Tales of the Beartooth
Book Two: Cowboys and Dudes
by
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Book I of the TALES OF THE BEARTOOTH series titled Critter Encounters dealt with animals – wild and domestic – that my little family and I encountered in operating a guest ranch in the rugged Beartooth Mountains on the northern boundary of Yellowstone Park. As I explained in the Introduction to that book, I had to choose between Critters and Cowboys and Dudes as the subject of my first book about dude ranching in the Beartooths and I unhesitatingly chose the former. And I explained this choice by stating that my most vivid remembrances of operating this ranch were of animals. I also went on to state that "People Encounters" would have to come later. Book I has been written and now it is time to write about the Cowboys and Dudes. I was in my fifties when I first met Carolynn. She was in her late thirties at the time. And Chris was eight. It was an unlikely quirk of fate that threw the three of us together in the rugged wilderness of the Beartooth Mountains in Montana, just a few miles northeast of Yellowstone Park. Carolynn was from Indiana, recently widowed, with two grown daughters who had struck out on their own shortly before I met her. Chris was my grandson. He had come to live with me shortly after he was born because neither of his parents was in a position to care for him. What brought the three of us together is a somewhat convoluted story that is not really germane to these TALES OF THE BEARTOOTH. For better or for worse, we had banded together – Carolynn as my new wife and Chris as my newly-adopted son – and now we had to figure out what we were going to do with our lives and with each other. I was born on a ranch near Custer, Montana, where the Big Horn River empties into the Yellowstone. This was the site of the original Manuel Lisa Trading Post, one of whose fur trappers was Jim Colter. He was previously a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and is generally credited with discovering the bubbling and spouting hot water geysers in what is now Yellowstone Park. My great uncle, an emigrant from Scotland, had settled down on a homestead near the confluence of the Big Horn and Yellowstone Rivers, living among Indians and early settlers in the area. His homestead was only a few miles downstream from Fort Pease, established by the U. S. Cavalry to attempt to keep peace between hostile Indians and miners flocking along the old Bozeman Trail and headed for newly-discovered gold fields at Virginia City, Bannock and Helena in Western Montana. My great uncle never married and my father and mother moved to Custer in the early 1900’s to help him operate and manage what by then was a large ranching and farming enterprise. I was born there in 1921, somewhere near the middle of their family of six children. I grew up surrounded by ranch animals and wildlife of many descriptions and my early memories were of bucking horses, mooing cattle, bleating sheep, and the cackling, quacking and gobbling of barnyard fowls. Perhaps my most vivid and fondest memories were of a faithful quarterhorse named "Buster" who carried me uncomplainingly through winter blizzards and summer heat to cattle roundups, fishing holes along the Yellowstone, impromptu rodeos at neighboring ranches, and to the one-room Edwards Creek schoolhouse I attended several miles from our ranch, and just across the gravel road from old Fort Pease The Great Depression of 1929-1938 hit hardest when I was in my early teens and my family had no money to buy even essential clothing items such as shoes, shirts, pants, winter coats and caps so we had to turn to trapping wild animals – beavers, muskrats, weasels (ermine), coyotes and an occasional wildcat or bobcat – for the cash their hides would bring from itinerant fur buyers. It didn’t bring in much, but it kept us covered with basic necessities.
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About the Book
The northern boundary of Yellowstone Park and the highest, snow-covered peaks of Montana lie in the craggy, incredibly beautiful Beartooth Mountains. It was to this rugged area that the author came following his retirement as an Air Force combat pilot to carve out a guest ranch in the Stillwater Valley of this wilderness region. He has written two TALES OF THE BEARTOOTH books describing his exciting adventures at his remote Shangri-La. The first, titled Critter Encounters, tells not only of his frustrations but also of his delight in trying to live in harmony with the trouble-making bears, fierce mountain lions, persistent dam-building beavers and numerous other creatures who were determined to share his mountain retreat with him, but on their own terms. The second book, titled Cowboys and Dudes, contains stories about some of the more colorful guests and wranglers who passed through the ranch. There was "The Family From Hell," every single one of them coming straight from down below; the "Do What Is Right" episode about how the author prevented a group of bigots from pressuring a black family to leave the ranch; "The Man Hater," who came with a fierce antagonism toward everything male because she had been dumped by her lover for a younger woman but ended up succumbing to the charms of a handsome young ranch cowboy; "The Rhinestone Cowboy" who was no good at working with horses but was a real charmer of female guests at the ranch; and Little Mandy, a 5-year old temptress who sweet-talked the author into giving her a big, fast horse to ride in the ranch rodeo. Plus many more tales about colorful guests and cowboys who made a lasting impression on the author and his small family during their stay at the Stillwater Valley Guest Ranch.
About the Author
John C. Mouat was born in 1921 in a small log cabin on a ranch near Custer, Montana where the Big Horn River empties into the Yellowstone and not far from the Battlefield on the Little Big Horn where General Custer and many of his troops were massacred in 1876 During World War II, the author piloted 8th Air Force Flying Fortresses from a base in England to targets in Germany. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery during a raid on the ball-bearing plant in Schweinfurt. He also flew combat in Korea from 1950 to 1953. This is the second book in the TALES OF THE BEARTOOTH series. The first was titled Critter Encounters and describes his many adventures with animals while operating a guest ranch in Montana’s snow-capped Beartooth Mountains near Yellowstone Park. He has also written two additional books, one about the Flying Tigers and the Korean War and the other about growing up near an old Indian Fort on "The Last Frontier." He has plans for a third TALES OF THE BEARTOOTH book as well as a novel about the Vietnam War. Colonel Mouat lives with his wife Carolynn in Cape Canaveral, Florida