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 year............