I have often wondered if horses go crazy like humans. The reason I say
this is that while I was breaking horses for the TL outfit, they had a
fine imported stallion—paid three thousand dollars for him. They had an
old man taking care of him. His name was Cayouse George. He knew
stallions thoroughly, had done that kind of work for several years. This
horse had always been gentle as a lamb. He had him in a box stall loose.
He used to go in there and feed and curry him and lead him to water. One
day two men were stacking hay outside the barn, when they heard a
terrible racket inside. They ran in there and the horse had George by
the side with his teeth and was throwing him up and down, trying to get
him under his feet. One of the boys hit him on the head with a club and
they dragged George outside. Meantime that horse roared like a lion.
They sent George to town to be doctored.
The next morning the boss told me to water the stallion. He said, “Just
take his bridle to the box stall. Hold it up. He will take the bit and
lead him to water.” I did as he told me, but I had a forty-five Colt in
my bed. I went and got that first, filled it full of bullets and cocked
it. I held the bridle up for the stallion to take with one hand and held
the gun with the other, and kept that position until he was watered and
back in the stall.
A few mornings later the boss came out when I was watering him. He
looked me and the stud over and told me I needn’t water him anymore,
which pleased me very much. I believe if he had even winked at me I
would have killed him, as I was deathly afraid of him. They carried
water to him for a while, then hitched him in a four horse team and
started to town. He died on the way—being soft, they overworked him.
CHAPTER VI
LINE RIDING WITH THE MOUNTED POLICE
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 being paid on them. So there was a kind of a gentleman’s
agreement made between the Montana cattlemen and the police captain of
the Alberta Division that the cattlemen would put line riders at all the
police camps, which was twenty to forty miles apart, and keep all cattle
out of Canada which, of course, was just a joke, as I was one of those
line riders for two years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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