XVFREIGHTING ACROSS THE PLAINS
“Do you know,” drawled Charley Martin, lazily, after supper this evening, “there’s a heap of money wrapped up in one of these bull outfits?”
They had made camp at sunset—and the sight had been an inspiring one. On order from Charley, the lead wagon had turned from the trail and halted; the second wagon had pulled up opposite and also halted; the third wagon had halted behind the first, a little outside of it, with tongue pointing out and the fore wheels about on a line with the other wagon’s rear wheels. The fourth wagon had halted in similar position behind the second wagon. And so forth. Each wagon widened the circle until it was time for them to begin to edge the other way and narrow the circle. At the last the circle was complete, save for an opening at either end. When the ox-chains had been linked from wagon-wheel to next wagon-wheel then the bull corral, as it was called, was finished. Or, no; after the bulls had been unyoked and driven to water and pasture each wagon tongue was hung off the ground, slung in the draw ropes of the front end of the hood. This weight kept the canvas hood pulled taut in case of storm.
It took considerable skill in driving to swing the long bull teams and land the wagons just right to form the corral. Yes, and the animals needed to be well trained, too. By the way that all went to work this wagon outfit knew their business.
The corral was useful for yoking the bulls and for standing off Indians. No Indians dared to charge a wagon corral when the men inside it had guns and ammunition.
The bulls were put out to pasture in charge of two teamsters selected as herders. The men had been divided into four messes. Each mess chose a cook and their water carrier and fuel gatherers and guards—when guard was needed. Davy was in Captain Charley’s mess, which consisted of Charley and Yank, Davy, the cavvy herder, the lead teamster, whose name was Joel Badger, and the extra teamster, Henry Renick, who did the cooking. This was the smallest mess.
Each mess had its fire, about which the men lounged after eating, to smoke their pipes and joke and tell stories.
“Yes, siree; there’s a lot of money wrapped up in a bull outfit,” quoth Wagon Boss Charley. “Take this train here. The most of those wagons are ‘Murphies’ (by which he meant wagons manufactured by J. Murphy, of St. Louis), or else the Conestoga pattern built down at Westport (and by Westport was meant Kansas City). Only the best of stuff goes into those wagons. Hickory, generally—thoughosage orange is said to be better, for it won’t warp. But second growth hickory and sound white oak answer the purpose if they’re so well seasoned that they won’t shrink or warp. This dry air out on these plains plays the dickens with wheels; it saps them dry and makes them so they want to fall to pieces. Well, I reckon you all know this better than I do. But as I was going to say, one of these wagons figures easily three hundred dollars, including bows and canvas. Then, bulls have been seventy-five dollars a yoke, but they’re rising to double that. Taking the six yoke at five hundred dollars, and adding the yokes and bows and chains and other gear, you’ll have nigh to a thousand dollars in each wagon outfit. With twenty-five and twenty-six wagons making a train there’s twenty-five thousand dollars in outfit alone. And Russell, Majors & Waddell have bull trains like this every five or six miles clear across from the Missouri River to Salt Lake!”
“Not to speak of the wages of the men and the cost of the supplies,” added Joel Badger.
“Yes, sir; not to mention the thirty or more men with every train at a dollar a day up; and the beans and flour and sowbelly and coffee they use.”
“Just the same,” observed Joel, “I hear that in Fifty-six, before Waddell joined, Majors & Russell cleaned up about seventy thousand dollars with three hundred wagons at work.”
Charley nodded.
“You can sum up for yourself. We’re hauling flour at nine cents a pound, meat at fifteen cents, furniture at thirty cents, hardware at ten cents; and my waybill shows we’re loaded with one hundred and sixty-three thousand pounds of freight, averaging, I reckon, at least fifteen cents.”
“Which totals up between twenty-five and twenty-six thousand dollars, as I make it,” proffered Joel.
“Of course, the outfits don’t earn that both ways,” reminded Henry Renick, scouring a skillet. “They travel back empty.”
“Well, twenty-five thousand dollars for the round trip to the mountains isn’t so bad,” said Charley.
“No,” grunted Yank, the assistant wagon boss. “Russell, Majors & Waddell are makin’ their profits, all right. They can sit at home an’ take things easy. But the trail’s a hard life for the rest of us.”
“Don’t you believe they take it easy,” retorted Charley. “Did you ever hear of Alex Majors taking it easy? And look at Billy Russell, with all the Leavenworth freighting on his shoulders. Besides, they know that one big blizzard or one Indian war would wipe them out in spite of their hustle. No; they’ve got the worry; we’ve got the picnic.”
“’Twould serve ’em right if they did get wiped out once in a while,” growled Yank, who evidently was as narrow-minded as his eyes indicated. “That psalm-singin’ old whiskers has too many notions. No swearin’, no drinkin’ no bull skinnin’, no fightin’, everyman read the Bible an’ lay up on Sunday! An outfit can’t do freightin’ on these plains an’ follow any such rules as those.”
“See here,” bade Charley, sternly. He was a gritty little chap. “You’re new amongst us, my man, and I’ll warn you that when you speak to us of Mr. Majors or Mr. Russell or Mr. Waddell either, you want to do it civilly. They may have their peculiar notions of how to run a bull outfit, but I notice they’ve made good already with about twenty million pounds of Government freight, and that’s a pretty big contract. They’re a firm whose word is equal to a United States banknote; and there’s not a man who ever worked for them that won’t stick up for Russell, Majors & Waddell. A kinder man than Mr. Majors never lived; and if he tries to spread a little Christianity along the trail all the more credit to him, and all the better for the rest of us. We need some of that out here. The fact is a Russell, Majors & Waddell bull train is the best on the trail, besides being decent.”
“Well,” rapped Yank, “as long as I do the work I’m hired to do I’ll allow no man to tell me how to act. When I signed that pledge for the whiskers outfit I didn’t mean to keep it an’ I sha’n’t if I don’t choose.”
He stalked off; they gazed after—Charley with a keen glint in his gray eyes.
“There’s a man” spoke Henry the mess cook, “who’ll take it out on animals when he gets mad. He’s just mean enough.”
“He’ll not take it out on my team,” remarked Joel, quietly. “I don’t whip my bulls.”
“No, nor on mine,” asserted Henry.
“Anybody who thinks he has to beat bulls to drive them doesn’t know how to drive,” added Charley.
That night they all slept on the ground under blankets and quilts and buffalo robes; many of the men slept beneath their wagons. The neck-yokes of the oxen, with an overcoat folded into the hollow of the curve in them, made comfortable pillows. At least so Davy found his when, to be a veteran bull whacker, he borrowed a yoke and tried. Two men at a time night-herded the cattle. Davy, being an “extra,” did not go on herd yet.
The mess cooks were up at dawn preparing breakfast; and speedily the collection of little camps was astir. The men called back and forth, washed at the nearby creek, brought water in buckets, and what fuel they found, and were ready for breakfast when breakfast was ready for them. The company, Davy learned, furnished everything, even to the gunny sacking in which buffalo chips and bull chips were gathered; everything except the men’s revolvers. These the men owned.
By the time that the breakfasts were over the cattle had been driven, with shouts and crack of whip, into the wagon corral, where under a dust cloud they stood grunting and jostling. Yank posted himself at one gap of the corral Charley at the other.
“Catch up! Catch up, boys!” called Charley, the wagon boss; the cry was repeated, and the men sprang to their yokes. Every man with his yoke on his shoulder, a yoke pin in his hand, another in his mouth, and an ox-bow slung on his arm, the gang poured into the corral. It was an interesting sight, and a number of emigrants who had camped near gathered to witness.
There was a rivalry among the men as to which should yoke up first. Davy wondered how they found their bulls so readily; but in rapid succession every man, working hard, had yoke and bows on a pair of his team, and led them forth to his wagon. First the yoke was laid over the neck of a bull, the bow was slipped under and the pins thrust in to fasten bow to yoke; then the other bull was yoked; and this done, dragging the chains they were led out in a hurry. This pair, Davy saw, were the wheel team—the team next to the wagon. They supported the wagon pole, which hung in a ring riveted to the centre of the yoke. As soon as the wheel teams were hitched to the wagon the men hastened to yoke and lead out the lead teams, which were the teams at the other end of the six. Then the space was filled in by the four other teams, all the chains were hooked, the men straightened out their six yoke, and the train was ready to move.
It all had been done, as Davy thought, very quickly; but Joel Badger, whom Davy liked exceedingly, thought differently.
“We make rather a botch of it at first,” said Joel,as beside his fine team he stood, whip in hand, waiting for the word to start. “Some of the bulls are sure to be green or ornery, and not used to their drivers or each other. After they have pulled together for a time all the bulls in each team will sorter flock in a bunch, in the corral, and a fellow won’t have to hunt through the herd. You’ll see some fast work before you get to the end of the trail.”
“Aren’t the mules as good as bulls?” queried Davy.
“No. They used to have mules and mule skinners instead of bull whackers down on the Santa Fe Trail, and I reckon they’ve used ’em on the Overland Trail, too. Bulls are better all ’round. They can walk as fast as a mule if they’re pushed; they can live on grazing that a mule can’t; and they’re not so liable to be stampeded. If Injuns run off any cattle we can overtake ’em by mule or horse and fetch ’em back. No, for freight hauling the bulls are the best. Those used down on the southern trails are Texas cattle largely; small-bodied kind, with flaring big horns. These we use in the north, on the Overland Trail, are some Durhams, some Herefords, and so on. I reckon I’ve got about the best team in the outfit; they’re black Galloways, with a yoke of red Devons.”
“Line out, men! Hep!” called Wagon Boss Charley.
Joel launched his whip with a tremendous crack above the backs of his team.
“Haw, Buck! Muley! Spot! Yip! Yip!”
“Haw! Whoa—gee! Yip! Yip! Hep!” The air was full of dust and shouts and cracking of whips; and one after another out for the trail rolled the huge wagons, until the circle of the corral had straightened into the day’s line.
The teamsters walked at the left side of their teams until, when the wind began to blow the dust into their faces, they changed about to the clear side. They sang, they joked, occasionally they cracked their long whips, and now and then one perched sideways on the wagon-pole behind the wheel yoke, and swinging his legs rode a short distance. But nobody entered a wagon; the men either walked or sat on the pole for a brief rest.
Charley, the wagon boss, kept position near the head of the column; Yank, the assistant wagon boss, usually was found at the rear. Davy sometimes was sent back with word from Charley; and once he was dispatched five miles ahead to take a message to another wagon train. He enjoyed these gallops over the prairie on official business, and he enjoyed riding with Charley.
“I suppose you know the make-up of a team,” proffered Charley, who seemed disposed to teach Dave as much as he could. “The first yoke next to the wagon are the wheel yoke; sometimes we call them the pole yoke. The other yokes are the swing yokes, until you come to the leaders, and these are the leadyoke. In a mule team the middle or swing spans are the pointers. Fact is, a four-span mule team is divided into wheelers, swing team, pointers and lead team. You didn’t time us this morning, did you?”
“No, sir,” confessed Davy.
“I hear Mr. Majors timed his outfit once, when it was in good trim; and it was sixteen minutes from the moment the men grabbed their yokes until the teams were hitched and the train was ready to start. That’s pretty fair for six yoke of bulls. I don’t believe we can beat it, but we’re going to try after a bit.”
“This noon I’ll show you how to pop a whip,” called Joel to Dave.
The men used their whips chiefly for the noise they made. They drove with the whips; the long lash flew out over the backs of the six yoke and seemed to crack wherever the wielder wished it to crack. Sometimes it barely flicked the back of some ox who required a little urging, but it never landed hard. Those bull whips were like living things, and in the hands of Joel and his rivals were as accurate as a rifle. The most of the men carried their whips with the lash trailing over their shoulder ready to be jerked forward like a cowboy’s rope. Dave felt a burning ambition to “pop” a whip. It must be quite an art.
The trail continued to be lined with emigrants, all pushing west, the vast majority for the “Pike’s Peak diggin’s,” but a few for California by way of the Overland Trail to Fort Laramie, and on over theSouth Pass to Salt Lake and the farthest West. The road was littered with cast-off stuff—so much of it that nobody seemed to think it worth picking up again.
“Great times for the Indians,” quoth Charley. “But they don’t savvy stoves and furniture yet. What they like most is the hoop iron off of the baled hay that the Government sends out to the posts. That hoop iron is fine for arrow points; many a poor fellow crossing the plains is killed with Government hoop-iron.”
“Will we meet many Indians, do you think?” asked Davy.
Charley shook his head.
“We may meet a few gangs of beggars; but the trail is too thick just now for much trouble. The Indians haven’t got roused yet and started in on the war-path. But they will, later. I reckon if you get off the trail a ways you’ll meet with plenty trouble, though. On the trail there are so many outfits that they can help each other, you see. The Indians are learning to shy off from bull outfits. We’re ready for them any time, and it costs them too many scalps. But when these plains begin to be settled with ranches then look out for the Indians.”
That noon the train halted on the far side of a creek. According to Joel, trains always tried to cross a creek before camping, in case a sudden storm might come and hold the train back by swelling the ford. They corralled, this noon, by a new evolution. One-halfthe train, in regular order, formed a half of the circle; the other half then formed the second half of the circle. This was called corralling with the right and left wings.
While dinner was being cooked and the bulls were herded off to water and graze, the men lounged in the shade of their wagons. Dinner was the same as supper and breakfast: fat salt pork or “sowbelly,” which came to the plate in slabs six or eight inches thick; hot bread baked in the kettle-like Dutch ovens; beans from the supply baked in the ashes the night before; and black coffee with sugar. That was the regulation until the buffalo and antelope country was reached. The last of the sugar was used, too; after this camp, all the way to Denver the coffee would be sugarless. But that was only ordinary. Nobody objected to the menu; appetites were splendid.
“Here,” spoke Joel, after dinner, rising, to Dave. “I said I’d show you how to pop a whip, didn’t I?”
“Joel can do it, all right,” approved Charley; and several other men nodded, agreeing with him.
And Bull Whacker Joel could. A heavy thing was that whip; the lash, of braided buffalo hide, was eighteen feet long and thick like a snake in the middle. It had a cracker of buck-skin, six inches long, split at the end; and a hickory stock eighteen inches long. Joel said it cost eighteen dollars in Leavenworth. Flicking it forward, from where it trailed on the ground, he landed the tip wherever he wished. With the crackerhe picked up small objects at the full extent of the lash; he snipped the tips from the sage and cut blossoms; and how he “popped”!
“He’s a boss bull-whip slinger,” laughed Charley, approvingly. “You’ll never see a better one to pick flies off the lead team.”
“I’ve seen others,” uttered Yank, who somehow appeared to have a grudge against the train. “These fancy tricks will do for show, but give me the man who can spot a bull twenty feet off an’ take a piece of hide out with the cracker. I don’t want no fancy fly-killer in my train. Bull whips are made for business.”
“You don’t want bull whackers; you want butchers,” retorted Joel, contemptuously. “Here, Dave, try your luck. Give him room, boys.”
Dave tried, but the long lash on the short handle proved a queer thing to handle. It persisted in flying crooked or falling short, and several times he almost hanged himself or narrowly escaped losing an ear. However, before he surrendered the whip to Joel he had got the knack of popping it; that was something.
“Hurray!” encouraged Joel. “We’ll make a bull whacker of you before the end of this trip. You’ll be able to pop a whip with the best of us.”
Davy scarcely expected this skill; but he was resolved to do so well that he could show Billy Cody.