The boss sure was mad about it at the time, but had a big laugh over it afterwards.
We were six weeks making that trip, and I was a fairly good freighter by that time, but it wasn’t a very good job for a cowboy, as I had to walk too much.
CHAPTER IV
WITH THE RL OUTFIT
In the spring of 1887 I went to work for the “RL” outfit located on the Musselshell River in Montana. The outfit belonged to the Ryan Brothers of Kansas City. They run about 25,000 head of cattle, and run three wagons and worked about 20 men to each wagon, and had about 500 head of saddle horses.
That year they had a contract with the government to supply the Sioux Indians with 5,000 beef cattle. We gathered the first herd of 2,500 and trailed them to landing Rock Agency on the Missouri River in North Dakota. We were about four months on the trail and I don’t remember of seeing one wire fence or farming ranch on the trip.
We swam those cattle across the Yellowstone River east of Miles City. We were four days trying to get those cattle across. It was in the month of June and at the time of high water—the river was bank full and at least a quarter of a mile wide. We tried every way anybody had ever heard of to get those cattle to take that water. We would bring them to the river every day and fight them all day, but it was no go. We would then drive them back from the river and night herd them and try again the next day. Finally we decided to hold them off water for twenty-four hours, and then drove them all into the river at once. It worked. It was sure some sight, the 2,500 head all swimming at once.
We had a wonderful trip after that. We only moved them about eight or ten miles a day and with plenty grass and water they got very fat. It was the custom them days to butcher a calf on anybody’s range, so we had plenty good meat.
When we arrived at the end of our journey, we had to herd those cattle for about three months, as we only delivered 250 head a week. We held them about twenty miles from the Agency, and each week we cut out the fattest ones and took them to the Agency. After we had been there about a week all the cowboys quit and went back to Montana, which only left the boss, the cook and myself with 2,500 cattle to hold, and as there was no white men in that part of the country, the boss had to hire some Indians to help hold the cattle. Those Indians could not understand one word of English and we couldn’t talk much Indian, so we were in a pretty bad fix.
Our horses didn’t like the smell of the Indian, and they persisted in getting on on the right-hand side, and, of course, our horses objected to that. They all wore moccasins and they would put their foot so far through the stirrup when a horse got scared when they were getting on and they would fall down and their foot would hang in the stirrup, so the boss and myself put in most of our time catching loose horses.
One day a steamboat came up the Missouri River and it blowed the whistle. Now those cattle had never heard a steamboat whistle before. They were scattered over an area of about four miles feeding. It sure scared them. They first run together all in one bunch, and we might have checked them but those Indians got excited and scared them worse than ever. One Indian was running his horse pretty close to the lead of the cattle and giving war whoops, and his horse fell down and throwed him right in among the cattle. I sure thought he was killed and hoped he was, but he never got a scratch. After we got the cattle stopped, he made signs that he enjoyed it very much, as it reminded him of hunting buffalo.