The Road Back
as told by Bee B. Knapp
(after his return from WWI)
Montana had changed while I was gone. The flu epidemic had swept through the country. My mother’s three brothers lost their lives in a few weeks time. Without Lee and Al, the homestead life just wasn’t the same. It was harder to settle down.
There was a piece of land along Beaver Creek that was just gumbo hard pan. A fellow decided he wanted to fence a mile of that. He rode down to see if I’d work for him and dig fence post holes. So I rode over and looked at it and told him that I wouldn’t work for him. That was all bar work. Anyone couldn’t put a shovel in it any place. A hole a day.
That was some country. Never saw any like it any place. Grass was high. It was a good place for horses.
I could have had a good ranch there. I had my homestead and could have added to it. But, when I got out of the army, I didn’t stop any place for long that first year.
I worked as lineman in Texas and Oklahoma and as swamper in the forests of Washington State.
One time I was working on telegraph line. A fellow named Hadley was with me. We were camped in Utah. Hadley wanted some apples. We were near an apple orchard. It belonged to an old lady. She watched as Hadley climbed the tree with his britches leg tied to hold apples. He got up in the tree when the lady came and said, "Who’s that in my apple tree."
"Lineman Hadley, Ma’am."
"Well, you’d better get down and pay me for that britches full of apples."
He got down and she asked him how many apples he had. He told her just what he had in his britches, and he didn’t want to count them right there. She chuckled and said if that was all she wouldn’t charge him.
She wouldn’t take any pay for them. She said she didn’t have any apples for sale. There were apples all over the country.
I went to work for Bill Udarian. He raised sheep and his wife was a big school teacher. She had 15 dairy cows. She made birthday cakes, one layer for each year. I worked for her but didn’t milk. Bill told me when I couldn’t stand her any longer to come work for him. He was haying then.
Another time I got a job in a lumber camp. I guess this was in Washington. They had great forests there. One of the first jobs I had was to take out a big stump that was right where they wanted to make a skidway logs for loading logs onto a flat car. That stump must have been eight or ten feet across and had to be cut down below the level of the ground. The boss found out I could work and assigned me to a big lumberjack to fall trees. I did pretty good, but, by golly, farming in Montana began to look better.
About 1920 I sided with John Sherod. We kept a herd of horses, farmed some on our own and hired out as helping hands for others. We hitched up our teams and followed the wheat harvest into Canada. We worked in the Big Hole Basin and fed sheep and cattle in Iowa. Besides this we did some prowling around.
John and me were up in Alberta – around Calgary. The wild geese would fly into the wheat fields at evening, and about daybreak they’d leave. The noise would wake a person up. Just a big cloud of those geese. They sounded like a thousand wind mills. I asked an old man if the geese did any damage to the wheat fields. He said, "no, they just fill up – who cares anyway."
One day John and me saw a storm coming so we stopped, and unhitched. We set up the tent and got our bedroll and grub box in the tent about when the storm hit. A fellow, his wife and 3 day old baby came flying up in a spring wagon. The feller said he didn’t know what to do – but could his wife and baby get in the tent?
While he took care of the horses, the woman and baby got in the tent. John and me just rolled the tarp back from the bedroll and told her to get in that bed. She did and we covered her up all snug. The feller came in and wanted to know what we’d done with his wife. We showed him where she and the baby were. My how it stormed, but that baby stayed warm and dry.
After the storm the family headed wherever they were going. When it rained that hard old tent leaked, but the baby stayed dry and warm. We just happened to be there and that feller said he didn’t know what they’d have done if we hadn’t been there. The next day, when it cleared up we unrolled that bed and spread it out to dry. Covered an acre or more. Someone came by and asked what kind of city we were starting.
One time John and me drove through Malta. Nothing much there. Went up by Willow Creek and camped. We had to wait for the inspectors to check our horses for glanders before going into Canada. We had to camp there two weeks waiting for the stock inspector.
It rained while we were there. The river was high. Lots of fellers were going into Canada to get stocked up for Dempsey’s fight.
Folks coming by in their old Model T’s got John to pull them across the river. One fellow and his wife drove up on the far bank. He was all dressed up. The fellow called across and asked john if he could ford with h is car. John told him he didn’t think so. The fellow asked John how much he charged to pull him across. John told him that some gave him $5.00 and some nothing. So the man said, "I’m not paying $5.00 to get pulled across."
He rode into the river. The car drowned out. The feller then called and asked John to come pull him out. So John rode out there, dragging the chain and singletree. Then John told the feller. "Of course, you have to hook it up." The feller didn’t want to, but saw he had to. He sure was dressed up. So the feller got out in that water and hooked up and John pulled him out. Then the feller asked what he owed. And John said, "Nothing, especially when you did the hitching up."
The guy threw $5.00 John’s way and drove off.
John said he didn’t care how long it rained and the inspector didn’t come. We had made enough to grub stake them all summer.
When we finally got out of there and made it to Calgary they were having a big celebration for the Queen’s birthday. We pitched our tent on a grassy field outside of town. We didn‘t know it but we had set up camp in an Indian Camp Ground. When the Indians discovered Whites were in the tent, they, the Indians, quietly moved to a new location.
In Calgary, when the threshing season ended, we sold everything and went home. We had some new wool blankets that we boxed up. We left them with a fellow who was going to ship them home. We never got the box.
We got back to Montana and decided to get a winter job in a milder climate. John and I worked for a guy in Iowa. He had a daughter named Susie. She was about 18. The Mama told me I’d better watch my step. So Susie tried to figure some place for me to take her. About Christmas the Mama asked me to take Susie to town to shop. I asked why Jim (husband) didn’t go. She said he wouldn’t. But she said Susie wasn’t so bad. She just wanted someone to carry the packages. I wonder how some women can just walk all day like that and look at stuff.
The mama came down to the bunk house one day just laughing. "I told you about Susie."
I told her, "Shucks, Susie don’t bother me none."
John was quite a rider and the boss had a horse that nobody could ride until one day the boss went to town and John tried him out. They had quite a go round, but John was a bigger hoss that the boss’ bronco.
The weather was bad and the hours were long. They had us sleep in a room in the attic. The heat from downstairs kept us comfortable enough, but the roof leaked a little. When Spring came along it rained and rained. The ceiling leaked some. It wasn’t too bad on the attic bed because a swarm of bees had built a hive between the roof and the ceiling.
"Don’t worry. Water won’t get through that bee hive," John said.
The rain came down on the bees. The plaster in the ceiling got wet. In the middle of the night the whole thing came crashing down. There were bees, honey, rainwater and wet plaster over everything. We had to move out.
One morning John and I were out feeding. John went up in the loft to throw hay down. I was feeding the oats. John stuck his pitchfork into an Indian who was bedded down in the hay. We got him to the pump house and built up a big fire. He wasn’t stuck too bad. We told him to stay out of sight until he warmed up and then hit for home. Probably an Omaha Indian. They’d come through after a drinking spree and bed down in the hay.
One Indian tried to sell us a saddle for about $35.00. We were ready to buy it when the Boss came along and advised against it. He said that in a few days the sheriff would come by and pick it up.
John Sherod and I got hold of some pretty good flat land in the eastern part of Montana and decided to put it into wheat. We had a fourteen inch gang plow and four work horses for their summer fallow work. This wasn’t enough horsepower to break up eight acres of new ground. But luck came our way. My brother, Buster, was looking for a pasture for a herd of horses. Buster’s horses were not notoriously gentle when they were broke. Most of these were unbroke.
John and I tied into breaking horses. We were breaking rigging too. Finally we created two teams of eight horses each. These included our own horses.
Dust raised over the prairie. John plowed half a day in the morning. I took the afternoon shift.
Some horses worked out good, but a few stayed green around the edges. One, on John’s string, was a mean eyed, Roman nosed booger. "Geeraff" John called him. Geeraff was a long legged horse who was short on disposition. He was tough and had harness marks, but he was difficult to handle.
We took to harnessing Geeraff in the chute. He kicked and fought and raised cane, but we fastened him in the middle of the eight horse team. After being dragged a few times he gave up laying down and got on his feet and pulled like a gentleman. But, by golly, you had to watch him. He was always ready to make trouble.
Some old timers believed that for every tough horse there was someone who could train him. Claude Gray was one such fellow. Gray had another flatland farm. His was a prosperous place complete with a wife and a poultry yard which contained a goose to provide down for the lady’s pillows. One day Gray came by when Geeraff was in the chute being outfitted.
"How long you been doing that?" Gray asked.
"Too long," John replied.
"Why I could have him working in two weeks."
"Give me a trade and you can have him," Sherod challenged. He was midday cook and wanted a break. "I saw a goose on your place. I’ll let you have Geeraff for a goose. Just have your wife cook the goose for dinner and Geeraff is yours."
A horse for a goose dinner was a good trade for a couple of fellows who were batching. It was especially a good trade when the horse was Geeraff and belonged to another fellow. A couple of weeks later we went to collect their dinner. The meal lasted all afternoon.
"That was a fine dinner," I said. "But tell us, how is old Geeraff working out?"
"He’s just like the goose – eat up. Couldn’t do anything with the long legged outlaw, so I fed him to the hogs."
Gray shook his head. "Run me out of my own corral, and when I lost my hat the son of a gun grabbed it with his teeth. The he stomped it into the ground. Lucky I wasn’t in it."
I don’t know what Geeraff did for the hogs. But with him out of the way we finished the job in jig time. I made the final round and headed for the barnyard. My eight horses were hooked to the plow and a thirty foot drag log with stub limbs was fastened behind the plow for leveling the ground. When I went to open the wire gate, one of the horses spooked. The others took the challenge. They stampeded through the gate with the tree drag chasing them. The corral and barn were ahead. A log outhouse was to one side. When the horses flew by the corral the log was getting airborne. As they rounded the barn on the way back the drag log swung wide, hit the outhouse and sent logs flying through the air like match sticks. The horses ended up in a glorious wreck – plow, logs, match sticks and harness.
I had one tame horse. He was on the bottom of the pile.
We were most of the afternoon cutting the horses out, and the next day we started sewing the harness back together.
The field was plowed. I asked John, "Now what shall we do?"
"Head west," came the reply.
We hitched up our horses and headed for the mountains. We reached the Big Hole Basin two weeks before haying time.
Rainbow welcomed us. "Glad you came early," he said. "I’ve got some green horses that I need to break so we can get in the hay fields."
John had spent several winters working in the Big Hole Basin for Rainbow. This was on a big cattle and hay operation. Someone in Seattle owned this. Rainbow was the ranch manager. His wife, Blanche, was a good manager herself. She’d borrow me for her special chores. Sometimes mowing Blache’s orchard took precedence over the nut grass in the meadows.
Blanche had an old horse that was full or miseries and on his last legs. One of my special tasks was putting the old horse out of his miseries.
[Sometimes Mr. Bee speaks of this ranch as the Huntley Ranch]
background: Bee Knapp & John Sherod