A blizzard blew hard across the Northern Montana prairie Christmas Eve 1920, and the last of the stateâs notorious cowboy outlaws struggled to see the road that would take him to his sweetheartâs schoolhouse 30 miles northwest of Havre.
Long George Francis had loaded a borrowed truck with Christmas presents and a box of apples â parting gifts before he turned himself in to serve a six- to ten-year stretch on a dubious charge of horse stealing. Not that he was an altogether innocent man. He was rumored to have helped himself to unbranded calves and to have purloined a horse or two over his more than three decades in Montana.