The Carbon County news. [volume] (Red Lodge, Mont.) 1924-1931, 1929-11-14
AN ETCHING


Bailiff met in the sheriff's office
to indulge in reminiscent. Formally
was laid aside, station was forgotten
and Sam and The Colonel met and
talked as equals, as indeed they were
for the clock of time has been turn
ed back forty years.
Sam, the soldier, fresh from the
war and still footsore from marching
with Sherman's army to the sea, felt
perfectly at home with the tall, dark
haired, brilliant young lawyer late
of Centerville, Iowa. And why not =?
Both now stand where the Autumn
leaves are falling; each had exhibited
high courage in his lifetime; each
had come to this part of Montana
when its prairie stretches were wild
and wide and when men were men
The Colonel was still too young
to enter the army of Grant OF Sher-
man when the armistice was signed
at AppomattoX but as a pioneer law
yer of new state, as citizen and
legislator and jurist; as a member
of its Constitutional convention his
record of achievement is replete with
courage; his history is coeval with
the courageous history of Montana.
Like Simon of old, she bore the
ross alone in '96 when as a eandi,
date for Congress, he met fearful
odds in preserving his sanity and in
unfolding the sacred traditions and
time-honored principles of his party.
His speaking campaign was memoir
able in lie annals of Montana poll
ties. When he was advertised to
speak he spoke. After the enemy had
shot the lights out as was true on
several occasions, he stood his
ground and made his speech like the
boy on the burning deck, Whence all
but him had fled"
Historians disagree as to whether
the attacking party was aiming at
the lights or the orator but there is
no diversity of opinion that he held
to the philosophy that one holding
wild theories is not accurate of aim.
There is no question whatever, of the
superb courage of the gladiator; who,
like David, gathered pebbles for his
sling and in those chaotic and hec-
tic days went forth with a firm voice
and glad heart to Stay and spare
not the entrenched hosts of the Phil
listines, who upheld the doctrine of
the free and unlimited coinage of sill
yer at the ratio Of Is to 1. l call that
bravery; l call that nerve-when
done in Montana in 1896.
Sam, the soldier boy, hurried to the
defense of the Union in his country's
hour of peril, and uncomplainingly
ate hard tack in the swamps of Geor-
gia and Alabama and the Carolinas
when he could get it. Sometimes he
had mule for Sunday dinner and some
times he had to do without. He
crossed southern rivers on bridges of
swapping alligators and waded dis
NAL swamps alive with astonished
crocodiles in his efforts to put down
the rebellion.
He faced death on hundred bat
tie fields of glory, but it can be truly
said of him that he never turned his
back of friend nor an enemy and
stands today as a living monument
of American courage and American
manhood.
The war over and the army dis
banded he betook him to the great
Northwest. Attired in a buckskin en-
semble of austere simplicity, the only
establishment being a bowie knife
and 81 xgun to lend it color and har-
monious relationship to its surround
ings, he spent the earlier 70's in
the Black Hills country prospecting
for gold. 1t isn't recorded that he
ever played poker in Deadwood but
ne was there in those historic DAYS
when they seasoned their beer with
gunpowder and mixed their whisky
with dynamite. He could, if he
would, recount heroic deeds in which
he was an actor in those days. He
could relate how once he tied
wounded prospector to a tree miles
from civilization and amputated his
leg and how the patient recovered
from that operation. His life here
is an open book; were it written it
would be a narrative of high minded,
law abiding citizenship; exemplary,
honest, charitable and public spirited.
1t was an interesting conversation
that the sixteen-year-old drummer
boy of 1863 held with the erstwhile
Iowa school boy who dreamed that
some day he would be Judge. It had
to do with pioneer days in this local
ity, with the establishment of Bear