blacksmith up.
He said, “That is all right. I have lost this bet, but I will make another one—I will whip Nelson the first time he comes to town.”
We sure had a great time spending that eight dollars and I think everybody else spent all they had besides.
We named that “A quiet day in Cascade,” and Charlie drew a picture of it, with chickens and dogs and everything running in all directions and some old man with a cane trying to get out of the way.
I remember a very amusing incident on a roundup. We had been out on the range for about three months, and nobody had shaved. We came into a little town (a shipping point) and when we had got the cattle all loaded on the train, we found out there was a barber shop in town, so we all patronized it, but there was one stingy old fellow in the outfit that wouldn’t spend a quarter to get shaved, so when we got started back on the range, he felt out of place, as we were all shaved and slicked up. He asked if there was anyone in the outfit that could shave him. I told him I could. Now I had never shaved a man in my life, the cook had an old razor in the Mess box, and God knows when it had been sharpened, (we had no safety razors those days). I started in on him, of course his beard was full of sand and dust, and I used cold water and lye soap to make the lather. When I got to working on him, the blood followed the razor wherever I touched him. We didn’t have any mirror so he couldn’t see himself bleed. The boys would ask him occasionally how he was getting along, he said the razor pulled a little but Con was doing fine. Charlie Russell was laying on his belly looking at the performance, and he laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. When I got through with him he looked like he had broke out with the small pox. He picked scabs off his face for several days, he didn’t complain, but he never asked me to shave him again. Nobody felt sorry for him because he never was known to buy a drink, and he had three thousand dollars in the bank, which was a big fortune to a cowboy.
As I grow older there are rather strange thoughts come to my mind about cowboys and cow people. I have mingled with most all classes of the human race and I have some very true and sincere friends among all classes—but I don’t believe there is any other people in the world that was as intimate and friendly on short acquaintance as the old time cowboy and cowman.
They would fight among themselves and some of them would steal from each other but let one of them get in a tough spot and his clan would come to his rescue when everybody else had throwed him down, I was on a roundup on the Moccasin range in Montana in the year 1888 and a small rancher lost a milk cow. He had come to the round up to ride with us for a few days to try to find his cow. The next morning we left camp about daylight and hadn’t went a mile from camp when his horse fell and broke the man’s leg above the knee. We got the bedwagon and fixed some blankets in it the best we could and drove him 20 miles to a doctor. The boys raised three hundred dollars for that fellow ... and none of them had ever seen him before that day he came to camp.
There was an old-time cowboy and cowman—lived at Gilroy, California, that I knew for twenty years. His name was Ed Willson. He is dead now—but when I recall the many kindnesses he extended to me in those years I knew him, it has burned a brand on my memory that time cannot blot out. He was as rough and tough as a grizzly bear, and to know him on the surface meant you didn’t know him at all. My wife and I had eaten Christmas dinner with him and his family for several years and he had planned for it again the year he died. He had been quite sick for a long time but came to see me on the sand of December with an invitation to come again to the Christmas dinner. I was sick in bed and told him we would come if I was able, but I got worse and on Christmas day could not get up. He was also in bed on that day—but when noontime came and we didn’t show up he had his wife, Pal, fix up a tray of turkey dinner and bring it in and show it to him. He smiled and said, “that ought to cure the old son-of-a-gun.” He had it sent three miles to my home. He died a few days after. I never saw him after he came to give me the invitation. That is just one of the many kind considerations that the old-time cowboy had for the other fellow—and I believe if they were organized they would be the greatest fraternity on earth.
The End