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............