IC-NRLF
SB
FRANK. BENTON
Cowboy Life on
The Sidetrack
Being an Extremely Humorous and Sarcastic
Story of the Trials and Tribulations
Endured by a Party of Stockmen
Making a Shipment from the
West to the East.
BY FRANK BEN TON,
CHEYENNE, WYO.
ILLUSTRATED BY E. A. FILLEAU,
KANSAS CITY, MO.
DENVER, COLO.:
THE WESTERN STORIES SYNDICATE.
Copyright, 19C3,
FRAN'/i '
Press of
Hudson-Kimberly Publishing Company,
Kansas City, Mo.
DEDICATION.
For justice no shipper e'er asked in vain
From George H. Crosby or C. J. Lane.
We go to them, as to our dad,
When on their road our run is bad,
And when we think the freight too large
Ask them to rebate the overcharge.
No matter which road you give your freight,
To both these friends, this book I dedicate.
F. B.
939854
The Author Wailing for the Train to Start.
CONTENTS.
PAGE-
Chapter I.— The Start 11
Chapter II. — Chuckwagon's Dream 21
Chapter III.— Grazing the Sheep. 29
Chapter IV. — Letters from Home Brought by Immigrants, 33
Chapter V.— Eatumup Jake's Life Story 39
Chapter VI. — The Schoolmarm's Saddle Horse 42
Chapter VII.— Selling Cattle on the Range 48
Chapter VIII.— True Snake Stories 56
Chapter IX. — Chuckwagon's Death 61
Chapter X. — Disappearance of the Sheepmen 67
Chapter XI. — Our Arrival in Cheyenne 77
Chapter XII.— The Post-Hole Digger's Ghost 83
Chapter XIII.— Grafting 89
Chapter XIV.— The File 95
Chapter XV.— The Cattle Stampede 99
Chapter XVI. — Catching a Maverick 109
Chapter XVII.— Stealing Crazy Head's War Ponies 121
Chapter XVIII.— The Cattle Queen's Ghost 136
Chapter XIX.— Packsaddle Jack's Death 150
Chapter XX.— A Cowboy Enoch Arden 164
Chapter XXL— Grand Island 170
Chapter XXII.— "Sarer" 176
Chapter XXIIL— Arrival at South Omaha Transfer 195
Chapter XXIV.-The Final Roundup 207
PREFACE.
To the readers of this little booklet: I wish to
s*a.) that while some things in the story seem over
drawn, yet I have endeavored to write it entirely from
a cowboy standpoint.
To the sheepmen of the West: I want to say
that J couldn't have written this story true to the
cowboys' character without making a great many re
flections on sheepmen, and I want to tender my apol
ogies .in advance for anything they may consider of
fensive, as some of my old-time and dearest friends
in the West are among the large sheep owners. But
I have been a cowboy and worked writh the cowboys
for thirty-two years, and have written the things set
down here just as they came from the cowboys' lips
on a stock train as we were waiting on sidetracks.
The names of the cowboys used are the actual nick
names of cowpunchers whom I worked with on
Wyoming ranges twenty years ago, and will be rec
ognized by lots of old-timers.
9
JQ PREFACE.
The statement has been frequently made by
newspapers that this volume was written as a roast
on the Union Pacific railroad. I wish to correct that
impression by saying that I selected that road for the
groundwork of this story to give them a good adver
tisement free in requital for the many courtesies ex
tended to me in times past by the officials of the road,
for whom I have the warmest friendship.
THE AUTHOR.
Cowboy Life on The Sidetrack.
CHAPTER I.
THE START.
I met a man from Utah the other day by the
name of Joe Smith, and he gave me quite an inter
esting history of his shipping some cattle to market
over the great Overland route from Utah to South
Omaha. I shall tell it in his own language. He said:
I don't want to misstate anything, and I don't
want to exaggerate anything, but will tell you the plain
facts.
When I and my neighbors, old Chuckwagon,
Packsaddle Jack, Eatumup Jake and Dillbery Ike got
into the ranch with a drive of cattle we found that
three railroad live stock agents, two representatives
of the union stockyards and five commission house
drummers had been staying at the ranch for a week
waiting to get our shipment. Each one took each of
11
12 COU'HOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
us aside and gave us a dirty private as to what they
would do for us. Every one of the commission house
drummers said their house was second last month in
number of cars of live stock in their market and they
were looking for them to be first this month; said
their salesmen always beat the other firms 10 cents
a hundred on even splits, and their yardmen always
got the best fill on the cattle. We went off by our
selves to talk it over and make up our minds which
firm to ship to. Packsaddle Jack -said it was remark-
able that they all told the same story, said it was con
fusing as nary one of them had mentioned a point
but what all the rest had coppered the same bet. Dill-
bery Ike gave it as his opinion that they were the
bummest lot' of liars he ever see. Old Chuckwagon
and Eatumup Jake now compared notes and discov
ered that all the drummers were out of whiskey, but
each drummer claimed the other dead beats had
drank his up. Old Chuckwagon took a blue down
hearted fit of melancholy on seeing they was all out
of whiskey and wouldn't decide on any of them. Eat
umup Jake just chewed a piece of dried rawhide and
wouldn't talk. Packsaddle Jack and me finally de
cided to bill the cattle to ourselves till we got some
further light on the subject.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 15
As the great Overland agent agreed that his road
would run us all the way to market at the rate of
forty miles an hour and the other live stock agents
couldn't promise only thirty-five miles an hour, we
gave the shipment to the Overland. The Overland
agent went right into town to have the cars greased
and sanded ready to start. We followed in with the
cattle. It took us about seven days to drive the cattle
in, and when we got there the cars were coming —
but hadn't arrived. We waited around nine days,
grazing the steers on sage brush in daytime and pen
ning them nights till they got so thin we had about
concluded to drive back and keep them for another
year, when the cars came. It seemed the railroad had
got them pretty near out to us once, but had run short
of tonnage cars, so just had to haul them back and
forth several times over one division to make up their
tonnage for the trains. This was very annoying to
the railroad men as well as ourselves, but they had
their orders to not let any California fruit spoil on the
road and to haul their tonnage, so just had to use
these stock cars. It seems Harriman and Hill and
J. P. Morgan and all the other boys who own the
western railroads are very particular about every
IQ COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
train hauling its full tonnage, and I heard there was
places they had a lot of scrap iron close to the track,
so if the train was short a ton or so they could load it
on, haul it to some place where there was some
freight to take the place of it, and then unload it
for trains going the other way that were short on
tonnage.
Finally we got the cattle loaded and our contract
signed. Got a basket of grub, as we were informed
there would be no time to get meals on the road. It
is to this basket of grub that we all owe our lives to
day, so I will give a partial description of the con
tents. First, we had four dozen bottles of beer; next,
eight quarts of old rye whiskey; next, two corkscrews,
a hard boiled egg, a sandwich without any meat in it
and a bottle of mustard, as Dillbery Ike said he
always wanted mustard. Eatumup Jake was for get
ting a can of tomatoes, but old Chuckwagon said he
never had been empty of canned tomatoes in twenty
years and wanted one chance to get them out his
system.
Well, we got on the way-car, were hitched on to
the cattle train and off at last for the first sidetrack,
which was a quarter of a mile from the stockyards.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. ] 7
The conductor said we would start right away soon
as he got his orders, so Chuckwagon proposed we open
the lunch, which meeting with direct approval from
the entire party, we proceeded to consume a large
section of it, and then went to sleep. When we woke
up the sun was sinking in the east, at least I main
tained it was east, but Packsaddle Jack said it was
in the north. Anyway we argued till it sunk, and
never did agree. But we found we were on the same
old sidetrack, and as our lunch was about gone we
made up a jackpot and sent Dillbery Ike after more
lunch. Packsaddle Jack went up and interviewed the
agent in the meantime, as he was the only one left in
the party who was on speaking terms with that func
tionary, and found out they were holding us there for
the arrival of eight cars of sheep that was expected
to come by trail from Idaho. These sheep belong to
Kambolet Bill and old Cottswool Canvasback, and
these two gentlemen had seen a cloud of dust ten miles
away about noon and insisted on having the train
held, as they were sure the sheep were coming, which
finally proved to be correct. So when they got the*»i
loaded, about 11 o'clock that night, we quit quarrel
ling with the agent, stopped making threats against
18 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
the railroad superintendent, got Dillbery Ike to put
on his coat (he had kept if off all evening to whip the
railroad agent who was to blame undoubtedly for all
this delay), and finally started, with rising spirits.
But as we got up to the depot where the conductor
was waiting with his final papers, the head brakeruan
reported a cow was down up near the engine, and we
all walked up there and found that one of Dillbery
Ike's critters had become so weak and emaciated that
it had succumbed right in the start. We prodded her,
and hollered and yelled, and Chuckwagon twisted her
tail clear off before we discovered she was stiff and
cold in death and consequently couldn't respond to
our suggestions. Dillbery asked the advice of a hobo
(who was giving us pointers how to get her up before
we discovered her dead condition) about suing the
railroad company for her. The hobo agreed to act as
witness and swear to anything after Dillbery gave
him a nip out of his bottle; and after we found
out what a good fellow the hobo was, how much he
knew about shipping cattle and that he wanted to go
east, we concluded to put his name on the contract
and make him one of the party. We asked his name
and he said 'twas most always John Doe, but we nick
named him Jackdo for short.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. JQ
We all went back to the way-car and started up
to the switch and back on to a sidetrack, as No. 1 was
expected to arrive pretty soon, as she was four hours
late, and was liable to come any time after she got four
hours late.
After taking some lunch we lay down on the seats
and went to sleep, Jackdo, Rambolet Bill and Cotts-
wool1 Canvasback on one side of the car, and Dillbery
Ike, Chuckwagon, Packsaddle Jack, Eatumup Jake
and myself on the other side. It was rather crowded
on our side of the car, but none of us liked the per
fume that Jackdo and the two sheepmen used. About
the time we got to sleep the brakeman came in, woke
us all up so he could get into the coal and kindling
which is under the seat in a way-car. It was warm
weather, but the train crews always build roaring
fires in hot weather on stock trains, and he was only
following the usual custom. We got our places again
and dropped off to sleep. The conductor came in,
woke us all up to punch our contracts. We went to
sleep again; the conductor came around, roused us all
up to know where we wanted our stock fed. Jackdo
now gave us a great deal of advice about where to
feed and how much, but Dillbery said the cattle
2() COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
had got used to going without feed so long that it
wasn't worth while to waste time feeding them now.
Jackdo said all the stockmen fed plenty of hay to their
stock al! the way to Omaha, but never let them have
any water till they got there, as they would get a big
fill that way. We finally went to sleep again. The
conductor and brakeman took turns jumping down
out of their high airy cab on top of the car (where
they keep a window open) to build up the fire and
see that all the doors and windows below were tightly
closed so the stockmen couldn't get no air, but hot air.
However, we had been getting hot air from the rail
road live stock agents and commission house drum
mers for some time and slept on till old Chuckwagon
begun to snore and woke us up again. It seemed he
was having a fearful nightmare, and we had all we
could do to keep him from jumping off the train till
we got him fairly awake. But after we had each given
him a drink from our private bottles he gave several
long, shuddering, shivering sighs and told us his
dream.
CHAPTER II.
CHUCK WAGON'S DKEAM.
He said he dreamed he was in a deep narrow can
yon, and it seemed to be a very hot day, and he
thought he walked in the broiling hot sun for miles
and oniles, his mouth and throat parched with thirst
and his eyes almost bursting from their sockets with
the heat, when all at once he heard the low mutter-
ings of thunder and he knew there was a storm ap
proaching. The thunder kept growing louder and
louder, and he looked around for some shelter and dis
covered a narrow crevice in the rocfks, and just as the
storm broke he entered this crevice. He hadn't no
more than got inside when he saw a wild animal ap
proaching the same place of refuge. It was bigger
than any two grizzly bears he ever saw in his life, but
was black with white stripes down its back, had a large
bushy tail, and he knew he was up against the biggest
skunk the world had ever known, and trembling with
horror he crept farther and farther back into the
21
22 GOWBOJ LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
crevice till he was stopped by a stream of red molten
lire that seemed to be flowing across his path" in the
mountain. He was about to retreat, but as he turned
to retrace his steps the immense Jumbo skunk was
coining in the crevice backwards^ with its enormous
tail reared over its back, and while the crevice seemed
only just large enough for him, yet this great animal
had a way of flattening himself out that, while he was
a great deal taller than before, yet did he keep forcing
himself gradually back towards poor Chuck. Chuck-
wagon said he knew that if the skunk was disturbed
he would discharge that terrible effluvia that is known
the world over, yet the heat from the molten stream
of lire was so great that it burned his face and he was
obliged to keep it turned towards the skunk. Finally
the animal had backed so far that the top of Chuck-
wagon's head was just under the root of the skunk's
tail. Then something commenced to annoy the ani
mal in front, and it started to back a little farther.
It was then he gave that despairing, blood-curdling,
soul-freezing yell that woke us up, and he said he
could still smell that awful effluvia even now that he
was awake; but we told him it was just the heat of
the car and the perfume that Jackdo and the two
sheepmen had.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 23
We now discovered that the train was in motion.
We were in doubt a long time, but after marking fence
posts, setting up a line of sticks and testing it by all
the known devices, we became convinced that it was
really a fact, and when there was no longer any doubt
left in our minds we fell on each other's necks and
sobbed for joy. We tapped four fresh bottles in suc
cession to celebrate the event and shook one another's
hands repeatedly. But, alas! in the midst of our re
joicing we came to a sidetrack.
It seems to be one of the rules of railroading to
never pass a sidetrack with a stock train till they
find out whether that particular train will fit that
sidetrack. This sidetrack was 2,125 feet and 223 inches
long and our train just fit it like it had been made
a purpose. If our train had been three feet longer it
would have been too long for this sidetrack, and we
had a long heated argument whether the train had
been made for this sidetrack or the sidetrack designed
for this special train; but, anyway, I never saw a
better fit, and it shows what mechanical heads rail
road men have got. We became attached to this
sidetrack, and for a long time had the sole use of it.
We held it against all comers, trains of empty cars
24 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
going west, gravel cars and even handcars, but finally
had to leave it, and it was with feelings of sadness
and regret that we at last had to bid it good-bye. Al
though we had many sidetracks afterwards, yet as
this one was the first we had entirely to ourselves we
hated to give it up and our eyelashes were wet with
unshed tears as we blew the last kisses from our fin
ger tips when it slowly faded from our sight around
a narrow bend in the roadbed. How long it remained
true to us we never knew, probably not long, as it
was a lonely spot and undoubtedly was occupied by
another stock train as soon as wre were out of sight.
While at this sidetrack we took a stroll over the
hills one day and found a sage hen's nest with the old
hen setting. Dillbery Ike slipped up, grasped her by
the tail and in her struggle to free herself she lost all
her tail feathers and got away. Dillbery tied a string
arouud the iail feathers and took them along. This,
as it turned out afterwards, was very fortunate, as we
were able by the feathers to settle a dispute that might
have led to serious consequences, which happened in
this way: Some time after the sage hen episode, while
we were waiting on a sidetrack one day for a gravel
train going west, and having had nothing to eat for a
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 25
long time but mustard on ice, we had become very
much discouraged and had even tried to buy Cotts-
wool Canvasback's coat to make soup of, when Jack-
do discovered a flock of half-grown young sage chick
ens feeding along past the train, and immediately we
were all out, filled our hats with rocks and com
menced to knock them over. We managed to kill the
most of them along with the old mother bird, and
made the startling discovery that she had lost her tail
feathers. We showed her to the division superin
tendent, who came along in his private car just then
and stopped to explain gome of the delays on our run,
and told him the story of Dillbery pulling out her
tail when she was setting. The superintendent argued
it couldn't be the same hen, but when Dillbery got the
bunch of tail feathers they just fitted in the holes in
the poor old bird's rump and that settled the dispute.
There was another little incident occurred after
wards that shows the world isn't so large after all.
One day while we were waiting on a sidetrack a mud
turtle came strolling by, and as Jackdo had suggest
ed turtle soup for old Chuckwagon, who, by the way,
had been feeling bad ever since the night he had the
gkunk dream; not being able to keep anything on his
.)g COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
stomach, we captured the turtle and on examining a
peculiar mark on the back of its shell discovered it
was Dillbery Ike's brand that he had playfully burnt
into the animal the day before we left the ranch with
the cattle.
Rambolet Bill, Cottswool Canvasback and Jackdo Watching the
Sheep Graze.
CHAPTER III.
GRAZING THE SHEEP.
It 's not generally known that when sheep get ex
tremely hungry they eat the wool off one another,
but nevertheless this is a fact, and Cottswool Canvas-
back and Rambolet Bill's sheep had long ere this de
voured all the wool off each other's backs, but we had
had a couple good warm showers of rain and the wool
had started up again and was high enough for pretty
fair grazing, so the two sheepmen were middlin' easy,
as they had a receipt for cooking jackrabbits so they
wouldn't shrink in the cooking. They claimed that
Manager Gleason of the Warren Live Stock Company
had invented this receipt. However, lambing season
had come on and Cottswool and Rambolet were kept
pretty busy as double deck cars was very cramped
quarters to lamb in. Rambolet wanted to unload the
sheep, and wrhen they got through lambing to drive
them to Laramie City and catch the train again, but
Cottswool Canvasback said they would have to pay
the same tariff for the cars and insisted on the rail
road company earning their money.
29
;.JO COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
JACKDO SINGS "HOME, SWEET HOME."
I remember a pathetic little incident that occur
red about this time. When we were waiting on a
sidetrack one evening I suggested to Jackdo that he
sing us a song to while away the time, and he started
in singing "Home, Sweet Some,-' in a choked-by-cin-
ders sort of voice, and he hadn't been singing long
before T discovered old Chuckwagon and Dillbery
Ike lying face downward on the seats sobbing like
their hearts would break. Chuck and Dillbery didn't
have much of a home, as they batched in little dobe
shacks away out on the edge of the plains; but that
old song, even if sung by a hoot owl, would make a
stockman weep when he is on a stock train and has
got about half-way to market. However, it didn't
seem to affect Eatumup Jake much, and yet Jake had
married a big, buxom, red-headed Mormon girl about
six weeks before we started to ship. While Jake
looked like he was in delicate health when we left
home, yet he had grown strong and hearty on the trip
in spite of the privations and sufferings we had to
go through, and was pretty near always whistling in
a lively way "The Girl I Left Behind Me."
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 3^
We now arrived at a town. It was about two
o'clock in the morning and the conductor roused us
up to tell us we would have to change way-cars, as
they didn't go any farther. We asked him which
way to go when we got off, and he said go anyway we
wanted to. We asked him where our car was that
we would go out on, and he said, "Damfino." So we
started out to limit it. This was a division station,
there were hundreds of cars in every direction and
they had put us o^T a mile from the depot. W^e beg
ged piteously from everyone we met to tell us where
the way-car was that went out on the stock train. We
carried our luggage back and forth, fell over switch
frogs in the darkness and skinned our shins, fell over
one another trying to keep out the way of switch
engines, ran ourselves out of breath after brakemen,
conductors, engineers and car oilers, but everyone of
them gave us the same stereotyped answer, "Darn-
fino." At last we started out to hunt up the stock
again, but just as we found it they started to switch
ing. However, we climbed on the sides of the cars
and hung on, all but poor old Chuck wagon, who had
been sorter under the weather and wasn't quite
quick enough. But he chased manfully after us till
3-
32 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
we came to a switch, when we dashed past him going
the other way. We hollered to him to follow the
train, which lie did, but only to find us going the oth
er way again. And thus we kept on. How long this
would have -lasted I don't know, for old Chuck was
game to the death and had throwed away his coat,
vest, hat and boots and was bound to catch them
stock oars, and the switchman and engineer was
bound he shouldn't. But finally the engine had to
stop for coal and water, and they shoved us in on a
sidetrack, went off to bed and left us there till 10
o'clock the next day. But I never shall forget the an
guish and horror we endured for fear we wouldn't find
that way-car and they would pull the stock out and
leave us there. Packsaddle Jack gave its as his opin
ion that the railroad people had plotted to do that,
but we frustrated their designs by getting on the stock
icars and staying with them. We all believed Pack-
saddle Jack was right, but since that time I've talked
with a good many cattlemen and found out that's
the way they treat everybody.
CHAPTER IV.
LETTERS FROM HOME BROUGHT BY IMMIGRANTS.
We arrived at Hawlins, Wyoming, one bright
sunny morning and planned to get a square meal there
and kinder clean up and take a shave. But this was
a sheep town and full of sheepmen and the odor of
sheep was so strong we just stopped long enough to
fill our bottles and then sauntered on ahead of our
train, expecting to get on when it overtook us. Well,
we sauntered and sauntered, looking back from every
hill, but no train, and finally when we were tired from
walking in the heat and dust we found a shade tree,
and, laying down, went to sleep. How long we slept
I don't know, but when we awoke it was night. In
the darkness we had hard work finding our way back
to the railroad track, and for a while were undecided
which way to go, but finally took the wrong direc
tion, and after plodding along in the dark for several
miles we came on top a high hill and saw the lights of
the town below us that we left that morning. We now
34 COWBOY LIFE ON PHE SIDETRACK.
held a council as to who should go down to town to
get our bottles filled. Jackdo offered to go, but we had
already discovered we couldn't trust him on that kind
of errand, as the bottles would be just as empty when
he got back as when he started, so finally we sent
Eatumup Jake and told him to inquire if our train was
'Still there or had gone sneaking by us when we were
asleep. Jake returned about midnight with the re
freshments and the information that the train was on
ahead. So we started after it, exchanging ideas along
the route as to how far we would have to walk before
we came to a sidetrack, as we didn't doubt for a mo
ment we would find the stock on the first siding
it could get in on. This wras one of the pleasantest
nights we had on our whole trip, with good fresh air
(we made the sheepmen and Jackdo walk about three
miles ahead of us and the wind was blowing in their
direction) and nothing to worry us. We talked of
home and speculated as to how many calves the boys
at home had branded for us on their annual roundups
since we left.
Finally Chuckwagon stopped and sniffed a time
or two and said he was satisfied the sheepmen and
Jackdo must have found the train. After we walked
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 35
a mile further we came to the sheepmen and Jackdo
setting down at a sidetrack, but the stock train was
not there. We were much puzzled at this, but after a
great deal of argument Eatumup Jake, who had stud
ied Arithmetic some, proposed to measure the side
track. He suggested as the only possible solution to
the train not being there that probably the track was
too short for the train. The trouble now was to get
some proper thing to measure with. Finally we took
Eatumup Jake's pants which he had removed for the
purpose, they being thirty-four inches inseam. By tak
ing the end of each leg they measured sixty-eight in
ches, or five feet eight inches, to a measurement.
Every time we made a measurement Dillbery put a
pebble in his pocket for feet and Chuckwagon put one
in his for inches. When we got through we made a
light out of some sticks and counted the pebbles. Dill
bery had 292 and Chuckwagon 287. They both insisted
they had made no mistake, so we had to measure it all
over again. There had come up a little flurry of snow
in the meantime, which happens frequently at that alti
tude, and Eatumup ^Jake wanted them to divide the
difference between 287 and 202, but as one had inches
and the other feet, Eatumup Jake couldn't make the
30 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
proper division in his head arid we had nothing to fig
ure with. So we measured again and counted and
found they each had 287. As this would only equal
forty-one stock oars, and as there was forty-three cars
of stock, five cars of California fruit, three cars mer
chandise, nine tonnage cars and the way-car, we knew
our train couldn't possibly get in on this sidetrack. So
Jake put on his pants and we started on again, per
fectly satisfied now that we had solved what seemed
at first a great mystery.
After walking several miles it became daylight
and we discovered a man and woman with a mule team
and wagon, going the same way we were. As they
didn't seem to have much of a load and asked us to
ride we concluded to ride. However, as we couldn't
all ride in the wagon at once and as the wagon road
wasn't always in sight of the track, we had Jackdo
and the two sheepmen walk along the track, and if
they found the train they were to holler and wave
something to us so we would know.
Eatumup Jake had been kinder grumpy ever since
he had to stand the snowstorm without any pants on
while we done the measuring, but now he was to hear
some good news which brought such overwhelming
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 37
joy to him as, indeed, it did to all of us, as our joys and
sorrows were one on this trip. It will be remembered
that Eatumup Jake had married a buxom Mormon
girl about six weeks before we started with the cattle,
and now it turned out that these people, who were
on their way from the Two Wallys to Arkansas, had
come by Jake's place in Utah and Jake's wife had not
only sent a letter by this couple to him, but the letter
contained the news that he was the father of twin boys.
Jake's pride and joy knew no bounds, and for a time
he talked about going back and taking a look at the
twins and then catching up to us again. But we
argued this would bring bad luck, and anyway there
were immigrants on the way from Oregon to Arkansas
all the time, and Jake's wife said all our folks in Utah
had agreed to send us letters every time anyone came
by with a team going east.
We now came in sight of our stock train as it was
slowly climbing a grade, but we were loath to give up
our new-found friends, the immigrants, and ;t wasn't
till they had drove several miles ahead of the stock
train that we finally bid them a reluctant good-bye
and sauntered on back to meet the special. This is
the first time I've used the word special, but all stock
38 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
trains are known as specials because they make special
time with them.
After we got on the train and had taken the prod
pole, and drove the sheepmen and Jackdo out and
made them ride on top, we emptied a bottle or so and
Eatumup Jake got very hilarious and sang "The
Little Black Bull Came Running Down the Mountain,"
while we all joined in the chorus. And finally when
old Chuckwagon, Packsaddle Jack and Dillbery Ike
had gone to sleep on the floor of the car, Eatumup
Jake got me by the button hole and told me the story
of his life in the following words. He talked in a
thick, slushy, slobbery voice, somethingg like the mud
and water squirts through the holes in your overshoes
on a sloppy day, but this was on account of a great
deal of whiskey and the fact that he had taken a slight
cold the night before standing in the snowstorm while
we used his pants to measure the sidetrack.
CHAPTER V.
EATUMUP JAKE'S LIFE STORY.
He said his father was a poor Methodist preacher
in a little country place in western Kansas where he
was born. Said they lived there many years because
they was so durn poor they couldn't get away. His
father's salary was paid promptly every month in con
tributions and consisted of one sack of cornmeal, one
sack of pofatoes, two gallons sorghum molasses, four
old crowing hens, seven jack rabbits, one quart choke
cherry jelly and one load of dried buffalo chips for fuel.
He said his father was one of the most patient beg
gars he ever saw, that he took up collections at all
times and on all occasions, morning, noon and night
— week days and Sundays he passed the hat. He had
seventeen different kinds of foreign missions to beg
for. He had twenty-one different kinds of home mis
sions to beg for, and while it was the poorest com
munity he ever saw, most people too poor to have any
tea or coffee, or overshoes for winter or shoes in sum
mer, yet his father begged so persistently that he got
39
40
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
worlds of flannels for the heathens in Africa, any
amount of bibles for the starving children in New
York City and all kinds of religious literature for the
reconcentrados in India.
Finally his mother died of nothing on the stom
ach, his father and a woman missionary went to Chi
cago, his nine brothers and sisters was bound out and
adopted by different people, and he, the oldest child,
was taken in charge by a professional bone picker, and
although he was only 10 years old at the time, yet he
picked up bones on Kansas prairies summer and winter
for two yea rs^ fill a bunch of cowpunchers came along
and took him away from the bone picker. He said he
never liad anything much to eat till he got into this
cow camp, and just eat roast veal, baking powder bis
cuits, plum duff and California canned goods till all
the cowboys stopped^eating to look at him, and one
of them asked his name, and when he said Jacob, they
immediately nicknamed him Eatumup Jake.
He said he never had seen any of his folks since
all this "happened, but one night he had a 'dreani, just
as plain as day. He thought he was in a big city arid
a one legged man with blue glasses was following him,
and when he stopped the man said: " Jacob, I'm your
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 41
father," and he asked him how he lost his leg, what
he was wearing Blue glasses for (a placard saying he
was blind), and why he held out a tincup, and his
father said: "I aant lost any leg, it 's tied up inside my
pants leg, and I'm wearing glasses so people can't see
my eyes." And he said his father told him that his
training as a Methodist preacher had peculiarly fitted
hirii for a professional beggar.
When Eatumup Jake finished telling his story he
fell to weeping and wept very bitterly for a long time,
and when 1 tried to comfort him by telling him a man
wasn't to blame for what his folks done, he said no,
but cowmen were to blame when they fell so durn low
as to spend the best part of their lives on a special
stock train associating with a hobo and two sheepmen.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SCHOOLM ARM'S SADDLE HORSE.
One day while waiting on a sidetrack old Chuck-
wagon got to telling about the new schoolmarm in
their neighborhood. He said he reckoned she was as
high educated as anybody ever got. He said she didn't
sabe cowpuncher talk much, but she used some
mighty high-sounding words. Why, he said, she
called a watergap a wateryawn; a shindig, a dawnce;
Injuns, Naborigines; cowboys, cow servants, and Bill
Allen's hired girl, where she boards, a domestic. The
first night she came to Bill Allen's she heard them a
talking about cowpunchers, and she asked old Bill if
he wouldn't show her a real live cowpuncher; said
there weren't any cowpunchers in Boston, where she
came from, and old Bill said he'd have one over from
the nearest cow ranch next day.
So next morning he comes over to my ranch and
tells me to rig out in fur snaps, put on my buckskin
shirt amTLig Mexican hat with tassels on it, with red
silk handkerchief around my neck, and he would take
42
George H. Crosby, General height*' Agent $.••$ M.\ ,'"',
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 45
me over and introduce me to the new schoolmarm.
So I rigged all up proper, and when we got over to
Bill Allen's place, old Bill told his wife to go to the
schoolmarm's room and tell her he had a genuine cow-
puncher out there and for her to come out and see
him. She told Mrs. Allen she was busy just then, but
tefl Mr. Allen to take the cowpuncher to the barn and
give him some hay and she would be out directly.
Now, he'd been wondering ever since, old Chuck
said, what on earth she reckoned a cowpuncher was.
Still she was mighty green about some things, 'cause
when they had a little party at old Bill Allen's all the
girls got to telling about the breed of their saddle
hosses, and some said their hoss was a Hamil toman,
and some said their hoss was thoroughbred, and some
was Blackhawk Morgan. The schoolmarm said she
had a gentleman friend in Boston who had a very
fine saddle hoss of the stallion breed, and when the
boys giggled and the gals began to look red, she says
as innocent as a lamb. "There is such a breed of
hosses, ain't they?" "Of course," she says, "I know
it's a rare breed and perhaps you folks out here never
saw any of that breed." She says, "They are great
hosses to whinney. Why, my friend's hoss kept
40 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
whinneying all the time." When she got to describ
ing that boss's habits, course all us boys begun to
back up and git out the room. I reckon she was
from an Irish family, 'cause she insisted Mrs. Flana
gan was right when she called the station a daypo.
But I reckon she could just knock the hind
sights off anybody when it came to singing. I never
did know just whether it was a song or not she sung,
'cause none of us could understand it. She said it
was Italian, and of course there wasn't any of us un
derstood any Dago talk. But she would just com
mence away down in a kind of low growl, like a
sleeping foxhound when he is dreaming of a bear
fight, and keep growling a little louder and little
louder, and directly begin to give some sliort barks,
and then it would sound like a herd of wild cattle
bawling round a dead carcass; then like a lot of hun
gry coyotes howling of a clear frosty night, and
finally wind up like hundreds of wild geese flying high
and going south for winter. She said her voice had
been cultivated and I reckon it had. You could tell
it had been laid off in mighty even rows, the weeds
all pulled out and the dirt throwed up close to the
hills. But somehow I 'd a heap rather hear a little
COWB07 LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 47
blue-eyed girl I know up iu the mountains in Idaho
sing "The Suwanee River," and "Coming Through the
Eve," 'cause I can understand that. But I guess
them Boston girls are all right at home. I reckon
they are used to them there.
CHAPTER VII.
SELLING CATTLE ON THE RANGE.
Then old Facksaddle Jack got to telling about
Senator Dorsey, of Star Route fame, selling a littk
herd of cattle he had in northern New Mexico. He
said the Senator had got "hold of some eye-glass
Englishmen, and representing to them that he had a
large herd of cattle in northern New Mexico, finally
made a sale at |25 a head all round for the cattle.
The Englishmen, however, insisted on counting the
herd and wouldn't take the Senator's books for them.
Dorsey finally agreed to this, but said- the cattle
would have to be gathered first. The Senator then
went to his foreman, Jack Hill, and asked Jack if he
knew of a place where they could drive the cattle
around a hill where they wouldn't have to travel too
far getting around and have a good place to c^ount
them on one side. Jack selected a little round moun
tain with a canyon on one side of it, where he sta
tioned the Englishmen and their bookkeepers and
48
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 49
Senator Dorsey. The Senator had about 1,000 cattle,
and Jack and the cowboys separated them into two
bunches out in the hills, a couple of miles from the
party of Englishmen and out of sight. Keeping the
two herds about a mile apart, they now drove the
first herd into the canyon, which ran around the edge
of the bluff, and on the bank of the canyon sat the
Senator with the Englishmen, and they counted the
cattle as the herd strung along by them. The herd
was hardly out of sight before the second bunch came
stringing along. Two or three cowboys, though, had
met the first herd, and, getting behind them, gal
loped them around back of the mountain and had
them corning down the canyon past the Englishmen
again, and they were counted the second time. And
they were hardly out of sight before the second di
vision was around the mountain >and coming along to
be tallied some more. And thus the good work went
on all day long, the Senator and the Englishmen only
having a few minutes to snatch a bite to eat and tap
fresh bottles.
The foreman told the English party at noon that
they was holding an enormous herd back in the hills
yet from wrhich they were cutting off these small
50 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
bunches of 500 and bringing them along to be tallied.
But along about 3 o'clock in the afternoon the cattle
began to get thirsty and footsore. Every critter had
traveled thirty miles that day, and lots of them began
to drop out and lay down. In one of the herds was an
old yellow steer. He was bobtailed, lophorned and
had a game log, and for the fifteenth time he limped
by the crowd that was counting. Milord screwed his
eyeglass a little tighter into his eye, and says, "There
is more bloody, blarsted, lopho;rned, bobtailed, yellow,
crippled brutes than anything else, don't you know."
Milord's dogrobber speaks up, and says, "But, me
lord, there 's no hanimal like 'im hin the hither 'erd."
The Senator overheard this interesting conversa
tion, and taking the foreman aside, told him when
they got that herd on rhe other side of the mountain
again to cut out that old yellow reprobate, and not
let him come by again. So Jack cut him out and run
him off aways in the mountains. But old yellow had
got trained to going around that mountain, and the
herd wasn't any more than tallied again till here come
old Buck, as the cowboys called him, limping along
behind down the canyon, the Englishmen staring at
him with open mouths, and Senator Dorsey looking
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 51
at old Jack Hill in a reproachful, grieved kind of way.
The cowboys ran old Buck off still farther next time,
but half an hour afterwards he appeared over a little
rise and slowly limped by again.
The Senator now announced that there was only
one herd more to count and signaled to Jack to ride
around and stop the cowboys from bringing the
bunches around any more, which they done. But as
the party broke up and started for the ranch, old
Buck came by again, looking like he was in a trance,
and painfully limped down the canyon. That night
the cowboys said the Senator was groaning in his
sleep in a frightful way, and when one of them woke
him up and asked if he was sick, he told them, while
big drops of cold sweat was dropping off his face,
that he 'd had a terrible nightmare. He thought he
was yoked up with a yellow, bobtailed, lophorned,
lame steer and was being dragged by the animal
through a canyon and around a mountain day after
day in a hot, broiling sun, while crowds of witless
Englishmen and jibbering cowboys were looking on.
He insisted on saddling up and going back through the
moonlight to the mountain and see if old Buck was
still there. When they arrived, after waiting awhile,
59 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
they heard something coming down the canyon, and
in the bright moonlight they could see old Buck pain
fully limping along, stopping now and then to rest.
A cowboy reported finding old Buck dead on his
well-worn trail a week afterwards. But no one ever
rides that way moonlight nights now, as so many
cowboys have a tradition that old Buck's ghost still
limps down the canyon moonlight nights.
Counting "did Buck '. ''
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 55
OLD BUCK'S GHOST.
Down in New Mexico, where the plains are brown and sere,
There is a ghostly story of a yellow spectral steer.
His spirit wanders always when the moon is shining bright;
One horn is lopping downwards, the other sticks upright.
On three legs he comes limping, as the fourth is sore and lame;
His left eye is quite sightless, but still this steer is game.
Many times he was bought and counted by a dude with a mon
ocle in his eye;
The steer kept limping round a mountain to be counted by that
guy.
When footsore, weary, gasping, he laid him down at last,
His good eye quit its winking; counting was a matter of the
past;
But his spirit keeps a tramping 'round that mountain trail,
And that's the cause, says Packsaddle, that I have told this
tale.
CHAPTER VIII.
TKUE SNAKE STOKIES.
Then we all got to telling true snake stories.
Eatumup Jake said down on the Republican River hi
western Kansas the rattle-snakes were awful thick
when the country was first settled. He said they had
their dens in the Chalk Bluffs along the Republican
and Solomon rivers; said these bluffs were full of them.
It. was nothing for the first settlers in that country to
get together of a Sunday afternoon in the fall of the
year and kill 15,000 rattle-snakes at one bluff as they
lay on the shelves of rock that projected out from its
face. He said the snake dens were two or three
miles apart, all the way along the river for a hundred
miles, and wrhen somebody would start in to killing
them at one place, why all the snakes at that den would
start in to rattling. Then the snakes at the dens on
each side of where they was killing them would wake
up and hear their neighbors' rattle, and then they 'd
get mad and begin to rattle and that would wake up
56
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 57
the snake dens beyond them and start them to rat
tling. And in an hour's time all the snakes for a
hundred miles along that country would be rattling.
When these two hundred million snakes all got to
rattling at once you could hear them one hundred
miles away and all the settlers in eastern Kansas
would go into their cyclone cellars. But after the
Populists got so thick in Kansas, if they did hear the
snakes get to rattling, they just thought five or six
Populists got together and was talking politics.
Then Packsaddle Jack told about a bull-snake
family he used to know in southern Kansas. He
said the whole family had yellow bodies beautifully
marked below the waist, but from their waist up, in
cluding their necks and heads, was a shiny coal black.
The old man bull^snake would beller just like a bull
when he was stirred up. The old lad}' bull-snake had
sort of an alto Aroice and the younger master and
misses bull-snakes went from soprano and tenor down
to a hiss. He said this family of bull-snakes weie
very proud of their clothes, as there weren't any other
bull-snakes dressed like them, all the other bull-
snakes being just a plain yellow. And old Mrs. Bull-
snake used to talk about her ancestors on her fa-
58 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
ther's side, and ishe called the scrubby willow under
which they had their den the family tree, and talked
about the family tree half her time. She never al
lowed her daughters to associate with any of the
common young bull-snakes, but kept them coiled up
around home under the family tree till they got very
delicate, being in the shade all the time. All the
snakes in the country looked up to this family of half-
black bull-snakes and they were known by the name
of Half-Blacks. All the old female bull-snakes in the
country around there, if they had just a distant
speaking acquaintance with Mrs. Half-Black, always
spoke of her as "my dear intimate friend Mrs. Half
Black." Old Papa Half-Black set around all swelled
up with unwary toads he 'd swallowed when they
came under the family tree for shade, and while he
didn't say much about his ancestry and family tree,
yet he was mighty proud and dignifieoT. Sometimes
he would slip off from his illustrious family, and go
ing over the hill where there was a little sand blow
out and something to drink, he 'd meet some of the
Miss Common Bull-snakes, and then he would unbend
a good deal from his dignity and treat them with
great familiarity, an3 after having a few drinks call
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 59
them his sweethearts and get them to sing "The
Good Old Summer Time," and he would join in the
chorus with his heavy bass voice, and they would all
be very gay. Of course, he never told old Mrs. Half-
Black about these meetings, cause she wouldn't un
derstand them.
But with all their glory this aristocratic family
of half-black bull-snakes came to an untimely end.
One day there came along a couple of mangy Kansas
hogs and rooted the whole family out and eat them
up as fast as they came to them; rooted up the fam
ily tree also.
We all cheered Packsaddle Jack's bull-snake
story.
We now all got to telling stories about fellows
we knowed who had died from mad skunk bites, said
skunks creeping up on them in the night when they
were sleeping outdoors. When we got to the end of
our mad skunk stories wre turned our attention to
tales of friends of ours who had died from rattle
snake bites. It seemed each of us had dozens of
dead friends who had met their doom by crawling in
to a roundup bed at night without shaking the blank
ets only to find a couple of rattle-snakes coiled up
60
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
inside. The more we told the stories the more snake
bite antidote we imbibed, till we got so full of the
antidote it ?s safe to say that it would have been sure
death for any poisonous reptile to have bitten any man
in the crowd. Some of us wept a good deal over the
memory of our dead friends and other things, and all
together this was about the most enjoyable half day
of our journey.
CHAPTER IX.
CHUCKWAGON'S DEATH.
I now come to a point in my story that is fraught
with such grief and sorrow that I would gladly pass
over if I could, but my story wouldn't be complete
without this sad chapter.
We were slowly climbing Sherman Hill, some of
us pushing on the train, some using pinch bars — as
we always did where there was a hard pull — when all
of a sudden the engine broke down and the train
started slowly back down the hill. While the train
didn't go very fast on account that the wheels hadn't
been greased since we started, as the company was
economizing on oil, anH the train stopped when it got
to the bottom of the hill, yet it was so discouraging
and heart-sickening to poor old Chuckwagon that he
died almost immediately after this took place.
He had been gradually growing weaker lately, not
being able .to keep anything on his stomach except a
little Limburger cheese since the night he had the
61
62 COWBOY LIFE OX THE SIDETRACK.
skunk dream. He always imagined this dream to be
a warning, and had low sinking spells at times, spe
cially when the two sheepmen and Jackdo were all
three in the car in at once, and at such times we were
obliged to take a prod pole and drive Jackdo and the
two sheepmen out the car and make them ride on top
till Chuck revived. We made some smelling salts
out of asafoetida and Limburger cheese for him to use
when he had these fainting spells, as he frequently
did when the car got warm and Jackdo and the sheep
men were there. We also found the decomposed body
of a dog lying beside the track one day, and gather
ing it up in a gunnysack would hang it round Chuck's
neck at night when the sheepmen and Jackdo had to
ride Inside, and in that way he would get a little sleep.
But if he happened to be out of reach of any of these
remedies when one of the sheepmen come near him
he immediately began to strike at the end of his nose
and mutter something about glue factories.
Poor old Chuckwagon! In my mind I can still
see his ruggged, tear-stained face as he would pite-
ously hold out his hands for his sack of decomposed
dog when one of the sheepmen or Jackdo came in the
way-car.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 53
All I know of Chuekwagon's life before lie come
West was what he told me on this trip. He said as
a boy lie had worked cleaning sewers in Chicago and
after that was watchman for glue factories till lie
come West, but with all this training had never got
hardened enough to stand the smell of Jackdo, Cotts-
wool Canvasback and Kambolet Bill in a way-car.
He died like a hero. When we see he was going,
Paeksaddle Jack took a prod pole and drove Jackdo
and the sheepmen down the track a ways so Chuck
could breathe same purer air. Then we gave him a
whiff of decomposed dog, propped him up against an
old railroad tie and took his post-mortem statement in
writing as to cause of his death. We let some cattle
men who had formed themselves into a committee for
the public safety up in the New Fork country, in
Wyoming, have his statement. We now went to the
nearest town, got the best coffin we could and after
selecting a place right under a big cliff, we buried old
Chuck and piled up a lot of rock at the grave so we
could come back and get him and give him a good de
cent burial on his own ranch. We didn't have much
funeral services, but Dillbery Ike made a talk which
just filled all our ideas exactly, and here is what he
said:
5-
64 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
DILLBERY IKE'S TRIBUTE TO CHUCK WAGON.
Chuck was a good man. While he never joined
church and drunk a heap of whiskey, bucked faro and
monte, cussed mighty hard at times, yet he always
paid his debts. Never killed other people's beef and
didn't take mavericks till they was plum weaned from
the cows. He believed mighty strong in ghosts and
God Almighty; believed in angels, 'cause he loved a
little, blonde, blue-eyed girl away up in the mountains
in Idaho. He had a strong belief in heaven, but a
heap stronger one in hell, 'cause he said there must
be some place to keep the sheepmen by themselves in
the other world. He never had a father or mother
and no bringing up, but lived a better life 'cording
to what he knowed than some people who knowed
more. He always gave his big-jawed cattle to Injuns
to eat, place of hauling the meat to town and ped
dling it out to white folks. He 'd been known to even
cut stove wood for married men when their wives
were off visiting, and once he gave all the tobacco
and cigarette papery he had to a sick Digger Injun
and went without for a wreek himself. He always let
the tenderfoot visitor at the ranch fish all the strips
of bacon out the beans and pretended to be looking
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 55
the other way, and when old Widow Mulligan, who
ran a little milk ranch, died of fever and left four
little red-headed kids he took them all home and took
care of them, told them bear stories till they all went
to sleep nights in his bed, washed them, fed them and
never said a cross word, and even when they drowned
his pet cat in the well, let out his pigs, turned the
old cow in his garden and stoned all his young Ply
mouth Hock chickens to death, he just said, "Poor
little fellars, they hain't got no mother now," and he
guessed they didn't mean any harm, and took care of
them till a relative came and took them away.
We figured all these things up and made up our
minds that no fair-minded Grod would send a great,
big-hearted, innocent cowman, who never harmed
anybody in his life, to a place like hell was supposed
to be. Even if God couldn't let him into heaven on
'count of his wearing his pants in his boots, eating
with his knife at the table place of his fork, drinking
his coffee out his saucer and other ignorant ways, yet
He might give him a pretty decent place away out
where there wasn't any sheepmen, and if He didn't
have somebody handy to keep old Chuck company just
let him have a deck or two of cards to play solitaire
wiith and Chuck wouldn't mind.
66 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
Old Chuckwagon was mighty fond of white-faced
cattle, and just as he breathed his last he sorter
roused up and stretched out his arms, with his eyes
as bright as 'lectric lamps, and said: "Boys, I see an
other country, just lots of big grass, with running
streams of water, big herds of white-face cattle, and
they are all mavericks, not a brand on 'em, and not a
.sheep-wagon in sight." And them was his last words.
He lay on the sidetrack, poor honest Chuckwagon,
The pallor of death creeping fast o'er his brow;
Said he to the cowboys, "My rope is a dragging,
I'm going o'er the divide and going right now.
"I 've often faced death with the bronks and the cattle,
And meeting him now doesn't take so much sand,
For sooner or later with death all must grapple,
And all that we need is to show a straight brand.
"I would like one more glimpse at the side of the mountain,
Before I saddle up for Eternity's divide;
The ranch house, the meadow, the spring like a fountain,
But, alas for poor Chuck, my feet are hogtied."
Down his bronzed hardy cheeks the warm tears were
stealing,
At the memory of his cow ranch, so pleasant and bright.
A smile like an angel played over each feature,
And the soul of the cowboy rode out of sight.
CHAPTER X.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SHEEPMEN.
After we buried Chuckwagon we walked across a
bend in the road and caught up with the stock train
and strolled on ahead with sad hearts and silent lips
till we arrived at the top of Sherman Hill. We pre
pared to wait for the arrival of the stock train, so
selecting a site on the south side of Ames monument,
we built a snow hut by rolling up huge snowballs and
piling them up one on top of the other for walls to a
height of about seven and one-half feet, leaving a
space for our room of about twelve feet square inside,
and gradually drawing them together at the top for a
roof, and making a big snowball for the door. After
it was all finished we let the sheepmen and Jackdo go
over across the canyon about two miles and build an
other hut for themselves. We moved our luggage
(which we had carried to lighten up the train) inside,
and after closing the door with the big snowball, we
ate a hearty supper of boiled rawhide, and spreading
67
68 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
down a sheet of mist, we rolled up in a blanket of fog
and went to sleep.
We hadn't no more than got to sleep before a
lightning rod agent by the name of Woods came along
and put up lightning rods all over our snow hut and
woke us up to sign |350 worth of notes for the rods.
This matter attended to. we went to sleep again and
the lightning rod agent went over across the canyon
to "the sheepmen's hut and put rods on it. This man
Woods was a good fellar, got people to sign notes by
the wholesale, but never did anything so low as to col
lect them, just turned them over to a lawyer and let
him attend to that. Pie was always broke and bor
rowed your last "five" in a way that endeared him to
you for life. He never bothered with paying for any
thing, always said, "Just put it down, or charge it,"
in such a lofty way T;hat everyone in hearing would
begin to hunt for pencils right off. He put lightning
rods on everything, even to prairie dogs' houses and
ant heaps, took anybody's note with any kind of
signature.
Cottswopl Canvasback, Kambolet Bill and Jackdo
couldn't write, but he had Rambofet Bill make his
mark to the note and then Cottswool Canvasback and
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. QQ
Jackdo witnessed it by affixing their mark; then he
had Cottswool Canvasback sign his mark as security
and Rambolet Bill and Jackdo witness the signature
with their marks; then had Jackdo sign his mark as
security and Rambolet and Cottswool witness it with
their marks.
We had put out a signal flag on our snow hut so
the trainmen would know where to find us when they
came along with the stock. When we awoke next
morning and went outdoors a strange sight greeted
our astonished vision. There had come a *chinook
wind in the night and melted the snow off up to with
in one hundred feet of our altitude. As Jackdo and
the two sheepmen had built their snow residence
about 150 feet lower altitude on the other side of the
canyon, their house had melted down over their heads,
and as they were nowhere in sight it was safe to pre
sume they had been carried away in the ruins. We
had quite an argument now, whether we should try to
find them or not. Dillbery Ike maintained they was
human beings and as such was entitled to our look
ing for them. Packsaddle Jack said he didn't know
*For the benefit of our readers who do not know wliHt a chinook wind
is, I will explain that it is a hot, violent coast wind which blows at certain
periods of the year at certain altitudes in the West.
70 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
for sure whether sheepmen were humans or not. He
guessed it was a mighty broad word and covered a
heap of things. Eatumup Jake said he reckoned they
would turn up all right, that sheepmen didn't die
very easy, that he knowed them to pack off more lead
than an antelope would and still live; he guessed be
ing washed off the side of the mountain wouldn't kill
them. He said we 'd better wait till the trainmen
came along and then report the matter to them, as the
sheepmen would want damages off the railroad or
somebody and we'd better not hunt them up too
quick as ft might jeopardize their case. We all
agreed there was some difference in sheepmen, and
that Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback cer
tainly belonged to the better class, and we all fell to
telling stories of the generous, open-handed things
that sheepmen of our acquaintance had done.
Packsaddle Jack said he knowed a sheepman
once by the name of Black Face, who was so good-
hearted that he paid $20 towards one of his herder's
doctor bill when he lost both feet by their being
frozen in the great Wyoming blizzard in '94. The
herder stayed with the sheep for seventy-two hours
in the Bad Lands and saved all the 3,000 head except
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 71
seven, that got over the bank of the creek into ice
and water and drowned. The herder having got all
but these seven head out and getting his feet wet
they froze so hard that Black Face said his feet was
rattling together like rocks when he found him still
herding the sheep. Of course, the sheep might have
all perished in the storm if the herder didn't stay with
them, and of course, the herder didn't have anything
to eat the entire three days in the storm, as he was
miles from any habitation and that way saved Black
Face 30 cents in grub. But we all agreed that while
Black Face would feel the greatest anguish at the loss
of the seven sheep and giving up the $20, yet the sat
isfaction of doing a generous deed and the pride he
would experience when it was mentioned in the item
column of the local county paper would partially al
leviate that anguish.
Eatumup Jake said he knew a sheepman by the
name of Hatchet Face from Connecticut, who had
sheep ranches out there in Utah, and he was so kind-
hearted that when one of his herders kept his sheep
in a widow neighbor's field till they ate up everything
in sight, even her lawn and flower garden, he apolo
gized to the widow when she returned from nursing
72 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
a poor family through a spell of sickness, and told her
he would pay her something, and while he never did
pay her anything, yet he always seemed sorry, while
a lot of sheepmen would have laid awake nights to
have studied ja way how to eat out the widow again.
Eatumup Jake said old Hatchet Face, when he prayed
in church Sundays (he being a strict Presbyterian), he
always prayed for the poor and widows and orphans,
and that showed he had a good heart, to use what in
fluence he had with God Almighty and get Him to do
something for widows and orphans and poor people.
Dillbery Ike said he knew a sheepman by the
name of Shearclose, and while he never gave his
hired help any meat to eat except old broken-mouthed
ewes in the winter and dead lambs in the spring and
summer, and herded his sheep around homesteaders'
little ranches till their milk cows mighty near starved
to death, yet old Shearclose gave |5 for a ticket to
a charjty ball once when a list of the names of all the
people who bought tickets was printed in the coun
ty paper.
After we summed all these things up, our hearts
got so warm thinking of these acts of generosity by
sheepmen that we concluded to make a hunt for Bam-
C. J. Lan°,t General Freight* Agent- and Pass DlsCnl'uter to
Live Stock Shippers.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 75
bolet Bill, Cottswool Canvasback and Jackdo. We
now discussed a great many plans how to rescue
them. While we were arguing the stock train came,
and when we told the conductor, he immediately had
the agent wire General Freight Agent C. J. Lane at
Omaha the following message:
"Two prominent sheepmen swept away by fresh
et while camping ahead of special stock train No.
79531. Please wire instructions how to find them."
Lane immediately wired back not to find them,
and if there was any trace left of them to obliterate
it at once.
JACKDO 's STORY OF His ESCAPE.
•
We now sauntered down Sherman Hill ahead of
the train to Cheyenne, expecting to get some help
there to find Eambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvas-
back, and was much surprised to discover Jackdo
asleep riding on the trucks of a car in a special that
went by, and on waking him up he told us the follow
ing story of his escape:
He said when the flood came he got astride a big
snowball and making a compass out of a piece of
lightning rod he pointed it for the north star so as to
76 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
not lose his bearings and started for Cheyenne. He
said it was a wild ride, that he passed cattle and
horses, forests and ranches in auick succession and his
snowball was almost worn out when he got below the
altitude of the chinook wind and struck a country of
ice and snow again. But it was impossible to stop,
he had acquired such a momentum going down the
mountain that he slid through nine miles of cactus
and prickly pears without having changed the sitting
position he started in. However, after his snowball
wore out, he just held up his feet and kept on till he
struck a special stock train going East, and after
knocking two of the cars off the rails and breaking
the bumpers of a half-dozen more, he checked up
enough to crawl on a brake beam and go to sleep. He
knew nothing of Kambolet Bill and Cottswool Can-
vasback.
CHAPTER XL
OUR ARRIVAL IN CHEYENNE.
We arrived in Cheyenne, and after reporting to
the dispatcher what tame our special stock train
would arrive, we exposed Jackdo to the gentle breeze,
which is always on tap in Cheyenne, and it blew all
the cactus slivers out of his anatomy that he had ac
cumulated in his nine miles slide in just thirteen sec
onds. We then started out to see the town. We
asked an expressman on the corner of Main Street —
he was the only live human being in sight — what was
the main features of Cheyenne. He said Tom Horn
and Senator Warren. We asked him what they was
noted for, and he saicl that Tom Horn was noted for
killing people that took things that didn't belong to
them and then blowing his horn about it afterwards,
and Senator Warren was noted for building wire
fences on government land and taking everything in
sight.
Not seeing anyone on the streets, we asked him
77
78 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
if it was Sunday, and he said every day was Sunday
in Cheyenne except when they had a political rally,
and then it was a durn Democratic funeral from sun
to sun, burying the Democratic party over and over
again, they rehearsed them same old services. When
ever people saw the politicians on the streets with
clean shirts on they knew the Democratic party was
going to have another funeral. The folks in Chey
enne was always going to church, or else burying the
Democratic party. We asked him what the prevail
ing religion of the town was, and he said, "High-
priced wool."
Just then Senator W- - came along, and hear
ing of the disappearance of two sheepmen, and it be
ing near election time, he immediately had all the
troops called out, got together a vast army of United
States deputy marshals and wired the president of the
Overland, who immediately chartered a special train
loaded with detectives, and two cars loaded with
blood-hounds in charge of a lawyer by the name of
Ashby from Lincoln; one car loaded with automobiles,
two cars loaded with bottled goods and other useful
supplies and two pianos with pianola attachments,
seven trunks full of mechanical music in air-tight bot-
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 79
ties, and one steam calliope near the engine on a flat
car. The Governor of Wyoming met the special train
at Cheyenne, and after issuing a proclamation offering
a large reward for the sheepmen dead or alive, joined
the II. P. president in his car. They now started the
steam calliope, and the Governor playing one of (he
pianola-attachment pianos, the U. P. president playing
the other. The state chairman of the Republican
party sang the old familiar hymn, "Ninety and Nine
Were Safely Laid in the Shelter of the Fold," and
Senator W — - made a speech something like
this:
He said: "Fellow sheepmen and what few other
citizens there are in Wyoming: What's the matter
with the sheep business? Have we deteriorated in
the eyes of the world in the last two thousand years?
Who writes poetry of the sheep and sheepherder of
the present time? What artist puts priceless paint
ings on canvass of the sheep business to-day? Why,
fellow sheepmen, in ancient times all the poetry that
was written was of the shepherd and his flock, and in
every palace, in the most conspicuous place, was -a
picture of a tall shepherd with venerable beard and
flowing locks, with his serape thrown carelessly over
-6
0 COWBO? LIFE ON 1HE SIDETRACK.
his shoulder, a long shepherd's crook in his hand, lead
ing his sheep over the hill into some fresher pasture.
And when the people saw the original of this painting
in ve ancient time appearing over the hill in the sun
set glow, they cried : 'Lo, behold the shepherd cometh.'
Now what do they say? This is what you hear: 'Well,
look at that lousy sheepherding scoundrel coming oyer
the divide with his sheep. Boys, get your black masks
and the wagon spokes.'
"Now," he says, "wouldn't that Ram you? What
would our party have amounted to in Wyoming if I
hadn't Bucked everything in sight? I've Lambed the
stuffing out of the Democrats and Pulled Wool over
the eyes of the would-be party leaders till we have
Pretty Good Grazing and Fair We(a)thers.
"In a few days we will be called on to decide a
great question at the polls, whether Billy Bryan will
build your house out of cold, clammy, frosty silver
bricks, or whether we will have houses built out of all
wool. You must make a choice between the two. If
you vote for me, it means a good, warm woolen house,
good woolen underclothes, good woolen overclothes."
Judge Carey tried to say something about a gold
plank, but everybody frowned at him so that he slunk
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. gj_
off in the crowd and Shortly afterwards was seen in
a back alley having a heart-to-heart talk with two
bow-legged cowpunchers who, while they did not know
much about any kind of gold, let alone a big gold
standard, knew anything was better than all this talk
about sheep and wool.
Senator W- — kept talking as long as he
could keep the Governor and the U. P. president mak
ing music. He said everybody who voted right could
sit on his right hand with the sheep, otherwise they
would have to 'associate with the goats on his left that
was herded by Billy Bryan. Some of the crowd
grumbled about associating with either one, but the
Senator said there was no choice if they stayed in
Wyoming.
A carriage now dashed up, all emblazoned with a
coat-of-arms, which consisted of a panel of barbed wire
fence with a rampant sheep leaning against it. The
Senator entered this carriage, rolled away and the
crowd followed him.
Although there had been no effort made to find
the sheepmen, yet apparently the object of the rail
road expedition had been accomplished, and they were
about to return when they discovered that three of
$2 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
the highest-priced detectives were missing. They were
found almost immediately on the trail of the man who
could tell why a life-long Democrat in Wyoming, as
soon as he starts in the sheep business, gets a public
office in place of a life-long Republican who didn't own
any sheep. The detectives were called off the trail and
the president of the great Overland began his return.
We heard afterwards that Captain Ashby claimed that
two of the most valuable blood-hounds escaped from
the hound car and he demanded that the U. P. pay him
$700 for the dogs. He claimed that if they struck the
trail of anything they would follow it to the death.
A couple of mangy fox-hounds were found dead in an
alley back of one of the Cheyenne hotels the next
morning after the president's train left, and as it was
known that one of the hotel cooks had been down to
the train, these were supposed to be the dogs, and the
claim was allowed. What caused their death was a
matter of conjecture. There was quite a pile of hotel
grub laying near the dogs. The hotel boarders differed
in opinion. Some said the dogs died of indigestion and
some said of starvation.
CHAPTER XII.
THE POST-HOLE DIGGER'S GHOST.
The skeletons of Rambolet Bill and Cottswool
Canvasback were found a long tiime after this all hap
pened by one of the Warren Live Stock Company's
fence riders. This fence commences in northeastern
Colorado near the 27th degree of longitude west from
Washington, and extends west over hills and valleys,
plains and mountains, through all kinds of latitudes,
longitudes and vicissitudes. There is a legend in re
gard to the building of this fence that is told in whis
pers when the fire burns low of a night in western
homes. It runs something like this:
Years ago Senator Warren, Manager Gleason and
some other Massachusetts Yankees started in the
sheep business in southern Wyoming and northern Col
orado, and as the country was large they thought it
would be a good thing to fence in a few hundred thou
sand acres of government land and save the grass so
fenced in case of hard winters and other things and
83
84 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
graze their sheep in this enclosure only when there
was no more. grass around the little homesteads taken
here and there by settlers. So hiring a young German
from the Old Country, who couldn't speak a word of
English, to dig the post-holes, they got him a brand-
new shovel, a post-bar about eight feet long, the fam
ous receipt for cooking jackrabbits, and started him
digging near the 27th degree of longitude west from
Washington. Pointing toward the setting sun in the
west, they went off and left him. The German was
never seen alive again, but he left a never-ending line
of post-holes behind him. The Warren Live Stock Com
pany, it is said, put on a great many men setting the
posts in these holes and stringing barbed wire on
them, and although they kept ever increasing the force
that built the fence, yet they never caught up with the
German, and time after time the post-setters would
come to the top of a high hill or a range of mountains
and thought they would come in sight of the German,
only to see a long line of post-holes stretching awaj?
over hill and valley towards the setting sun.
After a while the Mormons along the line of Utah
and Wyoming complained of seeing a ghost about the
time they drove their cows home of an evening. They
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 35
said it was a German with grizzled locks and flowing
beard, w/ith a large meerschaum pipe in his mouth and
a shovel in one hand from which the blade was worn
down to the -handle and a post-bar no bigger than a
drag tooth in the other hand. He was always looking
toward the setting sun, shading his eyes with his hand
and muttering these words: "Das sinkende Sonne, ich
fange sie nicht."
But when they approached close to him, or spoke
to him, he immediately vanished. When the ghost
wasn't disturbed it seemed to be digging holes. It
would go through the motions of digging a hole in the
ground, then rising up, take thirteen steps in a west
erly direction, look back to see if the line was straight,,
dig another hole, and go on. Sometimes the ghost
seemed to be studying a well-worn piece of paper,
which was undoubtedly the receipt for cooking jack-
rabbits, and would mutter in German, "O wohene, Oj
wohene ist er gegangen, mit Schwanz so kurz und Ohr
so lang? O wohene ist mein Hase gegangen?"
After awhile the ghost began to appear in western
Utah and still later on in Nevada, always digging a
never-ending imaginary line of post^hbles. No one:
never knew where the actual post-holes left off and'
the imaginary ones commenced.
86 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
As the Routt County cattlemen in western Colo
rado never allowed any sheepmen to encroach on their
range, and they always killed all the sheep and sheep
men who dared to intrude, of course, the Warren Live
Stock had to stop building fence west and turn north'
before they got there.
When the ghastly skeletons of Rambolet Bill and
Cottswool Canvasback were found lying by this fence,
their bones picked clean by coyotes and vultures, ai
small book was picked up near them which proved to
be a diary of their adventures and last hours of suffer
ing. It will be remembered that Rambolet Bill and
Cottswool Canvasback couldn't write, but they had
drawn pictures in the book, and when we had gotten,
another sheepman who couldn't write to examine th m!
he read them just like print. The first picture was a
mountain with a lot of marks, which was interpreted
as the flood, and two men drawn crosswise layinp)
down was the sheepmen being washed away. The
next picture was a wire fence with twTo men clinging
to it. He said that was when they washed into the
fence. The next was another fence picture showing
two men walking along it. There was about fifty
pictures after this one, but they always had a sect i OB
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. §7
of a wire fence in them. Several pictures in the front
part of the book showed the two men eating jackrab-
bits, but later on some of the pictures showed them
chasing a prairie dog, or trying to slip uj) on one, in
dicating that they couldn't find any more jackrabbits.
There was pictures of them chewing bits of their
clothes to get the sheep grease out of them. Then
there was pictures of them pointing to their mouths
and stomachs, finally in the last picture they were ii>
the act of eating a piece of paper with some writing on
it, which was probably the receipt for cooking 'jack-
rabbits. They probably had walked hundreds of miles
along this fence before they finally succumbed, and as
it was a country where they had herded large bands
of sheep the grass had become so exterminated that
no jackrabbits could live there, and consequently Ram-
bolet Bill and Cottswool Oanvasback had gradually
starved to death.
gg COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
Two guileless sheepmen lay sleeping on the side of a barren
hill,
One's name was Cottswool Canvasback, the other was Rambo-
bolet Bill.
They were dreaming, sweetly dreaming, the fore part of the
night
Of grazing their sheep on a homesteader's claim when he was
out of sight.
But hark! to the wind that's rising; 'tis coming fast and
warm;
Little recced the sleepers that it would do them harm;
But the roar was growing louder, as the pine trees bent and
shook,
And the birds were screaming loudly, "Beware of the warm
chinook."
When that hot blast struck their hut, built out of walls of snow,
That house turned into a river in a way that wasn't slow;
Washed off these dreaming sheepmen in the middle of the
night.
As the waters swept the dreamers away, what must have been
their fright,
Till tangled up in Warren's fence that's built o'er mountain
and vale,
They followed it the rest of their lives, winding o'er hill and
dale.
When found by the annual fence rider, they long since had
been dead,
Their bon^s picked clean by coyotes, with vultures hovering
o'erhead.
CHAPTER XIII.
GRAFTING.
One night while we were in Cheyenne we were
going from the dispatcher's office down to our way-
car, which was, as usual, about one mile from the
depot. The railroad company had quite a number of
police on duty in the yards to watch for strikers, there
having been a machinists' strike on for a long time.
No strikers had ever come around the railroad yards
nights or even interfered with any one at any time,
but a lot of fellows who wanted soft jobs as watch
men made the officials of the road think the strikers
were going to do something, and these night watch
men had. it seems, been looking for a long time for
some weak tramp to beat to death and then claim the
tramp was working in the interest of the strikers and
was about to injure " railroad property when those
awful sleuths caught him in the act and put his light
out. Thus they could get a fresh hold on their jobs.
However, they had been unable to catch a tramp, and
90 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
as they had to get somebody in order to hold their
jobs, they cornered Dillbery Ike, who had loitered be
hind the rest, and one of the valiant watchmen swip
ing him over the head with a six-shooter, scalped him
as clean as a Sioux Injun would have done it with a
scalping knife. Hearing Dillbery Ike's cries for help,
we went to his rescue, and none too soon, as the
watchman was still beating him. When we had got
a doctor for Dillbery, of course the first thing he asked
for was Ddllbery's scalp, so he could sew it on again.
But although we made a long search "for the scalp,
we only found a few bloody hairs, and undoubtedly
some hungry canine prowling around had ate it up.
However, the railroad company, after some parleying,
agreed to pay for having a new one grafted on, and
as grafting is the long suit of the Cheyenne doctors,
there was a general scramble for the job. ;Twas
finally agreed to divide the job amongst them, or
rather divide the space and the money. The doctors
immediately advertised for contributions of pieces of
scalp to graft on Dillbery' a head, but no one respond
ing they offered to buy some sections of scalp, and
this ad was responded to in a mysterious way by a
midnight visitor at each of their offices, with a small
Dillbery Ike c.s a fthipper,. . ,,
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK, 93
piece of very close shaven fresh scalp, which the vis
itor (who was a woman in each case and so muffled up
that her features couldn't be seen) claimed she had
cut off Billy's or Johnny's or Jimmy's head after put
ting them under the influence of ether.
Each of the four doctors paid her $25 and hiked
off to plaster the piece of hide on Dillbery Ike's
cranium. The scalped place ha'd been carefully laid
off by a civil engineer, so each of the four doctors
knew his corner in the block, and without any courte
sies to one another they each trimmed down his $25
piece of hide to fit his corner and then fastened it on.
The grafting took at once and in a few days wras
healed over nicely, despite the fact it turned out that
the woman had taken a different piece of scalp off
from different pet animals which she kept. One was
a pet pig, another a pet goat, another a pet sheep and
the fourth a pet dog of the Newfoundland breed.
When the hair, wool and bristles all began to make
a luxuriant growth on Dillbery's new scalp, he seemed
to be more or less affected by the dispositions of each
animal from which a part of the wonderful scalp was
removed, and when the different colored hair, wool
and bristles had grown to a good length the effect of
94 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
this unique head covering was very striking to stran
gers. However, Dillbery ]ke was justly proud of it,
as the doctors had charged the Union Pacific f 1,200 for
this variegated scalp. Of course, no other cowpunch-
er could boast of such a valuable head covering.
There was one little white bare spot in the center
which was above timber line, as it were, where the
doctors, making these four corners, had each been a
little shy of material, and here was a little open, or
park, on the top of his head in which sheep ticks, hog
lice, dog fleas and goat vermin could have a common
ground to assemble and sun themselves in.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE FILE.
After learning the fate of the two sheepmen we
prepared to leave Cheyenne and catch up with our
stock train, which we figured would take us a day or
so. We interviewed the dispatcher, superintendent
and station agent at Cheyenne, asking each one of
them to wire down the road and see if they could lo
cate the speciail. Every one of them wired and th?
next day about noon the agent got word the stock
was at Egbert. That evening the superintendent got
a message that they was between Egbert and Pine
Bluffs. About midnight the dispatcher got a message
that they were hourly expected in Pine Bluffs, so we
started on to overtake them.
We had noticed with a great deal of anxiety that
the wrinkles had commenced to accumulate on our
cattle's horns, as a new wrinkle grows each year after
an animail is two years old, and we had been advised
by several cattlemen who had been in the habit of
95
96
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
taking their cattle by rail to market in place of driv
ing them, to procure files and rasps and remove these
wrinkles before we got to Omaha. So we secured a
lot of rasps and files at Cheyenne and had Jackdo car
ry them for us, and when we caught up with the train
we went to work to take off the sign of old age which
had come on our stock since shipping them, as the
Nebraska corn-raisers only want young stock to feed
When we first loaded our cattle we were informed
that they were a little bit too fat for the killers, Irit, rf
course, the next day, they was about four pounds too
thin for the killers, but too fat for the feeders. How
ever, by this time they were nothing but petrified
skeletons, and Dillbery Ike wanted to leave the
wrinkles on their horns 'and sell the entire 'outfit for
antiques. But the more we discussed it, the more
we made up our minds that as this railroad done a
large business hauling stock, the antique cattle mar
ket must be overstocked. So we finally concluded to
take off the wrinkles that had grown since we started
and sell the cattle on their merits. We arranged to
run two day shifts and one night shift of six hours
each and to commence up next the engine and work
back. So getting in the first car we climbed astride
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 97
the critters' necks and commenced to file. Day after
day, night after night, we kept at this wearisome
task, and when our files and rasps became worn we
sent Jackdo (who wouldn't work, but who didn't mind
tramping) to the nearest town to get fresh files and
rasps. Sometimes we became discouraged when we
saw the wrinkles starting again that we had removed
to commence with, and our eyes filled with bitter
tears when Ave thought how much better it would
have been to have trailed our cattle through, or even
sold them to some Nebraska sucker and taken his
draft on a commission house. Dillbery Ike, who had
some education, made up a song for us to sing while
we were at work, called "The Song of the File,1' and
one of us would sing a verse and then all join in the
chorus, and this song helped us a great deal. Here
it is:
98
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
Oh! we are a bunch of cattlemen,
Going to market with our stock again,
And, as we ship over a road that's bum,
The days they go and the days they come.
Chorus.
Cheer up, brave hearts, and list to the file ^
As the wrinkles keep dropping below in a pile;
Never fear, my boys, we have plenty of time
To remove old age that's known by the wrinkle sign.
And as time goes by the wrinkles grow
On the horns j£ the cattl, in a train that's slow;
For every year after the second a cow that 's born
Another wrinkle grows upon each horn.
While we have a job that isn't so soft,
A-trying to rasp these wrinkles off,
To make their horns look smooth and bright,
We file all day and we file all night.
And as we file, we whistle and sing,
Trying to make it a jolly thing,
To remove the wrinkles that are sure to grow
On the horns of cattle with a road that's slow.
Astride their necks, we sit and file,
And through our tears, we try to smile.
Cheer up, brave hearts, cheer up, we say again,
As we camp along with the bum stock train.
CHAPTER XV.
THE CATTLE STAMPEDE.
The boys all got to talking about stampedes one
night while we were waiting on a sidetrack, and I re
lated to them an experience of my own.
A number of years ago, I bought some 15,000
steers in southern Arizona, and shipping them to Den
ver, Colorado, divided them up into herds of about
3,500 head in each herd and started to trail these
herds north to Wyoming. About 4,000 head of these
steers were from 4 to 10 years old and were known as
outlaws in the country wrhere they were raised. These
steers were almost as wild as elk; very tall, thin, raw-
boned, high-headed, with enormous horns and long
tails, and as there \vas great danger of their stamped
ing at any time, I put all of them in a herd by them
selves and went with that herd myself. I worried
about these steers night and day, and talked to my
men incessantly about how to handle them and what
to do if the cattle stampeded. There is only one thing
99
100 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
to do in case of a stampede of a herd of wild range
steers, and that is for every cowboy to get in the lead
of them with a good horse and keep in the lead with
out trying to stop them, but gradually turn them
and get them to running in a circle, or "milling," as
it is commonly known among cowboys. Cattle on the
trail never stampede but one way, and that is back
the way they come from. If you can succeed in turn
ing them in some other direction, you can gradually
bring them to a stop. These long-legged range steers
can run almost as fast as the swiftest horse.
So we kept our best and swiftesf Worses saddled
all night, ready to spring onto in case the herd ev.er
got started. We were driving in a northerly direction
all the time, and every night took the herd fully a
mile north of the mess wagon camp before we bedded
them down. I had fourteen men in the outfit, half of
them old-time cowboys and the other half would-be
cowboys; several of them what we used to call tender-
feet.
Amongst the green thands at trailing cattle was
the nephew of my eastern partner, a college-bred boy,
with blonde, curly hair and a face as merry as a girl's
at a May day picnic. The boys all called him Curley.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. IQI
He was as lovable a lad as I ever met, but positively
refused to take this enormous herd of old outlaw,
long-horned steers as a serious proposition.
We had always four men on night herd at a time,
each gang standing night guard three hours, when
they were relieved by another four men. The first
gang was 8 to 11 o'clock in the evening; the next 11
till 2 and the last guard stood from 2 till daylight, and
then started the herd traveling north again. I kept
two old cow hands and two green ones on each guard,
and had been nine days on the trail; had traveled
about a hundred miles without any mishap. We had
bright .moonlight nights. The grass was fine, being
about the first of June, and I was beginning to feel a
little easier, when one night we were camped on a
high rolling prairie near the Wyoming line.
Curley and three other men had just went on
guard at 2 o'clock in the morning. The moon was shin
ing bright as day. Everything was as still as could
be, the old long-horned outlaws all lying down sleep
ing, probably dreaming of the cactus-covered hillsides
in their old home in Arizona. Curley was on the north
eide of the herd and rolling a cigarette. He forgot
my oft-repeated injunction not to light a parlor match
102
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
around the herd in the night, but scratched one on
his saddle horn. When that match popped, there was
a roar like an earthquake and the herd was gone in
the wink of an eyelid; just two minutes from the time
Curley scratched his match, that wild, crazy avalanche
of cattle was running over that camp outfit, two and
three deep. But at that first roar, I was out of my
blankets, running for my boss and hollering, •'Come
on, boys!" with a rising inflection on "boys." The old
hands knew What was coming and were on their
bosses soon as I was, but the tenderfeet stampeded
their own bosses trying to get onto them, and their
bosses all got away except two, and when their riders
finally got on them, they took across the hills as fast
as they could go out the way of that horde of on
coming wild-eyed demons. The men who lost their
bosses crawled under the front end of the big heavy
roundup wagon, and for a wonder the herd didn't over
turn the wagon, although lots of them broke their
horns on it and some broke their legs. When I lit in
the saddle, and looked around, five of my cowboys was
lined up side of me, their bosses jumping and snort
ing, for them old cow bosses scented the danger and I
only had time to say, "Keep cool; hold your bosses'
The Stampede
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 105
heads high, boys, and keep two hundred yards ahead
of the cattle for at least five miles. If your hoss gives
out try to get off to one side," and then that earth
quake (as one of the tenderfeet called it when he first
woke up) was at our heels, and we were riding for our
own lives as well as to stop the cattle, because if a
hoss stumbled or stepped in a badger hoile there
wouldn't be even a semblance of his rider left after
those thousands of hoofs had got through pounding
him. I was riding a Blackhawk Morgan hoss with
wonderful speed and endurance and very sure footed,
which was the main thing, and I allowed the herd to
get up in a hundred yards of me, and seeing the coun
try was comparatively smooth ahead of me, I turned
in my saddle and looked back at the cattle.
I had been in stampedes before, but nothing like
this. The cattle were runningtheir best, -all the crip
ples and drags in the lead, their sore feet forgotten.
Every steer had his long tail in the air, and those 4,000
waving tails made me think of a sudden whirlwind in
a forest of young timber. Once in a while I could see
a little ripple in the sea of shining backs, and I knew
a steer had stumbled and gone down and his fellows
had tramped him into mincemeat as they went over
106 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
him. They were constantly breaking one another's
big horns as they clashed and crowded together, and
1 could hear their horns striking and breaking above
the roar of the thou sands of hoofs on the hard ground.
As my eyes moved over the herd and to one side,
I caught sight of a rider on a grey hoss, using whip
and spur, trying to get ahead of the cattle, and I
knew at a glance it was Ourley, as none of the other
boys had a grey hoss that night. I could see he was
slowly forging ahead and getting nearer "the lead of
the cattle all the time.
We had gone about ten or twelve nuiiles and had
left the smooth, rolling prairie behind us and were
thundering down the divide on to the broken country
along Crow Creek. Now, cattle on a stampede all fol
low the leaders, and after I and my half dozen cow
boys had ridden in the lead of that herd for twelve or
fifteen miles, gradually letting the cattle get close to
us, but none by us, why we were the leaders, and when
we began to strike tn~at rough ground, my cowboys
gradually veered to the left, so as to lead the herd
away from the creek and onto the divide again. But
Curley was on the ileft side of the herd. None of the
other boys had noticed him, and when the herd began
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 107
to swerve to the left, it put him on the inside of a
quarter moon of rushing, roaring cattle. I hollered
and screamed to (my men, but in that awful roar could
hardly hear my own voice, let alone make my men
hear me, and just then we Avent down into a steep
gulch and up the other side. I saw the hind end of
the herd sweep across from their course of the
quarter circle towards the leaders, saw the grey hoss
and Curley go over the bank of the gulch out of sight
amidst hordes of struggling animals. But as I looked
back at the cattle swarming up the other bank I
looked in vain for that grey hoss and his curly-haired
rider. Sick at heart, I thought of what was lying in
the bottom of that gulch in place of the sunny-haired
boy my partner had sent out to me, and I wished that
eighty thousand dollars worth of hides, horns and
hoofs that was still thundering on behind was back
in the cactus forests of Arizona,
As the herd swung out on the divide they split in
two, part of them turning to the left, making a circle
of about two miles, myself and two cowboys heading
this part of the herd and keeping them running in a
smaller circle all the time till they stopped. The other
part of the hertf kept on for about five miles further,
108 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
then they split in two, and the cowboys divided and
finally got both bunches stopped; not, however, till one
bunch had gone about ten miles beyond where I had
got the first herd quieted.
It was now broad daylight, and I started back to
the gulch where poor^Curley had disappeared. When
I came in sight of the gulch, I saw his dead boss,
trampled into an unrecognizable mass, lying in the
bottom of the gulch, but could see nothifng of Curley.
While gazing up and down the gulch which was over
hung with rocks in places, I heard someone whistling
a tune, and looking in that direction, saw Curley with
his back to me, percKed on a rock whistling as merry
as a bird.
He told me that as his boss tumbled over the
•
rocky bank, he fell off into a crevice, and crawling
back under the rocks, he watched the procession go
over him.
We were three days getting the cattle back to
where they had started and two hundred of them were
dead or had to be shot, and hundreds had their horns
broken off and hanging by slivers. It had cost in dead
cattle and damage to the living at leas! .ftflJOOO. But
I was so glad to get that curly-beaded scamp back
alive and unhurt I never said a word to bim.
CHAPTER XVI.
CATCHING A MAVERICK.
One day while waiting for a gravel train going
west, we all got to talking about catching mavericks.
Eatumup Jake said he'd always been too honest to go
out on the range and hunt mavericks; Dillbery ike
said he was too, but he wasn't so durned honest as
to let a maverick chase him' out oTTitS own corral,
and they asked me wrhat I thought about branding
mavericks. I told them that I thought it was a bad
practice to hunt mavericks all the time, but whenever
a maverick came around hunting mie up, I generally
built a fire and put a branding iron in to heat. But
I toild them I would always remember one maverick I
had an adventure with, and after they had all prom
ised me not to ever tell the story to any one, I told
them the following:
One hot day in the spring of '84 I sfarted across
the hills from my ranch fo town, fifteen" miles awray.
I generally had a good rtiata on my saddle, but this
109
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
day, for some reason, I didn't take anything but a
piece of rope fifteen feet long. I didn't expect to meet
any mavericks, as it was just after the spring round
up and there wasn't a chance in a hundred of seeing
one. My way was across a high, broken country,
without a house or a ranch the entire distance. There
was bunches of cattle and horses everywhere eating
the luxuriant grass, drinking out of the clear running
streams of mountain water or lying down too full to
cat or drink any more. I was riding one of my best
hosses, as everybody did when they went to town; had
my high-heeled boots blacked till you could see your
face in them; was wearing a brand-new |12 Stetson
hat that was made to order; had on a pair of new Cal
ifornia pants — they were sort of a lavender color with
checks an inch square, and I was more than proud of
them. I had on a white silk shirt and a blue silk
handkerchief round my neck, a red silk vest with
black polka dots on it. but didn't have any coat to
match this brilliant costume, so was in my shirt
sleeves.
I rode along, setting kind of side ways, my hat
cocked over my ear, a-looking down at myself from
time to time, and I was about the most self-satisfied
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. m
cowpuncher ever was, didn't envy a saloon-keeper in
the territory, and saloon-beepers (had as much influ
ence in Wyoming them days as a sheepman does now,
and that 's saying all you can say, when it 's known
that the sheepmen to-day in Wyoming fill almost
every office, elective and appointive.
Well I had got about half way to town and was a-
studying 'bout a girl I bid goodbye to in the East fif
teen years before, and sort a-wishing she could see me
now, when all of a sudden I looked up and right
there, not fifty feet away, was a big, fat, ~black bull
maverick. He was about a year and a half old and
would weigh 800 pounds. He was wild as an elk and
had given a loud snuff on seeing me, which had called
my attention to him. I immediately commenced mak
ing that short piece of rope into a lasso. There wasn't
much more than enough for the loop, But! knew old
Bill, the boss I was riding, could catch him on any
kind of ground, so throwed the spurs in and went sail
ing over the breaks and coolies after that wild bull
maverick. I soon caught up with him, but found it
amost impossible to throw the loop over his head
with such a short rope, as he dodged to one side or
the other every time I got in reach. However, I
8-
-Q2 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
finally got it over his horns just as he went over a
bank, but before L could take any Mallys, he jerked
the rope out of my hands and was gone with it.
Now I had got to pick up the rope, and as it only
dragged five or six feet behind him, I would have to
ride by him and grab the rope near his head as I went
by: but he was still on the dodge, and I made several
passes at it and missed. The bull was getting mad
by this time, and lowering his head and elevating his
tail he soon had me on the dodge. Whenever I wasn't
chasing the bull, he was cha'sing me. Thus we had it
up one gulch and down another. Many times I
grabbed the rope only to have it jerked out of my
fingers, but finally got a wrap around my saddle horn
and a knot tied. It never had occurred to me I could
n't throw him with that short rope till I was tied hard
and fast to him and riding down the gulch at break
neck speed with that blaclsT bull a close second.
We had been chasing each other now for over an
hour and my hoss was getting tired, but Mr. Bull
seemed to be fresher than ever. I had lost my new
Stetson hat early in the game, and, as we had soused
through a good many alkali mud-holes, I was spal-
*Wrapping rope arout.d the saddle horn.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
tered from head to foot with mud. My white silk
shirt and lavender-colored pants were a total wreck.
But something had got to be done, and watching the
bull till he was veering a little to the left of my hoss
I made a quick turn to the right, and stopping right
quick, turned Mr. Bull over on his back. Before he
could get up I was off and on top of him, had his tail
between his hind legs, my knees in his flank, and, as
every cowpuncher knows, I could hold him down.
My hoss was pulling on the rope same as any well-
trained cow hoss would, keeping the bull's head
stretched out, and there wasn't the least possible
show of him getting up; but as I didn't have any short
foot ropes to tie his feet with, I just had to set in his
flank and keep tight hold of his tail. Billy, my hoss,
had got hot and excited during the race and kept
surging on the rope more than was necessary. I kept
saying, "Whoa, Bill," but directly he give an extra
hard pull, the rope broke right at the bull's head,
and despite my nice tailk, Billy turned his back to me
and started across the hills for home. In vain I hol
lered, "Whoa, Bill; come, Billy," he never looked
around but once, and that was just as he disappeared
over the hill. He sort a-looked back for a moment,
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
as much as to say, "Well you wanted that darn little
black bull so bad, now you got him stay with him/'
and that, 's what I had to do. He was twice as hard
to hold now without any rope on his head, but I knew
if he ever got up, he would gore me to death, as there
wasn't a tree or rock to get behind.
It was about noon. The hot sun was pouring
down on my bare head and I was choking with thirst.
No one ever traveled that way but me. " Miles away
to any habitation, there I would have to stay in that
stooping position, holding on to that little black bull's
tail. I was young and strong, but my back began to
ache, my hand would cramp clasping that bull's tail
so tightly, but still T held on somehow, for I knew
certain death awaited me if I let go. A bunch of
cattle came along and circled around me with wide-
eyed astonishment, then trotted off; a couple of an
telope came running over the hill, and catching sight
of me in that ridiculous position, their curiosity over
came their timidity and they kept getting nearer and
nearer, till only a few rods away, the old buck ante
lope stopped and snuffed very loudly and stamped with
his fore feet, but, not being able to get any response
out of the black bull and me, finally left. Then a
Catching a tifdverick.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
silly jackrabbit came hopping up on three legs, and
after standing up several times on his hind legs as
high as possible and pulling his whiskers some, he
shook his big ears as much as to say, "It 's beyond
me," and he, too, left.
Just then the bull took a new fit of struggling
and I heard the loud buzz of a rattlesnake behind me.
I almost dropped my holt on the bull's tail then, but
I had acquired the habit of holding on to it by this
time, so glanced over my shoulder to see how far the
snake was from me. I discovered he was only about
ten feet behind me, coiled up and mad about some
thing. He was about four and a half feet long and big
around as <my wrist, and didn't seem to have any
notion of going around, but just 'laid there colled up,
and every time the bull or me moved, would begin to
rattle and draw his head back and forth, run out his
tongue and act disagreeable. Several times he started
to uncoil and crawl in my direction, but I stirred up
the bull to floundening around and bluffed the snake
out of coming any closer. Still he seemed to like our
company, and finaly went to sleep; but every time I
and the bull got to threshing around, he would drow
sily sound his rattle, as much as to say, "I am still
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
here; don't crowd me any." It was now about two
o'clock in the afternoon. I felt a kind of a goneness
in my stomach, but my thirst was something awful,
and in my mind's eye I could see the boys in town
setting in the card-room of the saloon around the
poker tables behind stacks of red, white and blue
chips, drinking Scotch highballs, while I was out on
that high mesa dying of thirst and holding down a
little black bull maverick with nothing for company
but that old fat rattlesnake who insisted on staying
there to see how the bull and I come out.
I hoped against hope that when old Billy arrived
at the ranch some one would start back with him to
hunt me up, but I remembered that most everybody
at the ranch had gone up in the mountains trout fish
ing and woudn't be back till night, and then I won
dered which would live the longest, me or the bull,
and I thought about slipping away from him while
he was quiet; but the moment I would loosen up on
his tail he would commence threshing around trying
to get up, still I kept fooling with him. I 'd loosen up
on his tail, and then when he tried to get up, throw
him back; so pretty soon he didn't pay any attention
when I loosened up, and I thought I would try a sneak.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
However, in order to make him think I still had hold
of hds tail, I tied the end of it into a hard knot.
I looked around for his snakeship, as I had got to
sneak back towards him, but he was sound asleep,
and as the bull was pretty quiet, I sized up the coun
try back of me and spied a gulch with steep broken
banks about one hundred and fifty yards away, and
made up my mind that that was the place to get to.
So slipping by the snake I made the star run of my
life for that gulch.
I had run about fifty feet when that bull first
realized some of his company was missing, and jump
ing to his feet looked around and caught sight of me,
and giving a snuff that I can hear in nay dreams to
this day, he was after me. Talk about running. I
remember a ja^krabbit 'jumped up in front of me, but
I hollered to him to get out of the way. The bull
caught up before I quite got to the gulch, but hesi
tated for a moment where to put his horns, and sort
a-throwed his head up and down for a time or two,
like he was practicing — kind a-getting a swing like
throwing a hammer. When he got Ms heck to work
ing good, biff! he took me and I went sailing through
the air, but when I come down it was on the bank of
120 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
the gulch, and before he could pick me up again I
was over and under that bank. It was about fifteen
feet to the bottom and straight up and down, but
there was a little shelf of hard dirt on the side, and
I caught on there and was safe. He had' gone clear
over me into the gulch, but was up and bawling and
jawing around in a minute. However, he couldn't get
up to me. so looked around, found a trail leading out
of the gulch, and went up on top, then come around
and looked down at me. He was mad clear through;
went and hunted up the old rattlesnake, and after
pawing and bellowing around him, charged him and
got bit on the nose. Then he saw my Stetson hat,
and giving a roar, went after it, and putting his horn
through it, went off across the hills mad clear
through, full of snake poison, with my Stetson hat on
one horn, and that was the last I saw of the little
black bull.
CHAPTER XVII.
STEALING CRAZY HEAD'S WAR PONIES.
We all got to talking about loolung over your
shoulder, and the boys asked me if I had ever had to
look over my shoulder, and I related to thean the fol
lowing incident in my career on the plains:
In the year 1880-81 the first cattle herds were
driven to northern Wyoming and turned loose along
Tongue River, Powder River and the Little Horn, and
while the Injuns in southern Montana at that time
were not very hostile, yet they kept stealing our
hosses and butchering the cattlemen's cattle and com
mitting all kinds of petty crimes, and once in a while
when they found a white man riding aloneln the hills
didn't scruple to murder him. But stealing hosses
was their long suit. Now, I only had four hosses at
that time, and was working out by the month for a
cow outfit at |50 a month and board. I thought
everything of these four hosses, as they was the sum
total of my possessions except about f 500 I had due
121
122 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
me in wages. And when these hosses was missing
one day and a hunter reported seeing a band of Injuns
prowling around, I was pretty well worked up. A
good many of the settlers in northern Wyoming at that
time had had their hosses stolen by the Injuns, but
when they found them in the Injuns' possession were
unable to get them, as the Injuns refused to give them
up and wrould drive the white men out of their camp. I
had always made a loud talk when these men related
their experiences, that if ever any Injuns stole my
hosses and I found them in their possession I 'd take
them hosses and no Injun would drive me a step in
any direction. So when a freighter reported seeing
some Injuns on the Little Horn River, going north
with my hosses, the cowboys all said now was the
time for me to make good all my loud talk about tak
ing my hosses away from the Injuns if they stole
them.
I had considerable trouble to get anyone to go with
me, but finally persuaded a boy by the name of King,
who was about 17 years old at the time, and getting
three hosses from the outfit I worked for, which was
the PK cattle outfit, we packed one of the hosses with
bed and grub, and riding the other two we struck out
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 123
north down the Little Horn River. After traveling
along the river for several days we crosseeTand went
over on the Big Horn River, and keeping up this river
to the T>ig Horn Mountains, came across about two
hundred Injuns camped at the base of the mountains.
As soon as we got in sight of their cayuses we saw
two of my bosses running with theirs. When we rode
into their camp they appeared friendly enough till
they found out we wanted these two bosses. I could
talk the Injun language, and after making one of the
petty chiefs of their ftand a few little presents, King
and I went out to catch our two bosses, but they had
been running with the Injuns' cayuses so long we
couldn't get near them. Finally we tried to drive
them away from the Injuns' cayuses, but about twen
ty Injuns had come up to us and told us to let the
bosses alone and go away. They had their guns, and
While they didn't point their guns at me, they kept
sticking them against King's breast and threatening
to shoot if he didn't go at once. I now offered to pay
them if they would catch the two bosses. Even7 In
jun wanted from four to twenty dollars apiece. As
there were about twenty Injuns it amounted to about
|300. The Injuns rounded up all their cayuses, and
124 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
getting them in a safe corral, caught my Iwo bosses.
1 now instructed King to take the saddle off the
boss he was riding and tie the boss to the pack-boss,
and I also done this w.ith the one I was riding. We
then turned them loose and the three animals imme
diately started south towards Wyoming. I then told
King to saddle one of the bosses that the Injuns bad
caught for us, but pay no attention to the Injun who
was holding it. I saddled the other animal; two In
juns each bad a rope on the boss's neck. When we got
them saddled and bridled, I told King to get on his,
and I got on mine. The Injuns were standing all
around us as well as the squaws and papooses, but
they had all laid down their guns. I pulled my Win
chester out of the saddle scabbard and throwing a
shell in the barrel, I told King to pull his sixshooter
and cut the Injun's rope that was on bis boss's neck.
He said: "The Injuns will shoot me if I cTo." I said:
UI will shoot you right now if you don't." Although
he was very much excited, he managed to pull his
knife out of his belt and cut the Injun's rope, and im
mediately started off after the pack-boss and saddle
bosses on a dead run. The Injuns all set up a howl,
and the squaws began bringing the guns out of the
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 125
teepees. But I kept throwing my Winchester down
on first one and then another. The Injuns kept up an
awful din hollering to one another, all the squaws
yelling to kill the masacheta (white man). But I
could hear the chiefs voice above them all, telling
them not to shoot me. The two Injuns holding the
hoss having dropped their ropes, I suddenly threw
the. ropes off my boss's neck and reaching down grab
bed a papoose, five or six years old, and throwing it
up in the saddle with me, galloped away. I knew they
wouldn't shoot at me' as long as I held to that pa
poose. But it was like holding on to a full-grown
wildcat. I was carrying my Winchester in one hand,
guiding my hoss with the same hand and trying to
hold on to that little biting, scratching, hair -pu Ming,
shrieking papoose with the other. My hoss was
bounding over rocks and sage brush. But he was a
magnificent animal and in less time than it takes to
tell I was out of gunshot, and then I dropped that
Shrieking little Injun devil on a sage bush and gal
loped off in the gathering darkness.
I soon caught up with King. We traveled all
night and the next day. Putting him on the trail to
Wyoming with all the hosses but the one I was rid-
126 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
ing, I turned north again to find tlie other two hosses.
That day I met a Piegan Injun that I was acquainted
with, and he told me old Crazy Head's band was
camped on the Yellowstone River, and that they had
my other two hosses and tried to sell them to him.
I rode into Fort Ouster and told my story to Jim
Dunleavy, the post scout and interpreter, and wanted
him to introduce me to the post commancTer and get
me a permit to be on the reservation. But the post
commander refused to see me and sent word for me
to get off the reservation, or he would put me in the
guard house. But I struck out through the hills
north, and that afternoon came in sight of Crazy
Head's camp. I found an Injun boy herding a large
bunch of cayuses about a mile from camp, with my
two hosses in the bunch. I rode into the herd and had
my hosses roped and tied together before the Injun
had recovered from his surprise, and started back
south.
But now a neiv idea took possession of me. Why
not steal some Indian cayuses and get even? There
was a stage line running through the reservation
them days, and I knew the stock tender at the stage
ranch, fifteen miles from Fort Custer, at the Fort
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 127
Cus-ter battle-ground. So waiting till dark I went
there, and getting something to eat and leaving the
two bosses, I started back to Crazy Head's camp. It
was a bright, moonlight night and I found fhe Injuns1
cayuses grazing in the same place. Looking around
cautiously I discovered two fine-looking, coal black
cayuses grazing by themselves about two hundred
yards from the main bundh. Slipping up close to
them I threw my rawhide rope over one of them, and,
as he was perfecty gentle, started to lead him to a
little patch of timber, intending to hobble him and
come back and get his mate. But as soon as I started
to lead him off, bis mate followed him, so I just kept
going till I got to the stage station, twenty miles
from there, about 3 o'clock in the morning. Getting
a bite to eat from the old stock tender and showing
him the two cayuses I had stole, he told me he knew
the cayuses and that they were old Crazy Head's war
ponies.
I had been in the saddle now for twenty-four
hours without any rest, but dare not stop a moment,
for I knew the Injuns and troops both would be after
me as soon as Crazy Head missed his ponies. So
necking the two to my other two 'bosses I started for
128 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
Wyoming, ninety miles away. The Little Horn River
was very high, swimming a hoss from bank to bank,
and the stage hadn't been able to get through for
some time. The recent rains made the ground soft,
and I knew the Injuns would have no trouble track
ing me. But they wouldn't miss the ponies till 6
o'clock in the morning, so I would (have twenty miles
the start and "certainly three hours of time. But there
was the danger of meeting other Ii(funs who would
know Crazy Head's ponies, and I might meet some
scouting soldiers and have to give an account of my
self, not having any permit. I didn't mind swimming
the Little Horn River, if I hadn't the bosses to drive,
but it 's hard work for a hoss to swim in a swift cur
rent where the waves out about the middle are run
ning big and high, as they do in mountain streams, a^d
drive some loose bosses. But I made the bosses all
plunge in and started for the other shore, two hun
dred yards away. They all swam like ducks at first
crossing, but I would have to swim the river seyen
times if I kept the valley, and knew I would lose time
if I went through the hills. So I kepf on in a tireless
lope, mile after mile, and all the time looking back
over my shoulder.
"Looking Over My Shoulder.'
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 131
Now I knew the Injuns couldn't be in twenty
miles of me, but nevertheless I kept looking over my
shoulder to make sure, arid I looked ahead, and every
moving bush along the stream looked like a soldier
or an Injun, and every jackrabbit that jumped up
side the road, every sage hen that flew out the grass
and startled my bosses nearly made me jump out of
my skin. Everything that moved in the distance
looked like old Crazy Head to me. Talk about looking
over your shoulder, boys; why, my neck got in the
shape of a corkscrew. Then I came to another cross
ing of the river. I never stopped to look at the high
rolling black waters, but plunged my bosses in and
struck out for the other side. I again made it in
safety, and stopping just long enough to tighten my
saddle cinches, took another look over my shoulder
and hit that lope again and made up my mind I
wouldn't be caught. But supposing 1 was caught,
what kind of a story could I tell? And so I tried to
figure out a defense for being found with them two
black bosses. I couldn't think of anything or any
story but what looked fishy and showed I was a thief,
and it seemed as if every one else would know it. I
remember after I became an officer of the law, several
132 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
years after this event happened, I caught a poor devil
skinning a beef one day that didn't belong to him, and
as I rode up on him and told him to turn the beef over
so I could see the brand, he dropped his skinning knife
and looking up at me with guilt and terror in his face,
he says, "You know how it is yourself.'' And I said,
"Yes, Bill, I know how7 it is. I was a thief once, but
the people are paying me now to uphold the law. Be
sides I stole Injun bosses and you are stealing white
men's beef." And then at the memory of my ride on
the Little Horn that day I looked over my shoulder
again, and when I looked back for Bill he was gone,
and somehow I was kind of glad, for I had a fellow
feeling for him.
But to return to my story. When I had swum
the Little Horn the fourth time I was forty miles on
my journey, and while the iron grey Oregon boss I
was riding seemed as fresh as ever, the black Indian
ponies seemed to be getting tired. When I struck the
next ford on the river I was fifty miles on the way and
it was only 9 o'clock. I wras feeling pretty good. But
this time when we got out about the middle of the
river where the waves were high and rolling, one of
the Injun ponies stopped swimming and commenced
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 133
to float down stream with his nose in the water and
dragging the one he was necked to with Iiim. I
started after them and by a good deal of urging got
miy hoss alongside, and throwing my rope on them
finally towed them ashore. The pony laid in the shal
low' water at the shore for a long time, and I thought
he was dead, but he finally came to and got up. But
he was full of water and pretty groggy.
I found the other two, and getting them together
again started on, but knew I would have to take to
the hills now when I came to the river again, which
I did, and hadn't rode over five miles in the hills skirt
ing the river till, coming up on a high divide and look
ing down in the valley of the river, I saw a camp of
five or six hundred Injuns; but they didn't See me,
and I kept on till I came to Owl Creek, which empties
into the Little Horn, and it was bank full of cream-
colored, muddy water. The banks wrere steep and I
couldn't guess at the depth of the water, which was
of the consistency of gumbo soup. However, I drove
the hosses into it, first having untied them from one
another, as the buffalo trail going down into it was
very narrow. As each hoss plunged in he went com
pletely out of sight, and I couldn't guess how far he
134 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
went under water. But they all clambered up on the
other bank, and I see I had got to follow them, so
plunged in. As my hoss jumped off that high bank,
I grabbed my nose and under that yellow water we
went. It seemed like we never would find the bot
tom, but finally did, and came back to the surface
and scrambled up the bank. My fine buckskin shirt
and leggings made but a sorry appearance. My six-
shooter and holster were full of yellow mud the same
as my Winchester, and it took me an hour to clean
my guns and get that yellow mud off my hat and
clothes. But I had no more streams to cross, except
Tongue River, which is in Wyoming, and I crossed it
a little after dark and got to my own ranch at 9
o'clock that evening, having ridden the same hoss one
hundred and six miles since 3 o'clock that morning.
That grey hoss is still living and is 30 years old
now, and is well known by all the old-timers in
northern Wyoming. I laid down and slept for twenty
hoars, and when I reported" at the roundup with my
four bosses and the two Injun ponies besides, I got a
hearty handshake all around. The boys made up a pot
of a hundred dollars and gave it to me for the Injun
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. -^35
ponies, and then played a game of freeze-out to see
who should have them.
I've never had the least inclination to look over
my shoulder since.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CATTLE QUEEN'S GHOST.
AVhen darkness overshadows a lone cow ranch, wild and drear,
One's nerves they get a-trembling in a way that seems so queer;
AVhen you fed the spirits round you, 'tis idle then to boast
You don't believe those stories you 've heard about the ghosts.
One dark, rainy evening while we were waiting
on a sidetrack the boys insisted I should tell them
some adventure of mine. So after considerable urg
ing I told them an actual experience I had, that has
always convinced me that murdered people's ghosts
come back and haunt the place they were murdered in.
Twenty years ago Jerry Wilson was known as the
cattle king of the Platte River. His cattle roamed
for hundreds of miles up and down the main river and
all its tributaries, and, as the cowboys used to say, no
one man could count them even if they was strung
out, cause he couldn't count high enough.
Jerry had a beautiful wife and two lovely chil
dren, a boy and a girl, and for years he and his family
136
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETtiACK. 137
had no settled place to live, but went around amongst
his different ranches, staying awhile at each^one, the
children being kept in school in Chicago, except in the
summer time when they came West to stay on some
cattle ranch with their parents. Finally Jerry Wilson
bought a new ranch up in the south part of South Da
kota, on Battle Creek, and stocking it up with regis
tered cattle and fine horses, built a fine house, fur
nished it very expensively and settled on this ranch
for their home. He built magnificent barns that were
the talk of the whole country, and spent a small for
tune in building up and beautifying this ranch. But
one day Jerry was riding his horse after a cow on a
hard run. The horse stepped in a badger hole and fell
on top of him, crushing in his ribs and otherwise in
juring him so he only lived long enough to be carried
to the house and bid his wife and children goodbye
before he died.
Mrs. Wilson mourned for Jerry a long time, but
the 'care of her two children and the increasing cattle
herds occupied her mind and time to such an extent
that her grief had settled into a quiet sadness, when
a young man from New York City, who had been dis
carded from home by his family for his profligate ex-
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
cesses, came to Battle Creek, and stopping at Mrs.
Wilson's ranch was (as is the custom at all cattle
ranches in the West) made welcome to stay as long as
he wanted to. At this time Jerry Wilson had been dea 1
seven years. His daughter, who was the oldest of the
two children, had married a prominent lawyer of Chi
cago. The son was in school in the same city, and
Mrs. Wilson made her home at the Battle Creek
ranch. She had successfully carried on all her cattle
enterprises and was known all over the West as the
Cattle Queen. She was about 40 years old at this
time, still a beautiful woman and had received many
offers of marriage, but had rejected them all till this
graceless and unprincipled scoundrel from New York,
whose name was Clayton Allen, came to the ranch.
Mrs. Wilson had arrived at the age where a great
many women begin to hanker for a young man's soci
ety and attention, and was soon violently in love with
Clayton Allen; and he, seeing a chance to get hold of
large sums of money to gamble and go on sprees with,
and knowing he could never hope to get any more from
his family, laid siege to the Cattle Queen's heart and
herds with all the wiles he was capable of.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK
To make the story short, Mrs. Wilson married this
worse than scamp arid learned too late to regret her
mistake. He persuaded her first to sell all her great
cattle herds and ranches and invest all the money in
bonds, which she did, keeping only the ranch and
blooded cattle on Battle Creek. He now persuaded
her to go to New York City with him, and soon as they
armed he joined his old gang of profligates and spent
his nights with gay men and women, only coming to see
her when his money was exhausted, and then only
long enough to get more money. In vain she plead
with him. Finally, in sorrow and grief, not having
seen him for several days, she took the train for the
West and returned alone to her old Battle Creek home.
She had been home about a month, staying in her
room alone most of the time, weeping and crying,
when one stormy, black night Clayton Allen returned
about 10 o'clock. He immediately went to his wife's
rooms. The servants heard loud talking and angry
words between them for some time, and apparently he
was demanding money and she was refusing to give
him any. There was a large hall that ran through the
center of the house, dividing the building its entire
length. The servants had their rooms and the dining-
140 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
room was on the west side of this hall, and the Cattle
Queen had her parlors and sleeping apartments on the
other side. About 11 o'clock the servants heard their
mistress walking up and down this hall, crying and
moaning, but on opening their door that led into the
hall found she had gone back into her rooms, but Clay
ton Allen came in the hall just then and asked the
housekeeper to bring a bottle of wine, as her mistress
was ill and wanted some. The wine was brought, and
Clayton Allen taking it out of her hand at the door
closed the door in her face, telling her if she was
wanted he would call her. Thirty minutes later the
housekeeper heard her mistress scream for help in the
hall, and rushing in found her lying on the floor in vio
lent spasms, and picking her up carried her to the bed,
only to see her die the next moment. The death-
stricken woman only spoke once as she was being car
ried to the bed. She whispered in the housekeeper's
ear, "Mr. Allen has poisoned me."
All of the Cattle Queen's money and bonds were
kept in a portable safe and where she kept the keys
hidden no one knew. But at the funeral the lawyer
from Chicago, who, it will be remembered, married
Jerry Wilson's daughter, appeared an the scene, and
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 141
after a consulation with the housekeeper and cowboys
at the ranch, Clayton Allen disappeared, in fact the
cowboys kidnapped him and kept him guarded in an
old dugout for several days, and when they let him go
the lawyer had returned to Chicago. The safe disap
peared at the same time the lawyer left. So Clayton
Allen never got the enormous fortune that was in the
safe, but he got an administrator appointed, and the
administrator sold the herd of fine cattle at the Battle
Creek ranch to me, as also the use of the ranch for
one year, and the hay.
I tried to get some cowboys living in that part of
the country to take care of the ranch and cattle, but
all of them promptly refused, saying they wouldn't
stay there for any amount of money. Then I sent some
of my men from my Wyoming ranch, where I was liv
ing at the time, but in a week they came back, looking
shamefaced and sulky, but refusing to stay at the Bat
tle Creek ranch. After I questioned them pretty
sharply, they said they didn't believe much in ghosts,
but the Cattle Queen's ghost was too much for them.
They said from 10:30 o'clock in the evening till after
midnight she tramped up and down the hall in the
house, crying, screaming and groaning. They said the
142 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
doors leading from the hall to the Cattle Queen's
rooms kept opening and shutting, and they could hear
her talking and expostulating with someone and walk
ing back and forth from the hall to her rooms. I had
an old man working for me at the time who was al
most totally deaf, so I sent him and my own son,
Georgie, who was a manly, brave little fellow of 12
years, to the ranch. I had a talk with George before
they started and told him all about it. I said some
one was trying to buy the ranch cheap and was mak
ing these disturbances in order to give the ranch the
name of being haunted. But in a week I got a letter
from my boy, saying there might not be any such
things as ghosts, but there was certainly some kind of
carrying on in the hall of that old house every night,
and wanting me to come up. So taking my gun and
dog, I went up there to lay the ghost. My dog was
one of the largest specimens of the big blue Dane
breed and wasn't afraid of anything. And I said to
myself, "Now I will nail these parties and convince my
sou while he is young that there isn't any such things
as ghosts."
When I arrived at the ranch I found Deaf Bill, as
we called him, and my little boy had taken up their
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
quarters in the housekeeper's room, which was in the
extreme western portion of the house, which was built
without any upstairs, all the rooms being on the
ground floor. I went into the hall of the house and
found that the doors at each end of the hall were
locked from the inside, the keys being in the locks. I
next went into the parlors and sleeping apartment
used by the Cattle Queen in her lifetime and where she
met her tragic death, and found the curtains all down
and the windows closed with catch locks and screens
outside of the windows. Everything was apparently
in the same condition as when the rooms were fast
ened up after her death. Her books, and pictures, and
paintings, and wardrobe, and easy chairs were all
there, just as if she might have stepped out expecting
to be back at any moment.
I raised a window in her bedroom with some dif
ficulty, as I wanted to air the room a little, for I had
made up my mind to sleep in that bed that night in
those haunted rooms and convince superstitious peo
ple that I at least wasn't afraid of ghosts. I tried to
get my little boy to sleep in there with me, but with
pale cheeks and staring eyes and chattering teeth he
begged so hard that I didn't insist on it. I have al-
10-
144 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
ways been thankful that I didn't oblige him to stay
with me that dreadful night.
When I retired, about 8:30 that evening, with my
dog and gun into the haunted rooms I was very tired
from my long drive from the railroad, and setting the
lam]) on a stand at the head of the bed and putting
my six-shooter under my pillow I called my dog to
the side of the bed and laying down with my clothes
on, pulled some blankets over me, blew out the light
and immediately went to sleep.
How long I slept I know not, but was awakened
by my dog who was whining and licking my face.
When I first woke up I didn't remember for a moment
where T was, but the next moment heard a long-
drawn sigh across the room from me and could hear
somebody walking on the carpet. I bounded up and
had just lit the lamp when I heard someone open the
door from the parlor into the hall, and the next mo
inent heard an agonizing cry for help in the hall. I
now grabbed the lamp and my six-shooter and run
ning through the two parlors opened the hall door
suddenly, just after hearing the second cry for help,
and found that the hall was absolutely empty, the
doors at each end still being locked, and the door that
The Cattle Queen's Ghost.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SWETRAVK. 147
led into the servants' part of the house was also
locked from rny side of the hall, as I had locked it
when I went through to go to bed.
I went back into the two parlors and sleeping
apartments and searched them thoroughly, even the
wardrobes and clothes closets; tried all the windows,
but there was no trace of any living person's presence.
I then noticed my dog. He had crawled under the
bed and was lying there whining in the most abject
terror. I dragged him out and kicked him a couple
of times and told him to "watch them." But ap
parently he 'd had all the ghost business he cared
about, for tie "lay at my feet trembling and whining.
Disgusted with him, I laid down again, thinking I
would blow out the light, but be ready with my six-
shooter and some matches and catch whoever it was
prowling around that house, trying to hoodoo the
place.
I hadn't any more than laid down and blown out
the light before my dog was trying to get out of the
window back of my bed and whining piteously, and
then I heard a woman crying in the same room with
me and coming slowly towards my bed. I began to
get nervous, but scratched a match an<Fm the flicker-
148 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
ing light saw that the room was absolutely empty.
But as the match went out I heard someone run
through the parlor, open and shut the door into the
hall, and then heard a long despairing cry for help in
a woman's voice. I plucked up the little courage I had
left, ran to the hall door, opened it, and, lighting a
match, gazed up and down that empty hall, seeing
nothing or nobody. But as the match flickered and
went out there came a breath of cold air right in my
face, and then out of that black darkness, seemingly
right at my shoulder, arose that awful blood-curdling
cry for help again, and as my blood froze in my veins
my dog answered the cry with one of those long, de
spairing, drawn-out, mournful howls that dogs al
ways give as a premonition of death in the family. I
tottered back to the bed and vainly triel to light a
match, but was too nervous; then hearing that light
footstep and that rustling presence coming from the
hall through the parlors again towards the bed, I
dropped the match and pulling a lot of blankets and
bed covers over my head, I huddled down in a heap
and lay there trembling with fright and horror till
the next morning, when I heard my boy pounding or
the outside of the window and calling me to break
fast.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. j
No money would have induced me to have stayed
another night on that ranch, and getting an offer next
day for the cattle, I sold them. Five years after
wards I saw a man who had come by the Cattle
Queen's ranch and he said nobody lived there. The
house and barns were all out of repair; the fields
overgrown with weeds and an air of desolation to the
whole premises. The administrator had finally sold
the property for a song to an easterner and he moved
his family up there in the day time. He had to go
back to town that night for another load of his goods,
and when he returned to the ranch the next day, he
found his wife roaming around the fields a raving
maniac, and she is still in the asylum in South Dakota.
They say the Cattle Queen's ghost still keeps entire
possession, and will till her murderer is punished for
his crimes.
CHAPTER XIX.
PACKSADDLE JACK'S DEATH.
Facksaddle Jack had got tired of filing off
wrinkles one night, and, not being sleepy, walked on
ahead of the special till he came to a sidetrack. Ly
ing down there on the embankment he went to sleep
and caught a violent cold, from which he never re
covered. It settled into .a bad cough, and the wrinkle
dust seemed to aggravate it. Still he insisted on tak
ing his regular shift in spite of our remonstrances,
and the harder he coughed the harder he 'd file. As
the motion of filing and coughing is almost the same,
he seemed to make better time coughing when he was
filing, -and vice versa, but finally he became so weak
that he couldn't leave the way-car any more, and we
knew it would be a question of a very Tew days till
old Packsaddle would be swimming his bronk across
the River Styx. He became very quiet and thought
ful those days — seemed to do a heap of studying — and
150
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 151
one bright, sunny afternoon he called me over to his
corner of the way-car and told me he had a dream the
night before and it made such an impression on him
he wanted to tell it to me.
He said in the sfart of his dream he seemed to
be there on the way-car planning how much he could
possibly get out of what cattle was left when he got
to Omaha, when it seemed all of a sudden there was
a mighty well-dressed cowpuncher riding a big paint
hoss and leading another all saddled and bridled came
right up to him and says: "Packsaddle, come with
me." He said the stranger had on a big Stetson hat,
a mighty nice embroidered blue shirt, with red silk
necktie and whfte fur snaps, high-heeled boots, and
a pearl-handled .45 six-shooter. He was riding Fra-
zier's famous Pueblo saddle, had a split-eared bridle
and was rigged out every way that was proper. Said
he asked the stranger where he wanted him to go, and
the stranger told him they was going to a country
where there was no sheep or sheepmen; where the
grass grew every year; where the cattle was always
fat; where they drove their cattle to market place of
shipping them; where hard winters, horn flies, heel
flies and mange was unknown. He said the stranger
152 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
made such a square talk he finally made up his mind
to go with him, although he had some doubts, iiot
knowing the fellar. So getting on the led hoss, he
was kind of surprised to find the stirrups just his
length and the saddle just fitted him.
He said they started off kind a slow at first, in
a little jog trot, but directly got to loping, and finally,
after crossing a lot of mean-looking country, they
came to a big river and his guide told him they had
got to swim their horses across it as there was no
bridge. The stranger said lots of smart men had
tried to build a bridge across this river, and some peo
ple had deluded themselves into thinking they knew
of a bridge that they could get across on, but always
when it came to crossing they couldn't exactly locate
their bridge and had to plunge in with the crowd.
Packsaddle said it was a mighty ugly-looking stream.
It was wide and deep and looked like it was rising.
The water was black as ink and the waves out toward
the middle was rolling mountain high. Still there
appeared to be people all along the shore, a-plunging
in and starting for the other side. There was a large
crowd scattered along and most of them didn't seem
to see the river till tfiey fell off backwards into it.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 153
They would be laughing and cutting up, with their
backs to the river and all of a sudden get too close;
a little piece of bank would crumble off, and with a
despairing cry they disappeared beneath the black
waters and was seen no more. Some apparently
mighty rich people dashed up with carriages and ser
vants, and taking a sack of gold in each hand would
offer that to the river, thinking probably they would
n't have to cross if they offered it some gold. But of
all the people who came to the river, only a very few
ever turned back, although most of them seemed to
want to. He noticed a few that looked like farmers'
wives who came up, and soon as they saw the river a
smile of content came on their faces and they slid in
to the boiling water as naturally as though it was
wash-day. There was a class of men, too, who came
up with a determined look on their countenances, and
without the slightest hesitation plunged into the
awful stream and struck out for the other side. These
men all had cowboy hats on, and when Facksaddle
asked his guide who they were, he said they were cow
men who had been shipping their cattle to the Omaha
market, and their cattle had starved to death on the
stock-yard transfer waiting to be unloaded.
}54 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
Some there was that looked like pettifogging
lawyers and cheap politicians, who, when they arrived
at the river, flourished a handful of annual passes
over different lines, looking for a pass over the river,
but not getting it, turned back and wouldn't cross,
and the guide told Packsaddle that he guessed this
class of people never did cross, as they seemed to get
thicker every year.
Packsaddle said at first he kind of hated to cross
the river, as his guide said none ever returned, and
lie couldn't see the other bank very plainly, and was
in some doubt as to what kind of a country was on
the other side, although there was hundreds of big,
fat, red-faced looking men, dressed in black, standing
along the shore where he was, telling everybody what
kind of a country was on the other side. They dif
fered a great deal in their description of it, but that
was probably on account of what different people
wanted. All these black-robed, fat-looking rascals
got money out of the crowds and seemed to be doing
a thriving business by fixing up people to cross and
giving them encouragement. Most all oT them was
selling some kind of a patented life-preserver to wear
across the river, and each one shouted out the merits
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 155
of his life-preserver till their noise drowned the roar
of the river, and they tried to get lots of people to
cross the river that hadn't got anywhere near the
bank, just to sell them a life-preserver.
Packsaddle had noticed all these things as they
waited on the bank a moment, and then, he said,
they plunged their hosses in and started swimming
for the other side. The other bank, he said, was
sorter obscured by a mist or fog, and he didn't see
it till most there, but saw worlds of all kinds of peo
ple struggling in the black water of the river. Pack-
saddle said his hoss swam high in the water, never
wetting the seat of his saddle, and he felt just like he
was getting home from the general roundup. When
they struck the bank there was a bunch of cowboys
helped his hoss up the bank, gave him a hearty hand
shake all around and made him welcome every way.
When he turned around to thank his guide that gen
tleman had vanished, and the cowboys told him his
guide was a regular escort across the river for cow
men and cowboys; that most everybody had to get
across the best way they could, but cowmen and cow
boys always had a good hoss to ride and a guide; that
one reason for this was that they was most always
15fi COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
mighty good to a boss and thought a heap of them.
They said, though, that there was a lot of boats
with cushioned seats, and mighty comfortable, that
brought over the poor old widder women and farm
ers' wives and orphan children that had been abused
and starved till they just had to cross the river to get
away.
Packsaddle said it looked like a mighty good
country, lots of fat cattle, the finest hosses he ever
see, lots of cowboys laying under the megs-wagon
bucking monte and everybody winning, while the
roundup cooks had pots and bakeovens steaming with
roast veal, baking powder biscuits and cherry roll.
He said the boss of one of these outfits hired him on
the spot, and giving him a string of fat hosses to ride,
he picked out a black pinto with watch eyes and sad
dled him. Soon as he got on this hoss it started to
buck and he said he dreamed that hoss throwed him
so high that he saw he was coming down on the other
side of the river and it disgusted him so he woke up.
Packsaddle was very weak when he got through
telling his dream, and after taking a drink of water
he told me he thought we was all making a mistake
trying .to make money raising cattle. He 'd heard
' Jack';
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 159
about some place in the East where they just issued
stock, place of raising it, and that certainly must be
the place to go. He 'd heard of two or three men,
probably stockmen, who get together in New York
City, issued just millions of stock in one day, and he
was satisfied that was one thing made our stock so
cheap. For himself, he said, he liked that country he
saw in his dream and thought he 'd go there pretty
soon.
While we were talking the head brakeman came
in and said there was a cow dead in the car next the
engine. Packsaddle gave a gasp or two, and wrhen I
bent down over him he whispered he would go and
round her up; and when I looked at him again he
was dead.
Poor old Packsaddle! His early life had been
embittered by the discovery that a married woman
(whom he was in the habit of visiting in the absence
of her husband down in Texas where he was raised)
was untrue to him, and on meeting his rival at the
lady's house when her husband had gone to mill with
a grist of corn, he promptly filled his rival's anatomy
full of lead and came away in such a hurry that he
had to borrow a jack-mule and packsaddle from a man
11—
160 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK^.
that was prospecting, and rode this packsaddle to
Wyoming, and thus acquired the euphoniotnTname of
Packsaddle Jack. Although he was cheerful at times,
vet the memory of this woman's perfidy to him cast
a gloom of melancholy over his after life which was
never entirely dispelled. He never whined when he
lost his money bucking monte, always had a good sup
ply of tobacco and cigarette papers of his own and
never failed to pass them around. While he didn't
have mucffTove for women or Injuns, he loved a good
hoss and twice owed his life to his hoss when he had
a brush with Cheyenne Injuns in early days in north
ern Wyoming.
In a burst of confidence a few days before his
death he told me he had endured the worst kind of
hardships all his life. Winter and summer he had
lived on the plains and in the mountains without shel
ter, by open campfires, lots of times without much to
eat; had been Hunted and shot at for days and nights
by Cheyenne Injuns and never met with the privations
and discomforts he had on this trip. And as for slow
ness, he said he hired out one time in Texas when he
was a boy, to help drive 000 tame ducks across the
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. IQl
swamps of Louisiana to New Orleans to market; said
the trail was so narrow that only one duck at a time
could walk in it and sometimes no trail.at all, just
high grass and swamp brush, and yet they beat the
time of a cattle special away yonder.
162 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
THE SPIRIT OF PACKS ADDLE FOLLOWS THE DEAD
COW.
A stock train was waiting on a sidetrack one day
For gravel trains going some other way;
And as they waited the cattle grew old,
The stockmen grew haggard, the weather turned cold.
Their stomachs were empty, they were starving in fact,
While the stock train was waiting on its lonely sidetrack.
The reports said the markets were lower each day,
While the cattle grew thinner, the stockmen grew grey.
An old, grizzled cattleman spoke up at last,
Said he to the cowboys, "The time it is past,
To make mon out of cattle or get any dough,
This going to market by rail is a little too slow.
The railroad companies' tariffs get higher each year,
Their passes get fewer, till I very much fear
That ahead of our stock train we will have to walk
And wait for the cattle train to get up our stock.
Let us up and be doing and build a big merger trust,
And sell stock to suckers and let them go bust,
And for every steer issue millions of shares,
Let other people worry how to get railroad fares.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 153
We will issue bonds and certificates and thus raise our
stock;
In place of breeding Shorthorns we will make a swift talk;
Have our shares all printed in red, green and gold,
Sell them in the stock market to the young and the old.
And thus live by our cuteness and work of our brains
In place of starving on special stock trains.
We will have servants and waiters, the best in the land;
Governors and princes will give us the glad hand."
Just then the front brakeman stuck in his head,
Saying in the car next the engine an old cow was dead.
The old cowman gave a gasp and his spirit started to ride
To round up that old cow that in the front car had just
died.
CHAPTER XX.
A COWBOY ENOCH ARDEN.
Just after leaving North Platte, a train of immi
grants on their way from Oregon to Arkansas with
mule teams went by us, and we found they had a
letter for us from Eatumup Jake, who had returned
to Utah long ere this to look after his domestic mat
ters. One of the reasons why he abandoned us was
to return and look after the education of the twin
boys. However, the main reason wras that so many
reports had come to us from travelers in wagons and
sheepherders trailing sheep east, who had come
through our neighborhood in TTfaH, who said that all
our friends had given us up for dead, and Eatumup
Jake's wife, after putting on mourning for a proper
season, had begun to receive the attentions of a wid
ower, who was part Gentile bishop and part Mormon
elder.
As Jake was in a hurry when he started back
home, he bought him a cheap mustang in place of ac-
164
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. ^5
cepting the transportation which was urged on him
by all the principal officers of the railroad. He wrote
us that when he arrived on his ranch, his wife was
out in the hayfield putting up the third crop of alf
alfa. She was driving a bull rake, hauling it into the
stack, while one of the twins was driving the mower
and the other twin was doing the stacking. The half-
breed Mormon-Gentile bishop was standing round
with a cotton umbrella over his head, giving orders.
Jake's wife didn't know him at first, he had changed
so, but the bishop tumbled to him at once and started
to leave. However, Jake overtook him and persuaded
the bishop to turn aside into a little patch of timber
with him, and Jake getting the loan of the umbrella
in the painful interview that followed, he left most
of the steel ribs of the umbrella sticking in the anat
omy of the bishop, and then let the house dog, with
the help of the twin boys armed wiith their pitchforks,
assist the bishop clear off the ranch. This was so
much better than the old style of Enoch Arden busi
ness that Dillbery Ike made up a little rhyme about
it after we got Jake's letter, and here it is:
166 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
In Utah a cattleman got married in the glow of summer time,
Married a buxom Mormon girl, warm heart and manner kind.
And as the autumnal sun began to tinge things red,
He rounded up his catlte herd and to his bride he said:
"Come hither, dear, and kiss me and sit upon my lap,
For I am going a lengthy journey with my cows and steers
that's fat.
I 'm going on the Overland with a special, long stock train."
His bride, she wept and trembled and said, "I '11 ne'er see you
again.
0 Jake, my darling husband, give up this wrong design,
If you must go east with cattle, then try some other line,
For I have heard the stockmen talking and this is what they
say,
That if you drive your stock to market, that then there 's no
delay.
But if you get a special train, the railroad has a knack
Of letting you do your running when your train is on a side
track.
Some stockmen they have starved to death, and others grow so
old
That none knew them on their return, so frequent I 've been
told."
But Jake was young and hearty and his mind was full of zeal
To load his beef on a special and eastward take a spiel.
So he started with his steers and cows in the golden autumn
time.
Some neighbors also loaded theirs; the cattle were fat and fine.
But they run the stock on the Overland, so slow and awful bum
That stockmen get old and care-worn, staying with a special
run.
Their wives get weary waiting for hubby's coming home
And flirt with the nearest preacher who drops in when they 're
alone.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. iffi
Jake's wife was no exception, and, as time went by, she said,
"If Jake was alive I know he 'd come back; he surely must be
dead."
The good woman put on mourning and mourned for quite a
time,
But when thus she 'd done her duty, she suddenly ceased to
pine,
And when a Gentile-Mormon preacher dropped in one night to
tea
She put on her new dress of gingham and was chipper as she
could be;
Had him eating her pies and jellies that she knew how to make,
Had him sit in the easy rocker, without ever a thought of Jake.
And when the twins got drowsy, she packed them off to beQ,
Sat and played checkers with the bishop, just as though poor
Jake was dead.
When she jumped in the preacher's king- row, and had eight
men to his five,
She cared not (she was so excited) whether Jake was dead or
alive.
But at four o'clock next morning, she roused from sleep with
a scream;
She 'd seen Jake pushing behind a stock train in this early
morning dream.
And that evening when the lusty preacher came hanging
around again,
He got but a scanty welcome, for she thought of the special
train.
For a time she was silent and thoughtful, the dream an im
pression had made,
She could still see Jake pushing the special, as it slowly
climbed the grade.
Now wo know how the brave-hearted Jake with the stock train
had to stay,
168 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
How he camped by her side night times as on a sidetrack she
lay.
We know how he pushed so manfully whene'er she climbed a
hill,
Jn fact every one pushed, even the sheepmen, Cottswool and
Rambolet Bill;
How hunger and famine o'ertook them as slowly they crawled
along,
Their hearts almost broke with home-longing when Jackdo
sung a home song.
Eyes filled with tears that were unbidden, hearts o'erflowing
with pain —
No pen can paint their sorrow as they stayed with this special
stock train.
The passing of poor old Chuckwagon, who slowly starved to
death,
On account of the smell of the sheepmen, he couldn 't get his
breath ;
Their camping ahead of the special after they had buried
Chuck,
The washing away of the sheepmen, who surely were out of
luck.
They lived in snow huts on the mountain that's known as Sher
man Hill,
Where the last was seen of the sheepmen, Cottswool and Ram
bolet Bill;
Their arrival at the Windy City that's known as the dead
Shyann,
Some things about Burt and Warren and mayhap another man.
And now with their party diminished by old age, privation and
death,
They still kept plodding on eastward, what of the party was
left
Till Jake talking with wandering sheepmen, who had trailed
by his cabin home.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 159
Heard of the scandalous preacher, who came when his wife
was alone;
Heard of the nightly playing of checkers when the twins were
safely in bed,
About his wife all the neighbors were talking, her claiming
. that Jake was dead.
Finally through very home-sickness, he started to take the
back track,
And because he was in such a hurry, he rode all the way horse
back.
Arriving in sight of his meadows, a-waving fresh and green,
The alfalfa growing the highest that Jake had ever seen;
Two redheaded boys the hay were pitching; their mother was
hauling it in.
There was only one blot on the landscape that made Jake feel
like sin.
'Twas cur Gentile-Mormon bishop in the shade of his eld
umbreller.
With his long-tailed coat and eye glasses, he looked like Foxy
Quiller.
When Jake got close to the bishop he booted him out the field,
The house dog and twins, with their hayforks, finished making
the elder spiel.
Then Jake gathered his family around him, work was laid by
for the day,
They told all their joys and their sorrows, so I 've finished my
lay.
Moral.
The old-fashioned Enoch Arden story was a tale well told;
I can't approach or rival it, nor make a claim so bold.
But the ending of my cowboy Enoch Arden I really like the
best,
For he fired the interloper out the modern Arden nest.
CHAPTER XXI.
GRAND ISLAND.
Before we arrived at Grand Island we learned
from Jackdo that most cowmen unloaded their cattle
there and drove them back and forth through the
stockyards awhile in order to accumulate a large
amount of mud on them. This Grand Island mud is
very adhesive and once steers is thoroughly im
mersed in it the mud sticks to them for weeks and
helps very materially in their weight. A shipper told
him that before he stopped at Grand Island he used
to wonder what cattlemen meant by filling their cat
tle at Grand Island, but now he knew it was filling
their hair full of mud. Sometimies he said the mud
was a little too thick, kind of chunky and fell off, and
sometimes it had too much water in it and drained off,
more or less. But when it was mixed just right it
would settle into their hair like concrete cement.
It's quite dark in color, fortunately, and if they rv e
had a rain it is easy to get pens where you can im-
170
/o« /Terr Loading 3Mept9for South* &? ./ok''
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 373
merse your cattle all over and thus make them the
color of the Galloways, which is the most fashionable
color for cattle in the market.
He said there was cases where cattlemen had
got a good fill on Grand Island mud and sold their
cattle weighed up there to feeders who put them on
full feed for six months and they weighed less in the
market than to start with, because the feeders had
curried the mud off them. Sometimes he said after
people left Grand Island with their cattle and before
the mud got well set, there would come a hard rain
on them and the mud washed off in streaks and gave
the cattle kind of a zebra appearance. Especially was
this true where the cattle had originally been white.
He said we would be expected to order some hay and
pay for it and get the mud for nothing. It was just
like a boot-jack saloon, where you bought a high-
priced peppermint drop and got a pint of whiskey
throwed in.
'Twas here at Grand Island that we met Joe
Kerr again. We had met him in Utah before we
shipped, and he had tried very hard to get us to ship
our cattle to the coming live stock market of the
United States at St. Joe. Kerr travels in the interest
174 COWP07 LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
of the St. Joe stockyards, and while in the fullness
of our youth and conceit when we first loaded our
stock we wouldn't have taken a suggestion from Ted
dy Roosevelt, yet we had grown older and had lost
some of our self-confidence; in fact, I've often
thought since these experiences that the old proverb,
"He who ships his range cattle to market place of
selling them at home leaves hope behind," would ap
ply to most range shipments.
Now it seems Joe Kerr had kept posted as to our
movements right along through friends of his who
were in the sheep business and who had trailed
their herds past our train at different times on
their trip East to sell their sheep for feeders, and
Kerr had made such nice calculations by casting
horoscopes and looking up the signs of the zodiac
that he knew to a month when we would arrive
in Grand Island, and was waiting there to persuade
us to ship our stock to St. Joe in place of Omahn.
He was right on the spot to help us unload them;
knew all the pens where the mud was the deepest,
even helped us smear the mud into their hair on the
few spots that was missed, when we were swimming
them through the mud batter. Joe had loads of sta-
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 175
tistics for sheepmen, cattlemen, horsemen and hog-
men that would convince any man that wasn't too
suspicious that St. Joe was the best market. He had
beautiful colored maps of the yards, showing the clear
limpid waters of the Missouri River, flowing along at
the foot of the bluffs; the waters swarming with
steamboats and smaller craft; the city of St. Joe cov
ering the bluffs and river bottoms for miles, and just
down the river at the lower end of this great city was
stockyards and packing plants laid out like some
great city park and hundreds of acres, all paved with
brick, laid into walks and floors for the pens with
perfect precision, and all divided in different com
partments for all kinds of live stock; everything ar
ranged so sheep could be unloaded one place, hogs an
other place, cattle another, so as to admit6 of no delay
in unloading when stock arrived. He told us that
their yards were kept so clean that ladies could walk
all over them an rainy weather without soiling their
costumes. Said no Sheenies were skinning people in
their yards. He made such a square talk we finally
agreed to split the shipment and let part of the train
go to St. Joe, and sent Jackdo along to talie care of
the cattle.
12—
CHAPTER XXII.
"SARER."
The rainy season had now set in in good earnest
all through Nebraska, and while the natives have
typhoid fever and malaria to a more or less extent,
yet most of them live through it, but people from the
dry mountin regions that have been used to pure air
and water all their lives fare worse from these fevers
ten times over than the natives, and Dillbery Ike fell
a victim right in the start. One evening soon after
we left Grantf Island I noticed his face was flushed
very red, aad he complained of a dull headache, but
as he had the headache a good deal ever since the
railroad police had scalped him at Cheyenne in mis
take for a striker, I didn't think so much of his head
ache. But when I come to look at his tongue and feel
his pulse T found every indication of high fever. In
a few hours he was out of his mind and talked of
shady mountain sides, babbling brooks and clear
176
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 377
mountain springs of water, and lie talked of his
bosses and cattle, his cow ranch and alfalfa meadows,
but most of all he talked of "Sarer."
Now Dillberv had only one romance in his life
that we knew of, arid that happened in this way:
Several decades previous to our story the few families
living in the vicinity of Dillbery's. ranch in Utah had
got together and built an adobe school-house, and
voting a special tax on the piece of railroad track that
run through their part of the country had raised
enough money to pay for the school-house and hire
a school-teacher. At first each of the three married
women in the neighborhood wanted to teach the
school. Then each of them offered to take turns
about teaching it so they could divide the money,
but their husbands, who was the directors, wanted a
school-marm, so as to have a little young female
blood diffused through the atmosphere in that part
of the country, and after advertising for a, school
teacher, the New England brand preferred, got hun
dreds of answers very shortly. So- putting their
heads together they selected one that had a kind of
crab apple perfume attached to the application, and
was worded in such way as to give the reader a notion
178 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
of pleading blue eyes, with a wealth of golden brown
hair and heaving bosom, not too young to teach
school nor too old to be romantic and sympathetic,
and closed a deal with her to come West and teach
their school. She had signed her name Sarah Jessica
Virginia Smythe, but was always known as Miss
Sarer. When she was about to arrive at the railroad
station, thirty miles away, all the married men
wanted to go and meet her. All of them had partic
ular business in at the station that day, but none of
their wives would stand for it. They said that Dill-
bery Ike was a bachelor and the proper one to get her.
Now Dillbery Ike was a long, gangling, bashful,
backward plainsman, never had a sweetheart and was
considered perfectly harmless around women by every
one who knew him. The old married men finally
agreed to let Dillbery meet Fhe school-marm, but
not till each had went through a stormy scene with
his wife, in which that good woman had threatened
to tear the blanket right in two in the middle with
such forcible language that you could almost hear it
ripping. Dillbery had got shaved, had his hair cut,
put on his best black suit he had bought from a
Sheeny, the pants being a trifle of six or eight inche'
The Arrival '
"? V . V ?$?3*,J
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 1Q1
too short for Mm at the top and bottom both, his
coat rather large in the waist, but short at the wrists
like the pants; and hitching his mules to his spring
wagon, he started bright and early to the station of
Kelton, Utah. He arrived about noon, him and his
mules white with alkali dust, and finding that the
train was twenty-three hours late, stayed at the sec
tion house till next day, there being no hotel in Kel
ton. When the train came along next day about noon,
a large, portly lady of uncertain age, with her frizzed-
up hair turning grey, her hands full of wraps, lunch
baskets, sofa pillows, telescope grips, umbrellers,
band-boxes and bird cages, climbed off the train, and
the baggageman put off a large horse-hide trunk, from
which most of the hair had been worn off, or perhaps
scalped off in the troublous times when Washington
was crossing the Delaware. When she got this .old,
bald-headed looking trunk and a couple of shoe boxes
with rope handles (that were probably full of Century
Magazines) piled up with her other baggage, the
newsboy said it looked like an Irish eviction.
When Dillbery saw this old mian-hunter and all
her luggage, his heart failed him, and he went to the
saloon three times to liquor up before he got sand
182 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
enough to talk to her. Of course, Dillbery expected
to miarry her, no matter what she was like, as the
whole neighborhood where he lived had planned it
ever since the school-marm was talked of, and he
couldn't expect to disappoint the neighbors and still
continue to live there. Still she wasn't exactly what
he had figured in his mind after reading a great many
novels about the rosy-cheeked, small-waisted, dainty-
feet, lily-white hands, wondrous brown hair, blue-
eyed New England darlings, with pretty sailor hats
and tailor-made suits, who come West to teach our
schools and incidentally marry the most expert rop
ing, best broncho-busting, chief cowpuncher. And
now here was this dropsical-looking old girl, with
fat, pudgy-looking hands and feet like a couple of
poisoned pups, with all this colonial luggage.
However, Dillbery was obliged to take charge of
her and her traps, as he called them, and when he was
finally ready to start, had got everything on the
spring wagon, even to the bird cages, and after get
ting a final drink with the boys and filling a bottle to
take along, he loaded the old girl in and whipping up
his mules, disappeared in a cloud of alkali dust.
Dillbery sat on his end of the seat, frightened out
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. '183
of his wits, and Sarah Jessica Virginia Smythe sat on
the other end, but, of course, sat on all the vacant
seat left by Ddllbery, 'cause she couldn't help it, she
was built that way, and was even more afraid of Dill-
bery than he was of her. Although she had always
been hunting a man, yet she was in a wild country
and a stranger; not a house in sight and night coming
on, was with a savage-looking man, who was, un
doubtedly, very drunk, and acting very strangely to
say the least. As time went on Dillbery got dryer
and dryer, and studied a good deal how to get a
drink out of his bottle without letting Sarah see him.
Finally he concluded he could make some excuse that
the load was slipping; he might get around back of
the wagon to fix it, and under cover of the darkness
quietly get a drink out of his bottle. So when they
were crossing a canyon in an unusually lonely spot,
he stopped the mules and muttering something about
the load, he started to get out, but Sarah thought her
hour had come, and throwing her arms (which were
like pillow bolsters) around Dillbery's neck, began to
scream and piteously beg him not to do her any
wrong. The more Dillbery Ike tried to explain, the
more Sarah Jessica 'cried, screamed and sobbed, till
184 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
finally with a despairing sigh, like unto the collapse
of a big balloon, she fainted clear away on his breast,
pinning him over the back of the seat, his spinal
column slowly but surely being sawed in two over the
sharp edge. The horror of poor old Dillbery, when he
realized that death from a broken back was only a
question of her not coming out of the dead faint,
which she seemed to have gotten an allopathic dose
of, cannot be described.
When some time had elapsed and she showed no
signs of animation, he made a great struggle to get
from under her; but it was a vain attempt, he was
nailed down as completely as a piece of canvas under
a paving block. And when it came over him that he
was doomed to this ignominious death, when he fully
realized what people would think about him when
they found him in this compromising position, and the
cowboys would facetiously all agree that he looked
like a Texas dogie steer hanging dead on a wire fence
after a Wyoming blizzard; when he felt that peculiar,
loud buzzing in his ears that is a premonition of death,
he made one final desperate struggle, and spitting out
a lot of grey hair, hair pins and pieces of switch,
which had accumulated in his mouth, he screamed
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 135
with all the strength of his lungs in one long despair
ing cry, the one word "Sareiv7
Now in Dillbery Ike's delirium and raging fever
on the stock train, he kept continually giving tongue
in a long, blood-curdling, soul-freezing, despairing cry
to that one word "Sarer." Night and day we had to
listen to that heart-broken cry. Finally, when the
fever was at its highest stage I consulted the con
ductor of our special about getting a doctor and he
advised me to go back to the last town we had passed
through, where there was a good physician and get
him. He said that we would have plenty of time, as
there was a lonely sidetrack just ahead of the train.
So walking back about ten miles to this town, 1 se
cured the services of a doctor, and getting a livery rig
we soon caught up with the special. When the doc
tor had examined Dillbery's tongue and pulse and had
put his ear to Dillbery's heart while he was giving
one of his despairing cries for "Sarer," he wrote a
prescription in some kind of foreign language which
he interpreted to us, as he said he had written it down
as a mere form to show that he could write in a for
eign language. He said our friend was very sick and
the one thing that would save his life was to get
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
"Sarer" for him. Now, of course, that was an impos
sibility, but he said all we needed was an imitation
"Sarer," something that looked like her and was
about her size and form, so after explaining to him
what "Sarer" was like, he drove back to town, and
when he caught up to us again, brought into the car
a wonderful dummy made out of a large sack of bran
with a head tied on it composed mainly of a sack of
hair, such as plasterers use to mix mortar with. He
had a large, but not too large, Mother Hubbard dress
on this wonderful dummy, and the whole well per
fumed with Florida water. When we laid this imita
tion "Sarer" in the emaciated arms of poor old Dill-
bery, his eyes grew moist for a moment, and straining
it to his breast he gave a contented sigh or two, whis
pered "Sarer, Sarer," and dropped off into a healthy
slumber, and the doctor said he would live.
EATS UP "SARER."
Dillbery slept for a long time, and awoke some
what refreshed, but somewhat under the influence of
his animal scalp, and no one being in the car, the
spirit of the goat probably overtook him, as he de
voured the head of the dummy "Sarer," which will be
remembered consisted of plastering hair. Then the
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 137
spirit of the sheep and the pig coming over him, he
devoured the sack of bran, and laying down in front
the stove like a Newfoundland dog, he went to sleep.
Thus I found him on my return to the car. But, alas!
his stomach was too weak to digest all the stuff he
had consumed and in a few hours he was in a raging
fever and calling for "Sarer" again. But, of course,
he had devoured "Sarer," and we had nothing to fix
up in the place of the dummy. And while it was
heart-rending to hear his sobbing cry for "Sarer"
growing weaker and weaker as the night wore on, yet
we could only listen and hope. About 4 o'clock in the
morning his cries stopped and he seemed to be sleep
ing for a few minutes, and then opened his eyes and
took my hand and in a weak but rational voice told
me the story of his boyhood in the following words:
He said he was born in the mountains in Virginia.
He was the only child, so far as he knew, of a moon
shiner's daughter. His mother was not an unhappy
woman, he said, when she had plenty of snuff and
moonshine whisky; in fact, was quite gay at times.
No one, not even his mother, knew exactly who his
father was. Some people said it was a revenue officer
and some said it was the member of Congress from
188 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
that district, but most people thought it was a live
stock agent of one of the* western railroads. How
ever this may bo, he thrived on corn pone, dewber
ries, wild honey, and sow bosom, and as soon as he
got old enough helped his mother cut wood and haul
it to town in a two-wheeled hickory cart drawn by a
steer. They lived with his grandfather, who was quite
a prominent man in that part of Virginia and who
was finally killed by revenue officers. His mother was
sent to the pen for selling moonshine whiskey and he
was taken charge of by a family who immigrated to
Utah. He said the last time he saw his darling
mother 'twas at their old home in the mountains in
Virginia. The steer was hitched to the cart one beau
tiful spring morning. The sun's rays was just kiss
ing the mountain tops, when two revenue officers had
appeared at their home, and after a lively scrap with
his mother they had succeeded in arresting her. Not
though till she had thoroughly furrowed their cheeks
with her finger nails and plenteously helped herself
to sundry handfuls of their hair, after which she had
peacefully seated herself in the cart and was placidly
chewing a snuff stick in each corner of her mouth,
when the steer and cart disappeared around a bend in
Dillbery Ike's Darling Mother Under Arrest
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETtfZGK. 1Q1
the mountain road, and fate had decreed he should
never see her again.
The family that took charge of him were neigh
bor moonshiners and had a day or so after this took
place traded off their Virginia estate for a team of
antique mules and a linch-pin wagon, and storing a
goodly supply of moonshine whiskey, apple jack, corn
meal and bacon in the wagon, loaded the family, con
sisting of nine children, himself included, in the
wagon, and immigrated for Utah. He said as long
as he was with these people he was treated like one
of the family, but as they immigrated back to Vir
ginia the next year they left him in Utah with a poor
family and he was hungry many times, and was al
ways telling the children he associated with how big
the dewberries grew where he came from, so the other
children nicknamed him Dewberry, which was finally
changed to Dillbery and that name had stuck to him
ever since.
After finishing the story of his boyhood, Dillbery
lay quiet for a short time and then motioning me to
bend down close to him he whispered to me not to
bury him in Nebraska where, he said, the only way a
man could hope to be resurrected was in the shape of
192 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
a yellow ear of corn, to be fed to a yellow steer, fol
lowed by a yellow hog and the hog meat eaten by a
yellow-whiskered malarial Populist, and so on. After
I promised to see that he was buried on his ranch in
Utah, he asked me to sing that old 'cowboy song, "Oh!
give me a home where the buffalo roams, a place
where the rattlesnake plays."
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 193
THE PASSING OF DILLBERY IKE.
'Twas a dismal night on a way-car, the rain pattering on the
roof o'erhead,
The man who has told this story was alone with the silent dead.
The voice that had been calling for Sarah was hushed and
stilled at last,
He had finished telling the story of his childhood's checkered
past.
No more would he ride the ranges, no more the mavericks
brand,
Nor subdue the bucking broncho, in that far western land;
Never again to meet the school-marms, when they came trav
eling West
Under the guise of school teaching, to get in a bachelor's nest.
Dillberry folded his hands gently, as he quietly went to sleep,
In the death that knows no waking, for which no shipper
could weep;
While some of his life had been stormy, of hardships he 'd had
his share,
Pen cannot paint a cattleman's troubles, nor picture his heart
sick care.
When he 's got his cattle on a special, and getting a special run,
Death for him hasn't a single terror, he longs for it to come;
And so with poor old Dillbery, when his weary eyes closed in
death,
Blotted out his sorrows and troubles, all blown away with his
last breath.
!Q4 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
He had gone to meet his grandfather, and get some of his
latest brew,
For who shall say that old moonshiner had quit distilling some
mountain dew;
For all say the other world is better, we '11 get what we like
over there,
While of our joys here we are stinted, in the hereafter we
get double share.
His eyes grew bright with a vision that he saw on the other
side,
He got a glimpse of a right good cow country, just before he
started to ride;
And his eyes lit up with a gladness, his face o'erspread with
hope,
As without a trace of sadness, his spirit rode away in a lope.
CHAPTER XXIII.
ARRIVAL AT THE TRANSFER TRACK OP SOUTH
OMAHA.
One dark, dismal, rainy morning, a little before
daylight, I arrived with the remnant of our stock
train on the stockyards transfer at South Omaha.
The conductor and brakernan ordered me out of the
way-car. So picking up my belongings I got out in
the mud and rain and looked around for some shelter.
There was a lot of railroad tracks and switches, but
no houses or hotels, or anyone to inquire from, as I
had learnt by experience that conductors, brakemen
and switchmen never give any information to stock
men in a dark, rainy night.
So after wandering up and down the tracks for a
ways, and not being able to find out which way the
town lay I got on top of the sto'ck cars, and huddling
down in my rain-soaked rags I prepared to wait till
daylight. The rain was very cold, and after a bit
turned to snow and chilled me to the bone. But I
195
196 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
was afraid to leave the stock cars, as I had never been
there before and was sure to get lost if I left the
stock, as the town is quite a ways from the transfer. I
thought of Dillbery Ike, Packsaddle Jack and old
Chuckwagon in the other world, and wondered why I
should be left shivering in this awful storm, suffer
ing the pangs of hunger and cold, while doubtless they
had more fire than they really needed. No matter
what their condition was in the other world, it was
bound to be better than mine. Even the sheepmen's
condition in the other world couldn't be much worse,
though some claim there is a hell set apart a-purpose
for sheepmen on the other side.
My clothes were all worn out long ago; my beard
had grown down to my knees and the hair on my head
having never been cut since we started, now reached
to my waist, and, of course, it and my beard was some
protection from the storm. But I realized that if I
stayed where I was it would only be a short time till
I should meet my comrades who had gone before, and
I thought it would be proper to make some prepara
tions for the other world. I never had prayed or went
to church much, 'cause a cowman don't have any
chance to attend to these, as there is always either
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 197
some calves to brand Sundays, or else some of the
neighbors coming visiting. But I remembered a pas
sage of scripture I had heard when a boy, and it came
back to me now and kept ranging in my ears: "For1
give thine enemy." I never had an enemy in my
whole life that I knew of, without it was this blamed
railroad, and while I wasn't sure they was enemies,
yet they had dealt me more misery than anyone, ex
cept it might be this stockyards company that was
keeping me and my stock out on this transfer, starv
ing and freezing in the storm after me and my steers
had all got to be Rip Van Winkles getting that far on
the road. I studied over the matter and could see it
would be too great a job to forgive them both at the
same time, and, of course, couldn't tell how much for
giveness the stockyards company would have to have,
as I hadn't got through with them yet. There might
be so much against them before they got my cattle un
loaded that it would be impossible to forgive it.
It was very lucky, as it turned out afterwards,
that I had this forethought, because, as I take it, for
giveness only comes from the heart no matter what
your lips say, and your heart is the blamedest thing
to control in forgiveness, as well as love, and when
198 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
that stockyards company finally got around to bring
my cattle in and unload them, I reckon it would have
been impossible for any mortal man with the least
spark of vitality left in his veins to have forgiven
them. They have tried over and over to explain it to
me by saying that when they built the transfer tracks
and unloading chutes, their receipts only run about
1,500 to 2,000 cattle a day, with about the same num
ber of hogs and about 200 sheep. And, now in the fall
of the year, their receipts of cattle run up to 7,000 to
12,000 a day, with the same number of hogs and 20,000
to 25,000 of sheep, and they are trying to handle them
with the same facilities they had to start with. So
they are pretty near 'always so far behind in unload
ing stock in the busy season that it takes all the slack
business season to finish unloading the stock that ac
cumulated during the rush.
Having made up my mind to put off forgiving the
stockyards company till some future date, I turned
all my attention to forgiving the railroad company. I
had noticed a good many religious people when some
one had done them an injury and they couldn't get at
them any other way they would pray for them. And
while they generally asked the Lord to forgive them,
-u ^B
,*?•
A K?
< *tf *
The Arrival of the Surviio/ 'aV the 'Transfer.
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 201
yet they always told their side of the story in such a
way that if the Lord was anyways easily prejudiced,
he would be pretty tolerable slow about handing out
any unsought-for clemency to their enemies, as they
always started in by telling of all the mean things
their enemies had ever done in order to remind the
Lord what a big contract it was. After studying the
matter over I thought this would be the proper way
to pray for the railroad company. But after I got
started telling the Lord what mean things they had
done, I see 'twas no use to try to finish unless I 'd
hand the matter down to future generations, as one
life wouldn't be long enough to get fairly started in.
THE INFERNO OF THE TRANSFER.
All night long I had heard voices on all sides of
me and apparently the owners of them were in the
direst distress. Some were praying undoubtedly,
but the most were cursing. A few were crying
and moaning with the cold 'and I thought for a long
time I must have got into an inferno of lost souls,
and added to my sufferings jn the storm in which I
had come close to death was the terror of listening
to these distressing cries, and I longed for day-
OQ9 COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
light to appear so these horrors would be explained.
Daylight began to appear while I was thinking
about these things, and I could see other stock trains
near me, and on every train I could see one or more
miserable wretches like myself huddled down on top
of a car in the snow and cold rain, and the only sign of
life you could detect was when they took spells of
shivering. One of them was pretty close, and I hailed
him once or twice, and finally he roused up enough to
answer me; but the poor, shivering wretch was so
numb with the cold he didn't sense much of anything,
and when I asked him why all the shippers stayed out
all night with their cattle, place of going into town, he
said lots of times cattle were so tired when they got
to Omaha and they were so long about getting them
to the chutes, that there was more danger of their get
ting down after they got to the transfer and getting
tramped to death than before. Then he said lots of
stockmen who tried to get to town from the transfer
in the night and had got killed, and some got their legs
cut off by trains that were all the time switching on
the transfer tracks. He said if the Humane Society
took half the pains to protect the shippers that they
did the stock being shipped he thought it would be
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 203
better. He said a shipper was a human being even if
he did look like a orangoutang just dragged out of a
Chicago sewer when he got through to Omaha with a
shipment of livestock. I thought maybe he was get
ting- personal, so told him he didn't look so fine him
self; that I thought anyone who resembled a jackass
in a Wyoming blizzard hadn't any call to make reflect-
tions on. other people's looks. Just then the switch
engine coupled onto his train and hauled him and his
stock off to the unloading chutes, and I was kinda glad
he was gone, as I had conceived a dislike to him any
way. I can't bear anyone who makes disagreeable re
flections and comparisons on one's personal appear
ance when one isn't looking their best, especially a
person who ain't got anything to brag of themselves.
THE FARMER'S PRAYER.
I looked on the other side of me and saw another
stock train with a group of four or five stockmen on
top the cars. They were huddled down together in the
snow and wet, and I thought at first one of them was
making a speech, but soon discovered he was praying.
It turned out one of their number was dying from ill
health and the exposure of the night before, they hav-
204 GOWB07 LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
ing been there all night waiting for the switch engine
to haul them to the chutes. They were a bunch of Ne
braska farmers who had bought some feeders in Oma
ha sometime previous, shipped them out to their farms
a couple hundred miles west, fed up their corn crop
and was bringing the cattle back. The man that wa
praying seemed to be a son and partner of the dying
man, and was telling the Lord the whole transaction
from a to izard. Whether he was doing this to relieve
his own feelings, or whether he thought the Lord
would size his father up as an honest man in place of
a sucker, it ?s hard to tell. Anyway, you could tell by
his prayer that him and his dying father had got the
worst of the deal all the way through. What I heard
of his prayer run something like this:
"O Lord, Thou knowest how Thy humble ser
vants have been the victims of designing and unscru
pulous men. Thou knowest, Lord, how a hooked-nosed
Sheeny first induced Thy poor servants to buy of him
a lot of crooked-backed, narrow-happed, long-tailed,
high-on-the-rump, ewe-necked, dehorned, Southern
steers, and how they had kept them off of water for
seven days, waiting for a sale, and then let them drink
till their stomachs was like unto bass drums, when
COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK. 205
they weighed them up to Thy deceived servants, and
then, O Lord, Thy wretched servants, not having any
money to pay for them, we had to go to a grasping com
mission man and, O Lord, Thou knowest how he did
charge us usury cent for cent and all kinds of percent,
how he figured up interest on the cost of the steers,
then figured interest on that interest, then figured
interest on the interest that he had figured on the
interest, then figured a commission for buying them,
then another commission for selling them, then fig
ured the interest on the commission, then figured
the interest on the interest that he had figured on
the commission; and, how when we had got these
steers home, two of them were dead, three were crip
ples, five were lump jaws, and how their feet were
so large, and they had such wise, old-fashioned coun
tenances, we were behooved to look into their mouths
to determine by their teeth how old they were, and
Thy astonished servants discovered that in place of
two year-olds, as was represented, they were a great
many times two years old; and how many times when
we had a little fat on their ribs, they saw someone
afoot, and becoming frightened, ran round and round
the feed lots till they were poorer than ever, and some
9QO COWBOY LIFE ON THE SIDETRACK.
there was that escaping over the fence were never seen
by Thy servants any more, they having disappeared
over the hills and in adjacent corn fields; and Thou
knowest how we were always sober, law-abiding citi
zens till we were inveigled into buying these imitation
steers, and since that time have lived in a constant
round of excitement, terror and riot."
The switch engine now coupled on to the dying
man's stock train and pulled it away to the chutes, so
I didn't hear the last of the prayer. Probably his com
mission man heard it after he got through explaining
why the steers didn't bring any more money.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE FINAL ROUNDUP.
Two railroad men of mighty brain,
The steadfast friends of true cowmen;
No matter which the first you name,
We all love George Crosby and Charlie Lane.
And if in this story, they should see
Some mentioned evil, for which a remedy
That 's in their power and can be used,
They '11 fix it so the shipper is less abused.
Of all things needed, and it 's a crying shame,
Is some kind of toilet room on each stock train;
In regard to fires, let the shippers agree,
Whether they '11 be froze or roasted into eternity.
Have a call-boy escort with lantern bright,
When at division stations we come in darkest night;
To save our anxiety, fear and doubt,
Put us on the right way-car that 's going out.
To the stockyards company a suggestion could be made,
If they expect to keep and gain more trade;
When our cattle are delivered on their transfer track,
Try and unload them, or else we '11 ship them back.
If one or two of these evils should be wiped away
By these suggestions in this humble lay,
Then will I rejoice and forget the days of toil
When I composed this work and burnt the midnight oil.
207
14*-
Elijah Bosserman, President.
M. H. Mark, Vice-President.
F. J. Duff, Secretary and Treas.
A. Bosserman, Cashier.
Elijah Bosserman, Cattle Salesman.
Link Bosserman, Cattle Salesman.
F. J. Duff, Hog Salesman.
M. H. Mark, Sheep Salesman.
The
Denver Live Stock
, Commission Co. , ,
Telephone 818. ^ P. 0. Box 818.
Union Stock Yards, Denver, Colo,
Market Reports Furnished Promptly by Mail or Wire on
Application. Money Loaned to Parties Owning
Stock. Correspondence Solicited.
Incorporated $20,000.
Reference :
ANY BASK IN DENVKU.
DENVER, COLO,
F. W. FLATO, Jr., Prest. JAMES C. DAHLMAN, Sec'y
I. M. HUMPHREY, Vice-Prest. J. S. HORN, Treas.
• • • JL AAV? • • •
Flato Commission
Company
LIVE STOCK SALESMEN HMD BROKERS,
South Omaha, Nebraska; Chicago, Illinois; South St.
Joseph, Missouri; North Fort Worth, Texas.
Capital $250,000.00
Prompt and Careful Attention Given all Consignments. Pleased
to Furnish Information by Correspondence or Otherwise
to any Person Interested.
DIRECTORS:
F. W. Flato Jr. R. R. Russell. James C. Dahlman.
I. M. Humphrey. Ed. H. Reid. J. S. Horn.
Li. L. Russell.
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW
AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS
WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN
THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY
WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH
DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY
OVERDUE.
LD 21-100m-8,'34
939854
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11