“WHEN HORSES TURN BACK, THERE’S DANGER AHEAD.” --------------------------- Of all the living creatures to travel the plains and mountain defiles of the great Northwest, the horse can justly lay claim to the greatest wisdom and keenest sense of impending danger. Not a few men today owe many years of their life on earth to the intuition and quick action of his horse. It was an actual incident in the career of the artist that prompted this production. Although Mr. Russell was never a hunter; although he never knowingly killed a wild animal in his life, he often, for friendship's sake, accompanied hunting parties on their expeditions. It was while with such a party of big game seekers, 'in the fastnesses[sic] of the Montana Rockies that happened just much an incident as is here portrayed. These hunters have “packed” into the wilds from a station on the Great Northern railway. Having followed up the west shore of the South Fork of the Flathead river, they had undertaken a ford of that stream. When just past the center of the shallow stream, the “Bell” mare has bolted, wheeled and stampeded the entire pack train. Such conduct on the part of a horse is never without cause, and when the grizzly pokes his nose from the underbrush of the oposite[sic] shore, he finds the experienced mountain men prepared. Nevertheless, it was the “bell" mare who scented the intruder while he was yet hidden from view, and, although she may have disorganized the train for the moment, she has saved the men a probable embarassing[sic] situation. Because Artist Russell was a “child of the Frontier", and because his knowledge of the plains and the mountains and the lainsmen[sic] and the mountain men was acquired through actual experience, his paintings were “right” in every detail. He knew how a horse should be packed, because -1- [next] he had packed many a cayuse. Note the typical double-diamond hitch of the animal which bears the camp stove and the single-diamond hitch of these bearing the bedding and kindred camp accoutrement. Note, too, how the bell on the bell mare is hobbled; this is just as it should be, or the hunter in the wooded mountains always hobbles the bell when he is on the trail. The guide in the foreground is a man of the later day, for we see him here pulling his rifle from beneath his left leg. This, too, is "right"; the earlier day plainsman and mountaineer carried his gun across his saddle in front of him, but this custom was changed as the West became more thickly populated. The stage for “When Horses Turn Back There’s Danger Ahead,” has been set in one of the most beautiful, most awe-inspiring sections of the North American continent. This is the Flathead country--the Flathead river, lined on either bank with its lodgepole[sic] pine, its fir, quaking ash and cottonwood, its winding, rocky, drift-wood strewn banks , just as you would find them were you there, today. Beyond and majestic and awe-inspiring, their shining crests blending with the silken clouds, are the rugged, snow-crowned peaks of the Continental Divide in what is now Glacier National Park. Artist Russell once said: “There’s lots of times a hoss knows more than a man. A man that says a hoss don’t know anything, don't know much about hosses.” This is a masterpiece with an important moral to the man who enters the danger-infested mountain wilds. ---------------------- -2- [Transcribed by Melynda Seaton, 2011-11-01]