I remember, when I went back to Montana from Cripple Creek, Colorado, in 1894, I came into town (Cascade, Montana—where Charlie was living) in a box car, but didn’t tell Charlie how I arrived. In the few years I was away from Montana, Charlie heard I had been killed by a horse. I didn’t know anything about that report. So when I walked into his cabin we shook hands and had quite a talk—and, of course I thought he knew who I was. He was sitting by the stove frying bacon and I caught him looking at me in a sort of a puzzled way and I knew at once he didn’t know who I was. So I said to him, “You don’t know me.” He said, “Yes, I do.” “Well, who am I then?” He said, “If I didn’t know Con Price was dead, I would say you was him.”
While I was with Charlie that time, just in fun he had me pose for him in a stage hold-up. I had a sawed-off shot-gun, big hat and my pants legs inside my boots. We found an old Prince Albert coat somewhere that I wore and a big handkerchief around my neck. I surely looked tough. He sure got a kick out of that model.
Well, he painted that picture in a rough way and didn’t give it much attention and never gave it any consideration as to value. It was more of a joke than anything else. I think about two years after he was married, he went to New York, and in some way this picture had got mixed up with the rest of his stuff, so it landed in New York with him.
He said New York was sure tough then for an artist breaking into the game. He said there was only two classes of people there: paupers and millionaires, and he had a hard time to keep out of the pauper class.
But some artist friend loaned him the use of his studio and Charlie was trying to do a little work and took this old picture there.
One morning a foreign nobleman came in and was looking the studio over—mostly the other artist’s work—and he came to this old picture. After examining it for some time, he said, “How much is this picture worth?” Charlie said he needed money pretty bad just at that time and wanted to ask him one hundred and fifty dollars, but didn’t know whether the old boy would go for that much or not. While he was hesitating Nancy, his wife, stepped over to where the old fellow was and said, “This one would be eight hundred dollars,” and the man said, “Very well, I’ll take it.” Charlie said he nearly fell off his stool with joy.
After the fellow left he told Nancy, “I’ll do the work from now on—you will do the selling,” and I believe that bargain held good until the day of Charlie’s death.
Charlie didn’t like the new set-up. He was a child of the open West before wire fences and railroads spanned it. Civilization choked him even in the year 1889 when the Judith country was getting settled up with ranchers and sheep had taken the cattle range. He hated the change, and followed cattle north to the Milk River Country trying to stay in an open range country. He said, “I expect I will have to ride the rest of my life but I would much rather be a poor cowboy than a poor artist.” He didn’t know he was graduating from nature’s school and the education frontier life had given him.
In the fall of 1891 he got a letter from a man in Great Falls who said if he could come there he could make seventy-five dollars a month painting, his grub included.
It looked good to Charlie, as he was only making forty a month riding, so he saddled the old gray and packed old Monty, the pinto, and hit the trail for Great Falls.