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 straight
alcohol and the one drink nearly strangled me, but old Uncle Jim, as he
was called, drank it like water and seemed to do quite well on it. Every
little while he would go to the bank of the river and holler at the top
of his voice, “Do you want to bring your wagon over?” There would not be
anybody in sight, but he seemed to get a great kick out of make-believe.
I worked with Kid Curry that summer on the roundup. He worked for the
Diamond outfit and I worked for the DHS. Both outfits worked the range
together. Kid was a fine fellow at that time and a good cowboy—that was
before he became an outlaw. I have read where some writers told what a
cold-blooded killer he was and where he had held up banks and so forth,
and I know from some of the dates given that he was blamed for a great
many things he did not do.
I am not trying to make a hero out of the Kid or say that I approve of
some things he done, but the public at large does not know all the
circumstances leading up to where he first got into trouble.
Charlie Russell knew Kid Curry and has given me his analysis of his
character (and he seldom made a mistake in the reading of human nature).
Charlie figured any normal man might have went the route the Kid did.
I am going to set down some of the facts regarding the Kid’s becoming an
outlaw. His name was Harvey Curry. He had an older brother, Henry Curry.
They had a little ranch in the Badlands of the Missouri River and ran a
few cattle and horses. Both the brothers were fine boys at that time and
would give anyone the shirt off their back if they were in need.
Now there was a little mining town sprung up in the Little Rockies not
far from the Curry Ranch. The outstanding character in that town was a
man by the name of Pike Landusky, a prospector who had found some fairly
rich prospects, and as there was some excitement about the find quite a
lot of people went to the mining camp and Pike being about the first one
on the ground, the town was named Landusky.
The town was about fifty miles from the railroad and farther from the
Sheriff’s office, so Pike was appointed a Deputy Sheriff. Now Pike was
not a bad sort of a fellow as a rule, but had a reputation as somewhat
of a gun-fighter and was rather proud of it—he didn’t have much
education and very little intelligence—but was proud of his authority as
a Deputy Sheriff.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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