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 years i knew charlie, i never knew him to go to church (although i know he was a real christian at heart) but there was an old time preacher, a methodist by name van orsdell. he preached in cow camps, school houses or anywhere that he could get even a few people.
brother van told me when he graduated from the ministry he came up the missouri river on a steam boat to fort benton. he had a very good voice. he said he sang hymns to pay his fare. that must have been in the early 1870’s. when i knew him first, he used to ride horseback through the country and hold services, and he was sure loved by everybody. i listened to one of his sermons in the cow country and there was quite a sprinkling of cattle rustlers in that locality and i remember in his talk he told us if we would do as god wanted us to do we wouldn’t need a fast horse and a long rope.
he told us he overtook a bull whacker (a freighter) pulling a big hill out of fort benton one time. brother van was riding a horse and he followed along behind this fellow and the language he used for those cattle was sure strong. he said the fellow called each steer by some religious name with an oath after it, such as methodist, baptist, presbyterian, and so forth.
when the bull whacker got to the top of the hill, brother van asked him what was the idea of giving those cattle such religious names. the man said, “it’s appropriate. for instance, there is old methodist—when i unyoke him he walks out a little distance and paws on the ground, gets down on his knees and balls and bellers just like a methodist preacher. then there is that old steer i call baptist. if there’s a water hole anywhere, he will find it and get into it and throw water all over himself—and old bishop there, he leads all the other steers.” he had a religious name appropriate for each steer. brother van got a kick out of that.
brother van was a very devout methodist and one time he and charlie were discussing religion, charlie said he didn’t believe in so many branches of religion and said he thought the people should have a general roundup and make them all one. brother van said, “that’s a fine idea, charlie, and make it methodist.”
one time at malta, montana, when we were shipping cattle, a cowboy got killed. he was riding a young horse and the train came by and this horse got scared and run away with this boy. it ran into a wire fence and hit the wires just high enough on his legs to cause him to turn a somersault and land squarely on top of the boy and broke his neck. brother van preached a sermon over that boy’s body. when i look back at it now, it seems to me the boy’s body was laid out in an old store and i think there were about twenty cowboys with their chaps and spurs on and the old time cowboy was a rather queer kind of a mixture of human nature. sometimes he drank whiskey to celebrate and have a good time; other times he drank when he was blue. i guess to try to raise his spirits. anyway, this morning quite a number of them had taken on quite a load of the old joy juice. when the sermon started, brother van preached a very forceful sermon and the tears rolled down his old cheeks like rain drops and in looking around after that sermon was over there were very few dry faces among that tough old bunch of waddies and they were all as sober as if they never had a drink.
speaking of batching, some people of this day may not know what it means. but for us cowboys it meant this: four or five of us would get together in the fall of the year and get a cabin in some little town, buy some groceries and go into winter quarters, and everybody cooked according to his liking and if anybody didn’t like the way one fellow cooked he could cook to suit himself.
i remember one winter a bunch of us batched together and there was a great variety of tastes. one fellow loved maple syrup and lived mostly on that and a little bread ... but mostly syrup. another old-timer wanted to put bacon in everything he cooked. he said it gave the cooking “tone” (he meant flavor). he spoiled most of his cooking for the rest of us. i believe if he would try to make a cake he would have put bacon in it. i liked hard-boiled potatoes; nobody else did, so that was my specialty. charlie russell was the coffee and hot cake man. we all agreed he had no equal in those two things.
one time we had a christmas dinner and in some way got a chicken (i don’t want to remember how we got it) and we held council as to how it would be cooked and, of course, the old-timer came forward at once with his bacon idea. but we told him the chicken was old and tough and we would have to boil it. that didn’t make any difference to him, as he said any way a chicken was cooked it had to have bacon in it to be good and to give it tone. anyway he won out and the bacon was put in. really i think there was more bacon than chicken.
charlie russell volunteered to make some dumplings, which sounded good to everybody, but for some reason unknown to all of us, the dumplings turned to gravy and we had to eat them like soup with a spoon. charlie himself didn’t boast about those dumplings but his alibi was bill’s bacon ruined the whole mixture. i don’t know as to the truth of that statement as i never knew charlie to make dumplings again.
one time i was in great falls, charlie was circulating a petition to get an old-time cowboy out of the penitentiary. he had been sent up for rustling cattle and had served about four years. charlie asked me to go with him on his rounds, and i did.
we called on people for several days and there was not a man or woman turned us down, until we met one of the wealthiest men in great falls. he read the petition and handed it back and said, “he can rot in the pen as far as i am concerned.” then he began to criticize charlie for circulating the petition. there was where he made a mistake and the things he told him must have cut pretty deep into his feelings.
charlie said, “if you don’t want to sign the petition, that’s your business, but don’t you roast me. i knew this man. he was once my friend. i don’t approve of what he done, but he has a wife and two children praying for his release and he has been punished enough already.” then he looked him in the eye and said, “you know, jim, if we all got our just dues, there would be a big bunch of us in the pen with bill.” i thought i could see the old boy’s whiskers tremble because he knew what charlie meant.
i have never forgotten what charlie said when we left this fellow. he said justice was the hardest, cruel word that ever was written. he said if all the people that were crying for real justice got it, they would think they were terribly abused and would not want it and would find out they wanted a little mercy instead.
while charlie and i were partners, he got an attack of appendicitis and someone told him to stand on his head and walk on his hands and knees and it would cure him. he said he tried that cure until his head and knees were so sore he couldn’t perform anymore.
so he finally made an appointment with the doctor for an operation.
the morning he went to the hospital his wife, nancy, was with him. when they dressed him for the operating table (he called it putting a set of harness on him) nancy was very much frightened and looked like she might break down under the strain. so to quiet her, he began to tell her how simple the operation was and that he didn’t mind it at all and started to roll a cigarette, but his hands got to shaking so bad the tobacco all fell out of the paper and, of course, nancy noticed that and it really made matters worse than if he had said nothing.
after he had gotten over the operation, he had some very severe pains. one day when the doctor came to see him charlie asked him if he had lost any of his tools. when the doctor asked why he thought so, he said he was sure he had some of them sewed up inside of him.
there was an old doctor in great falls told charlie and me a rather amusing experience he had about that time.
there was a fellow came through the country and camped in several places around great falls and one day he murdered a whole family and throwed them in the river. the officers finally arrested him and had him in jail awaiting trial. during that time he killed himself and he was buried in the paupers’ graveyard.
this doctor told us he had a great curiosity to know what a human brain and head was like that would kill those people without any known motive. for some reason, doc could not get the body and as he didn’t like the idea of prowling around the graveyard at night, he chose one cold, rainy morning to go out and dig this fellow up. it took him quite awhile to get him out of the ground, and as he had just a small buggy to carry him in, he had to break the coffin open and put him in a gunny sack.
doc said while he was working on the corpse the sun came out and the weather cleared and he thought everybody in great falls went for a ride or walk. there was people all around him and looking at him rather queer, and he was afraid he would be arrested for a grave robber, but he finally got to town without anybody seeing what he had.
doc’s entrance to his office was on main street, and no other way to get in. so he drove into an alley back of his place. there was a jew running a pawn shop there facing onto a side street. so doc took his sack with the corpse and went in the back way of the jew’s store and dropped it in his woodshed, and went into the front where the proprietor was standing behind his counter.
doc slipped up to the counter and whispered, “sol, i left a stiff in your shed back there. i will get him when it gets dark.” he said the jew’s eyes began to grow large and said, “vat’s a stiff?” doc said, “a dead man.” the jew began to scream and was attracting people on the street. he said, “my god, my god, take him out of here! i will be arrested for murder!” doc whispered to him to hush, but he hollered still louder, so doc picked up his sack, put it on his shoulder and walked up the main street into his office. he told us he was sure relieved when he got that corpse in his back room.
he had the skull on his desk when he told us the story and said whenever he looked at it, it reminded him of one of the most strenuous days of his life.
while i was working for the dhs outfit, i think it was in 1896, i got a letter from charlie russell telling me he was married. he said the gospel wrangler had caught him and necked him. the word “necking” didn’t mean then what it does now. we would sometimes have a wild horse that we couldn’t hold in the bunch and every chance he got he would run away and we would lose him. so it was the horse wrangler’s job to catch this horse and with a short piece of rope tie him to a gentle horse, and the old horse would lead him wherever he went. he had to eat and sleep and go where the gentle horse went.
so charlie said he was necked and didn’t think he would get away for awhile, and gave me a pressing invitation to come and see him, and i wrote him the day i would be there and the train i would be on.
but something happened and i was a day late. charlie met me at the train. after we had visited for a little while several other boys joined us and we were enjoying our general talk. charlie turned to me and said, “what happened you didn’t come yesterday?” he said, “when the train arrived i was at the depot and looked on the blind baggage car, on top of the train and down under the cars and the brake rods.” the conductor knew charlie and said, “what are you looking for, russ?” charlie said, “i told him i had a letter from a friend of mine that he would be on this train and i come to meet him.”
that was the first time i knew he knew i had got out of that box car several years before in cascade.
i recall one time i was breaking horses close to the town of cascade, montana. i would ride a colt into town nearly every day.
a blacksmith and a barber got heckling each other about riding broncs. the blacksmith bet the barber four dollars he would ride the first horse that i rode to town. charlie russell was stake holder.
i didn’t know anything about this bet until i had come to town and both parties tried to find out the merits of the horse—whether he would buck or not, and as i knew the stake money was going to be spent for drinks, i told each one a different story—the blacksmith he wouldn’t buck, the barber he would, so as to be sure to have the bet go as the blacksmith was a little scared, but he was a big, powerful young man and the horse was rather small, he took a chance.
the bet was he had to ride the horse to the livery stable and back, which was about two blocks.
he got on. with a death-grip, with the reins in one hand and the other on the saddle horn, he started and was getting along fine—going slow—when a stock man by name h. h. nelson started by him going home. he had a big canvas overcoat on and could not resist the temptation to shake his coat as he rode by the bronc—and down went the bronc’s head. i think the first jump the saddle horn hit the blacksmith in the eye, and the next jump he was on the ground. somebody caught the horse and helped the blacksmith up.
he said, “that is all right. i have lost this bet, but i will make another one—i will whip nelson the first time he comes to town.”
we sure had a great time spending that eight dollars and i think everybody else spent all they had besides.
we named that “a quiet day in cascade,” and charlie drew a picture of it, with chickens and dogs and everything running in all directions and some old man with a cane trying to get out of the way.
i remember a very amusing incident on a roundup. we had been out on the range for about three months, and nobody had shaved. we came into a little town (a shipping point) and when we had got the cattle all loaded on the train, we found out there was a barber shop in town, so we all patronized it, but there was one stingy old fellow in the outfit that wouldn’t spend a quarter to get shaved, so when we got started back on the range, he felt out of place, as we were all shaved and slicked up. he asked if there was anyone in the outfit that could shave him. i told him i could. now i had never shaved a man in my life, the cook had an old razor in the mess box, and god knows when it had been sharpened, (we had no safety razors those days). i started in on him, of course his beard was full of sand and dust, and i used cold water and lye soap to make the lather. when i got to working on him, the blood followed the razor wherever i touched him. we didn’t have any mirror so he couldn’t see himself bleed. the boys would ask him occasionally how he was getting along, he said the razor pulled a little but con was doing fine. charlie russell was laying on his belly looking at the performance, and he laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. when i got through with him he looked like he had broke out with the small pox. he picked scabs off his face for several days, he didn’t complain, but he never asked me to shave him again. nobody felt sorry for him because he never was known to buy a drink, and he had three thousand dollars in the bank, which was a big fortune to a cowboy.
