Distinctly Montana Magazine

85 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m Committed to care and service. MONTANA'S PREMIER COMPOUNDING PHARMACY • Bioidentical Hormone Replacement • Low-Dose Naltrexone • Weight Management • Dermatology • Pain Management • Veterinary Medications Creating customized medications for over 60 years Made Locally... Shipped to Your Door Insurance Billing—including Medicaid 406.869.0100 www.jurospharmacy.com Call TODAY! Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Adrenal & Thyroid Support | Pain Management Dermatology | Veterinary Medications 406.869.0100 • www.jurospharmacy.com Compounding Pharmacy Insurance Billing-including Medicaid Serving Montana for Over 60 Years J UR S ' O PHARMACY HEALTH & WELLNESS Anderson Specialty Pharmacy is now Creating Customized Medications for Your Unique Needs Same commitment to Care and Service Under a New Name Montana's Premier Made Locally... 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Call TODAY! mOntana's Premier Creating customized Medications for Your unique needs COMPOUNDING PHARMACY Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Low-Dose Naltrexone Weight Management Dermatology Pain management Veterinary Medications Serving montana for over 60 years 406.869.0100 Www.jurospharmacy.com Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Adrenal & Thyroid Support | Pain Management Dermatology | Veterinary Medications 406.869.0100 • www.jurospharmacy.com Compounding Pharmacy Insurance Billing-including Medicaid Serving Montana for Over 60 Years J UR S ' O PHARMACY HEALTH & WELLNESS Anderson Specialty Pharmacy is now Creating Customized Medications for Your Unique Needs Same commitment to Care and Service Under a New Name Montana's Premier Made Locally... Shipped to Your Door almost certain- ly stretching the truth for the bene- fit of his stage per- sona, which is to say, he lied. Could he have been a Pony Express rider, as he repeatedly claimed over his life? Probably not, con- sidering that short-lived operation had folded before he was born. Apparently, we must also be skeptical of his claim to have performed with Buffalo Bill's Wild West during 1893 and the years immediately following. I wrote to the archi- vists at the Buffalo Bill Cody Center of the West, and one of them was kind enough to reply that Montana Frank couldn't have been a trick roper during those days because all of Buffalo Bill's ropers were Mexican at that time. Could he have been employed in some other capacity? Was his father really one of the vigilantes who helped to hang George Ives in Virgin- ia City, as he claimed late in life? Possibly, but that requires his father to then relocate to the barely-there gold mining camp of Butte in 1864 a year later. Then, when McCray was 17, his father was killed by an Indian attack on Fort Shaw. As far as I can tell, no such attack occurred in 1881. At any rate, there doesn't seem to be a Major Lyman Mc- Cray listed as commanding officer of the camp. As for having been close personal friends with C.M. Russell, or his having met Ed- ward VIII, the one-time heir to the throne of England? You decide. Or consider the supposed 10 notches on his pistol — seven for Indians, three for members of the Curry Gang. In his letter to the Madisonian, he mentions being a mail courier through the Hole in the Wall. But Curry's gang was most active in the late 1890s, so was McCray somehow shooting outlaws after his supposed stint with Buffalo Bill's Wild West? It's all frustratingly murky — not impossible, but difficult to prove either way. Could Frank McCray have really been who he says he was after all? Is there any truth to any of it? FRANK'S LAST ROUND-UP In the end, who the hell was Montana Frank anyway? It is impossible, for me, anyway, not to read Montana Frank as in some ways the inverse of Buffalo Bill. If the flood of Buffalo Bill's imitators, like Young Buffalo, Pawnee Bill, Buck- skin Ben, Texas Jack, and the rest, in turn, reveal something like a portrait of Buffalo Bill himself, then what does a portrait of Buffalo Bill reveal about Montana Frank? Bill Cody had great success riding a big express train along the line between fact and fiction, between fantasy land and the "real" world of everyday life. It made him a legend, but it also made him a bit blurry. Somewhere in his past were genuine accom- plishments, but layers and layers of mythmaking and storytelling had obscured the edges of what was real. By the end, even Cody wasn't sure what he had really done. On the subject of Yellow Hair, sometimes known as Yellow Hand, whom Bill had famous- ly killed and scalped in the weeks after the Little Big Horn, shouting "First scalp for Custer, boys!" he would later say, "Bunk! Pure bunk! For all I know Yellow Hand died of old age." Montana Frank seems to have seen Cody's success and tried to emulate it. However, he was different in that there was a different ratio of truth to fiction in the makeup of his stage persona. There had to be because not all of us are as blessed with the life of adven- ture and derring-do that made Buffalo Bill famous in the first place: the core, you might say, around which Cody so successfully built his legend. Not all of us, as Montana Frank probably knew, get to be Indian scouts, to shoot up the Curry Gang while on a daring mission through their territory.

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