We came upon Billings one sunny day in May [about 1882], dropped upon
it, I might say; for after a ten miles' drive across a high and windy
plateau, the immense dazzling range of the Big Snowy Mountains looming
up in front, the ground fell away abruptly and the town lay at our
feet in a broad, green valley. The yellow-pine houses, untouched by
paint, glistened in the sunlight like gold. The valley, hemmed in
by precipitous cliffs on the north, and by black, bare hills beyond
the muddy river on the south, stretched away to the west to distant
mountain slopes. Under the shadow of a huge sandstone butte lay the
little hamlet of Coulson, now quite out of spirits because of the new
town a mile further on. Old Coulson, it was called, though its age was
only three years. It had made some money buying buffalo robes of the
Crow Indians across the river, and selling shirting, groceries, and
whisky to a few herdsmen whose cattle graze in the Musselshell Ranges.
Now it must abandon its score of "shacks" and shanties or move them
up to Billings. The new town, when I visited it, consisted of perhaps
fifty cheap structures scattered over a square mile of bottom-land.
Many people were living in little A tents or in their canvas-covered
wagons, waiting for lumber to arrive with which to build houses. Sixty
dollars a thousand was the price of a poor quality of green stuff
brought from a mill twenty miles up the Yellowstone. All articles of
food, except beef, were frightfully dear. Potatoes were eight cents
a pound, flour six dollars a sack. I doubt if one in ten of the
inhabitants could tell why he had come. The migrating impulse is the
only way to account for the movement of merchants, mechanics, farmers,
speculators, gamblers, liquor-sellers, preachers and doctors to a point
nearly one hundred and fifty miles from anything that can be called a
town--a point, too, in a region inhabited only by Crow Indians and a
few scattered herdsmen. At the signal that a town was to be created,
all these people, of diverse possessions and ambitions, moved forward
and occupied the site as though they were soldiers marching at the
word of command. What a wonderful self-organizing thing is society!
How did the German baker from St. Paul, the milliner from Minneapolis,
the Chinese laundryman from the Pacific slope, the blacksmith, the
carpenter, the butcher, the beer-seller, the grocer and all the other
constituent parts of a complete community happen to feel the desire, at
the same time, to go with their trades and wares to a remote spot in an
unknown land?
[Illustration: A great farm in the New Northwest.
All the land is cultivated, even the hillsides.]
Large herds of cattle graze in the valleys of the Yellowstone and
its tributaries, and in the hill country as far north as the Upper
Missouri, wherever there are small streams or water holes. Now that
the buffalo is fast disappearing, the region would afford pasturage
to at least ten times as many cattle as it supports at present. The
stockmen who occupy it are generally careful, however, not to let this
fact be known, as they naturally would like to keep the whole section
for the future increase of their own herds. Cattle-raising in Montana
is an exceedingly profitable business. One hears a great deal said in
the Territory of the wealth of the "cattle-kings," and how they began
their careers a few years ago with only a few hundred dollars. The
local estimate of the annual return from money invested in a herd of
cattle is from thirty to fifty per cent. The life of a stockman is
not, however, an idle and comfortable one, as often pictured in the
newspaper accounts of the business. Unless he is rich enough to hire
herdsmen he must look after his herd constantly. He lives, as a rule,
in a wretched dirt-roof "shack," and passes most of the time in the
saddle, seeing that his animals do not stray too far off the range. In
the fierce winter storms he must be out driving the herd into ravines
and deep valleys, where they will be protected from the wind. No
shelter is built for stock in Montana. The dried bunch-grass furnishes
abundant winter grazing, and the animals get through the severe weather
with a loss rarely exceeding four per cent. In the spring each owner
"rounds up" his herd, and brands the calves. Every ranchman has his
own brand, which he registers in the office of the county clerk, and
advertises in the nearest local paper, printed, it may be, one or two
hundred miles from his range. The annual drive of bullocks across the
plains southward to the Union Pacific Railroad, or eastward to the
temporary terminus of the Northern Pacific, takes place in the summer
months.