Well, I was always one to look for new experiences and I figured, having worked on a cattle ranch, this was going to be a cinch. Well, it wasn’t. He was almost as hard to control as Tom was, back at Sam’s in Turtle River. Maybe he was harder. They both were a challenge. I did manage to rope the critter but not before I had a small gash on my right arm and two large bites, a matching pair, one on my left leg, the other on my right. The town gave me my $10 without a fight which was good because I had had enough fighting to do me for the day. The town also gave me some free medical attention which I badly needed after all the blood I had lost. That was the day I decided no more ‘gators for me… dead or alive!
Chapter 12 - Heading North Again
While visiting Tampa, I bought the local paper and saw that a small town up north was looking to hire a Sheriff. Since that was the direction I was planning on going, I ripped out the ad and headed in that direction. The name of the town was Duncan Flats and it was in Northern Montana, again close to the Canadian border. I didn’t get the chance to see any part of Canada when I was in Broken Hearts, The need of a job and the urge to cross the border for a look-see was all it took to hasten me on my way. I was really worried that somebody else would have been hired before I got there.
I left Tampa on the first train going north. It was headed for Oklahoma City. From there I would have to make more connections to get up to Duncan Flats. I wasn’t sure at that point what they would be but I knew going to Oklahoma was putting me in the right direction.
Once I arrived in Oklahoma, two days after leaving Tampa, I checked in at the ticket office and learned that a train would be leaving for Jackson Springs the next morning. I was somewhat disappointed by the delay but there was nothing I could do about it. I found a place to stay for the night, left early the next morning, bought my ticket and I was again on my way. It was long after sundown when we arrived in Jackson. I was only 200 miles or so from my destination but again, I would have to find overnight accommodations.
The next morning I found myself on a freight train, this one bound for Tall Pines, Montana. Once there, I would need to catch a stagecoach to go the extra twenty-five miles to Duncan Flats. I arrived early enough in Tall Pines. There was plenty of sunlight left but I found myself delayed. There wasn’t any stagecoach to the Flats for another two days. I couldn’t believe my luck was turning so bad. I was sure at this point that I would arrive too late and somebody else would have been hired as Sheriff.
Those two days were the longest two of my life. Finally, on Friday, June 10, 1867, I arrived in Duncan Flats. I went straight to the Post Office in order to find out who I had to see about the Sheriff’s job. I was told to go see Ben Crawford over at the bank. Ben was both the bank manager and the town’s mayor.
Mr Crawford saw me right away and we had what I considered my first formal interview. When I told him I worked as a Deputy in Broken Hearts, his business-like manner faded and he seemed to become more friendly. As it turned out, he was a long-time buddy of Sheriff Abraham. He paused for a moment or two and then said he remembered how Abe had told him of hiring a Deputy to work for him. I guess Abe must have said a few good things about me because Ben informed me that I could start the job on Monday if I really wanted it. Of course I did! Having the weekend free worked out well because it gave me a chance to settle in and become familiar with the town before I began my duties.
I found the White Rose Inn and went in to see if I could lodge there but they had no vacancies. They told me to try Maple Creek Lodge over on Pine Street. I remember thinking how stupid that seemed but I didn’t dwell on it long. I was able to secure a small room and was told that I probably could move into a bigger room in a month when one of their other lodgers left. Big room, small room, it didn’t matter just so long as I had a place to stay. The owners of Maple Creek were the town doctor and his wife. She took care of the lodge and he had his practice in town.
I spent the weekend going here and there trying to meet the townsfolk. I never told anybody that I was going to be the town’s Sheriff. They were going to find out soon enough. All I wanted was to make a few friends and size-up things so I would get an idea of who might be the troublemakers and what kinds of trouble might occur in town.
I even went to church that Sunday. I think the last time I went to church was for my Grand-Pappy’s funeral. I was eight years old.
After a wonderful meal of steak and baked beans, I went to my room to relax before my big day.
Before going to bed, I made some notes of the things I had learnt over the weekend just to make sure I didn’t forget anything. I was sure some of the information was going to help me ease into my new position.
Chapter 13 -I am a Sheriff!
I met Mr Crawford in front of the Sheriff’s office at 8AM on Monday morning, as he and I had agreed. He unlocked the door and showed me my new office. He had a handful of papers with him and a ring full of keys. The extra keys he gave to me and said, “Welcome Sheriff”. I took them, shook his hand and replied, “Glad to be here.” Then we sat down and went over the most important things I would need to know - things such as who the town magistrate was and where to find him, the location of the two taverns (I already had found one of them) and when the Wells Fargo coach came into town. He didn’t need to tell me where the Doctor’s office was. His wife had already told me. Just before he left, he said I wasn’t really the Sheriff quite yet. I needed to sign one of the papers he had brought with him. It was a contract for six months which was renewable by both him and me if agreed. I signed it straightaway and then he gave me a plaque to hang from the wall that read, “Homer Bolton, Sheriff of Duncan Flats“. He then gave me my badge, some papers to read over and told me my horse’s name was Thunder, a three year old that I was to get over at the blacksmith’s, just down a hundred yards from my new office.
Thunder was a beauty. He and I hit it off right away. He reminded me very much of one of the horses on my Pappy’s ranch. They both had a white patch on their right sides. Thunder’s looked like a lightning bolt and that is obviously how he got his name.
So it was on Monday, the thirteenth of June, 1867, that the town of Duncan Flats had its first Sheriff. I was to serve the town twenty-five years, twenty-five years of many adventures and a few mishaps, I should add.
Chapter 14 - Duncan Flats
Before I recount some of the experiences I had, it seems only fitting to me that I give you a brief history of Duncan Flats. It had a population of only 400 people when I arrived. It had been settled seven years before by some Scottish people who came, like me, to start a new life. Their leader was a man by the name of Angus Duncan. They decided to start their homesteads here as it had a beautiful river and the soil appeared to be very fertile. They didn’t wish to go any further west as they were well aware of the Indian Wars that were occurring. They weren’t all that sure that they should have gone as far west as they did but they decided to stay since they were here already.
After a year and not experiencing any trouble from Indians nor outlaws, other people came to join them. What started out as thirty-five Pioneers soon came to be one hundred, then two hundred and as I have said, 400 by the time I arrived in 1867. Five years after I became Sheriff, silver was discovered in the hills just north of our town. Prospectors came in. A silver mine was opened up and our population grew to more than 1,000. Things were starting to get busy for me and it was then that I had to appoint a Deputy to help me out.
The town continued to grow and became a central trading point because it was so close to the Canadian border. Goods were coming and going all the time and by 1880, our town consisted of 4,000 perman
ent residents and another 1,000 who resided with us in the summer.
By the time I retired (in 1892) the town had a population of over 12,000, not counting the other 2,500 or so who came to stay in the warmer months. The silver mine was still running, there were two paper mills, a textile factory, three dairies and somewhere in the neighbourhood of 120 farms. There was work for everyone. The worst year for unemployment which I can remember was in 1890 when forty of the townsfolk weren’t working. It wasn’t because there was no work for them - they were just too damn lazy.
Chapter 15 - My First Duty as Sheriff
My very first day on the job was pretty much uneventful. I had my new horse Thunder, but no place to keep him in the nights. It was summer then but I knew winters were mighty cold up here. I needed somewhere where I could give him the shelter he required. I worked out an arrangement with the Blacksmith to board Thunder with him until I could get a small barn built.
The doctor had some extra land behind the lodge and said he didn’t mind if I built a small barn there provided that I paid for all of it and if I ever left the area, I would give it to him. All I needed now was to get the money to buy supplies.
I went on over to see Ben at the bank who was more helpful than I could ever have imagined. He said, as Mayor, he could grant me half the money towards the barn and could give me a loan for the other half.
Everything fell in place so easily that I started thinking I may have moved to Paradise. Events later proved to me that I was wrong.
I started to build the barn right away and used all my spare time in that pursuit. I wanted to be sure I finished before October because I wasn’t quite sure when the cold weather would start coming. Some of the folks in town were glad to lend me a hand. Being Sheriff did seem to have some privileges.
I had the barn finished by mid-September and moved Thunder to his new home right after the last nail was banged in.
Chapter 16 - The Ups and Downs of Homer Bolton, Sheriff of Duncan Flats
I thought there shouldn’t be much trouble in town. After all, there were only 400 or so people. How much trouble could they cause anyway? I was a bit anxious with our country’s birthday less than a month away. I was prepared for some partying, firecrackers and a few drunks. I even figured they might start celebrating the day before. I didn’t figure on them starting on the second of July.
Well, start they did, two days early. Word came down from up north, from the other side of the border, that what we had been calling Upper Canada had joined politically with some provinces to their east. They declared themselves a nation on July 1, 1867. The town folk all seemed to be in favour of the event. The taverns were selling beer and whiskeys for half-price, people were partying all over the place, and it seemed to me that there wouldn’t be any fireworks left when our birthday arrived. So what I thought would be a party of a couple of days turned out to last almost a week.
Looking back over the notes I kept, I see that I put sixteen people in jail for intoxication, six for fighting, broke up a total of eight fights and even had to help put out a fire in a hay barn because of some fireworks. There was a point where my jail, small as it was, couldn’t handle everyone who was causing trouble. I had to let some out early, others I could only give a stern warning to. There was no point in me arresting them if I had no place to keep them.
Any thoughts I had that being Sheriff in this town was going to be easy, were quickly put aside.
One of the strangest events in my Sheriff days was when Mae‘s Travelling Show came to town. The show arrived in the form of two covered wagons. Inside them were props of their trade. In all, there were some ten people - a juggler, a fire-eater, two clowns, a sword-swallower, a fortune teller and a couple of others I don’t quite remember. I never did see Mae. Oh yes, there was an old man with an organ grinder and a monkey.
They didn’t really cause much trouble. They didn’t ask people for money. Instead, they had a little box where people could throw their pennies. The fire-eater had been a bit careless when he laid down one of his sticks. He set fire to a small bale of hay but it was doused quickly with a bucket of water he kept nearby. One of the clowns did try to steal some candy from the General Store but she was only ten years old. So all I did was give her a small talking to about right and wrong.
Myrona, the fortune-teller, was the biggest hit of the show. She claimed to be able to tell people’s fortune just by touching their foreheads. The box beside her was full of pennies. She was getting a lot of business from the towns folk. Yes, I admit I was one of them. She laid her hand on my forehead and told me that I would have a very bad limp one day as a result of a crushed leg. Claimed she knew the leg had been hurt once before and that it would be hurt again. How she managed to know I had been bitten by a ‘gator, I’ll never know. Then again, she never said anything about my having been bitten, just having been hurt. Perhaps it was nothing more than a lucky guess.
What did make me chuckle however, was her prediction that I would one day become famous after my death. I hadn’t reckoned on being famous when I was alive. How the heck would I become famous after I was dead, I wondered. She claimed that in the future, there would be an American who would write what would be called Westerns. His name would be Louis L’Amour and he would discover me in the course of his research and then write a novel about me. That would be great if it ever happened but I wasn’t prepared to bet the farm on it, even if I owned one.
Today, I look back on these memoirs and see that I started writing them on May 22 of this year, 1894. Today it’s the sixth of June. I just noticed that my inkwell is getting dry and I do not have a lot of paper left. I will have to end these memoirs soon which saddens me because there are still so many things to write about. I must try to tell you of two more events while I still can.
Back in the spring of 1875 three fugitives fled Mexico after robbing a bank in Tijuana and headed north. They were spotted in New Mexico and Arizona. Every Deputy, Sheriff and Marshall was on the lookout for them. Even the US Cavalry. It was interesting news to follow even way the heck up here in Northern Montana. People in town were betting among themselves on what date they would be captured. It was quite a shock for me when someone from the Thompson’s Silver Mine came galloping in to say they were robbed by three men wearing sombreros.
By then, I had a Deputy and we gathered together a small posse of seven men. I figured two against one was fair odds and we had a spare to boot.
We had heard that these banditos were dangerous. The people over at the silver mine were lucky that nobody had been shot. They might be dangerous but they sure weren’t smart.
It was just after noon when we caught site of a campfire near a bend in the river five miles out of town. We dismounted quietly and crept toward the fire, keeping behind some small fir trees to give us cover. I tramped on a dry branch which snapped, alerting the robbers. They scurried behind a large pile of rocks that had fallen from a small cliff beside them.
Their horses were tied to some small bushes and were standing between us and them. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t fire at us for two reasons: they didn’t know how many of us there were and they wouldn’t want to accidentally shoot one of their horses. The horses were their only real means of escape.
I didn’t want to shoot any of the horses either so I had my Deputy or two of the posse stay where they were. Then four of us crept carefully to our right in an effort to get to the side of the rocks where we could get a bead on them.
We found an opening behind the rocks and the cliff and could see all t
hree huddled down on their bellies in the dirt. I called out for them to surrender but the only response I got from them were bullets flying into the trees beside us.
We fired back and almost immediately one of them cried out. It seemed we had managed to hit him but there were still two to go. Bullets were whizzing back and forth. One of my posses was hit in his left arm and rolled on the ground. A quick check on him told me he wasn‘t hurt too badly. Another of the banditos leaned over a rock, fired at me and just missed my head. I returned fire hitting him twice - once in the neck and once in the chest. He keeled over and I was pretty sure he was dead but we waited because we weren’t going to be suckered. There was still a third behind the rocks and we didn’t think he had been hit at all. He didn’t continue to fire at us. Perhaps he had run out of ammunition. We weren’t sure.
Then suddenly, he raised his sombrero on a stick and said he was ready to surrender. He threw his gun out from behind the rocks and stood up with his hands in the air. While my posse covered me, I ran to him with my gun leading the way. I patted him down to be sure he didn’t have another gun on him or worse still, a hunting knife. Once I knew he was unarmed, I had him lay flat on his stomach and hollered for someone to fetch me a rope. Once we had him secure, we checked on his two comrades.
One was badly injured from a bullet in his left shoulder but would live. We tied him up and checked on the third, the one whom I had shot. Clearly he was dead. The shot to his chest was right above the heart and I suspect he died right after the bullet hit him.
When we arrived back in town, half the population was there to greet us. We were being treated as heroes, which I guess was what we were really. A few people even patted me on the back and thanked me for capturing them that particular day. They had guessed that would be the day the robbers would be caught and won some money from some bets they made.
The towns people buried the dead robber with little ceremony and the other two, we turned over to the Marshall in Crooked River, here in Montana. My name was plastered all over the papers as far as Albuquerque, New Mexico. Was that the fame the fortune teller spoke of? I hoped not because she had said my fame would come after I was dead. I still felt pretty much alive.