The Prairie Schooner Part 1

The Prairie Schooner.

by William Francis Hooker.

INTRODUCTION

When the Union Pacific Railroad was completed from Omaha, Nebraska, to Ogden, Utah, it pa.s.sed 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 b.u.mper 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 gra.s.ses of the country, upon which they flourished. These included the succulent bunch gra.s.s.

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 st.u.r.dy 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 gra.s.ses 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 Pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 alt.i.tude; 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 pa.s.sing the sun and the myriads of pa.s.senger 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 cla.s.sed 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 pinon yokes, tighten the chains, and hurry along the four or five tons of bacon or flour or sh.e.l.led corn in gunny-sacks that Uncle Sam wants delivered somewhere over the range, across the desert sweeps, through cactus-grown, p.r.i.c.kly 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 gra.s.s, 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 b.u.t.t 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-gra.s.s; 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 n.o.ble 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 antic.i.p.ate 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.