The Ronan pioneer. [volume] (Ronan, Mont.) 1910-1970, 1917-06-29

Many men have lived within the
boundaries of Montana whose careers
would make the widest flights OF
imagination of fiction writer's look
commonplace and colorless, but it is
doubtful if this state ever saw a
more picturesque character from the
viewpoint Of pure romance than the
Marquis de Mores, a scion of a noble
French family, whose adventures, es-
capades and huge financial losses in
Montana and North Dakota were the
talk of the two territories in the SOS.
soldier of fortune, one of the
finest swordsmen in Europe, cul-
tured cosmopolitan and a traveller to
remote places Of the globe, he was a
charming companion in a palace or
on the roundup, but there was never
a man of more impulsive tempera-
ment, more erratic in his ideas and
business Judgment or poorer judge
OF human nature than the Marquis
de Mores But from the time he
completed his military training as a
cadet at the French military school
for officers to the time he fell NOR
tally wounded beneath a rain of bull
! lets from the long rifles of a horde
of treacherous Arabs in Algeria, after
he had killed dozen in a fierce COM
bat against overwhelming odds, his
life was never devoid of thrills. 1t
would take volume to recount his
experiences in Montana and Dakota,
but old timers remember his unfor-
tunate experiences in the cattle and
beef packing business, when he tried
to put the Cudahys, Armours and
Swifts out of business; his brief ex-
pertinent in the growing of tropical
fruits in North Dakota; his gun fight
with Frank O'Donnell and Riley Luf-
sey, in which Lufsey was killed and
the marquis was charged with homi-
eide; the resultant legal proceedings,
when practically every attorney in
Montana and Dakota was employed
to defend the marquis; the part the
marquis played in the vigilante raids
against cattle rustlers in the bad
merous to mention.
The Marquis Comes West.
Indirectly it was big game hunting
that brought the Marquis de Mores
west. In 1882 his cousin, Count Fitz
James, a French nobleman whose an
cestors fled from Scotland to France
with Bonnie Prince Charlie, was sent
to the Custer Trail ranch by General
Manager Sargent, of the Northern
Pacific railroad, for a buffalo hunt.
Count Fitz James was an enthusiastic
sportsman, and the next year he per-
suaded his kinsman, the marquis, to
visit the west.
The Marquis de Mores had recently
married Miss MOdora Won Hoffman
the daughter of Louis Won Hoffman.
New York banker whose fortune,
rated at $2O,000,000, was one of the
biggest in the country in those days.
The family of the marquis, while not
lacking in the bluest of blood, was
not in the best of financial circum-
stances, and de Mores had aspirations
to fill it's Golfers by the development
of vast commercial enterprises in the
United States. He succeeded in Sc
curing almost unlimited backing
from his father-in-law, and in COM
ing to the western plains he had in
mind, besides the hunting of big
game, the investment of money in
any undertaking that seemed to have
possibilities of big returns.
He had heard much of the profits
of the packing industries of the coun-
try, and when he saw the huge herds
of cattle that were becoming common
in Montana and the Dakotas in those
days he at once devised a plan for the
building of a packing and refrigerat-
ing plant in the midst Of a big cat
tie range, and shipping the meats and
NV to oc{ inc ofI
sending the cattle east and slaughter
were doing.
To conceive plan with the mar
quis was to put it into execution
without delay, and in all business
matters it was his policy to depend |
on his intuition, on his keenness of
which he prided himself, rather than
to act after investigation and re-
search. He therefore selected point
a few miles east of the Montana line
in North Dakota for the scene OF his
operations, and named it Modora,
after his wife.
Some Heavy Losses.
Within few weeks of his arrival
he had secured a tract of land at this
point and built roomy dwelling to
serve as headquarters, after which he
began immediate preparations for his
packing business. He went east, and
after consulting his father-in-law,
made plans for cold storage ware
houses at half dozen of the leading
cities of the middle west, as we'll as
at Butte, Helena, and other cities of
The Rocky mountain region. The
,owmen of western Dakota and east