Plentywood herald. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1908-current, 1931-07-30
BY GRACE STONE COATES
Author of BLACK Cherries"

town, the holiday Fourth of July"
spirit was changed in a twinkling to
confusion and panic. Two horse
thieves, "Rattlesnake Jake" and a
companion, came riding into the lit
tie settlement, insolent and abusive,
looking for trouble. They found it.
When the trouble wa over they
lay stretched besides their horses,
dead, in the street they had tried to
shoot up.
The day was a memorable n in the
annals of Lewistown. and its events
were ineffectively etched in the men,
cries of eye witnesses.
Those who watched the affair with
most startled interest were members of
a wagon train party, five families and
their companions, who had recently
come from Bozeman. Their children
were playing in the street exposed TO
the bandits bullets when the shooting
began. Their camp was in line of fire
as the men ran for shelter. These
people had reason to remember.
The five families who with stock and
household goods came to settle at
Lewistown were those of Frank Daley,
Dan Mclaughlin, and the three Jack
son brothers, Joseph, Dorman, and
Robert Jackson. Others belonged to
the party: Charles Scoville, Maggie
Bargar, Red" Smith, and other driv-
ers; and, arriving a week later than
these, David Toff and his family.
Children and grandchildren of these
early corners are now substantial and
prosperous residents of Fergus county,
but of the adults who found the first
Fourth of July in their new home SO
rudely disrupted only two survive,
Mrs. Mclaughlin and Mrs. Clara M.
Daley, wife Of the late Frank Daley.
Mrs. Daley, then a young woman
of IS, had come with her husband and
eldest daughter, Iva, from Hazleton,
Iowa. A fairly large party had come
by train to Bozeman, experiencing the
meager accommodation of an emigrant
train, which Mrs. Daley describes as
little better in those days than a box
car.
The five families and their friends
left Bozeman late in March in seven
emigrant wagons for the Judith basin.
Travel was slow. They drove four
horse teams, but had no change Of
horses for the wagons. They were trail
ing their stock, and mares and cows
dropped their colts and calves by the
roadside, necessitating delay while
these were cared for. Mrs. DALEY says
her wagon almost always had a new
born colt or calf in it.
She was driving a three-year-old
bronco, but she will not admit that any
part of her early experience was hard.
1t was all new and interesting, and
something to be enjoyed, not groaned
over
Accidents happened. Once a colt got
under a bridge and was drowned before
it could be rescued. In the Smith riv-
er valley a valuable stallion died,
poisoned, probably; and the party had
to camp there a week while some one
went back to Bozeman for another
stallion. Worst tragedies sometimes
threatened. While driving over the
Devils Backbone" a mile of high
ridge climbing. the feather-bed in
the back of the Dailey's wagon fell
down on their infant daughter, lisa, and
almost smothered the baby before her
plight was discovered. The party did
not hurry. They fished and hunted,
and camped when they needed rest,
and in leisurely fashion arrived in
LeWiStown in June.
Lewistown at that time, according to
NE,. Do;1ou uor ,>1nrn 1ilyo n xroc+ Wild
erness than a town. There was one
store, Dan Crowley had a saloon. There
was a sort of hotel and a tiny
school house; a log cabin of two rooms,
with a dirt floor in n and a fireplace
in the other, into which the Daileys
moved 1t started to rain soon after
they arrived, and washed all the dirt
off the dirt roof, until the only way
to keep the two small daughters dry
was to stretch a canvas over the fire
place, and keep them under it.
Joseph Jackson moved into the freight
house, which was said to have been
built of drygoods boxes-and it looked
like it had. Ouilette's trading post was
on "Buckskin Flats" and Paul Morase
kept store. 1t was a stock joke OF the
day that Morase kept books by draw
ing a picture of his customer. When a
man who owed him came back, he rec
ognized him by his picture.
Into this wilderness" came the five
white families. Their children had
amused themselves on the long trip
overland by making up games in i'm
itation of the grown-up's activities.
They played wagon train," down on
their hands and knees to represent
wagons, nibbling grass like the COWS,
hobbling themselves like horses turned
out at night. Since horse thieves were
a constant menace, they played horse
thief" to. They were playing "horse
thief" in the street, when "Rattlesnake
Jake" and his friend rode through the
town, shooting and yelling. Four-year
old Iva Daley, now Mrs. Heath OF
Martinsdale, remembers how Jake
Vekes ran and picked her and another
child up, and ran with them into the
yard. Mrs. Daley, running out with
her baby, Isa, on her arm, too excited
to put the child down, bent over Iva
lust as a bullet sang over their heads
Mrs. Heath says she can still hear the
z-z-z-z-z of the bullet as 1t passed over
them. Mercy Jackson, daughter OF the
late Robert Jackson, and a teacher for
MANY years in the Lewistown public
schools. was one Of the hobbled
horses" Her foot was tied securely to
- -~-