Montana Ghost Story: The Haunting of Red Mike

By Bennett Owen

He was quiet and contemplative, a chain smoker, a full blooded Crow Indian, leathery, skinny, almost gaunt…a WW2 Vet who’d  ‘been in the thick of it.’ Impeccably polite, a ranch hand with a voracious appetite for work, a teetotaler who’d gotten there the hard way.  We called him ‘Red Mike.’  

Credit: Library of Congress

We were friends of a sort. I was seven. Red Mike was ageless and the deal was that if I’d supply him with grasshoppers, he’d go down to the creek of an evening and bring home brook trout for breakfast.  A natural storyteller, Red Mike’s tales always began, “when I was your age…” then on he’d go, about growing up in a Tipi on the Crow Agency, sleeping on Buffalo hides, eating gophers baked in hot coals, the Medicine Men summoning spirits. I was always fascinated, sometimes skeptical but never frightened.  Until that night.

‘Weather’ was brewing. A late summer wind was swirling, the sunset a hideous mural of violet and scarlet.   And as I made my nightly delivery of insects, rounding out back of the barn, I felt my first moment of quiet, irrational dread.  A glance over my shoulder.  The ranch house wasn’t more than a quarter-mile away.  “He’ll think you’re a scaredy cat,” was a boy’s reasoning. And so I continued, though every ounce of instinct told me that the silhouette waiting out there on the bluff was not Red Mike.   

Credit: Library of Congress

And yet it was, though a side of him I’d never seen before.

“Now hear me out and be warned,” he said. The words were a deep croak. “Take your Rosary to bed with you. Cover yourself tightly and don’t move a muscle.  Wait ‘til you hear the war drums for that means you are safe. And now listen to my story,” and this is what he told me:

“I was back from boot camp, driving an old jalopy out of St. Xavier to visit my girl in Prior, heading west right into the setting sun.  There was something freakish in the air, just like tonight, something sinister. But I was too stupid to take note. On I drove, nothing but dust and desert and lots and lots of nothing. 

“When I saw him standing on the roadside my instinct was to keep on driving, but I stopped of course…do unto others… He got in and as we drove I made small talk but received no answer and within two miles, a smell permeated my old pickup that I can only describe as evil. I looked over. And what stared back at me had slits for eyes like a goat and hooves instead of feet.  It smiled and gurgled and I braked so hard I almost flew through the windshield.

“I said to the thing, ‘By the power of the Holy Spirit, I command you to get from me!’  The thing hissed and retreated, replying, ‘it’s too late for that…’

Credit: Library of Congress

“As it left my truck I hit the gas and sped away. I could see it in the rear view mirror, running after me and I floored it, leaving the specter in the dust. Finally I could see it no more.  My escape complete I concentrated on the road and gathering darkness ahead giving silent thanks…even as I glanced to the side…and saw the thing, running next to me, smiling, hissing. There was a bar in Prior. I never met up with my girl.”

And then Red Mike said to me, “Remember my warning. Now run.”   And I ran.  I ran to the house and up the stairs to my bed and pulled the covers tight. And waited. And late at night the drumbeats came as the first boom of thunder echoed off Bald Mountain.

Credit: Library of Congress

The Ride of Her Life - Fanny Sperry Steele

By Bennett Owen

If there are no horses in heaven, I don’t want to go there. -- Fanny Sperry Steele

Credit: Cowgirl.net

She was a stunning beauty with long braided hair, a warm and engaging personality…and an iron will…make that Steele. And when that fanny sat in the saddle, it was by God gonna’ stay put.  By age 25 Fanny Sperry had already made a name for herself throughout the west but it was her performance at the inaugural Calgary Stampede in 1912 that cemented her standing as a western legend, riding ‘Red Wing,’ a hellacious bucking bronc that had stomped a cowboy to death just four days earlier.   

Credit: geocaching

Here’s a description of the ride, courtesy WILD WEST Magazine:

Red Wing came straight out of the chute standing on his hind legs. He bucked…hard! He sidestepped, circled, head down, head up. The crowd exploded as they watched Sperry's waist-long black braid flounce up and down to the rhythm of the horse under her. She heard the 10-second whistle blow and jumped to the ground. She knew this magnificent sorrel had given her the ride of her life. 'GIVE THE LITTLE LADY A NIIICE HAND!' said the announcer.

A hand and a $1,000 dollar paycheck, a custom saddle and a gold belt buckle. In all, a pretty decent payday considering that ride lives on as one of the best in rodeo history.

Fanny Sperry was born in 1887 at the base of Sleeping Giant Mountain near Helena, Montana.   Her mother, Rachel, taught all five children to “ride as soon as they could walk” and as a child, Fanny and her brother made sport of rounding up the wild pintos in the surrounding foothills and then riding the roughest ones.  By age 15 she was performing in ‘Horse Shows,’ the precursor to the rodeo. 

In 1913 she met and married Bill Steele, a champion rider and rodeo clown and they spent their honeymoon…rodeo-ing, with Sperry Steele riding as many as 14 broncs in a single weekend and earning a reputation of ‘gluing herself to the saddle.’

Credit: National Cowboy Museum

The young couple started up a Wild West show, touring with Buffalo Bill Cody.

Credit: PatchesWorld.org

In addition to her horse and bull riding skills, Sperry Steele was a steel-eyed marksman who would shoot the ashes from her husband’s cigar.

Credit: PatchesWorld.org

She also became a fashion icon for her ‘divided’ skirts with a front panel that allowed her to ride astride and keep a ladylike appearance…always a consideration, especially when ‘sticking to the saddle like a cocklebur’ atop the infamous “Midnight” in Madison Square Garden.

Credit: BirchStreetClothing.com

The Steeles eventually went into ranching near Lincoln, Montana.

Widowed by 1940 she kept the ranch by herself for nearly 30 years, breaking horses, and saddle guiding hunters into rough country.  In 1975 at nearly 90 years of age Fanny Sperry Steele became one of the first three women inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame.  And as she edged toward the century mark, Steele summed up her life thusly:   “…to the cowboys I used to know, to the bronc busters that rode beside me, to the horses beneath me, I take off my hat. I wouldn’t have missed one minute of it.”   Now that’s one heck of a ride.