The man who hated himself

By Walt Coburn
A powerful story of the Montana cattle trails and the Great Blizzard of ’86
Every stockman in the northwest recalls the hard winter of ’86-’87. It broke most of them. One cattleman, spending his winter in the South, wrote back to his ranch to inquire how his stuff was wintering. His line rider took a pencil and drew the picture of a starving cow hung up in the drifts. Under it he wrote:
Waiting for a chinook. The last of the five thousand.
The man who drew that picture was Charlie Russell, the daddy of them all when it came to putting the cow and the horse and the Indian and the cowpuncher on canvas or in clay. But in ’86 Charlie was a cowpuncher.
This is not a story about Charlie Russell. He is mentioned no more in the tale. I speak of him here because when a cowman of Montana recalls the winter of ’86 he invariably mentions that picture of Charlie Russell’s as an illustration for his tale of hardship. It tells better than any words the bitter curse of that hard winter.
The Circle C outfit made their last shipment of steers along about the first of November that fall. It was spitting snow when they finished loading. The cattle train pulled out for Chicago. The boys rode back to where the roundup wagon was camped on Main Alkali. They gulped down hot food and black coffee, caught out their town horses and headed for Malta.
As they jogged along the road with their ears tied up with silk handkerchiefs, heads bent against the raw wind, big Buck Bell rode up alongside the wagon boss.
“Winter’s done come, Horace,” grunted Buck, fashioning a cigaret with numbing fingers.
“Shore has,” returned Horace, humped across his saddle horn.
“Makes a man wonder what’s become of his summer’s wages,” Buck led up to his subject.
Horace nodded a trifle absently. He was wondering how he’d get his mess wagon loaded and started for the ranch before the cook got too drunk to handle his four lines.