When Roscoe and Tooey leave Fort Benton after their run-in with Cronkit out in the Little Rocky Mountains, as told in "Roscoe and Tooey, Montana Runaways", they ride out to Clint Stranahan's place on the Teton River. There they learn to milk cows, to put up hay and to irrigate the hay fields. After working hard all summer they are asked to help with finding some missing cattle for a rancher a few miles west on the Teton River. They pack their bedrolls and some gear thinking they'll only be gone for a day or two at the most. But when Roscoe hears some men burying something by the river late at night, their search for missing critters turns into a more deadly adventure. They follow the Bootlegger Trail into Black Eagle where they learn to their chagrin what the men were doing out on the river so late at night.

Roscoe and Tooey Ride the Bootlegger Trail

By Anne M. Shaw

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Anne M. Shaw
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4389-8797-2

Chapter One

1930

It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening on the fourth of July and the sun was still high in the sky as Tooey and I rode out of Fort Benton, up the Helena Hill and through the viaduct under the Great Northern tracks. Our dog Ruff followed along, taking time here and there to investigate the smells beside the road and then hurrying to catch up before he got too far behind. We were headed out to the Stranahan place in the Teton River Valley, where we would have jobs on an honest to goodness ranch. I looked at Tooey as we reached the top of the hill and the grin on his face showed he was thinking the same thing I was—it really was going to be a good summer after all.

It had only been a few days since we had escaped from that evil no-good snake, Cronkit, in the Little Rocky Mountains. It was our dog Ruff and Cronkit's taste for bootleg whiskey that did him in. Everyone was so glad to have him gone that they gave us a reward and asked us to lead the Fourth of July Parade.

After the parade and all of the speeches were over, we decided to skip the evening fireworks and ride our mares out to the Teton ranch, where we would work for Judge Stranahan's son, Clint, for the summer. It was still only the first week of July and we would have two whole months before school started in September. Then, if we did have to go back to Minneapolis to live with our aunts, we hoped Clint would keep our mares, Princess and Angel, on the ranch until we could come back to Montana next summer.

After our family came to Fort Benton three years ago when our father went into law practice in with the Judge, we met Pete McCall, an old-time cowboy. He helped us raise two orphaned foals and train them. But when our parents were killed in a car accident, we took our fillies and ran away, rather than sell them and go back to the city. We had some great times riding down the river through the White Cliffs of the Missouri Breaks, but we had some really scary ones too. That's why we were looking forward to working on Clint's ranch. After all, when we ran away we were hoping to find work on a ranch somewhere.

It was still daylight as we rode across the prairie between the Teton and the Missouri River valleys even though it was nearly eight o'clock in the evening. As we rode down into the Teton Valley, a cool fresh breeze came up and we could smell the sweet smell of alfalfa ripening in the hayfields.

Clint and Marie Stranahan and their daughter, Lorene, passed us in their pickup as we headed down into the valley, and they were already home by the time we got to the ranch. As we rode up to the corral, Clint opened the gate for us. We unsaddled Princess and Angel and watched as the mares had a good roll in the dirt of the corral, got up, shook themselves and got a drink from the water trough. We put some hay in the manger for them and Clint showed us where to put our saddles and other gear.

That afternoon in Fort Benton after the parade, there had been a huge picnic in the park and we'd eaten fried chicken, potato salad and a lot of other good stuff and all of that was topped off with homemade ice cream. Since no one was very hungry yet, Marie Stranahan fixed us a light supper. After we ate she showed us to our room upstairs in the big house.

The next morning after breakfast, we began to make ourselves useful. This had been a dry year. Clint had already irrigated the hay fields and the garden, but it was hot and the ground had dried out. Everything needed more water, but the river was so low that the intake pipe to the pump was out of the water. If it was going to get suction in order to pump, we would have to dig a deeper sump hole close to the riverbank. That would let the pipe down and back under water again. It was backbreaking work. Clint wore his wading boots and dug down in the river bottom. Then he piled the dirt up as far as he could on the side of the bank. It was our job to move the muddy mess farther back so it didn't slide back down. By suppertime we were exhausted. We thought we had worked hard when we mowed and raked lawns and spaded gardens in Fort Benton last year when we earned enough money to buy our saddles and gear. But now I decided we'd had it easy then, because after lifting shovels full of mud all day, every muscle in my body ached.

"We must of moved a ton of mud today," Tooey said as he carefully got into bed, groaning as he eased his tired body down to rest.

"Yeah, I'll bet I don't move till morning," I said, gingerly lowering myself onto the bed.

"I'll pay you each fifty cents a day." Clint had told us that first morning while we were eating breakfast. "You probably should have more, but that's all I can afford."

"We're just glad to have a place to stay and to keep our horses," I said.

"Yeah, we'd work for nothing to be able to stay here and not have to go back to the city," Tooey added.

"You'll earn all I can pay you and more. There's always plenty of work to be done around here," He said.

Drifting off to sleep that night I thought about it and decided that he'd been right. My body felt like we really would earn our three dollars a week.

Morning came too soon for our sore muscles. After we got the sump hole deep enough, Clint started the pump and it began to pump water up to the flume to send it on to the main ditch. Then we had to get the water onto the fields. Clint showed us how to put a dam across the ditch. The dam was a large piece of canvas with a long, heavy, two-by-six-inch beam threaded through a pocket on one side. You piled shovel fulls of dirt all across the sides and the bottom. When the water came, the dam held it and the water rose higher and higher until it ran out the holes you made in the sides of the ditch. When enough water had run out to irrigate the dry places in the field, you had to close the holes—more shoveling.

Clint got some irrigating boots for us to wear and we each had a shovel. He showed us how to sharpen them by clamping the handles tight in a vise on the workbench in the shop and then how to use a file to put a sharp edge on the working side. It was a lot easier to cut through the hard ground and the tough alfalfa roots and grass if your shovel was sharp.

The Stranahans had asked us to call them by their first names, but usually we used `Sir' and `Ma'am' when addressing them. We were, however, beginning to use their first names when referring to them when we talked about them to each other.

"Every animal on the place will eat a ton of hay before spring comes, and if it's late or it's a hard winter they'll eat more," Clint said. "So we'll have to get as much water on that alfalfa as we can."

So, after more shoveling in the first hay field in order to get the water to the dry spots, we'd move the dams to another place farther on in the ditch. It was hard work under the hot sun, and even though it had been a dry year, there were still enough mosquitoes to torment us.

The Judge's garden in Fort Benton seemed pretty big when we had to spade and hoe it for him last summer and earlier this spring, but it was small compared to the one that Clint and Marie put in across the Teton River from the house. Clint always planted seed potatoes on Good Friday if the weather permitted, and in the fall, he sold hundred-pound sacks of potatoes to stores in Fort Benton and in Great Falls. His potato patch was an acre or more and it seemed...