Fred Reid was one of the old time deer and elk hunters in the early days of Montana. He told me the first bear he ever killed when he was a young boy, that he was so scared he didn’t go near it after he shot it until he saw some flies flying around its mouth. He said, he knew then it was dead.

Fred hunted for the market and said he often followed elk all day on foot until they got tired, then he would make the kill.

After his hunting days were over, Fred went to work as a cowboy and took charge of quite a big outfit. The man wanted a new range and sent Fred out to locate one. Fred found what he wanted and moved the outfit to the Judith Basin. Then he located his headquarters down in the Badlands of the Missouri River. It was surely a tough country, to get in and out of—had to pack in everything on pack horses.

I asked Fred one time why he picked out such an ungodly country. He said he wanted to be alone where nobody would bother him and he sure found the ideal place for that.

During the winter of 1891 he hired me to go there and ride what he said was some half-broke horses—about twenty head. He wanted them for the Spring roundup so he could use them to work cattle. Those horses were like Fred—plenty tough. I don’t know how he got so many mean ones in one bunch.

I never saw so many mean horses—they would buck, strike, kick, bite, or run away. Shortly after I went to work for Fred, very cold weather set in and I sure had a tough time with those horses. There was snow and ice everywhere and it was hard enough for a gentle horse to stand up. These broncs didn’t care whether they stood up or not when they made up their minds to buck or run away. The camp was on a ridge with very rough gulches and canyons on both sides. The ridge averaged about a mile wide and a good many miles long, and when I would get one of them lined out on this ridge I would sure speed him up and didn’t give him any time to think of his tricks. I had to dress pretty heavy in that cold weather and a lot of clothes on don’t go very good with riding broncs. But the worst trouble of all was, I would get two or three of them going fairly good and the weather would turn so cold I couldn’t ride at all, sometimes for a week and those horses would get bronco again and I would have all my work to do over again. I rode most of them with draw reins and I could always double or pile them up in a snow bank before they would get to a cut bank or a gulch, but one day I was out riding one without draw reins and the horse stampeded heading for a cut bank. If one went over it he would land in the Missouri River. I couldn’t stop him and that bank looked to be a million feet straight up and down, so when I saw I couldn’t stop him I quit him and that’s a hard thing to do when a horse is running away. I just let all holts go and fell off but he didn’t go over the bank as soon as I quit him. He turned and went to camp which was about four miles that I had to walk.

One morning one of those horses bucked pretty hard. Fred was there and saw it. He said, “I saw a lot of daylight between you and that saddle. Looked to me like you was about gone.” I told him, “Oh no, that’s the way I ride, kind of loose.” I don’t know if he believed it or not but the fact was I was just about thrown off.

The headquarters consisted of a dugout for a home, no floor in it and a couple of bunks made out of cottonwood poles, and a corral. We melted snow to make coffee and cook with as the water hole was frozen and about all we had to eat was sour dough bread and black coffee. O............