Memories of Old Montana

by Con Price

Now Shelby was the great cowboy town of that time, and whenever a cowboy had any chance he went to Shelby. There was usually a dance or some other doings that a cowboy enjoyed—and maybe he had a sweetheart there.

So the night this boy got back from hunting the horses, we all gathered in the sleeping tent to get the news of Shelby from this boy, and it was quite interesting to the rest of us. I can see old Jim yet, sitting there smoking a big pipe, saying nothing, but listening to everything.

So he sent another man out on the range next day to look for the horses. He was gone a few days and came back without any horses ... but plenty news about Shelby.

The next morning he told me to catch a saddle horse and go and see if I could find those horses. I said, “Where will I go?” He said, “Damned if I know where to tell you to go, only there is one place there is no use going and that is Shelby. I have sent two men to hunt those horses and they both went to town and didn’t find the horses. So I know they are not in Shelby!” You could have heard a pin drop among those boys. They didn’t know the old man had been listening.

I remember one time the old man hired a stranger from Oregon to ride a rough string. Nobody knew the boy but he claimed to be a bronc fighter. The first horse he rode very near throwed him off. When someone caught the horse he was in a bad way, had lost both stirrups and his bridle reins. Someone made the remark he thought that fellow would ride that horse and whip him. The old man said he could if he had another hand, as he had to use the two he had to hang onto the saddle horn.

In those days the way we caught our saddle horses, when we made camp we pulled the bedwagon up behind the chuckwagon and tied a long rope to the front wheel of the chuckwagon and one to the hind wheel of the bedwagon. Then a man held up each end of those ropes and the horse wrangler took care of the gap. In that way we could corral quite a large bunch of saddle horses. But there was always some broncs in the bunch and the boys had to be careful in catching their horses that they didn’t scare them and cause them to break through the ropes.

So the old man gave orders for one man at a time to catch his horse—but Jim had hired a new man that was very fond of roping and he didn’t always obey orders, and he used a loop half as big as the corral. So naturally, when he throwed his big loop in among those horses he caught something. Sometimes two or three head of horses at once. Sometimes he caught one around the body and would cause the horses to stampede. The old man had told him several times in a nice way to be careful of that big loop.

This morning Jim was in the corral trying to catch his horse. It wasn’t quite daylight yet and the fellow didn’t see him. So he throwed that big loop in there and caught two broncs, the brake on the bedwagon and the old man—all in one loop. And believe me there was some commotion—the broncs jumping and the old man a-hollering. Charlie Russell helped Jim get out of the mix-up and he said Jim bucked worse than the broncs. He lost his hat and his big pipe and hurt his foot.

When he got straightened out, he went hunting this fellow. He said, “Where is that big loop S.B.?” and when he found him he told him plenty. He said, “I don’t think you are a cowboy at all. I think you are a damn sailor the way you handle a rope. If I ever see you throw another rope in that corral, I will shoot you. Somebody else will catch your horse from now on.” But he didn’t fire him, and the fellow was pretty tame afterwards.

There was a great friendship existed among those old cowboys of those days. They would quarrel among themselves and sometimes one would think they were bitter enemies, but if one of them got sick or hurt, even with their small wages they would soon raise a few hundred dollars for him, and as there was no compensation law those days it meant a great deal to them.