“Mud?” said Jerk Line Smith to the barflies in the Bloody Heart Saloon.
“Mud? I’ll tell a man we was in mud. I’m haulin’ grub, powder and licker
to the camps at the Little Rockies, five wagons and the caboose, loaded
a thousand pounds to the horse, and workin’ thirty-two o’ the best
hosses north o’ hell. Bogged to the hubs. It taken us twenty-one days
and part o’ that night tuh pull the Rocky Point Hill.
“Mud? Mister, them Montana bad lands, comin’ up from the Rocky Point
crossin’ on the Missouri, is eye deep to a tall camel. Ol’ Hard Luck
Jones laid over at the Point and goes on a big drunk. Turned his hosses
loose fergettin’ to tie up their tails. Tails gits balled with that
gumbo till it weighted down them pore animals. Stretched their hides
back. In a week every one o’ them hosses was dead. Hide so tight they
couldn’t close their eyes. The pore things died from lack o’ sleep.”
“That was in ’81,” agreed Two Dog Moore, Jerk Line’s swamper. “The
summer o’ the blue snow.”
Whereupon fresh drinks were set up. Out on the street stood Jerk Line
Smith’s freight outfit. The two wagons and canvas topped cart, or
caboose. Eighteen horses standing at rest; the off wheeler a bronc. A
battered old saddle on the nigh wheeler; brass knobbed hames; chain
harness; the lead team decorated with double rowed strings of bells
strung on a hoop shaped support fastened to the tops of the hames; check
reins and bridles ornate with ivory rings of red, white and blue. The
wagons heavily loaded with grub, dynamite and whisky billed to Zortman
and Landusky in the Little Rockies.
Presently the tall, yellow bearded freighter and his diminutive swamper
would pull out of town, before they got too drunk. And Chinook would
pause in its collective business or boredom to watch the long string
team under Jerk Line’s guidance turn the corner of the town business
street and head for the open country. From the rear of the caboose to
the ears of the lead team the distance was approximately half a block.
Yet, drunk or sober, Jerk Line Smith would accomplish the impossible by
rounding that corner with neat and profane perfection. Astride his nigh
wheeler, guiding nine span of horses by means of a single line, he would
swing around that corner and on to the straight road.
“Tighten up, thar! Blondy, Joe, Snowball, Buck! Ribs, you long backed,
cow hocked son of a cross between a bogged cow and a wore out winter!
Ginger, Pete! Tighten up! Keno, you high withered, cold shouldered, hip
shot, ring-boned, box ankled specimen o’ humanity, tighten them tugs!
You, Greyback! Born a-sleepin’ an’ never woke up! Louse! Injun! Tadpole!
Roosevelt an’ Bryan! Roulette an’ Faro! Stand Up an’ Lay Down! D. T. and
Hangover! Whisky an’ Chaser! Stumble an’ Fall Down! Tighten up!”
Out on to the open road. Winter and summer. Bells chiming, wheels
creaking, harness rattling. Jerk Line riding his nigh wheeler, Two Dog
sitting on the plank known as the jockey bar, or walking alongside. Two
Dog’s business was setting and releasing the brakes, helping with the
harnessing and hobbling of the teams, wrangling in the morning, cooking,
fastening roughlocks on grades, blocking wheels on long climbs, watching
the loads, greasing wheels, mending harness, jacking up wheels in the
mud, nursing Jerk Line over periods of delirium tremens. In short,
swamping.
* * * * *
Motor trucks have replaced the snail-like freight outfits. Fences
crisscross the old open range. That breed of frontiersman to which
belonged Jerk Line Smith and Two Dog Moore is now extinct. Save in the
memory of men who loved the old West, their names and deeds are
forgotten. Yet the freighter filled his place in the building of an
empire. When the West needed him, he served. Through heat and blizzard.
Ragged, bearded, his blacksnake hung across his shoulders. Freezing,
drinking, laboring, cursing. Broken wheels and empty bottles marking his
passing.
Pride of their breed cropped out in their teams. Bells and colored
rings. They boasted not of their own deeds, but of what their teams
could do. The passing cowboy knew him and liked him. Trapper and
sheepherder were ever welcome to a drink and a meal and the latest
gossip of the towns.
It was said of Jerk Line Smith that he was the orneriest human north of
the Pecos, save one. That one was hanged. Tall, with rawhide muscles,
unwashed and unshaven, his rough-hewn features red and cracked from bad
weather. And each spring, after the chinook wind had melted the winter
snow, Two Dog brought the sheep shears from the jockey box and cut Jerk
Line’s matted yellow hair.
Two Dog had been a sheepherder, and as Jerk Line often said, “the damn’
li’l’ cuss never got over it.”
Small of stature, inoffensive, with watery eyes of mild blue, he did his
work, swallowed his liquor as an obedient child takes medicine, and
stoutly vouched for Jerk Line’s stories.
“Yep. It happened back in ’81, the summer o’ the blue snow.”
He had attached himself to the freight outfit in much the same manner
that a stray dog picks up a master. Jerk Line claimed that Two Dog “must
’a’ been with him six months or so afore he sobered up an’ found him one
day jackin’ up a bogged wheel with a case o’ powder fer a jack-rest.”
But the truth of that statement might be questioned, because Two Dog,
above all the dangers that roam the earth, feared powder.
At some spot along the colorless career of little Two Dog Moore, he had
been a prospector and hard rock miner. He had lost two fingers and all
the toes of his right foot while thawing a stick of frozen dynamite in
the oven.
His fear of powder became an obsession. Yet almost every freight load
had its quota of dynamite and blasting powder. Jerk Line handled powder
with a contemptuous nonchalance that drove the blood from Two Dog’s face
and sent the little swamper into a sweat chilled fever.
“Gawd. Oh, Gawd!” he groaned in silent agony. “Someday it’ll happen!
Someday....”
And he would hobble back to the Bloody Heart and the bar bottle.
Yet even his terrible fear could not drive him away from the freight
outfit. No more than beating can drive off the stray dog from the man he
has chosen for master.
Perhaps Two Dog drew wages of some sort. Or it may have been that Jerk
Line, in moments of drunken generosity, gave the little fellow money.
For the harness maker at Chinook could tell you that almost every trip
to town Two Dog would shamble into the shop. Here he would spend an hour
fondling the red, white and blue rings, brass buckles and bells. A
folded bill would come from the pocket of his disreputable overalls in
exchange for rings or buckles or a new bell.
He was never known to buy clothes of any sort. He wore what Jerk Line
cast aside as being worn out. With harness thread and the sheep shears,
he cut down and patched these abandoned garments until they hung to him
somehow. His feet, when wrapped in gunny sacking, would fill the rusty
shoes he picked up. Jerk Line fed him. He drank when called up to the
bar.
He managed to keep those eighteen horses and the wrangling pony curried
and brushed after a fashion. He spent hours trimming their tails. He
filled them with grain, and if he put an extra hatful of oats in the
nosebag, Jerk Line pretended not to notice.
A good hand around a horse, Two Dog. Even the broncs seemed to savvy
that the little old fellow was harmless. Before Jerk Line gave the
starting howl that put the long string team in motion, Two Dog went down
the line with the blacksnake no man ever saw him use. Mumbling gentle
profanity, prodding them with the wooden butt of his blacksnake, talking
to those horses as if they were children. And when Jerk Line bawled
forth his “Tighten up!” the tugs tightened along the line, lead bars and
stretchers, and chains lifted from the ground. Every horse in the string
was giving the best that was in him. And deep down in his mule-skinner’s
heart, Jerk Line gave credit to little Two Dog. Two Dog, who had a way
with hosses.
Evenings, when he had the time, the little swamper polished the brass
buckles and bells until they glistened.
Their evenings, especially during mild weather, were usually visited by
stray cowboys, an occasional trapper, or a sheepherder.
“I seen Jerk Line pullin’ in on to Black Coulee this evening,” word
would pass along from camp to ranch and from ranch to camp.
Later in the day, after dusk had fallen, a hail would come out of the
night.
“Hi, there, Jerk Line, you gone to bed?”
“Dunno who you are,” would come the reply from within the lantern lit
caboose, “but light and rest your saddle.”
If the man was a cowboy, or a trapper, he was welcome to imbibe freely
of the liquor. But a sheepherder was limited to one or two “light ’uns”.
Not that the freighter was snobbish, for the herder and his dog was ever
welcome. But there was a large band of woolies in the herder’s care, and
despite the fact that Montana makes wanton desertion of a band of sheep
punishable by a term in prison, herders had been known to turn loose
their sheep. Because most sheepherders were habitual drunkards, and
because it took but a few drinks to set them on the trail for town, Jerk
Line used caution in the passing of his jug.
Once when a herder, goaded by the taste from Jerk Line’s jug, quit his
band, the freight outfit laid over and Two Dog herded the sheep until
the camp tender discovered the absence of the herder and brought out a
man to relieve Two Dog. That week’s delay had cost money. Jerk Line had
been duly cussed out for his tardiness. And from that time on, the jug
was passed with due caution.
* * * * *
Jerk Line’s jug was kinfolks to that fabled pitcher that never became
empty. Care of this earthenware container fell to Two Dog. And its
replenishing was as much a rite as was the polishing of the bells and
care of the stock.
By holding the jug to his ear and gently shaking it, Two Dog could tell
a man, almost never failing, the number of man-size drinks left in it.
And when its contents were lowered to a certain amount, the swamper
would set about refilling it.
Whisky was shipped in huge barrels. To tap this barrel en route from
wholesaler to retailer was unlawful. For, allowing for small natural
shrinkage, the saloon man paid good cash for the net contents as listed
on the bill of lading made out at the shipping point.
Now Jerk Line was a man of honest habit. He paid his bills. His word in
money matters was as true and good as signed paper or Christian oath.
Yet no whisky barrel ever landed at its final destination without being
tapped.
Unlike the trained ear of Two Dog, the saloon man could not gauge the
amount of liquor inside the fifty-gallon barrel or the hundred-gallon
barrel. Furthermore, no naked eye could detect any sign of the barrels
having been tampered with. Yet, from that barrel had come a gallon,
three, or perhaps five gallons of its original contents.
Barrel tapping, like safe cracking, is an art. Two Dog was the skilled
artist.
From the jockey box would come a hammer, a strip of canvas and a cold
chisel with its edge filed round and smooth so that it made a dull sort
of instrument. Selecting one of the hoops that bound the wooden staves
of the barrel, the swamper became a barrel cooper. With hammer and
chisel, the canvas as a buffer to prevent marking the hoop, Two Dog
would lift the hoop until it was an inch or so above its original place.
A gimlet and length of rubber tubing now came from the jockey box. A
tiny hole was bored in a carefully selected spot somewhere along the rim
marked by the hoop. The bit of tubing was inserted, its lower end
vanishing into the neck of the jug. If necessary, a tiny air hole was
made in the top of the barrel. This hole was made somewhere on the
lettering of the maker that was customarily burned into the wood by a
red-hot stencil.
The siphoning was now under way. A slow process, for the air hole was
small, as was the tube that led from the barrel to the jug. But Two Dog,
from experience, could time the process with fair accuracy.
“Some barrels,” he would tell Jerk Line, “gives down their licker
faster’n others.”
And when the jug was filled, tiny wooden pegs were driven into the
gimlet holes and the white dots of the wooden pegs were seared into a
blending, charred color by means of a hot iron. The hoop was
painstakingly driven back into place. No visible trace remained of the
looting. Two Dog would step back, head on one side, surveying the barrel
with the pleased eye of an artist who has put the final touches to a
masterpiece.
Yet Jerk Line was an honest man. And Two Dog was of guileless bearing,
meek as the man of the Scriptures.
“I reckon we earn that much, haulin’ the stuff over this damn’ road.
Anyhow I allers tell ’em.”
Jerk Line, with a wink and a grin, would always boast that he had tapped
the barrel.
“Show me whar we tapped ’er an’ I’ll pay fer the whole dang barrel,”
he’d tell Dutch John or Big Fred or Buster or Jew Jake or old Pike.
“Ain’t that right, Two Dog?”
“Righter’n hell, Jerk Line,” came prompt affirmation.