CHAPTER XII FRED REID

Fred Reid was one of the old time deer and elk hunters in the early days of Montana. He told me the first bear he ever killed when he was a young boy, that he was so scared he didn’t go near it after he shot it until he saw some flies flying around its mouth. He said, he knew then it was dead.

Fred hunted for the market and said he often followed elk all day on foot until they got tired, then he would make the kill.

After his hunting days were over, Fred went to work as a cowboy and took charge of quite a big outfit. The man wanted a new range and sent Fred out to locate one. Fred found what he wanted and moved the outfit to the Judith Basin. Then he located his headquarters down in the Badlands of the Missouri River. It was surely a tough country, to get in and out of—had to pack in everything on pack horses.

I asked Fred one time why he picked out such an ungodly country. He said he wanted to be alone where nobody would bother him and he sure found the ideal place for that.

During the winter of 1891 he hired me to go there and ride what he said was some half-broke horses—about twenty head. He wanted them for the Spring roundup so he could use them to work cattle. Those horses were like Fred—plenty tough. I don’t know how he got so many mean ones in one bunch.

I never saw so many mean horses—they would buck, strike, kick, bite, or run away. Shortly after I went to work for Fred, very cold weather set in and I sure had a tough time with those horses. There was snow and ice everywhere and it was hard enough for a gentle horse to stand up. These broncs didn’t care whether they stood up or not when they made up their minds to buck or run away. The camp was on a ridge with very rough gulches and canyons on both sides. The ridge averaged about a mile wide and a good many miles long, and when I would get one of them lined out on this ridge I would sure speed him up and didn’t give him any time to think of his tricks. I had to dress pretty heavy in that cold weather and a lot of clothes on don’t go very good with riding broncs. But the worst trouble of all was, I would get two or three of them going fairly good and the weather would turn so cold I couldn’t ride at all, sometimes for a week and those horses would get bronco again and I would have all my work to do over again. I rode most of them with draw reins and I could always double or pile them up in a snow bank before they would get to a cut bank or a gulch, but one day I was out riding one without draw reins and the horse stampeded heading for a cut bank. If one went over it he would land in the Missouri River. I couldn’t stop him and that bank looked to be a million feet straight up and down, so when I saw I couldn’t stop him I quit him and that’s a hard thing to do when a horse is running away. I just let all holts go and fell off but he didn’t go over the bank as soon as I quit him. He turned and went to camp which was about four miles that I had to walk.

One morning one of those horses bucked pretty hard. Fred was there and saw it. He said, “I saw a lot of daylight between you and that saddle. Looked to me like you was about gone.” I told him, “Oh no, that’s the way I ride, kind of loose.” I don’t know if he believed it or not but the fact was I was just about thrown off.

The headquarters consisted of a dugout for a home, no floor in it and a couple of bunks made out of cottonwood poles, and a corral. We melted snow to make coffee and cook with as the water hole was frozen and about all we had to eat was sour dough bread and black coffee. Of course, Fred being a great hunter, we had plenty of deer meat. Soon after I came there the sugar was all gone so we didn’t have any sweetening the rest of the winter. As soon as the weather broke so I could get out I quit Fred and left that part of the country.

Some time afterwards I was back in that locality and went to his camp. There was nobody home. It looked like nobody had been there for some time. I looked around and found some grub. It was a very warm day in the summer so I picketed my horse and laid down on Fred’s bed in the dugout to take a rest before getting something to eat. While I was lying there I saw a snake’s head appear out of a hole in the dugout. It looked as big as my hand and when he got his whole body out he was a monster. He was about four feet from me and saw me. He stuck his tongue out at me a few times and crawled across the dugout to where there was a grub box and got about half of his body in it and stopped. I raised up on my elbow to see what he was doing. He had his head in the sugar sack. I was twenty-five miles from where I could get anything to eat. I saddled up and beat it out of there. That was a bull snake (Gopher Snake) but he sure didn’t look good to me and he took all of my appetite, eating out of the grub box. I saw Fred some time afterwards and told him of my visit and of my leaving without eating. He seemed very much surprised that that should bother me any. He said the big fellow had been with him a long time and that they were great friends. He also said the big fellow didn’t allow no rats or mice to come near the camp.

I had quite an experience with another couple of old timers—two brothers that had a ranch and quite a large bunch of cattle. They had this ranch for some forty years, did their own cooking and washed their clothes, in fact, lived in real pioneer style. Their names were Frank and George. I was working for an outfit several miles from where those old timers lived. They sent my boss word that we had some cattle strayed on to their range and he sent me over there to help them gather the cattle and bring them home, and while working with them I took a very bad cold. One night when we got home I was quite sick and went into the room where they slept and laid down on one of the bunks. Later George and Frank came in and started getting supper. Now, they had a kind of an old box fastened on the wall of the cabin. They called it their medicine chest and in there was every kind of a bottle and little pill boxes imaginable and they were so old and dusty that the description and contents of each bottle was unreadable. While I was lying down I heard George say to Frank, “Con is pretty sick,” Frank said, “Why don’t you give him some bromo quinine?” George said, “Where is it?” “Why, it’s in that thar medicine box.” So George went looking for it. Pretty soon I heard him say, “I think this is it.” Frank said, “Yes, I think it is.” George started in where I was, but Frank stopped him and said, “Wait a minute, let me look at that again.” There was a little pause and I heard Frank say, “Hell no, this is coyote poison, don’t give him that.” “All right,” George said, “I’ll go back to the medicine box and look again.” Soon he came into the room with several different kinds of packages but I told him I didn’t think I needed anything now. In fact, I felt much better.

He was very much disappointed that I wouldn’t try some of the medicine. But, oh boy, he couldn’t have gotten any of that stuff down me with a ten foot pole.