The Prairie Schooner
By William Francis Hooker
Copyright, 1918
By SAUL BROTHERS
Chicago
To My Wife
MAMIE TARBELL HOOKER
A Pioneer of the
Jim River (Dakota) Valley
[Illustration: Illustration and Patent Color Process by J. D. Johnsen]
CONTENTS.
Page
Introduction 11
I. Letters Pass Between Old Pards 15
II. Trains That Run Without Rails 27
III. Hunton and Clay--Bull-Train Magnates 43
IV. Guarding an Overland Freight Outfit 57
V. Rattlesnakes and Redskins 67
VI. Belated Grace for a Christmas Dinner 75
VII. The Fate of One-Eyed Ed. 85
VIII. Track-Layers Fought Redskins 99
IX. "Bill" Hickok, City Marshal 105
X. When Cheyenne Was Young 113
XI. The Lost Indian at Bedtick Creek 119
XII. A She-Bear and Her Cub 129
XIII. A Kick From a Playful Bullock--and a Joke 135
XIV. The Indian and the Trousers 143
XV. There's a Reason; This Is It! Conclusion 149
INTRODUCTION
When the Union Pacific Railroad was completed from Omaha, Nebraska, to
Ogden, Utah, it passed through a territory about as barren of business
as one can imagine. It apparently was a great Sahara, and in fact some
of the territory now growing bumper crops of alfalfa, grains and fruits,
was set down in school text-books in the 70's as the "Great American
Desert."
Its inhabitants were, outside of the stations on the railroad, largely
roaming bands of Indians, a few hundred soldiers at military posts, some
buffalo and other hunters, trappers, a few freighters, and many outlawed
white men.
The railroad had no short line feeders, and there was, in the period of
which I write, no need for them sufficient to warrant their
construction. There were military posts scattered along the North
Platte, and other rivers to the north, and the government had begun, as
part of its effort to reconcile the Red Man to the march of civilization
started by the Iron Horse, to establish agencies for the distribution of
food in payment to the tribes for lands upon which they claimed
sovereignty. These oases in the then great desert had to be reached with
thousands of tons of flour, bacon, sugar, etc., consequently large
private concerns were formed and contracts taken for the hauling by
ox-teams of the provisions sent to the soldiers as well as the Indians.
The ox was the most available and suitable power for this traffic for
the reason that he required the transportation of no subsistence in the
way of food, and was thoroughly acclimated. Usually he was a Texan--a
long horn--or a Mexican short horn with short stocky legs, although the
Texan was most generally used, and was fleet-footed and built almost on
the plan of a shad.
Both breeds were accustomed to no food other than the grasses of the
country, upon which they flourished. These included the succulent bunch
grass.
Oxen were used in teams of five, six and seven yokes and hauled large
canvas-covered wagons built for the purpose in Missouri, Wisconsin,
Illinois and Indiana. In the larger transportation outfits each team
hauled two wagons, a lead and a trailer, and frequently were loaded with
from 6,500 to 8,000 pounds of freight. These teams were driven by men
who were as tough and sturdy as the oxen.
Most of the freighting was done in the spring, summer and fall, although
several disastrous attempts were made to continue through the midwinter
season to relieve food shortages at the army posts.
It may seem strange, but it is nevertheless true, that Indians
frequently attacked the very wagon trains that were hauling food to
them, in Wyoming and Western Nebraska. Perhaps they were the original
anarchists; anyway, they often tried--seldom successfully--to destroy
the goose that laid the golden egg, but the course of civilization's
stream never was seriously turned, for it flowed rapidly onward, and
between 1870 and 1885, the country was quite thoroughly transformed from
a wild and uninhabited territory to one of civilization and great
commercial productivity.
Cattle ranches with their great herds came first, then sheep, and by
degrees the better portions of the lands, where the sweet grasses grew,
and even on the almost bare uplands when water was made available by
irrigation projects, were tilled. Settlements followed quickly--towns
with schools and churches; then branch railroads, the development of the
mines of gold, silver, coal, etc., all came in natural order. And
finally, at a comparatively recent date, rich fields of oil were
discovered and made to yield millions of gallons for the world's market
and millions in wealth.
It is difficult to realize that the now great territory was, in the day
of men still active, regarded as of little or no value--the home of
murderous, wandering tribes of savages in a climate and soil unfitted
for agriculture and containing little else of commercial value.
But science and enterprising men and governments have wrought almost a
miracle.
Go back with me to the days of the prairie schooner before the Wild West
was really discovered, and let me try to entertain you with just a
glimpse of things that are in such wonderful contrast to those of today.
The freight trains with ox-team power have vanished, never to return,
and with them most of the men who handled them.
The "color" of what follows is real, gathered when the Wild West _was_
wild; and I make no excuse for its lack of what an Enos R. Mills or a
Walter Pritchard Eaton would put in it, for they are naturalists while I
am merely a survivor of a period in the development and upbuilding of a
great section of the golden west.
In relating incidents to develop certain phases of pioneer life real
names of persons and localities have not always been used; and in some
of the narratives several incidents have been merged.
CHAPTER I
LETTERS PASS BETWEEN OLD PARDS.
_My Dear Friend_:
Can you put me in correspondence with any of the old boys we met when
the country was new, out in Wyoming? * * * Of the Medicine Bow range, or
Whipple, the man I gave the copper specimens to? * * *
Have you forgotten the importance you felt while walking up and down the
long line of bovines, swinging your "gad" and cursing like a mate on a
river boat? You looked bigger to me than a railroad president when you
secured that job, as you used to say, breaking on a bull-train. I should
say you were an engineer, but I suppose you know best. Those were happy
days. When I recall the fool things we did to satisfy a boy's desire for
adventure, I wonder that we are alive. How we avoided the scalping
knife; escaped having our necks broken, or being trampled to death under
the feet of herds of buffalo is a mystery to me. * * *
When the building of the Union Pacific road checked the buffaloes in
their passage from summer to winter feeding grounds, and they were
banked up along the line near Julesburg in thousands, I recall the
delight we took in watching them "get up and get." What clouds of dust
they would kick up when they got down to business! And such dust as the
Chalk Bluff would make never entered the eyes or lungs of man elsewhere.
Weren't we whales when we could divide or turn a herd? And how we would
turn tail-to, "spur and quirt" for our lives if the bunch did not show
signs of swerving from their course. How a cow-pony can carry a man
safely over such treacherous ground as the dog-towns is almost a
miracle.
O! to have my fill of antelope steak or buffalo "hump" broiled on a cone
of buffalo chips! Nothing better ever entered my mouth on the plains.
The soothing song of the lone night-herder of the bull-train as he
circles and beds his stock is not more conducive to sweeter slumbers
than we enjoyed by the rippling streams in the hills of Wyoming.
The difficulty we had in boiling beans until done in so high an
altitude; our hunt for a gun at old Dale Creek where "Shorty" Higgins
died suddenly; the fool act on my part when, afoot and alone, I
recovered the horse the Comanches had stolen from us. I wish we might
corral some of our old-time friends and go over the past before we leave
this land, "for when we die we will be a long time dead."
The wild horse that roamed the West, among which was the stallion who so
valiantly guarded his harem on the Laramie Plains, was a model for a
Landseer. The great herds of buffalo that looked like shadows cast on
the plains by clouds passing the sun and the myriads of passenger
pigeons, are among the things that man will never see again, and as read
from the chronicles of history a few years hence, will be classed with
the Jonah and the Whale story.
Old Man, when convenient, write me a long letter recalling some of the
old days, for--
"I'm growing fonder of my staff,
I'm growing dimmer in my eyes,
I'm growing fainter in my laugh,
I'm growing deeper in my sighs;
I'm growing careless in my dress,
I'm growing frugal with my gold,
I'm growing wise--I'm growing--yes,
I'm growing old."
Sincerely yours,
_VAN_.
* * * * *
The reply:
_My Dear Old Pard_:
Your note concerning the events of long ago out on the Laramie Plains
and the Harney flats shoots across my vision events in the Cache de La
Poudre (the Poodre), the Chugwater country, old Cheyenne, Sherman, Fort
Laramie, Fetterman, Camp Carlin, both Plattes, the Medicine Bow waters
and range, Allen's "Gold Room," McDaniel's hurdy-gurdy, the
dust-stirring, dust-laden buffalo east of Chalk Bluffs, the deer and
antelope of the whole Wyoming territory, the sage-hens, and I don't know
what not.
It makes me stop and lope back into the sagebrush. It makes me climb the
mountain sides and urge the bulls to fill their piñon yokes, tighten the
chains, and hurry along the four or five tons of bacon or flour or
shelled corn in gunny-sacks that Uncle Sam wants delivered somewhere
over the range, across the desert sweeps, through cactus-grown, prickly
pear sprinkled wastes, on through the dog-towns, in the heavy sand
sifting through the spokes, and falling off in a spiral fount from the
slow-turning hub.
Ah, yes, old pard, and as I whack my bulls in the train that runs
without rails to the top of a long divide, I look for three things:
water, smoke and Indians.
There were no railroads north of Cheyenne--nothing but the
"bull-trains." There away on the edge of the horizon, over the yellow
bunch grass, cured by the sun, is a strip of green. It is box-elder, and
underbrush. Standing out here and there like grim sentinels on guard are
the big, always dead and leafless cottonwoods, white as graveyard
ghosts, day or night. It seems to be only a flat surface haul to this
refreshing looking strip of green, and, as I have stopped the whole
wagon-train by making this observation, and the wagon boss is moving my
way on a big mule, I tap the off leader, who is thirty odd feet away,
with my long lash and yell:
"Whoa, haw, Brownie," but not too loud at first; just an encouraging
word or two, and then string 'em out. My leaders are light of feet and
built like running horses. The pointers--or middle yokes--come in
reluctantly, but I attend to that, and with the butt end of my stock,
jab the near wheeler in the ribs, and away we go.
But, old pard, inside of three minutes my strip of green is gone! In its
place is the quivering, broiling sun over the yellow bunch-grass; the
ashen stalks of the sage seem never to have had a drop of sap in
them--everything is dead. Even the jack-rabbit that stops for a look
seems bedraggled and forlorn, but I whistle, pick up a moss agate, throw
it in my jockey box, and jog along, for the surface is now hard as a
stone, though off ahead there I will unwind my lash and send its
stinging thongs to the backs of my noble beasts, touching only selected
spots where the hair has been worn away until the surface looks like the
head of the drum in a village band.
Yes, I know they used to think us bullwhackers were brutes, but they (an
occasional tenderfoot) only saw the surface. They had never been
initiated; they didn't know the secrets. It was only when the load just
had to be yanked to the top without doubling teams or dropping trailers,
that we used the undercut which sent the long V-shaped popper upon the
tender spots of the belly, and then, Pard, the thing looked worse
because the Comanche-like language we hurled with it was so unusual to
ears that had been trained east of the Missouri River. It sure was
picturesque language!
But we were all day reaching that green belt strung like a ribbon across
the face of central Wyoming, and from the time we first hove in sight of
it, until we pulled the pins from the steamy yokes, and dropped the
hickory bows at our feet, it appeared and disappeared so often that I
wonder that both man and beast did not go mad. However, inasmuch as this
was a daily programme for me for several years, I know that man can
stand a whole lot of hardship, if he only thinks so.
And then ring in the change from the desert heat of midsummer to trifles
like thirty below in winter along the same landscape, when you see the
ghostly cottonwoods and anticipate your arrival among them some hours
later. Won't there be a roaring fire? And beans? And bacon? And pones of
bread for everyone? Wet stockings piled on inverted yokes or held on
pieces of brush, are drying, we are nursing our chilblains and
discussing the incidents of the day's drive, and not a weakling in the
outfit. Every man has been frozen or soaked all day, but he's as happy
as a lark. Sleep? You bet! You know it; but if you and I tell our
friends around our comfortable firesides now or in the lobby of an
onyx-walled Waldorf-Astoria, Belmont or Biltmore, that we just kicked a
hole in the snow, rolled into our blankets and dreamed of being roasted
to death, they would look at your well-shaven face, my biled shirt, and
then at your highly polished shoes, then at my black derby, and, dammit,
I believe they might be justified in forming the opinion that neither
one of us had ever been deprived of breakfast food, or bath tubs, or a
manicure artist's services.* * *
You want to know if I can locate any of the old gang. Sure! Some sleep
in the sidehills along the swift-flowing waters of the North Platte, one
or two are parts of gravel beds down on the wild meadows--or what were
the wild meadows of hundreds of square miles between the North Platte
and the Poudre; but not a few, like you and I, stalk abroad on the face
of the earth--cheating first, as we did, tribes of Sioux, Arapahoe,
Cheyenne and the Comanches who swept up across Kansas and Nebraska;
escaping the blizzards, periods of starvation, cold, heat, fire, water,
whisky, and finally the surgeon's knife. I tell you, the world only
thinks it knows a thing or two about how the human body is made, and how
much it can stand. But to answer your questions:
Jim Bansom, the last time I knew of him, in 1875, was headed east with a
fine span of hosses and a fair-to-middlin' wagon.
Don't know where he went and don't know what he did with the hosses or
the wagon! 'Taint none o' my bizness, neither! In those days it wasn't
customary to be too gol-darned inquisitive about such things, unless
you owned the hosses or the wagon, or a bit, or a halter, or something
of that sort you happened to loan to the outfit; and then, of course,
you could take the trail if you wanted to.
* * * * *
Sam Smith, old U. P. conductor, walked into my office a while ago, and,
as he closed the door behind him, I said, "Hello, Sam; haven't seen you
since 1875, but you're the same Sam!" Then I told him my name.
And then Sam gasped and acted like maybe he might pull a gun, thinking
me an impostor; because when Sam saw me the last time, stretched out in
his caboose on the old mountain division of the U. P., and the train
sailing down the toboggan that slid us into Laramie City, past Tie
Siding and old Fort Saunders, my hair was black, and I had a different
look.
Maybe I looked bad. I guess I did, for I carried a gun and a belt of
forty rounds, and a butcher knife in a scabbard, just as we all did, for
it was the custom of the country; and I had long hair, too, and it was
matted and dirty, mixed with pitch that came from camp-fires in the
hills. No doubt I looked wretched, but, old Pard, I didn't even feel
that way. I felt good, and I was as harmless as a pigeon.
But I said something about a hatband of rattlers' rattles that I gave
his little girl at Cheyenne, as I rode up to his door aboard a cayuse,
and that settled it. We talked about snow-sheds, the Sherman hill, once
the highest railroad point in the world, and of old times in general.
But what's the use? When you come to New York, I'll meet you at the
Waldorf and we'll talk about it all night, and wish the buffalo were
still there, and the sagebrush, and the bull-trains, and the other
things undisturbed by civilization. So long....
_BILL._
New York, August, 1917.
[NOTE--The above letters are from the author's files. "Van" is a
multi-millionaire manufacturer living in a middle-western state.
For several years his pastime was buffalo hunting and "roughing it"
in the wild and woolly west.
The author, when a boy of 16, was developing a case of tuberculosis
of the lungs, and to escape the fate that had overtaken other
members of his family, took Horace Greeley's advice, went west, and
grew up with the country. He had been a clerk in a railroad office,
and still is in the railroad business in New York City, more than
forty years after the events related in the following chapters. He
is the only survivor of a family of fourteen, including all of his
own children, eight in number.]