“After I Got to Montana, My Sympathies Was With the Indians” BY TEDDY BLUE ABBOTT It was just about the time of the big chinook that came in March 1884, and a few snowdrifts still showed up, when a Cheyenne named Black Wolf and his immediate family of seven lodges came over from Tongue River to the Rosebud on a visit to the other Indians. They camped at the mouth of lame … [Read more...]
Charlie Russell and the Heroic Cheyenne
Also, Granville Stuart’s Desirable Daughters, and Teddy’s Infatuation With a Dusky Maiden BY TEDDY BLUE ABBOTT When I was with the N Bar there was a fellow working for their Powder River outfit by the name of John Green. He was from Texas like the rest of them, but he had been everywhere and seen everything, to hear him tell it. One morning at the ranch house they brought … [Read more...]
Indians, Vigilantes, and Buffalo Women
Recollections of a Cowboy BY TEDDY BLUE ABBOTT (From We Pointed Them North, Oklahoma University Press, originally published in 1939) A night or two before we left town that fall (in 1884), we were all together with the girls, drinking and having a good time, and I got dressed up. Cowboy Annie put her gold chain around my neck, and wound her scarf around the crown of my … [Read more...]
All Horses and Men, We Pointed Them North
Recollections of a Cowboy (Continued) BY TEDDY BLUE ABBOTT From 1874 to 1877 I was taking care of my father's cattle, and after a while the neighbors began putting cattle with me, paying me a $1.50 a head for 6 months. I herded them in the daytime and penned them at night, and for the first time in my life I could rustle a little cash. In 1875 I made $29 that way, and my … [Read more...]
Harry Rutter Was a Cowboy
He Drove Cattle to Montana, Put Away Outlaws, and Got the Girl BY PAT HILL Though his 2009 induction into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame simply states Harry Rutter was a cowboy, long-deceased friends and surviving family members agree that Rutter was quite a man out of the saddle as well. JoAnn Russell of Bozeman is Rutter's granddaughter. She has assembled a collection … [Read more...]
We Pointed Them North
Recollections of a Cowpuncher—How I Came to Montana BY TEDDY BLUE ABBOTT People who know me often talk as though I was from Texas. That is not correct. I was born in Granwich Hall, Granwich County of Norfolk, England, December 17, 1860. But I came to Montana with a herd of Texas cattle in 1883. This is where they get the idea that I am a Texan. All this part of Montana … [Read more...]
On the Outlaw Trail
A Bat Masterson Bar Fight, Tracking the Wild Bunch BY CHARLES A. SIRINGO From Cowboy Detective On returning to Santa Fe [in 1895], I received a telegram from W.O. Sayles [fellow Pinkerton detective], saying that he had found the right trail [of the train robbers we were pursuing], going through Pagosa Springs, and over Mosca Pass into the Wet Mountain Valley. Shortly … [Read more...]
Cowboy Detective
BY CHARLES SIRINGO Originally published in 1912 The writer was born in Matagorda County, Texas, in the extreme southern part of the State, in 1855, and was reared on the upper deck of all kinds and conditions of cow-ponies scattered throughout the Lone Star State, Kansas, Indian Territory and New Mexico. I spent fifteen years continuously in the saddle, seldom ever sleeping … [Read more...]
The Apache Kid
BY TOM HORN Originally published in 1904 (The conclusion of Life of Tom Horn) Early in April of 1887, some of the boys came down from the Pleasant Valley, where there was a big rustler war going on and the rustlers were getting the best of the game. I was tired of the mine and willing to go, and so away we went. Things were in a pretty bad condition. It was war to the knife … [Read more...]