A FAMILY REUNION
The hospitality of a trail wagon was aptly expressed in the invitation
to enjoy ourselves. Some one had exercised good judgment in selecting a
camp, for every convenience was at hand, including running water and
ample shade from a clump of cottonwoods. Turning our steaming horses
free, we threw ourselves, in complete abandonment and relaxation, down
in the nearest shade. Unmistakable hints were given our host of certain
refreshments which would be acceptable, and in reply Forrest pointed to
a bucket of creek water near the wagon wheel, and urged us not to be at
all backward.
Every one was well fortified with brown cigarette papers and smoking
tobacco, and singly and in groups we were soon smoking like hired hands
and reviewing the incidents of the morning. Forrest’s cook, a tall,
red-headed fellow, in anticipation of the number of guests his wagon
would entertain for the day, put on the little and the big pot. As it
only lacked an hour of noon on our arrival, the promised fresh beef
would not be available in time for dinner; but we were not like guests
who had to hurry home—we would be right there when supper was ready.
The loss of a night’s sleep on my outfit was a good excuse for an
after-dinner siesta. Untying our slickers, we strolled out of hearing
of the camp, and for several hours obliterated time. About three
o’clock Bob Quirk aroused and informed us that he had ordered our
horses, and that the signal of Sponsilier’s cattle had been seen south
on the trail. Dave was impatient to intercept his herd and camp them
well down the creek, at least below the regular crossing. This would
throw Bob’s and my cattle still farther down the stream; and we were
all determined to honor Forrest with our presence for supper and the
evening hours. Quince’s wrangler rustled in the horses, and as we
rejoined the camp the quarters of a beef hung low on a cottonwood,
while a smudge beneath them warned away all insect life. Leaving word
that we would return during the evening, the eleventh-hour guests rode
away in the rough, uneven order in which we had arrived. Sponsilier and
his men veered off to the south, Bob Quirk and his lads soon following,
while the rest of us continued on down the creek. My cattle were
watering when we overtook them, occupying fully a mile of the stream,
and nearly an hour’s ride below the trail crossing. It takes a long
time to water a big herd thoroughly, and we repeatedly turned them back
and forth across the creek, but finally allowed them to graze away with
a broad, fan-like front. As ours left the stream, Bob’s cattle were
coming in over a mile above, and in anticipation of a dry camp that
night, Parent had been advised to fill his kegs and supply himself with
wood.
Detailing the third and fourth guard to wrangle the remuda, I sent
Levering up the creek with my brother’s horses and to recover our
loaned saddle stock; even Bob Quirk was just thoughtless enough to
construe a neighborly act into a horse trade. About two miles out from
the creek and an equal distance from the trail, I found the best
bed-ground of the trip. It sloped to the northwest, was covered with
old dry grass, and would catch any vagrant breeze except an eastern
one. The wagon was ordered into camp, and the first and second guards
were relieved just long enough to secure their night-horses. Nearly all
of these two watches had been with me during the day, and on the return
of Levering with the horses, we borrowed a number of empty flour-sacks
for beef, and cantered away, leaving behind only the cook and the first
two guards.
What an evening and night that was! As we passed up the creek, we
sighted in the gathering twilight the camp-fires of Sponsilier and my
brother, several miles apart and south of the stream. When we reached
Forrest’s wagon the clans were gathering, The Rebel and his crowd being
the last to come in from above. Groups of saddle horses were tied among
the trees, while around two fires were circles of men broiling beef
over live coals. The red-headed cook had anticipated forty guests
outside of his own outfit, and was pouring coffee into tin cups and
shying biscuit right and left on request. The supper was a success, not
on account of the spread or our superior table manners, but we graced
the occasion with appetites which required the staples of life to
satisfy. Then we smoked, falling into groups when the yarning began.
All the fresh-beef stories of our lives, and they were legion, were
told, no one group paying any attention to another.
“Every time I run a-foul of fresh beef,” said The Rebel, as he settled
back comfortably between the roots of a cottonwood, with his back to
its trunk, “it reminds me of the time I was a prisoner among the
Yankees. It was the last year of the war, and I had got over my first
desire to personally whip the whole North. There were about five
thousand of us held as prisoners of war for eleven months on a
peninsula in the Chesapeake Bay. The fighting spirit of the soldier was
broken in the majority of us, especially among the older men and those
who had families. But we youngsters accepted the fortunes of war and
were glad that we were alive, even if we were prisoners. In my mess in
prison there were fifteen, all having been captured at the same time,
and many of us comrades of three years’ standing.
“I remember the day we were taken off the train and marched through the
town for the prison, a Yankee band in our front playing national airs
and favorites of their army, and the people along the route jeering us
and asking how we liked the music. Our mess held together during the
march, and some of the boys answered them back as well as they could.
Once inside the prison stockade, we went into quarters and our mess
still held together. Before we had been there long, one day there was a
call among the prisoners for volunteers to form a roustabout crew.
Well, I enlisted as a roustabout. We had to report to an officer twice
a day, and then were put under guard and set to work. The kind of labor
I liked best was unloading the supplies for the prison, which were
landed on a near-by wharf. This roustabout crew had all the unloading
to do, and the reason I liked it was it gave us some chance to steal.
Whenever there was anything extra, intended for the officers, to be
unloaded, look out for accidents. Broken crates were common, and some
of the contents was certain to reach our pockets or stomachs, in spite
of the guard.
“I was a willing worker and stood well with the guards. They never
searched me, and when they took us outside the stockade, the captain of
the guard gave me permission, after our work was over, to patronize the
sutler’s store and buy knick-knacks from the booths. There was always
some little money amongst soldiers, even in prison, and I was
occasionally furnished money by my messmates to buy bread from a
baker’s wagon which was outside the walls. Well, after I had traded a
few times with the baker’s boy, I succeeded in corrupting him. Yes, had
him stealing from his employer and selling to me at a discount. I was a
good customer, and being a prisoner, there was no danger of my meeting
his employer. You see the loaves were counted out to him, and he had to
return the equivalent or the bread. At first the bread cost me ten
cents for a small loaf, but when I got my scheme working, it didn’t
cost me five cents for the largest loaves the boy could steal from the
bakery. I worked that racket for several months, and if we hadn’t been
exchanged, I’d have broke that baker, sure.
“But the most successful scheme I worked was stealing the kidneys out
of beef while we were handling it. It was some distance from the wharf
to the warehouse, and when I’d get a hind quarter of beef on my
shoulder, it was an easy trick to burrow my hand through the tallow and
get a good grip on the kidney. Then when I’d throw the quarter down in
the warehouse, it would be minus a kidney, which secretly found
lodgment in a large pocket in the inside of my shirt. I was satisfied
with one or two kidneys a day when I first worked the trick, but my
mess caught on, and then I had to steal by wholesale to satisfy them.
Some days, when the guards were too watchful, I couldn’t get very many,
and then again when things were lax, ‘Elijah’s Raven’ would get a
kidney for each man in our mess. With the regular allowance of rations
and what I could steal, when the Texas troops were exchanged, our mess
was ragged enough, but pig-fat, and slick as weasels. Lord love you,
but we were a great mess of thieves.”
Nearly all of Flood’s old men were with him again, several of whom were
then in Forrest’s camp. A fight occurred among a group of saddle horses
tied to the front wheel of the wagon, among them being the mount of
John Officer. After the belligerents had been quieted, and Officer had
removed and tied his horse to a convenient tree, he came over and
joined our group, among which were the six trail bosses. Throwing
himself down among us, and using Sponsilier for a pillow and myself for
footstool, he observed:
“All you foremen who have been over the Chisholm Trail remember the
stage-stand called Bull Foot, but possibly some of the boys haven’t.
Well, no matter, it’s just about midway between Little Turkey Creek and
Buffalo Springs on that trail, where it runs through the Cherokee
Strip. I worked one year in that northern country—lots of Texas boys
there too. It was just about the time they began to stock that country
with Texas steers, and we rode lines to keep our cattle on their range.
You bet, there was riding to do in that country then. The first few
months that these Southern steers are turned loose on a new range,
Lord! but they do love to drift against a breeze. In any kind of a
rain-storm, they’ll travel farther in a night than a whole outfit can
turn them back in a day.
“Our camp was on the Salt Fork of the Cimarron, and late in the fall
when all the beeves had been shipped, the outfit were riding lines and
loose-herding a lot of Texas yearlings, and mixed cattle, natives to
that range. Up in that country they have Indian summer and Squaw
winter, both occurring in the fall. They have lots of funny weather up
there. Well, late one evening that fall there came an early squall of
Squaw winter, sleeted and spit snow wickedly. The next morning there
wasn’t a hoof in sight, and shortly after daybreak we were riding deep
in our saddles to catch the lead drift of our cattle. After a hard
day’s ride, we found that we were out several hundred head, principally
yearlings of the through Texas stock. You all know how locoed a bunch
of dogies can get—we hunted for three days and for fifty miles in every
direction, and neither hide, hair, nor hoof could we find. It was while
we were hunting these cattle that my yarn commences.
“The big augers of the outfit lived in Wichita, Kansas. Their foreman,
Bibleback Hunt, and myself were returning from hunting this missing
bunch of yearlings when night overtook us, fully twenty-five miles from
camp. Then this Bull Foot stage came to mind, and we turned our horses
and rode to it. It was nearly dark when we reached it, and Bibleback
said for me to go in and make the talk. I’ll never forget that nice
little woman who met me at the door of that sod shack. I told her our
situation, and she seemed awfully gracious in granting us food and
shelter for the night. She told us we could either picket our horses or
put them in the corral and feed them hay and grain from the
stage-company’s supply. Now, old Bibleback was what you might call shy
of women, and steered clear of the house until she sent her little boy
out and asked us to come in. Well, we sat around in the room,
owly-like, and to save my soul from the wrath to come, I couldn’t think
of a word that was proper to say to the little woman, busy getting
supper. Bibleback was worse off than I was; he couldn’t do anything but
look at the pictures on the wall. What was worrying me was, had she a
husband? Or what was she doing away out there in that lonesome country?
Then a man old enough to be her grandfather put in an appearance. He
was friendly and quite talkative, and I built right up to him. And then
we had a supper that I distinctly remember yet. Well, I should say I
do—it takes a woman to get a good supper, and cheer it with her
presence, sitting at the head of the table and pouring the coffee.
“This old man was a retired stage-driver, and was doing the wrangling
act for the stage-horses. After supper I went out to the corral and
wormed the information out of him that the woman was a widow; that her
husband had died before she came there, and that she was from Michigan.
Amongst other things that I learned from the old man was that she had
only been there a few months, and was a poor but deserving woman. I
told Bibleback all this after we had gone to bed, and we found that our
finances amounted to only four dollars, which she was more than welcome
to. So the next morning after breakfast, when I asked her what I owed
her for our trouble, she replied so graciously: ‘Why, gentlemen, I
couldn’t think of taking advantage of your necessity to charge you for
a favor that I’m only too happy to grant.’ ‘Oh,’ said I, ‘take this,
anyhow,’ laying the silver on the corner of the table and starting for
the door, when she stopped me. ‘One moment, sir; I can’t think of
accepting this. Be kind enough to grant my request,’ and returned the
money. We mumbled out some thanks, bade her good-day, and started for
the corral, feeling like two sheep thieves. While we were saddling
up—will you believe it?—her little boy came out to the corral and gave
each one of us as fine a cigar as ever I buttoned my lip over. Well,
fellows, we had had it put all over us by this little Michigan woman,
till we couldn’t look each other in the face. We were accustomed to
hardship and neglect, but here was genuine kindness enough to kill a
cat.
“Until we got within five miles of our camp that morning, old Bibleback
wouldn’t speak to me as we rode along. Then he turned halfway in his
saddle and said: ‘What kind of folks are those?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I
replied, ‘what kind of people they are, but I know they are good ones.’
‘Well, I’ll get even with that little woman if it takes every sou in my
war-bags,’ said Hunt.
“When within a mile of camp, Bibleback turned again in his saddle and
asked, ‘When is Christmas?’ ‘In about five weeks,’ I answered. ‘Do you
know where that big Wyoming stray ranges?’ he next asked. I trailed
onto his game in a second. ‘Of course I do.’ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘let’s
kill him for Christmas and give that little widow every ounce of the
meat. It’ll be a good one on her, won’t it? We’ll fool her a plenty.
Say nothing to the others,’ he added; and giving our horses the rein we
rode into camp on a gallop.
“Three days before Christmas we drove up this Wyoming stray and beefed
him. We hung the beef up overnight to harden in the frost, and the next
morning bright and early, we started for the stage-stand with a good
pair of ponies to a light wagon. We reached the widow’s place about
eleven o’clock, and against her protests that she had no use for so
much, we hung up eight hundred pounds of as fine beef as you ever set
your peepers on. We wished her a merry Christmas, jumped into the
wagon, clucked to the ponies, and merely hit the high places getting
away. When we got well out of sight of the house—well, I’ve seen mule
colts play and kid goats cut up their antics; I’ve seen children that
was frolicsome; but for a man with gray hair on his head, old Bibleback
Hunt that day was the happiest mortal I ever saw. He talked to the
horses; he sang songs; he played Injun; and that Christmas was a merry
one, for the debt was paid and our little widow had beef to throw to
the dogs. I never saw her again, but wherever she is to-night, if my
prayer counts, may God bless her!”
Early in the evening I had warned my boys that we would start on our
return at ten o’clock. The hour was nearly at hand, and in reply to my
inquiry if our portion of the beef had been secured, Jack Splann said
that he had cut off half a loin, a side of ribs, and enough steak for
breakfast. Splann and I tied the beef to our cantle-strings, and when
we returned to the group, Sponsilier was telling of the stampede of his
herd in the Panhandle about a month before. “But that run wasn’t a
circumstance to one in which I figured once, and in broad daylight,”
concluded Dave. It required no encouragement to get the story; all we
had to do was to give him time to collect his thoughts.
“Yes, it was in the summer of ’73,” he finally continued. “It was my
first trip over the trail, and I naturally fell into position at the
drag end of the herd. I was a green boy of about eighteen at the time,
having never before been fifty miles from the ranch where I was born.
The herd belonged to Major Hood, and our destination was Ellsworth,
Kansas. In those days they generally worked oxen to the chuck-wagons,
as they were ready sale in the upper country, and in good demand for
breaking prairie. I reckon there must have been a dozen yoke of
work-steers in our herd that year, and they were more trouble to me
than all the balance of the cattle, for they were slothful and sinfully
lazy. My vocabulary of profanity was worn to a frazzle before we were
out a week, and those oxen didn’t pay any more attention to a rope or
myself than to the buzzing of a gnat.
“There was one big roan ox, called Turk, which we worked to the wagon
occasionally, but in crossing the Arbuckle Mountains in the Indian
Territory, he got tender-footed. Another yoke was substituted, and in a
few days Turk was on his feet again. But he was a cunning rascal and
had learned to soldier, and while his feet were sore, I favored him
with sandy trails and gave him his own time. In fact, most of my duties
were driving that one ox, while the other boys handled the herd. When
his feet got well—I had toadied and babied him so—he was plum ruined. I
begged the foreman to put him back in the chuck team, but the cook
kicked on account of his well-known laziness, so Turk and I continued
to adorn the rear of the column. I reckon the foreman thought it better
to have Turk and me late than no dinner. I tried a hundred different
schemes to instill ambition and self-respect into that ox, but he was
an old dog and contented with his evil ways.
“Several weeks passed, and Turk and I became a standing joke with the
outfit. One morning I made the discovery that he was afraid of a
slicker. For just about a full half day, I had the best of him, and
several times he was out of sight in the main body of the herd. But he
always dropped to the rear, and finally the slicker lost its charm to
move him. In fact he rather enjoyed having me fan him with it—it seemed
to cool him. It was the middle of the afternoon, and Turk had dropped
about a quarter-mile to the rear, while I was riding along beside and
throwing the slicker over him like a blanket. I was letting him carry
it, and he seemed to be enjoying himself, switching his tail in
appreciation, when the matted brush of his tail noosed itself over one
of the riveted buttons on the slicker. The next switch brought the
yellow ‘fish’ bumping on his heels, and emitting a blood-curdling
bellow, he curved his tail and started for the herd. Just for a minute
it tickled me to see old Turk getting such a wiggle on him, but the
next moment my mirth turned to seriousness, and I tried to cut him off
from the other cattle, but he beat me, bellowing bloody murder. The
slicker was sailing like a kite, and the rear cattle took fright and
began bawling as if they had struck a fresh scent of blood. The scare
flashed through the herd from rear to point, and hell began popping
right then and there. The air filled with dust and the earth trembled
with the running cattle. Not knowing which way to turn, I stayed right
where I was—in the rear. As the dust lifted, I followed up, and about a
mile ahead picked up my slicker, and shortly afterward found old Turk,
grazing contentedly. With every man in the saddle, that herd ran seven
miles and was only turned by the Cimarron River. It was nearly dark
when I and the roan ox overtook the cattle. Fortunately none of the
swing-men had seen the cause of the stampede, and I attributed it to
fresh blood, which the outfit believed. My verdant innocence saved my
scalp that time, but years afterward I nearly lost it when I admitted
to my old foreman what had caused the stampede that afternoon. But I
was a trail boss then and had learned my lesson.”
The Rebel, who was encamped several miles up the creek, summoned his
men, and we all arose and scattered after our horses. There was quite a
cavalcade going our way, and as we halted within the light of the fires
for the different outfits to gather, Flood rode up, and calling
Forrest, said: “In the absence of any word from old man Don, we might
as well all pull out in the morning. More than likely we’ll hear from
him at Grinnell, and until we reach the railroad, the Buford herds had
better take the lead. I’ll drag along in the rear, and if there’s
another move made from Dodge, you will have warning. Now, that’s about
all, except to give your cattle plenty of time; don’t hurry. S’long,
fellows.”