I remember one winter a bunch of us batched together and there was a great variety of tastes. One fellow loved maple syrup and lived mostly on that and a little bread ... but mostly syrup. Another old-timer wanted to put bacon in everything he cooked. He said it gave the cooking “tone” (he meant flavor). He spoiled most of his cooking for the rest of us. I believe if he would try to make a cake he would have put bacon in it. I liked hard-boiled potatoes; nobody else did, so that was my specialty. Charlie Russell was the coffee and hot cake man. We all agreed he had no equal in those two things. One time we had a Christmas dinner and in some way got a chicken (I don’t want to remember how we got it) and we held council as to how it would be cooked and, of course, the old-timer came forward at once with his bacon idea. But we told him the chicken was old and tough and we would have to boil it. That didn’t make any difference to him, as he said any way a chicken was cooked it had to have bacon in it to be good and to give it tone. Anyway he won out and the bacon was put in. Really I think there was more bacon than chicken. Charlie Russell volunteered to make some dumplings, which sounded good to everybody, but for some reason unknown to all of us, the dumplings turned to gravy and we had to eat them like soup with a spoon. Charlie himself didn’t boast about those dumplings but his alibi was Bill’s bacon ruined the whole mixture. I don’t know as to the truth of that statement as I never knew Charlie to make dumplings again. One time I was in Great Falls, Charlie was circulating a petition to get an old-time cowboy out of the penitentiary. He had been sent up for rustling cattle and had served about four years. Charlie asked me to go with him on his rounds, and I did. We called on people for several days and there was not a man or woman turned us down, until we met one of the wealthiest men in Great Falls. He read the petition and handed it back and said, “He can rot in the pen as far as I am concerned.” Then he began to criticize Charlie for circulating the petition. There was where he made a mistake and the things he told him must have cut pretty deep into his feelings. Charlie said, “If you don’t want to sign the petition, that’s your business, but don’t you roast me. I knew this man. He was once my friend. I don’t approve of what he done, but he has a wife and two children praying for his release and he has been punished enough already.” Then he looked him in the eye and said, “You know, Jim, if we all got our just dues, there would be a big bunch of us in the pen with Bill.” I thought I could see the old boy’s whiskers tremble because he knew what Charlie meant.