Western Stories

Are Old West Bankers and Today’s Bankers Different?

Today, when I think of banks and bankers, I think of Wall Street, my home mortgage, and the banker that I used to deal with on a frequent basis to retain a line of credit for my dad’s business, Big Sky Horse Leasing. I have to say that Bankers of the old west don’t come right to my mind, but maybe they should.

I always have rather high anxiety when meeting with a banker. They really hold the cards for what it is that I want to do. If I want to build a house and need a construction loan, I have to get a banker to approve the loan. If I want to buy a car and don’t have the money to pay cash for it, I need a banker for that too.

In the last several years people have lost their homes to bankers and had extremely stressful experiences all over America, but I have heard stories of bankers in the old west that truly put the fear in the word, “Banker”!

George P. Diehl and the Goose Ranch

In Townsend Montana, back in the 1920’s there was a man named George P. Diehl who was an extremely hard worker and had a cattle ranch in the valley that is now covered by the Canyon Ferry Reservoir. He went to work on a Ranch that was called the Old Goose Ranch.

After working there for a number of years, he was able to put together enough money to put a down payment on the place when it came up for sale. He financed the rest through the bank and went to work to build his dream.

One of the major differences between bankers at that time, sometime around 1920, and bankers now, is that back then bankers wanted to own property. In today’s world, banks and by extension bankers deal in cash, they really don’t want to deal with property, but that was not the case in those days.

For a reason known only to the banker in question, they decided to call in the loan on the Goose
Ranch in full. George was caught by surprise, but came up with a plan. He contacted a cattle buyer and offered him all of his cattle. This would have taken one half of George’s ability to make income from the land, but as the alternative was losing the whole place, he knew he had no choice.

George made a deal with the cattle buyer and set a date for the buyer to come out to the ranch and make the payment and take possession of the cattle. The day arrived and the cattle buyer was late. While they were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the cattle buyer, the banker showed up to take possession of the ranch as the payment had obviously not been made.

George told him the situation and asked him to wait until the cattle buyer got there and he would be paid. The banker would not wait and declared the place repossessed on the spot, telling George that he would have to leave the property. The cattle buyer arrived one half hour later, but it was no use. The place had been lost and George never trusted a bank to hold his money until the day he died.

The Fist of Cockie Spear

Another man that had bankers TRY to take advantage of him was a man named Cockie Spear. Cockie, as he was known and no one that I talked to could remember his real name, was in the banker’s office one day when the banker, a Mr. Norman, told him that he was calling in the farmer’s bank note in full. Cockie just looked at him steadily and asked to see the note.

When the banker brought the note out of a drawer to show him, Cockie dove headlong over the desk, punched the banker in the face a terrible blow, and ripped the note out of his hand. I have no idea how this interaction ended accept that Mr. Norman did NOT call in the note, maybe because Cockie walked out of there with it or maybe for some other reason not known to me.

One thing I do know is that if anyone dove over a desk and did that to a banker today, it would not go well with him. In those days, things were different. There were no electronic copies of documents, people weren’t able to sue you for punching them in the face like they can today and most likely the banker knew that what he was doing was unethical or illegal and understood that he had come across someone who would not stand for it.

That wasn’t Cockie’s only run in with this banker. Somehow, Cockie got wind of the fact that the banker was going to come and confiscate all of his hard earned wheat crop that he was storing in his granaries, probably waiting for the best price before hauling it to the elevator to sell. The night before the banker was supposed to be there, Cockie loaded all of his grain in grain trucks and hauled it to an elevator in Ledger, Montana in the middle of the night. This was a great feat in those days as the trucks in the 1920’s held very little grain and did not go very fast either, maybe 30 or 40 miles per hour when they were empty and going down a steep hill.

Just to give you another tidbit to think about, in those days every bit of that grain had to be shovelled into those trucks and probably shovelled back out too. That was quite a night!

When morning came and the banker showed up with his own trucks to take possession of the wheat, the granaries were completely empty. Cockie just scratched his head and told him, “Well, I can’t believe it! It was all here yesterday!” To my knowledge, the banker never did find out what had happened to that grain, though he almost certainly knew that Cockie had done something with it.

I tend to root for the little guy and always enjoy hearing stories about someone like Cockie, who stood up for himself and didn’t let the bankers run over the top of him and do unethical, albeit legal, business.

Not very many of the stories from those days are as rosy however. Many a farmer or early rancher ended up just like George Diehl and lost everything. No story of this has hit home so hard as the story of a young dutch family that lived in the same area as Cockie Spear, the Van Dykes.

The Sad Story of the Van Dykes

Both John (Johannes) and Gertie (Griffioen) Van Dyke had come over from the Netherlands for the promise of free land available in the western United States. They had come separately, each coming for the same reason but not knowing each other until they met in the american west and married in 1915. They were from completely different backgrounds and perhaps where they came from and their backgrounds contributed in a way to what happened.

John was from an extremely poor farming family and Gertie was from a very wealthy family, her father having owned several cargo ships. Being from the Netherlands and coming from such a poor stature, John did not realize the you could question such an authority as the bank. He spoke very broken english and probably did not understand the laws very well either.

After being completely driven off a farm that they rented by the terrible drought of the early 1920’s, they left Montana, but came back and bought a farm of their own a year or two later. This was finally the realization of the dreams they had chased when they left their homeland and they were filled with new hope and passion for life.

After purchasing the farm, the banker who had sold it to them, a Mr. Norman, (yes the same one) encouraged them to build a bigger home and he would loan them the money. John was very grateful for the offer and went to work immediately.

As soon as the home was finished, the banker demanded payment in full! (Sound familiar?) In the contract, he had left a clause that he could do this at any time and he rightly guessed that the family of trusting dutch emigrates would not catch it.

Of course the Van Dykes could not pay and were forced to sell all of their livestock and move off of the property. They had to give all of the proceeds from the sale of their cattle to the bank and ended up with absolutely nothing!

Sometimes I hear someone say they had nothing, but in this case, it was absolutely true. John and Gertie Van Dyke left that farm with 10 children in tow, in an old Chrysler car that had no brakes. Gertie was expecting their 11th child and they had nowhere to go.

I have no idea where the large family slept or cooked or ate, but I am sure that it wasn’t pretty. Church members of the little Christian Reform Church did what they could, but they were very poor themselves.

A very good hearted gentlemen named Flagg, heard about the Van Dyke’s hardship and offered an old shack on a piece of property that he owned for them to live in. This is where the family saw the hardest times that they had ever endured. The shack had one small room and a lean-to porch with no roof. There was barely enough room in that shack for all of them to sit on the floor in the main room, so the cooking had to be done out on the uncovered porch. Gertie’s children distinctly remember her sobbing while she cooked and saying that she never thought she would have to cook for her kids without a roof!

Sleeping arrangements were very difficult. A couple of the younger ones would sleep on the floor, the rest of the boys would sleep in the “attic” which was accessed by a ladder and a random hole knocked in the ceiling. When the boys had climbed up the ladder, it was removed and placed outside, because there was no room for it in the house. God knows what would have happened had there been a fire!

Three of the girls slept in the Chrysler car and the rest slept with the chickens in the chicken coop! This was how they lived for about a year until John built a shed and covered it with black tar paper for the kids to sleep in.

The building of the shed came after the boys were moved to the barn, because of the fire concern, and the horse had crapped in their bed.

This little building came to be called the black shack. As it did not have any heat and the temperatures in Montana during the winter get down to well below zero, you can imagine the conditions endured by those brave little kids!

The Van Dykes spent about 3 years at this property and only because of the kindness of the farmer, Mr Flagg, were able to grow beets in a field they didn’t own and make enough money to finally get another place. It was a piece of ground that was full of rocks, had never been worked and the house started as an old wooden granary that was built to store grain in, but it was the beginning of starting over. Much better at any rate than what they had endured because of the greed and downright evil of that crooked banker.

For all that bankers scheming and plotting, he ended up with nothing. He died in the state of Washington without a penny or a friend to his name. I am sure the atrocities that he committed, including the horrible life that he inflicted on the Van Dykes, haunted him in his old age. I doubt it was worth it!

So when you go see your local banker for that new car or house, you can thank God that times have changed. Or have they?

 

In the west there are cowboys and then there are Cowboys! Let me explain what I mean.

 

The men that I consider to be true western Cowboys have a desire that they are born with to be on a horse for the rest of their life. They feel that any excuse they can find to ride is a good one. Whether that is for moving or doctoring cattle, riding in a rodeo, or riding in the mountains for the heck of it. They just want to ride.

Now before you start thinking, “Well, that’s me!”,  let me add one other requirement.

A true Cowboy also has almost no fear of horses or the danger that is associated with them. He takes risks that most people would not think of taking, and the reason he takes these risks? For the thrill of it alone!

To demonstrate this point, I will relate a story that involves one such Cowboy in Conrad, Montana.

Back in the early 1970’s, there was a band of horses running free in a huge pasture out on the grassy draws and cutbanks of the prairie.  In one portion of that field, lay the Conrad rodeo grounds.

This little band of horses had become pretty much wild and were only used when there was a rodeo in town and then they only used these horses for bucking stock.

The horses would be rounded up and wrangled into the rodeo arena, run into the bucking chutes and bucked out for the rodeo.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with rodeo, it is a competition for cowboys and cowgirls. Some events are timed, like calf roping and barrel racing and some others are scored by judges, like the bareback riding, saddle bronc riding and bull riding.

In these rough stock events, the cowboy gets on a basically wild animal in a chute and when he gets his seat set where he wants it, he nods his head for the chute door to be opened.

At that time, the horse or bull tries their best to buck the cowboy off and the cowboy tries to ride it for 8 seconds. If the cowboy makes it to the 8 second whistle, then they are judged on how well they rode and how well the horse or bull bucked.  At the end of the rodeo, the one with the highest score wins. Sounds like fun huh?

This particular bunch of horses were only used for one rodeo a year.  This meant that the only interaction they every had with humans was not one that would put them in a hand shaking mood.

One day this particular cowboy was riding with his friend, Roger and they met the owner of those horses. They got to talking and the owner of the horses stated that he thought that after this many years, no one could ride those horses as they were just too wild.

Now he didn’t mean ride them in a rodeo, as they had been ridden more than once in that regard.  What he meant was that someone wouldn’t be able to ride one like a saddle horse.

The Cowboy called John felt his ears perk up when the owner said this and just as quickly as the thought appeared in his brain, it also came out of his mouth.  He stated that he thought they could be ridden and to back it up, added that he himself could do it today, if he had a mind to.

So confident was he that he bet horse owner $5 that he could ride one of the horses that was running with that bunch and ride him today.

The owner thought he was either joking or crazy and told him so laughingly, but when he saw that John was serious, he thoughtlessly took the bet.

He said he was going to be in town later that day and John could ride him over there to settle the bet. The owner didn’t take the whole thing seriously in the least, thinking it was just talk, and pretty much forgot about the whole thing a few minutes later.  But John went right to work.

John turned to Roger and said, “Let’s get those suckers into the arena and put them in the chutes so we can get one of them saddled.”

His friend grinned. He knew John well enough to know that he was going to get this done. Roger was fine with it too, as long as HE wasn’t the one that had to ride any of those broncs!

The broncs were standing on the hill behind what they called “the bleachers” at the Conrad rodeo grounds, even though they were actually a bunch of telephone poles set into a hill so people could sit on them and watch the rodeo.

Those broncs were wild and took off at a dead run before the two men even got close. And did they run! John and Roger had to whip and spur to catch up to them and turn them towards the old arena below them.

It took a well over a mile before the wild little bunch tired out enough to let the chasing cowboys turn them. When they finally lined out towards the gate of the arena, they were still picking them up and putting them down (their hooves, that is) at a pretty rapid pace.

John stayed on one side of the herd and Roger rode on the other side as they ran those broncs right into the waiting arena.

John unsaddled his grey saddle horse and set his saddle on a chestnut they had picked out and put in the bucking chute. The horse was convinced that this was the end of the line, so he snorted and jumped as the cinch was pulled tight around his girth.

Completely unaffected by the horses flared nostrils and wild eyes, John climbed into the chute and settled down in the saddle.

When Roger opened the chute gate, the horse jumped out and went right to bucking, but the cowboy didn’t come off after 8 seconds, as he would have in a rodeo.  John stayed with him as he jumped and dodged around the arena trying to rid himself of this thing on its back.

After bucking his heart out for about 10 seconds he settled into a choppy, teeth jarring, hop skip and a lope movement and John figured that meant he was ready to go the 13 miles to town.

So, ready or not Roger opened the gate and let the snorting bronc and rider out on to the waiting miles of prairie.

For the first 2 or 3 miles the big chestnut horse must have figured he was going to outrun whatever was on his back, cause he laid back his ears and tore as fast as he could across the broken grass land.

The bewildered horse was not really paying much attention to the terrain. Ditches and fences were inconsequential.

He was just running. This worked out perfect for John and as he only had to guide the totally unbroke horse so that he was running in the right general direction.

They were going so fast that John was thinking this was going to be a piece of cake and that they would make it to town in no time. As with all good things, however, they must come to an end.

After that initial spurt for the first couple of miles, the horse suddenly slammed on the breaks and refused to budge. He stood as still as if you had carved him out of stone accept for the heaving of his sides, you could not tell he was alive at all.

A major difference between cowboys and Cowboys is they never quit!

John kicked and clucked and slapped the horse on the butt with the reins, but all to no avail. That horse had decided that that was as far as he was going to go.

It took quite a while for Roger to finally catch up to where they were, but eventually he came loping up on his saddle horse. John told him the situation and told him to get out his rope and slap the horse on the butt, and after John took a deep seat in his saddle, thats just what Roger did.

It surprised the chestnut a might and he jumped straight in the air and when he came down again his legs were already churning as he hit the ground. Away they went again, first with a hop and a skip or too and then flat out, with Roger trying to keep them in sight.

This time he didn’t last more than a mile and the horse locked up again. So Dan repeated the process until the wild thing was finally trotting along like a somewhat decent horse would. A somewhat decent horse that took an extraordinary amount of work to keep moving.

The horse had no clue how to steer or go or stop using the bridle so it was an almighty zig zaggy pattern that they cut across the country. In fact they probably covered about twice as many miles as they would have riding in a straight line.

As they went along however, the horse was getting a crash course in turning and was starting to get the general idea. He was still completely unsure of himself and was spooking and jumping sideways every time the wind moved a blade of grass or he saw his shadow on the ground.  

All the jumping to this side and then that side was making it awfully interesting and even more tiring to ride.

John recalls now that even though they were moving very fast in the beginning of the ride, the rest of the ride took so long that it was well after dark when the finally reached the edge of town.

The main street in Conrad is only a little over a mile long, but that horse didn’t particularly like town any more than it liked its shadow. It balked and snorted at every single new thing it saw, which was pretty much everything.

Being a small town, John and Roger stopped someone on the street and asked them where the owner of the horse was.

The person they asked told them that he was on the other side of town at the drive in movie theater, watching a movie in his pickup.

It took quite a while to get through the whole town, but they finally made it to the parking area of the outdoor theater and spotted the owner’s unmistakable bright orange Chevy Truck.

John being John, he rode the snorting spooking horse, sometimes going sideways through the other parked cars, right up to the window of that Chevy and knocked on it.

The owner stepped out of the vehicle with a question in his eyes, having completely forgotten about their bet.

“What are you boys doin?”, he asked quizzically.

“Don’t you recognize this horse?”, John answered with his own question.

The man looked close at the sweating horse, but not with any recognition on his face.

“This is one of the horses I bet you this morning that I could ride.”, John said.

The man looked closer as it came back to him. “Naw! It can’t be”, he said with disbelief.  “No way you could ride one of those horses into town like this.”

“After the ride I’ve just had, you better believe it is!”, John said with a challenge. “And you also owe me five dollars.”

The owner could not believe that it was those same wild horses, but had to grudgingly agree that it was.

They put the horse in a corral at the edge of town, as even John did not want to ride him any farther, especially in the middle of the night.

This event only took place because of John’s true Cowboy spirit. He just wanted the thrill of the experience, and the risk was part of the fun.

I know this story and that John is a true Cowboy because John is my father.

(As a side note, I don’t believe that the owner of the horse ever made good on his bet!)