"On June 17, 1897, as the report of the reveille gun was reverberating through the mountains surrounding Fort Missoula, the Twenty-fifth United States Infantry Bicycle Corps was bounding along in front of ‘The Officers Line' en route to St. Louis."

It's fun to think, Hayes Otoupalik said the other day, that the "reveille gun" that correspondent Edward Boos wrote of more than 112 years ago is the same one that stands guard in front of the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula today.

It doesn't fire over the banks of the Bitterroot River anymore, although Otoupalik hopes it will again someday on occasion.

Indeed, the entire known story of the Civil War model ordnance gun brings a smile to the face of one of Montana's foremost military collectors. Otoupalik was only a teenager when he bought it from a Missoula trading post. One year ago, after he'd turned 60, he and wife Amalia returned it to its post, donating the cannon to the Fort Missoula museum.

Just last week, Otoupalik received shipment of two brass interpretive plaques that he'll mount on either side of the gun's base.

"When Hayes proposed this we were just tickled," said Robert Brown, the museum's director. "This was something from the original Fort Missoula, and we have so few things from the original fort."

Manufactured at the Phoenixville Iron Co. in 1861 for the Union Army, the 3-inch cannon's war record is unknown. Otoupalik said it shows up in recorded history when it was shipped to Fort Missoula in 1883, the same year the Northern Pacific Railway came through. The fort was just 6 years old.

A muzzleloader in war, the cannon had been converted afterward to a breechloader. The reduced bore size made it fit to shoot only blank rounds, and so it did - on special occasions at the fort and every day for reveille and retreat from 1883 to 1942.

"Old-time citizens of Missoula still remember it - BOOM every morning, BOOM every evening," Otoupalik said.

The cannon was salvaged from the scrap heap, literally, during World War II.

"The two cannons that were at Fort Missoula, a field gun and the salute gun, were given up for scrap metal," Otoupalik said. "They were taken away by Emory Silver to Pacific Hide and Fur, which used to be on West Broadway."

Fortunately, he said, a history buff by the name of Walter Custer became aware of the cannon in the scrap yard. He made a deal with Pacific Hide and took them both to his Hellgate Trading Post on West Broadway, where the Trails End Bar building is today.

There they stood for more than 20 years.

"Then in the 1960s, young Hayes Otoupalik comes along," said an older Hayes Otoupalik. The centennial of the Civil War was just past, "and I was one of the baby boom kids fascinated with Civil War history."

By then Walter Custer had died. A group of business partners, including a young former Grizzly football star named Roy Malcolm, purchased the Hellgate Trading Post from Custer's widow. Eventually Malcolm took over ownership. Over the years, Custer's collection of historic relics from the Old West and past wars was sold off.

Born in 1948, Otoupalik and his twin brother Josef caught the relic fever early. Their father Bud bought, sold and traded guns and by the time the boys were 9 years old, they had started collecting. The letters they sent to other dealers bore the head "Twin Brothers Arsenal," a name Hayes still uses sometimes.

Josef was 14 when he died in a car accident on the Salmon River in 1962. The new brass plaques say the gun is donated to Fort Missoula in Josef's memory.

By the time in early 1964 when young Hayes Otoupalik mustered up the nerve to talk to Malcolm about the cannon, he had already amassed a collection of military artifacts worthy of a feature story in the Missoulian.

With his father's encouragement and advice, Otoupalik told Malcolm he would purchase the cannon for the asking price of $600.

"I didn't have the money, but my dad said, ‘How much money do you have in your pocket?' "

Sixty dollars, Hayes told him.

Then you've got a down payment, his father said.

"He told me to ride my bike down and look the man straight in the eye and tell him you'll buy the cannon, and he'll say OK. Then you get out your $60 and say you'll put down a deposit," Otoupalik remembered.

"My dad said (Malcolm) won't back out because you're a little kid and you'll have the cannon tied up. And if you don't, some rich man will drive through Missoula and load up the cannon and haul it away."

Hayes followed his father's advice and wrapped up the deal, telling Malcolm he would "work as hard as I could as fast as I could to pay it off."

A year later, a time spent salvaging bottles and metal and hauling them to Pacific Hide for redemption, and Otoupalik was the proud owner of the cannon.

He has always been grateful to Malcolm, who passed away in 2005.

"Over the years, I've sold a lot of stuff to a lot of people and I've sold it on time payments. This made it possible for me to have something that I wouldn't have had otherwise," said Otoupalik. "And you know, it was an interest-free debt."

Otoupalik had to raise another $20 to pay Carl Willig to transport the cannon to the family home near the base of Evaro Hill. That's where it remained until late last fall, when Otoupalik himself loaded it up and hauled it to Fort Missoula.

This, he said, is where it belongs, and where it will remain long after he's gone.

"You know, this cannon has a whole history of good memories," Otoupalik said, patting the sleek black barrel.

"It's so unique, and it's so Fort Missoula," Brown said. "It's just an incredibly important contribution that Hayes made."

Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or at kbriggeman@

missoulian.com.