The cowtown of Nanton, Alberta (population about 2,200) was on our vacation route several years ago.
We stopped in this town on busy Highway Two between Great Falls Montana and Calgary to visit the air bomber museum depicting the Second World War training site.
We were delighted to find a museum of miniatures with carefully constructed miniature scenes.
On the way to get a drink and pastry, we noticed what seemed an over-abundance of antique shops — at least four that we saw on the main street.
While my partner and wife nursed her beverage and pastry, Yours Truly investigated the antique shops.
Interesting as they were, nothing jumped out and said Buy Me until I noticed a book written by famous cowboy artist Charles M. Russell. The book was a surprise. Russell is known for his paintings and sculptures of Native and cowboy culture
He was a prolific note writer with a drawing on each note as seen on a wall of letters in the C.M. Russell Museum Complex in Great Falls.
One of those drawings — a gaunt steer being stalked by wolves — sent to a ranch owner in response to a query about the winter started his fame as an artist.
Titled Trails Plowed Under ,the book contains almost 50 short stories from the West, numerous drawings and five reproductions of his paintings.
Russell was planning the book when he died in 1926. His friends completed the book for publication in 1927.
At age 15, Russell left his eastern Missouri home to go out west where he became a cowboy, riding and roping with the best of them for 44 years.
He lived among the Natives and his art was sympathetic to their lifestyles in contrast to the other best known cowboy artist Frederick Remington.
The book is written in cowboy vernacular from the introduction by comedian Will Rogers to the back dust jacket cover written by cowboy artists/author Will James.
Writes James: “The writing that’s in this book gives the same feeling as the many pictures that’s in it. It’s all sure enough rangeland and as true to life as it can be put down.
“Even the few stories which might sound like cow-camp jokes are truer to life than a feller would think…”
A typical story tells of the young cowboy who takes a train to Chicago and the big city only to get rolled by a friendly man and lose all his money and possessions.
Many of the stories resemble tall tales expected from bored cowboys sitting around a camp fire each trying to outdo the others.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
