Doc said while he was working on the corpse the sun came out and the weather cleared and he thought everybody in Great Falls went for a ride or walk. There was people all around him and looking at him rather queer, and he was afraid he would be arrested for a grave robber, but he finally got to town without anybody seeing what he had.
Doc’s entrance to his office was on Main Street, and no other way to get in. So he drove into an alley back of his place. There was a Jew running a pawn shop there facing onto a side street. So Doc took his sack with the corpse and went in the back way of the Jew’s store and dropped it in his woodshed, and went into the front where the proprietor was standing behind his counter.
Doc slipped up to the counter and whispered, “Sol, I left a stiff in your shed back there. I will get him when it gets dark.” He said the Jew’s eyes began to grow large and said, “Vat’s a stiff?” Doc said, “A dead man.” The Jew began to scream and was attracting people on the street. He said, “My God, my God, take him out of here! I will be arrested for murder!” Doc whispered to him to hush, but he hollered still louder, so Doc picked up his sack, put it on his shoulder and walked up the main street into his office. He told us he was sure relieved when he got that corpse in his back room.
He had the skull on his desk when he told us the story and said whenever he looked at it, it reminded him of one of the most strenuous days of his life.
While I was working for the DHS outfit, I think it was in 1896, I got a letter from Charlie Russell telling me he was married. He said the gospel wrangler had caught him and necked him. The word “necking” didn’t mean then what it does now. We would sometimes have a wild horse that we couldn’t hold in the bunch and every chance he got he would run away and we would lose him. So it was the horse wrangler’s job to catch this horse and with a short piece of rope tie him to a gentle horse, and the old horse would lead him wherever he went. He had to eat and sleep and go where the gentle horse went.
So Charlie said he was necked and didn’t think he would get away for awhile, and gave me a pressing invitation to come and see him, and I wrote him the day I would be there and the train I would be on.
But something happened and I was a day late. Charlie met me at the train. After we had visited for a little while several other boys joined us and we were enjoying our general talk. Charlie turned to me and said, “What happened you didn’t come yesterday?” He said, “When the train arrived I was at the depot and looked on the blind baggage car, on top of the train and down under the cars and the brake rods.” The conductor knew Charlie and said, “What are you looking for, Russ?” Charlie said, “I told him I had a letter from a friend of mine that he would be on this train and I come to meet him.”
That was the first time I knew he knew I had got out of that box car several years before in Cascade.
I recall one time I was breaking horses close to the town of Cascade, Montana. I would ride a colt into town nearly every day.
A blacksmith and a barber got heckling each other about riding broncs. The blacksmith bet the barber four dollars he would ride the first horse that I rode to town. Charlie Russell was stake holder.