in 1892 i went to wyoming and broke horses there for a couple of years. then i heard of the cripple creek gold stampede in colorado. i sold my rig and went to cripple creek and it looked like everybody in the world went there. there was two railroads in there and every passenger coach would be loaded with people. the roads were lined with people of every description—some walking, some riding donkeys and some with wagons.
about every other house there was a saloon and gambling house. of course, there wasn’t work for everybody and lots of them were broke when they landed there—that was in the month of november and shortly after the weather turned bitter cold. i have seen men lay down on the floor to sleep in those saloons which kept open day and night, and when the house man started to clean up in the morning he would find dead men under the tables and on benches. the altitude was very high. those people had no place to sleep—and nearly all of them contracted mountain fever and that went into pneumonia and they would sometimes die in a few hours after taking sick.
new year’s night in 1894 was sure a wild night in cripple creek. every man that filed on a mining claim prior to that time had to have one hundred dollars’ worth of work done in order to hold it by law and, of course, there was the usual contention when people are crazy for gold, some claiming the required amount of work was not done—and others claiming they had fulfilled the requirements of the law. the results were that every man owning a claim was on his ground at midnight with a gun to protect what he thought was his property.
i was in a good spot that night to get a view of the big mountain around cripple creek, and the lanterns moving around from claim to claim looked like a bunch of stars. there was reported nine men killed that night over claims and i didn’t hear of one arrest.
i had a little money when i landed in cripple creek but soon lost it all gambling and then took down with mountain fever. an old prospector took me into his cabin and he took sick, too. we were both broke and had nothing to eat but a half sack of potatoes, but had plenty of wood and kept warm. we took turns, when one was a little better than the other, going out and gathering mountain sage and making tea out of it—and i am sure it saved our lives, as it broke the fever. when i got a little better i made a little money to buy food, gathering that sage and selling it to sick people.
when i got a little stronger i got twenty dollars for digging an assessment hole on a fellow’s claim, so i got in a poker game with that and won about a hundred dollars. i will never forget that night. people were being help up every night—sometimes hit on the head—sometimes killed, and the amount of money didn’t mean anything, as some of them birds would hold you up for five dollars.
this night when i had won that money quite a crowd gathered around me in the gambling house. i didn’t know any of them but bought a drink for everybody and thought i would slip away. there was one big tough-looking guy persisted in shaking hands with me and gave me some kind of a sign that i did not understand, so i was rather nervous when i got out of there.
i had to walk about a mile to my cabin following an old mining ditch. i had got about half way home when i saw a man’s head raise up out of the ditch just in front of me. that sure scared me. i turned the other way, back towards town. the farther i went the more scared i was ... and the faster i ran. i think even if a jack rabbit had seen me he would have admired my speed, and i didn’t stop until i got into town where there was light. i could not get a room in town, so sat in a chair all night in one of the gambling houses. i kept my hand on that hundred dollars and sweat with fear.
a few nights afterwards i was going home late. i had to go by a lot of wagons—a freighting outfit. just as i got opposite the wagons i saw a man in the dark coming towards me. i had a gun that night so i got it in my hand and backed up against one of the wagons. this fellow came up about twenty feet from me and stopped—neither of us spoke for several minutes (but seemed to me to be an hour)—finally he said, “hey, there.” i said, “hello.” he said, “what are you doing here?” i thought quick and said, “i am working for the man that owns this outfit,” and said to him also, “who are you?” he said, “i am the night marshal.” i believe i would have kissed him if he had been close to me because i sure had him sized up as a hold-up.
i stayed around there a few days longer and hung onto the hundred dollars, but decided it was no place for a moneyed man, so took the train for denver and lived quite respectable for awhile until i was pretty near broke and started for montana. i rode box cars the most of the way and saved my little money to eat on.
when i got to helena i heard charlie russell was in cascade and as i was badly in need of money, i headed for there and found him batching in a cabin with plenty grub—and he sure looked good to me.
after my experience in cripple creek i decided that i belonged back on the range among the cows, and wrote to the foreman of the dhs outfit at shelby, montana, for a job. i had known him several years before and he told me to come on, he would give me work. so after being outfitted by charlie, which meant everything a cowboy needed, including some money, i went to shelby.
i worked for the dhs outfit the first time in 1889 for only one season. they were one of the pioneer cow outfits of montana and was owned by granville stuart and reese anderson, and were located near fort maginnis and ranged on flat willow country in the year of 1887. they moved all their cattle north of the missouri river on what was known as the little rocky range. they swam this big herd across the missouri river at an old steamboat landing called rocky point.
the cowboys had a dance while i was in shelby that i believe there is a record of in the files of some of the old newspapers of that day.
there was an opera troupe on their way to spokane, washington. for some reason they were sidetracked at shelby and as they were from new york, some of the ladies had never seen a cowboy, so they said (i guess they thought cowboys eat grass and were only half human). anyway, some of them left the train and went to the hotel where the dance was going on and mingled with the crowd and as those cowboys were very easy for a lady to get acquainted with and as there was considerable liquor consumed, the dance was a great success and the ladies found the boys much nicer than they had anticipated and invited some of them over to their train.
now the male population of the troupe did not take to the cowboys too well and finally ordered them out of the car which, of course, insulted the boys and a fight started. but some of these fellows in the troupe were good boxers and the cowboys didn’t have a chance in a fist fight, so they brought their guns into the play. they didn’t shoot anyone but made the car very smoky, and the troupe quit the car and most of them scattered out in the sagebrush, shelby being a little cow town on the great northern railroad.
it seems that the worst thing that happened was one of the cowboys shot a lantern out of a brakeman’s hand. so in a few days there was railroad officials around there, thick as flies, but they couldn’t get any information and there wasn’t a cowboy in fifty miles of shelby. the railroad sent several detectives there at different times but the population of the town was all in sympathy with the cowboys and nobody knew any cowboy’s name that attended the dance. so they could not get any evidence and didn’t know where to find anyone to arrest, and had to drop the matter.
my old boss was one of the leaders in that mix-up and he, of course, made a couple of days ride away from shelby. it happened he stayed a few days in a locality where there was considerable stock rustling going on and he didn’t go to that part of the country very often, so his presence there created quite a commotion and fear among those fellows living there, as they thought he was after them. but the old man was simply dodging the railroad officials and was more frightened than they were.
at that time the dhs ran two outfits—one at shelby and one at malta on milk river about two hundred miles apart. those big outfits in the course of a few years all accumulated quite a few spoiled horses for different reasons, sometimes from bad breaking and sometimes on account of putting strange riders on them so often, sometimes from getting away when they were half broke, and maybe not finding them for a year. they would then be harder to handle than a green bronc and would buck a few riders off. they would get pretty tough and the average cowboy could not ride them. so the boss would hire a bronc fighter to ride the rough string. a strange thing about it was that most of those kind of horses were the best ones in the bunch when they were thoroughly broke.
the dhs had accumulated about twenty head of those kind of horses. so the boss sent me to malta to ride some of those horses. they also hired another fellow to help me. the only name i ever knew for him was “red neck davis” and he was a good bronc fighter.
the outfit was getting ready to go on the spring roundup and we went to their horse ranch on milk river and gathered all the saddle horses—maybe two hundred head—and there was quite a lot of those horses needed touching up before we went to work on the roundup. the first day red neck and i caught two of the worst horses in the outfit. the boss had put two men to help us and herd for us (they are called pick-up men nowadays).
one of the cowboys had put his bedding out to air that day and had a nice woolen blanket laid on a pile of poles on the ground. when i mounted my first horse, he went up in the air and landed right in the middle of that blanket, and the poles being hard all four of his feet went through it. i believe the blanket belonged to the fellow that was herding for me, so i laid the blame on him.
shortly after red neck mounted his horse, a big buckskin. he had quite an old man herding for him and rather cranky. he caught the best horse in his string that morning, one he was sure was gentle so he could pick up red’s horse if he stampeded. as soon as red hit the saddle the buckskin went in the air and let a roar out of him like a lion, which scared the old man’s horse and he stampeded. we were only about fifty feet from milk river and it was time of high water, and into it he went and swam across. the old man was sure wet and mad, and cussed the whole outfit—horses and men—and said he wouldn’t have any more to do with such a damn wild west outfit.
that year—i believe it was 1896—our outfit was cleaning up their malta range on milk river with the view of closing out their holdings in that part of the country. a fellow named tom daly and i worked with all the different outfits owning cattle in that part of the country. we were representing the dhs brand and all cattle we gathered we shipped to chicago. we had orders to clean the range of our cattle the best we could, as they had missed several steers from year to year. we found steers 12 to 13 years old and some of them were sure wild and hard to gather and bring to the railroad for shipment.
it was quite comical and interesting to outsmart some of these old renegades. we usually found them in the roughest country. they would try to hide when they saw you, and when you got too close to them they would fight and as most of them had bad horns if you crowded one of them in a rough place he could easily kill your horse.
the outfit had a big old steer that had made his home in the missouri river badlands for several years, which was pretty rough and when the cowboys would find him with other cattle and he got a glimpse of the riders he would quit the bunch. as he was plenty fast, he would get somewhere and hide, and as the outfits only worked this part of the country about once a year on account of not many cattle ranged there, this old steer had gotten by for several years without being brought out and shipped.
i was repping with a wagon that worked that part of the country this time that i write about and we knew the day that we would camp and ride the locality that he was ranging in and several of the boys knew this steer, as he had gotten away from them at different times before. they were joking me about him several days before we got to this place and called him “con’s steer,” and made me a small bet i wouldn’t get him.
we camped the chuck and bed wagon on a nice level spot of about 200 acres, just on the edge of the badlands, and rode from there to the river, which was about 20 miles. coming back we found him in a long canyon that led out to the camp and the rodeo ground. we put riders on both sides of the canyon on top of the ridges and some stayed behind. we had about 200 head of cattle, so we just drifted the band along slow. i told everyone to keep as far away from this old steer as possible so he wouldn’t break or get on the fight. when we got out to the roundup ground, some of the other boys had gotten in off their ride and had found quite a lot of cattle. we had about a thousand head in all. we bunched all the cattle together as easy as we could so as not to give this old fellow any excuse to break.
now we had to cut out the cows and calves (to brand the calves) and also cut out the beef steers to ship, and turn the rest loose, and we knew as soon as anyone went to riding among those cattle this steer would break for the badlands and we would lose him. he was going through the bunch ringing his tail and hooking everything that came in his way, as he was getting suspicious that everything wasn’t just right.
so we left about ten men to hold the cattle. the rest of us went to camp to catch fresh horses to work the cattle and cut out what we wanted.
i had a little spanish horse in my string, didn’t weigh over 900 pounds, built kind of squatty and close to the ground, about 15 years old, but he knew more about working cattle than lots of men. i caught him. we went back to the roundup and started to work. i stayed on the outside of the bunch with my eye on this old bird. the boys had gotten out about 50 head when someone got too close to this old steer, and here he comes as fast as he could run, headed for the badlands! i had a big grass rope about 40 feet long and had one end tied hard and fast to the saddle horn and when he came out of the bunch my little horse was watching him and went right along with him. i run him about 50 yards. he was going down a hill. i dropped my loop over his pretty horns and let him jump over the slack with his front feet, and turned my horse the other way as fast as he could run. when that rope tightened that steer went about 10 feet high and hit the ground with his head doubled under his body. one of his pretty horns was broken off right close to his head and he was bleeding badly, and he was bawling like a calf—where otherwise he would only snort when you got in his way.
i didn’t know it at the time, but the boys that i had made the bet with had framed on me—and it was understood among them that nobody was to help me—just to have a joke on me if the steer got away.
so after a few minutes, when nobody came to help me, i let him up with the rope still on him. the fall had taken most of the sap out of him. he made a kind of a weak attempt to get to my horse, so i busted him again. the next time he got up i led him back to the roundup and into the bunch where i wanted him, throwed him down, took the rope off, and he never made a break to get away. we took him to the railroad and shipped him to chicago. he was a rather funny looking old fellow with one of his long pretty horns gone and blood dried all over his face. i don’t think he made very good eating but i tallied him: “one beef steer shipped to chicago.”
in the year of 1897 the circle diamond outfit turned loose 5,000 head of arizona yearlings on their range on milk river in montana and instead of settling down and locating there they kept on going north until the outfit heard of some of them 200 miles up in canada.
so they sent an outfit of about 20 men with horses and bed and chuckwagon to bring them back and try to locate them on their own range.
the dhs outfit sent me with them, thinking some of their cattle had drifted with the arizona’s.
the country was all open—north, south, east and west—for miles (i don’t know how far) and no ranches after we crossed the canadian border. we didn’t know any particular place to go to find those cattle, so we just wandered around for days, first one direction, then another. after we got as far north as moose jaw, which is well north in canada, we began to see some signs of cattle, and would pick up a few each day. and those cattle hadn’t seen anybody for four or five months and were plenty wild and, of course, we had to nightherd those cattle every night. and badger holes were so thick in that country you could almost compare them to a saltcellar—and the grass was thick and tall so a horse or man couldn’t see the holes. somebody would get a fall every day and night.
one morning we were making a circle, looking for cattle, and we saw two animals standing on a butte. we got close to them—could tell they were two head of cattle—and away they went like a couple of antelope. we finally got ahead of them and got them stopped. they ran around in a circle for awhile, just like they might be tied together. one wouldn’t get no distance away from the other. when we got them to the roundup and could get a good look at the brands, we found they both belonged to the dhs outfit, and we knew from the arizona brand on them and the year the outfit bought them as yearlings that they were 13 years old. they were pals and had ranged in that part of the country for several years alone, as we did not find any sign of cattle anywhere within several miles of them.
it was quite a problem to get those two old fellows to the railroad. they were easy to hold in the daytime but at night it took all of one man’s time to watch them two. we would bed the herd down at night and those two would lay down in about the middle of the bunch—and sometimes they would lay ten minutes when they would come slipping through the herd, heading back the way they came from. they wouldn’t make any noise and reminded one of two big cats trying to steal away. when they got to the edge of the herd, the man watching them would holler at them—they would shake their heads and go right back into the herd and lay down for a short time and then try again, and would keep that up all night. we finally got them to the railroad and shipped them to chicago.
the man that had charge of that circle diamond wagon, or that part of the outfit that year was win cooper. he came from jack county, texas, and was a wonderful cowboy. he used to carry a 45 colts six-shooter and had the trigger filed so it wouldn’t stand cocked, but fanned the hammer with his thumb. he told me the reason he had his gun fixed that way was for quick action. he could fill the chamber with bullets and start a tomato can rolling and keep it going until his gun was empty. he used to tell me about the gun fights they had in texas a long time ago ... and i think he sometimes got lonesome for those old feuds and would like to go back and have a little excitement.
as i remember, tom green county, texas, and jack county were enemies and had a lasting grudge at each other. win said the reason for that was jack county had the better men and always beat the tom green county men in a fight.
win didn’t have any education and couldn’t read or write—and when he paid a man his wages he had to send him to the superintendent and tell him how long the man worked.
this year i am writing about was election year in valley county, montana, and the circle diamond ranch was supporting a man by the name of kyle for sheriff. they had put up a black flag with white letters which read: “vote for kyle for sheriff.” now win had been up in canada with his outfit for about six weeks looking for those cattle that had drifted north and hadn’t had any news as to the happenings around home. so when he had got the cattle back on their range and turned them loose, he started for the home ranch with his outfit, but he started several hours ahead of the men, horses and chuckwagon—they were to follow. but when win got close to the ranch and saw that black flag (and he couldn’t read) he got scared and turned back and stopped the outfit and said it wasn’t safe to take the outfit home, as he thought that some sort of an epidemic had broke out and the ranch was under quarantine. so he sent a man to town to find out what was the matter.
i worked with several of those old-time gunfighters from texas and some that had left wyoming during the johnson county war between cattlemen and rustlers, and found most of them pretty decent fellows. some of them were under assumed names and it seemed to bother them to have to carry that load—and usually when they did talk and tell me about their trouble most of them were victims of circumstances.
