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Books by
Maynard Lehman
Reuben and Amy Corbin, brother and sister, are left destitute in 1886 when Quantrill's Raiders burn their Missouri farm, kill their father, and ride off with all the livestock and supplies. 8 Tapes 10.2 Hrs.
Cynthia and Abigail inherit their brother's Wyoming ranch which according to local gossip is 'hexed.' But ghost or not ghost, the ladies are determined to move in. 4 Tapes 5.7 Hrs.
 Cow Country Law
A tenderfoot New York attorney gets a humorous and unwanted transplant to 1930 Montana. His purpose is to find the heirs to a large ranch and settle the estate. "Highly Recommended." 6 Tapes 6 Hrs.
 Texas Lawman
Jess Moran returns to Texas after the Civil War to find carpetbaggers have moved in and taken over. His previous life is wiped out, family gone, but he's determined to start a new life. 4 Tapes 4.8 Hrs.
 Rustlers on the Frying Pan
Posing as a cowhand to find the men who killed his father, Todd Lang faces discovery when the owner of the Frying Pan Ranch disappears.
 Wool on the Drift Fence
After her husband is killed by cattlemen in southern Colorado, sheep rancher Tina Wanski drives her flocks to Montana to gain a foothold in the Tongue River Valley. 4 Tapes 4.6 Hrs.
About the Interviewer:
Jean Henry-Mead is the author of
Maverick Writers
Click to order this
insightful book
directly from
Jean Henry-Mead
Maverick Writers' 271 pages are packed with humor, photos, advice and biographies. Authors profiled include: A.B. Guthrie, Jr., Louis L'Amour, Will Henry, Elmer Kelton, Dee Brown, Loren D. Estleman, Peggy Simson Curry, Don Coldsmith, Wayne D. Overholser, Don Worcester, Judy Alter, Matt Braun, Gordon Shirreffs and many other legends of Western Literature.
Signed copies are $14.95 prepaid. Send a check or money order to:
Medallion Press, HCR 5770, Box 39, Evansville, Wyoming 82636.
Other books by the author include Wyoming in Profile and Casper Country.
MAVERICK WRITERS is Jean Henry-Mead's third non-fiction book and second volume of candid interviews and profiles. She began her writing career in 1968 as a news reporter and photographer in California's San Joaquin Valley, while serving as her college newspaper's editor-in-chief. She later worked as staff writer-editor in San Diego, news reporter in Casper, Wyoming, and magazine editor.
Mead's freelance articles have appeared in national publications as well as magazines in Norway and West Germany, which have won more than twenty state, regional and national writing awards. She also has two novels under consideration at publishing companies and is working on her third, a Wyoming historical. Founder of the Western Writers Hall of Fame, she's a 20-year member of Western Writers of America, sustaining member of Women Writing the West, and until recently moderator and coordinator of the WHR Workshop on AOL.
Click to visit Jean Henry-Mead's Website
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MAYNARD LEHMAN
Senior Cowboy-Writer
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An Interview with Maynard Lehman,
Senior Cowboy-Writer
By Jean Henry-Mead
Maynard Lehman still misses the job he had 78 years ago in Eastern Montana's "Big Open"country. He didn't mind the pay $40-$60 a month especially when he could hunt coyotes to supplement his income. Now, at 91, he's written more than twenty novels based on his cowboying experiences.
Lehman grew up on his parent's ranch in North Dakota's northwestern corner, twenty miles south of the Canadian border. There his family raised and broke horses for the American Express Company in Milwaukee. His father "was not what you would call a regular cowboy," Lehman said, "but I guess I grew up with horses in my blood. I went to work as a cowboy away from home when I was thirteen." Not exactly a tenderfoot, he had worked for another ranch the previous summer.
His first job in 1923 was to help swim 300 horses across the Missouri River from Canada to Culbertson, Montana. "I was a good-sized kid," he said, "and could rope and ride with the best of 'em." He also told everyone that he was sixteen.
"I worked there until the horses more or less got used to the territory. Otherwise they would have kept right on going. I then went to work for the Cantonio Ranch, downriver aways, where I stayed for the rest of the summer."
Cattle herds of 12,000-15,000 head were not uncommon during the later years of the nineteenth century, but the Cantonio Ranch, near the Canadian border, only ran 2,000 head. They grazed in the badlands along the Red Water and Missouri River. The young cowpoke worked there until winter arrived, then returned home for school. Young Maynard had to schedule his classes after his various jobs, which included helping his father with the harvesting and thrashing. He managed to complete eight grades within five years, but by the time he reached high school, he had to ride twelve miles through North Dakota snow. That, however, wasn't the reason he quit his studies. Unable to start high school until after thrashing season in November, he couldn't catch up with the other students. And no one offered to help him. Frustrated and discouraged, he decided his education was over the following January. In 40 degrees below zero weather, he left school to find another job.
That spring he arrived in Miles City to work for Van Venable, a horse buyer for the Hanson Packing Plant at Butte, Montana. There Lehman worked with the crew that rounded up horses between the Mespaw and Pumpkin Creek, which later became the first BLM project. "Van bought 3,000 horses from that roundup and turned them out on Laney Creek on the Powder River with the rest of his horses," Lehman recalls. "I rode for him until we had no more horses to bring in to ship." The cowboy worked several other ranches in the Powder and Tongue River areas for the next eighteen years, including the SY, T+S, JK, Jim Vance Ranch, and the CBC.
Lehman soon learned that he could not keep a steady cowman's job if he continued to return home every the fall to help with the family harvest. "That's when I went to work for the Quarter Circle JK, and only went home for a visit."
Among his prized possessions was his fiddle--in addition to his saddle, bridal, 35-foot lariat, chaps, spurs, bedroll, extra pairs of socks and "enough Bull Durham to last at least two weeks." His fiddle accompanied him much of the time, but if it wasn't standard equipment, it remained behind in the bunkhouse. He played his fiddle and accordion for dances since the age of twelve and later learned to play the organ. "The winter I was 14, I hung up my saddle and traveled with a road show that showed movies in the small towns along the Canadian line in North Dakota and Montana. Joe Alberts traveled with us-he wrestled the big bear. But when spring came, I was back in the saddle."
By the time Lehman was actually sixteen, he and two Indian boys his own age decided to steal horses from the Sioux Indian Reservation. "Any horse not branded or running with its mother was called a slick. It belonged to anybody who put a brand on it. That rule didn't hold true on the Indian reservation because slicks belonged to the Indian agency. Every two years they held a roundup and the white guys that ran the roundup would take any horse that looked good for themselves. The Indians didn't like the idea any better than I did, so we decided to hold our own little roundup."
The three boys found an abandoned homesteader's spread and repaired the pasture fence. Lehman remembers his small roan roping horse and the 45 slicks they rounded up. The horses were corralled in the pasture until the boys learned that Indian agency representatives were on their trail. "It was raining and as dark as the inside of a boot when we got those we could out of the pasture, and took off for North Dakota. By daylight we were across the state line, but we only had 36 head." The horses were trailed to the Lehman's North Dakota ranch where they were later sold. The Sioux teens returned to the reservation, and were later sentenced and placed in the county jail. Lehman's not sure whether the charge was horse theft, but he never returned to the reservation to find out.
That spring, Lehman learned to drive twelve horses on a triple plow to break up 120 acres of alfalfa sod that had gone to grass. He said, "When it started, I had two gentle teams and eight broncs." The boss rode alongside the leaders and kept them in line while I sat on the plow with a handful of reins. After the second day, the boss turned me loose with the outfit, so I learned to drive early."
That winter the young cowpoke supplemented his meager income with coyote pelts. "The first winter we had pretty good luck. We got about thirty-five." The ranch owner had a pack of hounds "and we'd put em on a sled that was just the front bobs. When we'd spot some coyotes, we'd open the gate and turn em loose. They'd then run the coyotes down. Coyotes aren't that speedy, but the dogs wouldn't kill em, so you had to have a killer among the pack, which was generally a Russian Wolfhound. The other coyotes would knock the dogs over and play with them until the killer grabbed them."
The carcasses were skinned and sold to the fur houses for $7-$8 apiece. "Pretty good in those days. With the price of anything else, that was pretty good wages. If you could catch one a day, you were doing pretty good."
Good food depended on the ranch. "When I was working out at Venables, Herm had just gotten married and his wife couldn't boil water. She'd put on a pot of beans half an hour before dinner and they'd rattle on your plate. At the SY, I was the cook, so we ate pretty good. The ranch was 45 miles from town and I cooked for the haying crew, but we didn't have bread or butter. We used syrup and I made sourdough biscuits all the time, and had lots of good meat and potatoes." With abundant cattle they didn't waste time hunting game meat, and there was plenty of bacon and ham.
"We had purtinear every kind of canned food you could want, like vegetables. Even out on the range. We'd butcher a critter, generally a two-year-old and hang him up at nightpropped up on the wagon tongue. Leave him overnight and in the daytime wrap him in blankets or a tarp and put em in the wagon. And that meat would keep for a couple of weeks. It would get a skin on it about that thick," he said, spreading his thumb and index finger. "But it wouldn't spoil, and the older it got, the better it got."
Lehman only rode with chuck wagons a couple of times before they were fazed out of cattle roundups. "Most of the ranches were smaller by then and didn't use one. But the JK went together with the Birchers and some of the others still used them for a couple more years." Lehman knew a man whose lower arm had been shot off during the Johnson County War. "He was the cook for the LO outfit for a time. He made sourdough biscuits that would melt in your mouth. He showed me how to make em, but over the years I seemed to have forgotten, cause mine don't turn out like his."
The best part of cowboying, Lehman said, was the camaraderie among the men. "I really enjoyed it. In fact, I never liked anything else that I ever did as well. Any job I ever had I would have chucked in a minute to go back out on the range."
Spring and fall roundups were the best of times. "Riding fence and checking on the cattle at calving time, but it was not all work you did in the saddle. There was hay to put up and feed to the cows in winter, but I didn't mind that too much . . . I enjoyed breaking in the new saddle and work horses. When I worked at Venables, he'd buy a bunch of horses and a lot of times there would be saddle horses in the bunch. If it looked like there was a saddle mark on it, you'd grab it and ride. Grooming was a hit and miss practice, whenever the men had time. "We'd trim their hooves and pull a long hair and cockleburrs out of their manes and tails, if we were riding in the dust, like working a herd. There would be a ring of muddy sweat around the edge of the saddle blanket we also would rub. That was about the extent of grooming."
While Lehman worked as foreman of the JK Ranch, he received $60 a month, "but when the stock market crashed in 1929, "that changed things. Before the depression, the going wage all through the 20s was $40-$60 a month. After the crash you were lucky to find a job at any wage. During the early 30s cattle wasn't worth enough to ship to market. I broke horses for $5 and $10 each and I broke some for hay to feed my horse. The JK was owned by some people who owned a steel mill in Pittsburgh, and when the steel mill went broke, so did the ranch in 31. My job went with it and they still owed me--the only wages I ever lost. So from then until about 1937, it was whatever you could find."
The cowboy worked for his board two winters feeding sheep and hunting coyotes. "That's how we got our wages. And I worked for $25 a month. When I worked for the CBC, I got $40-$45 a month--they figured it by the day.
Herding sheep was a cowboy's anathema. "My dad had a band of sheep after he sold all the horses, which is one of the reasons I left home," he said laughing. Lehmana took the only available, job it because it included coyotes hunting.
The cowboy also managed to worked cattle. The JK, located on Tongue River, ran a thousand head as well as Shire and Morgan horses. "We had one Shire stud that weighed 2,400 pounds," he said grinning, "and a couple of other [heavy weights]. "There were no quarter horses, as such, Most were range horses, some with Arabian and Morgan blood. The short-legged range horses, regardless of their blood line were the favorites. They were less likely to stumble over their own feet and made much better cutting and roping horseslike the quarter horses of today."
Lehman and his cohorts worked long hours during the Great Depression. He rode for the CBC Horse Ranch, "and they always said Sell your bedroll and buy a lantern,' because we'd get in about 10 o'clock at night and were up at 4:30. I worked for them until they cleaned the ranch of all their horses. They ran over 200,000 head in seven Western states, with their headquarters in Rawlins, Wyoming. Most of the horse meat was shipped overseas.
The CBC was owned by the Chappel Brothers, who ran a packing plant in Rockford, Illinois. "And their horses were nothing but scrubs. They didn't have a decent horse on the place. Same way with our saddle horses." Most ranches, he said, like the LO and larger operations had 75-100 saddle horses available and each man had about seven in his string, although Lehman remembers working roundups with a five horse string. Most of them, including the CBC, had no strings at all, and "you rode whatever you could catch, whether it was broke, wind broke, it didn't make any difference. You rode it. That was the general rule around most horse ranches.
"Most cowboys didn't race for the nearest saloon to spend their entire paycheck," he said. "Of course it was during prohibition and there were speakeasies in townlike Brown's had a big one under the Metropolitan Café, and pretty much all the cowboyswhen they went to townhad a couple of drinks. Beer mostly, but they were not traditionally drunks. Most of em had other plans for the little wages they got. Like maybe buying a new saddle, or they were saving to buy some cattle. I might add that Montana was one of two states that never ratified the 18th amendment. Local and state police had nothing to do with prohibition, but the state was crawling with federal agents."
Lehman told a story of hungry Sioux who stopped at the JK ranch. The JK was situated along the Tongue River, "and at the end of the home pasture you had to cross the river to get to the Fort Keogh reserve. You couldn't camp there, or stop with a herd of cattle. The Indians would come along and they couldn't camp there either, so they'd camp on the edge of our pasture. They came to the cookhouse one day and wanted to know if there was anything they could have. They didn't know much about vegetables, but the cook gave em some and I don't know whether they ate em or not. There happened to be some bacon and hams that had spoiled and had maggots in em, and one of the cowboys was going to take em down to the river and dump em, but they were still laying out there. So he said, "We've got all this meat here if you want it. They called it pig beef. So they took a couple of pieces and about an hour later, here they came, a bunch of squaws who took the whole pile. But after they left, there would be all those dog heads laying around."
There were humorous times as well. Lehman remembers when Van Venable furnished the bucking horses for a three-day Miles City Rodeo. "We were bringing in a couple hundred horses to town for the rodeo and we had lots of help. Patty Ryan, Bob Haskins, both world champion saddle bronc riders; Irvie Collins, Pete Knight, the Canadian champion; and Booger Red, who was a bull dogger from Oklahoma. They were all helping us bring horses in along with the regular crew. We got to Miles City where we had to go through the outskirts of town. Then, as usual, Van put a man or two at each street to keep the horses from scattering. But somehow they got away from us. We had at least one horse in every garden on that side of town. One of the cowboys rode very carefully so as not to damage the gardens when a woman came out of her house swinging a broom. His horse started to buck down a row of tomatoes and cabbage. By the time we came to his rescue, he had the garden pretty well plowed up."
Lehman said there's a lot of misconceptions about cowboys, mainly due to what has been written or seen on the screen. "Like people who think those who weren't outlaws were ex-sheriffs, the cowboys have gotten a bad rap." What bothers him most about the cowboy image is the "long duster. I've never seen a real cowboy wear one. Or watching a cowboy ride into a herd swinging a wide loop. It makes me wonder if he's trying to catch something or run them out of the country. I just hope nobody judges the cowboy by what he's seen in "Lonesome Dove."
Lehman worked at a number of jobs since his cowboy days, but it wasn't until he was 75 that he decided to write about his experiences. Since that time, he has sold more than twenty books to an audio company, Books in Motion. Marietta, his wife of 62 years, edits his work and they have combined their names as author: M.M. Lehman.
Copyright © 2001 Jean Henry-Mead. All rights reserved.
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