Memories of Old Montana

by Con Price

I recall an amusing thing that happened. A report leaked through to Ottawa that those reports were not all true, so the Canadian government sent a special army officer out there to investigate.

I was at Police Camp named Writing on Stone the evening he arrived with an escort on horseback. They had rode the trail from the railroad station and it being a cool evening and the cattle out grazing, he saw thousands of American cattle on his way.

The next day the old boy got all his regimental regalia with his escort and a tally man together and started out to make a tally and a report on those cattle. Now it turned out to be a very hot day and when he got on the ground, there wasn’t a cow to be seen, as the cattle had all drifted back into the big bend of the Milk River to water and as the Captain would be lost if he got a mile off the trail (and those cattle had went about 10 miles) he was stuck. On his way back to the railroad, he met my partner who was staying at another police camp. He said, “I say, Cowboy, where are all those cattle I saw last evening on this trail?” This fellow was a Texan and had quite a sense of humor. He said, “Damned if I know, Captain. I think they saw your hole card and all went back to Montana.” Of course the Captain didn’t understand that kind of language. But we didn’t hear anymore from him. I don’t know what report he made—but the cattle continued to graze on Canadian soil for several years afterwards.

It was pretty soft for those cattlemen of those days. Every year two or three big outfits would pool together and take thirty or forty men, a big band of saddle horses, chuck and bed wagons, and go to the Port of Entry on the Canadian line. There they would report that they were going into Canada to gather and take all American cattle out of Canada which, of course, sounded good to the Canadian government.

Now, what they would do was go into Canada and work for several weeks and roundup all the American cattle they could find and bring them out to Montana and report the same just like they did when they went in. They would take them about three or four miles across the line into Montana—several thousand head—then they would brand the calves, cut out the beef cattle that was fit to ship—and then turn the main herd loose right there and, of course, in a couple of days those cattle would all be back in Canada, and nothing to bother about for another year.

Of course, it didn’t do any harm to anyone as the grass was going to waste and somebody should get benefit out of it. The amusing part about it was that my job was to keep all American cattle from crossing the line and to have all or as many as possible to drift across. But the Mounted Police and I got along fine. I butchered the finest beef I could find and that was all they wanted or cared about and didn’t question how many American cattle came into Canada.

I sure had a lot of fun with those policemen. A great many of them came right out of the city of London, England, and knew nothing about the West or Western ways.

While I was there the Mounted Police force bought a bunch of horses from a big horse outfit for the police to ride to patrol the line. Those horses had been broke by cowboys that rode and handled horses much different from the regimental way and the policemen had a great deal of trouble with some of those horses. There was one horse brought to a police station on Milk River that they could not ride and in order to get rid of him there had to be made a very lengthy report. I read that report and it covered a whole sheet of paper. It went into details as to his disposition, how he had bucked off several policemen, giving the name of each man, and pictured the horse as a regular man-eater. At any rate it took about a month to get this horse condemned. Then they detailed an army officer and a policeman to go and bring this horse to army headquarters, which was 100 miles. They stayed over night at Writing on Stone where I was at that time. I tried to get the officer to give me five dollars to ride the horse. He said he could not do that but would like very much to see him rode. So I rode him. He was a very nice horse and as far as bucking, he didn’t jump two feet off the ground. A lady could have rode him.

I joked the officer about the horse and he said the main objection was no one could mount him in regimental way. My description of the regimental way of getting on would be to fall on, instead of getting on and, of course, the horse didn’t savvy that. I tried to buy the horse, but they couldn’t sell him until he had went through the form of being condemned, which was surely some red tape.

Charlie Russell spent one summer in Canada and told me a funny experience he had. There was an old retired army captain up in northern Canada who went into the cattle business and had occasion to swim a bunch of cattle across quite a large river. He tried for several days and in different ways to make those cattle cross the stream but couldn’t make it work.