George got on his horse and came to where we were and the boss notified the Sheriff. The boss knew George very well and liked him very much, so he took George to a big patch of brush down the river and hid him out until things got cleared up and the boss detailed one of the cowboys to carry food to him.
George was very desperate at first and would not agree to give himself up—so the sign agreed on between George and the other boy was that the cowboy was to whistle When he came near the brush patch. This boy told me afterwards he would begin whistling a mile before he got to the brush patch, and when he got there he would be so damn nervous he couldn’t whistle at all.
Finally the boss got George to give himself up and the fact that no one saw the shooting and George’s testimony was all there was, he got clear on the grounds of self-defense.
It’s a strange coincidence, but I worked with another fellow that killed a man the year before in Gold Butte, Montana, and he and George worked together for the RL outfit. His name was Frank McPartland—and they were both the quietest and mild-mannered men in the outfit. So as the old saying goes: “You can’t tell how far the frog can jump by looking at him.”
Frank and his partner were wintering in a cabin in Gold Butte and got into a fight over a gallon of whiskey they had—anyway that was what started the fight. Gold Butte was about two days’ ride to Fort Benton, which was the county seat and the nearest place to get in touch with an officer.
Frank stayed with the corpse and sent a neighbor after the sheriff and coroner. When they arrived they had to stay all night in the cabin and when it came time to go to bed there were only two bunks. Frank gave one to the sheriff and coroner. They asked him where he was going to sleep. He said with his partner. He said, “I slept with him when he was alive—I don’t see why I shouldn’t now.”
Frank was in jail for about a year and as Gold Butte was at that time an Indian reservation, he had to be tried in the Federal Court which was at Fort Keogh near Miles City.
He got free, too, from the fact nobody saw the killing but him.
When I worked for the RL outfit, we used to work along the Yellowstone River. There was one place where there was quite a little settlement of farmers. The place was known as Pease Bottom. We always camped a couple of days right on the edge of the Bottom.
My memory of it is the whole female population of the Bottom was two girls, a widow and a married lady.