When reminiscing about the Matson's, we brushed across the Lackey family, for William and his wife were homesteaders on what later became Emil Matson's ranch.

William insisted that his family live in his backyard, as he expressed it, so when their son, Burley, married Esther, they bought a place a few miles – even backyards are large in Montana – from his parents. Driving a mile west on Big Wall Road from its intersection with North Gage, one finds a gumbo track heading north to a cluster of buildings, and that was where they bought.

It is a beautiful setting nestled under a high hill w...