Brother Van told me when he graduated from the ministry he came up the Missouri River on a steam boat to Fort Benton. He had a very good voice. He said he sang hymns to pay his fare. That must have been in the early 1870’s. When I knew him first, he used to ride horseback through the country and hold services, and he was sure loved by everybody. I listened to one of his sermons in the cow country and there was quite a sprinkling of cattle rustlers in that locality and I remember in his talk he told us if we would do as God wanted us to do we wouldn’t need a fast horse and a long rope.
He told us he overtook a bull whacker (a freighter) pulling a big hill out of Fort Benton one time. Brother Van was riding a horse and he followed along behind this fellow and the language he used for those cattle was sure strong. He said the fellow called each steer by some religious name with an oath after it, such as Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and so forth.
When the bull whacker got to the top of the hill, Brother Van asked him what was the idea of giving those cattle such religious names. The man said, “It’s appropriate. For instance, there is old Methodist—when I unyoke him he walks out a little distance and paws on the ground, gets down on his knees and balls and bellers just like a Methodist preacher. Then there is that old steer I call Baptist. If there’s a water hole anywhere, he will find it and get into it and throw water all over himself—and old Bishop there, he leads all the other steers.” He had a religious name appropriate for each steer. Brother Van got a kick out of that.
Brother Van was a very devout Methodist and one time he and Charlie were discussing religion, Charlie said he didn’t believe in so many branches of religion and said he thought the people should have a general roundup and make them all one. Brother Van said, “That’s a fine idea, Charlie, and make it Methodist.”
One time at Malta, Montana, when we were shipping cattle, a cowboy got killed. He was riding a young horse and the train came by and this horse got scared and run away with this boy. It ran into a wire fence and hit the wires just high enough on his legs to cause him to turn a somersault and land squarely on top of the boy and broke his neck. Brother Van preached a sermon over that boy’s body. When I look back at it now, it seems to me the boy’s body was laid out in an old store and I think there were about twenty cowboys with their chaps and spurs on and the old time cowboy was a rather queer kind of a mixture of human nature. Sometimes he drank whiskey to celebrate and have a good time; other times he drank when he was blue. I guess to try to raise his spirits. Anyway, this morning quite a number of them had taken on quite a load of the old joy juice. When the sermon started, Brother Van preached a very forceful sermon and the tears rolled down his old cheeks like rain drops and in looking around after that sermon was over there were very few dry faces among that tough old bunch of waddies and they were all as sober as if they never had a drink.
Speaking of batching, some people of this day may not know what it means. But for us cowboys it meant this: four or five of us would get together in the fall of the year and get a cabin in some little town, buy some groceries and go into winter quarters, and everybody cooked according to his liking and if anybody didn’t like the way one fellow cooked he could cook to suit himself.
I remember one winter a bunch of us batched together and there was a great variety of tastes. One fellow loved maple syrup and lived mostly on that and a little bread ... but mostly syrup. Another old-timer wanted to put bacon in everything he cooked. He said it gave the cooking “tone” (he meant flavor). He spoiled most of his cooking for the rest of us. I believe if he would try to make a cake he would have put bacon in it. I liked hard-boiled potatoes; nobody else did, so that was my specialty. Charlie Russell was the coffee and hot cake man. We all agreed he had no equal in those two things.
One time we had a Christmas dinner and in some way got a chicken (I don’t want to remember how we got it) and we held council as to how it would be cooked and, of course, the old-timer came forward at once with his bacon idea. But we told him the chicken was old and tough and we would have to boil it. That didn’t make any difference to him, as he said any way a chicken was cooked it had to have bacon in it to be good and to give it tone. Anyway he won out and the bacon was put in. Really I think there was more bacon than chicken.
Charlie Russell volunteered to make some dumplings, which sounded good to everybody, but for some reason unknown to all of us, the dumplings turned to gravy and we had to eat them like soup with a spoon. Charlie himself didn’t boast about those dumplings but his alibi was Bill’s bacon ruined the whole mixture. I don’t know as to the truth of that statement as I never knew Charlie to make dumplings again.
One time I was in Great Falls, Charlie was circulating a petition to get an old-time cowboy out of the penitentiary. He had been sent up for rustling cattle and had served about four years. Charlie asked me to go with him on his rounds, and I did.