Cowboy Life on the Sidetrack Part 5

Now I knew the Injuns couldn't be in twenty miles of me, but nevertheless I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure, and I looked ahead, and every moving bush along the stream looked like a soldier or an Injun, and every jackrabbit that jumped up side the road, every sage hen that flew out the gra.s.s and startled my hosses nearly made me jump out of my skin. Everything that moved in the distance looked like old Crazy Head to me. Talk about looking over your shoulder, boys; why, my neck got in the shape of a corkscrew. Then I came to another crossing of the river. I never stopped to look at the high rolling black waters, but plunged my hosses in and struck out for the other side. I again made it in safety, and stopping just long enough to tighten my saddle cinches, took another look over my shoulder and hit that lope again and made up my mind I wouldn't be caught. But supposing I was caught, what kind of a story could I tell? And so I tried to figure out a defense for being found with them two black hosses. I couldn't think of anything or any story but what looked fishy and showed I was a thief, and it seemed as if every one else would know it. I remember after I became an officer of the law, several years after this event happened, I caught a poor devil skinning a beef one day that didn't belong to him, and as I rode up on him and told him to turn the beef over so I could see the brand, he dropped his skinning knife and looking up at me with guilt and terror in his face, he says, "You know how it is yourself." And I said, "Yes, Bill, I know how it is. I was a thief once, but the people are paying me now to uphold the law. Besides I stole Injun hosses and you are stealing white men's beef." And then at the memory of my ride on the Little Horn that day I looked over my shoulder again, and when I looked back for Bill he was gone, and somehow I was kind of glad, for I had a fellow feeling for him.

But to return to my story. When I had swum the Little Horn the fourth time I was forty miles on my journey, and while the iron grey Oregon hoss I was riding seemed as fresh as ever, the black Indian ponies seemed to be getting tired. When I struck the next ford on the river I was fifty miles on the way and it was only 9 o'clock. I was feeling pretty good. But this time when we got out about the middle of the river where the waves were high and rolling, one of the Injun ponies stopped swimming and commenced to float down stream with his nose in the water and dragging the one he was necked to with him. I started after them and by a good deal of urging got my hoss alongside, and throwing my rope on them finally towed them ash.o.r.e. The pony laid in the shallow water at the sh.o.r.e for a long time, and I thought he was dead, but he finally came to and got up. But he was full of water and pretty groggy.

I found the other two, and getting them together again started on, but knew I would have to take to the hills now when I came to the river again, which I did, and hadn't rode over five miles in the hills skirting the river till, coming up on a high divide and looking down in the valley of the river, I saw a camp of five or six hundred Injuns; but they didn't see me, and I kept on till I came to Owl Creek, which empties into the Little Horn, and it was bank full of cream-colored, muddy water. The banks were steep and I couldn't guess at the depth of the water, which was of the consistency of gumbo soup. However, I drove the hosses into it, first having untied them from one another, as the buffalo trail going down into it was very narrow. As each hoss plunged in he went completely out of sight, and I couldn't guess how far he went under water. But they all clambered up on the other bank, and I see I had got to follow them, so plunged in. As my hoss jumped off that high bank, I grabbed my nose and under that yellow water we went. It seemed like we never would find the bottom, but finally did, and came back to the surface and scrambled up the bank. My fine buckskin shirt and leggings made but a sorry appearance. My six-shooter and holster were full of yellow mud the same as my Winchester, and it took me an hour to clean my guns and get that yellow mud off my hat and clothes. But I had no more streams to cross, except Tongue River, which is in Wyoming, and I crossed it a little after dark and got to my own ranch at 9 o'clock that evening, having ridden the same hoss one hundred and six miles since 3 o'clock that morning.

That grey hoss is still living and is 30 years old now, and is well known by all the old-timers in northern Wyoming. I laid down and slept for twenty hours, and when I reported at the roundup with my four hosses and the two Injun ponies besides, I got a hearty handshake all around.

The boys made up a pot of a hundred dollars and gave it to me for the Injun ponies, and then played a game of freeze-out to see who should have them.

I've never had the least inclination to look over my shoulder since.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE CATTLE QUEEN'S GHOST.

When darkness overshadows a lone cow ranch, wild and drear, One's nerves they get a-trembling in a way that seems so queer; When you _feel_ the spirits round you, 'tis idle then to boast You don't believe those stories you've heard about the ghosts.

One dark, rainy evening while we were waiting on a sidetrack the boys insisted I should tell them some adventure of mine. So after considerable urging I told them an actual experience I had, that has always convinced me that murdered people's ghosts come back and haunt the place they were murdered in.

Twenty years ago Jerry Wilson was known as the cattle king of the Platte River. His cattle roamed for hundreds of miles up and down the main river and all its tributaries, and, as the cowboys used to say, no one man could count them even if they was strung out, cause he couldn't count high enough.

Jerry had a beautiful wife and two lovely children, a boy and a girl, and for years he and his family had no settled place to live, but went around amongst his different ranches, staying awhile at each one, the children being kept in school in Chicago, except in the summer time when they came West to stay on some cattle ranch with their parents. Finally Jerry Wilson bought a new ranch up in the south part of South Dakota, on Battle Creek, and stocking it up with registered cattle and fine horses, built a fine house, furnished it very expensively and settled on this ranch for their home. He built magnificent barns that were the talk of the whole country, and spent a small fortune in building up and beautifying this ranch. But one day Jerry was riding his horse after a cow on a hard run. The horse stepped in a badger hole and fell on top of him, crushing in his ribs and otherwise injuring him so he only lived long enough to be carried to the house and bid his wife and children good-bye before he died.

Mrs. Wilson mourned for Jerry a long time, but the care of her two children and the increasing cattle herds occupied her mind and time to such an extent that her grief had settled into a quiet sadness, when a young man from New York City, who had been discarded from home by his family for his profligate excesses, came to Battle Creek, and stopping at Mrs. Wilson's ranch was (as is the custom at all cattle ranches in the West) made welcome to stay as long as he wanted to. At this time Jerry Wilson had been dead seven years. His daughter, who was the oldest of the two children, had married a prominent lawyer of Chicago. The son was in school in the same city, and Mrs. Wilson made her home at the Battle Creek ranch. She had successfully carried on all her cattle enterprises and was known all over the West as the Cattle Queen. She was about 40 years old at this time, still a beautiful woman and had received many offers of marriage, but had rejected them all till this graceless and unprincipled scoundrel from New York, whose name was Clayton Allen, came to the ranch. Mrs. Wilson had arrived at the age where a great many women begin to hanker for a young man's society and attention, and was soon violently in love with Clayton Allen; and he, seeing a chance to get hold of large sums of money to gamble and go on sprees with, and knowing he could never hope to get any more from his family, laid siege to the Cattle Queen's heart and herds with all the wiles he was capable of.

To make the story short, Mrs. Wilson married this worse than scamp and learned too late to regret her mistake. He persuaded her first to sell all her great cattle herds and ranches and invest all the money in bonds, which she did, keeping only the ranch and blooded cattle on Battle Creek. He now persuaded her to go to New York City with him, and soon as they arrived he joined his old gang of profligates and spent his nights with gay men and women, only coming to see her when his money was exhausted, and then only long enough to get more money. In vain she plead with him. Finally, in sorrow and grief, not having seen him for several days, she took the train for the West and returned alone to her old Battle Creek home.

She had been home about a month, staying in her room alone most of the time, weeping and crying, when one stormy, black night Clayton Allen returned about 10 o'clock. He immediately went to his wife's rooms. The servants heard loud talking and angry words between them for some time, and apparently he was demanding money and she was refusing to give him any. There was a large hall that ran through the center of the house, dividing the building its entire length. The servants had their rooms and the dining-room was on the west side of this hall, and the Cattle Queen had her parlors and sleeping apartments on the other side. About 11 o'clock the servants heard their mistress walking up and down this hall, crying and moaning, but on opening their door that led into the hall found she had gone back into her rooms, but Clayton Allen came in the hall just then and asked the housekeeper to bring a bottle of wine, as her mistress was ill and wanted some. The wine was brought, and Clayton Allen taking it out of her hand at the door closed the door in her face, telling her if she was wanted he would call her. Thirty minutes later the housekeeper heard her mistress scream for help in the hall, and rushing in found her lying on the floor in violent spasms, and picking her up carried her to the bed, only to see her die the next moment. The death-stricken woman only spoke once as she was being carried to the bed. She whispered in the housekeeper's ear, "Mr. Allen has poisoned me."

All of the Cattle Queen's money and bonds were kept in a portable safe and where she kept the keys hidden no one knew. But at the funeral the lawyer from Chicago, who, it will be remembered, married Jerry Wilson's daughter, appeared on the scene, and after a consultation with the housekeeper and cowboys at the ranch, Clayton Allen disappeared, in fact the cowboys kidnapped him and kept him guarded in an old dugout for several days, and when they let him go the lawyer had returned to Chicago. The safe disappeared at the same time the lawyer left. So Clayton Allen never got the enormous fortune that was in the safe, but he got an administrator appointed, and the administrator sold the herd of fine cattle at the Battle Creek ranch to me, as also the use of the ranch for one year, and the hay.

I tried to get some cowboys living in that part of the country to take care of the ranch and cattle, but all of them promptly refused, saying they wouldn't stay there for any amount of money. Then I sent some of my men from my Wyoming ranch, where I was living at the time, but in a week they came back, looking shamefaced and sulky, but refusing to stay at the Battle Creek ranch. After I questioned them pretty sharply, they said they didn't believe much in ghosts, but the Cattle Queen's ghost was too much for them. They said from 10:30 o'clock in the evening till after midnight she tramped up and down the hall in the house, crying, screaming and groaning. They said the doors leading from the hall to the Cattle Queen's rooms kept opening and shutting, and they could hear her talking and expostulating with someone and walking back and forth from the hall to her rooms. I had an old man working for me at the time who was almost totally deaf, so I sent him and my own son, Georgie, who was a manly, brave little fellow of 12 years, to the ranch. I had a talk with George before they started and told him all about it. I said some one was trying to buy the ranch cheap and was making these disturbances in order to give the ranch the name of being haunted. But in a week I got a letter from my boy, saying there might not be any such things as ghosts, but there was certainly some kind of carrying on in the hall of that old house every night, and wanting me to come up. So taking my gun and dog, I went up there to lay the ghost. My dog was one of the largest specimens of the big blue Dane breed and wasn't afraid of anything. And I said to myself, "Now I will nail these parties and convince my son while he is young that there isn't any such things as ghosts."

When I arrived at the ranch I found Deaf Bill, as we called him, and my little boy had taken up their quarters in the housekeeper's room, which was in the extreme western portion of the house, which was built without any upstairs, all the rooms being on the ground floor. I went into the hall of the house and found that the doors at each end of the hall were locked from the inside, the keys being in the locks. I next went into the parlors and sleeping apartment used by the Cattle Queen in her lifetime and where she met her tragic death, and found the curtains all down and the windows closed with catch locks and screens outside of the windows. Everything was apparently in the same condition as when the rooms were fastened up after her death. Her books, and pictures, and paintings, and wardrobe, and easy chairs were all there, just as if she might have stepped out expecting to be back at any moment.

I raised a window in her bedroom with some difficulty, as I wanted to air the room a little, for I had made up my mind to sleep in that bed that night in those haunted rooms and convince superst.i.tious people that I at least wasn't afraid of ghosts. I tried to get my little boy to sleep in there with me, but with pale cheeks and staring eyes and chattering teeth he begged so hard that I didn't insist on it. I have always been thankful that I didn't oblige him to stay with me that dreadful night.

When I retired, about 8:30 that evening, with my dog and gun into the haunted rooms I was very tired from my long drive from the railroad, and setting the lamp on a stand at the head of the bed and putting my six-shooter under my pillow I called my dog to the side of the bed and laying down with my clothes on, pulled some blankets over me, blew out the light and immediately went to sleep.

How long I slept I know not, but was awakened by my dog who was whining and licking my face. When I first woke up I didn't remember for a moment where I was, but the next moment heard a long-drawn sigh across the room from me and could hear somebody walking on the carpet. I bounded up and had just lit the lamp when I heard someone open the door from the parlor into the hall, and the next moment heard an agonizing cry for help in the hall. I now grabbed the lamp and my six-shooter and running through the two parlors opened the hall door suddenly, just after hearing the second cry for help, and found that the hall was absolutely empty, the doors at each end still being locked, and the door that led into the servants' part of the house was also locked from my side of the hall, as I had locked it when I went through to go to bed.

I went back into the two parlors and sleeping apartments and searched them thoroughly, even the wardrobes and clothes closets; tried all the windows, but there was no trace of any living person's presence. I then noticed my dog. He had crawled under the bed and was lying there whining in the most abject terror. I dragged him out and kicked him a couple of times and told him to "watch them." But apparently he'd had all the ghost business he cared about, for he lay at my feet trembling and whining. Disgusted with him, I laid down again, thinking I would blow out the light, but be ready with my six-shooter and some matches and catch whoever it was prowling around that house, trying to hoodoo the place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Cattle Queen's Ghost._]

I hadn't any more than laid down and blown out the light before my dog was trying to get out of the window back of my bed and whining piteously, and then I heard a woman crying in the same room with me and coming slowly towards my bed. I began to get nervous, but scratched a match and in the flickering light saw that the room was absolutely empty. But as the match went out I heard someone run through the parlor, open and shut the door into the hall, and then heard a long despairing cry for help in a woman's voice. I plucked up the little courage I had left, ran to the hall door, opened it, and, lighting a match, gazed up and down that empty hall, seeing nothing or n.o.body. But as the match flickered and went out there came a breath of cold air right in my face, and then out of that black darkness, seemingly right at my shoulder, arose that awful blood-curdling cry for help again, and as my blood froze in my veins my dog answered the cry with one of those long, despairing, drawn-out, mournful howls that dogs always give as a premonition of death in the family. I tottered back to the bed and vainly tried to light a match, but was too nervous; then hearing that light footstep and that rustling presence coming from the hall through the parlors again towards the bed, I dropped the match and pulling a lot of blankets and bed covers over my head, I huddled down in a heap and lay there trembling with fright and horror till the next morning, when I heard my boy pounding on the outside of the window and calling me to breakfast.

No money would have induced me to have stayed another night on that ranch, and getting an offer next day for the cattle, I sold them. Five years afterwards I saw a man who had come by The Cattle Queen's ranch and he said n.o.body lived there. The house and barns were all out of repair; the fields overgrown with weeds and an air of desolation to the whole premises. The administrator had finally sold the property for a song to an easterner and he moved his family up there in the day time.

He had to go back to town that night for another load of his goods, and when he returned to the ranch the next day, he found his wife roaming around the fields a raving maniac, and she is still in the asylum in South Dakota. They say the Cattle Queen's ghost still keeps entire possession, and will till her murderer is punished for his crimes.

CHAPTER XIX.

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 gra.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.ses over different lines, looking for a pa.s.s over the river, but not getting it, turned back and wouldn't cross, and the guide told Packsaddle that he guessed this cla.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 pa.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.ses 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.