A few nights afterwards I was going home late. I had to go by a lot of
wagons—a freighting outfit. Just as I got opposite the wagons I saw a
man in the dark coming towards me. I had a gun that night so I got it in
my hand and backed up against one of the wagons. This fellow came up
about twenty feet from me and stopped—neither of us spoke for several
minutes (but seemed to me to be an hour)—finally he said, “Hey, there.”
I said, “Hello.” He said, “What are you doing here?” I thought quick and
said, “I am working for the man that owns this outfit,” and said to him
also, “Who are you?” He said, “I am the night marshal.” I believe I
would have kissed him if he had been close to me because I sure had him
sized up as a hold-up.
I stayed around there a few days longer and hung onto the hundred
dollars, but decided it was no place for a moneyed man, so took the
train for Denver and lived quite respectable for awhile until I was
pretty near broke and started for Montana. I rode box cars the most of
the way and saved my little money to eat on.
When I got to Helena I heard Charlie Russell was in Cascade and as I was
badly in need of money, I headed for there and found him batching in a
cabin with plenty grub—and he sure looked good to me.
After my experience in Cripple Creek I decided that I belonged back on
the range among the cows, and wrote to the foreman of the DHS outfit at
Shelby, Montana, for a job. I had known him several years before and he
told me to come on, he would give me work. So after being outfitted by
Charlie, which meant everything a cowboy needed, including some money, I
went to Shelby.
I worked for the DHS outfit the first time in 1889 for only one season.
They were one of the pioneer cow outfits of Montana and was owned by
Granville Stuart and Reese Anderson, and were located near Fort Maginnis
and ranged on Flat Willow country in the year of 1887. They moved all
their cattle north of the Missouri River on what was known as the Little
Rocky Range. They swam this big herd across the Missouri River at an old
steamboat landing called Rocky Point.
The cowboys had a dance while I was in Shelby that I believe there is a
record of in the files of some of the old newspapers of that day.
There was an opera troupe on their way to Spokane, Washington. For some
reason they were sidetracked at Shelby and as they were from New York,
some of the ladies had never seen a cowboy, so they said (I guess they
thought cowboys eat grass and were only half human). Anyway, some of
them left the train and went to the hotel where the dance was going on
and mingled with the crowd and as those cowboys were very easy for a
lady to get acquainted with and as there was considerable liquor
consumed, the dance was a great success and the ladies found the boys
much nicer than they had anticipated and invited some of them over to
their train.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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