The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1902-04-15
MADE A HIT.

II NC 1Clu.- |TNE
MADE A HIT.
Billings Naval Recruits Catch Fancy
of Butte Reporters.
From Mondays Daily Gazette.
The local contingent Of the possible
future Deweys, Wainwrights, Perrys
and some probably Of a lesser degree
of renown and glory that Lieutenant
Morton enlisted during his short stay
in the city seem to have struck the
Butte reporters as just about the
right sort. Especially has the Inter
Mountain shown a marked preference
for the Billings lads, as it has given
them several complimentary men
lions and also honored some of them
by publishing their pictures.
Together with the other recruits the
embryo sailormen from Billings left
Butte last Saturday for Mare Island
navy yard and the matter of their de-
p~arture afforded the Inter Mountain
it's last opportunity to show it's prefer
ence for them. 1t printed an excellent
likeness of Tex Potts and Guy
Upton, the latter of whom accom-
panied the detachment from this city
and enlisted at Butte. In addition to
the picture it also had the following
as the parting words of the two, with
comments of its own:
I'VE are between the sheepman and
the deep sea-" said Guy Upton, who
with his partner cowpuncher, Charlie
Potts, came up from Billings and join
ed Uncle Sans boys who left this af-
%ternoon for Mare Island. An Inter
Mountain representative asked him
why he quit the hurricane deck of a
cayuse for the f%orecastle of a modern
ironclad.
"And so we chose the deep sea-"
added Potts who will be a cowpuncher
if he stays in the navy 80 years.
The two boys, who had been practi-
cally bred, or. as Upton expressed it,
drug up" in the saddle, stretched
their long legs and yawned when they
reminded that the navy was not
as free a life as on the range.
GIass-Eyed JoIts.
"Well, 1 guess" remarked Potts
with a smile that revealed the cynic
devil in his blood, "a sailor has bout
as much home as a cowpuncher any
how.
"Tipton and me have always had a
home where ever we pulled off our
saddles and as for getting seasick,
~ can't stand up under the pitching
81 the big Pacific after being jolted
around by every glass-eyed, pigeon
toed cayuse between the Cow Creek
in Texas and the Big Dry in Montana
well I'll come back and herd sheep
down around Billings and go to the
%bug-house inside of a year."
Upton rolled his fifteenth cigarette
in the same number of minutes and
shot his old partner a c~orroborative
81 didn't have no intention of joining
the navy until I had a talk with that
officer, Lieutenant. Norton" said Tip
ton. "Why, he's just like the boys
the roundup.
There amt nothing small about that
not even his wishin' fer hard
Ticker"
They'll Be on Hand.
And the boys went on in their reck-
less, dare devil manner tempered by
the evidence of loyalty. The years
the range that had made them re-
s%ourceful, had perhaps left them in
provident; but it was evident that if
long-suffering, hard-riding and an ut
ter contempt for death Or danger,
were the ingredients which good sail
ors were made out of, these two, who
had fought and drank, slept and
hungered together, and r."elled in the
peril of the night stampede, w6rlG
never finch at the terrors of the
fight, or bring shame to the
picturesque character fast disappear
ing, the cowboy of the west.
I'VE may not make good sailors for
a WHILE" said Upton as he said good
bye, "but if we ever strike a cow-town
near the coast in this or any other
country, We'll show them what a Mon
tana nuncher oan d0 from rho ton 0f
a bucking broncho."