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.