In the spring of 1887 I went to work for the “RL” outfit located on the Musselshell River in Montana. The outfit belonged to the Ryan Brothers of Kansas City. They run about 25,000 head of cattle, and run three wagons and worked about 20 men to each wagon, and had about 500 head of saddle horses.
That year they had a contract with the government to supply the Sioux Indians with 5,000 beef cattle. We gathered the first herd of 2,500 and trailed them to landing Rock Agency on the Missouri River in North Dakota. We were about four months on the trail and I don’t remember of seeing one wire fence or farming ranch on the trip.
We swam those cattle across the Yellowstone River east of Miles City. We were four days trying to get those cattle across. It was in the month of June and at the time of high water—the river was bank full and at least a quarter of a mile wide. We tried every way anybody had ever heard of to get those cattle to take that water. We would bring them to the river every day and fight them all day, but it was no go. We would then drive them back from the river and night herd them and try again the next day. Finally we decided to hold them off water for twenty-four hours, and then drove them all into the river at once. It worked. It was sure some sight, the 2,500 head all swimming at once.
We had a wonderful trip after that. We only moved them about eight or ten miles a day and with plenty grass and water they got very fat. It was the custom them days to butcher a calf on anybody’s range, so we had plenty good meat.
When we arrived at the end of our journey, we had to herd those cattle for about three months, as we only delivered 250 head a week. We held them about twenty miles from the Agency, and each week we cut out the fattest ones and took them to the Agency. After we had been there about a week all the cowboys quit and went back to Montana, which only left the boss, the cook and myself with 2,500 cattle to hold, and as there was no white men in that part of the country, the boss had to hire some Indians to help hold the cattle. Those Indians could not understand one word of English and we couldn’t talk much Indian, so we were in a pretty bad fix.
Our horses didn’t like the smell of the Indian, and they persisted in getting on on the right-hand side, and, of course, our horses objected to that. They all wore moccasins and they would put their foot so far through the stirrup when a horse got scared when they were getting on and they would fall down and their foot would hang in the stirrup, so the boss and myself put in most of our time catching loose horses.
One day a steamboat came up the Missouri River and it blowed the whistle. Now those cattle had never heard a steamboat whistle before. They were scattered over an area of about four miles feeding. It sure scared them. They first run together all in one bunch, and we might have checked them but those Indians got excited and scared them worse than ever. One Indian was running his horse pretty close to the lead of the cattle and giving war whoops, and his horse fell down and throwed him right in among the cattle. I sure thought he was killed and hoped he was, but he never got a scratch. After we got the cattle stopped, he made signs that he enjoyed it very much, as it reminded him of hunting buffalo.
All cattlemen know that cattle do not get over a scare like that very soon, and those were all longhorned Texas steers and would scare of their own shadow, and when one jumped they all went. So that night when we put them on the bed-ground, the boss wouldn’t put the Indians on night guard as he knew they would scare them for sure. So he put me on first guard, and he brought his bed and night horse out to the herd so he would be close if anything happened. He staked his horse and went to bed.
I was riding around the herd and they all seemed to be settled down fine, when all at once, quick as you could snap your finger, they were all running. It was very dark and it sounded like thunder when that herd stampeded. I was badly scared and I tried to stay in the lead of them as much as I could, but they would swing first one way and then another. I think they run about three miles, when something came out of the herd right longside of me. I knew it wasn’t a steer. It made a different noise from anything else that I had heard. I thought it was a ghost, and I pretty near fainted. It was the boss’ horse dragging the stake rope and the stirrups and saddle a-popping that scared the cattle and me, too. The horse had pulled his stake pin and stampeded the herd. After this ghost had disappeared, I got the cattle stopped but I still didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know where I was or where camp was, so I tried to sing and talk to the cattle and wait for help. Some of them began to bawl and I knew that was a good sign, as cattle will not scare so bad when some of them are bawling. In about an hour I heard the boss whistling and coming my way. He had walked to camp and got another horse, and come hunting me. He stayed the rest of the night with me. Luckily we had not lost any of them, as they all stayed together, but there was a lot of broken horns and lame cattle, as they had piled up several times in the run.
For several days those cattle were very nervous and we had considerable trouble watering them. A steer would see a little rock or a piece of grass that didn’t look just right—he would jump and away they would all go.
After about a month the other herd came and we had more cowboys. We were all right then as we had plenty of help, and began delivering beef to the Indians.
I remember one delivery we made, the boss sent me with a pack outfit and my orders were to camp about halfway of the twenty miles we had to go and make coffee for the cowboys that were bringing the cattle. It was raining that day, and as we were on the Indian reservation there was very little wood to build a fire with, so when I got to the place I was to camp everything was wet and nothing to make a fire with. I saw a pine box about two feet long in a cottonwood tree. I got it down and broke it up and inside of it were a few dried bones and a few pieces of red flannel. It was an Indian papoose grave—that was the way they buried their dead. I dumped the bones out and made a fire out of the box.
Old man Ryan, one of the owners of the cattle, was with us that day, and came ahead of the cattle to get some coffee. When he seen I had coffee made, he was very pleased, and told me I was a great boy. But when he went to pour out his coffee, he spied those bones. He asked me what they were, and when I told him he nearly fainted, and would not touch the coffee. But it didn’t affect those hungry cowboys when they got there; they told me I was wonderful, but the old gentleman said I was simply terrible. The old man was a very devout Catholic and said I would surely go to Hell when I died.
We would put those cattle in the government corral and an army officer would just look them over and accept them. They didn’t weigh them, but bought them so much a head.
After the inspector passed on them, they would call five or six Indians with their rifles. They would get up on the corral fence and shoot every one of them before they touched one. Then the army officer would take so many Indian families to each steer and let them divide it up. There was three tribes there, with a chief at the head of each tribe. I don’t know how many Indians was in each tribe but it looked like about 3,000 Indians—all Siouxs.
In about two hours there wouldn’t even be a tail of a steer left. Each family took their portion and went to their different camp grounds.
Those three chiefs’ names were Sitting Bull, Rain in the Face, and Gall—the latter two looked like old seasoned warriors, both had been wounded in battle several times. Sitting Bull was a younger man and looked like he had some white blood in his veins.
The old time Indians claimed Sitting Bull was not the great warrior that he got credit for and that he did not plan the massacre of General Custer and that Rain in the Face was the great man in that battle.
Every time those steers were shot down in the corral, before any beef was divided, Rain in the Face made a speech—I don’t know what it was about, but the roar of applause was terrific.
That fall when we got the beef all delivered, we took the saddle horses to Mandan, North Dakota, on the Northern Pacific Railroad and shipped them back to Montana.
The cowboys went by passenger train. Those cowboys had been on the Indian reservation all summer and could not get any refreshments, and as they had all their wages they made Mandan a lively town for a Hay and a night. There was about twenty of them, and it was some job getting them cowboys loaded on that train, and after we got started it took the train crew all their time to keep them straight.
Them days they heated the chair cars with a coal heating stove. One old cowboy got a raw steak out of the diner, and before the conductor knew it he was cooking it on top of the stove and the car was full of smoke. The conductor took it away from him and throwed it out of the car and gave the old man hell. The old man was very mad and told the conductor he didn’t know nothing, as that was the proper way to cook a steak.
Another fellow bought a suit of clothes in Mandan and decided to change clothes in the parlor car. He got into quite a dispute with the train crew, but finally got his new suit on. He said they were too damn particular about riding on trains.
We were all at the RL ranch one afternoon ready to start on the spring roundup next morning. We saw a rider coming very fast. When he rode in we all knew him. His name was George Shepord. His horse was all sweat and about winded.
Someone said, “Hello, George. What is the matter?” He set on his horse and didn’t say anything for about a minute—then he said, “I killed John Matt about two hours ago.”
John run a saloon at what was known at that time as Musselshell Crossing, a stage station.
George’s story was that him and Matt were playing poker single-handed that day and got into a dispute over a pot. George said Matt tried to steal a twenty dollar gold piece out of the pot. They got in an argument over it. They both had guns (all cowboys wore guns those days)—Matt reached for his gun but George beat him to it and killed him right there at the poker table.
George got on his horse and came to where we were and the boss notified the Sheriff. The boss knew George very well and liked him very much, so he took George to a big patch of brush down the river and hid him out until things got cleared up and the boss detailed one of the cowboys to carry food to him.
George was very desperate at first and would not agree to give himself up—so the sign agreed on between George and the other boy was that the cowboy was to whistle When he came near the brush patch. This boy told me afterwards he would begin whistling a mile before he got to the brush patch, and when he got there he would be so damn nervous he couldn’t whistle at all.
Finally the boss got George to give himself up and the fact that no one saw the shooting and George’s testimony was all there was, he got clear on the grounds of self-defense.
It’s a strange coincidence, but I worked with another fellow that killed a man the year before in Gold Butte, Montana, and he and George worked together for the RL outfit. His name was Frank McPartland—and they were both the quietest and mild-mannered men in the outfit. So as the old saying goes: “You can’t tell how far the frog can jump by looking at him.”
Frank and his partner were wintering in a cabin in Gold Butte and got into a fight over a gallon of whiskey they had—anyway that was what started the fight. Gold Butte was about two days’ ride to Fort Benton, which was the county seat and the nearest place to get in touch with an officer.
Frank stayed with the corpse and sent a neighbor after the sheriff and coroner. When they arrived they had to stay all night in the cabin and when it came time to go to bed there were only two bunks. Frank gave one to the sheriff and coroner. They asked him where he was going to sleep. He said with his partner. He said, “I slept with him when he was alive—I don’t see why I shouldn’t now.”
Frank was in jail for about a year and as Gold Butte was at that time an Indian reservation, he had to be tried in the Federal Court which was at Fort Keogh near Miles City.
He got free, too, from the fact nobody saw the killing but him.
When I worked for the RL outfit, we used to work along the Yellowstone River. There was one place where there was quite a little settlement of farmers. The place was known as Pease Bottom. We always camped a couple of days right on the edge of the Bottom.
My memory of it is the whole female population of the Bottom was two girls, a widow and a married lady.
Always the day before we made this camp the cowboys shined their spurs and bridles and put on clean shirts (if they had one) as they knew all the lady folks would be at the roundup and boy, what a show those forty or fifty cowboys would put on for those four or five ladies. If a cowboy’s horse didn’t buck, he would make him buck. If no cattle broke out of the roundup, some fellow would cut one out and take it around and around in front of the ladies. Of course, the ladies applauded us all—and we didn’t know who was the favorite but, of course, each one thought in his own mind he was the best.
Every year when we camped and worked the country close to Pease Bottom it was understood by everybody that we would have a dance at night in some one of the farmers’ houses, as the people in this little valley really enjoyed those events just as much as we did.
Our cook played the banjo and a mouth harp, both of which he always carried with him. He had a kind of a frame fixed around his head so he could play them both at once. He only played two or three tunes, such as “Turkey-in-the-Straw,” “Hell Among the Yearlings” (which was a cowboy title) and maybe a waltz or two, but those pieces answered the purpose for all dances.
We danced mostly quadrilles, I remember, and one time some stranger happened to be at one of those dances and he asked the cook to play some dance tune that he never heard of and it came near to causing a riot, as that was one thing the cook prided himself on—that he knew and could play any tune that anyone asked for, regardless of how difficult. So he played “Buffalo Girls,” or some other old-timer. The fellow said that it was not the tune he asked for and it started a hot argument right now. We all said the cook was right and the stranger didn’t know what he was talking about. Of course, we didn’t know anything about music, but we did know we had to stand by the cook, as he was the only musician we had. He wouldn’t stand for any criticism of his music and would quit playing and break up the dance.
In those days the foreman of an outfit wore better clothes and rode a better rig than the average cowboy and really was in a class by himself, so when we went to those dances he was usually more popular than the regular cowboy, and was often shown favors among the girls. In fact, we would have to take another fellow for a partner instead of a girl sometimes—the ladies was so scarce.
I recall what seems to me to be very amusing now. There was a school teacher at one of those Pease Bottom dances and she was a great favorite with everybody and every cowboy tried to pick her for a partner, if possible. The floor manager had called a dance with “Ladies’ Choice.” I heard that call and figured I was out for that dance—and took a big chew of tobacco—when to my surprise this little lady stepped up to me and asked me for that dance. Now I had no chance to get rid of that chew and rather than let this little queen know I chewed tobacco or lose that dance, I swallowed the whole works, tobacco juice and all.
It is hard to imagine the high regard and respect we had for those good women of that day, as we saw so few of them—and as I know good women appreciate those things, I believe they liked us and valued our friendship. Why I have known some old hard-faced cowpuncher that had a grouch about something and when one of those women would give him some little attention his face would soften up until you couldn’t tell it from the face of the Virgin Mary.