This poem is dedicated to the man
who inspired it, Bill Duncan. (I
was married to him for 48 years.) He was the
grandson of one of the earliest settlers in the southeast corner
of the
Montana Territory, Caleb Duncan. Bill was born and raised
on the family ranch. As a small boy, he and his brother Pete rode
bareback on bucking calves with Bud Linderman, pretending to be
rodeo stars. Bud Linderman later became a World Champion
bareback rider. Bill was active on the family ranch. In
Spring, he helped drive cattle about 50 miles from the home base, to
higher leased ranges on the Crow Indian reservation. In fall, he helped
drive them back. He figured he had been on over 20 such cattle
drives.
Bill was in the Army in WWII , serving in the Pacific
theater in Finchhaven, New Guinea; and he made the beachheads at Laiti
and Mendora in the Philippines. Later, as a student at
Montana State College, he was part of a six man committee that helped
establish rodeo as an intercollegiate sport at MSC.
Bill performed as a bareback rider in local rodeos for several
years.
After College, Bill worked for the Bureau of Reclamation as boss of an
eight man crew that surveyed the Big Horn Mountains, prior to
construction of the Yellowtail Dam. They were deep in the Little
Big Horn Canyon for over 5 months. This job, among other things,
required them to establish elevations of mountain cliffs down through
the canyon. As a consequence, the crew traveled through and over
country that very few people had ever seen. They lived chiefly off of
the abundant game to be found in the Bighorns at that time.
In a very
remote section of the Big Horns, the crew came across a narrow pass into
the canyon. It had a heavy chain attached to a hook in the granite
wall. It was stretched across the pass, and across the adjacent
river. Ahead were boulders. The river was boiling with
rapids and water falls. Past the boulders, there was a pathway to a
fertile plateau. It had long been rumored that there was a
band of rustlers that operated out of the Big Horn Mountains. They had
often been chased...but never caught. They always disappeared to the
consternation of the nearby Cattlemen's Associations. (The cowboy poem,
The Rustler's Roost, a fictional account based on Bill's
recollections, is scheduled to appear on
Casey's Corral.)
This entire area is now under water; and is part of the Yellowtail Dam
reservoir. Bill counted himself fortunate to have seen this bit of
Montana history and to have experienced the wild west in a way
that few people living today have known. And I count myself lucky
to have known him.
Wacobelle