Back Window Adventures

A tale by a frontier gentleman, my granddad

Yep, that’s me all right.  Looks just like I did back when I was farming and raising a few head of cattle in Montana. The hat in that picture is a genuine straw hat.  Not a dress straw hat, but a real one, the kind a feller could use every day, and, by golly, when it was new you could wear it to town and look just as good as the banker. Of course, a straw hat gets kind of old after a busy summer, and you have to replace them. Luckily, they don’t cost as much as those felt hats like my brother, Buster, wore. Neither can they stand the wear and tear that he gives them when he’s slapping the meanness out of a horse from his rough bunch. 

Buster wears those felt hats, Stetsons, that are plum hot in the summertime. One will last him three or four years, by that time he’ll have a hole in the top of his hat right at the front of the crease, and the sweat and grease from his hat band will have leached through to the outside. The top of a light gray Stetson will have a black ring around its bottom, and it won’t do to wear at a community dance.  But Buster wears one anyway. 

By golly, you notice that hat in my picture?  It’s a straw hat. Instead of getting hot and sweat bound, the older it gets the more it lets in a fresh stream of air.  That is right nice on the hot days in July and August when a feller is thrashing out his wheat crop. 

About 1920, after I came back from the war, John and I put in about thirty acres of wheat.  That doesn’t sound like much now-a-days, but we were doing it all with two shifts of horsepower, three or four hitched up together when breaking new ground. More for pulling a binder. Some of our horses was well broke, and when we run short of good ones, we’d round up one from the half wild herd that Buster had roaming those sagebrush hills. Some of Buster’s horses were pretty juicy, but John could ride anything with hair on it, and I was a fair hand with work horses. By the end of a farming season, we’d have a good string of horses and a lot of broken harness.

At first, we did pretty good farming.  But then, by golly, we hit a couple of bad years.  Two in a row.  Glanders was going around the horse herds. My straw hat was in its third year and was in bad shape.  If it hadn’t been for the antelope roaming the hills we’d have starved to death..

Come spring, when we got our crop in, John says, “The third time’s a charm.” Sure enough, the rains came, and the grass grew, and the wheat had big, full, heavy heads. When the threshing crew came, we made over forty bushels to the acre. On the last day of threshing, when that threshing rig was kicking out the last of the straw, Old John said that we need something to clean out the rig.

I threw in my old hat. With a bumper crop, I’d get new one. I might even wear it for Phipps harvest party.  I’d fiddle for dance.  By golly those folks might take up a collection.  Any hat that pays a feller back is a good hat.

The sound of horse hooves on the Montana prairie caught the attention of the man who tended the stock. A smile played on his lips as he watched his two daughters riding bareback, “By Golly! Those girls look like a couple of wild Indians.” His eyes twinkled with admiration as he chuckled.

There was a time when the sisters, just one year apart, were inseparable from their horses. Darky belonged to the oldest girl, Jean. You might guess that Darky was dark brown, sleek and shiny. He wasn’t just for pleasure, but also for work. Her sister’s horse was Goldie.

The family supplemented their income by milking cows. Each of the girls had their string of Shorthorns. The girls would run and jump on the back of their horses and ride across the prairie to gather the cows in for milking. Jean was known to wrestle the cows that were reluctant to cooperate. Some of them ended up on the ground, legs tied together, while Jean relieved their burden and filled her bucket with milk.

When the girls went off to school and boarded in town, the horses had to be left behind, but they still rode whenever they had the opportunity.

The day came when Jean married her mountain sweetheart. Along with just a few possessions, she brought a cat and her beloved Darky to the marriage. On moving day, the cat rode up the canyon in the car, but not Darky. There was only one way worthy of transporting a horse like him. 

Leaving the home place on Tin Can Hill, Jean rode Darky bareback across the prairie. Her new sisters-in-law, Barbara and Mary Jane, rode down and met her in Melville. From there, the girls cut across the hills and into the mountains. They stayed the night at the Brannin Ranch before completing their journey the next day. When Darky entered the gate at the Ward and Parker place, he was at his new mountain home.

Years later as I imagine Darky’s ride, I see just a wisp of a girl riding bareback over hills covered with prairie grass swaying in the breeze. Splashes of color dot the countryside as wildflowers lift their faces toward the sun. A wave of emotion washes over me as I see the girl of the prairie riding alone into adulthood. As she neared the mountains, with the passing of each mile, she left childhood behind and was transformed into a young bride. 

And so began another journey…

Cars stopped on the road to allow the horses and wagons to pass. Though wagons were a common sight in Yellowstone National Park, this particular procession was different. I don’t know if there were any banners flying that read “Just Married”, or tin cans trailing from the back of the wagons, but I can almost guarantee that onlookers soon learned that this procession was part of a special celebration.

It was the summer of 1905. Wedding bells rang for the second son of Stanton and Guadalupe Brannin. 

The bride and groom stood before the Justice of the Peace. The groom’s sister and brother-in-law attended them while several family members witnessed the event. 

Family was important, so important that they were part of the wedding party – the after-wedding party.  After the “I do’s” were exchanged, the family made their way back to their camp set up along the river. It didn’t end there. The honeymoon became a family affair. Their destination? Yellowstone National Park. 

The wedding entourage must have been quite a sight. The bride and groom were on horseback. Some of the family rode in the top buggy, some in the spring wagon, some on horseback, and some on the lumber wagon loaded with their camping gear.

Their first night in the Park was at Mammoth Hot Springs. They visited Old Faithful, Yellowstone Lake, the stinky paint pots, Tower Falls, and other sights. Among other wildlife viewing, they watched grizzlies feast on scraps of food tossed in garbage cans.

With this group came their own entertainment. There was always good-natured bantering and teasing going on along with lots of laughter. 

One day, the groom caught a mess of fish for supper. He cleaned them for the cook and managed to hide the fish heads. When no one was looking, he took the heads and hid them under the bedding of his sister and brother-in-law. In the middle of the night, the campers awakened to a low grumbling sound and sniffling near the tent. The fish head bait worked. A resident bear showed up for an evening meal. The campsite buzzed with the family trying to drive the bear away.

After about two weeks, the newlyweds and the family returned to their first camp along the river for one last night together. The next day, they went their separate ways. There would be other opportunities for them to gather again. That’s the way it is when it’s a Family Affair.

While talking with a cousin the other day, he said, “We aren’t good neighbors anymore.” I thought, “He is exactly right.” Often, we don’t even know our neighbors. An age old question is, “Who is my neighbor?” Well, it can be anyone.

Once upon a time, neighbors needed one another. Neighbors weren’t necessarily close in distance but were essential. They would stop what they were doing to help others. 

A neighbor might make a five-mile trip in the middle of the night to deliver a birth announcement or rescue an expectant couple when the bridge was out. Neighbors gathered to help raise a barn, fight fires, help in the fields, brand cattle, sew and quilt, or make home repairs. They were there for funerals, weddings, tragedies, in time of sickness, and times of great joy. They pooled their resources, worshipped and fellowshipped together, and made time for each other even in the busiest of times. Neighbors were a necessity. They became friends and valuable treasures.

My great grandmother was such a friend. She was midwife to expectant mothers, doctored neighbors with her herbal remedies, and considered the matriarch of the community as well as her own family. They knew what it meant to be a neighbor and a friend.

William Butler Keats said, “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t met yet.”

The long trek from New Mexico to Montana had not been without hardship and loss for the Brannin family. Their bout with typhoid had lifelong effects, rendering the youngest son handicapped. Heading north from Annabella, Utah, where they had wintered, they were caught in a snowstorm that took about half of their goat herd. 

Almost a year after their departure from their ranch along the Sapillo in New Mexico, they arrived at their Montana destination where two more children were added to the family. However, that was not the journey’s end. 

One of the boys, Ed, and a friend rode into Sweet Grass Canyon in 1898 after checking out mining possibilities in Fergus County. The two young men on horseback followed the trail that led into the Crazy Mountains. As the trail began to descend, they rounded a hill, and it seemed as if a secret doorway opened in front of their very eyes. In the valley below, the river danced and sang a tune as it made its way from the mountains through the horseshoe bend and beyond. They had never seen such a view. Before them lay Sweet Grass Canyon. Immediately Ed knew that his family had to move to the heart of the mountains. 

They crossed the river, and stopped to talk with C. M. Rein, a Norwegian man who had made his home there in 1893. The Reins became valuable neighbors and friends of the family for years to come. They also visited the Tucker family who lived on the Sweet Grass near Melville. The Tuckers, who they had known from Marysville, were more than friends, they became family as well.

After spending the winter in the Crazy Mountains of 1898-99, Ed made his way back to Silver City, Montana, to tell the family of the paradise he had seen. Upon his return, he encouraged the family to move to that paradise. Grandfather Brannin went to look it over, pulled up stakes in 1904, and made the move. Joe had his misgivings because it was too far from a school. Had the matriarch of the family known of future events, she might have had misgivings as well.

The youngest girl, Babe, remembered the trip, “Papa and Joe came to get us and take us to the Sweet Grass and the Crazy Mountains. Papa drove the spring wagon with Mamma, Sid, Bess, Crawford and me in it. Joe drove the lumber wagon and Will Smedley went along to help. I think Gus must have been with Dick over at the new place.” According to Sid, they camped the first night on the Missouri near Helena. The second night they camped along the trail and the third night near White Sulphur Springs. They traveled by way of Deep Creek Canyon and spent the fourth night in Martinsdale. The fifth night was on the Little Elk near Two Dot. When they passed the American Fork Ranch, they knew their destination was within reach.

As the wagons topped the rise and followed the trail into the valley, they saw the horseshoe bend of the Sweet Grass River. Looking into the canyon in front of them, they knew this was home. For the first time in her life, the matriarch felt safe and was no longer afraid to be alone. The mountains called her name, and she answered the call. With her back to the mountains and the valley before her, she found her place of refuge there in the heart of the mountains. She was finally home – a place of safety, surrounded by her family, and neighbors who needed one another. 

Years later, Babe, the young one who rode in the spring wagon at five years old, said every time she came to that place at the horseshoe bend, she thought the same thing, “This is home.”