The old time Indians claimed Sitting Bull was not the great warrior that he got credit for and that he did not plan the massacre of General Custer and that Rain in the Face was the great man in that battle.
Every time those steers were shot down in the corral, before any beef was divided, Rain in the Face made a speech—I don’t know what it was about, but the roar of applause was terrific.
That fall when we got the beef all delivered, we took the saddle horses to Mandan, North Dakota, on the Northern Pacific Railroad and shipped them back to Montana.
The cowboys went by passenger train. Those cowboys had been on the Indian reservation all summer and could not get any refreshments, and as they had all their wages they made Mandan a lively town for a Hay and a night. There was about twenty of them, and it was some job getting them cowboys loaded on that train, and after we got started it took the train crew all their time to keep them straight.
Them days they heated the chair cars with a coal heating stove. One old cowboy got a raw steak out of the diner, and before the conductor knew it he was cooking it on top of the stove and the car was full of smoke. The conductor took it away from him and throwed it out of the car and gave the old man hell. The old man was very mad and told the conductor he didn’t know nothing, as that was the proper way to cook a steak.
Another fellow bought a suit of clothes in Mandan and decided to change clothes in the parlor car. He got into quite a dispute with the train crew, but finally got his new suit on. He said they were too damn particular about riding on trains.
We were all at the RL ranch one afternoon ready to start on the spring roundup next morning. We saw a rider coming very fast. When he rode in we all knew him. His name was George Shepord. His horse was all sweat and about winded.
Someone said, “Hello, George. What is the matter?” He set on his horse and didn’t say anything for about a minute—then he said, “I killed John Matt about two hours ago.”
John run a saloon at what was known at that time as Musselshell Crossing, a stage station.
George’s story was that him and Matt were playing poker single-handed that day and got into a dispute over a pot. George said Matt tried to steal a twenty dollar gold piece out of the pot. They got in an argument over it. They both had guns (all cowboys wore guns those days)—Matt reached for his gun but George beat him to it and killed him right there at the poker table.