Pfflffii
The Prairie Schooner
The Prairie Schooner
By
William Francis Hooker
CHICAGO
SAUL BROTHERS
1918
Copyright, 1918
By SAUL BROTHERS
Chicago
3.1
O
a
O To My Wife
< MAMIE TARBELL HOOKER
A Pioneer of the
O Jim River (Dakota) Valley
O
CONTENTS.
Page
Introduction 11
I. Letters Pass Between Old Pards . 15
II. Trains That Run Without Rails . 27
III. Hunton and Clay Bull-Train Mag-
nates ..... 43
TV. Guarding an Overland Freight Out-
fit 57
V. - Rattlesnakes and Redskins . 67
VI. Belated Grace for a Christmas Din-
ner 75
VII. The Fate of One-Eyed Ed. . 85
VIII. Track-Layers Fought Redskins . 99
IX. "-Bill" Hickok, City Marshal . 105
X. When Cheyenne Was Young . 113
XI. The Lost Indian at Bedtick Creek 119
XII. A She-Bear and Her Cub . . 129
XIII. A Kick From a Playful Bullock
and a Joke . . . .135
XIV. The Indian and the Trousers . 143
XV. There's a Reason; This Is It!
Conclusion 149
INTRODUCTION
WHEN the Union Pacific Railroad was com-
pleted from Omaha, Nebraska, to Ogden,
Utah, it passed through a territory about as
barren of business as one can imagine. It ap-
parently was a great Sahara, and in fact some
of the territory now growing bumper crops
of alfalfa, grains and fruits, was set down in
school text-books in the 70 's as the "Great
American Desert."
Its inhabitants were, outside of the stations
on the railroad, largely roaming bands of In-
dians, a few hundred soldiers at military posts,
some buffalo and other hunters, trappers, a few
freighters, and many outlawed white men.
The railroad had no short line feeders, and
there was, in the period of which I write, no
need for them sufficient to warrant their con-
struction. There were military posts scattered
along the North Platte, and other rivers to the
north, and the government had begun, as part
of its effort to reconcile the Red Man to the
march of civilization started by the Iron Horse,
to establish agencies for the distribution of
food in payment to the tribes for lands upon
which they claimed sovereignty. These oases
in the then great desert had to be reached
with thousands of tons of flour, bacon, sugar,
etc., consequently large private concerns were
12 Introduction
formed and contracts taken for the hauling by
ox-teams of the provisions sent to the soldiers
as well as the Indians.
The ox was the most available and suitable
power for this traffic for the reason that he
required the transportation of no subsistence
in the way of food, and was thoroughly accli-
mated. Usually he was a Texan a long horn
or a Mexican short horn with short stocky
legs, although the Texan was most generally
used, and was fleet-footed and built almost on
the plan of a shad.
Both breeds were accustomed to no food
other than the grasses of the country, upon
which they flourished. These included the suc-
culent bunch grass.
Oxen were used in teams of five, six and
seven yokes and hauled large canvas-covered
wagons built for the purpose in Missouri, Wis-
consin, Illinois and Indiana. In the larger
transportation outfits each team hauled two
wagons, a lead and a trailer, and frequently
were loaded with from 6,500 to 8,000 pounds of
freight. These teams were driven by men who
were as tough and sturdy as the oxen.
Most of the freighting was done in the
spring, summer and fall, although several dis-
astrous attempts were made to continue
through the midwinter season to relieve food
shortages at the army posts.
It may seem strange, but it is nevertheless
true, that Indians frequently attacked the very
wagon trains that were hauling food to them,
Introduction 13
in Wyoming and Western Nebraska. Perhaps
they were the original anarchists ; anyway,
they often tried seldom successfully to de-
stroy the goose that laid the golden egg, but
the course of civilization's stream never was
seriously turned, for it flowed rapidly onward,
and between 1870 and 1885, the country was
quite thoroughly transformed from a wild and
uninhabited territory to one of civilization and
great commercial productivity.
Cattle ranches with their great herds came
first, then sheep, and by degrees the better
portions of the lands, where the sweet grasses
grew, and even on the almost bare uplands
when water was made available by irrigation
projects, were tilled. Settlements followed
quickly towns with schools and churches;
then branch railroads, the development of the
mines of gold, silver, coal, etc., all came in nat-
ural order. And finally, at a comparatively
recent date, rich fields of oil were discovered
and made to yield millions of gallons for the
world's market and millions in wealth.
It is difficult to realize that the now great
territory was, in the day of men still active,
regarded as of little or no value the home of
murderous, wandering tribes of savages in a
climate and soil unfitted for agriculture and
containing little else of commercial value.
But science and enterprising men and gov-
ernments have wrought almost a miracle.
Go back with me to the days of the prairie
schooner before the Wild West was really dis-
14 Introduction
covered, and let me try to entertain you with
just a glimpse of things that are in such won-
derful contrast to those of today.
The freight trains with ox-team power have
vanished, never to return, and with them most
of the men who handled them.
The " color' 7 of what follows is real, gath-
ered when the Wild West was wild; and I
make no excuse for its lack of what an Enos
R. Mills or a Walter Pritchard Eaton would
put in it, for they are naturalists while I am
merely a survivor of a period in the develop-
ment and upbuilding of a great section of the
golden west.
In relating incidents to develop certain
phases of pioneer life real names of persons
and localities have not always been used; and
in some of the narratives several incidents
have been merged.
Letters Pass Between Old Pards
CHAPTER I
LETTERS PASS BETWEEN OLD PARDS.
My Dear Friend:
Can you put me in correspondence with any
of the old boys we met when the country was
new, out in Wyoming ? * * * Of the Medi-
cine Bow range, or Whipple, the man I gave
the copper specimens to ? * * *
Have you forgotten the importance you felt
while walking up and down the long line of
bovines, swinging your "gad" and cursing like
a mate on a river boat? You looked bigger
to me than a railroad president when you se-
cured that job, as you used to say, breaking
on a bull-train. I should say you were an en-
gineer, but I suppose you know best. Those
were happy days. When I recall the fool
things we did to satisfy a boy's desire for ad-
venture, I wonder that we are alive. How we
avoided the scalping knife ; escaped having our
necks broken, or being trampled to death un-
der the feet of herds of buffalo is a mystery
to me. * * *
When the building of the Union Pacific road
checked the buffaloes in their passage from
summer to winter feeding grounds, and they
were banked up along the line near Julesburg
in thousands, I recall the delight we took in
watching them "get up and get." What
18 The Prairie Schooner
clouds of dust they would kick up when they
got down to business! And such dust as the
Chalk Bluff would make never entered the
eyes or lungs of man elsewhere. Weren't we
whales when we could divide or turn a herd?
And how we would turn tail-to, "spur and
quirt " for our lives if the bunch did not show
signs of swerving from their course. How a
cow-pony can carry a man safely over such
treacherous ground as the dog-towns is almost
a miracle.
! to have my fill of antelope steak or buf-
falo "hump" broiled on a cone of buffalo
chips ! Nothing better ever entered my mouth
on the plains. The soothing song of the lone
night-herder of the bull-train as he circles and
beds his stock is not more conducive to sweeter
slumbers than we enjoyed by the rippling
streams in the hills of Wyoming.
The difficulty we had in boiling beans until
done in so high an altitude ; our hunt for a
gun at old Dale Creek where "Shorty" Hig-
gins died suddenly; the fool act on my part
when, afoot and alone, I recovered the horse
the Comancheg had stolen from us. I wish we
might corral some of our old-time friends and
go over the past before we leave this land,
"for when we die we will be a long time
dead."
The wild horse that roamed the West, among
which was the stallion who so valiantly guard-
ed his harem on the Laramie Plains, was a
model for a Landseer. The great herds of
The Prairie Schooner 19
buffalo that looked like shadows cast on the
plains by clouds passing the sun and the myr-
iads of passenger pigeons, are among the
things that man will never see again, and as
read from the chronicles of history a few years
hence, will be classed with the Jonah and the
Whale story.
Old Man, when convenient, write me a long
letter recalling some of the old days, for
"I'm growing fonder of my staff,
:'m growing dimmer in my eyes,
:'m growing fainter in my laugh,
:'m growing deeper in my sighs;
! 'm growing careless in my dress,
'm growing frugal with my gold,
..'m growing wise I'm growing yes,
I'm growing old."
Sincerely yours,
VAN.
The reply:
My Dear Old Pard:
Your note concerning the events of long ago
out on the Laramie Plains and the Harney flats
shoots across my vision events in the Cache
de La Poudre (the Poodre), the Chug water
country, old Cheyenne, Sherman, Fort Lara-
mie, Petterman, Camp Carlin, both Plattes, the
Medicine Bow waters and range, Allen's "Gold
Room/' McDanieFs hurdy-gurdy, the dust-
stirring, dust-laden buffalo east of Chalk Bluffs,
the deer and antelope of the whole Wyoming
territory, the sage-hens, and I don't know
what not.
20 The Prairie Schooner
It makes me stop and lope back into the
sage-brush. It makes me climb the mountain
sides and urge the bulls to fill their piiion
yokes, tighten the chains, and hurry along the
four or five tons of bacon or flour or shelled
corn in gunny-sacks that Uncle Sam wants de-
livered somewhere over the range, across the
desert sweeps, through cactus-grown, prickly
pear sprinkled wastes, on through the dog-
towns, in the heavy sand sifting through the
spokes, and falling off in a spiral fount from
the slow-turning hub.
Ah, yes, old pard, and as I whack my bulls
in the train that runs without rails to the top
of a long divide, I look for three things:
water, smoke and Indians.
There were no railroads north of Cheyenne
nothing but the "bull-trains." There away
on the edge of the horizon, over the yellow
bunch grass, cured by the sun, is a strip of
green. It is box-elder, and underbrush. Stand-
ing out here and there like grim sentinels on
guard are the big, always dead and leafless
cottonwoods, white as graveyard ghosts, day
or night. It seems to be only a flat surface
haul to this refreshing looking strip of green,
and, as I have stopped the whole wagon-train
by making this observation, and the wagon
boss is moving my way on a big mule, I tap the
off leader, who is thirty odd feet away, with
my long lash and yell :
"Whoa, haw, Brownie," but not too loud at
first; just an encouraging word or two, and
The Prairie Schooner 21
then string 'em out. My leaders are light of
feet and built like running horses. The point-
ers or middle yokes come in reluctantly,
but I attend to that, and with the butt end of
my stock, jab the near wheeler in the ribs,
and away we go.
But, old pard, inside of three minutes my
strip of green is gone ! In its place is the quiv-
ering, broiling sun over the yellow bunch-
grass ; the ashen stalks of the sage seem never
to have had a drop of sap in them every-
thing is dead. Even the jack-rabbit that stops
for a look seems bedraggled and forlorn, but I
whistle, pick up a moss agate, throw it in my
jockey box, and jog along, for the surface is
now hard as a stone, though off ahead there
I will unwind my lash and send its stinging
thongs to the backs of my noble beasts, touch-
ing only selected spots where the hair has been
worn away until the surface looks like the
head of the drum in a village band.
Yes, I know they used to think us bull-
whackers were brutes, but they (an occasional
tenderfoot) only saw the surface. They had
never been initiated; they didn't know the
secrets. It was only when the load just had
to be yanked to the top without doubling
teams or dropping trailers, that we used the
undercut which sent the long V-shaped pop-
per upon the tender spots of the belly, and
then, Pard, the thing looked worse because
the Comanehe-like language we hurled with it
was so unusual to ears that had been trained
22 The Prairie Schooner
east of the Missouri River. It sure was pic-
turesque language!
But we were all day reaching that green belt
strung like a ribbon across the face of central
Wyoming, and from the time we first hove in
sight of it, until we pulled the pins from the
steamy yokes, and dropped the hickory bows
at our feet, it appeared and disappeared so
often that I wonder that both man and beast
did not go mad. However, inasmuch as this
was a daily programme for me for several
years, I know that man can stand a whole lot
of hardship, if he only thinks so.
And then ring in the change from the des-
ert heat of midsummer to trifles like thirty
below in winter along the same landscape,
when you see the ghostly cottonwoods and an-
ticipate your arrival among them some hours
later. Won't there be a roaring fire? And
beans? And bacon? And pones of bread for
everyone? Wet stockings piled on inverted
yokes or held on pieces of brush, are drying,
we are nursing our chilblains and discussing
the incidents of the day's drive, and not a
weakling in the outfit. Every man has been
frozen or soaked all day, but he's as happy as
a lark. Sleep? You bet! You know it; but
if you and I tell our friends around our com-
fortable firesides now or in the lobby of an
onyx-walled Waldorf-Astoria, Belmont or Bilt-
more, that we just kicked a hole in the snow,
rolled into our blankets and dreamed of being
roasted to death, they would look at your
The Prairie Schooner 23
well-shaven face, my biled shirt, and then at
your highly polished shoes, then at my black
derby, and, dammit, I believe they might be
justified in forming the opinion that neither
one of us had ever been deprived of breakfast
food, or bath tubs, or a manicure artist's serv-
ices. * * *
You want to know if I can locate any of the
old gang. Sure! Some sleep in the sidehills
along the swift-flowing waters of the North
Platte, one or two are parts of gravel beds
down on the wild meadows or what were the
wild meadows of hundreds of square miles be-
tween the North Platte and the Poudre; but
not a few, like you and I, stalk abroad on the
face of the earth cheating first, as we did,
tribes of Sioux, Arapahoe, Cheyenne and the
Comanches who swept up across Kansas and
Nebraska; escaping the blizzards, periods of
starvation, cold, heat, fire, water, whisky, and
finally the surgeon's knife. I tell you, the
world only thinks it knows a thing or two
about how the human body is made, and how
much it can stand. But to answer your ques-
tions :
Jim Bansom, the last time I knew of him, in
1875, was headed east with a fine span of
bosses and a f air-to-middlin ' wagon.
Don't know where he went and don't know
what he did with the hosses or the wagon!
'Taint none o' my bizness, neither! In those
days it wasn't customary to be too gol-darned
inquisitive about such things, unless you
24 The Prairie Schooner
owned the hosses or the wagon, or a bit, or a
halter, or something of that sort you hap-
pened to loan to the outfit ; and then, of course,
you could take the trail if you wanted to.
* * *
Sam Smith, old IT. P. conductor, walked into
my office a while ago, and, as he closed the
door behind him, I said, " Hello, Sam; haven't
seen you since 1875, but you're the same
Sana!" Then I told him my name.
And then Sam gasped and acted like maybe
he might pull a gun, thinking me an impostor ;
because when Sam saw me the last time,
stretched out in his caboose on the old moun-
tain division of the U. P., and the train sail-
ing down the toboggan that slid us into Lara-
mie City, past Tie Siding and old Fort Saun-
ders, my hair was black, and I had a different
look.
Maybe I looked bad. I guess I did, for I
carried a gun and a belt of forty rounds, and
a butcher knife in a scabbard, just as we all
did, for it was the custom of the country; and
I had long hair, too, and it was matted and
dirty, mixed with pitch that came from camp-
fires in the hills. No doubt I looked wretched,
but, old Pard, I didn't even feel that way. I
felt good, and I was as harmless as a pigeon.
But I said something about a hatband of
rattlers' rattles that I gave his little girl at
Cheyenne, as I rode up to his door aboard a
cayuse, and that settled it. We talked about
The Prairie Schooner 25
snow-sheds, the Sherman hill, once the highest
railroad point in the world, and of old times in
general.
But what 's the use ? When you come to New
York, I'll meet you at the Waldorf and we'll
talk about it all night, and wish the buffalo
were still there, and the sagebrush, and the
bull-trains, and the other things undisturbed
by civilization. So long. BILL.
New York, August, 1917.
[NOTE The above letters are from the author's
files. "Van" is a multi-millionaire manufac-
turer living in a middle-western state. For sev-
eral years his pastime was buffalo hunting and
"roughing it" in the wild and woolly west.
The author, when a boy of 16, was developing
a case of tuberculosis of the lungs, and to es-
cape the fate that had overtaken other members
of his family, took Horace Greeley's advice, went
west, and grew up with the country. He had
been a lerk in a railroad office, and still is in
the railroad business in New York City, more than
forty years after the events related in the fol-
lowing chapters. He is the only survivor of a
family of fourteen, including all of his own chil-
dren, eight in number.]
Trains That Ran Without Rails
CHAPTER II
TRAINS THAT RAN WITHOUT RAILS.
BEFORE railroads were built in the country
west of the Missouri River there was, never-
theless, considerable doing in the transporta-
tion line. And even after the Union Pacific
was built from Omaha to Ogden to connect
with the Central Pacific, which carried the rails
to the Golden Gate, most of the transportation
of the then great Wild West, in the mountains,
on the plains and the " Great American Des-
ert, " was done by ox-teams. These were run
in trains of from ten to fifty or sixty teams,
the teams consisting usually of from five to
seven yokes of oxen and lead and trail wagons
built for the purpose.
These wagons were called prairie schooners,
because they were supplied with canvas cover-
ings. The first of these, made in St. Louis, were
called "Murphys," and were provided with
iron axles. Later many of them were made in
Indianapolis, Chicago, and Kenosha, Wis., the
latter known as the Bain. The Schuttler and
the Bain wagons were almost as big and sub-
stantial as a box car and were well painted
and put together to stand hard knocks on
mountain "breaknecks" or in Bad Land sands.
The lead wagon would carry an average of
30 The Prairie Schooner
6,500 pounds, while the trailer fastened to the
lead by a short tongue had a capacity of per-
haps two tons. In a sandy place or on a moun-
tain road, the bull whacker (teamster) would
slacken his team, pull a coupling pin from an
iron half-circle arrangement on the axle of his
lead wagon, drop his trailer to one side of the
road and proceed to the top of the hill, if in
the mountains, or to an "island" of hard
ground in the desert, unhook his wheelers and
go back for the trailer. Sometimes a "bull
outfit" would spend a whole day doing this.
Lead wagons were parked one at a time and
the trailers brought on later and hooked up.
These parkings were in the shape of an oval,
called a corral, a narrow opening being left
only at each end.
Inside this corral, when it came time to yoke
up, the cattle were driven in by the herders,
if the camp had been for over night or a long
mid-day stop. Then the bullwhackers, carry-
ing the heavy piiion yokes over their left
shoulders, hickory bows in their right hands
and iron or wooden pins with leather strip
fastened to them in their mouths, would seek
out their teams, yoking them together and
leading them to their wagons.
When a "whacker" had his "wheelers," or
pole oxen, in place, he wo aid bring on his
"pointers," and the rest, including the leaders.
The wheelers were always the heavyweights,
old and trained, and able to hold back the
load or their unruly teammates until the
The Prairie Schooner 31
whackers could throw on a brake or " rough
lock/' the last named a log chain fastened at
one end to the wagon, thrown through the
wheel spokes in such a way as to be between
the ground and the wheel on the "near rear
hind wheel " of the lead wagon.
New cattle just being trained to yoke were
always put in the center of the team, where
they were easily managed with the assistance
of the "leaders," which were always light
weights and most always long-horns from
Texas long horns, long legs and bodies, thin
as a razorback hog. These leaders were always
the best broken oxen, and would respond to
the low-spoken Wordi J of "haw" or "gee,"
especially if the word were uttered in the pe-
culiar musical tone of the whacker which can-
not be described in print, not only because it
is impossible to convey sound in that manner
but because the language that goes with the
music the request to gee or haw would not
be pleasant reading. Alone, the leaders would
trot like horses.
The average person outside of Texas and
the southwest and some of the western states
has a mental picture, perhaps, of the Texas
steer of the long-horn variety. Those who lived
thirty or forty years ago, even in the Bast, re-
member him as a member of the quadruped
family consisting largely of horn, for it was
not an infrequent thing to see him in a cattle
car on a sidetrack. He w'as, as a matter of
fact, also entitled to a reputation for his legs,
32 The Prairie Schooner
for they were unusually long. His body, too,
was slim, and he never was fat for the reason
that while free to roam the ranges at will he
devoted most of his time to using his horns in
goring his mates and neglected to eat. He
raced about from place to place, whereas, if
he had no horns he would have been a peaceful
animal and consequently much more valuable
for the market.
The old-time Texas steer often was as fleet-
footed as a Kentucky racehorse of the thor-
oughbred variety, and it took a good horse to
catch him when he made up his mind to run.
Nevertheless, thousands of these Texas steers
were broken to yoke, and used in overland
transportation; and once broken they were
good workers, even though their horns were
always in the way, and the cause of a great
deal of trouble in a herd.
While I have no authority for the statement,
I believe practical dehorning began with the
bullwhackers of the plains, for they frequent-
ly bored holes in the horns which in a few
weeks caused the horns to drop off. Then it
was noted that if the dehorned cattle were
kept separate from those with horns, the de-
horned ones, even when working hard every
day, took on flesh and were better workers.
Finally nearly all the work-oxen were de-
horned, and they were as meek and quiet as
lambs.
The whacker always began his orders to his
bulls in a low tone, increasing it as the neces-
The Prairie Schooner 33
sity for action presented itself, and ending in a
string of oaths that would make an old-time
Mississippi steamboat mate ashamed of his
reputation. Frequently teams were stalled on
a high hill or in the sand, when it would be
necessary to gee the team of seven yokes at an
almost right angle, with chains between each
yoke slackened and with "wheelers" filling
their yokes. Then the whacker would walk
out half way to his leaders and soothingly coax
them to come haw toward him on a trot,
until all the chains between the other yokes
were tightened. By this time, however, Mr.
Whacker was back to his wheelers, perhaps
punching the near one in the ribs, and then
throwing his eighteen or twenty foot lash over
the backs of any of the yokes that were not
clawing the sand properly. In this way the
men often worked for days at a time, making
sometimes only a few rods by each repetition
of the operation. Then again, the wagon
boss would order a doubling-up process and
two whackers and fourteen yokes of oxen would
work on one pair of wagons, taking them along
perhaps a mile, and then returning, repeat
the process until the bad road was left behind.
This was transportation in the old days, and
"trains" of this kind first hauled the heavy
traffic from Leavenworth and Nebraska City
to the Pacific and intermediate settlements in
Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. After the
Union Pacific was built this bullwhacker trans-
portation increased, especially in the country
34 The Prairie Schooner
between Utah and the Missouri River, in both
directions away from the railroad, for the gov-
ernment had a line of forts on the North Platte
River and Indian Agencies were established in
Western Nebraska, Wyoming and what is now
South Dakota.
Two of these agencies. Red Cloud, on White
River, and Spotted Tail, forty miles to the
north, were big traffic points. Train loads of
bacon, flour, sugar and other things were haul-
ed to these agencies on government contract,
the provisions being in payment to the Sioux
and other tribes for the land they occupied
near the North Platte River. Along the Platte
there were forts two famous in their day
Fort Laramie at the junction of the Platte and
Laramie Rivers, and Fort Fetterman, one hun-
dred miles west of Fort Laramie, on the Platte
at Lapariel Creek. Soldiers here depended
upon the "bull outfits" for their provisions,
nearly all being hauled in over mountain range
and plain by contractors.
Those were wild and woolly days, and the
rnan who lived the life of out-of-doors was a
rugged, devil-may-care, hungry, healthy, happy
fellow. He knew how to face a freezing bliz-
zard, or a baking sun without flinching; he
knew how to take care of himself with a mini-
mum of discomfort under the most adverse
circumstances. He was afraid of nothing. It
wouldn't do otherwise. He was there, usually
beyond the arm of any law other than ordi-
nances made and provided by himself and com-
The Prairie Schooner 35
pardons and enforced by the same law-givers.
Stealing was a worse crime than life-taking.
There never was an excuse for the first, but
nearly always one could be trumped up for
the latter. To take a man's horse was worse
than cold-blooded murder; to rob him of his
gun or his blankets was equally as bad a
crime. But if he had been cheated in a game
of " freeze out/' or called a name that reflected
upon his origin it was not uncommon for him
to become judge and executioner then and there.
So men who engaged in this early day trans-
portation of food and fodder for soldiers and
their mounts and for the followers of Sitting
Bull, Old Red Cloud and other chiefs, were
careful in their social intercourse, and when
the harsh word was passed, as frequently was
the case, it was no uncommon thing for men
to settle their score with pistols ; and the win-
ner in these duels seldom, if ever, was pun-
ished. But a cold-blooded murder a wanton
killing was never tolerated. In a fight with
pistols it was always considered that the man
who did the killing was justified.
Unlike the present day fliers, bull trains did
not run on schedules, although there was a pre-
tense of regularity about the day's routine,
and it was about as follows :
At break of day the night herder who had
been out with the bulls all night it is always
daybreak to him whether three o'clock or five
drives his herd into the corral, usually sing-
ing some refrain of his own composition, but
36 The Prairie Schooner
always having for its motive the same that ani-
mates the pestiferous alarm clock set by a
master to disturb the slumber of a tired serv-
ant. However, a half hour before the herder
appears the cook and his helper, both bull-
whackers, doing their turn of a week, have
been on the job with the coffee and bacon, and
as soon as the herder sounds his first note, the
cook takes up the song, which is perhaps:
Bacon in the pan,
Coffee in the pot;
Get up and get it
Get it while it's hot.
And then, and it is always so, some of the
lively stock, as it approaches the corral, takes
the notion that there is some nice sweet buffalo
bunch grass to the rear that looks better than
a day's work, and there is a bolt often ap-
proaching a stampede. Curses? You never
heard the like, for the wagon boss and an
assistant are already in their saddles helping
the herder. If you tried to sleep just a minute
longer it would be impossible, therefore you
roll out from your bed on the ground, fold up
your blankets, tie them with a strap and
throw them on your trail wagon.
Coffee and bacon are swallowed in haste, and
if you are like the majority, you grab a piece
of bacon and a chunk of bread, bang them
together into a huge sandwich and put them
in the jockey box of your wagon for a lunch
at eight or nine o'clock.
Yoking and stringing out the oxen is the
The Prairie Schooner 37
next operation, and a short one in a well regu-
lated outfit. Twenty minutes, usually, from
the time the bulls are driven in, the lead team
is moving, and when the " outfit, " as every
train is called, is well under way, the lead
wagon is perhaps a half mile from the last
one, which is the mess wagon, containing the
provisions, cooking utensils, levers for raising
a load of four or five tons, the iron jacks, ex-
tra tires, coils of rope, pulleys, wheels, extra
spokes, bars of iron, and almost always a
small forge a regular wrecking outfit.
In hot summer weather on fair roads a bull
train would make four or five miles before the
sun was high enough to burn usually nine
o'clock. Then, if the camp was to be a "wet"
one at a creek, river or spring there would
be a "layover" until four o'clock in the after-
noon, during which time the boys could sleep
under a wagon, wash their clothes, or if in a
creek or river bottom, shoulder a gun and look
for moccasin, lodge pole or bear tracks.
All day long, however, the men who were on
the cook trick would make bread in Dutch
ovens. And let me tell you, no bull outfit ever
stopped for a long mid-day rest without put-
ting on a huge kettle of beans, for the army
or white bean was the staple food in those
days; and there was always, on these long
mid-day stops, plenty of soup.
Perhaps one of the boys in his meanderings
up or down the creek would bag a deer. If
he wandered out upon the plain he was sure
38 The Prairie Schooner
of an antelope, if he was a good shot. The
deer kept to the trees along the rivers and the
hills, while the antelopes' territory was the
open plain, hard to get at unless the plain
were rolling, and the hunter could be in the
right place as regards the wind.
Sometimes there were poker games, usually
freeze-out, which the men played with plug
tobacco cut up into small cubes. Others would
spend their time braiding whips or mending
clothing.
The bullwhacker 's whip not only made a
tenderfoot open his eyes with wonder, but it
usually shocked him. It was something he
had never seen before, and if he had been told
that a man of ordinary strength would be
able to wield it he would have been decidedly
incredulous.
Differing from a cowboy's or herder's whip,
the bullwhip lash was attached to a stalk of
hickory or white ash three feet long upon which
the whacker could firmly plant both hands.
The lash at the butt, which was attached to
the stick by a soft strip of buckskin, formed
in a loop or swivel, frequently was more than
an inch thick. These lashes were from eigh-
teen to more than twenty feet long and were
graduated in thickness from this great bulk
to the tip, which was the thickness of a lead
pencil. The number of strands in a bullwhip
were also graduated. At the butt there were
as many strands as the maker usually the
bullwhacker could weave, often fourteen. At
The Prairie Schooner 39
the tip, this number was reduced to six. The
top, and down to six or eight feet from the
end, the whip was made of leather, often old
boot tops. The rest was of tough buckskin or
elkskin. But on the very tip of the whip
the business end was a "popper" of buck-
skin cut in the shape of a long V, the bottom
end of the V running into a strand which was
braided into the tip.
The bullwhacker, when using this instru-
ment, first threw it out before him upon the
ground ; then by the use of all his strength he
swung it in over his head, to the right, often
whirling it several times before he let it go
upon the back of the bull he wanted to reach.
To the man who never saw this operation
before, there was a shock, for as the whip
landed on the bull the popper made a roar
like the report of a cannon.
As a matter of fact the bull was uninjured,
unless the bullwhacker was careless and al-
lowed his popper to strike a tender spot, the
nose, an eye or the belly.
It was almost a crime for a bullwhacker to
cut a bull and draw the blood, and he seldom
did it unless his popper had been wet and
then dried. The spot usually aimed for was
the hip, and bulls that had been in service
any length of time had a spot on the rump
that was hairless, resembling the head of a
drum. But the spot was tough. The noise of
40 The Prairie Schooner
the popper, however, was what startled the
team and caused it to "dig in."
Frequently in the summer the afternoon
drive lasted until ten or eleven o'clock, espe-
cially if there was a moon. You cannot imag-
ine a more impressive, weird, wild sight. The
shadows, the rattle of the wagons, perhaps the
scream of a night bird or a wild cat maybe
the zip of an arrow from a redskin's bow, or
the report of a gun, all calculated to keep even
the hardened bullwhacker on his mettle. And
for this the bullwhacker got $75 to $100 a
month and "grub." He usually spent his
money at the end of his trip much after the
habit of the sailor who rounds the Horn.
In the cold weather the hardships were
many. There were, remember, no bridges and
the roads crossed numerous streams, all of
which had to be forded; and there was but
one way to cross, and that was to wade and
guide a team.
Usually the heavy freighting w r as done be-
fore December, but often it was necessary to
fight through blizzards and zero weather. It
was this kind of work that tried the soul of
even the hardy bullwhacker, and not infre-
quently his hands, feet, ears or face were
frozen. It was hard on the cattle, too, al-
though it was almost always possible to find
plenty of good feeding ground of buffalo grass,
which grew in heavy bunches and was very
sweet in its dry state, for the wind usually
The Prairie Schooner 41
kept places bare. If not, the bulls would nose
it out from under several inches of snow and
manage to get something approaching a meal.
Otherwise, they went hungry, for no feed of any
kind was ever carried for them.
Indians, usually, were too lazy to hunt the
white man in winter, so there was seldom any
trouble from this source after the first snow-
fall. But when the grass was green it was dif-
ferent, especially in the mountains or foothills.
Redskins seldom fought a real battle in the
open. To the bullwhacker he w r as nearly al-
ways an invisible foe, shooting his arrows or
his gun from behind a rock, or from the top of
a bluff, well out of range himself. When the
Indians were known to be following an outfit
it was common practice to keep a couple of
horsemen outriders on each side of the train
where possible. Frequently bull trains were
obliged to corral and put up a fight, and usu-
ally the Indian lost.
Hunton and Clay
Bull-Train Magnates
CHAPTER III
HUNTON AND CLAY, BULL-TRAIN MAGNATES.
AMONG the bull-train magnates of the
early 70 's were Charley Clay, said to be a
relative of the famous statesman, and Jack
Hunton. They were pioneers of Wyoming who
have no doubt been quite forgotten, though in
their day none in the then sparsely settled
frontier territory was better known. They
were not only pioneer freighters, but among
the very first of the daring frontiersmen to go
beyond the limits of civilization, and into the
stamping grounds of the warlike tribes of In-
dians to establish homes. Both built ranches
in the Chugwater country along the trail lead-
ing from Cheyenne to Fort Laramie. Clay's
log house was directly under one of the fa-
mous landmarks of the territory chimney
rock a chalky butte formed, geologists say, by
erosion. Hunton built his ranch on the north-
west end of the Chugwater at a point near
Goshen's Hole, a great basin, where the Lara-
mie trail wheeled directly north to Eagle's
Nest, another butte. At Hunton 7 s a trail less
used branched off to the northwest, across
what was then considered a desert and reach-
ing Fort Fetterman, perhaps 125 miles away
on the North Platte river at Lapariel creek.
46 The Prairie Schooner
This part of Wyoming is now, I understand, a
vast wheatfield. To a bullwhacker of the early
70 's this is almost a miracle.
Both Hunton and Clay used their ranches
to range their work cattle in off seasons, al-
though both had beef herds and lots of horses.
These ranch houses were protected from In-
dians by less than a dozen men at any time;
but these men were fighters and were known
to be such by the chiefs of the tribes that fre-
quently roamed the territory south of the
Platte, although in a treaty with the Federal
government they had promised to stay north
of the famous stream, the consideration being,
on the part of Uncle Sam, a contribution of
hundreds of tons of flour, bacon, tobacco and
other things. Strictly speaking, this food was
in payment for land south of the Platte.
Both Hunton and Clay had a knack of deal-
ing with these roaming bands, however, that
prevented any serious raids, although at one
time, when Clay had closed a contract with
the government and found himself in Chey-
enne with his big bull outfit, consisting of a
couple of hundred head of oxen and thirty or
forty men, word was brought to him that on
his return trip to his Chugwater quarters, a
band of Sioux would attack him. So he left
Cheyenne one night, and taking a course almost
due east avoided the Laramie trail, and by a
circuitous route reached the Chugwater with-
out having traveled a mile on a trail.
Hunton 's and Clay's ranch houses were load-
The Prairie Schooner 47
ed with firearms, looked like armories, and
at the height of the shoulder in the log walls
were fort holes through which guns could be
fired. These were used several times, but none
of the skirmishes approached in any degree
the present-day pictures one sees in the movies,
and I doubt if they ever did, in the West. In
the first place, while the Sioux, Cheyenne and
other redskins were considered especially
bloodthirsty, none of them was fond of expos-
ing his worthless carcass to a shower of bul-
lets, even though outnumbering the whites 100
to 1. The Indian of that day of the day that
history was making on the frontier was a
most miserable cow r ard when dealing with
frontiersmen of the Hunton or Clay calibre.
Of course, there were open battles with
United States troops, but even then only when,
as in the case of Custer and his Seventh Cav-
alry, the troops were outnumbered and
trapped. Even Sitting Bull's band, which has
wrongly been represented by some historians
as brave, were entitled to no credit of that
kind. Custer was trapped in a big bowl and
his 300-odd fighters surrounded on all sides by
several thousand well mounted and well-
armed young bucks. The Custer and the ear-
lier so-called Indian battles both at old Fort
Phil Kearney and earlier in Minnesota, were not
battles at all simply massacres. There is no
record of an even fight between redskins and
whites in the settlement of the country be-
tween the Missouri River and the Rocky Moun-
48 The Prairie Schooner
tains. The Modocs fought for months in the
lava beds, but seldom did a soldier see a Mo-
doc. So it was with old Geronomo and his
Apache followers. They fought from cover,
never in the open unless overtaken and sur-
rounded.
Nevertheless, the raiding bands of Ogalala
Sioux that slipped over the Platte in the sea-
son of good grass were a problem for these
pioneer ranchmen and transportation outfits,
and it was not an uncommon thing for a bullet
or an arrow to reach a vital spot in a bull-
whacker from some hiding place just in range
of the road. When this happened it was the
common practice for members of the outfit to
mount their saddle horses, with which every
bull-train was well supplied, and give chase
unless the lead of the Indians was too great,
and usually it was.
Once in a while, however, the Indian made
a miscalculation, and the bullwhacker would
return to the temporarily corralled outfit with
a scrubby Indian pony, a few rawhide thongs,
and an Indian's ear freshly amputated for use
as evidence at the first camp of bullwhackers
or army post that one more "Good Indian"
had been put on the list.
This cutting off of ears was reprisal, for the
Indians scalped their white victims and muti-
lated their bodies when they had a chance.
Hunton and Clay hauled with their big out-
fits, at one time, about everything that was
sent to the northern line of forts by Uncle
The Prairie Schooner 49
Sam. Clay's contracts were largely confined
to Fort Laramie, although Hunton hauled a
good deal of the provisions to that post. Hun-
ton and others supplied Fort Fetterman, the
principal route being from Medicine Bow sta-
tion on the Union Pacific across the mountain
range of the same name.
It took several days to load the prairie
schooners from the freight cars on a sidetrack
that was laid upon the sod ; and while this work
was going on there was sometimes a good deal
of drinking and many gun fights.
It was while a bull outfit was loading for
one of the fall trips to Fetterman that the
first billiard table came to Medicine Bow. I
think it was the only one in the territory out-
side of Cheyenne and Laramie City, both divi-
sion^ points on the Union Pacific. There were
no women in Medicine Bow, good or bad, at
the time and not more than 100 regular resi-
dents, yet the town had a saloon because the
bull outfits, Hunton 's and others, in their occa-
sional trips, and a few adventurers wiio were
prospecting south and west of the "Bow," fur-
nished ample patronage to make the enter-
prise profitable. It was this saloonkeeper who
conceived the idea of importing a billiard table,
and also a back bar and mirror.
The bullwhackers watched the installation
of the new furniture, and that night informed
the saloonkeeper that as there were no women
in the camp it had been decided to have a
stag dance in the saloon. He protested, but it
50 The Prairie Schooner
did no good. A few drinks in a dozen leaders
was followed by a deliberately aimed shot
which shattered the mirror, after which the
operation of removing the billiard table be-
gan. It was a rough job, and would have
given a Brunswick-Balke man a chill. The
table went out onto the prairie in sections, and
the sections were not always separated at the
regulation point. The green cover was ruined.
Then the dance began. The German saloon-
keeper smiled his protests, but when he be-
came too much concerned about what was go-
ing on, someone would snuff a light or plug a
barrel of whisky with a bullet. So the night's
debauch continued, and it did not end until
daybreak. The place was a wreck, and the
saloonkeeper was in despair when the wagon
boss came along with a roll of money as big
around as a ship ? s cable, saying :
< ' What 's the damage, Fritz ? ' '
"Ach," he replied, "the table cost me $500;
a barrel of whisky and cigars, beer, my fine
mirror everything is gone?"
"Yes, I see, the whole bizness," said the
boss.
"Well," said Fritz, "the boys spent $600
mit me, so I make it $600 more; maybe I can
repair the table."
So the bill was paid, the wagons were loaded,
and the outfit sallied forth across the plains,
the bridgeless rivers, and the mountain passes
to Petterman where there was a pay-day. De-
ductions pro-rata were made from every man's
The Prairie Schooner 51
wage to even up the score with Fritz, and
every bullwhacker paid his share willingly,
saying it was cheap sport for the price. There
was no feeling against Fritz because Fritz had
not shown fight. If he had well, most of the
men in the outfit were wild and woolly, and
rough, but not killers. Still one or two could
not be trusted.
Hunton put up a log house, a forge and a
charcoal kiln just outside the south limit of
the Fort Fetterman government reserve, a sec-
tion five miles square south of the Platte. Just
before this plant was erected a series of Indian
depredations began; several men engaged in
cord wood chopping for a government con-
tractor were murdered by small bands of Sioux,
and many saddle horses stolen. There were
also several raids in the Lapariel bottoms ; and
one day a small band of Sioux, well mounted,
forded the Platte almost in sight of the fort,
stampeded a herd of mules and drove them far
into the Indian country before a company of
soldiers took up the chase.
A military telegraph line ran from Fort Fet-
terman to Fort D. A. Russell at Cheyenne, and
the northwestern end of the line was down
most of the time, the Indians taking the wire
away to use in ear and nose rings and for
other purposes, although the line was de-
stroyed many times, no doubt, for pure cussed-
ness. One time I traveled for fifty miles on
horseback along this telegraph line, and in
places the wires were connected with insula-
52 The Prairie Schooner
tors which were mounted on buffalo horns. In
many places the wire was on the ground.
It was said at the time of the running off
of the mules that the Fort Fetterman com-
mandant was unable to follow the Indians
without orders from Washington via Fort Rus-
sell. However, this was not confirmed. Any-
way, on this and many other occasions the
army moved slowly and was past understand-
ing on the part of the few citizens in the coun-
try. Nevertheless, the soldiers of those days,
whenever in conflict with the redskins, usually
gave a good account of themselves.
Things got so warm one spring in the vicin-
ity of Fort Fetterman that the thirty or forty
citizens camping outside the military reserva-
tion organized a secret society known as the
Buckskin Militia, and determined to avenge
the deaths of several men, Jesse Hammond, a
woodchopper, and others, if opportunity should
present itself. The only qualification for mem-
bership in the Buckskins was a willingness to
take the oath, which was as follows:
I, John Smith, do solemnly swear that I will
shoot on sight any male Indian, no matter whether
he is attacking me or other white men, stealing
or attempting to steal my property or the property
of others, or whether he is approaching or moving
from me. Furthermore, I will answer any call
from another member of this band or any other
good white citizen, for assistance in the destruction
of any male Indian found on the south side of the
North Platte river; and will join in any raid upon
an Indian camp when called upon by the Chief
Buckskin. So help me God.
The Prairie Schooner 53
This oath was taken while standing on the
stump of a cottonwood tree in the Lapariel
bottoms, the candidate being loaded down with
as many log chains as he could hold, and the
ceremony, usually taken on a moonlight night,
was as weird a sight as one can imagine.
The raids from the north continued nearly
all summer. Several more white men were
killed, one a lone prospector who thought there
was mineral in the hills southwest of Port Pet-
terman and near old Port Caspar.
One of the Buckskins hunting antelope one
day in the vicinity of La Bonte Creek crossed
the trail of a single tepee or family, and three
ponies. This he knew from the lodge pole
tracks made by a horse dragging the poles
over the ground. The Buckskin took the trail,
keeping well out of sight, but finally cut off
a lone Indian who had dismounted to drink
from a spring, allowing his young buck sons
to go on. Buckskin whistled to give his quarry
the chance he would give a mad dog and no
more. Then he put a bullet in his head. He
remained on the spot from which he fired,
waiting to hear from the rest of the tepee,
which he did in a few minutes, although the
young bucks kept out of sight. They fired a
few shots before Buckskin decided to make a
dash, and when he did it was a race of ten
miles to a ford in the Platte. The young bucks
escaped. Buckskin returned to his "Good In-
dian," removed a lock of his hair, took his
gun and ammunition and a greasy card from
o
Z
bfi
O
Q
a
s
-o
33
s
o
o
The Prairie Schooner 55
the folds of his blanket upon which some white
man had written :
This is Cut Nose, a "Good"
Sioux Indian; but he is a
Murderer and Thief.
There was a big session of the Buckskin Mi-
litia a few nights later, and great rejoicing.
Cut Nose was a whole tribe of Indians in him-
self, and many dark crimes had been laid at
his door by the white men who were engaged
in freighting food to the Indian agencies and
army posts.
It must be understood that there were no
settlers or settlements or families in this sec-
tion of Wyoming at this time, therefore there
were never any of those horrible affairs com-
mon farther East a hundred years or more
ago. There were no women and children for
these red devils to kill, and year in and year
out the fight was between bullwhackers, a few
ranchmen, not more than half a dozen, govern-
ment woodchoppers, and a few prospectors.
The professional hunters usually "stood in"
with the red man, being possessed of some kind
of magic that was never fully explained. In
those days beaver, bear, buffalo, deer, ante-
lope and other game abounded. The hunter
usually had a hut or " dug-out " near a beaver
dam, and it usually was well supplied with
food and sometimes a squaw was the hunter's
companion. Her relatives were sure of good
treatment, and I presume for that reason the
relatives were able to give the "squaw man"
56 The Prairie Schooner
hunter protection. Still hunters were mur-
dered, but not often.
Finally, along in July, after the grass had
lost its sap and turned brown, one of the Buck-
skins saddled up his pinto horse one day,
strapped a blanket, a pone of bread and a
piece of bacon to his saddle, and giving free
play to his Rowell spur, waved his hat and
yelled as he dashed away:
"Good-bye, boys; see you again in a few
days. I'm goin' to put an end to these raids."
IBs brother Buckskins thought he was
crazy some of them did. But one or two
winked and looked wise; and about sixty
hours later, when some of the " militia " had
almost forgotten him, Buckskin rode up, un-
saddled his pinto, punched him in the ribs and
said: "There now, old boy, go up the creek
and enjoy yourself. Eat yourself to death,
and I'll know where to find you when I want
you. No Indian will get you."
When the boys crowded around him he
vouchsafed this much information :
"From a point twenty miles east of this spot
to a spot twenty miles west of Fort Laramie
on the north side of the Platte as far as the
eye can reach in a northerly direction, and you
know that's considerable distance, there is just
one charred mass every blade of grass has
been burned."
There was no more trouble that season. No
feed for the Indian ponies within a hundred
miles of the fort to the north of the river.
Guarding an Overland
Freight Outfit
CHAPTER IV
GUARDING AN OVERLAND FREIGHT OUTFIT.
DRIVING seven yoke of oxen hauling two
wagons attached by a short rig similar to
that used in coupling cars, along a desert road,
is enough to keep an able-bodied ox-train
brakeman busy. But when, in addition to
keeping his wild " leaders " in the road and his
" wheelers " filling their yokes, he has to keep
an eye on a distant bad land bluff or a roll
in the surface, he has his hands more than full.
This was the situation when the bull outfit,
from Cheyenne to Spotted Tail, was slowly
moving along north of the Platte river in
August, 1875 a time when Red Cloud and
Spotted Tail agencies were nearly deserted,
and all the young bucks were chasing antelope
and incidentally collecting scalps of white men
when they could find a white man alone and
unprepared to defend himself; or when they
could outnumber a bull outfit one hundred or
two hundred to one and get its members in
a " pocket," which was not often.
At this particular time a young man who, a
couple of years previous, had never known
anything less comfortable than a feather bed,
or a job harder than writing railroad way-
bills, was one of two in the cross-country
60 The Prairie Schooner
freighter crew who had been assigned by Wag-
onboss Watson to mount a "pinto" pony and
ride all day at least 1,000 yards away from the
trail and keep to the high places where he
could see what was going on, if anything, in
the vicinity. He had been told to dismount
and examine any signs of life on the ground
where it was bare, or in the grass, and when
found to fire one shot from his revolver to let
the bullwhackers know that they had "com-
pany" not far off; and if he saw one Indian
or a hundred to shoot not once but three times
in rapid succession and then gallop to the
wagon train with details.
The movement across the desert-like country
this day began at four a. m., and continued un-
til ten a. m. The feather-bed youngster was
well equipped with an army Springfield of
large calibre, forty rounds in his belt, two
Remington revolvers and a butcher knife with
a five-inch blade for the possibility of close
quarters. He had a bottle of spring water and
a saddlebag full of sandwiches of bread and
fried sowbelly and plenty of chewing and
smoking tobacco.
Maybe you think this youngster thought of
his soft bed at home or a pot shot from am-
bush that would leave his skeleton bleaching
in a sandy desert sun after it had been stripped
of its flesh by wolves ; or that he wished some-
one else had been chosen to guard one side of
the overland train of flour, bacon, corn and
sugar and its custodians, but that is not so.
The Prairie Schooner 61
It was one of the. proudest days of his life and
I know he will never forget it. He was highly
honored by Watson and he appreciated it, for
the reason that only two years before he had
come to Wyoming a green city boy and was
then known in the parlance of the plains as a
1 i tenderfoot, ' ' which was a truthful description
of any man or boy when he first entered upon
the life of the bullwhacker, the then popular
master of transportation between civilization
and its outposts. He never dreamed of death
when he got his orders, because he was young
and foolish. Sometimes it is called bravery,
but that isn't the right word. It can't be de-
scribed unless it is called blind or reckless in-
difference. Perhaps that isn't it; anyway the
youngster, as he mounted and galloped away
and waited on a neighboring knoll for the out-
fit to string out along the sandy trail, hoped
he wouldn't be disappointed. He wanted an
eventful day and he fairly prayed for it. "I
hope," he ruminated to himself half aloud,
"that I cross a tepee trail, at least, even if I
don't get my eye on an Indian."
It wasn't long until he began to wonder, for
it was still barely daylight, if it wouldn't be
possible for a buck of good aim to pick him
off, especially if the buck practiced the usual
tactics of concealing himself behind a sand-
dune or a butte. He wasn't afraid he didn't
know the word but he wondered. For this
reason he kept his pony moving, reasoning that
it is easier to hit a stationary target than a
62 The Prairie Schooner
swiftly whirling one. But the pony appeared
to be a dead one even when a spur was roughly
rubbed upon his belly, until, as the train had
gotten well out of camp and the teams strung
along for a mile, he found his pony to be inter-
ested in something, for he insisted on frequent
stops and moved his ears back and forward
and snorted lightly.
Finally it seemed next to impossible to get
him to move, and Featherbed was sure the
pony had been owned by Indians at some time
and was of the trick variety, being trained to
a brand of treachery that meant delivery of
his mount into the hands of the reds.
And while these things were passing through
the youngster's brain his only concern was
that the train was leaving him, and that he
was not guarding it. Hie heard a coyote's
mournful note, but that was a common occur-
rence, although he wondered if it couldn't be
possible that an Indian was doing the howling.
It sounded like an imitation.
The pony snorted some more, and then
Featherbed, finding his blunt pointed spurs
w r ere not getting him anywhere, unsheathed his
butcher-knife and jpricked his eayuse on the
back. He tried to buck, but he wore a double
cinch one fore and one aft and it kept him
on all fours.
Things were getting worse and the voices
of the bullwhackers yelling at their teams
grew fainter and fainter as the outfit slowly
but surely put distance between Featherbed
The Prairie Schooner 63
and his companion, when there was a sound
that resembled the dropping of a stick in the
water preceded by a distinct swish as if it had
been thrown through the air like a boomerang.
Then the pinto got busy. It was an arrow !
There were several more, and one of them
clipped the pommel of the saddle before
Featherbed thought of his orders to fire once
on sight of disturbed grass or a moccasin track
on bare ground; or, upon sighting an Indian,
to fire three times.
Then he let go with his Springfield in the
supposed direction of the enemy, and headed
for the trail, which he readily found, and soon
caught up with the mess-wagon which always
formed the rear guard with one whacker, the
night herder inside, and the extra herd horses
tied behind. Featherbed met Watson gallop-
ing toward the rear.
"What is it, boy?" he shouted.
"They got a piece of my Texas pommel,"
he replied, "but I don't know where the arrow
came from. I'll go back and see."
He wheeled his pony to go and would have
been off to take up his station a thousand
yards from the trail had not Watson said,
laughingly :
"You're crazy wait a minute till I send
word up ahead to corral."
"You (to the mess wagon driver) untie
them hosses, saddle 'em up and wait for Blu-
64 The Prairie Schooner
cher Brown and Archer; they'll be back in a
minute/'
Featherbed, as the sun peeped over a rise in
the land, waited impatiently. So did the pony,
for the miserable Indian-bred cuss had a good
nose that was keen to the smoky smell of an
Indian, or to the odor of another horse, espe-
cially of his own breed, and he w r as all ani-
mation and ready to go.
When the party finally got away Watson,
turning to Featherbed as they galloped side
by side along the high spots near the back
trail, said:
"If yer not afraid, pull out ahead with that
pony and lead the way."
Featherbed pressed the Rowell spur to the
pony's side and he responded like a real cow-
pony, much to Featherbed 's surprise, and be-
fore Watson could gather his breath to call
the youngster back he led them by 200 yards.
Finally he did manage to yell between his
laughter :
"Hold on, you danged idiot I didn't
mean
But he didn't finish the sentence, although
he continued yelling, this time expressing him-
self to the effect:
"My hoss has been creased in the neck dis-
mount, give me your hoss and lead mine back
to the outfit; we'll take care of these galoots."
Featherbed protested, but it was no use, and
he returned and joined the whackers who had
corralled and gathered the bulls inside the
The Prairie Schooner 65
wagons, forming two half circles on a high
spot near the trail. There were several other
horses in the outfit, so Featherbed quickly
slipped the boss' fine $200 rig on the back of
a buckskin of the cow-puncher variety and
sped back to the scene of action.
But it was all over. The sneaking Indians
had disappeared, and the only evidence of
their presence was a spot of crumpled grass
behind a knoll where several of them had lain
in complete safety while they tried to send
Featherbed to the Happy Hunting Ground.
The sun was too high for the Indians, so
they disappeared, skulking at safe distance to
wait for darkness and perhaps other prey.
Featherbed, after another shift of mounts
and saddles and bridles, again took his post
1,000 yards from the trail, smoked his pipe,
munched his sandwiches and drank the spring
water.
At ten o 'clock camp was struck for the mid-
day stop close to a creek of sweet cold water
that ran through some small hills covered with
stunted pines, a few miles from a range of
black mountains out of the bad lands and
sand.
Featherbed was here promoted to the posi-
tion of assistant wagon boss, presented with a
big sorrel horse called "America" (because he
was not Indian-bred) and given the lead team
to drive in the outfit. This meant that, in co-
operation with the "big boss," he would help
select the camps, govern the speed of the
66 The Prairie Schooner
4 'train," look after the manifests, act as check
clerk in loading and unloading, and besides
wear a red sash to designate his official posi-
tion.
Featherbed took his honors modestly, in fact
he was surprised and couldn't understand it
until someone told him the "old man" was
pleased when he (Featherbed) took the wound-
ed horse back to the train, saddled up another
and returned to help find where the arrows
came from.
Rattlesnakes and Redskins
CHAPTER V
RATTLESNAKES AND REDSKINS.
THE night-herder's song awoke me at four
a. m. the first streak of day and I didn't
have time to pull on my boots before the bulls
were inside the corral ; so, in bare feet, I yoked
my fourteen head and then proceeded to pull
on, the cowhides, roll up my blankets* and
throw them on my trail wagon. Due to the
haste for nearly everyone else in the outfit
was ready to "pull out" in response to the
assistant wagon boss' order I proceeded to
pull on the left boot without the usual precau-
tions. My fingers were in the straps as I sat
on the ground,* and in another minute my
toes would have been in the boot. But the
rattler that had spent the night in it stuck out
his head. I shook him out, first calling my
pard to come with his whip.
After the rattler was dead I plucked off
eleven beautifully graduated white rattles and
a black button, later on adding them to a hat-
band of several hundred which I had sewn to-
*This was in the center of a prairie dog town
covering perhaps twenty acres; and the "town"
was inhabited not only by these marmots but rab-
bits, owls and rattlesnakes, apparently living in
perfect peace and harmony in the same burrows.
70 The Prairie Schooner
: SM
gether, using silk thread and a cambric needle.
The other boot was tenantless.
The blankets, in a neat roll secured by a
heavy leather strap, were thrown on top of
the freight in the trailer, and away we went
for a dry camp in the bad lands, where we
spent six hours of the middle of the day hid-
ing under our wagons to escape the hot rays
of the sun.
A late afternoon start ended at nine p. m.,
in a moonlit camp on a creek that ran swiftly
through chalk-like bluffs perhaps the head-
waters of the Niobrara river. In those days
none but a geographer or a government sur-
veyor knew the names of many of the water-
ways, if they had names. It had been a hard
drive through deep sand most of the way, and
after the bulls had been relieved of their yokes
and the chains that held the teams together,
all hands raced for the water, both for inter-
nal and external purposes.
Our night camp was on a flat between the
bluffs and a few yards from the stream in a
most inviting spot, the edge of the crooked
channel being lined with stunted and gnarled
box-elder, while farther back were a few dozen
dead and gaunt cottonwoods. Some small
bushes grew in clumps here and there, but our
camp commanded a good view, even in the
night, of the country for a mile in at least two
directions north and south.
Though tired, it was too nice a night even
in this wilderness to go to bed ; for a young-
The Prairie Schooner 71
ster who had acquired two revolvers, a Win-
chester rifle, a butcher knife and other wea-
pons believed the crumpled grass he had seen
at the edge of the creek indicated the pres-
ence not far away of others of the human
family, and he intended to find out about it.
He had confided this suspicion to one other
youth of the outfit, and as the supper campfire
died down to a bed of coals and a cool wind
began to fan, the hot earth these boys stole
out of camp, waded the creek, and carefully
examined the earth up and down its margin
until they came upon a distinct moccasin, pony
and lodge pole trail. They followed it along
the bottoms for two miles to a jutting bluff
where around the corner they saw six tepees,
near which were picketed several ponies.
All was silent as the boys, concealed in a
safe spot, viewed the scene. Then there was a
sound, low at first, like the crooning of a moth-
er to a babe, which grew louder and louder,
until finally there emerged from one of the
tepees a big buck who stood silently for a full
minute, listening. He wore nothing but a
breech-clout, and over his shoulder hung a
buck-skin strap upon which was attached the
arrows for the big bow held in his hand. He
did wear a bonnet and it consisted principally
of feathers that looked exactly like some of
the creations worn by women of the present
day.
When he had located the sound he moved
toward the hiding boys but stopped at the
72 The Prairie Schooner
nearest tepee. The crooning grew to a lamen-
tation. Then other tepees showed signs of
life, and in a few moments bucks, squaws and
papooses were running hither and thither in
a bewildering way. But the boys remained
silent, for there was no sign of a movement of
camp and not an indication that there was an
outside alarm. Then what could it be? What
was all this fuss about? The lamentations be-
came louder and louder and the excitement
apparently greater.
Finally a number of squaws who had gone
to the creek bottom appeared in the center of
the little camp. They carried bundles of green
willows, dozens of large hard-head boulders
and rawhide receptacles filled with water; also
a bundle of dry faggots.
After the stones had been piled in a neat
heap a fire was built upon them which was
allowed to burn briskly for half an hour. Then
the coals and ashes were brushed off and a
tent-like covering put over a quickly woven
basket-like structure that had been built over
the stones. Then the water was dashed upon
the stones and the steam began to ascend.
Presently out from a tepee came a squaw
with a bundle which she gently shoved under
the elkskin covered cauldron of steam.
' ' Say, ' ' said one of the boys, ' ' are you on ? ' '
"Sure enough," the other whispered, "they
are giving that kid a Turkish bath."
And that's what they were doing; but it
wasn't Turkish just Injun.
The Prairie Schooner 73
Returning to camp the boys proceeded to
slip into their blankets quietly, say nothing
about what they had seen, and go to sleep.
They believed the straggling band of Arapa-
hoes were not on the war-path and had work
for the "medicine-man" the big buck they
first saw come out of his tepee.
You have no idea how cautiously the boys
went about getting the blankets off the wagon
so as not to disturb the boss, a man they
feared. So they moved noiselessly.
One threw his roll of blankets from the top
of the trailer and the other caught the bundle
and proceeded to flatten it out into a comfort-
able bed when he heard a familiar noise, and
forgetting that they were to be silent, the
youth on the ground yelled :
"Look out a rattler!' 5
It woke up the whole camp. The snake had
occupied the blankets from four a. m., at least,
until this time midnight. Perhaps he had
slept with the boy until four a. m. ; I think
he did; anyway, he had rolled him up and put
him where found.
Belated Grace
For a Christmas Dinner
CHAPTER VI
BELATED GRACE FOR A CHRISTMAS DINNER.
AFTER fighting through a ten-hour blizzard
that swept across the plains from the
Elk Mountain country our wagon-train reached
the foothills of the Medicine Bow range, where
there was shelter for the work cattle along a
swift running stream. The snow was piled in
great drifts everywhere except upon exposed
high spots, and it seemed impossible for us to
proceed farther, for we knew that along the
government trail just beyond, and 1,000 feet
higher, that the drifts would be so deep that
a long camp where we had stopped would be
necessary.
Ten men were tolled off by the wagon-boss
to chop down young quaking aspen trees, the
bark and small twigs of which furnished appe-
tizing fodder for the bulls. Another gang
climbed a sidehill and with axes felled a group
of stunted pines for the side walls of a cabin ;
still others were sent into a ' ' burnt and down ' '
piece of timber to gather well seasoned dead
pitch pine for firewood.
The storm lasted until six o'clock in the
evening, then continued as an old-fashioned
heavy snowfall with no wind, increasing the
level of the snow to the tops of the wheels of
78 The Prairie Schooner
our corraled wagons. Apparently they were
doomed to stay where they were until spring.
Next morning there was a let-up. Then the
blizzard began again in all its fury only such
a blizzard as one can see in but one other place
on earth, judging from Dana's description of
his experience in going around the Horn. The
cattle, with almost human intelligence, 200
head of them, crowded toward the big bon-
fires of pitch, and with long faces looked
mournfully upon the scene. They seemed to
know, as we did, that the prospects were not
bright for our cavalcade. Certainly there was
no grass in sight now, not even on the round-
topped knolls bordering our little valley, for
the night fall of snow was heavy and damp,
and finally, when the thermometer registered a
few degrees below zero, the grass was sealed
against the tough noses and even the hoofs of
the hungry bulls. An attempt was made
by a scouting party to find a clear feeding
place on the back trail, but a day's investiga-
tion resulted in failure. Not a blade of grass
could be found all sealed with a heavy crust
that would, in most places, carry a horse and
rider.
The storm continued, after an eight-hour let-
up, the temperature rising. Two feet more fell
on top of the crust, then came another freeze
and a new crust. After twenty-four hours an-
other blizzard from the north, consisting of
sleet and snow and some rain, was like a sand-
storm in summer on the plains below. It was
The Prairie Schooner 79
fierce, nearly freezing and blinding both men
and cattle. The poor bulls were more forlorn
than ever. They gnawed the very wood of
the aspens, and there wasn't enough of that.
On the last crust of all this snow and sleet
it was finally found possible to take the oxen
farther along into the mountains, where four
men drove them. Others went ahead with axes
and for two weeks cut aspens and sought out
hidden protected places in the valleys where
there were a few blades of grass and some
succulent underbrush.
One day, when the sun was shining brightly
on the white mantle and the distant peaks of
the majestic mountains of blue stood out like
a painting, Nate Williams, wagon-boss, spoke:
"Do you know," he said to the fellows who
were carving the carcass of a faithful old bul-
lock, "that tomorrow is Christmas?" None
had thought of it.
"And," he continued, "do you know we
are liable to stay where we are until the
Fourth of July, if we don't get a move on?"
There were no suggestions.
"Furthermore," added Williams, "we have-
n't much else to eat but beef there are just
five 100-pound sacks of flour in the mess
wagon no bacon nor canned goods. Its a
case of shoveling a road to Crane's Neck."
Crane's Neck was a mountain twist in the
road, a mile from camp. If the road could be
cleared to that point there would be fair haul-
ing for five miles in the range to another
80 The Prairie Schooner
stretch that had been filled in places with from
ten to twenty feet of snow, while one spot was
covered by a slide from a mountain to a depth
of forty feet ,and for a considerable distance
along the trail.
For three hours plans were discussed, and
it was finally determined to go to work with
shovels and picks, but not until after Christ-
mas. Our caravan included a blacksmith's
forge, also a regular wrecking outfit, and in
a short time big wooden shovels were made
from blocks of pine with handles stoutly at-
tached with iron bands.
The cook was a youth of twenty and had all
the enthusiasm of the adventurer. He had
spent a year on a whaler and knew what it
meant to drift in the ice north of Point Bar-
row. This present situation, he said, was a
picnic; so was the one in the Arctic. It
couldn't be so bad that he wished to be snug-
gled away in a feather bed somewhere east
of the Missouri River. That would be too or-
dinary.
"If I could sit down to a table at the best
hotel in the land," he said, "I'd prefer to eat
the dinner that I'm going to cook for you fel-
lows tomorrow. ' '
Williams sneered. "Yes," he said, "we put
old Tex (a long-horn bull) out of his starving
misery and the boys have found his liver to
be 0. K. Maybe you can give us a liver pie."
"I'll do better than that," said the boy;
"I'll not only give you a beef stew, but a pud-
The Prairie Schooner 81
ding that you can't buy outside of London or
Liverpool a plum duff and a cake. Old
Tex will also be on the menu in several places,
for his tenderloin looks good, and there are a
few steaks which, when properly treated with
a maul on the top of a stump, will be as good
as you will get in a 'Frisco water front lodg-
ing, and better than any of you fellows have
had since we hit the drifts."
I have eaten meals that mother used to cook,
I've been famished during a sea voyage, and
devoured a Norwegian sailor's pea soup; I've
participated in several real banquets in New
York; I've dined at Delmonico's and at Sher-
ry's, at Young's in Boston, and I've feasted
in a circus cook tent; but my Christmas din-
ner in the foothills of Wyoming in 1874, un-
der the circumstances I have but faintly
described, still is a fond memory and holds the
record as the best meal I ever ate. It was as
follows :
MENU
Marrowbone Soup "Tex" Water Cress
Beef Stew "Tex"
Hamburg Steak "Tex"
Planked Porterhouse Steak "Tex"
Tenderloin Steak "Tex" Roast Beef "Tex"
Corn Bread Wheat Bread
English Plum Pudding Hard and Soft Sauce
Raisins Cake Coffee Tea
(No butter or milk) (Lots of salt and pepper)
The corn bread was made from meal milled
by the cook from shelled corn in the cargo.
The "plums" were raisins, of which the cook
had a few pounds. He used wheat flour,
82 The Prairie Schooner
baking; 'powder and grease saved from the
final ration of the bacon which gave out a
week before Christmas. The hard sauce was
made with sugar and grease and a flavoring
extract. The soft or liquid sauce contained a
" remedy " requisitioned from a homeopathic
quantity found in the wagon-boss' medicine
chest a few spoonfuls of brandy. The water-
cress was found two miles away at a spring.
The boys called it "pepper grass. " There it
was fresh and green, protected by spring
water which never freezes, and in some places
it was peeping out from the edge of the snow
at the brookside.
And now about whisky. There were sixty
men in this camp, and in one of the big
wagons were three barrels of whisky, but it
belonged to the post trader at Fort Fetter-
man, and it was a tradition not even broken
on this exceptional passage from Medicine
Bow on the U. P. to Fort Fetterman on the
North Platte that a consignment of hard
liquor was as safe in a bull train as it would
be anywhere on earth, .and that it would reach
its destination untouched. Few men drank in-
toxicants on these trips. It was a crime to
be found with whisky, punishable by banish-
ment from camp, and that might have meant
death. But at both ends of the journey
that's another story.
The plainsman and mountaineer, the bull-
whacker and the stage-driver, when chilled,
drank water. Whisky caused him to perspire,
The Prairie Schooner 83
and that was bad. He did not often use it
when on duty.
One of the peculiar things about this Christ-
mas dinner is the fact that there were no
mountain grouse, no sage hen, no antelope,
deer, nor elk for the menu. The truth is the
storm drove everything of the kind in another
direction the direction in which we were
slowly moving and some time later, when we
emerged upon^the other side of the range with
our ox-power so greatly reduced that we made
less than a mile of progress a day, the herds
of elk stampeded a dozen times past our camps,
and the "fool grouse" sat a dozen in a group
upon the pine boughs in the mountains and
refused to move, allowing us to kill them, if
so disposed, one at a time ; but we did it only
once, just to prove that it could be done.
(Colonel Roosevelt, please note!)
It took us a couple of weeks to shovel our
way out, and while the sun shone in the mid-
dle of the day hardly a flake of the snow
melted. The air was at times biting cold, but
invigorating, and every man, including the
boss and the cook and even the night herder,
fell to the work with a will that finally meant
victory. In places we operated in jthe drifts
as you see the excavators in a city cellar or
subway operate, digging down to the surface
and then benching as the open-ground miners
or cellar excavators do, the men below tossing
the blocks of snow up to the bench above and
they in turn passing it to the top of the drift.
84 The Prairie Schooner
Once or twice, in narrow passages, it was
necessary to build several benches. In one
place we began to tunnel, but the plan was
given up, for our wagons, the regulation prai-
rie schooners^ would require a passage big
enough for a railroad furniture car to pass
through.
After the high plateau was reached the
land that represented the watershed of the
Platte Valley it was clear sailing, and while
food wild game was plentiful, and we ate
lots of it, the memory of our Christmas dinner
remained to remind us after all that in the
midst of greatest hardships and suffering we
often find something to be thankful for, some-
thing to bring us to our senses when we grum-
ble or complain of our ill-luck or misfortunes.
Had I been as appreciative when I partook
of this mountain dinner as I am today for the
blessings of Divine Providence, I would have
been able to say, in relating this story, that
we properly gave thanks to Him who is re-
sponsible for all our blessings and who
chasteneth us for our wickedness; but I was
not properly appreciative, neither were my
rough but honest companions. Therefore, I
take this opportunity to say grace more than
forty years late:
Thank God for that snowbound Christmas
dinner.
The Fate of One-Eyed Ed
CHAPTER VII.
THE FATE OP ONE-EYED ED.
FROM the cross-tree of a telegraph pole hung
the body of a man when the 9:30 Union
Pacific Overland Express stopped for a "slow"
order across a bridge that a band of Comanche
Indians had tried to burn.
A Massachusetts woman enroute to 'Frisco
stuck her head out of a car window and ex-
claimed, "How awfully terrible!"
Yes, it was.
Ed Preston was a one-eyed man. I don't
know how he lost the other one, but I do know
that he was a dead shot with the one eye that
he slanted along the barrel of his pistol or
buffalo rifle, the latter a sawed-off Springfield
and the first mentioned an old-time army Rem-
ington.
Preston's marksmanship cost him his life.
They hung Preston, the boys did, because he
killed a man just for the meanness of it, or, as
one of them said, because he was spoiling for
trouble.
One day as we were camped on the north
bank of the North Platte near the eastern line
of Wyoming, Preston, full of liquor, lurched
up to a bunch of bullwhackers and asked if
anyone present thought he was a "dead shot."
88 The Prairie Schooner
Of course, all hands admitted that his reputa-
tion was unquestioned.
"But you never saw me shoot/ 7 he said, "so
what the do you know about it?" Then
he pulled his gun and backed off, saying, as
he pointed to a heap of discarded tomato cans :
"Hey, you Charley, heave one o' them cans
in the air hurry up."
Observing his apparent quarrelsome atti-
tude, Charley Snow, a youthful member of the
outfit, obeyed without protest. Snow had been
assigned by Martin, the wagon-boss, to help
the cook and the cook had made him responsi-
ble for the proper boiling of a pot of beans.
Snow left the beans and threw a can as far
away from himself as he could, and before it
hit the ground it was perforated by a bullet.
"Now throw one straight up in the air,"
commanded Preston, and Snow obeyed. Pres-
ton put two shots into that "on the wing."
Snow attempted to resume his duties at the
mess fire, but Preston's shooting had drawn
a dozen or more of the men of the outfit to
the scene, and he was in the humor to show
off; therefore as Snow was the youngest and
possibly the most inoffensive man in the party,
Preston decided to eliminate the bean question
by ordering Snow, with a flourish of his gun,
to remove the beans from the fire. This done,
he continued:
"Now you throw the cans and be lively
about it."
Snow did as ordered. One, two, three, ten
The Prairie Schooner 89
cans went into the air. Preston missed none.
Finally the boy threw, at Preston's command,
two at a time and both were plugged before
they came down. Then as Snow picked up
another one Preston shot it out of his hand,
and he tried to quit and return to the bean
kettle, whereupon Preston bored a hole
through Snow's sombrero without cutting off
a hair or bruising his scalp, although it was
plain to see that while Snow was no fresh
tenderfoot from the effete East, but a seasoned
young bullwhacker and plainsman, he was
more than uneasy. The boy said afterward
that while he had a whole lot of confidence in
Preston's marksmanship he knew he had drunk
at least a pint of whisky the worst of the
squirrel variety at that for had he not taken
the last swig out of a flask, thrown it almost
at Snow and sent its splinters in every direc-
tion by a shot from his Remington? Sober,
said Snow, Preston would not have been so
bad, but drunk he objected to further par-
ticipation in the William Tell business and he
entered his protest. When he discovered that
the chambers of Preston's revolver were tem-
porarily empty, Snow quietly took a rifle from
its leather fastenings on the side of a prairie
schooner. His move looked ominous to his
tormentor.
Preston was a coward, as were all of that
class of killers in those days. He was an en-
gineer of a bull team of seven yokes and a
good man at his business, but a bully, a brag-
90 The Prairie Schooner
gart and a coward, whose victims usually were
known to be peaceful and who were unarmed
or unprepared to defend themselves. He was
not the heroic figure of the almost forgotten
wild west the brave and big-hearted fellow
who fought sometimes for his rights or what
he considered his rights. Preston was just a
plain murderer, who had taken a place among
rough but honest frontiersmen, chased from
an orderly community somewhere in God's
country then east of the Missouri, now any-
where from the Atlantic to the Pacific be-
cause of some dark crime he had committed,
no doubt.
All day long we had been fording the North
Platte at this point Sidney crossing a dis-
tance of at least a half a mile, including a
small island of sand and a few bushes. It was
the last trainload of provisions for the season
we were taking north to the government's
beneficiaries the Ogalala Sioux and the
Cheyennes. We had seventy teams, each of
seven yokes, and two wagons, and as the
Platte is a swift-running stream at this point
and there is quicksand between the south
shore and the island, it was necessary to " jack
up" on blocks some of our loads on the
wagons and double and treble teams, some-
times using as many t as twenty-five yokes of
oxen on one wagon and a half dozen men,
belly deep in the mush ice, punching the bulls.
The water was in places up to the tops of the
The Prairie Schooner 91
wheels. It was a sun-up to sun-down job from
corral to corral.
Someone had whisky, but it was not ap-
parent until late in the afternoon, when the
target shooting incidents began. The boys
were a sober lot the good, honest kind, and
not a desperado among them, barring One-
Eyed Ed. Others there were, sure enough,
who might be considered hardly fit for even
the most humble society, for they looked like
pirates all of them hair long, clothes
weather-beaten and rough, faces unshaven and
grizzled, and language or topics of conversa-
tion not what would be called cultured by any
means. Yet there was in this outfit a pre-
dominance of good, honest hearts, most of
them measuring life from a standard never
understood if ever known in " God's Coun-
try." These sailors of prairie schooners, these
pioneer transportation men of the virile, virgin
West, knew little law or order or justice, as
we know them; they frequently violated what
is known as the law, but they didn't know it.
They had but one degree of murder. It
wasn't murder for them to fight and kill with
pistols. It was the custom. Murder was some-
thing else. It was to kill a man who was not
"heeled" or when his back was turned, or to
mount another man's horse and ride away.
This was murder in the first degree the same
as if the owner of the horse had been shot to
death while asleep. In those days some things
were as necessary, as indispensable as life a
92 The Prairie Schooner
horse, a saddle, a pair of blankets, a gun and
ammunition and a butcher knife perhaps a
small bag of salt. The last, however, would
be termed a luxury, although nearly every
man in those days had a little salt stored away
in a weather-proof pocket or saddle bag for
the sage hen, antelope, deer, or buffalo beef
he might have for dinner or breakfast.
But let me tell you how Preston spent the
rest of his day. It was early in the afternoon
when he perforated Snow's sombrero, but it
was sundown when he shot and killed Tom
Sash, the boss herder, a splendid Texan, who
had charge of an Indian contract beef herd
which had come up the trail from the Lone
Star state to the Platte Valley guided by a
half dozen range men in charge of Sash, and
were being grazed along the Platte bottoms
previous to being doled out as per agreement
with Uncle Sam to the clouted redskins at the
White River Agency at Red Cloud.
All during the previous summer, as the
wagon trains passed to and from Sidney and
the northern forts and agencies, Sash had told
the wagon bosses not to go hungry for lack of
veal. "We are anxious to fatten these cattle,"
he would say, "and you are welcome to a calf
or two any time you want it." Sash was all
right and the bullwhackers couldn't sing his
praises loud enough.
It was at the close of Snow's engagement
with Preston that the wagon boss told Pres-
ton to try his hand on some Indian veal. So
The Prairie Schooner 93
Preston disappeared down the river, returning
at suppertime with the admission that he had
not only veal but ''yearling steak." And he
had some of it with him.
The beans had been boiled and eaten, the
tin dishes and cups, pots and kettles and iron
ovens dumped into the mess wagon, and two
crews of men were at work jacking up wagons
and greasing axle skeins, when the space at
the north mouth of the corral was suddenly
filled by as fine a horseman as ever galloped
over the plains. It was Sash, dressed in the
costume of the real cowboy of the long-horn
cattle day sombrero, chaps, Rowell spurs, a
Mexican lariat properly adjusted over the
horn of his elaborate double-cinched cutting-
out saddle everything was perfection. He
was astride a fine big black American horse
not a regulation cow pony a shiny, deep bay
charger with a white left ankle half way to
the knee from the fetlock, and a spot of white
the size of a hand on the face.
He came on a gallop and stopped so short
at the corral mouth that, had he not known
his business, he would have been thrown over
the chains. But that was the style of riding.
Plunge ahead to the object or point desired-
then stop short. He waved his hat to Martin,
our wagon boss, to come to the corral chains.
"Someone from your outfit, " shouted Sash,
"has been out in one of our herds and shot a
half dozen yearlings and two three-year-old
94 The Prairie Schooner
steers. Aren't you satisfied with veal? Say,
old man, who did this mean trick?' 7
The acts of a coward are preceded by a
queer train of thought, the kingpin of which
is fear. Preston knew his disreputable work
of butchering among the herd of cattle had
been discovered. He knew that Sash, a Texan,
was a man of action, and that Sash was forti-
fied with the right on his side, and if justice
were meted out it would be some kind of pun-
ishment. The revolver in his holster was close
to his hand and fear cowardly fear over-
powered his weak mind.
Martin had no time to reply, and the first
indication that the coward was to act upon
the impulse that would move him was the cry
from a bullwhacker:
" Don't shoot don't."
Sash, who was looking straight over his
horse's head, turned at hearing this just in
time to receive a bullet in the hollow spot un-
der his left ear. It passed clean through his
head. Both arms flew into the air, his horse
sprang forward, and Sash laid upon the ground
flat on his back, with arms spread out from
his body dead. His face was ashen white,
eyes and mouth closed, both fists clinched.
It was young Snow who tied the black
charger to a wagon wheel, replacing the bridle
with a halter. The horse whinnied, pawed the
dirt, and for a time spun around as far as
the halter strap would allow, and looked at his
prostrate master with what seemed to be al-
The Prairie Schooner 95
most human intelligence; in fact, his body
was soon in a white lather, necessitating a
rub-down and then a blanket. He trembled
like a leaf and snorted and pawed the earth
for an hour.
Sash's camp was on the south bank of the
Platte. There Preston was delivered by
Wagon Boss Martin and a delegation of the
bull outfit fellows after he had tried to escape.
That night, together with a negro boy, Snow
stood guard over Sash's body to protect it
from the coyotes, for they were numerous,
close at hand and howled mournfully until
break of day.
None touched the body, as it had been de-
termined to follow what was believed to be
the law, for this time the outfit was only fifty
miles from where at least a pretense of regu-
larity was observed.
A rider was dispatched to Sidney, then a
scattered lot of board shanties on the south
side of the. Union Pacific Railroad track.
The second night there came to the bull-
whacker camp two men in a light road wagon.
They took the body away.
At the same time a dozen bullwhackers and
nearly all the men from the cow camp rode
away to the south. Preston, silent as the>
Sphynx, sat astride a horse, his hands tied be-
hind him. They told him he was going to
Sidney to have a trial. He smiled, but said
nothing. It was just an effort to appear
brave. His life had been one of crime. He
96 The Prairie Schooner
was a pest of the plains, of the trails, of the
camps and he was on the way to the end of
a rope. He knew it, and did not plead for
mercy or ask for quarter; he did not in the
long ride across the sand hills utter a word
of regret for what he had done. He was heart-
less, cruel, brutal, even in the valley of the
shadow. And he was silent even as death
itself. He showed no fear as we would de-
scribe fear.
Entering Sidney the posse and the prisoner
took the center one of three coulees that ran
down into the town, all three meeting at the
level. It was here that One-Eyed Ed met the
court that was to try him, together with the
populace. The court consisted of fifty horse-
men, half of whom rode down the east coulee,
the other half down the other, meeting the
prisoner and his escort as abruptly as one
meets a person sometimes in whirling around
the corner of a city, block.
One long yi, yi, yi, yi, ye ! was the ' ' hear ye ' '
of the plainsman court crier the signal un-
derstood by all the horsemen, and especially
those comprising the posse just emerging from
the center coulee. As if by magic the escort
faded away and the prisoner, bareheaded, long
hair waving in the wind, his hands securely
tied, sat upright alone.
Then from the east and west coulees dashed
horsemen led by Jim Redding swinging his
lariat over and over and over his head until
he was in the right spot to spin it out. Pres-
The Prairie Schooner 97
ton's horse stood like a piece of statuary, and
to give the man on his back his proper meed
of credit let it be recorded that he had the
appearance of a man bravely facing death, for
he sat erect and made no effort to dismount,
which he might have done, for he had not been
fastened to the saddle, as that would have
made impossible the program mapped out to
the minutest detail.
When Redding spun his lariat for Pres-
ton's head after he had ridden past him two
or three times while the horsemen lined up
like a company of cavalry and looked on it
landed around his shoulders. Redding planted
a spur into his cow pony, there was a jump
and Preston's body shot up and away from
his mount and to the ground.
Track-Layers Fought Redskins
u
I
CHAPTER VIII.
TRACK-LAYERS FOUGHT REDSKINS.
WHEN the Union Pacific Railroad was be-
ing built the Indians were wild and hos-
tile. The appearance of the locomotive was
unwelcome. Surveyors, track-layers, bridge-
builders and others if not properly guarded
by details of United States troops were at-
tacked from ambush and often killed.
It was indeed an adventurous calling to be
a railroader in those days, no matter in what
capacity; for if it wasn't Indians it was some-
thing else that made it so in the then wilder-
ness. Towns were built in a day along the
South Platte River and the populations were
first made up largely by the scum of the earth,
consisting of criminals of all kinds from all
quarters of the globe, either engaged in gam-
bling, highway robbery o_r running saloons that
were the toughest ever known in America.
Dance halls and dives followed the work of
railroad building from Omaha to Ogden, and
if the earth could speak it would tell a story
of murder that would make one shudder.
Hundreds of men were shot either in brawls
or by robbers and their bodies buried in un-
marked graves.
At Julesburg alone, the story was told, after
102 The Prairie Schooner
the temporary terminus was moved on west
100 miles, there were 417 graves in one side-
hill, and among the lot not one grave in the
so-called cemetery was filled by a man who
died a natural death. This may be an ex-
aggeration perhaps it is but it was not an
uncommon thing for a man to be shot and
killed in a brawl while a dance was in prog-
ress without for a moment stopping the fes-
tivities.
But the "noble" Indian, so often represent-
ed in heroic portraits and always called a
" brave" by writers who never saw an Indian
of that period was not there, at least not
numerously. He was a sneaking sniper, hiding
behind a sand hill or concealed in a clump of
bushes in a creek or river bottom, with a good
chance to get away if attacked. He seldom
came out into the open to fight even a lone
surveying party, but waited for the cover of
night, hid behind a rock and took a pot shot
and then rode his horse at top speed to a safe
distance. He was a miserable coward, and
dirty. Perhaps the next day he would come
meekly into some camp where there were sev-
eral hundred men, begging for sugar or bacon.
Artists have painted him in all his glory in
sight of his enemy (Discharging his arrows or
his gun. Don't believe it. He didn't do it
more than a half dozen times, and when he out-
numbered the white from 50 or 100 to 1. It
is too bad, I know, to destroy such beautiful
The Prairie Schooner 103
fiction ; but it is necessary in order to keep
these chronicles straight.
However, it is the truth that a crew en-
gaged in track-laying in the vicinity of North
Platte was one day almost overwhelmed by a
band of Comanches that came up from the
south following a herd of buffalo across the
Republican River. There were less than fifty
men in the gang, including a locomotive en-
gineer, fireman, conductor, foreman and track-
layers, among the rest two Chinese cooks. The
Indians had come upon the crew unexpectedly,
for the buffalo herd, in passing near at hand,
kicked up such a cloud of dust that the crew
was unseen until it was too late for the Coman-
ches to retreat without a fight.
The buffaloes rushed on past the right-of-
way of the road, and when the Indians fol-
lowed the first they knew of the locomotive
was when the engineer sounded his whistle to
bring the scattered crew to the shelter afforded
by a train of flat cars and the engine. The
country all about was flat. The Indians scat-
tered in a circle and at a distance of perhaps
500 yards began to shoot. The crew was well
supplied w r ith guns and ammunition and the
battle lasted for half an hour, resulting in the
death of one Indian and the wounding of not
one white man. Still it had all the elements
of a movie show, and would have made a fine
reel. In another hour track-laying proceeded
as usual.
Outside of a few clashes of this kind the
104 The Prairie Schooner
U. P. went its glorious way without open bat-
tle with so-called redskins. Indians look good
in pictures, and they are picturesque in pic-
tures and paintings; but when you were near
them in those days you found them nearly
always good-for-nothing, insect-infested, dis-
eased, hungry and cowardly, with less nerve
than a regular tramp.
When the U. P. was building it should be
remembered the Indians had been seeing the
pioneer going across the plains with wagons
for many years. The pony express rider, the
bullwhacker and the California and Utah emi-
grant had been his almost daily companion;
therefore he had learned to be circumspect.
Those hardy people had shot straight and to
kill, and by the time track-laying began the
Indian was about as cautious as a mountain
sheep. He knew the range of the white man's
gun, the fleetness of his big American horse,
and he governed himself accordingly, devoting
all his time, when doing anything at all, to
impede the progress of railroad building, to
pure and unadulterated murder from ambush.
"Bill" Hickok, City Marshal
CHAPTER IX.
"BILL" HICKOK, CITY MARSHAL.
< 4 \Y/ rLD BILL "HICKOK, who had been city
W marshal at Abilene, Kan., blew into
Cheyenne in 1874 along with Texas Charley
and a few more "bad men." Things were boom-
ing in the Wyoming metropolis. Gold had been
discovered in the Black Hills, and the crowds
of fortune-seekers from ,every point of the
compass had begun to flock in. Men were
there from South Africa, Brazil, California and
Australia, intermingling with the New Eng-
lander, the Middle Westerners, the cowboys
and bullwhackers and others attracted by the
reports of fabulous discoveries. Cheyenne was
the chief outfitting point for a trip into the
hills, although thousands tramped through the
sands of the Bad Lands to the new Eldorado
via Fort Pierre.
It meant big work for the small police force
of Cheyenne, for there were, besides the "kill-
ers" of the "Wild Bill" order, garroters and
other crooks from near and far to look after.
Gambling didn't bother the authorities at all,
and such characters as "Canada Bill," the
most famous of all the confidence men, were.
108 The Prairie Schooner
as a matter of fact, able to ply their trade
almost unmolested.
"Canada Bill" had the appearance of a
Methodist preacher of that period, wearing a
black broadcloth, long-tailed coat, trousers of
the same material, a black felt hat, "biled"
shirt and black bow tie. He carried an old-
fashioned satchel made of oil cloth, a pattern
of which is seen nowadays only on the vaude-
ville stage. "Bill" was certainly an innocent-
looking individual solemn-faced and perfect-
ly harmless apparently. He spent most of
his time on the U. P. passenger trains between
Omaha and Cheyenne and is said to have
swindled travelers out of an aggregate of
$100,000 at three-card monte, a form of swin-
dling in great vogue at that time. Cheyenne
was his headquarters and he was almost as
well known as any man in the town ; but he
followed his profession practically undisturbed
for several years, and I doubt if he ever spent
a day in jail. Sis victims included some men
who prided themselves on their shrewdness.
"Wild Bill" Hickok was perhaps the best
known "character" in Cheyenne in the 70's.
He, too, was a ministerial-looking person, but
was not a confidence operator. He was just a
plain gambler, and not a very good one, but
he managed to escape the halter every time he
put a notch in his gun. "Bill" killed no one in
Cheyenne; in fact, his days there were quiet
and prosy. His killings were all done in Kan-
sas at the time the K. P. was being built from
The Prairie Schooner 109
the Missouri to Denver. When in Cheyenne
he was on his last legs had begun, as they
say nowadays, to slow up. Nevertheless, he
was feared by a great many, owing to his
reputation, although among certain classes it
was generally understood that he had lost his
nerve. This was demonstrated while the Black
Hills excitement was at its height. "Bill" was
more than six feet tall, straight and thin. He
carried two big revolvers in his belt and they
protruded sometimes from the side of his long
broadcloth coat. He also carried a bowie
knife. But for all this and his reputation, he
' weakened one night when an undersized little
California buccaro challenged him to walk into
the street and fight a duel at twenty paces.
"Bill" laid down, saying his eyes had gone
back on him and that his shooting days were
over.
Shortly after this incident the Cheyenne au-
thorities decided to rid the town of a few of
the worst criminals, so they tacked a notice
on telegraph poles containing a list of a dozen
or more names of men, headed by "Wild
Bill," giving them twenty-four hours' time to
get out of town. When "Bill" saw the notice
he smiled, and with his bowie knife cut the
notice into ribbons, and he stayed until he got
ready to leave some months later. He went to
Custer City, then to Deadwood, where he met
his death at the hands of an avenger, who shot
him in the back as he sat in a poker game.
His murderer claimed "Bill" had killed his
110 The Prairie Schooner
brother in Kansas and said he had followed
him for two years, waiting for a chance to kill
him. "Bill" had a rule of life that he violated
the night he died, and that was never to sit
with his back to a door or window. On the
fatal night he sat with his back to a half-open
door into which the avenger crept.
"Wild Bill" was a "road agent" (a high-
wayman) long before the Black Hills stam-
pede and frequently entertained a crowd with
descriptions of the raids he and his pals made
upon the Mormon emigrants when they were
enroute from Nauvoo, 111., to Salt Lake. Ac-
cording to his own stories he was a heartless
brute. Many deeds, however, that have been
laid at his door, and others that he bragged
about, were never committed. It has been
estimated that he murdered all the way from
fifteen to thirty men, but most of these were
killed while he was marshal.
One story that used to be told in Cheyenne,
but which was not authenticated, was that on
one occasion at Abilene he entered a restaurant
for breakfast and or.dered ham and eggs
"turned over." The waiter returned with the
eggs fried on one side and "Bill" angrily said:
"I told you to have them eggs turned over!"
Whereupon the waiter playfully gave the
dish a flip and turned them over. This so
angered "Bill" that he shot the waiter dead,
and then finished his meal, the poor waiter's
body lying at his feet.
There was so much garroting of men who
The Prairie Schooner 111
came to Cheyenne to join the rush into the
hills that some of the wiser ones slipped out-
side the town at night and slept on the prairie,
while others, armed to the teeth, either walked
the streets or formed companies with guards
for protection. It was a condition of affairs
that gave the authorities more than they could
handle at the start. However, after the first
few months of excitement Cheyenne began to
he good, and soon the civilization and order of
older communities was apparent on every hand.
The railroad shortened the distance between
the frontier and "God's Country/' and before
one could realize it Cheyenne was as orderly
and well behaved as Worcester, Mass. So it
is today. "Wild Bill," "Texas Jack," "Can-
ada Bill" and the thieves and gamblers, with
their guns and daggers, are forgotten; and if
some of them could come back and tramp the
streets again they would be as great curiosi-
ties as they would be on Broadway, New York,
or State street, Chicago and they would land
in jail or get out of town unless the}^ walked
a chalk-mark.
Cheyenne has long been in "God's country,"
although at the time discussed it was a long
way over the line.
When Cheyenne Was Young
CHAPTER X.
WHEN CHEYENNE WAS YOUNG.
LET us suppose this is the year 1872, and
that we are taking a trip across the con-
tinent on the first railroad from the Missouri
river to the Golden Gate. We have passed
through western Nebraska and its uninhabited
hills and plains and we are entering Cheyenne,
on a vast plain, yet situated at the foot of a
range of the Rocky Mountains known as the
lower Black Hills. We are in sight of Long's
and other Colorado peaks of the Rockies and
while apparently on a wide prairie for several
hours we have nevertheless been climbing a
steep grade all the way from Sidney, the last
division point.
Cheyenne is (in '72, remember) a city of
boards, logs and canvas, but is beginning to
shake off the very first things of a "camp,"
and is entering the brick age, with good pros-
pects of acquiring fame as a substantial city.
But there are ,some hundreds of things here
that are strange to the eyes of an Eastern
man. For example, in all his life he has never
seen a man, outside a military encampment,
with a revolver strapped in a holster to a belt
around his waist. Perhaps he has never seen
a faro game in his life, and chuck-a-luck is as
116 The Prairie Schooner
mysterious to him as the lingo of the broad-
hatted men who recommend it to the fortune-
seeker instead of a gold mine or honest toil of
any kind. He has never seen, much less heard
of, a hurdy-gurdy where the men and the scar-
let women " waltz to the bar" to the tune of
the "Arkansaw Traveler."
He used to see his Uncle Cyrus plow with
a slow-plodding team of oxen among the cob-
ble stones of a Vermont farm; but this is the
first time in his life that he ever saw seven
yokes of oxen hitched together in front of
two big wagons and every team pacing a gait
that would bring praise from the judge ? s stand
at a county fair.
He starts down the main street and he sees
"The Gold Room" in big letters on a big
wooden building. "This is where they keep it,"
he muses, and he goes in. It is where they sell
it "forty-rod," "squirrel" a.nd the rest. But
that is not all we see in the ' ' Gold Room, ' ' run
by Jack Allen. We also see a woman called
Madam Moustache dealing the game of ' ' twen-
ty-one," at which "Wild Bill" Hickok, Texas
Jack and a lot more celebrities are "sitting
in." Then in another corner is a faro game.
Men here are so eager to get their money on
the cards that some of them are standing on
the back rungs of chairs and reaching over
sitting players to put stacks of golden twen-
ties on the table, either "calling the turn" or
betting that the nine-spot or some other card
The Prairie Schooner 117
will win or lose as the dealer slips the paste-
boards out of his silver box.
It is night, of course, and after a while,
when the gambling begins to drag, the tables
are shoved a little closer to the wall and the
big floor is given up to dancing, even though
through it all dancing and gambling a stage
performance is going on. Some painted female
person of uncertain age, but positive reputa-
tion, is either shouting personalities at char-
acters in the crowd or bellowing and butcher-
ing a popular song in a male voice. Smoke is
thick and not fragrant to the nostrils of the
new-comer the tenderfoot. The ' ' Gold Eoom ' '
roof is also occupied that is, the inside part
of it with boxes crowded with men and
women, the women being known as "beer
jerkers." In the early hours of morning it
is difficult to find a ober man or woman.
The same thing is going on in "McDaniels'
Variety," opposite Tim Dyer's Tin Restaurant.
McDaniels, bald-headed and also smooth of
voice, is circulating around among his top-
booted guests like a pastor among his flock,
and you wonder that such a fine-looking, well-
spoken man is not in a pulpit instead of a dive.
But this is some of Cheyenne in 1872 to 1875.
Go to Cheyenne today and what do you find?
Nothing like this, that's certain. It is doubt-
ful if you will round up more than a handful
of men who remember there ever was such a
place as Allen's "Gold Room" or the Mc-
Daniels' Variety, or even Tim Dyer's Tin
118 The Prairie Schooner
Restaurant tin because the plates and cups
were tin when the big place was first opened.
But see Cheyenne today. There isn't a city
200 years old on the Atlantic coast that has
more civilization, a finer lot of railroad men,
more culture and good order to the square
yard.
Cheyenne had a bad reputation, but it soon
reformed when the natural resources of Wy-
oming began to be developed, and today, while
we who pioneered it there so many years ago
spoke of it as a "desert metropolis/' are wit-
nessing every little while either in agricultural
or horticultural shows its progress in wheat-
field and orchard.
The Lost Indian at Bedtick Creek
CHAPTER XI.
THE LOST INDIAN AT BEDTICK CREEK.
THIS Indian was lost something that has
rarely happened. No Indian could use a
compass if he had one, and he wouldn't if he
could not the real Indian of the days of Gen-
eral Custer, Buffalo Bill and a few others. In-
dian instinct beats any mechanical contrivance
man has invented for white sailors, hunters,
explorers and lumber cruisers.
But the full-blood of this story was lost and
was bleating like a sheep away from its flock,
and just as timid and gentle. A lost Indian,
and a proud, high cheek-boned, breech-clouted,
bronzed specimen, too ; six feet tall in his moc-
casins hungry, iinarmed, footsore, tribeless.
He came into the camp of the wagon train
at Bedtick Creek not far from the site of the
deserted and famous overland stage station
run by Jules Slade, whose life was saved by
his wife, who rode 200 miles on a horse from
Julesburg to a goldjjamp in Montana just in
time to stop the lynching being conducted by
the Vigilantes.
And the day the Lost Indian was found was
Christmas, a time when every man plainsman
and mountaineer, far from civilization and liv-
ing in the open, as well as those toasting their
122 The Prairie Schooner
shins at comfortable firesides in snug homes in
" God's country'' has a sense of something
mysteriously elevating in his soul.
Everyone in the frost-bitten bunch of over-
land freighters knew his program for the day
was to have no change so far as the bill of fare
of bacon, beans and venison was concerned,
and everyone thought it was pretty good; but
there was to be no Christmas tree or happy
children no church services or anything else
everyone was contented, nevertheless, and
surely full of the spirit of the day, though far
out of reach of anything that would give the
slightest flavor to a proper celebration, even
informally.
The breakfast had been disposed of, the tin
dishes washed and plans made for a full day's
rest for man and beast, for it was also Sunday,
and the wagon boss, old Ethrop, while loaded
down with revolvers and bowie knifes, was of
a religious turn and was known as "The Par-
son."
Far away to the south, across a roljing plain,
was the blue-white outlines of Laramie Peak.
A long way this side, according to the eagle-
eye of Farley, driver of the lead team, some-
thing was winding a crooked course toward
camp. It wa# a mere dark object reflected
against the snow-covered surface, but when
viewed through a field glass was plainly dis-
cernible it was a man, all agreed; but with
The Prairie Schooner 123
the glass in Farley's hands it was a buck In-
dian.
So the boys watched and waited for an hour,
and finally the Lost Indian was within hailing
distance and stopped, circled and began to
close in. Farley waved him to come on, and
as insurance of friendliness went through the
ceremony of placing a rifle in its sling on the
side of a prairie schooner. Then the Lost In-
dian came forward at a trot and landed at the
camp-fire.
Between grunts, motions and words on the
part of the Lost Indian, and as many from
several plainsmen, none of which seemed to be
clearer than Hottentot, this was, in simple
language, the story told by the Lost Indian at
Bedtick Creek:
1 'Five moons ago, while at White River,
where the Great Father has begun to issue ra-
tions of beef on the foot to every head of a
Sioux tepee, I gave the Mountain F'ox seven-
teen beaver pelts, a bale of buckskins, twelve
obsidian arrow points, one lame calico pony,
a pipestone peace-pipe, some kinnickinnic and
an iron oven, found after the soldiers left a
camp at Clear Creek, and eleven bone buttons
for the hand of his second oldest daughter.
This was all of my fortune, except one saddle
pony, a pack pony, one lodge-pole tepee and
poles, four buffalo robes, a coil of telegraph
wire [stolen from the Overland] , several hair-
braided halters, a lariat and my private store
of scalps, none of which I took myself, but
124 The Prairie Schooner
which had been inherited from my father, a
sub-chief known as the Hawk, a brave man
whose bones are now dry in an elevated grave
near the fast-running creek known to the
whites as Ten, but which in Sioux is Wicka-
chimminy. Tnis, with my bows and arrows
and a Spencer rifle, for which I had no am-
munition, with my moccasins, a breech-clout
and jerked meat to last one moon, was all I
had not much, but .enough and I was happy
with my bride.
" After the sun had risen and set three
times Mountain Fox came to my tepee and
said I must give him still another horse, two
blankets (which I did not have and could not
get), and which he said I had promised.
" In our Sioux nation we never kill that is,
we do not kill Sioux. No Sioux has yet killed
a Sioux, and few Sioux have ever called an-
other of our tribe a liar. I called him a liar.
He made a sign of anger and a loud noise of
distress. My bride, on his command, left the
tepee with him, telling me that under Sioux
law, which I knew to be right, that the con-
tract had not been filled until one moon had
elapsed and all members of both families had
smoked in celebration. What did I do? I
rode away in the night toward the tracks
where the Iron Horse runs, twenty days away,
going and coming, to get from a white man's
corral a horse and perhaps the blankets. This
was while the grass was still green.
"I found the horse and the blankets and a
The Prairie Schooner 125
gun ; also food in cans. But I found in a large
bottle what I had heard of, but never tasted
before. After the first sun had set I stopped
at Dry Canyon, which is never dry, but full
of roaring water, and there I drank nearly all
from the bottle. What I did then I only re-
member as a dream, but I saw in my dream
my bride and I wept. My pony and the horse
I found in the white man's corral at the trail
of the Iron Horse, with the blankets and the
food in cans, and I Big Jaw waded Dry
Canyon Creek, which I say was wet, for near-
ly a day and left no trial. I drank more of
the white man's poison and then camped with-
out a fire.
"When the next sun came up I was ill and
drank lots of water. Then came six men from
the corral at the trail of the Iron Horse, and
they bound my hands with small chains, tied
me to my pony and took me back to the trail
of the Iron Horse, where I was kept in a log
house with iron windows until one night it
burned, and I was taken out by the white man
in charge, who, three moons ago, blindfolded
me, put me on a horse and took me to another
corral on the trail of the Iron Horse and
locked me in a large tepee made of stone,
where they fed me well and gave me medicine.
"Then I was, one moon ago, put to work in
a forest to chop trees, and I ran away.
"Have you seen my bride she of the hair
126 The Prairie Schooner
as black as a starless night and teeth as white
as the wing of a dove ?
"Oh, white man, tell me, have you seen her?
I am a lost sheep the trail is covered to my
eyes, with which I have wept almost constant-
ly all the moons I have been away. Have you
seen her I seek? I am hungry, not in my
stomach, but in my breast and in my head; I
must feast or die ! ' '
Then he wept like a child.
"Crazy," said Rawhide Robinson.
"As a loon," added Parker, the night
herder.
"Give him a pull at the Parson's bottle in
the medicine chest," suggested the Kid, as he
gave the fire a stir under a pot of bean soup.
"No," said the Parson, as he rode up on a
mule and was told the story "no liquor, boys,
Peed him up and we'll let him trail back with
us to Cheyenne and to the asylum. Poor cuss,
he loved the squaw and he's clean daffy, but
hasn't a bit of Injun left in him."
And so the Lost Indian, with a broken heart,
brain tortured, went back to the asylum a
child of the plains who bought his wife, but
loved her for all that. For the Sioux, while
selling their daughters, never sold them unless
there was real evidence of true love.
And while Big Jaw stole to make good his
bargain, wasn't his deed an act of old-time
knighthood after all?
Moreover, his undoing was not so much be-
cause of his own delinquency as it was that
The Prairie Schooner 127
of the white man's invention whisky that
brought about his downfall.
A thief, yes; a red-skinned, uncivilized wild
man of the plains and the mountains. But can
we classify him with the civilized white man
who commits a crime?
If the Lost Indian did not recover and win
his bride in civilization's regulation way, per-
haps it is just as well ; and let us hope he is
an angel in the Happy Hunting Ground.
A She-Bear and Her Cub
CHAPTER XII.
A SHE-BEAR AND HER CUB.
BEFORE my feet were thoroughly tough-
ened that is to say, when I was still to
some extent a tenderfoot I joined, single-
handed, in an undertaking which had more
chances for failure than almost anything that
can be imagined. It wasn't a trip to the moon,
neither was it an attempt to wipe out the then
powerful Sioux nation, but it was worse than
either of these.
On Wagon-hound creek, one summer day,
when our outfit was in camp for several hours,
I strolled away from camp alone. It was early
summer, probably July, and everything was
green and fresh. Three miles from camp I
came upon signs of life the limb of a wild
plum tree broken and hanging to the ground.
The first impression was that there were
prowling Indians in the neighborhood. The
grass had also been trampled. The plums were
only half ripe, and after gathering a few, I
dropped over an embankment into the creek
bottom, where I saw a large track in the soft
silt; it was almost the shape of a human hand.
There was a smaller one of the same character.
These I followed, clutching a small "pop-gun" of
the Derringer variety. After turning several
132 The Prairie Schooner
curves of the creek I suddenly came upon my
quarry a big she-bear and a cub. The former
snorted and made for me, and, sensibly pocket-
ing my revolver, I lifted myself out of the
creek bottom by grasping a convenient over-
hanging root of a tree ; but almost simultane-
ously the she-bear was beside me.
Then began as pretty a race as you ever
witnessed. It is a pity none saw it.
Fortunately I had only a few nights before
been a silent listener to several campfire yarns
of old-timers, one of which contained some ad-
vice about a man who finds himself in the
predicament I now was in. Before me was a
bald hill rising perhaps 200 or 300 feet, covered
with sage and other brush. Up I flew. My
feet were like wings. But Mrs. Bear, though
heavy, was able to keep within ten feet of my
heels until I reached the top. Then as I al-
most felt her warm breath I wheeled and ran
down hill. This was tactics I had heard at
the camp-fire and it saved me, too, for Mrs.
Bear, being set up heavier behind than in
front, and having long hind legs and short
front ones, was obliged to come down slowly
and sidewise at that.
Her cub had stayed at the bottom of the hill,
whining, and as I reached him I gave .him a
kick in the jaw and there was some more zig-
zagging, fast running and heart palpitation,
although I felt somewhat relieved when, look-
The Prairie Schooner 133
ing over my shoulder, I saw Mother Bear lick-
ing her cub's face.
Later on I sneaked into camp and tried to
keep my secret ; but I looked and acted queer-
ly, ajid finally told the story. In ten minutes
five of us were on the way to the site of my
encounter, all mounted.
We soon discovered Mrs. Bear and her cub,
and the boss insisted that I should have the
first shot at her with a Winchester. I took
good aim and fired, but saw the dirt fly a rod
behind the old lady. It was a bad miss. Then
"Sailor Jack" Walton sent a bullet into her
heart and the rest of us lariated and captured
the baby, which we took to Fort Laramie and
gave to an army officer's wife.
A Kick From a Playful Bullock
and a Joke
CHAPTER XIII.
A KICK FROM A PLAYFUL BULLOCK AND A JOKE.
NEAR Horse Creek lived a ranchman of the
name of McDonald, a pioneer, and I be-
lieve a religious and perfectly sane and honest
Scotchman, although I am not sure of his na-
tivity; however, he had all the good qualities
of that race. One June morning I joined a
bull outfit owned by him and drove a team
attached to the naked gears of two wagons
into the virgin parks on Laramie Peak, along
the streams and upon the sidehills of which
grew the straightest aspen and small pine
trees in all the territory. No ax had ever
desecrated this beautiful forest. The trip was
for the purpose of cutting some of these poles
and building, while on the mountain, two
dozen hay racks upon which was to be hauled
to an army post the contract hay cut in the
wild meadows. I was still something of a ten-
derfoot, for I knew nothing of this kind of
work, and I soon discovered that I was re-
garded much to my chagrin as only a half-
hand. I complained to other drivers when Mc-
Donald indicated that he thought me a burden
because I had to learn how to use an adz and
because I had mishandled my team on a wind-
ing new trail we broke in the hills.
138 The Prairie Schooner
One of the bulls, just before leaving the
plain below, had playfully reached me wijh
one of his heavy but unshod hind hoofs and
keeled me over into a bed of prickly pears.
For hours a kindly bullwhacker helped me
pluck the sharp and brittle brads from my
back. McDonald took a dislike to me, and
naturally I lost any admiration I might have
had for him. And here is where I made a
fatal mistake. I shouldn't have noticed it; in-
stead I took every opportunity offered to an-
noy him. One day, while in camp, at the in-
stigation of an older man, I remarked that we
were to have a change for supper.
"And what will it be?" queried McDonald.
" Bacon and coffee/' I replied.
"But we had that for breakfast/' said he.
"I know," said I, "but it was coffee and
bacon now it 's bacon and coffee ! ' '
The fact is there was no game in the hills,
at least we got none. I knew McDonald
wouldn't like the joke, but I never believed it
would be taken as a personal affront. He was,
as a matter of fact, a bountiful provider, but
expected to find plenty of grouse, venison, etc.,
on the trip and had therefore provided only
flour, bacon and coffee.
I met McDonald fifteen years later in the
Middle West on a railroad train. He remem-
bered me and hadn't forgotten the wound I
inflicted by my alleged wit, for he said:
The Prairie Schooner 139
"Yes, I remember you, and you were a poor
stick !"
I sincerely hope the last twenty-five and
more years has softened his heart if he lives
as it has softened mine, for I have only kindly
thoughts of him, and even hold no grudge
against the bull that reduced my efficiency by
the playful caress he gave me with his 'hoof.
* * *
If you have ever tried to hoof it up a wild
mountain stream running through towering
cliffs of shale, without a trail, you can well
imagine the task a bull-train outfit would have
in working its way through the same maze of
trees, rocks and rushing waters, winding from
bluff to bluff. But these tasks were common
undertakings for the men engaged in the busi-
ness of freighting. "Corduroy" bridges con-
sisting of gravel and poles had to be built,
trees chopped down, fallen and dead trees re-
moved, brush cleared away or used at the ford-
ing places.
A pioneer trip of this kind, and a fair ex-
ample, was one which took our outfit from
Cheyenne to the headwaters of the Cache de la
Poudre river in what was known as the North
Park, some years before Centennial Peak, one
of Colorado's principal mountains, was of
enough consequence to be christened by the
government.
Cheyenne was passing from the camp to the
substantial town stage and lumber was need-
ed for building purposes. The North and Mid-
140 The Prairie Schooner
die Park regions were virgin forests, untouched
by the woodman's axe, and the earth and. its
precious store of gold hardly scratched by
prospectors. There were no mines, no ranch-
men, nothing but nature undisturbed; lakes
of sweet, cold water, groves of white pines and
other trees, wild and untenanted except by
blacktail deer, bear, cougar and other animals.
The Greeley colony, however, had been estab-
lished many miles to the east in the valley of
the Poudre. This was the first great American
irrigating project and a few settlers had begun
to till the soil.
Beyond Fort Collins and Livermore the coun-
try was as new as an unexplored country
could be. Trout leaped at play along the nar-
row but fast-running streams, and if a sports-
man had ever cast his lines in these places he
must have been a red man or some daring
white hunter who preceded the stage of de-
velopment now under way and who left no
record of his doings.
It took several weeks to chop and dig a road
through this wilderness and set up in an open
space a couple of sawmill outfits we had with
us. Then it required a couple of months of
chopping, hauling and sawing of logs, and load-
ing of the green and heavy lumber upon our
Murphy wagons. The lumber was unloaded in
Cheyenne a month later; some of it was quite
dry, but in much smaller quantities than would
The Prairie Schooner 141
have been delivered had the owners been will-
ing J;o wait for it to dry where cut.
But Cheyenne was in a hurry, and the boom-
ers couldn't wait, consequently many of the
green joists in the new buildings shrunk and
there were several collapses.
The Indian and the Trousers
CHAPTER XIV
THE INDIAN AND THE TROUSERS.
WHEN the first clothing was issued to the
Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at Red
Cloud Agency the scene was better than a
circus. If I am not mistaken Carl Schurz was
secretary of the interior, and after a confer-
ence with some of the big chiefs it was de-
cided to attempt to abolish the breech-clout.
The " Great Father" at Washington, repre-
sented by members of Congress and some of
the Pennsylvania Quakers and others, discov-
ered that Uncle Sam had a warehouse full of
discarded or out of date army coats and trou-
sers, and it was decided to give these to cer-
tain tribes of Indians as part payment for
lands that were needed for white settlement.
The Indians were gathered by hundreds
from far and wide the day of issue at Red
Cloud, and Agent McGillicuddy addressed
them in their own tongue, telling them the
light blue trousers and coats were the same
kind worn by the brave men who fought heroic
battles/ for their Great Father. His words
were received in silence, and after he had fin-
ished several chiefs held a pow-wow, after
which one of their number presented himself
at the delivery window of the big warehouse
146 The Prairie Schooner
arid received a coat and a pair of trousers.
Several white men helped him to adjust the
trousers and coat, and when he was fully
rigged he started to walk toward his group
of red-skinned and breech-clouted compan-
ions.
As though the stage had been set and every
player had learned his part, the show began.
The up to this time silent Indians jumped into
the air and made a demonstration of guying
that would be a credit to any baseball crowd
that ever sat in the bleachers at the Polo
Grounds. They danced and cavorted, they
yelled and keeled over, and laughed. The
squaws and papooses thought it the greatest
joke, and participated in the hilarity. Finally
the buck who wore the first suit managed to
get it off and resumed his breech-clout.
This first attempt was a failure; but Mr.
McGillicuddy was a resourceful man and was
implicitly trusted, especially by the leading
men of the Sioux nation, and he finally tried
another plan which after a year or two suc-
ceeded to some extent. He engaged several
bucks to help him at the agency warehouse,
paying them in extra amounts of sugar, to-
bacco and bacon, but insisted that while they
were on duty they must be dressed in the
white man's garb, and finally he had a large
number of bucks who were willing to forego
the jibes of their friends for the extra allow-
ances.
Sooner or later these Indians began to circu-
The Prairie Schooner 147
late around among others of the tribe in a
lordly manner, and in the end it was not nec-
essary to bribe any of them, except the young-
sters of Sitting Bull's band, to wear clothing.
At first the Indians insisted in cutting out
entirely the seat of the trousers.
When the first beef on the hoof was issued
at Red Cloud, a four-year-old steer was al-
lotted twice a month to the head of each tepee
in the tribe. It was "cut out" from the herd
by a cowboy and turned over to the Indians
forming the tepee, or family, to do with as
they pleased, and what they pleased to do
would not have the approval of a humane so-
ciety.
Always the animal was as wild as a buffalo,
and if he did not immediately start a small
stampede on his own account a few blood-
curdling yells from the Indians did the busi-
ness. Selecting the easiest path of escape the
frightened steer made a dash, followed by the
bucks on their saddleless ponies. Some of the
Indians had long spears, all had bows and ar-
rows, and some had guns, ranging in make
from an old Spencer rifle to a modern Win-
chester, although there were few of these. Most
of their weapons were bows and arrows and
spears. The latter were thrown with great
accuracy, and fatal thrusts were never made
until the steer had become exhausted. The ar-
rows were also used, perhaps for an hour, as
weapons of torture and shot with no other pur-
pose into the fleshy part of the steer than to in-
148 The Prairie Schooner
crease his speed. The Indians could have
killed their steer at any time by a shot placed
under the shoulder. But the idea was to tor-
ture the beast and perhaps encourage him to
turn and fight for his life, which he often did
when surrounded in a ravine. This was In-
dian sport, and was indulged in for some time
before the Agency authorities required the gov-
ernment's wards to use civilized methods.
Usually when a steer had been chased up
hill and down vale for an hour, or until it was
worn out, the Indians planned to round up the
chase close to their tepee where a final shot
with arrow or bullet put an end to the ani-
mal's misery. Then the squaws swarmed about
the carcass with their skinning knives. The
hide, always badly damaged by the spears and
arrows, was removed in a workmanlike man-
ner and carefully put away for tanning later
on. The flesh of the steer was taken away and
the feast began in a few minutes. Much of
the meat was dried or "jerked."
There's a Reason; This Is It!
Conclusion
Bancroft Library
CHAPTER XV
THERE'S A REASON: THIS Is IT! CONCLUSION.
AND now let me answer questions that have
no doubt arisen in the minds of the read-
ers who have waded through these chapters.
"Why isn't this record presented in the regu-
lation way as a novel with a love story run-
ning through it ; " or, " What is the moral ? ' '
Let me ask such readers to follow me a little
farther.
On March 22d, 1873, a description of a cer-
tain boy who left his Wisconsin home to buf-
fet with the world on his own responsibility
would have read as follows:
Age, 16 years, 6 mos. and 7 days. Weight 109
pounds; black hair, black eyes, smooth, pale face;
well dressed; had, after paying for one handbag,
a Derringer revolver (pop-gun) and a few knick-
kna'cks, $85.00 in cash (a large sum for a youth
of his age in those days).
Carried trip pass from Milwaukee to Council
Bluffs, Iowa, via the Chicago & Northwestern Rail-
way, personally given to him by Marvin Hughitt,
then superintendent; also letter of introduction
from E. J. Cuyler, to S. H. H. Clark, general man-
ager of the Union Pacific Railroad at Omaha, re-c-
ommending him as a worthy boy looking for a
railroad office job, also requesting transportation
favors.
This description takes no account of a deep-
seated cough, occasional flashes of red in the
pale face, and a fear expressed by friends that
152 The Prairie Schooner
he was taking a desperate means of escaping
the fate that had overtaken his dear mother
but four months previously. It takes no ac-
count of his life up to the time of his depar-
ture on the long journey, not yet ended;
though in the natural order of worldly things,
the day is near at hand. I might add that he
had been a ''call boy" at a big railroad ter-
minal, had advanced to a desk as a way-bill
clerk, and when advised to seek a dry climate
and there live out-of-doors, was earning a
man's wage.
We will pass over briefly an encounter with
one of the best men that ever lived S. H. H.
Clark in his office at Omaha. When asked
for a pass to Sherman, Wyoming, he said
gruffly :
"Haven't you got any money?"
This was the reply:
"Yes, sir, and I'll pay my fare, too, if you
don't want to give me a pass."
* r Well," he said, turning to look out of a
window, "maybe I'll give you an order for a
half -fare ticket, ' ' which brought forth this :
"I don't want to be impolite, Mr. Clark, be-
cause you are a friend of good friends of
mine Mr. Hughitt and Mr. Cuyler but I must
say you don 't know me as well as you might I 'm
no half- fare fellow. Goodbye."
And then Mr. Clark laughed, and said he
was not in earnest and gave the pass freely
and willingly.
There was a nice chat after that between
The Prairie Schooner 153
the pale-faced youth and the big railroader,
during which The Boy discovered that Mr.
Clark liked his nerve but questioned his phys-
ical ability to stand the rough knocks that
were coming.
Later, after a season in a division railroad
office The Boy, carried away with the spirit
of adventure that was everywhere about him,
and carrying out a plan he had made to live
in the open, went to Cheyenne, signed up with
a bull-train, and began the life of out-of-doors.
The " train" was loaded and ready to leave
Camp Carlin, at Fort Russell, for Fort Laramie
on the North Platte, but it was for a while
impossible to employ men enough to drive the
teams. There had been an outbreak among
the Sioux, and things looked dark when The
Boy asked for a job driving bulls ; and when
he was hired by Nate Williams, the Missou-
rian wagon boss, it was almost a joke to Nate,
who said afterward that he took one chance in
a million when he employed The Boy and
took him to camp. Both The Boy and Nate
won on the long shot.
A year later The Boy was driving a lead
team, looked after the manifests, kept the ac-
counts, and shirked no duty, fair weather or
foul.
All this time the pale and flushed cheeks
were giving place to bronze, the thin arms and
skinny legs were toughening and filling out.
154 The Prairie Schooner
and the cough had disappeared weight after
first year, 155.
Before leaving Camp Carlin on this first
trip The Boy had time to write home and re-
ceive a reply. He told a relative what he had
done, and the reply was a stinging rebuke and
almost a final farewell, for the relative said
nothing good could possibly result from quit-
ting a job with a railroad paying $100 a month
and taking one as a teamster at the same fig-
ure ' ' and you nothing but a sickly boy. ' ' But
the relative was wrong, although excusable.
And now, after all the evidence is in, we find
that the "sickly" youngster is still in the land
of the living, past three score years, and with
some prospects of another score !
The letter left a sore spot, and The Boy fool-
ishly decided that he was cut off. So he did
not write again for nearly two years.
The middle of the second winter found him
at Fort Fetterman, living in a dug-out in the
embankment of a creek bottom, waiting for
the springtime when he could again use his
stout lungs in shouting at his bulls, but his
strong arms were not idle the while, for he
chopped cottonwood, box elder and pine logs
for the Fetterman commissary.
In those days there was naught but military
law, and the civilians were under more or less
surveillance, and it was customary for them
to report at given periods to the sergeant who
sat in the adjutant's adobe office in the fort.
On one of those occasions The Boy's atten-
The Prairie Schooner 155
tion was directed to a bulletin board upon
which was tacked a card carrying the caption
in big black types :
"INFORMATION WANTED"
Under this was The Boy's name, a detailed
description of him when he left Cheyenne,
and the statement that " anyone knowing his
whereabouts will confer a favor upon his anx-
ious father and sister and receive a reward if
word is sent to Thomas Jefferson, a friend
of the family at Sherman, Wyoming Territory, ' '
to whom an appeal had been made. It was
stated in the notice that he "weighs about 100
pounds, has black hair, black eyes, and is pale
and sickly."
At this time The Boy weighed nearly 170,
was brown as a berry, had muscles of an ath-
lete, and in no wise resembled the description.
He had no difficulty in convincing the sergeant
that while the name was similar to his own it
evidently was the description of a tenderfoot,
and he was no tenderfoot not then.
If I could pay any greater tribute than this
to life in the open I would do it; and if there
were a possible love story in this record I
would ignore it because, while it might entertain
and please some tastes, it would not answer the
main purpose of these tales, namely:
To demonstrate that as long as there is life
there is hope, especially if the spark of life is
properly fanned in a salubrious, glorious and
vigorous climate.
156 The Prairie Schooner
"As long as there is life there is hope!"
But after all is it not truer to say "As long as
there is hope there is life?"
Hope is the centerpiece of the familiar trio
Faith, Hope and Charity and not the least one
of these virtues. It is practical to be hopeful
and to order our lives in the spirit of hopeful-
ness ; the world will be better for our hopeful-
ness, especially in these depressing times. More-
over, it is a Christian duty to be hopeful.
"Hope," says the Rev. Julian K. Smyth, head
of the Swedenborgian church in the United
States, "is an affection of the will, and the will
is ever in the desire to act; thus hope is not
only a lively virtue, but a heroic and even a
practical one."
It is a good rule of life never to be discour-
aged no matter what the misfortune, disappoint-
ment or mistake. Life will have been a success
to one who lives in hopefulness, for life will have
been lived happily through many human failures
and errors. Life in the world of the flesh is a
battle which, if w r ell fought if we have faith
in the Divine Providence means a victory over
what we call Death, for Death is in truth not
the End, but the
BEGINNING.
