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.

My orders were to kill all the good beef the Mounties could eat and have them write a report that read something like the following: “American cowboy rode 15 miles in Western direction. No American cattle seen. Policeman Smith rode 15 miles in Eastern direction. No American cattle in sight.” Those reports went to Ottawa, Canadian headquarters twice a week.

I was always under the impression the Captain of the Alberta Division was getting his right hand greased by the cattlemen.

I recall an amusing thing that happened. A report leaked through to Ottawa that those reports were not all true, so the Canadian government sent a special army officer out there to investigate.

I was at Police Camp named Writing on Stone the evening he arrived with an escort on horseback. They had rode the trail from the railroad station and it being a cool evening and the cattle out grazing, he saw thousands of American cattle on his way.

The next day the old boy got all his regimental regalia with his escort and a tally man together and started out to make a tally and a report on those cattle. Now it turned out to be a very hot day and when he got on the ground, there wasn’t a cow to be seen, as the cattle had all drifted back into the big bend of the Milk River to water and as the Captain would be lost if he got a mile off the trail (and those cattle had went about 10 miles) he was stuck. On his way back to the railroad, he met my partner who was staying at another police camp. He said, “I say, Cowboy, where are all those cattle I saw last evening on this trail?” This fellow was a Texan and had quite a sense of humor. He said, “Damned if I know, Captain. I think they saw your hole card and all went back to Montana.” Of course the Captain didn’t understand that kind of language. But we didn’t hear anymore from him. I don’t know what report he made—but the cattle continued to graze on Canadian soil for several years afterwards.

It was pretty soft for those cattlemen of those days. Every year two or three big outfits would pool together and take thirty or forty men, a big band of saddle horses, chuck and bed wagons, and go to the Port of Entry on the Canadian line. There they would report that they were going into Canada to gather and take all American cattle out of Canada which, of course, sounded good to the Canadian government.

Now, what they would do was go into Canada and work for several weeks and roundup all the American cattle they could find and bring them out to Montana and report the same just like they did when they went in. They would take them about three or four miles across the line into Montana—several thousand head—then they would brand the calves, cut out the beef cattle that was fit to ship—and then turn the main herd loose right there and, of course, in a couple of days those cattle would all be back in Canada, and nothing to bother about for another year.

Of course, it didn’t do any harm to anyone as the grass was going to waste and somebody should get benefit out of it. The amusing part about it was that my job was to keep all American cattle from crossing the line and to have all or as many as possible to drift across. But the Mounted Police and I got along fine. I butchered the finest beef I could find and that was all they wanted or cared about and didn’t question how many American cattle came into Canada.

I sure had a lot of fun with those policemen. A great many of them came right out of the city of London, England, and knew nothing about the West or Western ways.

While I was there the Mounted Police force bought a bunch of horses from a big horse outfit for the police to ride to patrol the line. Those horses had been broke by cowboys that rode and handled horses much different from the regimental way and the policemen had a great deal of trouble with some of those horses. There was one horse brought to a police station on Milk River that they could not ride and in order to get rid of him there had to be made a very lengthy report. I read that report and it covered a whole sheet of paper. It went into details as to his disposition, how he had bucked off several policemen, giving the name of each man, and pictured the horse as a regular man-eater. At any rate it took about a month to get this horse condemned. Then they detailed an army officer and a policeman to go and bring this horse to army headquarters, which was 100 miles. They stayed over night at Writing on Stone where I was at that time. I tried to get the officer to give me five dollars to ride the horse. He said he could not do that but would like very much to see him rode. So I rode him. He was a very nice horse and as far as bucking, he didn’t jump two feet off the ground. A lady could have rode him.

I joked the officer about the horse and he said the main objection was no one could mount him in regimental way. My description of the regimental way of getting on would be to fall on, instead of getting on and, of course, the horse didn’t savvy that. I tried to buy the horse, but they couldn’t sell him until he had went through the form of being condemned, which was surely some red tape.

Charlie Russell spent one summer in Canada and told me a funny experience he had. There was an old retired army captain up in northern Canada who went into the cattle business and had occasion to swim a bunch of cattle across quite a large river. He tried for several days and in different ways to make those cattle cross the stream but couldn’t make it work.

So he built some blinds made out of green rawhide stretched on frames and put them on the river bank where the cattle were to cross and put a man behind each blind. So when the cowboys drove the cattle to the edge of the river and the captain got his position he gave the command, “Men behind rawhide—charge!” which they did. Now one can imagine those wild cattle when a lot of men charged in among them on foot. They stampeded and went to the hills and the captain had a hard time gathering them and getting them back to the river, and he immediately removed the blinds, as the cattle would not work the regimental way.

That is something I never found out about cattle—you may try for days to get cattle to take swimming water and use every means that you can think of and they will not go. Then some other day they will walk right into the water without any trouble.

Another thing in the old days a cowman weaned his calves. The range cow would wean it herself and when I was ranching in a small way I would wean the calves and keep them away from the cows for months, and some of them would go back to the mothers and when the cow would have a calf the next year she would leave the young calf and take up with the yearling. I have had cows that would nurse a steer sometimes until he was three years old and bigger than she was. My guess is that nobody knows these secrets but the cows themselves.

I believe cows has different ideas just like cowboys have. I worked for an outfit one time and the boss sent two of us out together to hunt some saddle horses we had lost on the roundup. We had a pack horse, bedding and grub.

I noticed the first day out this fellow was eating some little pills and he wouldn’t tell me what they were, and thinking of his disposition and the way he acted, I know now it was morphine.

Those horses we were hunting were supposed to be ranging on a big flat down on the Missouri River and we had to take one certain ridge to get in there. The ridge was about 15 miles long and if at any time we found out we were on the wrong ridge we had to come back and take another one. Now we were both uncertain about this ridge and I tried every way I knew to get his opinion on which ridge to take, as he was in a very bad mood just at that time. It was getting late in the evening. I was anxious to get to the river and make camp before dark. Anyway I had to choose the ridge, which proved to be the wrong one and we had to make camp in a very disagreeable place—no shelter—and we were pretty cold before morning. While we were making camp, I made the remark it was tough luck that we got on the wrong ridge. He said he knew damn well we were taking the wrong ridge, but it was none of his business, and he wasn’t going to say anything about it, so one can see he had a very lovable disposition.

We didn’t hold much conversation while we were getting supper and soon after I saw he was dividing the bedding, which was a very small amount, so I decided he did not want to sleep with me. So I took my cut and went to bed. He set by the fire. We had coffee enough to last about a week, but he made coffee and drank it all night, so when I got up we didn’t have any coffee for breakfast. I think those little pills gave out on him and he used the coffee as a substitute. Anyway he must have got kindhearted in the night sometime, as when I woke up in the morning he had throwed his blankets on me.

In a few days we found the horses we were looking for, and as our horses were tired, we decided to catch fresh horses out of the bunch we found to ride. We drove them up against a cut bank and roped two of them. One was a nice looking little fellow—the other one was a big, sleepy-looking guy. So I offered him his choice of the two horses. He thought the little horse looked kind of wild, so took the big fellow. However, when he went to saddle him he found him pretty bravo.

Anyway he got on him and the show started. This fellow had the longest nose I ever saw on a man. Some way in the bucking and mix-up, the saddle horn hit him on that big nose, but he rode him. I went to stop our loose horses and waited for him to catch up. When he came to where I was, the first thing I saw of him was that big nose—all blood and swelled up twice as big as it was before. I pretended not to see it and looked the other way, and asked him how he liked his horse.

He said, “How do I like him? Look at my nose!” and, of course, I had to look. Well, I nearly fell off my horse laughing, which I was ashamed of, but I couldn’t help it, as he was sure a funny sight and he being such a grouch made it more comical.

I nicknamed him “Curlew,” which is a bird with a long bill.

When we got back to the ranch the other boys all took up the name and called him Curlew. This lasted about a week and he was getting pretty sore. So one day he called us all together and said, “The next man that calls me ‘Curlew’ can shed his coat and get ready for battle. I am not going to stand for this name any longer.”

Now this fellow could sure fight and we all knew it, so he got nothing but silence—but we still called him Curlew behind his back.

One day there was a bunch of us riding—most of us was behind him. I whistled like a curlew. He stopped and turned around and looked us over. He didn’t know who had whistled, but he looked at me pretty vicious, so I was careful where I whistled after that.

When I lived with the Northwest Mounted Police, working for the Montana cattlemen, I kept three horses furnished me by the cow outfits. I had very little to do. My horses were fed plenty of grain by the police and the sergeant detailed a policeman every two weeks on cook duty. Most of those boys had been raised in the city. Some of them were highly educated and were remittance men who had come from very wealthy families in England and were given a small allowance from their families. So they knew nothing about the West or camp life. The result was we got some very poor cooking, but they were perfect gentlemen and had the highest sense of honor I have ever known.

They had never known mosquitoes before (and we had plenty of them on Milk River in summertime). They called them “blooming American flies” and said “they not only bite one through to the pores of the skin but would bloody well bite through your trousers.”

In the wintertime we were quite isolated, as the snow usually got very deep and there wasn’t much travel. We played whist (which I believe is an old English game) those long winter evenings for 25 cents a game and would have some hot arguments as to the rules of the game, so that we all went to bed mad every night—but everybody would be ready for play again the next night. If someone from the outside had heard us, it would have been like the man shipwrecked on an island who thought he was in a country of nothing but wild animals. He finally saw campfire smoke. He crawled up close to listen and find out what it was, when he heard someone say, “What the hell did you play that ace for?” He thought for a moment and said, “Thank God, I am in civilization.”