Old Missoula

Crazy Joe By “Pink” Simms

AS I was awaiting my turn at a service station in Whitehall, Montana, about three years ago I heard a man talking in a loud tone. His voice seemed vaguely familiar, and I looked to see who it was. I saw a medium-sized man of about fifty with a humorous face tanned to the color of old leather. I could not place him and he was gone before I enquired of the garage man as to his identity. He gave the name of a man that I had known intimately, about twenty-five years before, in the range country of the Powder River countries; although he was as mentally sound as the most of us, we dubbed him “Crazy Joe,” because of certain eccentricities.

Crazy Joe was a cowboy; there was none better; he was considered to have few equals and no superiors in the Powder River country, which was a country that took great pride in the riders it bred. He was everything that was expected of a puncher at that time. He worked hard, was a peerless rider, a good roper, and he drank and fought as he worked— hard.

Joe was always performing reckless stunts for the benefit of the rest of us. Of course there were others as brave and as reckless as he. The result was many sore heads and bruised bodies.

In appearance he was quite the opposite of the popular conception of what the present generation seems to think a top cowhand should look like. I judge from what I see of them on the streets and in the movies. He was of medium height, but very strongly built; he had large friendly brown eyes, a wide humorous mouth, and he was possessed of almost irrepressible good-nature. His wild habits kept him continuously in rags; he paid practically no attention to his personal appearance. He was “mouthy” to a fault, and dearly loved a joke, which often caused him trouble; but Joe was weaned on trouble.

One of Joe’s stunts that a good many of the boys would try unsuccessfully was finally barred by the wagonboss. He would “thumb” his horse and make him buck; on the first jump he would allow the bronc to throw him and always land on his feet. Other riders who tried it were only able to perform a part of the trick, that is—none of them were able to land on their feet. Another of his stunts—a very simple one— was to ride into camp as hard as he could run his horse and drop off without checking him, taking saddle, bridle and blanket with him. Not a hard trick to do after one has learned to uncinch the saddle on the run.

Once we had left a Powder River outfit after general roundup and found ourselves in Fallon looking for a job. We had our choice of several outfits, for everyone was short of riders; there was the CK, LU BAR, XIT and the LAZY J, that were shipping out of there. Joe said that Mike Dodge was about the hardest-looking wagonboss that he ever saw; he added, “I’d like to work for him.” Mike was running one of the LU wagons, so in time we found ourselves combing the breaks on the north side of the Yellowstone for LU beef.

With the LU wagon there was a young rider from Wyoming who called himself Tommy Day. That wasn’t his real name, as we found out later. Nor was he that desperate young man by that name who ran with Kid Curry and whose career of crime was ended after the bank holdup in Belle Fourche. The Tommy Day I speak of was just a budding cowboy—I don’t know if he ever did bloom. He found in Crazy Joe much to admire; he tried to imitate him in nearly everything he did, but with very poor success, except the stunt of “cleaning” the horse when he came into camp. He couldn’t handle his latago strap like Joe, so, to make things easier, he bought a patent cinch buckle, which few cowboys used in those days.

We arrived at the Yellowstone on a cold November morning to cross our last herd. There was slush ice running in the river, and the “river hands” huddled up to a camp fire in their underclothes. Joe, Day and myself were among the men who were going into the river.

Day refused to take off his boots or chaps. I asked him if he still had the patent cinch buckle; he said that he did; and I told him that he had better take it off or he would lose his saddle in the river; that anyone who did that was generally gone. The Yellowstone is a bad river. No man living could live long in it with a pair of chaps on. Day said, “It never has come off yet.” Most of the things I knew I had learned in the hard school of experience, so I decided to let Day get his knowledge the same way. He did.

We throwed the first bunch in the boiling waters just as it was breaking day. (Cattle will not enter the water if the sun is on it.) Of course we could not see very good. It is a wonder that Day wasn’t drowned— he would not have been the first. I was working on the lower point, because I could swim; I was in swimming water when I heard a scream, several yells and a heap of cursing. I saw a rider come plunging straight through the herd, which started to break back. It was Joe. I turned my horse toward the shore just as a black hat come floating by. I saw another dark object and grabbed at it. I got a handful of hair; it did not take me long to find out that there was a man attached to it. Joe too had seen something floating in the current and had nearly drowned getting it, only to find that it was Day’s fancy saddle. It was characteristic of Joe that he never let go of the saddle.

There were many savage remarks throwed at Day for not taking my advice, some quite unprintable; one said that I should be shot for pulling Day out. The outcome was that we lost so much time that the crossing was put off till the next day.

Two days later we were on the south side and shipped all the cattle that there were any cars for, which left us with about five hundred head. We drove the herd out of town a short way and Dodge ordered us to bed them down near Fallon Creek and close to the railroad track. This was a foolish thing to do—we had a big stampede that night.

We were on “cocktail”, Joe, Day, Tex Wilkins and myself, and were relieved for supper; it was late, almost dark, and, as usual when going into meals, we were riding hell bent.

When we had changed horses at noon, Day had roped out a baldfaced sorrel that had been badly “ringtailed.” This is an ailment caused by too much spurring when the horse is young; it causes a horse to throw his tail in a circle every time he is touched with a spur. It is almost impossible to rope from a ringtailed horse, for as the rider starts to whirl his rope he always touches his horse with the spur and the horse throws his tail straight into the rope. Crazy Joe showed Day a way to prevent that by braiding a knot in the pony’s tail and then tying the tail to one of the saddle strings. Hard on the pony in fly time, but the only way.

When we started for camp Day was still riding Ringtail, and Joe looked down at the tail pulled tight to the saddle and tied in a hard knot and grinned. I knew by the grin that he had hell in his neck, but did not know how it would crop out. As we neared the chuckwagon Joe spurred his horse to the front. “Come on, Tommy!” he shouted, “let’s show them how to come into camp.” He dashed madly into camp and stripped his mount on the run as he hit the ground. Close behind came Day and did likewise; then, to cap it all, he hit Old Ringtail on the rump with his bridle.

That was the start of a merry evening. Ringtail was not by any means a gentle horse, and when Day hit him he jumped about ten feet, and when he lit a lump of something banged him on the heels. He kicked it and it charged right back at him. That was too much; he started out to show it to the remuda; the horses in it would have none of him and pulled out for parts unknown, followed by an irate, profane night wrangler.

The route they chose led them close to the day herd, already nervous on account of the humming telegraph wires a short distance away. In a few minutes, crazy with terror, the cattle were bellowing and running wild, with every available man in pursuit. They raced toward Fallon Creek, and narrowly missed a cutbank thirty foot high. (In another stampede that night, they went over that same bank.) They were sent into a “mill” against the Northern Pacific fence.

It was ten o’clock before we got the herd back to their bed ground. They could be left only under heavy guard for a while. The remuda was no where in sight, so the men who had eaten supper were sent out to find them. Shots fired by the “night hawk,” who was still with them, showed where they were, but it was midnight before they were in. They then had to be corralled, for our night horses were worn out.

An account of the trouble we had that night would fill a novel. We were a weary, ill-tempered crew that gathered for breakfast the next morning. It had rained during the night and we were soaked—two men were hurt—our horses were all in— the cattle—they had been gathered for a beef herd—were no longer fit for beef, so they were turned loose.

Breakfast over, Mike Dodge wrote out two checks and handed one to Crazy Joe. “I ’m paying you and Day off, Joe,” he said. “You’re a good hand, but I don’t care for your playful ways. Your little playmate here,” he said as he handed the other cheek to Day, “can go along with you; you might take him up on the reservation where there’s lots of dogs—he can try tincanning them for a while, instead of LU horses.”

That was the last I saw of Crazy Joe until I saw his mischievious countenance in Whitehall; and that was the manner of his parting from every outfit that took him on. His love for a joke was greater than his better judgment. It was finally the cause of him leaving the rangeland altogether. No one cared to hire him. That was his one fault.

 

The above story is from The Frontier, November 1928 by Harold G. Merriam

A short introduction for this issue said the following about “Pink” Simms:

Harry (“Pink”) Simms writes, “Crazy Joe now lives in a wild isolated district near an abandoned mining town in Upper Jefferson river country.” He is himself an ex-cowpuncher and at present is a locomotive engineer on the C.M.& St.P. R.R. While a rider he “worked first in New Mexico for the old John Chisum outfit; after drifting over a good part of the Southwest including Old Mexico,” he came to Montana “with a herd of cattle.”

Simms, 57, was born in Kentucky and died in Los Angeles, California in 1943. He was a veteran of WW 1 and fought in Europe. He is buried in Butte, Mt.