Charles M Russell (part 2)

(By Dan R. Conway)

originally published in the Hysham Echo October 28, 1926

The Boy Comes West

Shortly after Russell had passed his 14th birthday, in the spring of 1880, his father placed him in charge of a man who was headed for Montana. This man was “Pike” Miller, (or Wallis Miller, as he was known to others). He owned a sheep ranch in the Judith Basin country and was a friend of the Russell family. They came to Montana over the Union Pacific and Utah Northern railroads as far as old Red Rock, then the terminus of the latter line. From Red Rock the trip to Helena was completed via stagecoach.

Col. Shirley Ashby once told of the fist time he ever saw Charlie Russell; “He had arrived in Helena with Miller, a man with whom I had some previous experience, and, meeting me, I invited them to lunch at my place. I really had never seen as green a looking boy as Charlie Russell was the day he came to my house. After we had lunch, Miller said that Russell had an idea that he could draw some and might become an artist. He turned to Charlie and said, ‘Charlie, show Mr. and Mrs. Ashby what you can do.’ He took a piece of black wax from his pocket and made a little horse which we kept for years.”

At Helena, Miller outfitted for the trek overland to his ranch, and, after a two week’s sojourn in the Capital city, they started out for the Basin country. In recounting this trip to a friend a few years ago, Mr. Russell said”

Quits His First Montana Job

“We did not stay over two weeks in Helena and bought a four horse team and wagon. The leaders were brown saddle horses and the wheelers bay. The saddle horses were not the best but a fellow could ride them. We started for the Judith Basin via Diamond, White Sulphur Springs and Judith Gap. Jack Waite and Pike had sheep and my first job in Montana was herding them. I wasn’t much of a success. You see, it was like this. I didn’t think the boys had money enough to keep me supplied - as I could lose the d....d things about as fast as they were turned over to me. Then Pike and I had a row about a saddle horse and I found that there was a job herding horses at the stage station, so I quit. Before I could put in my application, however, Pike double-crossed me by seeing the party first and telling them that I was no good. Part of it was true, for I will confess now that I was a bum sheep herder.”

When young Russell severed his business connection with Pike Miller he had two horses, a black mare and an Indian pinto pony. This latter horse was none other than Monte, the famous pinto that lived with Russell for almost thirty years, and which he purchased from the Blackfeet when he and Miller had gone to the reservation on a horse-buying trip. This was, though, all that the boy owned outside of a few blankets. He had no money and no provisions, but he fearlessly started out to make his own way in his new world.

At that time the Judith Basin was far from the railroad and one of the least civilized portions of Montana. A few miners were opening up the camp of Maiden and there were a few cattle outfits beginning to operate in what is now Fergus county. Where the city of Lewistown now stands, was only a trading post - Reed’s Fort. Gold had been struck the year before in Yogo Gulch and a lively camp was coming into existence at the head of Yogo creek, which forms the North fork of the Judith river.
Russell, who possessed a proud and independent spirit, took his two horses and his one pair of blankets and traveled a short distance up the Judith river, where he struck camp.

It was late in the afternoon when he noticed in the distance a horseman, with two or three pack horses. The stranger was riding down the road along the river bank, and presently came to the spot where the youth had spread his blankets. Russell made no advances to become acquainted, but after unsaddling his riding horse and unpacking the others, the stranger walked over and surveyed the lonesome-looking chap who was sitting smoking a cigarette.

Russell Finds a Friend

“Hello, Kid,” said the stranger, “where’s your grub and camp outfit?”
“Haven’t got any,” replied Russell.
“Did you eat at noon?” inquired the man, who wore buckskin breeches and a low-crowned wide-brimmed felt hat; was rather short of stature, but powerfully built; and had black hair and a black moustache.
“No,” replied Russell.
“Well,” said the stranger, “you’d best come over and eat with me, Elk meat’ll go pretty good on an empty belly, an’ I never yet seen a kid that didn’t have an empty belly.”

Russell was no more demonstrative as a boy than he was as a man. He rose without a word and followed his new friend. He rustled wood for the fire and went to the river for water for the coffee. The man plied him with questions and found out his story.

Then the stranger said: “Son, my name’s Jake Hoover. I’m huntin’ and trappin’ up on the South fork of the Judith. You’d better come up there with me when I go back and stay till you get somethin’ better to do. You can help me ‘round the place.”
Russell accepted, and after Hoover had sold his load of elk and deer meat to a few settlers around Utica, and had bought some tobacco and food necessities, the pair rode off together to Hoover’s place on the South fork which was to be Russell’s home for the next two years.

Hoover’s Beautiful Camp

Jake Hoover was one of Montana’s unique pioneer characters. He was more or less responsible for the discovery of the great Yogo sapphire mines, and several years ago sold his interests near Utica; he left Montana and established a boat house in Seattle where he died a few years ago. Hoover’s camp on the South fork, which he had filed on as a ranch to hold it, is one of the most beautiful mountain ranches in Montana. It is approached through a narrow defile with towering cliffs on either side, and, in those days it was possible to reach the camp only with saddle horses and a pack outfit. Later a road was blasted through. In recent years the ranch was the property of Walter Bright of Lewistown.

To the then 15-year-old Russell, yearning for the romance of western life, Hoover’s camp on the South fork was a paradise, and Jake Hoover, the best hunter in Montana, with his knowledge of the woods, of all the wild animals and of frontier life in all its complexities, seemed an ideal companion to the boy. Hoover had been in the gold camps of Virginia City, Bannack and Last Chance in the early,’60s and he had a never-ending supply of stories of the old west which Russell loved to hear.

A short time before his death, Hoover said of Russell: “Charlie Russell and I only had one quarrel. Russell was an ardent southerner in his sympathies, while I espoused the cause of the North in our discussions of the Civil war. One day the battle got so hot that Russell packed his bedding and hit the trail. Two weeks later be was back, and after that we never mentioned this subject again.”

Becomes Horse Wrangler

It was in this Hoover cabin that the boy first gave expression to a real desire to draw, and for hours at a time, this haven in the heart of the Little Belt mountains was his studio.

At the end of two years the youth was attracted by life on the range and he became a horse wrangler. He had gone back to his home in St. Louis on a visit and had brought to Montana with him on his return a cousin, by the name of Jim Fulkinson. The latter died of mountain fever at Billings about two weeks after they arrived.

That “Ornery Russell Kid”

Russell had spent all of his funds and with fifty cents in his pocket started out to cover the 200 miles between him and Old Jake’s cabin in the mountains. When out about fifteen miles on the snow-covered trail, he met a cow outfit and with this concern he received employment as a night wrangler of horses. The outfit joined the Judith roundup on the Ross fork and here the boy was hired as night herder. His old rep that had been given him by Miller still hung to him and, some of the outfit were a little dubious about placing their 300 saddle horses in charge of “that ornery buckskin Russell Kid.” But he made good.

From that time on until he finally quit the range country, he led the adventuresome and romantic life of a herder and cowboy. In 1888 he followed the herds across the Missouri river and lived at the cow camps along the Milk river most of the time until 1892 when he came to Great Falls. This first trip to the “big camp” is very interesting told by the artist himself. In writing of his experiences in Montana, in 1903, the artist said in part:

“The Judith country was getting pretty well settled and sheep had the range, so the cowmen decided to move. All that summer and the next we trailed the cattle north to Milk river. In the fall of 1891 I received a letter from Charley Green, better known as “Pretty Charley” a bartender who was at Great Falls, saying that if I would come to that camp I could make $75 a month and grub. It looked good, so I saddled my gray and packed Monty, my pinto, and pulled my freight for said burg.

“When I arrived, I was introduced to Mr. G., who pulled a contract as long as a stake rope for me to sign. Everything I drew, modeled or painted was to be his and it was to be for a year. I balked. Then he wanted me to paint from 6 in the morning until 6 at night, but I argued that there was some difference in painting and sawing wood, so we split up and I went to work for myself.

“I put in with a bunch of cowpunchers, a roundup cook and a prize fighter out of work and we rented a two-by-four on the South side. The feed was very short at times, but we wintered. Next spring I went back to Milk river and once more took to the range. In the fall I returned to Great Falls, took up the paint brush and have never ‘sung to them’ since.

“I went to Cascade in the fall of ‘95 and was married to Nancy Cooper in ‘96. She took me for better or worse, and I’ll leave it to her what she got. We moved to Great Falls in ‘97 and have lived there ever since.”

Russell as An Artist

Russell’s work as an artist began almost as soon as he reached Montana. To early residents of the Judith Basin he was “Kid” Russell, and he was known far and near as the kid who painted pictures. His early efforts were mostly in the line of caricature of the people with whom he came in contact, and were necessarily crude, but always so true to life that they were greatly in demand. As he matured he began, almost unconsciously to paint the range and Indian life about him. He was a marvelous observer of detail, and he never forgot anything he once had seen. Print this post