Old Missoula

Part of Broncho In Building West by Anne Hawkins

Anne Hawkins Tells of His Importance in An Earlier Day of This Region

By Anne Hawkins

Along in the ‘80’s when western school ma’ams had to figure out a way to get to and from the little log schoolhouse, the broncho seemed to be the only solution. You of the present day of the “Baby Grand” in automobiles, have no conception of what transportation meant in those days.

I never could have become a real western teacher without the aid of the broncho. He was an evil little brute, but I loved him. At first I think I was inclined to meet him on a psychological basis. I would go up to him when he was picketed, and reach my hand out timidly and say “Good little horsey”, “Nice little horsey”, and he would snort and run on the picket rope and both of us would be just as scared as we could be.

Now whatever you may have known or not known, in those days, if you came from a place east of the Missouri river (“back east”) and went “way out west to Montana”, you had to unlearn every thing and learn it all over again. For instance you were told never to lie down in the shade of a tree and go to sleep with the picket rope of your broncho tied to your ankle. And you must always throw your bridle reins over the broncho’s head to trail the ground, when you dismount, never leave them tied up on the saddle, and etc., etc.

In those days it was considered “unladylike” to ride astride on a man’s saddle, and we had those red plush and carpet-covered side saddles with a little metal stirrup and frail cotton cinches, but they were not much good for western use, but when we got the cowgirl saddle it was the real thing. It was made of heavy leather like a man’s saddle with a good substantial tree that wouldn’t gouge a horse’s back, and a safety leather covered stirrup and not a bit of metal that was like a death trap for your foot if you were thrown from your broncho.

I was so proud of my first cow-girl saddle, a $35 Collin’s make, with a stamped leather seat, sheep-lined skirts and hair cinches. I would hang it inside the schoolhouse with great care and then picket my little old broncho.

Credit Has Been Denied.

I often think the broncho hasn’t been given half enough credit for his part in the development of the west, his duties were so many and varied.

When it came to color, I think I had a leanin’ to the little buckskin with the dark stripe down his back. I never fancied a sorrel with a blaze face and Roman nose. I liked the bays and grays.

Once there was on the ranch, a pinto with a chalk eye that I craved to ride, but for a long time the men wouldn’t let me ride him. They said he’d run away and smash me up. Well, he didn’t smash me up, I just leaned forward in the saddle and loosed the reins and Chalk Eye gave me the ride of my life, what you might call transportation de luxe. Chalk Eye had just a wisp of a tail, said to be the result of turning corners rapidly.

I recall one time going to stay over night with some of my school children who drove about seven miles to and from school. They had two little bronchos and a buckboard. We made the home trip according to schedule time but the next morning for some reason or other, the little “bronks” were averse to leaving home. We were all “set” and ready to start when the “off” “bronk” turned his head ever so slightly and rolled his eyes. You know what that means. Well, it means nothing doing in the way of locomotion until the broncho gets good and ready, and the “near” broncho bore him out in it, too. Some of the children jumped out and begun throwing pebbles and gravel, and one tried coaxing and petting and we all clucked and clapped the reins on his back time and again. Now the word “honorary” is far too good a word to waste on those bronchos; it’s “onery” that I wish to use. We used up about an hour of our time on those “onery” brutes, and then we started quite suddenly and with violence. Dinner buckets rattled, children scurried to get in to the rear of the buckboard, and we never once stopped until we drew up at the schoolhouse door. I had planned to stop and talk a few minutes with a bachelor school trustee that morning, but I only caught a fleeting glimpse of him as we tore through his yard. Somehow, the little bronchos managed to make good in the end.

A Trip to School.

Another time in the dead of winter I hired a “rig” and driver in a little new town where I was visiting, to take me out some twenty miles to my school. We traveled light, a spring wagon with only my trunk in the back. We had a span of bronchos, of course. The roads were badly drifted in the gulches and hollows, and we got stuck in one. The bronchos refused to go at all for quite a spell and then started with a jerk that splintered the doubletrees and pulled the driver out over the dashboard and dragged him “a ways” on the snow. We were miles from any ranch and night was coming on and it was bitter cold. Said the driver, “I don’t know whether these bronks have ever been ridden or not, being a livery team, but we can’t stay here and you can’t walk in to the nearest ranch. Will you try riding one?” With my heart in my mouth (isn’t that where the heroine’s heart always goes when she is badly frightened?), I mounted one of the bronchos. He either wasn’t one of the bucking kind or else took pity on my helplessness, and we rode safely in to a ranch, proving once more that the little broncho really can make good in the end, despite his “orneryness.”

In the good old days when the cattle business was thriving, and the west was west and the trail herds were coming through from Texas to Fort Benton, what would they have done without the little old broncho? Can you imagine using either the heavy draft or a Kentucky racer on the range? No, nothing but the nondescript scrubby broncho was fit for the great part to be “carried on” by the horse, in the cattle business of the west.

Do you know how to load a pack animal with a bed so that it will stay on? Well, I do not either. I never could learn to do it right. I remember trying to tie a bed onto a broncho so that I could travel to a claim to sleep my one night thereon, which the law required you to do every six months. I got the bedding all on to the broncho and used all the rope I had, but it didn’t look right somehow, and when the broncho begun to travel sideways and the rope pinched him in the loins, I was pretty sure something was wrong. He just looked like I had put a poultice on him, and finally after “humping” himself once or twice, the bed slid down over his heels and I had it to do all over again. The next time I got it all up on his withers so that he very much resembled the gnu, the ruminant quadruped of the form of the antelope, ox and horse, inhabiting South Africa.

A Big Horse – and a Bustle.

Somehow after having once made the acquaintance of the broncho, it seemed rather out of place to have much to do with the states horse or the heavy draft type. I recall riding from my school boarding place to town, on a huge mare called “Huldah.” Huldah weighed – well really I don’t know how much she did weigh or how many hands high she was. Seems to me she must have been fifty cubits high at least. These were the days when bustles were stylish and I had sent away to a mail order house, for one with springs in it. I got it that day in the mail and opened the package to see what the new bustle was like. It “uncoiled” and I couldn’t get it back into the box again and so had to wear it home. Bronchos are so much more discerning than states horses, and I am quite sure that no self-respecting broncho would ever have allowed me to mount him with such a contraption on, but old Huldah cared not at all, and although I was grateful to her for not bucking me off, I secretly despised her for not having more pep.

At one time the room that had been the dining room in the old Duck Bar ranch house was used for a school room and I taught there one summer. It was a big old house and had a hall running the full length of it and rooms aplenty on both sides. In one of the largest ones with a big bay window had stood a grand piano of the old-fashioned type. That was when Techmacher and DeBillier owned the outfit, I think, and into that room rode a drunken cowpuncher who was determined to make his little old broncho run the scale on the piano. Now a broncho isn’t what you might really call musical, but when the puncher spurred him almost atop of that piano, he clawed out a fairly good accompaniment, and once more the little broncho made good. The rooms were all empty when I taught there, but they were full of high jinks of other days.

The broncho isn’t accredited with being possessed of any great affection for the human race, and only once do I remember of ever having seen him display any. I was sitting under a big pine tree watching the cattle. The dog was asleep at my feet and the little buckskin broncho stood idle, not feeding, with trailing reins and bowed head, quite close to me, when suddenly he reached out his pink tongue and licked my face. I was so surprised, I think I must have said, “Thank you” or something of that sort, and then I fell to stroking his soft velvety muzzle.

The wiry broncho of those days had much more of grace than awkwardness, and yet I remember one gangly bronk that was the most awkward quadruped I ever saw. His mother was a neat little gray, high spirited and sensitive, and his father had good blood, but son was hopelessly awkward. He had an open and honest countenance and was likeable, but his legs had bumps on the joints and never seemed to track right. I rode that colt in to the county seat to attend a teacher’s institute. Tony, that was his name, had never been in town before and he stopped and read every single sign on Main street, and my progress was so slow I was dreadfully mortified before I could get Tony in to the livery stable.

You know Bill Nye published his first newspaper in the loft of a livery stable and his sign to the public read something like this – “Come up and see me – if you have plenty of time come by way of the ladder, but if you are in a hurry, tickle the heels of the barest bronk.”

The Stage Coach Broncho.

Then there was the broncho of the stage coach days. Talk about your fine cars rolling over the smooth well cared for highways of today. Man! There was no means of locomotion on the face of the earth comparable to that exhilarating, swaying motion one felt in a stage coach with four or six bronchos attached thereto. Of course, you were certain you would arrive at your destination with all four of the coach wheels, but there would be at least ONE wheel left, and you would ARRIVE, at any rate.

“Judge Slaughammer,” [was] one of Owen Wister’s characters, whose real name was Sam —–, and who in real life used to drive bronchos with a “free hand” somewhat like the old-time stage drivers. Sam always contended that bronchos attached to a vehicle of any description should be allowed to gather speed going down a hill, steep or otherwise, until such momentum was attained that before you reached the bottom, be it washout, gully or culvert, you cleared it entirely with one bound and landed pretty well up the hill on the other side. I mentioned in one of my previous articles that Sam drove like that – once when I went out with the county superintendent to visit schools, and he was the driver, Sam was very gallant to the ladies, and had chartered a double covered carriage and a classy span of bronchos for the occasion.

The empty stables on the Marcus Daly estate up at Hamilton gave me a most intense feeling of homesickness, and whenever I pass the Bonner residence here in Missoula I usually go around by the one-time stables just to “look” at them, although I suspect neither of the locations ever housed many little bronchos. The west never built fine barns for the sturdy bronchos; just took the saddle off and turned him out to rustle for himself, or, at best, gave him a bit of baled hay and a quart of oats in the pole stable.

In what capacity has the little broncho not served? How many times has he “performed” for the amusement of the public in Buffalo Bill shows and “Frontier Days?” He always gives the public its money’s worth in thrills and does his cussed best to live up to their expectations of him.

Who but a sturdy broncho could take the “shock” when a roped “critter” makes his run for freedom, and the other end of the rope is tied to the saddle horn? Feet braced and muscles tense, the little broncho makes his stand. It’s all in a day’s work. Please do not forget him when you write the prize poem on Montana.

If I could have my way about it, there would be a splendid statue of the little broncho at the entrance of the Tourist park here in Missoula to welcome all the fine people and all the fine cars that enter therein.

The above Anne Hawkins article appeared in the Sunday Missoulian on April 12, 1925.

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