P a g e 4 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r goodbye and we started home. All social occasions had a unique western flavor. After we returned to Poplar from the N-N Ranch, we were again engaged to play for another big dance on New Year’s Eve at a well-to-do half-breed’s house. The house where the dance was, was a large house with three rooms made out of dry cottonwood logs, and a stockade around the house. On New Year’s Eve, the halfbreeds began to fill up on Jamaica Ginger and hard cider, getting ready for the big dance that night. At eight o’clock that evening, everybody was right on time. The dance started as usual, me playing “The Arkansas Traveler” for the grand march. The man who gave the dance and the owner of the place, was married to a full-blood. But a pretty half-breed maid, the belle of the reservation, had taken his eye and heart, and so all through the dance he danced with the girl. Everything went fine until about midnight. After supper, the owner of place and the pretty girl were not to be found any place. While we were all out to supper, he had his best team hitched to a cutter and pulled out for old Fort Buford, North Dakota. The dance went on the same, until the old squaw came into the dance hall crying and pulling her hair, saying that the half-breed dog had run off with her husband, and that she would kill her. After this, the dance broke up. It happened that there was a five gallon can of coal oil in the house. This old squaw took this can of oil and poured it all over the floor and the bedding and touched a match to it and burned the house and stable and contents to the ground. It wasn’t all fun and games. Along in the early days before the Fort Peck reservation was settled up by the white man and before any railroad went out of Bainville up the Big Muddy, while scouting in Eagle Nest country sixty-five miles north of Poplar, I was going down Eagle Creek, which empties into the Big Muddy. I came across a nice big corral made out of brush. A very nice bunch of horses were in this corral. Looking over the brands on the horses, not one was branded alike. I had often heard of a bunch of horse thieves ranging in that country, so it struck me at once that I had run into their nest. I went down the creek a little farther and came upon a little shack. A rain slicker was used for a door and a piece of white cotton for a window. I dismounted and said to myself, “I will take a chance and go in.” So I entered, finding all kinds of eatables. I cooked a square meal and after filling up, I mounted my horse and proceeded down the creek. A mile or so from the shack, I discovered five or six horses and a man sitting on his saddle with his gun in his hand, and this was Dutch Henry, one of the worst outlaws in that part of the country. I dismounted. He asked me where I landed from. I told him where I came from and that I was on my way to Willow Bunch, in Canada. “What is going on over there?” he asked. I told him that there was quite a big party over there getting paid for their land scripts from the Canadian Government. “Are they being paid in cash?” I said “Sure.” “How long do you expect to be gone on your trip?” I told him four or five days. “I suppose you will be coming back the same route with your party and we may camp with you.” While talking with Dutch, in rode two more men. I recognized both of them. One was Jones and the other Suffy, hard nuts from Bitter Root. Dutch told
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