In Montana during the 1870's - 1890s, cattle were driven to market or the railroad in late summer. The Union Pacific Railroad when completed cut across the Wyoming Territory. During the days of the Open Range and up until the Northern Pacific Railroad was completed in about 1885 as far as the Bozeman  Pass, the railroad stop at Casper on the Union Pacific line would have been the closest market/railroad connection to the Montana Judith Basin area. Casper is about 400 miles from the Judith Basin. It has been estimated that cattle drives traveled at a rate of about ten miles a day. In Charles M. Russell by John Taliaferro;1996; Little, Brown & Co, (Canada), it was estimated that it took Charlie Russell, traveling with a wagon and a four horse team, three weeks to go from Helena to the Judith Basin ( a distance of about 195 miles).

  My late husband's grandfather, Caleb Duncan, settled in Montana in the 1870s. He was one of the early settlers in the Judith Basin. It is not much of a stretch of the imagination to look at the  Olaf Wieghorst painting, "Horse Wrangler", below, and see Caleb Duncan mounted on his horse during the era of the “open range.”  What was the wrangler thinkin? “Goin’ For Broke” is the story that "The Horse Wrangler"  painted for me.
 
             

Goin' for Broke!
(Judith Basin, Montana-1880)

That hoof beat staccato!
I cotton the beat.
Let me hear the work sounds
of your range drummin' feet.
Wake up, my four footed,
star chasin' friends.
It's time for my pamperin'
you ponies to end.
The stars have all gone.
It's a sun's peek past dawn.
We're weeks from the railroad;
and late movin' on.

Come alive, you wind racers.
The summer's grown old.
The winds from Alberta
are blowin' in cold.
The winged flocks of wild geese
are passin' us by.
Get fixed for high ridin'.
Get ready to fly.
...No lead-footed bangtails
in this wrangler's herd.
Don Pegasus wings
and fly like a bird.

The waddies are waitin'
with  bank-notes of beef.
We've trouble enough
so don't give us more grief.
We're six weeks from Casper...
a long way t' go;
and the winds from Alberta
are whisperin' of snow.
We should a left sooner,
of that there's no doubt;
but late summer cloudbursts
left trails flooded out.

This ranchin's a gamble.
Some years things go fine....
and some years they don't-
which is most of the time.
The cowboys are waitin'.
There's cattle t' drive.
Get a move on you Cayuse!
The dawn's come alive.
You won't get no coddlin'
from this worried Poke.  
We're six weeks from Casper
and goin' for broke!!!

Bette Wolf Duncan  © 2009
 

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