Hat Creek Outfit Cattle Co. Montana Headquarters Set Illustration by Cary White

About the Work

While thinking about their Montana destination, Gus says, “I’d like to see one more place that ain’t settled before I get decrepit and have to take up the rocking chair.” Call seems to be thinking of a legacy for Newt when he says the boy could run a ranch in Montana. In the novel, the cattle drive terminates in Montana so late in the fall that Call knows the drovers could not return to Texas, but must spend the winter in Montana. He selects a spot near a stream and a stand of timber they could use to build a log cabin and corrals for the horses. Within ten days the drovers construct a rough log house using found materials; notice the cabin is windowless. Bricks made from creek bed clay form the fireplace and chimney and the smokehouse is steps away so that an accidental fire would not burn down the cabin. This part of Montana was unsettled and as Call hoped, the drovers may have been the first white men to see this place and thus, the first to graze cattle there. Production designer Cary White’s job was to take McMurtry’s text and to design and build the winter headquarters McMurtry described.