Charlie Russell, “Waiting for a Chinook”

Charlie Russell came to Montana in 1880 at the age of sixteen where he hired out on a sheep ranch. He later went to work for a former trapper Jake Hoover, who owned a ranch in central Montana’s Judith Basin. Over the next few years he worked as a night herder on a number of cow outfits in the area spending his free time becoming an artist. During the brutal winter of 1886-1887 he was working on the O-H ranch in the Judith when the owner wrote to the foreman asking how the cows had weathered th