Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1890 — AN AMERICAN BOY. [ARTICLE]

AN AMERICAN BOY.

How He Became a Millionaire in the " Great West. Philadelphia News. ‘ * Saturday evening I made one of a group of five in one of the smoking* rooms of the Lafayette Hotel, The others were a New York journalist, a Philadelphia physician, a Philadelphia artist, and a wealthy stock-raiser from Montana—Mr’. Charles Butz. Our conversation turned, very naturally, to the newly developing States and Territories of the West. Mr. Butz was full of information, not only about Montana, but about other sections beyond the Mississippi, and explained, so far as he was able, the novel processes recently introduced into the businesses of stock raising and mining. Finally I said to him: “How did you happen to get into the stock raising business?” Hesaid that it was by accident. for he landed in Montana-four-teen years ago with less than a dollar in his pocket. Then Mr. Butz said, with a smile, that there was a funny story connected with his entering upon the cattle business. All of us begged him to tell it, and, between cigar puffs he gave the tale which I will let him repeat to you. “I was 36 years of age in 1876,” ,he said, “when I left my home, near Springfield, Mass., for Montana. By the time I reached the town to which I was bound my money had been exhausted, a large part of it going into the pockets of some card sharpers, who induced me to join in a game on the train. In a few days I drifted to Helena. There I was utterly without friends, and the boundless possibilities said to exist in the West disappeared into thin air. Every other man I met was as badly off as myself. At last I met an old stock raiser named Blucher, who, because I could speak German, asked me to take dinner with him. I learned that he had a sheep ranch in the southern part of the Territory, with a large number of the animals grazing upon it. He had just purchased 900 more sheep to drive to his land. ‘ ‘Blucher asked me if I had anything to do. 1 told him that I hadn’t, and that if he would put me in the way of earning my board and clothes he would probably save a deserving man from starvation. He asked me if I had ever driven sheep. I said that I had, years before, when I was a boy of 16, upon my father’s Massachusetts farm. Then said Blucher, ‘lf you will drive my 900 sheep to the ranch, from the spot where they now are, fifteen miles from my farm, I will give you $lO and hire you afterward at's3o a month and found. 1 “The bargain was struck, I went to the corral where the 900 sheep were' tied up. and, getting directions concerning,the rOad to Blucher’s ranch, I started off. This was two days after I met him in Helena. I had been told that my road lay across a good-sized stream, at that time swollen by the rains far beyond its usual limit, but that there was a ferryboat there to take animals and vehicles across, and that in this boat I could take my sheep a part at a time. Sure enough, a couple of hours after I began to drive the woolly bleaters I found the river and the boat. Blucher had given me money to pay for the ferriage, and I quickly struck a bargain with the skipper. One hundred of the sheep were placed in the flat-bottomed boat, and the boy I had with me I left behind with the others at the bank, telling him to keep them bunched until I returned. “It was a rope ferry, and when we were about a hundred feet from land I -saw--some oMtre ’the’tjairk jump’ng into the water. *My heavens,’ exclaimed the boatman, ‘they’re going to follow us.’ True enough the sheep I did not want to be separated from their companions, and pouring from the I bank like a cataract of wolves they began to breast the muddy current toward the ferry boat. The boatman began to pull for dear life fearing they would reach us and trying to get in overturn the boat. The current was tremendous on account of the heavy rains. The sheep began to be carried down stream as they swam out. I begged the boatman to return, declaring that if he did not more than half of them would bedrownedand I would be held responsibk £ I • ‘But he said that such a move would endanger his life, and as he was armed and I was not, he had his way. With a feeling of heart-sickness 1 saw those 800 sheep stretched out in a long line floating down the river, while they paddled for dear life toward the distant southern shore. I hardly noticed the progress of the boat until I saw, about a third of a mi!ebelowus,sorne of the backs of the sheep rising out of the water. It seemed to me that they were walking. Bunch by bunch the . backs of the others appeared above ; the surface of the water, until those ! 800 sheep began to move like an army of animals, with blalders upon their feet, toward the southern bank of the river. “They had reached ford. Yes, sir, the water was not over eighteen inches deep in that shoal spot, even in that time of freshet. Every mother’s son of those sheep walked safely and serenely toward the southern shore, which they reached and ascended; and long before we touched land, they were nibbling the grass. When o r hundred, on the boat, wereallowed to land, they rushed toward their companions and the two bunches melted together. I got the flock safely to Blucher’s ranch, without losing a single one, and went to work. A couple of years later I became his partner and in 1880 he died, leaving all he had to me.” i . ■ The amount must have been con*slderable, for Charles Butz to-day is worth several thousand dollars.