After a few months in Deadwood my folks moved to the little town of Galena, where Colonel Davey owned the Sitting Bull mine, and my folks started a store and boarding house and I went to school for a short time. There was two Irishmen run a store there by the name of McQuillian and Finnegan. They also had a cow ranch about 75 miles east of Galena. Finnegan run the ranch, McQuillian run the store. Finnegan used to come to Galena sometimes on horseback. His saddle, chaps and outfit was something wonderful to me—and his stories of the range made me feel I wanted to be a cowboy. I asked him for a job and he laughed at me, told me I was too young. Also my folks wanted me to go to school.
But the spirit of the wild country had got in my blood and one day I run away from school and started for the Finnegan Ranch, caught a ride when I could and walked part of the way, but finally got there, and told Finnegan I was going to stay. So he gave me a job close herding some cows for breeding purposes. The first thing he learned me was to read his brand which was “F M.” There was thousands of brands on the range those days, and I was supposed to keep all other brands of cattle out of his bunch.
The old man had several cowboys working for him, but he was chief cook, bottle washer and boss. He used to tell me he was the best cowboy of them all. But the fact of the matter was he couldn’t do much of anything in the way of a cowboy, and the men used to make fun of him behind his back. But I learned pretty quick that he liked to be swelled about what he could do and I sure poured it to him, and he liked me fine. He used to tell me what a fine cook he was—his cooking was rotten and consisted of bacon and beans and sourdough bread. I remember he had an old knotty pine log in front of the cabin, and I don’t think he ever started to cook a meal that he didn’t grab the axe and hit that old knotty pine log a few licks. He never got any wood off of it, but would try it every time, then throw the axe away, and hunt up some chips, or anything else he could find to start a fire. When he made bread, he had flour from his eyebrows to his toes.
In 1879 the country was sure wild. Deer, antelope, buffalo and bear were very plentiful; very few white people, but lots of Indians and some of them were still on the warpath in them days; also quite a sprinkling of road agents. I remember one old road agent named Laughing Sam. He was very polite in his holdups. He held up a freighter one time and all he had that Sam wanted was chewing tobacco. The freighter begged Sam to not take all his tobacco, as he could not get any more until he got to Sidney, Nebraska, which was about 200 miles, but Sam said he was sorry on account of the law he could not go to Sidney, so took all of the tobacco.
In those days everything was freighted from Fort Pierre, South Dakota, and Sidney, Nebraska, to the Black Hills by ox teams and mule teams. I have seen 27 ten-yoke teams of oxen all in one outfit. At the head of this caravan rode the wagon boss. He was quite a dandy in those days—fancy saddle, boots and pearl handle six-shooter. It was a great sight to see an outfit like that moving across the country; with those men shouting at their teams, whips popping and wagons rattling. It sounded like a young army in action.
The town of Deadwood was the terminal of all freight and stage outfits, and as there was very little law and order those days, it was sure a wild town. There was another town about 20 miles before you got to Deadwood. It was called Scooptown those days, but afterwards was changed to the more dignified name of Sturgis, which it still has today. I have seen that town at night full of bull whackers, mule skinners, cowboys and soldiers, and the dance halls going full blast—when I think back at it today, it seems like a dream.
I knew an old-time bull whacker. He went by the name of Baltimore Bill. He got into a gun fight one night in one of those dance halls. He got three fingers shot off, but killed the other fellow. He was arrested for murder and laid in jail for about a year pending his trial. He was finally acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. I worked with Bill afterwards and was well acquainted with him. He said he had a very narrow escape from hanging. He said when the “prosecutin’” attorney got through making his plea to the jury, he felt he (Bill) was the lowest human alive and deserved hanging, “but, oh boy, when my attorney got through with my defense, I was a damn good man!”
Fort Meade was located three miles from Scooptown and was occupied by colored soldiers, and a very noted nigger ran a dance hall and gambling house in Scooptown.
One night some of those negro soldiers were drinking in this house and got into a row with the proprietor, whose name was Abe Hill, and he hit one of them on the head with a bottle. A few nights after this, these soldiers stole some guns and ammunition out of the Fort and came in to shoot Abe Hill’s place up. There were about twenty of them, and they raided that old dance hall and in fact nearly all the town. There was a cowboy in Abe’s place that night. His name was Bob Bell and he didn’t know what all the noise was about. He stepped from the gambling part into the dance hall, thinking it was a little celebration and was shot four or five times. Poor Bob never knew what hit him.
I was in town that night, and when the shooting began I ran back off the main street, but bullets seemed to be hitting all around me. The first thing I came to that looked like protection was a wagon with a mule tied to it. I ducked under the wagon—but between the bullets hitting the wagon and that old mule bucking on the end of the halter, I put in a quarter of an hour very uncomfortable. But the mule and myself escaped unhurt.