Distinctly Montana Magazine

65 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m by NICK MITCHELL T IME MUST HAVE PASSED SLOWLY FOR MONTANA SHEEPHERDERS. Days must have sluiced together, drained away with hypnotic uniformity. The life of a Montana sheepherder in the early 20th century was marked by profound boredom, for most. Unlike cattle, sheep nev- er needed to be rounded up. There were no dramatic scenes of sheep stampede; no one was ever trampled underhoof a flock of lambs or ewes. Rarely struck with the desire to explore, sheep are happy enough to stay awhile anywhere there is grass to eat, water to drink, and air to breathe. A sheepherder might stay away for a whole day and come back to find them in the same place. Something like cabin fever might begin to set in for all but the most dedicated hermits, until the imp of the perverse might start to nag at him and make him wish for misadventure to break up the monotony. All of that could change in an instant. In moments, the sheep- herder could be made to wish and pray for his endless series of interchangeable days to return again. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he was awoken to an alien sound: human footsteps. He might struggle to see by the dim light of their fire who ap- proached. What these men—there might be five or six of them, or more—now standing around his camp, rucksack masks drawn over their faces, wanted with him. The men would have pistols and rifles, de rigueur on what was left of the open range by that time. But the large wooden clubs would have been out of the ordinary. They ordered him to make some coffee for them. Perhaps a little time could be spared to break the clubs in on the sheepherder whose hands shook as he tried to boil coffee in a hurry. If he was lucky, they'd let him live. And after they'd beaten him and tied him to a tree, or simply killed him, they'd take stock of how much work had yet to be done, and only then would they realize the enormity of their task. The main event was yet to come, and would take until dawn to get done. They'd have liked to use bullets, but that many rounds would start to get expensive—a small fortune in ammu- nition. Fire might work, or herding them off of a cliff, if one was handy. Dynamite would do the trick. But in many cases, the killing weapons were as old as Cain and Abel—a hard object at arm's length. Try and imagine, for a moment, just how arduous it would be to beat several thousand sheep to death. How long does each swing of the club take from wind up to connection? What if the blow is only glancing, and the sheep is dazed but not dead? How much liquor and coffee would it take to fuel all that relentless activi- ty—raise the club into the air, and bring it down on the creatures' heads, over and over, for hours? TRY AND TRY AND IMAGINE, IMAGINE, FOR A FOR A MOMENT, MOMENT, JUST HOW JUST HOW ARDUOUS IT ARDUOUS IT WOULD BE WOULD BE TO BEAT TO BEAT SEVERAL SEVERAL THOUSAND THOUSAND SHEEP SHEEP TO DEATH. TO DEATH.

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