The outfit was getting ready to go on the spring roundup and we went to their horse ranch on Milk River and gathered all the saddle horses—maybe two hundred head—and there was quite a lot of those horses needed touching up before we went to work on the roundup. The first day Red Neck and I caught two of the worst horses in the outfit. The boss had put two men to help us and herd for us (they are called pick-up men nowadays).
One of the cowboys had put his bedding out to air that day and had a nice woolen blanket laid on a pile of poles on the ground. When I mounted my first horse, he went up in the air and landed right in the middle of that blanket, and the poles being hard all four of his feet went through it. I believe the blanket belonged to the fellow that was herding for me, so I laid the blame on him.
Shortly after Red Neck mounted his horse, a big buckskin. He had quite an old man herding for him and rather cranky. He caught the best horse in his string that morning, one he was sure was gentle so he could pick up Red’s horse if he stampeded. As soon as Red hit the saddle the buckskin went in the air and let a roar out of him like a lion, which scared the old man’s horse and he stampeded. We were only about fifty feet from Milk River and it was time of high water, and into it he went and swam across. The old man was sure wet and mad, and cussed the whole outfit—horses and men—and said he wouldn’t have any more to do with such a damn wild west outfit.
That year—I believe it was 1896—our outfit was cleaning up their Malta Range on Milk River with the view of closing out their holdings in that part of the country. A fellow named Tom Daly and I worked with all the different outfits owning cattle in that part of the country. We were representing the DHS brand and all cattle we gathered we shipped to Chicago. We had orders to clean the range of our cattle the best we could, as they had missed several steers from year to year. We found steers 12 to 13 years old and some of them were sure wild and hard to gather and bring to the railroad for shipment.
It was quite comical and interesting to outsmart some of these old renegades. We usually found them in the roughest country. They would try to hide when they saw you, and when you got too close to them they would fight and as most of them had bad horns if you crowded one of them in a rough place he could easily kill your horse.
The outfit had a big old steer that had made his home in the Missouri River Badlands for several years, which was pretty rough and when the cowboys would find him with other cattle and he got a glimpse of the riders he would quit the bunch. As he was plenty fast, he would get somewhere and hide, and as the outfits only worked this part of the country about once a year on account of not many cattle ranged there, this old steer had gotten by for several years without being brought out and shipped.
I was repping with a wagon that worked that part of the country this time that I write about and we knew the day that we would camp and ride the locality that he was ranging in and several of the boys knew this steer, as he had gotten away from them at different times before. They were joking me about him several days before we got to this place and called him “Con’s steer,” and made me a small bet I wouldn’t get him.
We camped the chuck and bed wagon on a nice level spot of about 200 acres, just on the edge of the Badlands, and rode from there to the river, which was about 20 miles. Coming back we found him in a long canyon that led out to the camp and the rodeo ground. We put riders on both sides of the canyon on top of the ridges and some stayed behind. We had about 200 head of cattle, so we just drifted the band along slow. I told everyone to keep as far away from this old steer as possible so he wouldn’t break or get on the fight. When we got out to the roundup ground, some of the other boys had gotten in off their ride and had found quite a lot of cattle. We had about a thousand head in all. We bunched all the cattle together as easy as we could so as not to give this old fellow any excuse to break.
Now we had to cut out the cows and calves (to brand the calves) and also cut out the beef steers to ship, and turn the rest loose, and we knew as soon as anyone went to riding among those cattle this steer would break for the Badlands and we would lose him. He was going through the bunch ringing his tail and hooking everything that came in his way, as he was getting suspicious that everything wasn’t just right.
So we left about ten men to hold the cattle. The rest of us went to camp to catch fresh horses to work the cattle and cut out what we wanted.