LUCK

OL' man Ogletree is smart
(Got a gizzard fer a heart),
Sez he don't believe in luck,
Calls it sentimental truck.

Ol' man Ogletree, ye see,

Owns the "S" an' "Circle-C."
Management, he sez, is what
Makes the bet an' wins the pot.

Ol' man Ogletree, an' me,

In the spring of eighty-three,
Rode the grub-line up the trail
To the range on Beaver-tail.

Ol' man Ogletree was wild,
An' a father's only child,
Couldn't ride a wagon-bed,

Never had a hand ner head;

Wasn't worth a badger's hide.
Till his daddy up an' died,

Leavin' him, alone, ye see,

With the "S" an' "Circle-C."

THE OLD CANOE

EVER shove her out an' let her drift
Down the stream; an' never care
How slow she went, ner where:

Jest snoopin' through the summer air, adrift?

'Round the bend, an' 'round another, let her drift,

Watchin' swallers dip an' skim

'Long the river's mossy rim;

Jest a-dreamin' of a whim, adrift.

Laziest thing on earth to do, let her drift,

Like a buzzard, floatin' 'round

'Mong the clouds, without a sound;

Let her strike, an' swing around, an' drift.

Under bushes, 'mong the leaves, let her drift;
Now in sunshine, then in shade,

Like the records we have made

Last a minute, then they fade, an' drift.

Life is just an old canoe, let her drift
Down the river, 'round the bend,
Driftin' slowly toward the end;
On the currents all depend, an' drift.

VOL. LXX.-10

THE OLD FRONTIER

ADOWN the trail with the buffalo herds
And the tribes of the warlike Sioux,
Are the round-up ways of cowboy days.
And the old chuck-wagon, too.

The trapper sleeps, and the packer's gone
With the coach and the bronco team,
And the bunch-grass range is growing strange
To the lonely camp-fire's gleam.

The trails are dimming among the hills;
Old wallows on the plain

Are levelled now by the nester's plough,
And there is no wagon-train.

The bull team by old Time's corralled
O'er Custom's sharp divide;
And shades galore of thrilling lore
In its deep'ning thickets hide.

The trooper and the half-breed scout,
In a history-making mass,

With the pioneer and the old frontier,
Have sifted through the pass.

But like echoes of the life we knew,
A love that's deep and strange
Is camping close to the fading host
As it crosses Mem'ry's range.

FOUR PAINTINGS BY THE MONTANA ARTIST, CHARLES M. RUSSELL

N speaking of the early days, Mr. Russell says: "Whether white or red, men carried the law in their hands. Even in my time Montana was a lawless land but seldom dangerous. We had outlaws, but they were big like the country they lived in."

Though born in St. Louis, Mr. Russell went while still a boy to Montana to live at the time when it was cow-country and mining-camps. He worked on the cow-ranges with men who were old-timers, and to these old friends he owes much of his knowledge of the West before his time-the days of Hawkins muzzle-loading rifles and when the ranges swarmed with humped-back brown grass-eaters.

Mr. Russell loves the West and will keep alive through his canvases the stories of the old West and his own time. The four story-telling pictures are typical of his work to-day.

The Blackfeet, at one time the strongest and most dangerous tribe in the Northwest, was composed of three bands, Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans. The picture shows a small party of the last, probably the advance-guard of a hunting-party.

Two plainsmen have suddenly been warned by the shadows of a war-party. The horse, whose ears, eyes, and nose are ever alert, misses few of nature's secrets. He is very apt to call to his passing friend. The plainsmen know this and have dismounted to hold the nostrils of their mounts.