The Ellis Boys Come to Wisdom
by Jerry
B. Cowley
We
leafed through the old photo album, Mother and I, reminiscing a bit as she
named the faces and described each occasion nesting in the dusty, leather-bound
pages she kept in the 1957 World Book Encyclopedia box. It had become a
familiar rite over the years, this itemizing of pictures. Now we were each
suddenly afraid we won't remember. This time I wrote the names on the back or
tuck a sticky note in at the edge if we couldn't lift them out.
We turned to the Ellis page. There they are: the four Ellis brothers, all
side by side, looking at us across the century. The photograph shows four men,
left to right, from the waist up: J.D. (the eldest), and his brothers Ted, Owen
(the youngest), and Lew. They had come to the relative freedom of
territorial eastern Idaho and its Montana border as soon
as they left home. J.D. came first. He began freighting with ox teams from Corinne, Utahthe
brawling end-of-track for the Union Pacific railroad. They trudged to the
boomtown of Virginia City, Montana, starting about 1875. At age 15 he
had tasted his first ice cream, seen his first black man, eaten a tomato, and
driven teams of obstinate oxen through Indian country across mountain passes,
rivers, and deserts. By the next decade, he and his brothers were homesteading
on Medicine Lodge Creek in present-day Clark County.
Now the four occasionally supplemented their living from the oncoming railroad.
They'd move just ahead of the crews building the roadbed. Then they'd set up a
saloon in a tent with a convenient plank table or two and wait for the thirsty
workers. In fact, the family credits Lew with
founding Wisdom, Montana.
When the town celebrated its centennial, my great aunt was there, waiting for
the name Ellis to be recognized. It was never mentioned. Wisdom had gone
respectable.
I looked again at the photograph. Full handlebar
mustaches sprouted on four similar faces above starched collars. The vests and suits must have been as stiff
as their solemn expressions. There is a secret in the picture. Three brothers
stand and one kneels. They appear the same height. Mother recited this
information. Owen is the one, who... her voice trailed away.
Listening, I picture a warmish Indian Summer
day in Montana.
Owen is tending the bar while Lew, J.D., and Ted play
cards with a stranger. The drinks flow freely as the sweating men pick up their
cards and lay down their bets. Suddenly a stool falls over and the stranger
staggers backward, drawing his gun. "I've
been cheated," he snarls and waves the Colt .45 around the table. Lew and Ted throw up their hands, backing slowly away,
begging for their lives. They have wives and children at home, they plead.
Momentarily uncertain, the stranger's eyes roam the tent for another target while
J.D. crawls out the door, unobserved. Owen is standing near the bottles,
spell-bound by the drama, when the stranger spies him. He swings the wavering
gun around and shoots. Owen falls to the flattened grass floor of the tent,
dead.
"Don't know if they were cheating him or not, " Mother continued."Never said.
Likely could have been. But he shot the one that was innocent. And your
great-grandfather crawled out on his hands and knees."
