By Con Price (Masachele Opa Barusha) THE HIGHLAND PRESS Highland at Hawthorne HOLLYWOOD 28, CALIFORNIA Copyright, 1945 By Con Price All Rights Reserved FIRST EDITION After Deluxe edition of 125 copies, numbered and signed by the author. DEDICATION To all the old-time cowboys and cowmen whose hearts were as big as the range they rode. CONTENTS I. Earliest Memories (1869 to 1878) II. Black Hills of South Dakota (1878 to 1885) III. I Start to Punch Cows IV. With the RL Outfit V. With the TL Outfit

I was born in the year 1869 in Manchester, Iowa. My father served in the Civil War and during that service contracted consumption and was discharged from the army and came home a very sick man, without any provisions being made to take care of him—only through the efforts of my mother, who didn’t have a dollar, only what she made working for wages which was very small at that time. There was four children—the oldest eight, the youngest two. So with my father’s sickness and us hungry kids to feed

In 1879 my folks came across the plains from Fort Pierre to the Black Hills and the first town we came to, of any size, was Scooptown and from there to Deadwood was mostly mountains and several toll gates. It cost a dollar to go through those places—that meant the people that kept those gates kept the road repaired so it would be passable—but those roads were sure tough. I remember when we drove our team up the street of Deadwood the mud was about two feet deep and we could hardly get through, a

In the year of 1885 I got my first job as a real cowboy. I went to work for the “7D” outfit on the Belle Fouche River in the Black Hills night herding horses on the roundup. There was twenty outfits working together and there was about 300 riders—that was more cowboys than I ever saw hi one bunch before, or since. Also there was more grass and water that spring than I ever saw since that time and the range was open for a thousand miles in every direction and the country was just alive with cattl

In the spring of 1887 I went to work for the “RL” outfit located on the Musselshell River in Montana. The outfit belonged to the Ryan Brothers of Kansas City. They run about 25,000 head of cattle, and run three wagons and worked about 20 men to each wagon, and had about 500 head of saddle horses. That year they had a contract with the government to supply the Sioux Indians with 5,000 beef cattle. We gathered the first herd of 2,500 and trailed them to landing Rock Agency on the Missouri River in

For a good many years there was a section of the country along the Canadian border and the Milk River that the cattlemen thought was no good for cattle—but in the late eighties and early nineties they discovered that it was a much better cattle country than the Missouri and Yellowstone country as it produced a buffalo-grass that I think had no equal for fattening cattle. It was a short grass, but had plenty of fattening qualities, especially in the Sweet Grass Hills area. I have seen steers so f

A few years after the big outfits moved their herds to the Milk River country, cattle got very thick along the Canadian line and as there was no fences anywhere the cattle would naturally drift into Canada and they could go hundreds of miles without anything to stop them on the finest kind of grass, which was fine for the Montana cattlemen. But there were some Canadian cow ranches started (mostly Americans) and a contention started about so many American cattle coming into Canada without duty be

When I was a kid, an old Indian told me a story about the badger and coyote and said they hunted together as partners. I had a very good chance to test that story when I was living on Milk River, as the badger and coyote were very plentiful. I have watched them travel together all right—but came to the conclusion the coyote forced his company on the badger. I think the coyote is the smartest animal that stands on four legs and a natural thief. I have watched them travel together for miles. The c

In 1892 I went to Wyoming and broke horses there for a couple of years. Then I heard of the Cripple Creek gold stampede in Colorado. I sold my rig and went to Cripple Creek and it looked like everybody in the world went there. There was two railroads in there and every passenger coach would be loaded with people. The roads were lined with people of every description—some walking, some riding donkeys and some with wagons. About every other house there was a saloon and gambling house. Of course, t

The old man that run the DHS that I worked several years for was the finest old-tune cow boss I ever knew. Jim Spurgeon was his name. He always looked tough and hard and was about as good-looking as a bank robber, but he sure had a kind heart and would never let you know he sympathized with you. I never knew him to fire but one cowboy. That fellow was supposed to stand second guard on night herd, but when the first guard went to call him, he was not in camp—had went to town and had not come back

Tom Daly and I worked together for several years and I liked him very much. One time we went from the DHS ranch at Rocky Ridge close to the main range of the Rocky Mountains to the ranch the outfit owned at Malta, which was in the eastern part of Montana. We had two strings of horses, which was about twenty head. We had our beds packed on two horses on that trip. One day Tom’s pack slipped and got down on the horse’s side. We roped him and fixed the pack, but while we were doing so we turned our

Most of the big Montana cow outfits moved their herds north of the Missouri River between 1888 and 1894. The point of crossing on the Missouri was an old steamboat landing called Rocky Point where Jim Norris had a saloon. When I crossed the river there in 1889, there was no one living there but the little old man. He had an old hand ferry boat that he took people across the river with. The night I stayed with him, he told me he had some fine gin and gave me a drink, which I found out was straigh

Fred Reid was one of the old time deer and elk hunters in the early days of Montana. He told me the first bear he ever killed when he was a young boy, that he was so scared he didn’t go near it after he shot it until he saw some flies flying around its mouth. He said, he knew then it was dead. Fred hunted for the market and said he often followed elk all day on foot until they got tired, then he would make the kill. After his hunting days were over, Fred went to work as a cowboy and took charge

In the year of 1886 Chief Sitting Bull of the Sioux tribe got permission from the agent at Standing Rock Agency in North Dakota to make a visit to the Crow Agency in Montana to visit the Crow Indians. So he collected about fifty Sioux warriors and made the trip, and went to the battle ground where General Custer and his army was massacred in the year 1876, which was a short distance from the Crow Agency. He asked the Crow agent for permission to have a war dance on the battle ground. He said he

In the days of open range, everybody had great freedom. A cowboy could change countries every spring if he wanted to and they were always drifting from one range to another—not only to different ranges but to different states. For instance, maybe he would be in New Mexico one year and on the Canadian border the next. Every cowboy had a private horse of his own, pack horse and his own bed, which consisted of a tarpaulin and some blankets. And according to the custom of them days he could stop at

This incident I write about was known as the Johnson County War in Wyoming in the years of 1893 and 1894, and I presume some of the old-timers of today remember those days when those things happened. The way it first started, some of the cowboys working for the big outfits bought a few cattle of their own and branded them and turned them loose on the range. The cattle barons objected to this, and passed a resolution that any cowboy owning a branding iron could not work for them—for the reason, t

Several people not familiar with horses have asked me what a bronco-buster means, and they seem to think all cowboys are bronco riders, which is not so. I sometimes talk to an old-timer that once rode broncs and broke horses, and like most all old-timers in every line of work they claim the younger generation cannot compete with them the way they did it in their day. But the old boys are only kidding themselves when they think those young fellows can’t ride a bucking horse. They have made a prof

In the days that I write of there were very few women folks in the country and a less number of girls, but there was one family who had one girl of about seventeen years and I thought she was very attractive. I worked about twenty miles from where she lived and used to go to see her quite often, but she had two brothers about eight and ten years old and they were wild as Indians and their main sport and pastime was riding wild calves and yearlings. The girl was about as wild as them and usually

A few years after my marriage we settled on a squatter’s right on the head of Kicking Horse Creek in the Sweet Grass Hills in Montana. The land was unsurveyed at that time and one did not know where his boundary lines were. So one staked off what one thought was about right and it was respected by most stockmen. I lived seven years on that squatter’s right and when it was surveyed I proved up on it at once. The government allowed me from the time I established my residence. I also had fenced in

I first met Charlie Russell in the fall of the year 1888. He was night herding beef cattle on the Judith Basin and Moccasin Range roundup. Charlie was very modest and never claimed to be a great cowboy, but I noticed the bosses always gave him a very responsible job, as the cowmen of those days were very particular how the beef cattle were handled. We usually started the fall roundup about the first of September and the gathering and driving to the railroad sometimes took until the 15th of Novem

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 wou