of his tepee, and was standing there calling to some of the other
Indians, when a soldier shot him without orders. Then the fight
commenced. How the guns did rattle! It was almost too dark at first for
me to see much of the fight, but it was getting lighter all the time.
As we were coming down the canyon that night, the General gave me his
field glasses to carry for him and I still had them.
Along the edge of the lake grew a lot of bulrushes. Soon after the
firing began, I could see the papooses running into these rushes and
hiding. From the volleys that were fired it got so smoky that I could
not see very plainly, but the shooting soon stopped, and as the smoke
rose, I could see everything that was going on. By this time they were
in a terrible mixup, and were fighting fiercely, the soldiers with
their bayonets and sabers, and the Indians with their clubs, axes, and
knives. I could see little children not over five or six years old
with sticks fighting like wildcats. I saw a soldier and an Indian that
had clinched in a death struggle. They had each other by the hair of
the head, and I saw a squaw run up to them with an ax and strike the
soldier in the back and he sank to the ground, then she split his head
with the ax. While she was doing this, a soldier ran a bayonet through
her, and that is the way it was going over the whole battle ground. And
what a noise they made! with the kids squalling, the squaws yelling,
the bucks yelping, the dogs barking, and the officers giving their
orders to the soldiers.
This was the worst battle and the last one that I ever saw. It lasted
about two hours, and during that short period of time, every Indian,
squaw, and papoose, and every dog was killed. After the battle, I was
sent to bring up the baggage wagons to haul our wounded to Camp Floyd.
As we were on our way back to Camp Floyd with the wounded, and were
passing through a rocky canyon, we were fired at by some straggling
Indian, and I was shot through my left arm about half way between the
wrist and elbow. The same bullet that went through my arm killed a
soldier at my side. The one shot was all we heard, and we did not even
see the one who fired it. I have sometimes wondered if that bullet was
not sent especially for me.
That spring the great war between the North and the South broke out,
and General Johnston sold all of the government cattle and wagons very
cheap, and went back East with his pack mules. I bought a yoke of oxen
for eighteen dollars and a new wagon for ten. There must have been as
many as ten thousand oxen bought at from twenty-five to fifty dollars a
yoke. That summer the gold mines were opened in Montana and everything
had to be hauled with ox teams, and the same oxen we had bought for
eighteen dollars were worth from one hundred and fifty to two hundred
dollars a yoke. The poor people that had been living on greens and
“lumpy dick” for two or three years now began to get very wealthy and
proud. The young ladies began to wear calico dresses, and I even saw
young men who could afford to wear calico shirts and soldiers’ blue
overcoats and smoke store tobacco.
[Illustration: “I kept on swinging through the deserts ... in the
‘boot’ of the Concord stage.”]
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE OVERLAND STAGE
Just before the soldiers left Camp Floyd, the Overland Stage line was
opened from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. Shortly
afterward the telegraph line was completed across the continent. This
ended the work of the Pony Express. Instead of the pony riders dashing
on their wiry horses over prairies and mountain and desert, now came
the stage drivers with their sturdy horses, four or six-in-hand,
rolling along in their great Concord coaches, loaded with passengers,
mail, and express.
The stations, as before, were scattered along the trail from eight to
sixteen miles apart, according to the water. These stations were mainly
low dirt-roofed structures, built of logs or adobe or rock. After
Johnston’s army had decamped, the lumber left by them at Camp Floyd was
used for some stations. They were large enough to accommodate six to
eight horses, and had, partitioned from the stalls, one room for the
stable keepers and another for provisions. Grain was hauled to them
from the fields of Utah and California. Native hay was supplied from
the grassy valleys through which the route lay. Traveling blacksmiths
kept the horses shod, and the stages in repair.
As a few of the stations had to be built where there was no spring or
stream, it was necessary to haul water to them. This was my first work
in connection with the Overland Stage. I had a good four-horse team and
was given the job of supplying Canyon station with water.
[Illustration: An overland stage ready for a trip.]
One day while I was unloading the water the stage came into this
station. Major Howard Egan, who had charge of this division of the
route, had the lines. The stage driver lay dead in “the boot” and one
passenger was wounded. They had been shot by stage robbers, or “road
agents,” as we called them. Another driver must be had. The station
keepers said they couldn’t drive four horses, so Major Egan called on
me. I hadn’t had any experience handling the stage, but I tried it. The
Major seemed to think I drove all right, for he didn’t send any man to
relieve me as he promised to do, so I kept on driving. Finally I sold
my team and water outfit and became a regular stage driver. For about
two years I kept on swinging over the rough and heavy roads through the
deserts of Nevada in the “boot” of the Concord stage.
The “boot” was the place where the driver sat perched in front. It was
big enough to hold two passengers besides the driver; and a thousand
pounds or more of mail could be packed in the “boot” also. Behind this
was the body of the coach, big enough to hold six passengers. They sat
three on each seat, facing each other. It was hard on those not used to
it to sit day and night through clouds of alkali dust or sand, through
rain and slush, or snow and cold, cramped up in that stage. If we had
to crowd more than six in, as we did occasionally, it was rather rough
riding. When few passengers were along, or the mail was lighter, we
made up our load with grain or other provisions to be distributed along
at the various stations. So we were nearly always well loaded. Often we
carried more than a ton of mail in the “boot,” and strapped on the back
platform.
Some pictures I have seen of the Overland Stage have passengers on
top. This is a mistake. There was no place on the rounded top for
passengers. Some of the boys occasionally lashed packages there. The
passengers would have had to be strapped on too, if they had tried the
top, for they would have got pitched off in a hurry, the stage rocked
so. The body of the stage was hung on great leather springs, and it
swung with a kind of cradle motion as we dashed along. When a fellow
learned how to swing with it, things went all right; if he didn’t, it
was hard riding.
The road was not only rough and wearisome; it was dangerous. For a time
the Indians were so troublesome that a soldier was sent with every
stage. We should have felt safer without these soldiers though, for we
knew how the Indians hated soldiers. The worst danger, however, was not
from Indians; they got lots of blame that didn’t belong to them. It was
the “road agents” that infested the country during those days that gave
us most trouble.
[Illustration: Two Gosiute braves of Overland Stage days.]
Many a time these desperadoes would hold up the stage on some lonely
place on the road. They would spring out before the horses and order
the driver to stop, or would shoot down a horse to stop the stage;
then after robbing the passengers and rifling the mail bags of their
valuables, they would dash away with their plunder to their hiding
places in the hills.
Some drivers, when these outlaws came upon them, would put the whip
to their horses and try to dash by them to safety. At times the boys
managed to give the robbers the slip, but oftener the driver would be
shot down in the attempt to escape. Then the horses, mad with fright,
if no passenger was aboard to grab the lines, would run away, upset
the coach, perhaps, and string things along the trail in great shape.
Sometimes they have dashed into a station with nothing but the front
wheels dragging behind them.
I was lucky enough to escape such mishaps. The robbers never held me
up; but one day I did have one of my wheel horses shot down, by some
skulking desperado or Indian, we never knew which. I was swinging
along a dugway down hill about two miles west of Canyon station when it
happened. Three passengers--two men and a woman--were in the stage. A
shot rang out and my off wheel horse dropped dead.
[Illustration: Antelope Jake, an aged Gosiute Indian who won his name
by killing antelope for Overland Stage stations.]
I flung off the brake, knowing what was up, cracked my whip and away
we went plunging down the hill, dragging the dead horse with us till
I thought we were out of gunshot. No more shots came, so I stopped
the team, jumped down and began to unhitch. The man inside the coach
jumped out too, but instead of helping me, he grabbed the whip and
begun to lash the team, yelling to me to go on. He was so scared he
acted like a crazy man till his wife jumped out, grabbed the whip from
his hand, and told him to behave himself. Then he cooled down a little;
and with the help of the other passenger, I got the dead horse out of
the harness, hitched one of the leaders in his place, and drove on to
the next station, without any more trouble. I never found out who did
that devilish trick, but I don’t believe it was stage robbers, though,
for they would have followed us up and finished their mischief. Other
drivers, however, were not so lucky. Three different times Major Egan
brought in the stage with the driver dead in the boot and the stage
shot full of holes. At one time a driver who had been wounded by
outlaws was loaded into my stage. We were trying to get him through
to Salt Lake, but the poor fellow died while he was with me. No other
passenger was along at the time. I couldn’t help the sufferer much. It
was a terrible experience, I tell you, for him and me too, that long
night on the lonely Nevada desert.
[Illustration: Antelope on the desert. Pictures of this kind were often
seen by Pony Express riders.]
Afterwards I was changed to another division, driving in Nevada from
Austin to Sand Wells. Jim Clift was division agent here. It was a heavy
road,--full of sand; but it wasn’t so hard and heavy as another stretch
that Ben Halliday, our big chief, gave me later. When he heard I was
careful with the horses, that I didn’t use them up as did some of the
drivers they brought in from the East, who didn’t know mountain life,
he set me to driving from the Sink of Carson to Fort Churchill. I drove
there that summer and winter and the next spring I was sent to drive
from Carson City to Virginia City, Nevada.
[Illustration: Old stage station at Fort Hall or Ross’s Fork, Idaho.
_Howard R. Driggs_]
I arrived at Carson City about ten o’clock one very fine morning in
June. The mail agent met me just as I entered the town, and told me to
drive to Tim Smith’s big rock stable and put up my horses. He told me
that the line I was driving on was in dispute, and he would have to go
to Salt Lake City to see who had the right of way. “Stay here until you
hear from me,” he said, “and board in that hotel across the street.”
With that he left me alone, seven hundred miles from home and among
strangers. If he had left me in an Indian camp, I should have felt all
right; but to be left away out here among a lot of strange white folks
was more than I could bear.
I put my horses up, and while I was sitting out by the side of the
stable, I saw a man come out of the hotel. He had on a white cap, and
a white apron that reached from his chin to his feet. In each hand he
had a big, round, brass thing. He pounded these together and made a
fearful racket. I had never seen a hotel before, to say nothing of
being in one, and as the men that worked in the barn came rushing past
me, I asked one of them what was up. “Dinner,” he said. I got up and
went over to the hotel, and when I went in, I never saw such a sight
before. They had tables all over the house, and people were rushing in
and sitting down to them.
I slipped in and took off my hat and stood by the side of the door
waiting for some one to come up and ask me to sit down at a table, but
nobody came. I stood there a while longer, and saw others come in and
sit down at the tables without being asked, so I went sneaking up to a
table and stood there, and as nobody asked me to sit down, I sat down
anyhow. A waiter came up and began to mutter something to me. I asked,
“What?” He got it off again. I told him that I did not know what he
said, so he went out and brought me something to eat. I went over to
the stable and sat down, and then I began thinking of home. I didn’t
go back to the hotel that night for any supper, and when I went to
bed, the fleas were so bad I didn’t sleep a wink that night, and when
morning came I was hungry, sleepy, tired, and homesick.
Next morning I met one of the stable men. He asked me if I had been to
breakfast. I told him I had not. “Come right on in,” he said, taking
me by the arm. The waiter came up and got off the same thing that he
said the day before, and the man that was with me told him to fetch it
along. I told the waiter to bring me the same. Well, I ate two or three
breakfasts that morning to make up. Then I felt much better.
After breakfast we went back to the stable, and pretty soon Tim Smith
came in and said, “Young man, it may be three weeks before the right of
way is settled, but if you want to go to work in the stable I will give
you three dollars a day.” I agreed and began to work. Tim Smith was a
one-armed man, and he had fourteen hostlers and a clerk that worked in
the stable. The office was in one corner of the stable and a young man
by the name of Billy Green was the clerk. He had charge of the men and
was very kind and good to me.
I was afraid to go out at night, so I stayed in the stable and helped
Billy. It was a very large stable, holding over one hundred horses, and
there was a good deal of work to do after dark.
At that time Virginia City was booming. Two or three men were killed
every day. I had not driven here very long before I saw a man hanged at
what they called the Golden Gate. I don’t remember what he had done,
but I saw him hanged, anyway.
Those were rough, wild days, and this was one of the roughest spots in
the savage West. I was glad enough to leave it. After a few months of
staging here, I quit the job and returned home.
[Illustration: Spring at Rockwell’s stage station, Salt Lake County,
Utah.]
[Illustration: “All of us but the driver would walk ahead of the team.”]
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A TERRIBLE JOURNEY
When I returned from Nevada to Utah, I found that mother had moved to
Cache Valley, so I went up there and stayed all winter with her. It
proved to be a very sad winter for me, though it began very happily. I
found here my first sweetheart, a beautiful girl, who made me love her
very dearly by her sweet ways and her kind heart; for she helped my
mother nurse me through a dangerous illness.
We had spent the time delightfully for about a month, when I got hurt.
My horse, which I was riding one day very fast, struck some ice,
slipped and fell, throwing me to the ground. My head struck the ice so
hard that it nearly killed me. I was carried home; brain fever came
on and I lay in bed till spring. To make matters worse, the wound in
my head broke out again and I was delirious for part of the time. But
this dear girl stayed by my bedside day after day, and helped me past
death’s door. They thought I was dying one day, and she was driven
half wild for fear I might go; but the next day I had rallied and from
then on I recovered very fast.
Our intention was to get married; but before we could realize our
hopes they were blighted and destroyed by certain men who should have
been our friends. These men poisoned the minds of her parents against
me, while I was away driving the stage and guarding the cattle of the
people against the Indians; her parents refused to allow her to answer
my letters; and finally they succeeded in making her give me up and
marry one of the men who had turned them against me.
The little bunch of cattle, which I had bought with the money I had
received for my team, were stolen that winter, presumably by the
Indians. I hunted for them for a while, but not one did I ever get
back. The money I had saved for a “wedding stake,” I gave to mother;
and as I had no heart to stay in that town any longer, I started for
the road again.
That summer I worked for John Bolwinkle of Salt Lake City, as his wagon
boss, in charge of his ox-team freighting from Carson City, Nevada.
A mail route had been established from Salt Lake City to Bannock,
Montana, and Mr. Leonard I. Smith obtained the contract to carry this
mail. Knowing of my experience in this business, he induced me to drive
the stage from Salt Lake north that winter.
We started out some time in November with a wagon-load of dry goods to
trade for horses along the road. Besides this, we had one light coach
and two buggies, in which were seven passengers. We went on our journey
through Ogden, Brigham City, and other towns north, buying what horses
we could as we went along. For a few days we stopped at Soda Springs
to arrange about making a mail station there. At that time a large
company of soldiers were wintering in the town. It was the plan of Mr.
Smith to make me division agent from Soda Springs to Salt Lake, but I
was to go on with him to Bannock to get acquainted with the whole route.
When we got to Bannock, winter had set in. It snowed very hard while we
were there, and kept snowing all of the way back. By the time we got to
Snake River, the snow was deep, and there was no place where we could
buy feed for our horses. We had two passengers with us, and Mr. Smith
had not provided us with supplies enough to last us half way back to
Soda Springs.
We could not travel as fast as he had planned on account of the deep
snow, and the horses were getting very weak for want of food. For these
reasons we could not come back on the road by which we had gone, so we
kept down the Snake River to where the Blackfoot empties into it. There
we ate the last of our provisions. We were still one hundred miles from
any place where we could get more, and the snow was becoming deeper
every day. When we got up the Ross Fork Canyon we had to stop for the
night. Here three of the horses gave out, and we had to leave them and
one of the buggies. We had left the coach at Beaver Canyon.
The next morning we started before breakfast, for we had eaten the last
thing the morning before. The snow kept falling all the time, and by
noon, it was at least three feet deep. All of us but the driver would
walk ahead of the team to break the road. We had four horses on the
buggy, and the buggy would push up the snow ahead of it until it would
run in over the dashboard and sides. That day two more of the horses
gave out and we had to leave them, but we reached the head of the
Portneuf.
That night we all turned out and kicked the snow off a little space so
the poor horses could get some frozen grass, but it was so very cold
and they were so tired that they could not eat very much.
The next morning we made another early start, and Mr. Smith said we
would get to Soda Springs that day, but I knew we could not get there
that day, nor the next day, either. I told the passengers that if we
were to leave the buggy, we might make it in two days, but the way we
were fooling along with the worn-out horses, we never would get there.
They told Mr. Smith what I said and he upbraided me for it. He said I
had scared the passengers nearly to death and he wanted me to stop.
Well, by noon that day, we came to the road we had come out on, but Mr.
Smith did not know the place and wanted to follow the road over which
we had traveled in going to Bannock. I told him the way we wanted to
go was south, but the way he wanted to go was north. He told me I was
wrong and ordered me to keep still. “Well,” I said, “I will go to Soda
Springs and you can go to the other place,” so I took what I wanted out
of the buggy and started off, but I had not gone far when I heard some
one calling me. It was so foggy and the frost was falling so fast that
I could see only a few yards, and as I hesitated about going back, one
of the passengers came up to me and asked me if I was sure I knew where
I was going, and begged me to come back to the buggy.
[Illustration: A snowy road through an Idaho forest.
_Caspar W. Hodgson_]
One of the passengers was a large, strong Irishman, and appeared to
be well educated; the other was a sickly looking Englishman. I don’t
remember their names, but they called each other Mike and Jimmy. I went
back to the buggy and Mike saw that I did not want anything to say to
Mr. Smith, so he did the talking. He questioned Mr. Smith and then me
for quite a while, and then he said he believed that I was right. He
told the driver to turn the team around and follow me. The driver
obeyed although it made Mr. Smith very angry.
After turning south we had not traveled over four miles, when one of
the remaining horses gave out and we could not get the poor thing to
move, so we had to leave the buggy. We went on about three or four
hundred yards to a clump of quaking aspen, and built a large fire. When
we all got warm, I went to bring up the horses and buggy, and when I
got back to the fire, Mr. Smith and Mike were quarreling. Mr. Smith
said that we were going away from Soda Springs, and that he intended to
turn and go the other way.
It was already quite dark, but we could travel just as well in the
night as in the day, for we could not see very far anyhow on account of
the fog. I said I knew I was right and for all those who wanted to go
to Soda Springs to fall in line, for I was going to start right then. I
went to the buggy and got a pair of buffalo moccasins I had there, put
them on, and started down the trail. “Hold on,” called Mike, “I will go
with you.” Then Jimmy said he was not going to stay there and starve to
death, that he would go with us, too. So the three of us went our way
and left Mr. Smith and the driver standing there in the fog and snow.
It was about eleven o’clock at night when we left the buggy. We did not
feel much like pushing our way through the snow, for we had already
walked many miles that day, and had been three days without anything
to eat. Mike said he would take the lead to break the path, I was to
come next, and Jimmy was to follow me. There was about a foot of snow
with a crust on it, not quite hard enough to hold one up, and on top of
this was about two feet of lighter snow, so you see it was very hard
traveling.
We had not been out over two hours, when Mike said his feet were
frozen. I had a few matches in my pocket wrapped in paper, and we
kicked around to find some dry sagebrush, but it was all wet and
frozen. We broke up some and tried to make a fire, but it would not
burn. Pretty soon Mike said we should give him the matches and he would
try it. He took them and laid them down by his side while trying to
light one, and Jimmy came up, struck them with his foot, and scattered
them all through the snow. We could not find a single one of them, so
we had to go without any fire.
We trudged along, stumbling over sagebrush and rock until morning. Mike
said we must be very near Soda Springs, for he thought we had traveled
twenty miles or more during the night, and he could not believe me when
I told him we had not made over eight miles. I told them before we left
the buggy that it was about thirty miles to Soda Springs, so I knew we
had over twenty miles yet.
Jimmy and I were about played out, and had to stop every little while
to rest. Mike had long legs, but Jimmy and I were so short that when we
tried to step in his tracks we had to jump, and that made it harder for
Jimmy and me. During the night we had traveled too far to the east and
had left the trail through the lava beds and sagebrush, and had started
to cross the big meadow and swamps along the Blackfoot River. The tall
slough grass and bulrushes were so tangled and frozen together that we
could hardly get through them. Sometimes Mike would forget himself and
step about six feet over a large mass of grass and rushes, and Jimmy
and I would have to wallow through them.