Add files from ibiblio as of 2025-03-08 22:18:17HEADmain

1 files changed, 2659 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/40497-0.txt b/40497-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b8954e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/40497-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2659 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40497 ***
+
+                        The Prairie Schooner
+
+                      By William Francis Hooker
+
+    Copyright, 1918
+    By SAUL BROTHERS
+    Chicago
+
+
+           To My Wife
+      MAMIE TARBELL HOOKER
+        A Pioneer of the
+    Jim River (Dakota) Valley
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Illustration and Patent Color Process by J. D. Johnsen]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                Page
+
+           Introduction                                           11
+
+        I. Letters Pass Between Old Pards                         15
+
+       II. Trains That Run Without Rails                          27
+
+      III. Hunton and Clay--Bull-Train Magnates                   43
+
+       IV. Guarding an Overland Freight Outfit                    57
+
+        V. Rattlesnakes and Redskins                              67
+
+       VI. Belated Grace for a Christmas Dinner                   75
+
+      VII. The Fate of One-Eyed Ed.                               85
+
+     VIII. Track-Layers Fought Redskins                           99
+
+       IX. "Bill" Hickok, City Marshal                           105
+
+        X. When Cheyenne Was Young                               113
+
+       XI. The Lost Indian at Bedtick Creek                      119
+
+      XII. A She-Bear and Her Cub                                129
+
+     XIII. A Kick From a Playful Bullock--and a Joke             135
+
+      XIV. The Indian and the Trousers                           143
+
+       XV. There's a Reason; This Is It! Conclusion              149
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+When the Union Pacific Railroad was completed from Omaha, Nebraska, to
+Ogden, Utah, it passed through a territory about as barren of business
+as one can imagine. It apparently was a great Sahara, and in fact some
+of the territory now growing bumper crops of alfalfa, grains and fruits,
+was set down in school text-books in the 70's as the "Great American
+Desert."
+
+Its inhabitants were, outside of the stations on the railroad, largely
+roaming bands of Indians, a few hundred soldiers at military posts, some
+buffalo and other hunters, trappers, a few freighters, and many outlawed
+white men.
+
+The railroad had no short line feeders, and there was, in the period of
+which I write, no need for them sufficient to warrant their
+construction. There were military posts scattered along the North
+Platte, and other rivers to the north, and the government had begun, as
+part of its effort to reconcile the Red Man to the march of civilization
+started by the Iron Horse, to establish agencies for the distribution of
+food in payment to the tribes for lands upon which they claimed
+sovereignty. These oases in the then great desert had to be reached with
+thousands of tons of flour, bacon, sugar, etc., consequently large
+private concerns were formed and contracts taken for the hauling by
+ox-teams of the provisions sent to the soldiers as well as the Indians.
+
+The ox was the most available and suitable power for this traffic for
+the reason that he required the transportation of no subsistence in the
+way of food, and was thoroughly acclimated. Usually he was a Texan--a
+long horn--or a Mexican short horn with short stocky legs, although the
+Texan was most generally used, and was fleet-footed and built almost on
+the plan of a shad.
+
+Both breeds were accustomed to no food other than the grasses of the
+country, upon which they flourished. These included the succulent bunch
+grass.
+
+Oxen were used in teams of five, six and seven yokes and hauled large
+canvas-covered wagons built for the purpose in Missouri, Wisconsin,
+Illinois and Indiana. In the larger transportation outfits each team
+hauled two wagons, a lead and a trailer, and frequently were loaded with
+from 6,500 to 8,000 pounds of freight. These teams were driven by men
+who were as tough and sturdy as the oxen.
+
+Most of the freighting was done in the spring, summer and fall, although
+several disastrous attempts were made to continue through the midwinter
+season to relieve food shortages at the army posts.
+
+It may seem strange, but it is nevertheless true, that Indians
+frequently attacked the very wagon trains that were hauling food to
+them, in Wyoming and Western Nebraska. Perhaps they were the original
+anarchists; anyway, they often tried--seldom successfully--to destroy
+the goose that laid the golden egg, but the course of civilization's
+stream never was seriously turned, for it flowed rapidly onward, and
+between 1870 and 1885, the country was quite thoroughly transformed from
+a wild and uninhabited territory to one of civilization and great
+commercial productivity.
+
+Cattle ranches with their great herds came first, then sheep, and by
+degrees the better portions of the lands, where the sweet grasses grew,
+and even on the almost bare uplands when water was made available by
+irrigation projects, were tilled. Settlements followed quickly--towns
+with schools and churches; then branch railroads, the development of the
+mines of gold, silver, coal, etc., all came in natural order. And
+finally, at a comparatively recent date, rich fields of oil were
+discovered and made to yield millions of gallons for the world's market
+and millions in wealth.
+
+It is difficult to realize that the now great territory was, in the day
+of men still active, regarded as of little or no value--the home of
+murderous, wandering tribes of savages in a climate and soil unfitted
+for agriculture and containing little else of commercial value.
+
+But science and enterprising men and governments have wrought almost a
+miracle.
+
+Go back with me to the days of the prairie schooner before the Wild West
+was really discovered, and let me try to entertain you with just a
+glimpse of things that are in such wonderful contrast to those of today.
+
+The freight trains with ox-team power have vanished, never to return,
+and with them most of the men who handled them.
+
+The "color" of what follows is real, gathered when the Wild West _was_
+wild; and I make no excuse for its lack of what an Enos R. Mills or a
+Walter Pritchard Eaton would put in it, for they are naturalists while I
+am merely a survivor of a period in the development and upbuilding of a
+great section of the golden west.
+
+In relating incidents to develop certain phases of pioneer life real
+names of persons and localities have not always been used; and in some
+of the narratives several incidents have been merged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+LETTERS PASS BETWEEN OLD PARDS.
+
+
+_My Dear Friend_:
+
+Can you put me in correspondence with any of the old boys we met when
+the country was new, out in Wyoming? * * * Of the Medicine Bow range, or
+Whipple, the man I gave the copper specimens to? * * *
+
+Have you forgotten the importance you felt while walking up and down the
+long line of bovines, swinging your "gad" and cursing like a mate on a
+river boat? You looked bigger to me than a railroad president when you
+secured that job, as you used to say, breaking on a bull-train. I should
+say you were an engineer, but I suppose you know best. Those were happy
+days. When I recall the fool things we did to satisfy a boy's desire for
+adventure, I wonder that we are alive. How we avoided the scalping
+knife; escaped having our necks broken, or being trampled to death under
+the feet of herds of buffalo is a mystery to me. * * *
+
+When the building of the Union Pacific road checked the buffaloes in
+their passage from summer to winter feeding grounds, and they were
+banked up along the line near Julesburg in thousands, I recall the
+delight we took in watching them "get up and get." What clouds of dust
+they would kick up when they got down to business! And such dust as the
+Chalk Bluff would make never entered the eyes or lungs of man elsewhere.
+Weren't we whales when we could divide or turn a herd? And how we would
+turn tail-to, "spur and quirt" for our lives if the bunch did not show
+signs of swerving from their course. How a cow-pony can carry a man
+safely over such treacherous ground as the dog-towns is almost a
+miracle.
+
+O! to have my fill of antelope steak or buffalo "hump" broiled on a cone
+of buffalo chips! Nothing better ever entered my mouth on the plains.
+The soothing song of the lone night-herder of the bull-train as he
+circles and beds his stock is not more conducive to sweeter slumbers
+than we enjoyed by the rippling streams in the hills of Wyoming.
+
+The difficulty we had in boiling beans until done in so high an
+altitude; our hunt for a gun at old Dale Creek where "Shorty" Higgins
+died suddenly; the fool act on my part when, afoot and alone, I
+recovered the horse the Comanches had stolen from us. I wish we might
+corral some of our old-time friends and go over the past before we leave
+this land, "for when we die we will be a long time dead."
+
+The wild horse that roamed the West, among which was the stallion who so
+valiantly guarded his harem on the Laramie Plains, was a model for a
+Landseer. The great herds of buffalo that looked like shadows cast on
+the plains by clouds passing the sun and the myriads of passenger
+pigeons, are among the things that man will never see again, and as read
+from the chronicles of history a few years hence, will be classed with
+the Jonah and the Whale story.
+
+Old Man, when convenient, write me a long letter recalling some of the
+old days, for--
+
+    "I'm growing fonder of my staff,
+    I'm growing dimmer in my eyes,
+    I'm growing fainter in my laugh,
+    I'm growing deeper in my sighs;
+    I'm growing careless in my dress,
+    I'm growing frugal with my gold,
+    I'm growing wise--I'm growing--yes,
+    I'm growing old."
+
+    Sincerely yours,
+    _VAN_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The reply:
+
+_My Dear Old Pard_:
+
+Your note concerning the events of long ago out on the Laramie Plains
+and the Harney flats shoots across my vision events in the Cache de La
+Poudre (the Poodre), the Chugwater country, old Cheyenne, Sherman, Fort
+Laramie, Fetterman, Camp Carlin, both Plattes, the Medicine Bow waters
+and range, Allen's "Gold Room," McDaniel's hurdy-gurdy, the
+dust-stirring, dust-laden buffalo east of Chalk Bluffs, the deer and
+antelope of the whole Wyoming territory, the sage-hens, and I don't know
+what not.
+
+It makes me stop and lope back into the sagebrush. It makes me climb the
+mountain sides and urge the bulls to fill their piñon yokes, tighten the
+chains, and hurry along the four or five tons of bacon or flour or
+shelled corn in gunny-sacks that Uncle Sam wants delivered somewhere
+over the range, across the desert sweeps, through cactus-grown, prickly
+pear sprinkled wastes, on through the dog-towns, in the heavy sand
+sifting through the spokes, and falling off in a spiral fount from the
+slow-turning hub.
+
+Ah, yes, old pard, and as I whack my bulls in the train that runs
+without rails to the top of a long divide, I look for three things:
+water, smoke and Indians.
+
+There were no railroads north of Cheyenne--nothing but the
+"bull-trains." There away on the edge of the horizon, over the yellow
+bunch grass, cured by the sun, is a strip of green. It is box-elder, and
+underbrush. Standing out here and there like grim sentinels on guard are
+the big, always dead and leafless cottonwoods, white as graveyard
+ghosts, day or night. It seems to be only a flat surface haul to this
+refreshing looking strip of green, and, as I have stopped the whole
+wagon-train by making this observation, and the wagon boss is moving my
+way on a big mule, I tap the off leader, who is thirty odd feet away,
+with my long lash and yell:
+
+"Whoa, haw, Brownie," but not too loud at first; just an encouraging
+word or two, and then string 'em out. My leaders are light of feet and
+built like running horses. The pointers--or middle yokes--come in
+reluctantly, but I attend to that, and with the butt end of my stock,
+jab the near wheeler in the ribs, and away we go.
+
+But, old pard, inside of three minutes my strip of green is gone! In its
+place is the quivering, broiling sun over the yellow bunch-grass; the
+ashen stalks of the sage seem never to have had a drop of sap in
+them--everything is dead. Even the jack-rabbit that stops for a look
+seems bedraggled and forlorn, but I whistle, pick up a moss agate, throw
+it in my jockey box, and jog along, for the surface is now hard as a
+stone, though off ahead there I will unwind my lash and send its
+stinging thongs to the backs of my noble beasts, touching only selected
+spots where the hair has been worn away until the surface looks like the
+head of the drum in a village band.
+
+Yes, I know they used to think us bullwhackers were brutes, but they (an
+occasional tenderfoot) only saw the surface. They had never been
+initiated; they didn't know the secrets. It was only when the load just
+had to be yanked to the top without doubling teams or dropping trailers,
+that we used the undercut which sent the long V-shaped popper upon the
+tender spots of the belly, and then, Pard, the thing looked worse
+because the Comanche-like language we hurled with it was so unusual to
+ears that had been trained east of the Missouri River. It sure was
+picturesque language!
+
+But we were all day reaching that green belt strung like a ribbon across
+the face of central Wyoming, and from the time we first hove in sight of
+it, until we pulled the pins from the steamy yokes, and dropped the
+hickory bows at our feet, it appeared and disappeared so often that I
+wonder that both man and beast did not go mad. However, inasmuch as this
+was a daily programme for me for several years, I know that man can
+stand a whole lot of hardship, if he only thinks so.
+
+And then ring in the change from the desert heat of midsummer to trifles
+like thirty below in winter along the same landscape, when you see the
+ghostly cottonwoods and anticipate your arrival among them some hours
+later. Won't there be a roaring fire? And beans? And bacon? And pones of
+bread for everyone? Wet stockings piled on inverted yokes or held on
+pieces of brush, are drying, we are nursing our chilblains and
+discussing the incidents of the day's drive, and not a weakling in the
+outfit. Every man has been frozen or soaked all day, but he's as happy
+as a lark. Sleep? You bet! You know it; but if you and I tell our
+friends around our comfortable firesides now or in the lobby of an
+onyx-walled Waldorf-Astoria, Belmont or Biltmore, that we just kicked a
+hole in the snow, rolled into our blankets and dreamed of being roasted
+to death, they would look at your well-shaven face, my biled shirt, and
+then at your highly polished shoes, then at my black derby, and, dammit,
+I believe they might be justified in forming the opinion that neither
+one of us had ever been deprived of breakfast food, or bath tubs, or a
+manicure artist's services.* * *
+
+You want to know if I can locate any of the old gang. Sure! Some sleep
+in the sidehills along the swift-flowing waters of the North Platte, one
+or two are parts of gravel beds down on the wild meadows--or what were
+the wild meadows of hundreds of square miles between the North Platte
+and the Poudre; but not a few, like you and I, stalk abroad on the face
+of the earth--cheating first, as we did, tribes of Sioux, Arapahoe,
+Cheyenne and the Comanches who swept up across Kansas and Nebraska;
+escaping the blizzards, periods of starvation, cold, heat, fire, water,
+whisky, and finally the surgeon's knife. I tell you, the world only
+thinks it knows a thing or two about how the human body is made, and how
+much it can stand. But to answer your questions:
+
+Jim Bansom, the last time I knew of him, in 1875, was headed east with a
+fine span of hosses and a fair-to-middlin' wagon.
+
+Don't know where he went and don't know what he did with the hosses or
+the wagon! 'Taint none o' my bizness, neither! In those days it wasn't
+customary to be too gol-darned inquisitive about such things, unless
+you owned the hosses or the wagon, or a bit, or a halter, or something
+of that sort you happened to loan to the outfit; and then, of course,
+you could take the trail if you wanted to.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sam Smith, old U. P. conductor, walked into my office a while ago, and,
+as he closed the door behind him, I said, "Hello, Sam; haven't seen you
+since 1875, but you're the same Sam!" Then I told him my name.
+
+And then Sam gasped and acted like maybe he might pull a gun, thinking
+me an impostor; because when Sam saw me the last time, stretched out in
+his caboose on the old mountain division of the U. P., and the train
+sailing down the toboggan that slid us into Laramie City, past Tie
+Siding and old Fort Saunders, my hair was black, and I had a different
+look.
+
+Maybe I looked bad. I guess I did, for I carried a gun and a belt of
+forty rounds, and a butcher knife in a scabbard, just as we all did, for
+it was the custom of the country; and I had long hair, too, and it was
+matted and dirty, mixed with pitch that came from camp-fires in the
+hills. No doubt I looked wretched, but, old Pard, I didn't even feel
+that way. I felt good, and I was as harmless as a pigeon.
+
+But I said something about a hatband of rattlers' rattles that I gave
+his little girl at Cheyenne, as I rode up to his door aboard a cayuse,
+and that settled it. We talked about snow-sheds, the Sherman hill, once
+the highest railroad point in the world, and of old times in general.
+
+But what's the use? When you come to New York, I'll meet you at the
+Waldorf and we'll talk about it all night, and wish the buffalo were
+still there, and the sagebrush, and the bull-trains, and the other
+things undisturbed by civilization. So long....
+
+_BILL._
+
+New York, August, 1917.
+
+     [NOTE--The above letters are from the author's files. "Van" is a
+     multi-millionaire manufacturer living in a middle-western state.
+     For several years his pastime was buffalo hunting and "roughing it"
+     in the wild and woolly west.
+
+     The author, when a boy of 16, was developing a case of tuberculosis
+     of the lungs, and to escape the fate that had overtaken other
+     members of his family, took Horace Greeley's advice, went west, and
+     grew up with the country. He had been a clerk in a railroad office,
+     and still is in the railroad business in New York City, more than
+     forty years after the events related in the following chapters. He
+     is the only survivor of a family of fourteen, including all of his
+     own children, eight in number.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+TRAINS THAT RAN WITHOUT RAILS.
+
+
+Before railroads were built in the country west of the Missouri River
+there was, nevertheless, considerable doing in the transportation line.
+And even after the Union Pacific was built from Omaha to Ogden to
+connect with the Central Pacific, which carried the rails to the Golden
+Gate, most of the transportation of the then great Wild West, in the
+mountains, on the plains and the "Great American Desert," was done by
+ox-teams. These were run in trains of from ten to fifty or sixty teams,
+the teams consisting usually of from five to seven yokes of oxen and
+lead and trail wagons built for the purpose.
+
+These wagons were called prairie schooners, because they were supplied
+with canvas coverings. The first of these, made in St. Louis, were
+called "Murphys," and were provided with iron axles. Later many of them
+were made in Indianapolis, Chicago, and Kenosha, Wis., the latter known
+as the Bain. The Schuttler and the Bain wagons were almost as big and
+substantial as a box car and were well painted and put together to stand
+hard knocks on mountain "breaknecks" or in Bad Land sands.
+
+The lead wagon would carry an average of 6,500 pounds, while the
+trailer--fastened to the lead by a short tongue--had a capacity of
+perhaps two tons. In a sandy place or on a mountain road, the
+bullwhacker (teamster) would slacken his team, pull a coupling pin from
+an iron half-circle arrangement on the axle of his lead wagon, drop his
+trailer to one side of the road and proceed to the top of the hill, if
+in the mountains, or to an "island" of hard ground in the desert, unhook
+his wheelers and go back for the trailer. Sometimes a "bull outfit"
+would spend a whole day doing this. Lead wagons were parked one at a
+time and the trailers brought on later and hooked up. These parkings
+were in the shape of an oval, called a corral, a narrow opening being
+left only at each end.
+
+Inside this corral, when it came time to yoke up, the cattle were driven
+in by the herders, if the camp had been for over night or a long mid-day
+stop. Then the bullwhackers, carrying the heavy piñon yokes over their
+left shoulders, hickory bows in their right hands and iron or wooden
+pins with leather strip fastened to them in their mouths, would seek out
+their teams, yoking them together and leading them to their wagons.
+
+When a "whacker" had his "wheelers," or pole oxen, in place, he would
+bring on his "pointers," and the rest, including the leaders. The
+wheelers were always the heavyweights, old and trained, and able to hold
+back the load or their unruly teammates until the whackers could throw
+on a brake or "rough lock," the last named a log chain fastened at one
+end to the wagon, thrown through the wheel spokes in such a way as to be
+between the ground and the wheel on the "near rear hind wheel" of the
+lead wagon.
+
+New cattle just being trained to yoke were always put in the center of
+the team, where they were easily managed with the assistance of the
+"leaders," which were always light weights and most always long-horns
+from Texas--long horns, long legs and bodies, thin as a razorback hog.
+These leaders were always the best broken oxen, and would respond to the
+low-spoken word of "haw" or "gee," especially if the word were uttered
+in the peculiar musical tone of the whacker which cannot be described in
+print, not only because it is impossible to convey sound in that manner
+but because the language that goes with the music--the request to gee or
+haw--would not be pleasant reading. Alone, the leaders would trot like
+horses.
+
+The average person outside of Texas and the southwest and some of the
+western states has a mental picture, perhaps, of the Texas steer of the
+long-horn variety. Those who lived thirty or forty years ago, even in
+the East, remember him as a member of the quadruped family consisting
+largely of horn, for it was not an infrequent thing to see him in a
+cattle car on a sidetrack. He was, as a matter of fact, also entitled to
+a reputation for his legs, for they were unusually long. His body, too,
+was slim, and he never was fat for the reason that while free to roam
+the ranges at will he devoted most of his time to using his horns in
+goring his mates and neglected to eat. He raced about from place to
+place, whereas, if he had no horns he would have been a peaceful animal
+and consequently much more valuable for the market.
+
+The old-time Texas steer often was as fleet-footed as a Kentucky
+racehorse of the thoroughbred variety, and it took a good horse to catch
+him when he made up his mind to run.
+
+Nevertheless, thousands of these Texas steers were broken to yoke, and
+used in overland transportation; and once broken they were good workers,
+even though their horns were always in the way, and the cause of a great
+deal of trouble in a herd.
+
+While I have no authority for the statement, I believe practical
+dehorning began with the bullwhackers of the plains, for they frequently
+bored holes in the horns which in a few weeks caused the horns to drop
+off. Then it was noted that if the dehorned cattle were kept separate
+from those with horns, the dehorned ones, even when working hard every
+day, took on flesh and were better workers. Finally nearly all the
+work-oxen were dehorned, and they were as meek and quiet as lambs.
+
+The whacker always began his orders to his bulls in a low tone,
+increasing it as the necessity for action presented itself, and ending
+in a string of oaths that would make an old-time Mississippi steamboat
+mate ashamed of his reputation. Frequently teams were stalled on a high
+hill or in the sand, when it would be necessary to gee the team of seven
+yokes at an almost right angle, with chains between each yoke slackened
+and with "wheelers" filling their yokes. Then the whacker would walk out
+half way to his leaders and soothingly coax them to come haw--toward
+him--on a trot, until all the chains between the other yokes were
+tightened. By this time, however, Mr. Whacker was back to his wheelers,
+perhaps punching the near one in the ribs, and then throwing his
+eighteen or twenty foot lash over the backs of any of the yokes that
+were not clawing the sand properly. In this way the men often worked for
+days at a time, making sometimes only a few rods by each repetition of
+the operation. Then again, the wagon boss would order a doubling-up
+process and two whackers and fourteen yokes of oxen would work on one
+pair of wagons, taking them along perhaps a mile, and then returning,
+repeat the process until the bad road was left behind.
+
+This was transportation in the old days, and "trains" of this kind first
+hauled the heavy traffic from Leavenworth and Nebraska City to the
+Pacific and intermediate settlements in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
+After the Union Pacific was built this bullwhacker transportation
+increased, especially in the country between Utah and the Missouri
+River, in both directions away from the railroad, for the government had
+a line of forts on the North Platte River and Indian Agencies were
+established in Western Nebraska, Wyoming and what is now South Dakota.
+
+Two of these agencies, Red Cloud, on White River, and Spotted Tail,
+forty miles to the north, were big traffic points. Train loads of bacon,
+flour, sugar and other things were hauled to these agencies on
+government contract, the provisions being in payment to the Sioux and
+other tribes for the land they occupied near the North Platte River.
+Along the Platte there were forts--two famous in their day--Fort Laramie
+at the junction of the Platte and Laramie Rivers, and Fort Fetterman,
+one hundred miles west of Fort Laramie, on the Platte at Lapariel Creek.
+Soldiers here depended upon the "bull outfits" for their provisions,
+nearly all being hauled in over mountain range and plain by contractors.
+
+Those were wild and woolly days, and the man who lived the life of
+out-of-doors was a rugged, devil-may-care, hungry, healthy, happy
+fellow. He knew how to face a freezing blizzard, or a baking sun without
+flinching; he knew how to take care of himself with a minimum of
+discomfort under the most adverse circumstances. He was afraid of
+nothing. It wouldn't do otherwise. He was there, usually beyond the arm
+of any law other than ordinances made and provided by himself and
+companions and enforced by the same law-givers. Stealing was a worse
+crime than life-taking. There never was an excuse for the first, but
+nearly always one could be trumped up for the latter. To take a man's
+horse was worse than cold-blooded murder; to rob him of his gun or his
+blankets was equally as bad a crime. But if he had been cheated in a
+game of "freeze out," or called a name that reflected upon his origin it
+was not uncommon for him to become judge and executioner then and there.
+
+So men who engaged in this early day transportation of food and fodder
+for soldiers and their mounts and for the followers of Sitting Bull, Old
+Red Cloud and other chiefs, were careful in their social intercourse,
+and when the harsh word was passed, as frequently was the case, it was
+no uncommon thing for men to settle their score with pistols; and the
+winner in these duels seldom, if ever, was punished. But a cold-blooded
+murder--a wanton killing--was never tolerated. In a fight with pistols
+it was always considered that the man who did the killing was justified.
+
+Unlike the present day fliers, bull trains did not run on schedules,
+although there was a pretense of regularity about the day's routine, and
+it was about as follows:
+
+At break of day the night herder who had been out with the bulls all
+night--it is always daybreak to him whether three o'clock or
+five--drives his herd into the corral, usually singing some refrain of
+his own composition, but always having for its motive the same that
+animates the pestiferous alarm clock set by a master to disturb the
+slumber of a tired servant. However, a half hour before the herder
+appears the cook and his helper, both bullwhackers, doing their turn of
+a week, have been on the job with the coffee and bacon, and as soon as
+the herder sounds his first note, the cook takes up the song, which is
+perhaps:
+
+    Bacon in the pan,
+        Coffee in the pot;
+    Get up and get it--
+        Get it while it's hot.
+
+And then, and it is always so, some of the lively stock, as it
+approaches the corral, takes the notion that there is some nice sweet
+buffalo bunch grass to the rear that looks better than a day's work, and
+there is a bolt often approaching a stampede. Curses? You never heard
+the like, for the wagon boss and an assistant are already in their
+saddles helping the herder. If you tried to sleep just a minute longer
+it would be impossible, therefore you roll out from your bed on the
+ground, fold up your blankets, tie them with a strap and throw them on
+your trail wagon.
+
+Coffee and bacon are swallowed in haste, and if you are like the
+majority, you grab a piece of bacon and a chunk of bread, bang them
+together into a huge sandwich and put them in the jockey box of your
+wagon for a lunch at eight or nine o'clock.
+
+Yoking and stringing out the oxen is the next operation, and a short
+one in a well regulated outfit. Twenty minutes, usually, from the time
+the bulls are driven in, the lead team is moving, and when the "outfit,"
+as every train is called, is well under way, the lead wagon is perhaps a
+half mile from the last one, which is the mess wagon, containing the
+provisions, cooking utensils, levers for raising a load of four or five
+tons, the iron jacks, extra tires, coils of rope, pulleys, wheels, extra
+spokes, bars of iron, and almost always a small forge--a regular
+wrecking outfit.
+
+In hot summer weather on fair roads a bull train would make four or five
+miles before the sun was high enough to burn--usually nine o'clock.
+Then, if the camp was to be a "wet" one--at a creek, river or
+spring--there would be a "layover" until four o'clock in the afternoon,
+during which time the boys could sleep under a wagon, wash their
+clothes, or if in a creek or river bottom, shoulder a gun and look for
+moccasin, lodge pole or bear tracks.
+
+All day long, however, the men who were on the cook trick would make
+bread in Dutch ovens. And let me tell you, no bull outfit ever stopped
+for a long mid-day rest without putting on a huge kettle of beans, for
+the army or white bean was the staple food in those days; and there was
+always, on these long mid-day stops, plenty of soup.
+
+Perhaps one of the boys in his meanderings up or down the creek would
+bag a deer. If he wandered out upon the plain he was sure of an
+antelope, if he was a good shot. The deer kept to the trees along the
+rivers and the hills, while the antelopes' territory was the open plain,
+hard to get at unless the plain were rolling, and the hunter could be in
+the right place as regards the wind.
+
+Sometimes there were poker games, usually freeze-out, which the men
+played with plug tobacco cut up into small cubes. Others would spend
+their time braiding whips or mending clothing.
+
+The bullwhacker's whip not only made a tenderfoot open his eyes with
+wonder, but it usually shocked him. It was something he had never seen
+before, and if he had been told that a man of ordinary strength would be
+able to wield it he would have been decidedly incredulous.
+
+Differing from a cowboy's or herder's whip, the bullwhip lash was
+attached to a stalk of hickory or white ash three feet long upon which
+the whacker could firmly plant both hands. The lash at the butt, which
+was attached to the stick by a soft strip of buckskin, formed in a loop
+or swivel, frequently was more than an inch thick. These lashes were
+from eighteen to more than twenty feet long and were graduated in
+thickness from this great bulk to the tip, which was the thickness of a
+lead pencil. The number of strands in a bullwhip were also graduated. At
+the butt there were as many strands as the maker--usually the
+bullwhacker--could weave, often fourteen. At the tip, this number was
+reduced to six. The top, and down to six or eight feet from the end, the
+whip was made of leather, often old boot tops. The rest was of tough
+buckskin or elkskin. But on the very tip of the whip--the business
+end--was a "popper" of buckskin cut in the shape of a long V, the bottom
+end of the V running into a strand which was braided into the tip.
+
+The bullwhacker, when using this instrument, first threw it out before
+him upon the ground; then by the use of all his strength he swung it in
+over his head, to the right, often whirling it several times before he
+let it go upon the back of the bull he wanted to reach.
+
+To the man who never saw this operation before, there was a shock, for
+as the whip landed on the bull the popper made a roar like the report of
+a cannon.
+
+As a matter of fact the bull was uninjured, unless the bullwhacker was
+careless and allowed his popper to strike a tender spot, the nose, an
+eye or the belly.
+
+It was almost a crime for a bullwhacker to cut a bull and draw the
+blood, and he seldom did it unless his popper had been wet and then
+dried. The spot usually aimed for was the hip, and bulls that had been
+in service any length of time had a spot on the rump that was hairless,
+resembling the head of a drum. But the spot was tough. The noise of the
+popper, however, was what startled the team and caused it to "dig in."
+
+Frequently in the summer the afternoon drive lasted until ten or eleven
+o'clock, especially if there was a moon. You cannot imagine a more
+impressive, weird, wild sight. The shadows, the rattle of the wagons,
+perhaps the scream of a night bird or a wild cat--maybe the zip of an
+arrow from a redskin's bow, or the report of a gun, all calculated to
+keep even the hardened bullwhacker on his mettle. And for this the
+bullwhacker got $75 to $100 a month and "grub." He usually spent his
+money at the end of his trip much after the habit of the sailor who
+rounds the Horn.
+
+In the cold weather the hardships were many. There were, remember, no
+bridges and the roads crossed numerous streams, all of which had to be
+forded; and there was but one way to cross, and that was to wade and
+guide a team.
+
+Usually the heavy freighting was done before December, but often it was
+necessary to fight through blizzards and zero weather. It was this kind
+of work that tried the soul of even the hardy bullwhacker, and not
+infrequently his hands, feet, ears or face were frozen. It was hard on
+the cattle, too, although it was almost always possible to find plenty
+of good feeding ground of buffalo grass, which grew in heavy bunches and
+was very sweet in its dry state, for the wind usually kept places bare.
+If not, the bulls would nose it out from under several inches of snow
+and manage to get something approaching a meal. Otherwise, they went
+hungry, for no feed of any kind was ever carried for them.
+
+Indians, usually, were too lazy to hunt the white man in winter, so
+there was seldom any trouble from this source after the first snowfall.
+But when the grass was green it was different, especially in the
+mountains or foothills. Redskins seldom fought a real battle in the
+open. To the bullwhacker he was nearly always an invisible foe, shooting
+his arrows or his gun from behind a rock, or from the top of a bluff,
+well out of range himself. When the Indians were known to be following
+an outfit it was common practice to keep a couple of horsemen outriders
+on each side of the train where possible. Frequently bull trains were
+obliged to corral and put up a fight, and usually the Indian lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HUNTON AND CLAY, BULL-TRAIN MAGNATES.
+
+
+Among the bull-train magnates of the early 70's were Charley Clay, said
+to be a relative of the famous statesman, and Jack Hunton. They were
+pioneers of Wyoming who have no doubt been quite forgotten, though in
+their day none in the then sparsely settled frontier territory was
+better known. They were not only pioneer freighters, but among the very
+first of the daring frontiersmen to go beyond the limits of
+civilization, and into the stamping grounds of the warlike tribes of
+Indians to establish homes. Both built ranches in the Chugwater country
+along the trail leading from Cheyenne to Fort Laramie. Clay's log house
+was directly under one of the famous landmarks of the territory--chimney
+rock--a chalky butte formed, geologists say, by erosion. Hunton built
+his ranch on the northwest end of the Chugwater at a point near Goshen's
+Hole, a great basin, where the Laramie trail wheeled directly north to
+Eagle's Nest, another butte. At Hunton's a trail less used branched off
+to the northwest, across what was then considered a desert and reaching
+Fort Fetterman, perhaps 125 miles away on the North Platte river at
+Lapariel creek. This part of Wyoming is now, I understand, a vast
+wheatfield. To a bullwhacker of the early 70's this is almost a miracle.
+
+Both Hunton and Clay used their ranches to range their work cattle in
+off seasons, although both had beef herds and lots of horses. These
+ranch houses were protected from Indians by less than a dozen men at any
+time; but these men were fighters and were known to be such by the
+chiefs of the tribes that frequently roamed the territory south of the
+Platte, although in a treaty with the Federal government they had
+promised to stay north of the famous stream, the consideration being, on
+the part of Uncle Sam, a contribution of hundreds of tons of flour,
+bacon, tobacco and other things. Strictly speaking, this food was in
+payment for land south of the Platte.
+
+Both Hunton and Clay had a knack of dealing with these roaming bands,
+however, that prevented any serious raids, although at one time, when
+Clay had closed a contract with the government and found himself in
+Cheyenne with his big bull outfit, consisting of a couple of hundred
+head of oxen and thirty or forty men, word was brought to him that on
+his return trip to his Chugwater quarters, a band of Sioux would attack
+him. So he left Cheyenne one night, and taking a course almost due east
+avoided the Laramie trail, and by a circuitous route reached the
+Chugwater without having traveled a mile on a trail.
+
+Hunton's and Clay's ranch houses were loaded with firearms, looked like
+armories, and at the height of the shoulder in the log walls were fort
+holes through which guns could be fired. These were used several times,
+but none of the skirmishes approached in any degree the present-day
+pictures one sees in the movies, and I doubt if they ever did, in the
+West. In the first place, while the Sioux, Cheyenne and other redskins
+were considered especially bloodthirsty, none of them was fond of
+exposing his worthless carcass to a shower of bullets, even though
+outnumbering the whites 100 to 1. The Indian of that day--of the day
+that history was making on the frontier--was a most miserable coward
+when dealing with frontiersmen of the Hunton or Clay calibre.
+
+Of course, there were open battles with United States troops, but even
+then only when, as in the case of Custer and his Seventh Cavalry, the
+troops were outnumbered and trapped. Even Sitting Bull's band, which has
+wrongly been represented by some historians as brave, were entitled to
+no credit of that kind. Custer was trapped in a big bowl and his 300-odd
+fighters surrounded on all sides by several thousand well mounted and
+well-armed young bucks. The Custer and the earlier so-called Indian
+battles both at old Fort Phil Kearney and earlier in Minnesota, were not
+battles at all--simply massacres. There is no record of an even fight
+between redskins and whites in the settlement of the country between the
+Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. The Modocs fought for months in
+the lava beds, but seldom did a soldier see a Modoc. So it was with old
+Geronomo and his Apache followers. They fought from cover, never in the
+open unless overtaken and surrounded.
+
+Nevertheless, the raiding bands of Ogalala Sioux that slipped over the
+Platte in the season of good grass were a problem for these pioneer
+ranchmen and transportation outfits, and it was not an uncommon thing
+for a bullet or an arrow to reach a vital spot in a bullwhacker from
+some hiding place just in range of the road. When this happened it was
+the common practice for members of the outfit to mount their saddle
+horses, with which every bull-train was well supplied, and give chase
+unless the lead of the Indians was too great, and usually it was.
+
+Once in a while, however, the Indian made a miscalculation, and the
+bullwhacker would return to the temporarily corralled outfit with a
+scrubby Indian pony, a few rawhide thongs, and an Indian's ear freshly
+amputated for use as evidence at the first camp of bullwhackers or army
+post that one more "Good Indian" had been put on the list.
+
+This cutting off of ears was reprisal, for the Indians scalped their
+white victims and mutilated their bodies when they had a chance. Hunton
+and Clay hauled with their big outfits, at one time, about everything
+that was sent to the northern line of forts by Uncle Sam. Clay's
+contracts were largely confined to Port Laramie, although Hunton hauled
+a good deal of the provisions to that post. Hunton and others supplied
+Fort Fetterman, the principal route being from Medicine Bow station on
+the Union Pacific across the mountain range of the same name.
+
+It took several days to load the prairie schooners from the freight cars
+on a sidetrack that was laid upon the sod; and while this work was going
+on there was sometimes a good deal of drinking and many gun fights.
+
+It was while a bull outfit was loading for one of the fall trips to
+Fetterman that the first billiard table came to Medicine Bow. I think it
+was the only one in the territory outside of Cheyenne and Laramie City,
+both division points on the Union Pacific. There were no women in
+Medicine Bow, good or bad, at the time and not more than 100 regular
+residents, yet the town had a saloon because the bull outfits, Hunton's
+and others, in their occasional trips, and a few adventurers who were
+prospecting south and west of the "Bow," furnished ample patronage to
+make the enterprise profitable. It was this saloonkeeper who conceived
+the idea of importing a billiard table, and also a back bar and mirror.
+
+The bullwhackers watched the installation of the new furniture, and that
+night informed the saloonkeeper that as there were no women in the camp
+it had been decided to have a stag dance in the saloon. He protested,
+but it did no good. A few drinks in a dozen leaders was followed by a
+deliberately aimed shot which shattered the mirror, after which the
+operation of removing the billiard table began. It was a rough job, and
+would have given a Brunswick-Balke man a chill. The table went out onto
+the prairie in sections, and the sections were not always separated at
+the regulation point. The green cover was ruined.
+
+Then the dance began. The German saloonkeeper smiled his protests, but
+when he became too much concerned about what was going on, someone would
+snuff a light or plug a barrel of whisky with a bullet. So the night's
+debauch continued, and it did not end until daybreak. The place was a
+wreck, and the saloonkeeper was in despair when the wagon boss came
+along with a roll of money as big around as a ship's cable, saying:
+
+"What's the damage, Fritz?"
+
+"Ach," he replied, "the table cost me $500; a barrel of whisky and
+cigars, beer, my fine mirror--everything is gone?"
+
+"Yes, I see, the whole bizness," said the boss.
+
+"Well," said Fritz, "the boys spent $600 mit me, so I make it $600 more;
+maybe I can repair the table."
+
+So the bill was paid, the wagons were loaded, and the outfit sallied
+forth across the plains, the bridgeless rivers, and the mountain passes
+to Fetterman where there was a pay-day. Deductions pro-rata were made
+from every man's wage to even up the score with Fritz, and every
+bullwhacker paid his share willingly, saying it was cheap sport for the
+price. There was no feeling against Fritz because Fritz had not shown
+fight. If he had--well, most of the men in the outfit were wild and
+woolly, and rough, but not killers. Still one or two could not be
+trusted.
+
+Hunton put up a log house, a forge and a charcoal kiln just outside the
+south limit of the Fort Fetterman government reserve, a section five
+miles square south of the Platte. Just before this plant was erected a
+series of Indian depredations began; several men engaged in cord wood
+chopping for a government contractor were murdered by small bands of
+Sioux, and many saddle horses stolen. There were also several raids in
+the Lapariel bottoms; and one day a small band of Sioux, well mounted,
+forded the Platte almost in sight of the fort, stampeded a herd of mules
+and drove them far into the Indian country before a company of soldiers
+took up the chase.
+
+A military telegraph line ran from Fort Fetterman to Fort D. A. Russell
+at Cheyenne, and the northwestern end of the line was down most of the
+time, the Indians taking the wire away to use in ear and nose rings and
+for other purposes, although the line was destroyed many times, no
+doubt, for pure cussedness. One time I traveled for fifty miles on
+horseback along this telegraph line, and in places the wires were
+connected with insulators which were mounted on buffalo horns. In many
+places the wire was on the ground.
+
+It was said at the time of the running off of the mules that the Fort
+Fetterman commandant was unable to follow the Indians without orders
+from Washington via Fort Russell. However, this was not confirmed.
+Anyway, on this and many other occasions the army moved slowly and was
+past understanding on the part of the few citizens in the country.
+Nevertheless, the soldiers of those days, whenever in conflict with the
+redskins, usually gave a good account of themselves.
+
+Things got so warm one spring in the vicinity of Fort Fetterman that the
+thirty or forty citizens camping outside the military reservation
+organized a secret society known as the Buckskin Militia, and determined
+to avenge the deaths of several men, Jesse Hammond, a woodchopper, and
+others, if opportunity should present itself. The only qualification for
+membership in the Buckskins was a willingness to take the oath, which
+was as follows:
+
+     I, John Smith, do solemnly swear that I will shoot on sight any
+     male Indian, no matter whether he is attacking me or other white
+     men, stealing or attempting to steal my property or the property of
+     others, or whether he is approaching or moving from me.
+     Furthermore, I will answer any call from another member of this
+     band or any other good white citizen, for assistance in the
+     destruction of any male Indian found on the south side of the North
+     Platte river; and will join in any raid upon an Indian camp when
+     called upon by the Chief Buckskin. So help me God.
+
+This oath was taken while standing on the stump of a cottonwood tree in
+the Lapariel bottoms, the candidate being loaded down with as many log
+chains as he could hold, and the ceremony, usually taken on a moonlight
+night, was as weird a sight as one can imagine.
+
+The raids from the north continued nearly all summer. Several more white
+men were killed, one a lone prospector who thought there was mineral in
+the hills southwest of Fort Fetterman and near old Fort Caspar.
+
+[Illustration: "Whistled to Give His Quarry the Chance He Would Give a
+Mad Dog, and No More."]
+
+One of the Buckskins hunting antelope one day in the vicinity of La
+Bonte Creek crossed the trail of a single tepee or family, and three
+ponies. This he knew from the lodge pole tracks made by a horse dragging
+the poles over the ground. The Buckskin took the trail, keeping well out
+of sight, but finally cut off a lone Indian who had dismounted to drink
+from a spring, allowing his young buck sons to go on. Buckskin whistled
+to give his quarry the chance he would give a mad dog--and no more. Then
+he put a bullet in his head. He remained on the spot from which he
+fired, waiting to hear from the rest of the tepee, which he did in a few
+minutes, although the young bucks kept out of sight. They fired a few
+shots before Buckskin decided to make a dash, and when he did it was a
+race of ten miles to a ford in the Platte. The young bucks escaped.
+Buckskin returned to his "Good Indian," removed a lock of his hair, took
+his gun and ammunition and a greasy card from the folds of his blanket
+upon which some white man had written:
+
+    This is Cut Nose, a "Good"
+    Sioux Indian; but he is a
+      Murderer and Thief.
+
+There was a big session of the Buckskin Militia a few nights later, and
+great rejoicing. Cut Nose was a whole tribe of Indians in himself, and
+many dark crimes had been laid at his door by the white men who were
+engaged in freighting food to the Indian agencies and army posts.
+
+It must be understood that there were no settlers or settlements or
+families in this section of Wyoming at this time, therefore there were
+never any of those horrible affairs common farther East a hundred years
+or more ago. There were no women and children for these red devils to
+kill, and year in and year out the fight was between bullwhackers, a few
+ranchmen, not more than half a dozen, government woodchoppers, and a few
+prospectors.
+
+The professional hunters usually "stood in" with the red man, being
+possessed of some kind of magic that was never fully explained. In those
+days beaver, bear, buffalo, deer, antelope and other game abounded. The
+hunter usually had a hut or "dug-out" near a beaver dam, and it usually
+was well supplied with food and sometimes a squaw was the hunter's
+companion. Her relatives were sure of good treatment, and I presume for
+that reason the relatives were able to give the "squaw man" hunter
+protection. Still hunters were murdered, but not often.
+
+Finally, along in July, after the grass had lost its sap and turned
+brown, one of the Buckskins saddled up his pinto horse one day, strapped
+a blanket, a pone of bread and a piece of bacon to his saddle, and
+giving free play to his Rowell spur, waved his hat and yelled as he
+dashed away:
+
+"Good-bye, boys; see you again in a few days. I'm goin' to put an end to
+these raids."
+
+His brother Buckskins thought he was crazy--some of them did. But one or
+two winked and looked wise; and about sixty hours later, when some of
+the "militia" had almost forgotten him, Buckskin rode up, unsaddled his
+pinto, pitched him in the ribs and said: "There now, old boy, go up the
+creek and enjoy yourself. Eat yourself to death, and I'll know where to
+find you when I want you. No Indian will get you."
+
+When the boys crowded around him he vouchsafed this much information:
+
+"From a point twenty miles east of this spot to a spot twenty miles west
+of Fort Laramie--on the north side of the Platte--as far as the eye can
+reach in a northerly direction, and you know that's considerable
+distance, there is just one charred mass--every blade of grass has been
+burned."
+
+There was no more trouble that season. No feed for the Indian ponies
+within a hundred miles of the fort to the north of the river.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+GUARDING AN OVERLAND FREIGHT OUTFIT.
+
+
+Driving seven yoke of oxen hauling two wagons attached by a short rig
+similar to that used in coupling cars, along a desert road, is enough to
+keep an able-bodied ox-train brakeman busy. But when, in addition to
+keeping his wild "leaders" in the road and his "wheelers" filling their
+yokes, he has to keep an eye on a distant bad land bluff or a roll in
+the surface, he has his hands more than full.
+
+This was the situation when the bull outfit, from Cheyenne to Spotted
+Tail, was slowly moving along north of the Platte river in August,
+1875--a time when Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies were nearly
+deserted, and all the young bucks were chasing antelope and incidentally
+collecting scalps of white men when they could find a white man alone
+and unprepared to defend himself; or when they could outnumber a bull
+outfit one hundred or two hundred to one and get its members in a
+"pocket," which was not often.
+
+At this particular time a young man who, a couple of years previous, had
+never known anything less comfortable than a feather bed, or a job
+harder than writing railroad way-bills, was one of two in the
+cross-country freighter crew who had been assigned by Wagon-boss Watson
+to mount a "pinto" pony and ride all day at least 1,000 yards away from
+the trail and keep to the high places where he could see what was going
+on, if anything, in the vicinity. He had been told to dismount and
+examine any signs of life on the ground where it was bare, or in the
+grass, and when found to fire one shot from his revolver to let the
+bullwhackers know that they had "company" not far off; and if he saw one
+Indian or a hundred to shoot not once but three times in rapid
+succession and then gallop to the wagon train with details.
+
+The movement across the desert-like country this day began at four a.
+m., and continued until ten a. m. The featherbed youngster was well
+equipped with an army Springfield of large calibre, forty rounds in his
+belt, two Remington revolvers and a butcher knife with a five-inch blade
+for the possibility of close quarters. He had a bottle of spring water
+and a saddlebag full of sandwiches of bread and fried sowbelly and
+plenty of chewing and smoking tobacco.
+
+Maybe you think this youngster thought of his soft bed at home or a pot
+shot from ambush that would leave his skeleton bleaching in a sandy
+desert sun after it had been stripped of its flesh by wolves; or that he
+wished someone else had been chosen to guard one side of the overland
+train of flour, bacon, corn and sugar and its custodians, but that is
+not so. It was one of the proudest days of his life and I know he will
+never forget it. He was highly honored by Watson and he appreciated it,
+for the reason that only two years before he had come to Wyoming a green
+city boy and was then known in the parlance of the plains as a
+"tenderfoot," which was a truthful description of any man or boy when he
+first entered upon the life of the bullwhacker, the then popular master
+of transportation between civilization and its outposts. He never
+dreamed of death when he got his orders, because he was young and
+foolish. Sometimes it is called bravery, but that isn't the right word.
+It can't be described unless it is called blind or reckless
+indifference. Perhaps that isn't it; anyway the youngster, as he mounted
+and galloped away and waited on a neighboring knoll for the outfit to
+string out along the sandy trail, hoped he wouldn't be disappointed. He
+wanted an eventful day and he fairly prayed for it. "I hope," he
+ruminated to himself half aloud, "that I cross a tepee trail, at least,
+even if I don't get my eye on an Indian."
+
+It wasn't long until he began to wonder, for it was still barely
+daylight, if it wouldn't be possible for a buck of good aim to pick him
+off, especially if the buck practiced the usual tactics of concealing
+himself behind a sand-dune or a butte. He wasn't afraid--he didn't know
+the word--but he wondered. For this reason he kept his pony moving,
+reasoning that it is easier to hit a stationary target than a swiftly
+whirling one. But the pony appeared to be a dead one even when a spur
+was roughly rubbed upon his belly, until, as the train had gotten well
+out of camp and the teams strung along for a mile, he found his pony to
+be interested in something, for he insisted on frequent stops and moved
+his ears back and forward and snorted lightly.
+
+Finally it seemed next to impossible to get him to move, and Featherbed
+was sure the pony had been owned by Indians at some time and was of the
+trick variety, being trained to a brand of treachery that meant delivery
+of his mount into the hands of the reds.
+
+And while these things were passing through the youngster's brain his
+only concern was that the train was leaving him, and that he was not
+guarding it. He heard a coyote's mournful note, but that was a common
+occurrence, although he wondered if it couldn't be possible that an
+Indian was doing the howling. It sounded like an imitation.
+
+The pony snorted some more, and then Featherbed, finding his blunt
+pointed spurs were not getting him anywhere, unsheathed his
+butcher-knife and pricked his cayuse on the back. He tried to buck, but
+he wore a double cinch--one fore and one aft--and it kept him on all
+fours.
+
+Things were getting worse and the voices of the bullwhackers yelling at
+their teams grew fainter and fainter as the outfit slowly but surely put
+distance between Featherbed and his companion, when there was a sound
+that resembled the dropping of a stick in the water preceded by a
+distinct swish as if it had been thrown through the air like a
+boomerang.
+
+Then the pinto got busy. It was an arrow!
+
+There were several more, and one of them clipped the pommel of the
+saddle before Featherbed thought of his orders to fire once on sight of
+disturbed grass or a moccasin track on bare ground; or, upon sighting an
+Indian, to fire three times.
+
+Then he let go with his Springfield in the supposed direction of the
+enemy, and headed for the trail, which he readily found, and soon caught
+up with the mess-wagon which always formed the rear guard with one
+whacker, the night herder inside, and the extra herd horses tied behind.
+Featherbed met Watson galloping toward the rear.
+
+"What is it, boy?" he shouted.
+
+"They got a piece of my Texas pommel," he replied, "but I don't know
+where the arrow came from. I'll go back and see."
+
+He wheeled his pony to go and would have been off to take up his station
+a thousand yards from the trail had not Watson said, laughingly:
+
+"You're crazy--wait a minute till I send word up ahead to corral."
+
+"You (to the mess wagon driver) untie them hosses, saddle 'em up and
+wait for Blucher Brown and Archer; they'll be back in a minute."
+
+Featherbed, as the sun peeped over a rise in the land, waited
+impatiently. So did the pony, for the miserable Indian-bred cuss had a
+good nose that was keen to the smoky smell of an Indian, or to the odor
+of another horse, especially of his own breed, and he was all animation
+and ready to go.
+
+When the party finally got away Watson, turning to Featherbed as they
+galloped side by side along the high spots near the back trail, said:
+
+"If yer not afraid, pull out ahead with that pony and lead the way."
+
+Featherbed pressed the Rowell spur to the pony's side and he responded
+like a real cow-pony, much to Featherbed's surprise, and before Watson
+could gather his breath to call the youngster back he led them by 200
+yards. Finally he did manage to yell between his laughter:
+
+"Hold on, you danged idiot--I didn't mean--"
+
+But he didn't finish the sentence, although he continued yelling, this
+time expressing himself to the effect:
+
+"My hoss has been creased in the neck--dismount, give me your hoss and
+lead mine back to the outfit; we'll take care of these galoots."
+
+Featherbed protested, but it was no use, and he returned and joined the
+whackers who had corralled and gathered the bulls inside the wagons,
+forming two half circles on a high spot near the trail. There were
+several other horses in the outfit, so Featherbed quickly slipped the
+boss' fine $200 rig on the back of a buckskin of the cow-puncher variety
+and sped back to the scene of action.
+
+But it was all over. The sneaking Indians had disappeared, and the only
+evidence of their presence was a spot of crumpled grass behind a knoll
+where several of them had lain in complete safety while they tried to
+send Featherbed to the Happy Hunting Ground.
+
+The sun was too high for the Indians, so they disappeared, skulking at
+safe distance to wait for darkness and perhaps other prey.
+
+Featherbed, after another shift of mounts and saddles and bridles, again
+took his post 1,000 yards from the trail, smoked his pipe, munched his
+sandwiches and drank the spring water.
+
+At ten o'clock camp was struck for the mid-day stop close to a creek of
+sweet cold water that ran through some small hills covered with stunted
+pines, a few miles from a range of black mountains out of the bad lands
+and sand.
+
+Featherbed was here promoted to the position of assistant wagon boss,
+presented with a big sorrel horse called "America" (because he was not
+Indian-bred) and given the lead team to drive in the outfit. This meant
+that, in co-operation with the "big boss," he would help select the
+camps, govern the speed of the "train," look after the manifests, act
+as check clerk in loading and unloading, and besides wear a red sash to
+designate his official position.
+
+Featherbed took his honors modestly, in fact he was surprised and
+couldn't understand it until someone told him the "old man" was pleased
+when he (Featherbed) took the wounded horse back to the train, saddled
+up another and returned to help find where the arrows came from.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+RATTLESNAKES AND REDSKINS.
+
+
+The night-herder's song awoke me at four a. m.--the first streak of
+day--and I didn't have time to pull on my boots before the bulls were
+inside the corral; so, in bare feet, I yoked my fourteen head and then
+proceeded to pull on the cowhides, roll up my blankets and throw them on
+my trail wagon. Due to the haste--for nearly everyone else in the outfit
+was ready to "pull out" in response to the assistant wagon boss'
+order--I proceeded to pull on the left boot without the usual
+precautions. My fingers were in the straps as I sat on the ground,[1]
+and in another minute my toes would have been in the boot. But the
+rattler that had spent the night in it stuck out his head. I shook him
+out, first calling my pard to come with his whip.
+
+[Footnote 1: This was in the center of a prairie dog town covering
+perhaps twenty acres; and the "town" was inhabited not only by these
+marmots but rabbits, owls and rattlesnakes, apparently living in perfect
+peace and harmony in the same burrows.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the rattler was dead I plucked off eleven beautifully graduated
+white rattles and a black button, later on adding them to a hatband of
+several hundred which I had sewn together, using silk thread and a
+cambric needle. The other boot was tenantless.
+
+The blankets, in a neat roll secured by a heavy leather strap, were
+thrown on top of the freight in the trailer, and away we went for a dry
+camp in the bad lands, where we spent six hours of the middle of the day
+hiding under our wagons to escape the hot rays of the sun.
+
+A late afternoon start ended at nine p. m., in a moonlit camp on a creek
+that ran swiftly through chalk-like bluffs--perhaps the headwaters of
+the Niobrara river. In those days none but a geographer or a government
+surveyor knew the names of many of the waterways, if they had names. It
+had been a hard drive through deep sand most of the way, and after the
+bulls had been relieved of their yokes and the chains that held the
+teams together, all hands raced for the water, both for internal and
+external purposes.
+
+Our night camp was on a flat between the bluffs and a few yards from the
+stream in a most inviting spot, the edge of the crooked channel being
+lined with stunted and gnarled box-elder, while farther back were a few
+dozen dead and gaunt cottonwoods. Some small bushes grew in clumps here
+and there, but our camp commanded a good view, even in the night, of the
+country for a mile in at least two directions--north and south.
+
+Though tired, it was too nice a night even in this wilderness to go to
+bed; for a youngster who had acquired two revolvers, a Winchester
+rifle, a butcher knife and other weapons believed the crumpled grass he
+had seen at the edge of the creek indicated the presence not far away of
+others of the human family, and he intended to find out about it. He had
+confided this suspicion to one other youth of the outfit, and as the
+supper camp-fire died down to a bed of coals and a cool wind began to
+fan the hot earth these boys stole out of camp, waded the creek, and
+carefully examined the earth up and down its margin until they came upon
+a distinct moccasin, pony and lodge pole trail. They followed it along
+the bottoms for two miles to a jutting bluff where around the corner
+they saw six tepees, near which were picketed several ponies.
+
+All was silent as the boys, concealed in a safe spot, viewed the scene.
+Then there was a sound, low at first, like the crooning of a mother to a
+babe, which grew louder and louder, until finally there emerged from one
+of the tepees a big buck who stood silently for a full minute,
+listening. He wore nothing but a breech-clout, and over his shoulder
+hung a buckskin strap upon which was attached the arrows for the big bow
+held in his hand. He did wear a bonnet and it consisted principally of
+feathers that looked exactly like some of the creations worn by women of
+the present day.
+
+When he had located the sound he moved toward the hiding boys but
+stopped at the nearest tepee. The crooning grew to a lamentation. Then
+other tepees showed signs of life, and in a few moments bucks, squaws
+and papooses were running hither and thither in a bewildering way. But
+the boys remained silent, for there was no sign of a movement of camp
+and not an indication that there was an outside alarm. Then what could
+it be? What was all this fuss about? The lamentations became louder and
+louder and the excitement apparently greater.
+
+Finally a number of squaws who had gone to the creek bottom appeared in
+the center of the little camp. They carried bundles of green willows,
+dozens of large hard-head boulders and rawhide receptacles filled with
+water; also a bundle of dry faggots.
+
+After the stones had been piled in a neat heap a fire was built upon
+them which was allowed to burn briskly for half an hour. Then the coals
+and ashes were brushed off and a tent-like covering put over a quickly
+woven basket-like structure that had been built over the stones. Then
+the water was dashed upon the stones and the steam began to ascend.
+
+Presently out from a tepee came a squaw with a bundle which she gently
+shoved under the elkskin covered cauldron of steam.
+
+"Say," said one of the boys, "are you on?"
+
+"Sure enough," the other whispered, "they are giving that kid a Turkish
+bath."
+
+And that's what they were doing; but it wasn't Turkish-just Injun.
+
+Returning to camp the boys proceeded to slip into their blankets
+quietly, say nothing about what they had seen, and go to sleep. They
+believed the straggling band of Arapahoes were not on the war-path and
+had work for the "medicine-man"--the big buck they first saw come out of
+his tepee.
+
+You have no idea how cautiously the boys went about getting the blankets
+off the wagon so as not to disturb the boss, a man they feared. So they
+moved noiselessly.
+
+One threw his roll of blankets from the top of the trailer and the other
+caught the bundle and proceeded to flatten it out into a comfortable bed
+when he heard a familiar noise, and forgetting that they were to be
+silent, the youth on the ground yelled:
+
+"Look out--a rattler!"
+
+It woke up the whole camp. The snake had occupied the blankets from four
+a. m., at least, until this time--midnight. Perhaps he had slept with
+the boy until four a. m.; I think he did; anyway, he had rolled him up
+and put him where found.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BELATED GRACE FOR A CHRISTMAS DINNER.
+
+
+After fighting through a ten-hour blizzard that swept across the plains
+from the Elk Mountain country our wagon-train reached the foothills of
+the Medicine Bow range, where there was shelter for the work cattle
+along a swift running stream. The snow was piled in great drifts
+everywhere except upon exposed high spots, and it seemed impossible for
+us to proceed farther, for we knew that along the government trail just
+beyond, and 1,000 feet higher, that the drifts would be so deep that a
+long camp where we had stopped would be necessary.
+
+Ten men were tolled off by the wagon-boss to chop down young quaking
+aspen trees, the bark and small twigs of which furnished appetizing
+fodder for the bulls. Another gang climbed a sidehill and with axes
+felled a group of stunted pines for the side walls of a cabin; still
+others were sent into a "burnt and down" piece of timber to gather well
+seasoned dead pitch pine for firewood.
+
+The storm lasted until six o'clock in the evening, then continued as an
+old-fashioned heavy snowfall with no wind, increasing the level of the
+snow to the tops of the wheels of our corraled wagons. Apparently they
+were doomed to stay where they were until spring.
+
+Next morning there was a let-up. Then the blizzard began again in all
+its fury--only such a blizzard as one can see in but one other place on
+earth, judging from Dana's description of his experience in going around
+the Horn. The cattle, with almost human intelligence, 200 head of them,
+crowded toward the big bonfires of pitch, and with long faces looked
+mournfully upon the scene. They seemed to know, as we did, that the
+prospects were not bright for our cavalcade. Certainly there was no
+grass in sight now, not even on the round-topped knolls bordering our
+little valley, for the night fall of snow was heavy and damp, and
+finally, when the thermometer registered a few degrees below zero, the
+grass was sealed against the tough noses and even the hoofs of the
+hungry bulls. An attempt was made by a scouting party to find a clear
+feeding place on the back trail, but a day's investigation resulted in
+failure. Not a blade of grass could be found--all sealed with a heavy
+crust that would, in most places, carry a horse and rider.
+
+The storm continued, after an eight-hour let-up, the temperature rising.
+Two feet more fell on top of the crust, then came another freeze and a
+new crust. After twenty-four hours another blizzard from the north,
+consisting of sleet and snow and some rain, was like a sandstorm in
+summer on the plains below. It was fierce, nearly freezing and blinding
+both men and cattle. The poor bulls were more forlorn than ever. They
+gnawed the very wood of the aspens, and there wasn't enough of that.
+
+On the last crust of all this snow and sleet it was finally found
+possible to take the oxen farther along into the mountains, where four
+men drove them. Others went ahead with axes and for two weeks cut aspens
+and sought out hidden protected places in the valleys where there were a
+few blades of grass and some succulent underbrush.
+
+One day, when the sun was shining brightly on the white mantle and the
+distant peaks of the majestic mountains of blue stood out like a
+painting, Nate Williams, wagon-boss, spoke:
+
+"Do you know," he said to the fellows who were carving the carcass of a
+faithful old bullock, "that tomorrow is Christmas?" None had thought of
+it.
+
+"And," he continued, "do you know we are liable to stay where we are
+until the Fourth of July, if we don't get a move on?"
+
+There were no suggestions.
+
+"Furthermore," added Williams, "we haven't much else to eat but
+beef--there are just five 100-pound sacks of flour in the mess wagon--no
+bacon nor canned goods. Its a case of shoveling a road to Crane's Neck."
+
+Crane's Neck was a mountain twist in the road, a mile from camp. If the
+road could be cleared to that point there would be fair hauling for five
+miles in the range to another stretch that had been filled in places
+with from ten to twenty feet of snow, while one spot was covered by a
+slide from a mountain to a depth of forty feet and for a considerable
+distance along the trail.
+
+For three hours plans were discussed, and it was finally determined to
+go to work with shovels and picks, but not until after Christmas. Our
+caravan included a blacksmith's forge, also a regular wrecking outfit,
+and in a short time big wooden shovels were made from blocks of pine
+with handles stoutly attached with iron bands.
+
+The cook was a youth of twenty and had all the enthusiasm of the
+adventurer. He had spent a year on a whaler and knew what it meant to
+drift in the ice north of Point Barrow. This present situation, he said,
+was a picnic; so was the one in the Arctic. It couldn't be so bad that
+he wished to be snuggled away in a feather bed somewhere east of the
+Missouri River. That would be too ordinary.
+
+"If I could sit down to a table at the best hotel in the land," he said,
+"I'd prefer to eat the dinner that I'm going to cook for you fellows
+tomorrow."
+
+Williams sneered. "Yes," he said, "we put old Tex (a long-horn bull) out
+of his starving misery and the boys have found his liver to be O. K.
+Maybe you can give us a liver pie."
+
+"I'll do better than that," said the boy; "I'll not only give you a beef
+stew, but a pudding that you can't buy outside of London or
+Liverpool--a plum duff--and a cake. Old Tex will also be on the menu in
+several places, for his tenderloin looks good, and there are a few
+steaks which, when properly treated with a maul on the top of a stump,
+will be as good as you will get in a 'Frisco water front lodging, and
+better than any of you fellows have had since we hit the drifts."
+
+I have eaten meals that mother used to cook, I've been famished during a
+sea voyage, and devoured a Norwegian sailor's pea soup; I've
+participated in several real banquets in New York; I've dined at
+Delmonico's and at Sherry's, at Young's in Boston, and I've feasted in a
+circus cook tent; but my Christmas dinner in the foothills of Wyoming in
+1874, under the circumstances I have but faintly described, still is a
+fond memory and holds the record as the best meal I ever ate. It was as
+follows:
+
+                       MENU
+    Marrowbone Soup--"Tex"             Water Cress
+                   Beef Stew--"Tex"
+                 Hamburg Steak--"Tex"
+            Planked Porterhouse Steak--"Tex"
+    Tenderloin Steak-"Tex"          Roast Beef--"Tex"
+             Corn Bread         Wheat Bread
+       English Plum Pudding--Hard and Soft Sauce
+             Raisins  Cake  Coffee  Tea
+    (No butter or milk)    (Lots of salt and pepper)
+
+The corn bread was made from meal milled by the cook from shelled corn
+in the cargo. The "plums" were raisins, of which the cook had a few
+pounds. He used wheat flour, baking powder and grease saved from the
+final ration of the bacon which gave out a week before Christmas. The
+hard sauce was made with sugar and grease and a flavoring extract. The
+soft or liquid sauce contained a "remedy" requisitioned from a
+homeopathic quantity found in the wagon-boss' medicine chest--a few
+spoonfuls of brandy. The watercress was found two miles away at a
+spring. The boys called it "pepper grass." There it was fresh and green,
+protected by spring water which never freezes, and in some places it was
+peeping out from the edge of the snow at the brookside.
+
+And now about whisky. There were sixty men in this camp, and in one of
+the big wagons were three barrels of whisky, but it belonged to the post
+trader at Fort Fetterman, and it was a tradition not even broken on this
+exceptional passage from Medicine Bow on the U. P. to Fort Fetterman on
+the North Platte that a consignment of hard liquor was as safe in a bull
+train as it would be anywhere on earth, and that it would reach its
+destination untouched. Few men drank intoxicants on these trips. It was
+a crime to be found with whisky, punishable by banishment from camp, and
+that might have meant death. But at both ends of the journey--that's
+another story.
+
+The plainsman and mountaineer, the bullwhacker and the stage-driver,
+when chilled, drank water. Whisky caused him to perspire, and that was
+bad. He did not often use it when on duty.
+
+One of the peculiar things about this Christmas dinner is the fact that
+there were no mountain grouse, no sage hen, no antelope, deer, nor elk
+for the menu. The truth is the storm drove everything of the kind in
+another direction--the direction in which we were slowly moving--and
+some time later, when we emerged upon the other side of the range with
+our ox-power so greatly reduced that we made less than a mile of
+progress a day, the herds of elk stampeded a dozen times past our camps,
+and the "fool grouse" sat a dozen in a group upon the pine boughs in the
+mountains and refused to move, allowing us to kill them, if so disposed,
+one at a time; but we did it only once, just to prove that it could be
+done. (Colonel Roosevelt, please note!)
+
+It took us a couple of weeks to shovel our way out, and while the sun
+shone in the middle of the day hardly a flake of the snow melted. The
+air was at times biting cold, but invigorating, and every man, including
+the boss and the cook and even the night herder, fell to the work with a
+will that finally meant victory. In places we operated in the drifts as
+you see the excavators in a city cellar or subway operate, digging down
+to the surface and then benching as the open-ground miners or cellar
+excavators do, the men below tossing the blocks of snow up to the bench
+above and they in turn passing it to the top of the drift.
+
+Once or twice, in narrow passages, it was necessary to build several
+benches. In one place we began to tunnel, but the plan was given up, for
+our wagons, the regulation prairie schooners, would require a passage
+big enough for a railroad furniture car to pass through.
+
+After the high plateau was reached--the land that represented the
+watershed of the Platte Valley--it was clear sailing, and while
+food--wild game--was plentiful, and we ate lots of it, the memory of our
+Christmas dinner remained to remind us after all that in the midst of
+greatest hardships and suffering we often find something to be thankful
+for, something to bring us to our senses when we grumble or complain of
+our ill-luck or misfortunes.
+
+Had I been as appreciative when I partook of this mountain dinner as I
+am today for the blessings of Divine Providence, I would have been able
+to say, in relating this story, that we properly gave thanks to Him who
+is responsible for all our blessings and who chasteneth us for our
+wickedness; but I was not properly appreciative, neither were my rough
+but honest companions. Therefore, I take this opportunity to say grace
+more than forty years late:
+
+_Thank God for that snowbound Christmas dinner._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE FATE OF ONE-EYED ED.
+
+
+From the cross-tree of a telegraph pole hung the body of a man when the
+9:30 Union Pacific Overland Express stopped for a "slow" order across a
+bridge that a band of Comanche Indians had tried to burn.
+
+A Massachusetts woman enroute to 'Frisco stuck her head out of a car
+window and exclaimed, "How awfully terrible!"
+
+Yes, it was.
+
+Ed Preston was a one-eyed man. I don't know how he lost the other one,
+but I do know that he was a dead shot with the one eye that he slanted
+along the barrel of his pistol or buffalo rifle, the latter a sawed-off
+Springfield and the first mentioned an old-time army Remington.
+
+Preston's marksmanship cost him his life. They hung Preston, the boys
+did, because he killed a man just for the meanness of it, or, as one of
+them said, because he was spoiling for trouble.
+
+One day as we were camped on the north bank of the North Platte near the
+eastern line of Wyoming, Preston, full of liquor, lurched up to a bunch
+of bullwhackers and asked if anyone present thought he was a "dead
+shot." Of course, all hands admitted that his reputation was
+unquestioned.
+
+"But you never saw me shoot," he said, "so what the ---- do you know
+about it?" Then he pulled his gun and backed off, saying, as he pointed
+to a heap of discarded tomato cans:
+
+"Hey, you Charley, heave one o' them cans in the air--hurry up."
+
+Observing his apparent quarrelsome attitude, Charley Snow, a youthful
+member of the outfit, obeyed without protest. Snow had been assigned by
+Martin, the wagon-boss, to help the cook and the cook had made him
+responsible for the proper boiling of a pot of beans. Snow left the
+beans and threw a can as far away from himself as he could, and before
+it hit the ground it was perforated by a bullet.
+
+"Now throw one straight up in the air," commanded Preston, and Snow
+obeyed. Preston put two shots into that "on the wing." Snow attempted to
+resume his duties at the mess fire, but Preston's shooting had drawn a
+dozen or more of the men of the outfit to the scene, and he was in the
+humor to show off; therefore as Snow was the youngest and possibly the
+most inoffensive man in the party, Preston decided to eliminate the bean
+question by ordering Snow, with a flourish of his gun, to remove the
+beans from the fire. This done, he continued:
+
+"Now you throw the cans and be lively about it."
+
+Snow did as ordered. One, two, three, ten cans went into the air.
+Preston missed none. Finally the boy threw, at Preston's command, two at
+a time and both were plugged before they came down. Then as Snow picked
+up another one Preston shot it out of his hand, and he tried to quit and
+return to the bean kettle, whereupon Preston bored a hole through Snow's
+sombrero without cutting off a hair or bruising his scalp, although it
+was plain to see that while Snow was no fresh tenderfoot from the effete
+East, but a seasoned young bullwhacker and plainsman, he was more than
+uneasy. The boy said afterward that while he had a whole lot of
+confidence in Preston's marksmanship he knew he had drunk at least a
+pint of whisky--the worst of the squirrel variety at that--for had he
+not taken the last swig out of a flask, thrown it almost at Snow and
+sent its splinters in every direction by a shot from his Remington?
+Sober, said Snow, Preston would not have been so bad, but drunk--he
+objected to further participation in the William Tell business and he
+entered his protest. When he discovered that the chambers of Preston's
+revolver were temporarily empty, Snow quietly took a rifle from its
+leather fastenings on the side of a prairie schooner. His move looked
+ominous to his tormentor.
+
+Preston was a coward, as were all of that class of killers in those
+days. He was an engineer of a bull team of seven yokes and a good man at
+his business, but a bully, a braggart and a coward, whose victims
+usually were known to be peaceful and who were unarmed or unprepared to
+defend themselves. He was not the heroic figure of the almost forgotten
+wild west--the brave and big-hearted fellow who fought sometimes for his
+rights or what he considered his rights. Preston was just a plain
+murderer, who had taken a place among rough but honest frontiersmen,
+chased from an orderly community somewhere in God's country--then east
+of the Missouri, now anywhere from the Atlantic to the Pacific--because
+of some dark crime he had committed, no doubt.
+
+All day long we had been fording the North Platte at this point--Sidney
+crossing--a distance of at least a half a mile, including a small island
+of sand and a few bushes. It was the last trainload of provisions for
+the season we were taking north to the government's beneficiaries--the
+Ogalala Sioux and the Cheyennes. We had seventy teams, each of seven
+yokes, and two wagons, and as the Platte is a swift-running stream at
+this point and there is quicksand between the south shore and the
+island, it was necessary to "jack up" on blocks some of our loads on the
+wagons and double and treble teams, sometimes using as many as
+twenty-five yokes of oxen on one wagon and a half dozen men, belly deep
+in the mush ice, punching the bulls. The water was in places up to the
+tops of the wheels. It was a sun-up to sun-down job from corral to
+corral.
+
+Someone had whisky, but it was not apparent until late in the afternoon,
+when the target shooting incidents began. The boys were a sober lot--the
+good, honest kind, and not a desperado among them, barring One-Eyed Ed.
+Others there were, sure enough, who might be considered hardly fit for
+even the most humble society, for they looked like pirates--all of
+them--hair long, clothes weather-beaten and rough, faces unshaven and
+grizzled, and language or topics of conversation not what would be
+called cultured by any means. Yet there was in this outfit a
+predominance of good, honest hearts, most of them measuring life from a
+standard never understood if ever known in "God's Country." These
+sailors of prairie schooners, these pioneer transportation men of the
+virile, virgin West, knew little law or order or justice, as we know
+them; they frequently violated what is known as the law, but they didn't
+know it. They had but one degree of murder. It wasn't murder for them to
+fight and kill with pistols. It was the custom. Murder was something
+else. It was to kill a man who was not "heeled" or when his back was
+turned, or to mount another man's horse and ride away. This was murder
+in the first degree--the same as if the owner of the horse had been shot
+to death while asleep. In those days some things were as necessary, as
+indispensable as life--a horse, a saddle, a pair of blankets, a gun and
+ammunition and a butcher knife--perhaps a small bag of salt. The last,
+however, would be termed a luxury, although nearly every man in those
+days had a little salt stored away in a weather-proof pocket or saddle
+bag for the sage hen, antelope, deer, or buffalo beef he might have for
+dinner or breakfast.
+
+But let me tell you how Preston spent the rest of his day. It was early
+in the afternoon when he perforated Snow's sombrero, but it was sun-down
+when he shot and killed Tom Sash, the boss herder, a splendid Texan, who
+had charge of an Indian contract beef herd which had come up the trail
+from the Lone Star state to the Platte Valley guided by a half dozen
+range men in charge of Sash, and were being grazed along the Platte
+bottoms previous to being doled out as per agreement with Uncle Sam to
+the clouted redskins at the White River Agency at Red Cloud.
+
+All during the previous summer, as the wagon trains passed to and from
+Sidney and the northern forts and agencies, Sash had told the wagon
+bosses not to go hungry for lack of veal. "We are anxious to fatten
+these cattle," he would say, "and you are welcome to a calf or two any
+time you want it." Sash was all right and the bullwhackers couldn't sing
+his praises loud enough.
+
+It was at the close of Snow's engagement with Preston that the wagon
+boss told Preston to try his hand on some Indian veal. So Preston
+disappeared down the river, returning at suppertime with the admission
+that he had not only veal but "yearling steak." And he had some of it
+with him.
+
+The beans had been boiled and eaten, the tin dishes and cups, pots and
+kettles and iron ovens dumped into the mess wagon, and two crews of men
+were at work jacking up wagons and greasing axle skeins, when the space
+at the north mouth of the corral was suddenly filled by as fine a
+horseman as ever galloped over the plains. It was Sash, dressed in the
+costume of the real cowboy of the long-horn cattle day--sombrero, chaps,
+Rowell spurs, a Mexican lariat properly adjusted over the horn of his
+elaborate double-cinched cutting-out saddle--everything was perfection.
+He was astride a fine big black American horse--not a regulation cow
+pony--a shiny, deep bay charger with a white left ankle half way to the
+knee from the fetlock, and a spot of white the size of a hand on the
+face.
+
+He came on a gallop and stopped so short at the corral mouth that, had
+he not known his business, he would have been thrown over the chains.
+But that was the style of riding. Plunge ahead to the object or point
+desired--then stop short. He waved his hat to Martin, our wagon boss, to
+come to the corral chains.
+
+"Someone from your outfit," shouted Sash, "has been out in one of our
+herds and shot a half dozen yearlings and two three-year-old steers.
+Aren't you satisfied with veal? Say, old man, who did this mean trick?"
+
+The acts of a coward are preceded by a queer train of thought, the
+kingpin of which is fear. Preston knew his disreputable work of
+butchering among the herd of cattle had been discovered. He knew that
+Sash, a Texan, was a man of action, and that Sash was fortified with the
+right on his side, and if justice were meted out it would be some kind
+of punishment. The revolver in his holster was close to his hand and
+fear--cowardly fear--overpowered his weak mind.
+
+Martin had no time to reply, and the first indication that the coward
+was to act upon the impulse that would move him was the cry from a
+bullwhacker:
+
+"Don't shoot--don't."
+
+Sash, who was looking straight over his horse's head, turned at hearing
+this just in time to receive a bullet in the hollow spot under his left
+ear. It passed clean through his head. Both arms flew into the air, his
+horse sprang forward, and Sash laid upon the ground flat on his back,
+with arms spread out from his body--dead. His face was ashen white, eyes
+and mouth closed, both fists clinched.
+
+It was young Snow who tied the black charger to a wagon wheel, replacing
+the bridle with a halter. The horse whinnied, pawed the dirt, and for a
+time spun around as far as the halter strap would allow, and looked at
+his prostrate master with what seemed to be almost human intelligence;
+in fact, his body was soon in a white lather, necessitating a rub-down
+and then a blanket. He trembled like a leaf and snorted and pawed the
+earth for an hour.
+
+Sash's camp was on the south bank of the Platte. There Preston was
+delivered by Wagon Boss Martin and a delegation of the bull outfit
+fellows after he had tried to escape.
+
+That night, together with a negro boy, Snow stood guard over Sash's body
+to protect it from the coyotes, for they were numerous, close at hand
+and howled mournfully until break of day.
+
+None touched the body, as it had been determined to follow what was
+believed to be the law, for this time the outfit was only fifty miles
+from where at least a pretense of regularity was observed.
+
+A rider was dispatched to Sidney, then a scattered lot of board shanties
+on the south side of the Union Pacific Railroad track.
+
+The second night there came to the bullwhacker camp two men in a light
+road wagon. They took the body away.
+
+At the same time a dozen bullwhackers and nearly all the men from the
+cow camp rode away to the south. Preston, silent as the Sphynx, sat
+astride a horse, his hands tied behind him. They told him he was going
+to Sidnev to have a trial. He smiled, but said nothing. It was just an
+effort to appear brave. His life had been one of crime. He was a pest
+of the plains, of the trails, of the camps--and he was on the way to the
+end of a rope. He knew it, and did not plead for mercy or ask for
+quarter; he did not in the long ride across the sand hills utter a word
+of regret for what he had done. He was heartless, cruel, brutal, even in
+the valley of the shadow. And he was silent even as death itself. He
+showed no fear as we would describe fear.
+
+Entering Sidney the posse and the prisoner took the center one of three
+coulees that ran down into the town, all three meeting at the level. It
+was here that One-Eyed Ed met the court that was to try him, together
+with the populace. The court consisted of fifty horsemen, half of whom
+rode down the east coulee, the other half down the other, meeting the
+prisoner and his escort as abruptly as one meets a person sometimes in
+whirling around the corner of a city block.
+
+One long yi, yi, yi, yi, ye! was the "hear ye" of the plainsman court
+crier--the signal understood by all the horsemen, and especially those
+comprising the posse just emerging from the center coulee. As if by
+magic the escort faded away and the prisoner, bareheaded, long hair
+waving in the wind, his hands securely tied, sat upright--alone.
+
+Then from the east and west coulees dashed horsemen led by Jim Redding
+swinging his lariat over and over and over his head until he was in the
+right spot to spin it out. Preston's horse stood like a piece of
+statuary, and to give the man on his back his proper meed of credit let
+it be recorded that he had the appearance of a man bravely facing death,
+for he sat erect and made no effort to dismount, which he might have
+done, for he had not been fastened to the saddle, as that would have
+made impossible the program mapped out to the minutest detail.
+
+When Redding spun his lariat for Preston's head--after he had ridden
+past him two or three times while the horsemen lined up like a company
+of cavalry and looked on--it landed around his shoulders. Redding
+planted a spur into his cow pony, there was a jump and Preston's body
+shot up and away from his mount and to the ground.
+
+[Illustration: Copyright by American Colortype Co., Chicago
+
+Track-Layers Fought Redskins--Chapter VIII.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+TRACK-LAYERS FOUGHT REDSKINS.
+
+
+When the Union Pacific Railroad was being built the Indians were wild
+and hostile. The appearance of the locomotive was unwelcome. Surveyors,
+track-layers, bridge-builders and others if not properly guarded by
+details of United States troops were attacked from ambush and often
+killed.
+
+It was indeed an adventurous calling to be a railroader in those days,
+no matter in what capacity; for if it wasn't Indians it was something
+else that made it so in the then wilderness. Towns were built in a day
+along the South Platte River and the populations were first made up
+largely by the scum of the earth, consisting of criminals of all kinds
+from all quarters of the globe, either engaged in gambling, highway
+robbery or running saloons that were the toughest ever known in America.
+
+Dance halls and dives followed the work of railroad building from Omaha
+to Ogden, and if the earth could speak it would tell a story of murder
+that would make one shudder. Hundreds of men were shot either in brawls
+or by robbers and their bodies buried in unmarked graves.
+
+At Julesburg alone, the story was told, after the temporary terminus
+was moved on west 100 miles, there were 417 graves in one sidehill, and
+among the lot not one grave in the so-called cemetery was filled by a
+man who died a natural death. This may be an exaggeration--perhaps it
+is--but it was not an uncommon thing for a man to be shot and killed in
+a brawl while a dance was in progress without for a moment stopping the
+festivities.
+
+But the "noble" Indian, so often represented in heroic portraits--and
+always called a "brave" by writers who never saw an Indian of that
+period--was not there, at least not numerously. He was a sneaking
+sniper, hiding behind a sand hill or concealed in a clump of bushes in a
+creek or river bottom, with a good chance to get away if attacked. He
+seldom came out into the open to fight even a lone surveying party, but
+waited for the cover of night, hid behind a rock and took a pot shot and
+then rode his horse at top speed to a safe distance. He was a miserable
+coward, and dirty. Perhaps the next day he would come meekly into some
+camp where there were several hundred men, begging for sugar or bacon.
+Artists have painted him in all his glory in sight of his enemy
+discharging his arrows or his gun. Don't believe it. He didn't do it
+more than a half dozen times, and when he outnumbered the white from 50
+or 100 to 1. It is too bad, I know, to destroy such beautiful fiction;
+but it is necessary in order to keep these chronicles straight.
+
+However, it is the truth that a crew engaged in track-laying in the
+vicinity of North Platte was one day almost overwhelmed by a band of
+Comanches that came up from the south following a herd of buffalo across
+the Republican River. There were less than fifty men in the gang,
+including a locomotive engineer, fireman, conductor, foreman and
+track-layers, among the rest two Chinese cooks. The Indians had come
+upon the crew unexpectedly, for the buffalo herd, in passing near at
+hand, kicked up such a cloud of dust that the crew was unseen until it
+was too late for the Comanches to retreat without a fight.
+
+The buffaloes rushed on past the right-of-way of the road, and when the
+Indians followed the first they knew of the locomotive was when the
+engineer sounded his whistle to bring the scattered crew to the shelter
+afforded by a train of flat cars and the engine. The country all about
+was flat. The Indians scattered in a circle and at a distance of perhaps
+500 yards began to shoot. The crew was well supplied with guns and
+ammunition and the battle lasted for half an hour, resulting in the
+death of one Indian and the wounding of not one white man. Still it had
+all the elements of a movie show, and would have made a fine reel. In
+another hour track-laying proceeded as usual.
+
+Outside of a few clashes of this kind the U. P. went its glorious way
+without open battle with so-called redskins. Indians look good in
+pictures, and they are picturesque--in pictures and paintings; but when
+you were near them in those days you found them nearly always
+good-for-nothing, insect-infested, diseased, hungry and cowardly, with
+less nerve than a regular tramp.
+
+When the U. P. was building it should be remembered the Indians had been
+seeing the pioneer going across the plains with wagons for many years.
+The pony express rider, the bullwhacker and the California and Utah
+emigrant had been his almost daily companion; therefore he had learned
+to be circumspect. Those hardy people had shot straight and to kill, and
+by the time track-laying began the Indian was about as cautious as a
+mountain sheep. He knew the range of the white man's gun, the fleetness
+of his big American horse, and he governed himself accordingly, devoting
+all his time, when doing anything at all, to impede the progress of
+railroad building, to pure and unadulterated murder from ambush.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"BILL" HICKOK, CITY MARSHAL.
+
+
+"Wild Bill" Hickok, who had been city marshal at Abilene, Kan., blew
+into Cheyenne in 1874 along with Texas Charley and a few more "bad men."
+Things were booming in the Wyoming metropolis. Gold had been discovered
+in the Black Hills, and the crowds of fortune-seekers from every point
+of the compass had begun to flock in. Men were there from South Africa,
+Brazil, California and Australia, intermingling with the New Englander,
+the Middle Westerners, the cowboys and bullwhackers and others attracted
+by the reports of fabulous discoveries. Cheyenne was the chief
+outfitting point for a trip into the hills, although thousands tramped
+through the sands of the Bad Lands to the new Eldorado via Fort Pierre.
+
+It meant big work for the small police force of Cheyenne, for there
+were, besides the "killers" of the "Wild Bill" order, garroters and
+other crooks from near and far to look after. Gambling didn't bother the
+authorities at all, and such characters as "Canada Bill," the most
+famous of all the confidence men, were, as a matter of fact, able to
+ply their trade almost unmolested.
+
+"Canada Bill" had the appearance of a Methodist preacher of that period,
+wearing a black broadcloth, long-tailed coat, trousers of the same
+material, a black felt hat, "biled" shirt and black bow tie. He carried
+an old-fashioned satchel made of oil cloth, a pattern of which is seen
+nowadays only on the vaudeville stage. "Bill" was certainly an
+innocent-looking individual--solemn-faced and perfectly
+harmless--apparently. He spent most of his time on the U. P. passenger
+trains between Omaha and Cheyenne and is said to have swindled travelers
+out of an aggregate of $100,000 at three-card monte, a form of swindling
+in great vogue at that time. Cheyenne was his headquarters and he was
+almost as well known as any man in the town; but he followed his
+profession practically undisturbed for several years, and I doubt if he
+ever spent a day in jail. Has victims included some men who prided
+themselves on their shrewdness.
+
+"Wild Bill" Hickok was perhaps the best known "character" in Cheyenne in
+the 70's. He, too, was a ministerial-looking person, but was not a
+confidence operator. He was just a plain gambler, and not a very good
+one, but he managed to escape the halter every time he put a notch in
+his gun. "Bill" killed no one in Cheyenne; in fact, his days there were
+quiet and prosy. His killings were all done in Kansas at the time the K.
+P. was being built from the Missouri to Denver. When in Cheyenne he was
+on his last legs--had begun, as they say nowadays, to slow up.
+Nevertheless, he was feared by a great many, owing to his reputation,
+although among certain classes it was generally understood that he had
+lost his nerve. This was demonstrated while the Black Hills excitement
+was at its height. "Bill" was more than six feet tall, straight and
+thin. He carried two big revolvers in his belt and they protruded
+sometimes from the side of his long broadcloth coat. He also carried a
+bowie knife. But for all this and his reputation, he weakened one night
+when an undersized little California _buccaro_ challenged him to walk
+into the street and fight a duel at twenty paces. "Bill" laid down,
+saying his eyes had gone back on him and that his shooting days were
+over.
+
+Shortly after this incident the Cheyenne authorities decided to rid the
+town of a few of the worst criminals, so they tacked a notice on
+telegraph poles containing a list of a dozen or more names of men,
+headed by "Wild Bill," giving them twenty-four hours' time to get out of
+town. When "Bill" saw the notice he smiled, and with his bowie knife cut
+the notice into ribbons, and he stayed until he got ready to leave some
+months later. He went to Custer City, then to Deadwood, where he met his
+death at the hands of an avenger, who shot him in the back as he sat in
+a poker game. His murderer claimed "Bill" had killed his brother in
+Kansas and said he had followed him for two years, waiting for a chance
+to kill him. "Bill" had a rule of life that he violated the night he
+died, and that was never to sit with his back to a door or window. On
+the fatal night he sat with his back to a half-open door into which the
+avenger crept.
+
+"Wild Bill" was a "road agent" (a highwayman) long before the Black
+Hills stampede and frequently entertained a crowd with descriptions of
+the raids he and his pals made upon the Mormon emigrants when they were
+enroute from Nauvoo, Ill., to Salt Lake. According to his own stories he
+was a heartless brute. Many deeds, however, that have been laid at his
+door, and others that he bragged about, were never committed. It has
+been estimated that he murdered all the way from fifteen to thirty men,
+but most of these were killed while he was marshal.
+
+One story that used to be told in Cheyenne, but which was not
+authenticated, was that on one occasion at Abilene he entered a
+restaurant for breakfast and ordered ham and eggs "turned over." The
+waiter returned with the eggs fried on one side and "Bill" angrily said:
+
+"I told you to have them eggs turned over!"
+
+Whereupon the waiter playfully gave the dish a flip and turned them
+over. This so angered "Bill" that he shot the waiter dead, and then
+finished his meal, the poor waiter's body lying at his feet.
+
+There was so much garroting of men who came to Cheyenne to join the
+rush into the hills that some of the wiser ones slipped outside the town
+at night and slept on the prairie, while others, armed to the teeth,
+either walked the streets or formed companies with guards for
+protection. It was a condition of affairs that gave the authorities more
+than they could handle at the start. However, after the first few months
+of excitement Cheyenne began to be good, and soon the civilization and
+order of older communities was apparent on every hand.
+
+The railroad shortened the distance between the frontier and "God's
+Country," and before one could realize it Cheyenne was as orderly and
+well behaved as Worcester, Mass. So it is today. "Wild Bill," "Texas
+Jack," "Canada Bill" and the thieves and gamblers, with their guns and
+daggers, are forgotten; and if some of them could come back and tramp
+the streets again they would be as great curiosities as they would be on
+Broadway, New York, or State Street, Chicago--and they would land in
+jail or get out of town unless they walked a chalk-mark.
+
+Cheyenne has long been in "God's country," although at the time
+discussed it was a long way over the line.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+WHEN CHEYENNE WAS YOUNG.
+
+
+Let us suppose this is the year 1872, and that we are taking a trip
+across the continent on the first railroad from the Missouri River to
+the Golden Gate. We have passed through western Nebraska and its
+uninhabited hills and plains and we are entering Cheyenne, on a vast
+plain, yet situated at the foot of a range of the Rocky Mountains known
+as the lower Black Hills. We are in sight of Long's and other Colorado
+peaks of the Rockies and while apparently on a wide prairie for several
+hours we have nevertheless been climbing a steep grade all the way from
+Sidney, the last division point.
+
+Cheyenne is (in '72, remember) a city of boards, logs and canvas, but is
+beginning to shake off the very first things of a "camp," and is
+entering the brick age, with good prospects of acquiring fame as a
+substantial city.
+
+But there are some hundreds of things here that are strange to the eyes
+of an Eastern man. For example, in all his life he has never seen a man,
+outside a military encampment, with a revolver strapped in a holster to
+a belt around his waist. Perhaps he has never seen a faro game in his
+life, and chuck-a-luck is as mysterious to him as the lingo of the
+broad-hatted men who recommend it to the fortune-seeker instead of a
+gold mine or honest toil of any kind. He has never seen, much less heard
+of, a hurdy-gurdy where the men and the scarlet women "waltz to the bar"
+to the tune of the "Arkansaw Traveler."
+
+He used to see his Uncle Cyrus plow with a slow-plodding team of oxen
+among the cobble stones of a Vermont farm; but this is the first time in
+his life that he ever saw seven yokes of oxen hitched together in front
+of two big wagons and every team pacing a gait that would bring praise
+from the judge's stand at a county fair.
+
+He starts down the main street and he sees "The Gold Room" in big
+letters on a big wooden building. "This is where they keep it," he
+muses, and he goes in. It is where they sell it--"forty-rod," "squirrel"
+and the rest. But that is not all we see in the "Gold Room," run by Jack
+Allen. We also see a woman called Madam Moustache dealing the game of
+"twenty-one," at which "Wild Bill" Hickok, Texas Jack and a lot more
+celebrities are "sitting in." Then in another corner is a faro game. Men
+here are so eager to get their money on the cards that some of them are
+standing on the back rungs of chairs and reaching over sitting players
+to put stacks of golden twenties on the table, either "calling the turn"
+or betting that the nine-spot or some other card will win or lose as
+the dealer slips the paste-boards out of his silver box.
+
+It is night, of course, and after a while, when the gambling begins to
+drag, the tables are shoved a little closer to the wall and the big
+floor is given up to dancing, even though through it all--dancing and
+gambling--a stage performance is going on. Some painted female person of
+uncertain age, but positive reputation, is either shouting personalities
+at characters in the crowd or bellowing and butchering a popular song in
+a male voice. Smoke is thick and not fragrant to the nostrils of the
+new-comer--the tenderfoot. The "Gold Room" roof is also occupied--that
+is, the inside part of it--with boxes crowded with men and women, the
+women being known as "beer jerkers." In the early hours of morning it is
+difficult to find a sober man or woman.
+
+The same thing is going on in "McDaniels' Variety," opposite Tim Dyer's
+Tin Restaurant. McDaniels, bald-headed and also smooth of voice, is
+circulating around among his top-booted guests like a pastor among his
+flock, and you wonder that such a fine-looking, well-spoken man is not
+in a pulpit instead of a dive.
+
+But this is some of Cheyenne in 1872 to 1875. Go to Cheyenne today--and
+what do you find? Nothing like this, that's certain. It is doubtful if
+you will round up more than a handful of men who remember there ever was
+such a place as Allen's "Gold Room" or the McDaniels' Variety, or even
+Tim Dyer's Tin Restaurant--tin because the plates and cups were tin
+when the big place was first opened. But see Cheyenne today. There isn't
+a city 200 years old on the Atlantic coast that has more civilization, a
+finer lot of railroad men, more culture and good order to the square
+yard.
+
+Cheyenne had a bad reputation, but it soon reformed when the natural
+resources of Wyoming began to be developed, and today, while we who
+pioneered it there so many years ago spoke of it as a "desert
+metropolis," are witnessing every little while either in agricultural or
+horticultural shows its progress in wheatfield and orchard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE LOST INDIAN AT BEDTICK CREEK.
+
+
+This Indian was lost--something that has rarely happened. No Indian
+could use a compass if he had one, and he wouldn't if he could--not the
+real Indian of the days of General Custer, Buffalo Bill and a few
+others. Indian instinct beats any mechanical contrivance man has
+invented for white sailors, hunters, explorers and lumber cruisers.
+
+But the full-blood of this story was lost and was bleating like a sheep
+away from its flock, and just as timid and gentle. A lost Indian, and a
+proud, high cheek-boned, breech-clouted, bronzed specimen, too; six feet
+tall in his moccasins--hungry, unarmed, footsore, tribeless.
+
+He came into the camp of the wagon train at Bedtick Creek not far from
+the site of the deserted and famous overland stage station run by Jules
+Slade, whose life was saved by his wife, who rode 200 miles on a horse
+from Julesburg to a gold camp in Montana just in time to stop the
+lynching being conducted by the Vigilantes.
+
+And the day the Lost Indian was found was Christmas, a time when every
+man--plainsman and mountaineer, far from civilization and living in the
+open, as well as those toasting their shins at comfortable firesides in
+snug homes in "God's country"--has a sense of something mysteriously
+elevating in his soul.
+
+Everyone in the frost-bitten bunch of overland freighters knew his
+program for the day was to have no change so far as the bill of fare of
+bacon, beans and venison was concerned, and everyone thought it was
+pretty good; but there was to be no Christmas tree or happy children--no
+church services or anything else--everyone was contented, nevertheless,
+and surely full of the spirit of the day, though far out of reach of
+anything that would give the slightest flavor to a proper celebration,
+even informally.
+
+The breakfast had been disposed of, the tin dishes washed and plans made
+for a full day's rest for man and beast, for it was also Sunday, and the
+wagon boss, old Ethrop, while loaded down with revolvers and bowie
+knifes, was of a religious turn and was known as "The Parson."
+
+Far away to the south, across a rolling plain, was the blue-white
+outlines of Laramie Peak. A long way this side, according to the
+eagle-eye of Farley, driver of the lead team, something was winding a
+crooked course toward camp. It was a mere dark object reflected against
+the snow-covered surface, but when viewed through a field glass was
+plainly discernible--it was a man, all agreed; but with the glass in
+Farley's hands it was a buck Indian.
+
+So the boys watched and waited for an hour, and finally the Lost Indian
+was within hailing distance and stopped, circled and began to close in.
+Farley waved him to come on, and as insurance of friendliness went
+through the ceremony of placing a rifle in its sling on the side of a
+prairie schooner. Then the Lost Indian came forward at a trot and landed
+at the camp-fire.
+
+Between grunts, motions and words on the part of the Lost Indian, and as
+many from several plainsmen, none of which seemed to be clearer than
+Hottentot, this was, in simple language, the story told by the Lost
+Indian at Bedtick Creek:
+
+"Five moons ago, while at White River, where the Great Father has begun
+to issue rations of beef on the foot to every head of a Sioux tepee. I
+gave the Mountain Fox seventeen beaver pelts, a bale of buckskins,
+twelve obsidian arrow points, one lame calico pony, a pipestone
+peace-pipe, some kinnickinnic and an iron oven, found after the soldiers
+left a camp at Clear Creek, and eleven bone buttons for the hand of his
+second oldest daughter. This was all of my fortune, except one saddle
+pony, a pack pony, one lodge-pole tepee and poles, four buffalo robes, a
+coil of telegraph wire [stolen from the Overland], several hair-braided
+halters, a lariat and my private store of scalps, none of which I took
+myself, but which had been inherited from my father, a sub-chief known
+as the Hawk, a brave man whose bones are now dry in an elevated grave
+near the fast-running creek known to the whites as Ten, but which in
+Sioux is Wickachimminy. This, with my bows and arrows and a Spencer
+rifle, for which I had no ammunition, with my moccasins, a breech-clout
+and jerked meat to last one moon, was all I had--not much, but
+enough--and I was happy with my bride.
+
+"After the sun had risen and set three times Mountain Fox came to my
+tepee and said I must give him still another horse, two blankets (which
+I did not have and could not get), and which he said I had promised.
+
+"In our Sioux nation we never kill--that is, we do not kill Sioux. No
+Sioux has yet killed a Sioux, and few Sioux have ever called another of
+our tribe a liar. I called him a liar. He made a sign of anger and a
+loud noise of distress. My bride, on his command, left the tepee with
+him, telling me that under Sioux law, which I knew to be right, that the
+contract had not been filled until one moon had elapsed and all members
+of both families had smoked in celebration. What did I do? I rode away
+in the night toward the tracks where the Iron Horse runs, twenty days
+away, going and coming, to get from a white man's corral a horse and
+perhaps the blankets. This was while the grass was still green.
+
+"I found the horse and the blankets and a gun; also food in cans. But I
+found in a large bottle what I had heard of, but never tasted before.
+After the first sun had set I stopped at Dry Canyon, which is never dry,
+but full of roaring water, and there I drank nearly all from the bottle.
+What I did then I only remember as a dream, but I saw in my dream my
+bride and I wept. My pony and the horse I found in the white man's
+corral at the trail of the Iron Horse, with the blankets and the food in
+cans, and I--Big Jaw--waded Dry Canyon Creek, which I say was wet, for
+nearly a day and left no trail. I drank more of the white man's poison
+and then camped without a fire.
+
+"When the next sun came up I was ill and drank lots of water. Then came
+six men from the corral at the trail of the Iron Horse, and they bound
+my hands with small chains, tied me to my pony and took me back to the
+trail of the Iron Horse, where I was kept in a log house with iron
+windows until one night it burned, and I was taken out by the white man
+in charge, who, three moons ago, blindfolded me, put me on a horse and
+took me to another corral on the trail of the Iron Horse and locked me
+in a large tepee made of stone, where they fed me well and gave me
+medicine.
+
+"Then I was, one moon ago, put to work in a forest to chop trees, and I
+ran away.
+
+"Have you seen my bride--she of the hair as black as a starless night
+and teeth as white as the wing of a dove?
+
+"Oh, white man, tell me, have you seen her? I am a lost sheep--the trail
+is covered to my eyes, with which I have wept almost constantly all the
+moons I have been away. Have you seen her I seek? I am hungry, not in my
+stomach, but in my breast and in my head; I must feast or die!"
+
+Then he wept like a child.
+
+"Crazy," said Rawhide Robinson.
+
+"As a loon," added Parker, the night herder.
+
+"Give him a pull at the Parson's bottle in the medicine chest,"
+suggested the Kid, as he gave the fire a stir under a pot of bean soup.
+
+"No," said the Parson, as he rode up on a mule and was told the
+story--"no liquor, boys. Feed him up and well let him trail back with us
+to Cheyenne and to the asylum. Poor cuss, he loved the squaw and he's
+clean daffy, but hasn't a bit of Injun left in him."
+
+And so the Lost Indian, with a broken heart, brain tortured, went back
+to the asylum--a child of the plains who bought his wife, but loved her
+for all that. For the Sioux, while selling their daughters, never sold
+them unless there was real evidence of true love.
+
+And while Big Jaw stole to make good his bargain, wasn't his deed an act
+of old-time knighthood after all?
+
+Moreover, his undoing was not so much because of his own delinquency as
+it was that of the white man's invention--whisky--that brought about
+his downfall.
+
+A thief, yes; a red-skinned, uncivilized wild man of the plains and the
+mountains. But can we classify him with the civilized white man who
+commits a crime?
+
+If the Lost Indian did not recover and win his bride in civilization's
+regulation way, perhaps it is just as well; and let us hope he is an
+angel in the Happy Hunting Ground.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A SHE-BEAR AND HER CUB.
+
+
+Before my feet were thoroughly toughened--that is to say, when I was
+still to some extent a tenderfoot--I joined, single-handed, in an
+undertaking which had more chances for failure than almost anything that
+can be imagined. It wasn't a trip to the moon, neither was it an attempt
+to wipe out the then powerful Sioux nation, but it was worse than either
+of these.
+
+On Wagon-hound creek, one summer day, when our outfit was in camp for
+several hours, I strolled away from camp alone. It was early summer,
+probably July, and everything was green and fresh. Three miles from camp
+I came upon signs of life--the limb of a wild plum tree broken and
+hanging to the ground. The first impression was that there were prowling
+Indians in the neighborhood. The grass had also been trampled. The plums
+were only half ripe, and after gathering a few, I dropped over an
+embankment into the creek bottom, where I saw a large track in the soft
+silt; it was almost the shape of a human hand. There was a smaller one
+of the same character. These I followed, clutching a small "pop-gun" of
+the Derringer variety. After turning several curves of the creek I
+suddenly came upon my quarry--a big she-bear and a cub. The former
+snorted and made for me, and, sensibly pocketing my revolver, I lifted
+myself out of the creek bottom by grasping a convenient overhanging root
+of a tree; but almost simultaneously the she-bear was beside me.
+
+Then began as pretty a race as you ever witnessed. It is a pity none saw
+it.
+
+Fortunately I had only a few nights before been a silent listener to
+several camp-fire yarns of old-timers, one of which contained some
+advice about a man who finds himself in the predicament I now was in.
+Before me was a bald hill rising perhaps 200 or 300 feet, covered with
+sage and other brush. Up I flew. My feet were like wings. But Mrs. Bear,
+though heavy, was able to keep within ten feet of my heels until I
+reached the top. Then as I almost felt her warm breath I wheeled and ran
+down hill. This was tactics I had heard at the camp-fire and it saved
+me, too, for Mrs. Bear, being set up heavier behind than in front, and
+having long hind legs and short front ones, was obliged to come down
+slowly and sidewise at that.
+
+Her cub had stayed at the bottom of the hill, whining, and as I reached
+him I gave him a kick in the jaw and there was some more zig-zagging,
+fast running and heart palpitation, although I felt somewhat relieved
+when, looking over my shoulder, I saw Mother Bear licking her cub's
+face.
+
+Later on I sneaked into camp and tried to keep my secret; but I looked
+and acted queerly, and finally told the story. In ten minutes five of us
+were on the way to the site of my encounter, all mounted.
+
+We soon discovered Mrs. Bear and her cub, and the boss insisted that I
+should have the first shot at her with a Winchester. I took good aim and
+fired, but saw the dirt fly a rod behind the old lady. It was a bad
+miss. Then "Sailor Jack" Walton sent a bullet into her heart and the
+rest of us lariated and captured the baby, which we took to Fort Laramie
+and gave to an army officer's wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A KICK FROM A PLAYFUL BULLOCK--AND A JOKE.
+
+
+Near Horse Creek lived a ranchman of the name of McDonald, a pioneer,
+and I believe a religious and perfectly sane and honest Scotchman,
+although I am not sure of his nativity; however, he had all the good
+qualities of that race. One June morning I joined a bull outfit owned by
+him and drove a team attached to the naked gears of two wagons into the
+virgin parks on Laramie Peak, along the streams and upon the sidehills
+of which grew the straightest aspen and small pine trees in all the
+territory. No ax had ever desecrated this beautiful forest. The trip was
+for the purpose of cutting some of these poles and building, while on
+the mountain, two dozen hay racks upon which was to be hauled to an army
+post the contract hay cut in the wild meadows. I was still something of
+a tenderfoot, for I knew nothing of this kind of work, and I soon
+discovered that I was regarded--much to my chagrin--as only a half-hand.
+I complained to other drivers when McDonald indicated that he thought me
+a burden because I had to learn how to use an adz and because I had
+mishandled my team on a winding new trail we broke in the hills.
+
+One of the bulls, just before leaving the plain below, had playfully
+reached me with one of his heavy but unshod hind hoofs and keeled me
+over into a bed of prickly pears. For hours a kindly bullwhacker helped
+me pluck the sharp and brittle brads from my back. McDonald took a
+dislike to me, and naturally I lost any admiration I might have had for
+him. And here is where I made a fatal mistake. I shouldn't have noticed
+it; instead I took every opportunity offered to annoy him. One day,
+while in camp, at the instigation of an older man, I remarked that we
+were to have a change for supper.
+
+"And what will it be?" queried McDonald.
+
+"Bacon and coffee," I replied.
+
+"But we had that for breakfast," said he.
+
+"I know," said I, "but it was coffee and bacon--now it's bacon and
+coffee!"
+
+The fact is there was no game in the hills, at least we got none. I knew
+McDonald wouldn't like the joke, but I never believed it would be taken
+as a personal affront. He was, as a matter of fact, a bountiful
+provider, but expected to find plenty of grouse, venison, etc., on the
+trip and had therefore provided only flour, bacon and coffee.
+
+I met McDonald fifteen years later in the Middle West on a railroad
+train. He remembered me and hadn't forgotten the wound I inflicted by my
+alleged wit, for he said:
+
+"Yes, I remember you, and you were a poor stick!"
+
+I sincerely hope the last twenty-five and more years has softened his
+heart--if he lives--as it has softened mine, for I have only kindly
+thoughts of him, and even hold no grudge against the bull that reduced
+my efficiency by the playful caress he gave me with his hoof.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If you have ever tried to hoof it up a wild mountain stream running
+through towering cliffs of shale, without a trail, you can well imagine
+the task a bull-train outfit would have in working its way through the
+same maze of trees, rocks and rushing waters, winding from bluff to
+bluff. But these tasks were common undertakings for the men engaged in
+the business of freighting. "Corduroy" bridges consisting of gravel and
+poles had to be built, trees chopped down, fallen and dead trees
+removed, brush cleared away or used at the fording places.
+
+A pioneer trip of this kind, and a fair example, was one which took our
+outfit from Cheyenne to the headwaters of the Cache de la Poudre river
+in what was known as the North Park, some years before Centennial Peak,
+one of Colorado's principal mountains, was of enough consequence to be
+christened by the government.
+
+Cheyenne was passing from the camp to the substantial town stage and
+lumber was needed for building purposes. The North and Middle Park
+regions were virgin forests, untouched by the woodman's ax, and the
+earth and its precious store of gold hardly scratched by prospectors.
+There were no mines, no ranchmen, nothing but nature undisturbed; lakes
+of sweet, cold water, groves of white pines and other trees, wild and
+untenanted except by blacktail deer, bear, cougar and other animals. The
+Greeley colony, however, had been established many miles to the east in
+the valley of the Poudre. This was the first great American irrigating
+project and a few settlers had begun to till the soil.
+
+Beyond Fort Collins and Livermore the country was as new as an
+unexplored country could be. Trout leaped at play along the narrow but
+fast-running streams, and if a sportsman had ever cast his lines in
+these places he must have been a red man or some daring white hunter who
+preceded the stage of development now under way and who left no record
+of his doings.
+
+It took several weeks to chop and dig a road through this wilderness and
+set up in an open space a couple of sawmill outfits we had with us. Then
+it required a couple of months of chopping, hauling and sawing of logs,
+and loading of the green and heavy lumber upon our Murphy wagons. The
+lumber was unloaded in Cheyenne a month later; some of it was quite dry,
+but in much smaller quantities than would have been delivered had the
+owners been willing to wait for it to dry where cut.
+
+But Cheyenne was in a hurry, and the boomers couldn't wait, consequently
+many of the green joists in the new buildings shrunk and there were
+several collapses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE INDIAN AND THE TROUSERS.
+
+
+When the first clothing was issued to the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at
+Red Cloud Agency the scene was better than a circus. If I am not
+mistaken Carl Schurz was secretary of the interior, and after a
+conference with some of the big chiefs it was decided to attempt to
+abolish the breech-clout. The "Great Father" at Washington, represented
+by members of Congress and some of the Pennsylvania Quakers and others,
+discovered that Uncle Sam had a warehouse full of discarded or out of
+date army coats and trousers, and it was decided to give these to
+certain tribes of Indians as part payment for lands that were needed for
+white settlement.
+
+The Indians were gathered by hundreds from far and wide the day of issue
+at Red Cloud, and Agent McGillicuddy addressed them in their own tongue,
+telling them the light blue trousers and coats were the same kind worn
+by the brave men who fought heroic battles for their Great Father. His
+words were received in silence, and after he had finished several chiefs
+held a pow-wow, after which one of their number presented himself at the
+delivery window of the big warehouse and received a coat and a pair of
+trousers. Several white men helped him to adjust the trousers and coat,
+and when he was fully rigged he started to walk toward his group of
+red-skinned and breech-clouted companions.
+
+As though the stage had been set and every player had learned his part,
+the show began. The up to this time silent Indians jumped into the air
+and made a demonstration of guying that would be a credit to any
+baseball crowd that ever sat in the bleachers at the Polo Grounds. They
+danced and cavorted, they yelled and keeled over, and laughed. The
+squaws and papooses thought it the greatest joke, and participated in
+the hilarity. Finally the buck who wore the first suit managed to get it
+off and resumed his breech-clout.
+
+This first attempt was a failure; but Mr. McGillicuddy was a resourceful
+man and was implicitly trusted, especially by the leading men of the
+Sioux nation, and he finally tried another plan which after a year or
+two succeeded to some extent. He engaged several bucks to help him at
+the agency warehouse, paying them in extra amounts of sugar, tobacco and
+bacon, but insisted that while they were on duty they must be dressed in
+the white man's garb, and finally he had a large number of bucks who
+were willing to forego the jibes of their friends for the extra
+allowances.
+
+Sooner or later these Indians began to circulate around among others of
+the tribe in a lordly manner, and in the end it was not necessary to
+bribe any of them, except the youngsters of Sitting Bull's band, to wear
+clothing.
+
+At first the Indians insisted in cutting out entirely the seat of the
+trousers.
+
+When the first beef on the hoof was issued at Red Cloud, a four-year-old
+steer was allotted twice a month to the head of each tepee in the tribe.
+It was "cut out" from the herd by a cowboy and turned over to the
+Indians forming the tepee, or family, to do with as they pleased, and
+what they pleased to do would not have the approval of a humane society.
+
+Always the animal was as wild as a buffalo, and if he did not
+immediately start a small stampede on his own account a few
+bloodcurdling yells from the Indians did the business. Selecting the
+easiest path of escape the frightened steer made a dash, followed by the
+bucks on their saddleless ponies. Some of the Indians had long spears,
+all had bows and arrows, and some had guns, ranging in make from an old
+Spencer rifle to a modern Winchester, although there were few of these.
+Most of their weapons were bows and arrows and spears. The latter were
+thrown with great accuracy, and fatal thrusts were never made until the
+steer had become exhausted. The arrows were also used, perhaps for an
+hour, as weapons of torture and shot with no other purpose into the
+fleshy part of the steer than to increase his speed. The Indians could
+have killed their steer at any time by a shot placed under the shoulder.
+But the idea was to torture the beast and perhaps encourage him to turn
+and fight for his life, which he often did when surrounded in a ravine.
+This was Indian sport, and was indulged in for some time before the
+Agency authorities required the government's wards to use civilized
+methods.
+
+Usually when a steer had been chased up hill and down vale for an hour,
+or until it was worn out, the Indians planned to round up the chase
+close to their tepee where a final shot with arrow or bullet put an end
+to the animal's misery. Then the squaws swarmed about the carcass with
+their skinning knives. The hide, always badly damaged by the spears and
+arrows, was removed in a workmanlike manner and carefully put away for
+tanning later on. The flesh of the steer was taken away and the feast
+began in a few minutes. Much of the meat was dried or "jerked."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THERE'S A REASON: THIS IS IT!--CONCLUSION.
+
+
+And now let me answer questions that have no doubt arisen in the minds
+of the readers who have waded through these chapters. "Why isn't this
+record presented in the regulation way--as a novel with a love story
+running through it;" or, "What is the moral?"
+
+Let me ask such readers to follow me a little farther.
+
+On March 22d, 1873, a description of a certain boy who left his
+Wisconsin home to buffet with the world on his own responsibility would
+have read as follows:
+
+     Age, 16 years, 6 mos. and 7 days. Weight 109 pounds; black hair,
+     black eyes, smooth, pale face; well dressed; had, after paying for
+     one handbag, a Derringer revolver (pop-gun) and a few knick-knacks,
+     $85.00 in cash (a large sum for a youth of his age in those days).
+
+     Carried trip pass from Milwaukee to Council Bluffs, Iowa, via the
+     Chicago & Northwestern Railway, personally given to him by Marvin
+     Hughitt, then superintendent; also letter of introduction from E.
+     J. Cuyler, to S. H. H. Clark, general manager of the Union Pacific
+     Railroad at Omaha, recommending him as a worthy boy looking for a
+     railroad office job, also requesting transportation favors.
+
+This description takes no account of a deep-seated cough, occasional
+flashes of red in the pale face, and a fear expressed by friends that
+he was taking a desperate means of escaping the fate that had overtaken
+his dear mother but four months previously. It takes no account of his
+life up to the time of his departure on the long journey, not yet ended;
+though in the natural order of worldly things, the day is near at hand.
+I might add that he had been a "call boy" at a big railroad terminal,
+had advanced to a desk as a way-bill clerk, and when advised to seek a
+dry climate and there live out-of-doors, was earning a man's wage.
+
+We will pass over briefly an encounter with one of the best men that
+ever lived--S. H. H. Clark--in his office at Omaha. When asked for a
+pass to Sherman, Wyoming, he said gruffly:
+
+"Haven't you got any money?"
+
+This was the reply:
+
+"Yes, sir, and I'll pay my fare, too, if you don't want to give me a
+pass."
+
+"Well," he said, turning to look out of a window, "maybe I'll give you
+an order for a half-fare ticket," which brought forth this:
+
+"I don't want to be impolite, Mr. Clark, because you are a friend of
+good friends of mine--Mr. Hughitt and Mr. Cuyler--but I must say you
+don't know me as well as you might--I'm no half-fare fellow. Good-bye."
+
+And then Mr. Clark laughed, and said he was not in earnest and gave the
+pass freely and willingly.
+
+There was a nice chat after that between the pale-faced youth and the
+big railroader, during which The Boy discovered that Mr. Clark liked his
+nerve but questioned his physical ability to stand the rough knocks that
+were coming.
+
+Later, after a season in a division railroad office The Boy, carried
+away with the spirit of adventure that was everywhere about him, and
+carrying out a plan he had made to live in the open, went to Cheyenne,
+signed up with a bull-train, and began the life of out-of-doors. The
+"train" was loaded and ready to leave Camp Carlin, at Fort Russell, for
+Fort Laramie on the North Platte, but it was for a while impossible to
+employ men enough to drive the teams. There had been an outbreak among
+the Sioux, and things looked dark when The Boy asked for a job driving
+bulls; and when he was hired by Nate Williams, the Missourian wagon
+boss, it was almost a joke to Nate, who said afterward that he took one
+chance in a million when he employed The Boy and took him to camp. Both
+The Boy and Nate won on the long shot.
+
+A year later The Boy was driving a lead team, looked after the
+manifests, kept the accounts, and shirked no duty, fair weather or foul.
+
+All this time the pale and flushed cheeks were giving place to bronze,
+the thin arms and skinny legs were toughening and filling out, and the
+cough had disappeared--weight after first year, 155.
+
+Before leaving Camp Carlin on this first trip The Boy had time to write
+home and receive a reply. He told a relative what he had done, and the
+reply was a stinging rebuke and almost a final farewell, for the
+relative said nothing good could possibly result from quitting a job
+with a railroad paying $100 a month and taking one as a teamster at the
+same figure--"and you nothing but a sickly boy." But the relative was
+wrong, although excusable.
+
+And now, after all the evidence is in, we find that the "sickly"
+youngster is still in the land of the living, past three score years,
+and with some prospects of another score!
+
+The letter left a sore spot, and The Boy foolishly decided that he was
+cut off. So he did not write again for nearly two years.
+
+The middle of the second winter found him at Fort Fetterman, living in a
+dug-out in the embankment of a creek bottom, waiting for the springtime
+when he could again use his stout lungs in shouting at his bulls, but
+his strong arms were not idle the while, for he chopped cottonwood, box
+elder and pine logs for the Fetterman commissary.
+
+In those days there was naught but military law, and the civilians were
+under more or less surveillance, and it was customary for them to report
+at given periods to the sergeant who sat in the adjutant's adobe office
+in the fort.
+
+On one of those occasions The Boy's attention was directed to a
+bulletin board upon which was tacked a card carrying the caption in big
+black types:
+
+     "INFORMATION WANTED"
+
+Under this was The Boy's name, a detailed description of him when he
+left Cheyenne, and the statement that "anyone knowing his whereabouts
+will confer a favor upon his anxious father and sister and receive a
+reward if word is sent to Thomas Jefferson, a friend of the family at
+Sherman, Wyoming Territory," to whom an appeal had been made. It was
+stated in the notice that he "weighs about 100 pounds, has black hair,
+black eyes, and is pale and sickly."
+
+At this time The Boy weighed nearly 170, was brown as a berry, had
+muscles of an athlete, and in no wise resembled the description. He had
+no difficulty in convincing the sergeant that while the name was similar
+to his own it evidently was the description of a tenderfoot, and he was
+no tenderfoot--not then.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If I could pay any greater tribute than this to life in the open I would
+do it; and if there were a possible love story in this record I would
+ignore it because, while it might entertain and please some tastes, it
+would not answer the main purpose of these tales, namely:
+
+To demonstrate that as long as there is life there is hope, especially
+if the spark of life is properly fanned in a salubrious, glorious and
+vigorous climate.
+
+"As long as there is life there is hope!" But after all is it not truer
+to say "As long as there is hope there is life?"
+
+Hope is the centerpiece of the familiar trio--Faith, Hope and
+Charity--and not the least one of these virtues. It is practical to be
+hopeful and to order our lives in the spirit of hopefulness; the world
+will be better for our hopefulness, especially in these depressing
+times. Moreover, it is a Christian duty to be hopeful.
+
+"Hope," says the Rev. Julian K. Smyth, head of the Swedenborgian church
+in the United States, "is an affection of the will, and the will is ever
+in the desire to act; thus hope is not only a lively virtue, but a
+heroic and even a practical one."
+
+It is a good rule of life never to be discouraged no matter what the
+misfortune, disappointment or mistake. Life will have been a success to
+one who lives in hopefulness, for life will have been lived happily
+through many human failures and errors. Life in the world of the flesh
+is a battle which, if well fought--if we have faith in the Divine
+Providence--means a victory over what we call Death, for Death is in
+truth not the End, but the--
+
+     BEGINNING.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Prairie Schooner, by William Francis Hooker
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40497 ***