PACKSADDLE JACK'S DEATH.
Packsaddle Jack had got tired of filing off wrinkles one night, and, not
being sleepy, walked on ahead of the special till he came to a
sidetrack. Lying down there on the embankment he went to sleep and
caught a violent cold, from which he never recovered. It settled into a
bad cough, and the wrinkle dust seemed to aggravate it. Still he
insisted on taking his regular shift in spite of our remonstrances, and
the harder he coughed the harder he'd file. As the motion of filing and
coughing is almost the same, he seemed to make better time coughing when
he was filing, and vice versa, but finally he became so weak that he
couldn't leave the way-car any more, and we knew it would be a question
of a very few days till old Packsaddle would be swimming his bronk
across the River Styx. He became very quiet and thoughtful those
days--seemed to do a heap of studying--and one bright, sunny afternoon
he called me over to his corner of the way-car and told me he had a
dream the night before and it made such an impression on him he wanted
to tell it to me.
He said in the start of his dream he seemed to be there on the way-car
planning how much he could possibly get out of what cattle was left when
he got to Omaha, when it seemed all of a sudden there was a mighty
well-dressed cowpuncher riding a big paint hoss and leading another all
saddled and bridled came right up to him and says: "Packsaddle, come
with me." He said the stranger had on a big Stetson hat, a mighty nice
embroidered blue shirt, with red silk necktie and white fur snaps,
high-heeled boots, and a pearl-handled .45 six-shooter. He was riding
Frazier's famous Pueblo saddle, had a split-eared bridle and was rigged
out every way that was proper. Said he asked the stranger where he
wanted him to go, and the stranger told him they was going to a country
where there was no sheep or sheepmen; where the grass grew every year;
where the cattle was always fat; where they drove their cattle to market
place of shipping them; where hard winters, horn flies, heel flies and
mange was unknown. He said the stranger made such a square talk he
finally made up his mind to go with him, although he had some doubts,
not knowing the fellar. So getting on the led hoss, he was kind of
surprised to find the stirrups just his length and the saddle just
fitted him.
He said they started off kind a slow at first, in a little jog trot, but
directly got to loping, and finally, after crossing a lot of
mean-looking country, they came to a big river and his guide told him
they had got to swim their horses across it as there was no bridge. The
stranger said lots of smart men had tried to build a bridge across this
river, and some people had deluded themselves into thinking they knew of
a bridge that they could get across on, but always when it came to
crossing they couldn't exactly locate their bridge and had to plunge in
with the crowd. Packsaddle said it was a mighty ugly-looking stream. It
was wide and deep and looked like it was rising. The water was black as
ink and the waves out toward the middle was rolling mountain high. Still
there appeared to be people all along the shore, a-plunging in and
starting for the other side. There was a large crowd scattered along and
most of them didn't seem to see the river till they fell off backwards
into it. They would be laughing and cutting up, with their backs to the
river and all of a sudden get too close; a little piece of bank would
crumble off, and with a despairing cry they disappeared beneath the
black waters and was seen no more. Some apparently mighty rich people
dashed up with carriages and servants, and taking a sack of gold in each
hand would offer that to the river, thinking probably they wouldn't have
to cross if they offered it some gold. But of all the people who came to
the river, only a very few ever turned back, although most of them
seemed to want to. He noticed a few that looked like farmers' wives who
came up, and soon as they saw the river a smile of content came on their
faces and they slid into the boiling water as naturally as though it was
wash-day. There was a class of men, too, who came up with a determined
look on their countenances, and without the slightest hesitation plunged
into the awful stream and struck out for the other side. These men all
had cowboy hats on, and when Packsaddle asked his guide who they were,
he said they were cowmen who had been shipping their cattle to the Omaha
market, and their cattle had starved to death on the stock-yard transfer
waiting to be unloaded.
Some there was that looked like pettifogging lawyers and cheap
politicians, who, when they arrived at the river, flourished a handful
of annual passes over different lines, looking for a pass over the
river, but not getting it, turned back and wouldn't cross, and the guide
told Packsaddle that he guessed this class of people never did cross, as
they seemed to get thicker every year.
Packsaddle said at first he kind of hated to cross the river, as his
guide said none ever returned, and he couldn't see the other bank very
plainly, and was in some doubt as to what kind of a country was on the
other side, although there was hundreds of big, fat, red-faced looking
men, dressed in black, standing along the shore where he was, telling
everybody what kind of a country was on the other side. They differed a
great deal in their description of it, but that was probably on account
of what different people wanted. All these black-robed, fat-looking
rascals got money out of the crowds and seemed to be doing a thriving
business by fixing up people to cross and giving them encouragement.
Most all of them was selling some kind of a patented life-preserver to
wear across the river, and each one shouted out the merits of his
life-preserver till their noise drowned the roar of the river, and they
tried to get lots of people to cross the river that hadn't got anywhere
near the bank, just to sell them a life-preserver.
Packsaddle had noticed all these things as they waited on the bank a
moment, and then, he said, they plunged their hosses in and started
swimming for the other side. The other bank, he said, was sorter
obscured by a mist or fog, and he didn't see it till most there, but saw
worlds of all kinds of people struggling in the black water of the
river. Packsaddle said his hoss swam high in the water, never wetting
the seat of his saddle, and he felt just like he was getting home from
the general roundup. When they struck the bank there was a bunch of
cowboys helped his hoss up the bank, gave him a hearty handshake all
around and made him welcome every way. When he turned around to thank
his guide that gentleman had vanished, and the cowboys told him his
guide was a regular escort across the river for cowmen and cowboys; that
most everybody had to get across the best way they could, but cowmen and
cowboys always had a good hoss to ride and a guide; that one reason for
this was that they was most always mighty good to a hoss and thought a
heap of them. They said, though, that there was a lot of boats with
cushioned seats, and mighty comfortable, that brought over the poor old
widder women and farmers' wives and orphan children that had been abused
and starved till they just had to cross the river to get away.
Packsaddle said it looked like a mighty good country, lots of fat
cattle, the finest hosses he ever see, lots of cowboys laying under the
mess-wagon bucking monte and everybody winning, while the roundup cooks
had pots and bakeovens steaming with roast veal, baking powder biscuits
and cherry roll. He said the boss of one of these outfits hired him on
the spot, and giving him a string of fat hosses to ride, he picked out a
black pinto with watch eyes and saddled him. Soon as he got on this hoss
it started to buck and he said he dreamed that hoss throwed him so high
that he saw he was coming down on the other side of the river and it
disgusted him so he woke up.
[Illustration: _Packsaddle Jack._]
Packsaddle was very weak when he got through telling his dream, and
after taking a drink of water he told me he thought we was all making a
mistake trying to make money raising cattle. He'd heard about some place
in the East where they just issued stock, place of raising it, and that
certainly must be the place to go. He'd heard of two or three men,
probably stockmen, who get together in New York City, issued just
millions of stock in one day, and he was satisfied that was one thing
made our stock so cheap. For himself, he said, he liked that country he
saw in his dream and thought he'd go there pretty soon.
While we were talking the head brakeman came in and said there was a cow
dead in the car next the engine. Packsaddle gave a gasp or two, and
when I bent down over him he whispered he would go and round her up; and
when I looked at him again he was dead.
Poor old Packsaddle! His early life had been embittered by the discovery
that a married woman (whom he was in the habit of visiting in the
absence of her husband down in Texas where he was raised) was untrue to
him, and on meeting his rival at the lady's house when her husband had
gone to mill with a grist of corn, he promptly filled his rival's
anatomy full of lead and came away in such a hurry that he had to borrow
a jack-mule and packsaddle from a man that was prospecting, and rode
this packsaddle to Wyoming, and thus acquired the euphonious name of
Packsaddle Jack. Although he was cheerful at times, yet the memory of
this woman's perfidy to him cast a gloom of melancholy over his after
life which was never entirely dispelled. He never whined when he lost
his money bucking monte, always had a good supply of tobacco and
cigarette papers of his own and never failed to pass them around. While
he didn't have much love for women or Injuns, he loved a good hoss and
twice owed his life to his hoss when he had a brush with Cheyenne Injuns
in early days in northern Wyoming.
In a burst of confidence a few days before his death he told me he had
endured the worst kind of hardships all his life. Winter and summer he
had lived on the plains and in the mountains without shelter, by open
campfires, lots of times without much to eat; had been hunted and shot
at for days and nights by Cheyenne Injuns and never met with the
privations and discomforts he had on this trip. And as for slowness, he
said he hired out one time in Texas when he was a boy, to help drive 900
tame ducks across the swamps of Louisiana to New Orleans to market; said
the trail was so narrow that only one duck at a time could walk in it
and sometimes no trail at all, just high grass and swamp brush, and yet
they beat the time of a cattle special away yonder.
THE SPIRIT OF PACKSADDLE FOLLOWS THE DEAD COW.
A stock train was waiting on a sidetrack one day
For gravel trains going some other way;
And as they waited the cattle grew old,
The stockmen grew haggard, the weather turned cold.
Their stomachs were empty, they were starving in fact,
While the stock train was waiting on its lonely sidetrack.
The reports said the markets were lower each day,
While the cattle grew thinner, the stockmen grew grey.
An old, grizzled cattleman spoke up at last,
Said he to the cowboys, "The time it is past,
To make mon out of cattle or get any dough,
This going to market by rail is a little too slow.
"The railroad companies' tariffs get higher each year,
Their passes get fewer, till I very much fear
That ahead of our stock train we will have to walk
And wait for the cattle train to get up our stock.
"Let us up and be doing and build a big merger trust,
And sell stock to suckers and let them go bust,
And for every steer issue millions of shares,
Let other people worry how to get railroad fares.
"We will issue bonds and certificates and thus raise our stock;
In place of breeding Shorthorns we will make a swift talk;
Have our shares all printed in red, green and gold,
Sell them in the stock market to the young and the old.
"And thus live by our cuteness and work of our brains
In place of starving on special stock trains.
We will have servants and waiters, the best in the land;
Governors and princes will give us the glad hand."
Just then the front brakeman stuck in his head,
Saying in the car next the engine an old cow was dead.
The old cowman gave a gasp and his spirit started to ride
To round up that old cow that in the front car had just died.