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 "WiillSm Francis Hoeker 
 
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 The Prairie Schooner
 
 The Prairie Schooner 
 
 By 
 
 William Francis Hooker 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 SAUL BROTHERS 
 
 1918
 
 Copyright, 1918 
 
 By SAUL BROTHERS 
 
 Chicago
 
 To My Wife 
 
 MAMIE TARBELL HOOKER 
 
 A Pioneer of the 
 Jim River (Dakota) Valley
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 Introduction 11 
 
 T. Letters Pass Between Old Pards . 15 
 
 II. Trains That Run Without Rails . 27 
 
 111. Hunton and Clay— Bull-Train :\Iag- 
 
 nates 48 
 
 TV. Guarding an Overland Freight Out- 
 fit 57 
 
 V. Rattlesnakes and Redskins . 67 
 
 VI. Belated Grace for a Christmas Din- 
 ner 75 
 
 VIT. The Fate of One-Eyed Ed. . 85 
 
 VIII. Track-Layers Fought Redskins . 99 
 
 IX. "Bill" Hickok, City Marshal . 105 
 
 X. When Chej^enne 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 Avere 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 
 
 i'orined and coiitraets 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 Avas 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 Avere hauling food to them.
 
 Introduction 13 
 
 in Wyoming and Western Nebraska. Perhaps 
 they were the original anarchists ; anyway, 
 they often tried — seldom suceessfnlly — 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 thoroughlj'^ transformed from a wild and 
 uninhabited territory to one of civilization and 
 great commercial productivity. 
 
 Cattle ranches Avith 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 Avith 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 
 Avorld'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 reallv 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" 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 Bear Friend: 
 
 Can you put me in correspondence with any 
 of the old boys we met when the country was 
 new, out in Wyoming? * * * Qf 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 M^ould 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. 
 
 0! 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 Comanches had stolen from us, I wish we 
 might corral some of our old-time friends and 
 go over the past before we leave this land, 
 "for when we die we will be a long time 
 dead." 
 
 The wild horse that roamed the West, among 
 which was the stallion who so valiantly 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 east 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, Avlien convenient, write me a long 
 letter recalling some of the old days, for — 
 
 "I'm growing fonder of my staff, 
 I'm growing dimmer in my eyes, 
 I'm growing fainter in my laugli, 
 I'm growing deeper in my sighs; 
 I'm growing careless in my dress, 
 I'm growing frugal with my gold, 
 I'm growing wise — I'm growing — yes, 
 I'm growing old." 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 VAN. 
 
 The reply : 
 
 My Dear Old Pard: 
 
 Your note concerning the events of long ago 
 out on the Laramie Plains and the Harney flats 
 shoots across my vision events in the Cache 
 de La Poudre (the Poodre), the Chugwater 
 country, old Cheyenne, Sherman, Fort Lara- 
 mie, Fetterman, Camp Carlin, both Plattes, the 
 Medicine Bow waters and range, Allen's "Gold 
 Room," McDaniel's hurdy-gurdy, the dust- 
 stirring, dust-laden buffalo east of Chalk Bluffs, 
 the deer and antelope of the whole Wyoming 
 territory, the sage-hens, and I don't know 
 what not.
 
 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 pinon 
 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 heen 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 Comanche-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 bosses 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 bosses 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 U. P. conductor, walked into 
 my office a while ago, and, as he closed the 
 door behind him, I said, "Hello, Sam; haven't 
 seen you since 1875, but you're the same 
 Sam!" Then I told him my name. 
 
 And then Sam gasped and acted like maybe 
 he might pull a gun, thinking me an impostor; 
 because when Sam saw me the last time, 
 stretched out in his caboose on the old 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 
 cavuse. and that settled it. We talked about
 
 The Prairie Schooner 2.5 
 
 snow-sheds, the Sherman hill, once the highest 
 railroad point in the world, and of old times in 
 general. 
 
 But what 's the use 1 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 tuljerculosis 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 clerk in a railroad office, and still is in 
 the railroad business in New York City, more than 
 forty years after the events related in the 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 iu 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 ear 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 hullwhacker (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 pifion 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 woald 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 
 Avheel 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 w«rd! 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 East, 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 was, as a matter of 
 fact, also entitled to a reputation for his legs.
 
 32 Tlie 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 ofiP. Then it 
 Avas noted that if the dehorned cattle were 
 kept separate from those Avith horns, the de- 
 horaed ones, even when Avorking hard CA'^ery 
 day, took on flesh and Avere better Avorkers. 
 Finally nearly all the work-oxen Avere de- 
 horned, and they Avere as meek and quiet as 
 lambs. 
 
 The whacker ahvays began his orders to his 
 bulls in a Ioav 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 Avas 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 
 man Avho 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 Avith a mini- 
 mum of discomfort under the most adverse 
 circumstances. He was afraid of nothing. It 
 Avouldn'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 
 
 panions and enforced by the same law-givers. 
 Stealing was a worse crime than life-taking. 
 There ncA^er 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 
 ^n 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 Avin- 
 ner in these duels seldom, if ever, Avas pun- 
 ished. But a cold-blooded murder — a wanton 
 killing — was never tolerated. Tn a fight with 
 pistols it was always considered tliat the man 
 who did the killing was justified. 
 
 Unlike the present day fliers, bull trains did 
 not run on schedules, although there Avas a pre- 
 tense of regularity about the day's routine, 
 and it was about as follows : 
 
 At break of day the night herder AA^ho had 
 been out with the bulls all night — it is always 
 daybreak to him Avhether three o'clock or five 
 — drives his herd into the corral, usually sing- 
 ing some refrain of his OAvn 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- 
 Avhackers, 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 87 
 
 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 — usuallj^ the 
 bullwhacker — could weave, often fourteen. At
 
 The Prairie Schooner 39 
 
 the tip, this iiuiuber 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 bull whacker, 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 Avas 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 Avas uninjured, 
 unless the bulhvhacker was careless and al- 
 lowed his popper to strike a tender spot, the 
 nose, an eye or the belh\ 
 
 It was almost a crime for a buUwhacker 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 buUwhaeker on his mettle. And 
 for tliis the bullwliacker got $75 to $100 a 
 month and "gnib. " He usually spent his 
 money at the end of his trip much after the 
 habit of the sailor who rounds the Horn. 
 
 In the cold weather the hardships were 
 many. There were, remember, no bridges and 
 the roads crossed numerous streams, all of 
 which had to be forded ; and there was but 
 one way to cross, and that was to wade and 
 guide a team. 
 
 Usually the heavy freighting was done 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 
 plentj^ of good feeding ground of buffalo grass, 
 Avhich grew in heavy bunches and was very 
 sweet in its drj'^ 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 Avas ever carried for them. 
 
 Indians, usually, Avere 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 buUwhacker he was 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. AVhen 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 '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, Mdien 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 liim that on 
 his return trip to his Chugwater quarters, a 
 band of Sioux Avould 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. 
 
 TTnnton's and ClaA'-'s ranch houses were load-
 
 The Prairie Schooner 47 
 
 ed with firearms, looked Uke 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 noiie 
 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 coward when dealing with 
 frontiersmen of the Hunton or Clay calibre. 
 
 Of course, there were open battles with 
 United States troops, but even then only when, 
 as in the case of Custer and his Seventh 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. Cnster 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 Kiver and the Eoekj' ^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 Avas 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 Avell 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 buUwhacker would 
 return to the temporarily corralled outfit with 
 a scrubb}^ Indian pony, a few raAvhide 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. 
 ITunton and Clay hauled with their big out- 
 fits, at one time, about everything that was 
 sent to the northern line of forts bv Uncle
 
 The Prairie Schooner 49 
 
 Sam. Clay's contracts were largely confined 
 to Fort Laramie, although Hunton hanled a 
 good deal of the provisions to that post. Ilun- 
 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 who 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 buUwhackers Avatched 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 Tlie 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 rained. 
 
 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 — everj^thing is gone?" 
 
 "Yes. I see. the whole bizness," said the 
 boss. 
 
 "Well," said Fritz, "the boys spent $600 
 mit me, so I make it $600 more ; maybe I can 
 repair the table." 
 
 So the bill was paid, the wagons were loaded, 
 and the outfit sallied forth across the plains, 
 the bridgeless rivers, and the mountain passes 
 to Fetterman where there was a pay-day. 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 Avas 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 Avires 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 Aveird a sight as one can imagine. 
 
 The raids from the north continued nearly 
 all summer. Several more white men were 
 killed, one a lone prospector who thought there 
 was mineral in the hills southwest of Fort Fet- 
 terman and near old Fort 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 otf 
 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
 
 a 
 
 w 
 
 X 
 
 u 
 
 o
 
 The Prairie Schooner 55 
 
 the folds of his blanket upon which some white 
 man liacl 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 Imnters 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." 
 
 His brother Buckskins thought he was 
 crazy — some of them did. But one or two 
 winked and looked wise; and about sixty 
 hours later, when some of the "militia" had 
 almost forgotten him, Buckskin rode up, 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 
 brakeniau 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 Avhen 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 Avhite 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 1,0(X) 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. 
 
 ]\Iaybe 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 01 
 
 It was one of the proudest clays of his life and 
 I know he will never forget it. lie was highly 
 honored by Watson and he apj^reciated it, for 
 the reason that only two years before he had 
 come to AVyoming a green city boy and was 
 then known in the parlance of the plains as a 
 ' ' tenderfoot, ' ' which was a truthful description 
 of any man or boy when he first entered upon 
 the life of the buUwhacker, the then popular 
 master of transportation between civilization 
 and its outposts. He never dreamed of death 
 when he got his orders, because he w^as young 
 and foolish. Sometimes it is called bravery, 
 l)ut that isn't the right word. It can't be de- 
 scribed unless it is called blind or reckless in- 
 lifference. 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 Avord — 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 liis 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 M^as leaving him. and that he 
 was not guarding it. H'e 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 
 were not getting him anywhere, unsheathed his 
 butcher-knife and j^ricked his cayuse on the 
 back. He tried to buck, but he Avore a double 
 cinch — one fore and one aft— and it kept him 
 on all fours. 
 
 Things were getting worse and the voices 
 of the bulhvhackers 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 Avas 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 arroAV ! 
 
 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 AVatson said, 
 laughingly : 
 
 "You're crazy — wait a minute till I send 
 word up ahead to corral." 
 
 "You (to the mess w^agon driver) untie 
 them bosses, saddle 'em up and wait for Blu-
 
 64 The Prairie Schooner 
 
 elier 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, espcr 
 cially of his own breed, and he was all ani- 
 mation and ready to go. 
 
 When the party finally got away AVatson, 
 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 Eowell spur to the 
 pony's side and he responded like a real cow- 
 pony, much to Featherbed 's surj^rise, 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 boss has been creased in the neck — dis- 
 mount, give me your boss 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 Clround. 
 
 The sun was too high for the Indians, so 
 they disappeared, skulking at safe distance to 
 Avait 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 
 
 "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 piill 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 
 
 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, w4iere we 
 spent six hours of the middle of the day hid- 
 ing under our Avagons 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 eottonwoods. 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 ac(|uii'ed two revolvers, a Win- 
 chester rifle, a butcher knife and other wea- 
 pons believed the crampled 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. Tlie crooning grew to a lamen- 
 tation. Then other tepees showed signs of 
 life, and in a few moments bncks, squaws and 
 papooses were running hitiier 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 sfjuaws 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 Avith 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 bum briskly for half an hour. Then 
 the coals and ashes were brushed otf 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 Tnjun.
 
 The Prairie Schooner 73 
 
 Keturniug to caini) 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 "medieinc-man" — the big bnelc they 
 first saAV come out of his tepee. 
 
 You have no idea how cautiously the boys 
 went about getting the blankets ofif 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!" 
 
 It woke up the whole canip. 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 
 goA'^ernment trail just beyond, and 1,000 feet 
 higher, that the driftp would be so deep that 
 a long camp where Ave 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 doAvn ' ' 
 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, Avhen 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. Tavo 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 beloAv. Tt was
 
 Tlie 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 erust 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 Ave 
 are liable to stay where we are until the 
 Fourth of July, if we don 't get a move ou ? " 
 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 wovild 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, "avc pyt 
 old Tex (a long-honi 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 ia 
 few steaks which, when properly treated Math 
 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 Wj^oming 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 
 
 I\Iarrowbone 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. H'e used wheat flour.
 
 82 The Prairie Schooner 
 
 baking ipowder 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 Avater. 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 Ave 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 Avhile the sun shone in the mid- 
 dle of the day hardly a flake of the snow 
 melted. The air was at times l)iting 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 Ave operated in the drifts 
 as you see the excavators in a city cellar or 
 subAvay operate, digging doAvn to the surface 
 and then benching as the open-ground miners 
 or cellar excavators do. the men beloAV tossing 
 the blocks of snoAv 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 schoonerSj 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 snowhound Christmas 
 dinner.
 
 The Fate of One-Eyed Ed
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Fate of One-Eyed Ed. 
 
 FROM the cross-tree of a telegraph pole hung 
 the body of a man when the 9 :30 Union 
 Pacific Overland Express stopped for a "slow" 
 order across a bridge that a band of Comanche 
 Indians had tried to bum. 
 
 A Massachusetts woman enroute to 'Frisco 
 stuck her head out of a ear 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 buUwhackers 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," he said, "so 
 
 what the do you know about it?" Then 
 
 lie 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 thrcAV 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 Avas 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 tlie 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 fiir. Preston missed none. 
 Finally the boy threw, at Preston's command, 
 two at a time and both were plugged before 
 the,y 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 SnoAv'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 bulhvhacker 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 thiat 
 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, 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 frequentlj^ 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 "j^earling 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 fro_m 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?" 
 
 The acts of a coAvard 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 — cowardl.y 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 fieAv 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 SnoAv who tied the black 
 charger to a wagon wheel, replacing the bridle 
 with a halter. The horse Avhinnied, paAved 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 ])Ocly 
 was soon in a white lather, necessitating a 
 rub-down and then a blanket. lie 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, SnoAv 
 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 Kailroad 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. Ilis 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
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Track-Layers Fought Redskins. 
 
 WHEN the T'^uion 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 or running saloons that 
 were the toughest ever known in America. 
 
 Dance halls and dives followed the work of 
 railroad building from Omaha to Ogden, and 
 if the earth could speak it would tell a story 
 of murder that Avould 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 Mathout for a moment stopping the fes- 
 tivities. 
 
 But the "noble" Indian, so often represent- 
 ed in heroic portraits — and always called a 
 "brave" by w-riters 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-laj'ing in the vicinity of North 
 Platte was one day almost overwhelmed bj^ 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 M^as well 
 supplied with guns and ammunition and the 
 battle lasted for half an hour, resulting in the 
 death of one Indian and the wounding of not 
 one white man. Still it had all the elements 
 of a movie shoAv, 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. ^vent its glorious way without open bat- 
 tle Avitli 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 Avas about as cautious as a mountain 
 sheep. He knew the range of the white man's 
 gun, the fieetness 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. 
 
 <<VV7rLD BILL "HICKOK, who had been city 
 ▼ ▼ marshal at Abilene. Kan., blew into 
 Cheyenne in 1874 along with Texas Charley 
 and a few more ''bad men." Things were 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 bullwhaekers 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. His 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 Avere 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 huccaro 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 Avhich 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 Xauvoo, 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 Avas 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 Avho
 
 The Prairie Schooner 111 
 
 came to Che^'enne 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 
 fcAv months of excitement Cheyenne began to 
 be good, and soon the civilization and order of 
 older communities was apparent on every hand. 
 
 The railroad shortened the distance between 
 the frontier and "God's Country," and before 
 one could realize it Cheyenne was as orderly 
 and well behaved as Worcester, Mass. So it 
 is today. "Wild Bill," "Texas Jack," "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 they walked 
 a chalk-mark. 
 
 Cheyenne has long been in "God's country," 
 although at the time discussed it was a long 
 way over the line.
 
 when Cheyenne Was Young
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 When Cheyenne Was Young. 
 
 LET us suppose this is the j^ear 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 Room ' ' 
 roof is also occupied — that is, the inside part 
 of it — with boxes crowded with men and 
 women, the women being known as "beer 
 jerkers." In the early hours of morning it 
 is difficult to find a sober man or woman. 
 
 The same thing is going on in "McDaniels' 
 Variety," opposite Tim Dyer's Tin Restaurant. 
 McDaniels, bald-headed and also smooth of 
 voice, is circulating around among his top- 
 booted guests like a pastor among his flock, 
 and you wonder that such a fine-looking, well- 
 spoken man is not in a pulpit instead of a dive. 
 
 But this is some of Cheyenne in 1872 to 1875. 
 Go to Cheyenne today — and what do you find? 
 Nothing like this, that's certain. It is 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 Pi-airie Schooner 
 
 Restaurant — tin becanse 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 
 M^e 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.
 
 'he Lost Indian at Bedtick Creek
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The Lost Indian at Bedtick Creek. 
 
 P[IS 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, unarmed, footsore, tribeless. 
 
 He came into the camp of the wagon train 
 at Bedtick Creek not far from the site of the 
 deserted and famous overland stage station 
 run by Jules Slade, whose life was saved by 
 his wife, who rode 200 miles on a horse from 
 Julesburg to a gold camp in Montana just in 
 time to stop the lynching being conducted by 
 the Vigilantes. 
 
 And the day the Lost Indian was found was 
 Christmas, a time when every man — plainsman 
 and mountaineer, far from civilization and liv- 
 ing in the open, as well as those toasting their
 
 122 The Prairie Schooner 
 
 shins at comfortable firesides in snng 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 rolling plain, 
 was the blue-white outlines of Laramie Peak, 
 A long way this side, according to the eagle- 
 eye of Farley, driver of the lead team, 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 Avas within hailing 
 distance and stopped, circled and began to 
 close in. Farley Avaved liim 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 wliicli seemed to be 
 clearer than Hottentot, this was, in simple 
 language, the story told by the Lost Indian at 
 Bedtick Creek : 
 
 "Five moons ago, while at AVhite 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 Fox 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. This, 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
 
 120 The Prairie Schooner 
 
 as black as a starless night and teeth as white 
 as the wing of a dove? 
 
 "Oh, white man, tell rae, have yon 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 EaAvhide Robinson. 
 
 "As a loon," added Parker, the night 
 herder. 
 
 "Give him a pull at the Parson's bottle in 
 the medicine chest," suggested the Kid, as he 
 gave the fire a stir under a pot of bean soup. 
 
 "No," said the Parson, as he rode up on a 
 mule and was told the story — "no liquor, boys, 
 Feed him up and 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 
 tliere Avas real evidence of true love. 
 
 And Avhile 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
 
 chaptp:r 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 AA'hich 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 Avipe 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 froni 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 em]>ankment 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 Avere like Avings. But ^Irs. 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 Avheeled 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 sideAvise at that. 
 
 Her cub had stayed at the bottom of the hill, 
 Avhining, and as I reached him I gave him a 
 kick in the jaAv and there Avas some more zig- 
 zagging, fast running and heart palpitation, 
 although I felt somcAvhat relieved Avhen, look-
 
 The Prairie Schooner 133 
 
 iiig 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, a;id finally told the story. In ten minutes 
 five of us were on the way to the site of ray 
 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 ]\reDonald, 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 T 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. T 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 nn^ team on a wind- 
 ine now trail we broke in the hills.
 
 138 The Prairie Schooner 
 
 One of the bulls, just before leaving the 
 plain below, had playfully reached me with 
 one of his heavy but unshod hind hoofs and 
 keeled me over into a bed of pricklj^ pears. 
 For hours a kindl}^ 1)ulhvhacker 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 hira. 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," T replied. 
 
 "But we had that for breakfast," said he. 
 
 "I know," said I, "but it Avas coffee and 
 l)aeon — noAv it's bacon and coffee!" 
 
 The fact is there was no game in the hills, 
 at least Ave 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 IMcDonald fifteen years later in the 
 ^Middle West on a railroad train. He remem- 
 bered me and hadn't forgotten the wound I 
 inflicted by mv alleged Avit, for he said:
 
 Tlie 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. 
 
 ^ •JP "tF w 
 
 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 Avould 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 
 t*oudre 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 tow^n stage and lumber was need- 
 ed for building purposes. The North and Mid-
 
 140 The Prairie Schooner 
 
 die Park regions were virgin forests, nntouched 
 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, ])ear, 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 Liverinore the coun- 
 try was as new as an unexplored country 
 could be. Trout leaped at play along the nar- 
 roAv 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 wnlderness 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 
 ]\Eurphy -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 jto M^ait for it to diy where cut. 
 
 But Cheyenne was in a hurry, and the boom- 
 ers couldn't Avait. 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. 
 
 WHKN 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 wan 
 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 
 liind 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 
 Avhich one of their number presented himself 
 at the delivery window of the big warehouse
 
 14G The Prairie Schooner 
 
 and received a coat and a pair of trousers. 
 Several white men helped him to adjust the 
 trousers and coat, and when he was fully 
 rigged he started to walk toward his group 
 of red-skinned and breech-clouted 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 an}^ 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 ofif 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 j^ear 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 tlie tribe in a 
 lordly manner, and in the end it was not nec- 
 essary to bribe anj^ 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. 
 
 "Wlien 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 doAvn 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 squaAvs 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
 
 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- 
 knacks, $85.00 in cash (a large sum for a youth 
 of his age in those days). 
 
 Carried trip pass from Milwaukee to Council 
 Bluffs, Iowa, via the Chicago & Northwestern 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, rec- 
 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 Avill 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 Shemian, Wyoming, he said 
 gruffly : 
 
 "Haven't you got any money?" 
 
 This was the reply : 
 
 "Yes, sir, and I'll pay my fare, too, if you 
 don't want to give me a pass." 
 
 ''^Well, " he said, turning to look out of a 
 window, "maybe I'll give you an order for a 
 half-fare ticket. ' ' which brought forth this : 
 
 "I don't want to be impolite, Mr. Clark, 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 
 Oarap 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. Ttiere 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 Xate 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. lie 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 "sickW" 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 ofi:'. So he did 
 not write again for nearly two years. 
 
 The middle of the second winter foimd 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 candying 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 virtvies. 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 n 
 battle which, if well fought — if we have faith 
 in the Divine Providence — means a victory over 
 what we call Death, for Death is in truth not 
 the End, but the— 
 
 BEGINNING.

 
 3 1205 00308 8182 
 
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