I didn’t know anything about this bet until I had come to town and both parties tried to find out the merits of the horse—whether he would buck or not, and as I knew the stake money was going to be spent for drinks, I told each one a different story—the blacksmith he wouldn’t buck, the barber he would, so as to be sure to have the bet go as the blacksmith was a little scared, but he was a big, powerful young man and the horse was rather small, he took a chance.
The bet was he had to ride the horse to the livery stable and back, which was about two blocks.
He got on. With a death-grip, with the reins in one hand and the other on the saddle horn, he started and was getting along fine—going slow—when a stock man by name H. H. Nelson started by him going home. He had a big canvas overcoat on and could not resist the temptation to shake his coat as he rode by the bronc—and down went the bronc’s head. I think the first jump the saddle horn hit the blacksmith in the eye, and the next jump he was on the ground. Somebody caught the horse and helped the blacksmith up.
He said, “That is all right. I have lost this bet, but I will make another one—I will whip Nelson the first time he comes to town.”
We sure had a great time spending that eight dollars and I think everybody else spent all they had besides.
We named that “A quiet day in Cascade,” and Charlie drew a picture of it, with chickens and dogs and everything running in all directions and some old man with a cane trying to get out of the way.
I remember a very amusing incident on a roundup. We had been out on the range for about three months, and nobody had shaved. We came into a little town (a shipping point) and when we had got the cattle all loaded on the train, we found out there was a barber shop in town, so we all patronized it, but there was one stingy old fellow in the outfit that wouldn’t spend a quarter to get shaved, so when we got started back on the range, he felt out of place, as we were all shaved and slicked up. He asked if there was anyone in the outfit that could shave him. I told him I could. Now I had never shaved a man in my life, the cook had an old razor in the Mess box, and God knows when it had been sharpened, (we had no safety razors those days). I started in on him, of course his beard was full of sand and dust, and I used cold water and lye soap to make the lather. When I got to working on him, the blood followed the razor wherever I touched him. We didn’t have any mirror so he couldn’t see himself bleed. The boys would ask him occasionally how he was getting along, he said the razor pulled a little but Con was doing fine. Charlie Russell was laying on his belly looking at the performance, and he laughed till the tears rolled down his cheeks. When I got through with him he looked like he had broke out with the small pox. He picked scabs off his face for several days, he didn’t complain, but he never asked me to shave him again. Nobody felt sorry for him because he never was known to buy a drink, and he had three thousand dollars in the bank, which was a big fortune to a cowboy.
CHAPTER XX
COWBOY PHILOSOPHY
As I grow older there are rather strange thoughts come to my mind about cowboys and cow people. I have mingled with most all classes of the human race and I have some very true and sincere friends among all classes—but I don’t believe there is any other people in the world that was as intimate and friendly on short acquaintance as the old time cowboy and cowman.
They would fight among themselves and some of them would steal from each other but let one of them get in a tough spot and his clan would come to his rescue when everybody else had throwed him down, I was on a roundup on the Moccasin range in Montana in the year 1888 and a small rancher lost a milk cow. He had come to the round up to ride with us for a few days to try to find his cow. The next morning we left camp about daylight and hadn’t went a mile from camp when his horse fell and broke the man’s leg above the knee. We got the bedwagon and fixed some blankets in it the best we could and drove him 20 miles to a doctor. The boys raised three hundred dollars for that fellow ... and none of them had ever seen him before that day he came to camp.