Month: September 2022

a real tale by my grandfather, Bee Knapp

The Missouri is a slow river and the ice freezes real deep. My cousin liked to load a sleigh full of folks and go to the UL ranch for a couple of days to dance. He had his horses sharp ice shod. He liked to drive four horses.

In June the water would come out from Three Forks and the Little Rockies. It would cover the ice. That which got under at rapids and waterfalls made a lot of pressure and the ice would blow. Ice jams would be heard 20-25 miles away.

One of the Missouri River ‘steaders was a little Irishman named Shorty Brannan. One time he got caught by a vicious hailstorm. There was a high wind and hail the size of goose egg.  The only shelter he found was a coyote den.  Brannan crawled in headfirst as far as he could go. He saved his life, but couldn’t sit down for some time.

Shorty had a homestead on the south side of the river. He had to boat to or swim to it in the summer. In winter he could cross on the ice.

The Missouri didn’t seem to dampen his spirits or interfere with his instinct to be a gentleman.  Brannan wasn’t sloppy.  He wore a suit, a white canvas suit. He kept it neat. Shorty rode a small, tough horse named Snookums. He kept the horse neat, too.

I was working for one of the Sun Prairie ranchers. That was the bachelor named Gus Tank. He homesteaded north of the river in the Lairb Hills. My father was a fine fiddler. Gus’s mansion was small, only one room, but the neighbors were aching for a party. Two of those pretty, half-breed Reynolds girls came down and said that they were going to have a dance and I was going to be the fiddler. They moved the bed and table outdoors and made a cake. The Sun Prairie people turned out with their jugs, and they danced all night. After breakfast the next morning some of the partiers had to get back to their own homesteads.

One girl, who had a homestead, was a “Blackdutch,” dark haired, single lady. I told her I’d get someone to ride home with her. Then I got Al McNeil aside and told him that Bertha sure needed an escort. The two left on what was the first step toward the hitching post.

Some of the others at the cabin decided they needed to stay around a little longer. They wanted to show off their riding abilities. Bill was a local cowboy who had taken a shine to my sister, Leone. He rode every bronc on the place and was chosen to bust out Gus’ six year old bull.

A couple of hands snubbed the big animal to a post and put a sursingle on him. Bill climbed topside and managed to stay there. The bull sunfished across the meadow but couldn’t get rid of his rider so he headed for the pond. He stopped in the middle of it. Only the bull’s head, hump and rider stuck out of the water. Bill was spurring and waving his hat but to no avail. He had the wettest boots in the country and was hollering for a pickup rider. The bull was in a balk.

Shorty Brannan went to the rescue. He bragged that Snookums could handle any critter on the prairie. Shorty climbed aboard, white canvas suit and all, and urged his horse into the pond. He threw the rope, a perfect shot over the bull’s horns.  Brannan dallied a hitch around the saddle horn. When Snookums pulled out the slack, the bull flipped his head sideways and upset the horse. Shorty came dragging out of there, by golly. His suit was in disarray. He washed his clothes down, got on old Snookums. The last we seen of him he was riding over the hill without saying a word.

Bill sort of tarnished his record as a bull rider. He come out wet and muddy. It was just as well. Later on Leone married Charlie Sherod.

A winter or two later, Shorty Brannan was riding Snookums across the river. They fell through a blow hole on the Missouri ice and washed down the stream under the Ice.  They didn’t find them until the spring thaw.  

by my guest author, Robert B Ward

The senior citizen at the sawmill on the Sweetgrass was named Nina Bea after the Basin Creek School teacher. Her teammate was Dolly Grey. When Dolly died back in 39, the years started catching up on Nina – seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. That’s getting old for a horse, and the last years — well if you were part of a team, you’d know. The last years were lonely. When you’d stabled with your partner on your off side for fifteen years, pulled a wagon  with her on the off side, grazed together, keeping the same formation – then things just aren’t the same. Those younger ones didn’t have the memories, weren’t teammates. 

So it was Nina went into retirement.  

In late fall when the hill pasture was dried up, and the grass was short, the gray mare, now turned white, was put in the small field with better pasture, and then in the hay meadow after the hay was taken off. She gleaned with the milk cows until snow covered the ground, then she had her own rest home in the horse barn with fresh hay every night and a can of ground oats every day. That was the way a horse should retire after long years of service. Bud Ward kept her under special care. She whickered when she saw him and strolled toward the barn door in cold weather. Twenty years plus and heading for more.  

She’d been born black. Her father was a Percheron State Champion and a ton of horseflesh. First picture of Bud Ward’s team of mares shows Dolly brown and broad, and Nina, a rich dapple gray, some two or three hands taller. The dapples faded to white, and the white was whiter. That’s the way with dapple gray work horses.

Spring came, snow melting spring, not grass growing weather. Bud let the old girl in the barn and she ate the can of ground oats, walked out of the barn where she wouldn’t cause any disturbance taking her out, lay down flat and breathed her last. That was the right way to go. Bud Ward pulled the pipe out of his mouth and turned away. He felt like he was getting old, too.