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.
