When I was young I never stayed anywhere very long. If I didn’t get fired, I would quit and in the winter time I liked to live in town, so when spring came and time to go to work, I was always broke. No saddle, no boots, no nothing. If possible I would hunt Charlie Russell up for help. I used to think up a pretty good hard luck tale to tell him. But before I got started he would laugh and say, “What do you need now?” Charlie didn’t always have money either, but had good credit and could always get anything he wanted. Indians, cowboys, gamblers, everybody borrowed off Charlie and I don’t know if they all paid him back or not—if they didn’t Charlie would never tell it to anyone.
I have often wondered if horses go crazy like humans. The reason I say this is that while I was breaking horses for the TL outfit, they had a fine imported stallion—paid three thousand dollars for him. They had an old man taking care of him. His name was Cayouse George. He knew stallions thoroughly, had done that kind of work for several years. This horse had always been gentle as a lamb. He had him in a box stall loose. He used to go in there and feed and curry him and lead him to water. One day two men were stacking hay outside the barn, when they heard a terrible racket inside. They ran in there and the horse had George by the side with his teeth and was throwing him up and down, trying to get him under his feet. One of the boys hit him on the head with a club and they dragged George outside. Meantime that horse roared like a lion.
They sent George to town to be doctored.
The next morning the boss told me to water the stallion. He said, “Just take his bridle to the box stall. Hold it up. He will take the bit and lead him to water.” I did as he told me, but I had a forty-five Colt in my bed. I went and got that first, filled it full of bullets and cocked it. I held the bridle up for the stallion to take with one hand and held the gun with the other, and kept that position until he was watered and back in the stall.
A few mornings later the boss came out when I was watering him. He looked me and the stud over and told me I needn’t water him anymore, which pleased me very much. I believe if he had even winked at me I would have killed him, as I was deathly afraid of him. They carried water to him for a while, then hitched him in a four horse team and started to town. He died on the way—being soft, they overworked him.
CHAPTER VI
LINE RIDING WITH THE MOUNTED POLICE
A few years after the big outfits moved their herds to the Milk River country, cattle got very thick along the Canadian line and as there was no fences anywhere the cattle would naturally drift into Canada and they could go hundreds of miles without anything to stop them on the finest kind of grass, which was fine for the Montana cattlemen.
But there were some Canadian cow ranches started (mostly Americans) and a contention started about so many American cattle coming into Canada without duty being paid on them. So there was a kind of a gentleman’s agreement made between the Montana cattlemen and the police captain of the Alberta Division that the cattlemen would put line riders at all the police camps, which was twenty to forty miles apart, and keep all cattle out of Canada which, of course, was just a joke, as I was one of those line riders for two years.
My orders were to kill all the good beef the Mounties could eat and have them write a report that read something like the following: “American cowboy rode 15 miles in Western direction. No American cattle seen. Policeman Smith rode 15 miles in Eastern direction. No American cattle in sight.” Those reports went to Ottawa, Canadian headquarters twice a week.
I was always under the impression the Captain of the Alberta Division was getting his right hand greased by the cattlemen.