Counting "'Old Buck."
The foreman told the English party at noon that they was holding an enormous herd back in the hills yet from which they were cutting off these small bunches of 500 and bringing them along to be tallied. But along about 3 o'clock in the afternoon the cattle began to get thirsty and footsore. Every critter had traveled thirty miles that day, and lots of them began to drop out and lay down. In one of the herds was an old yellow steer. He was bobtailed, lophorned and had a game leg, and for the fifteenth time he limped by the crowd that was counting. Milord screwed his eyeglass a little tighter into his eye, and says, "There is more bloody, blarsted, lophorned, bobtailed, yellow, crippled brutes than anything else, don't you know." Milord's dogrobber speaks up, and says, "But, me lord, there's no hanimal like 'im hin the hither 'erd."
The Senator overheard this interesting conversation, and taking the foreman aside, told him when they got that herd on the other side of the mountain again to cut out that old yellow reprobate, and not let him come by again. So Jack cut him out and run him off aways in the mountains. But old yellow had got trained to going around that mountain, and the herd wasn't any more than tallied again till here come old Buck, as the cowboys called him, limping along behind down the canyon, the Englishmen staring at him with open mouths, and Senator Dorsey looking at old Jack Hill in a reproachful, grieved kind of way. The cowboys ran old Buck off still farther next time, but half an hour afterwards he appeared over a little rise and slowly limped by again.
The Senator now announced that there was onlyone herd more to count and signaled to Jack to ride around and stop the cowboys from bringing the bunches around any more, which they done. But as the party broke up and started for the ranch, old Buck came by again, looking like he was in a trance, and painfully limped down the canyon. That night the cowboys said the Senator was groaning in his sleep in a frightful way, and when one of them woke him up and asked if he was sick, he told them, while big drops of cold sweat was dropping off his face, that he'd had a terrible nightmare. He thought he was yoked up with a yellow, bobtailed, lophorned, lame steer and was being dragged by the animal through a canyon and around a mountain day after day in a hot, broiling sun, while crowds of witless Englishmen and jibbering cowboys were looking on. He insisted on saddling up and going back through the moonlight to the mountain and see if old Buck was still there. When they arrived, after waiting awhile, they heard something coming down the canyon, and in the bright moonlight they could see old Buck painfully limping along, stopping now and then to rest.
A cowboy reported finding old Buck dead on his well-worn trail a week afterwards. But no one everrides that way moonlight nights now, as so many cowboys have a tradition that old Buck's ghost still limps down the canyon moonlight nights.
Down in New Mexico, where the plains are brown and sere,There is a ghostly story of a yellow spectral steer.His spirit wanders always when the moon is shining bright;One horn is lopping downwards, the other sticks upright.On three legs he comes limping, as the fourth is sore and lame;His left eye is quite sightless, but still this steer is game.Many times he was bought and counted by a dude with a monocle in his eye;The steer kept limping round a mountain to be counted by that guy.When footsore, weary, gasping, he laid him down at last,His good eye quit its winking; counting was a matter of the past;But his spirit keeps a tramping 'round that mountain trail,And that's the cause, says Packsaddle, that I have told this tale.
Then we all got to telling true snake stories. Eatumup Jake said down on the Republican River in western Kansas the rattle-snakes were awful thick when the country was first settled. He said they had their dens in the Chalk Bluffs along the Republican and Solomon rivers; said these bluffs were full of them. It was nothing for the first settlers in that country to get together of a Sunday afternoon in the fall of the year and kill 15,000 rattle-snakes at one bluff as they lay on the shelves of rock that projected out from its face. He said the snake dens were two or three miles apart, all the way along the river for a hundred miles, and when somebody would start in to killing them at one place, why all the snakes at that den would start in to rattling. Then the snakes at the dens on each side of where they was killing them would wake up and hear their neighbors' rattle, and then they'd get mad and begin to rattle and that would wake up the snake dens beyond them and start them to rattling. And in an hour's time all the snakes for a hundred miles along that country would be rattling. When these two hundred million snakes all got to rattling at once you could hear them one hundred miles away and all the settlers in eastern Kansas would go into their cyclone cellars. But after thePopulists got so thick in Kansas, if they did hear the snakes get to rattling, they just thought five or six Populists got together and was talking politics.
Then Packsaddle Jack told about a bull-snake family he used to know in southern Kansas. He said the whole family had yellow bodies beautifully marked below the waist, but from their waist up, including their necks and heads, was a shiny coal black. The old man bull-snake would beller just like a bull when he was stirred up. The old lady bull-snake had sort of an alto voice and the younger master and misses bull-snakes went from soprano and tenor down to a hiss. He said this family of bull-snakes were very proud of their clothes, as there weren't any other bull-snakes dressed like them, all the other bull-snakes being just a plain yellow. And old Mrs. Bull-snake used to talk about her ancestors on her father's side, and she called the scrubby willow under which they had their den the family tree, and talked about the family tree half her time. She never allowed her daughters to associate with any of the common young bull-snakes, but kept them coiled up around home under the family tree till they got very delicate, being in the shade all the time. All the snakes in the country looked up to this family of half-black bull-snakes and they were known by the name of Half-Blacks. All the old female bull-snakes in the country around there, if they had just a distant speaking acquaintance with Mrs. Half-Black, always spoke of her as "my dear intimate friend Mrs. Half-Black." Old Papa Half-Black set around all swelled up with unwary toads he'd swallowed when they came under the family tree for shade, and while he didn't say much about his ancestry and family tree, yet he was mighty proud and dignified. Sometimes he would slip off from his illustrious family, and going over the hill where there was a little sand blow-out and something to drink, he'd meet some of the Miss Common Bull-snakes, and then he would unbend a good deal from his dignity and treat them with great familiarity, and after having a few drinks call them his sweethearts and get them to sing "The Good Old Summer Time," and he would join in the chorus with his heavy bass voice, and they would all be very gay. Of course, he never told old Mrs. Half-Black about these meetings, cause she wouldn't understand them.
But with all their glory this aristocratic family of half-black bull-snakes came to an untimely end. One day there came along a couple of mangy Kansas hogs and rooted the whole family out and eat them up as fast as they came to them; rooted up the family tree also.
We all cheered Packsaddle Jack's bull-snake story.
We now all got to telling stories about fellows we knowed who had died from mad skunk bites, said skunks creeping up on them in the night when they were sleeping outdoors. When we got to the end of our mad skunk stories we turned our attention to tales of friends of ours who had died from rattlesnake bites. It seemed each of us had dozens of dead friends who had met their doom by crawling into a roundup bed at night without shaking the blankets only to find a couple of rattle-snakes coiled up inside. The more we told the stories the more snake-bite antidote we imbibed, till we got so full of the antidote it's safe to say that it would have been sure death for any poisonous reptile to have bitten any man in the crowd. Some of us wept a good deal over the memory of our dead friends and other things, and all together this was about the most enjoyable halfday of our journey.
I now come to a point in my story that is fraught with such grief and sorrow that I would gladly pass over if I could, but my story wouldn't be complete without this sad chapter.
We were slowly climbing Sherman Hill, some of us pushing on the train, some using pinch bars—as we always did where there was a hard pull—when all of a sudden the engine broke down and the train started slowly back down the hill. While the train didn't go very fast on account that the wheels hadn't been greased since we started, as the company was economizing on oil, and the train stopped when it got to the bottom of the hill, yet it was so discouraging and heart-sickening to poor old Chuckwagon that he died almost immediately after this took place.
He had been gradually growing weaker lately, not being able to keep anything on his stomach except a little Limburger cheese since the night he had the skunk dream. He always imagined this dream to be a warning, and had low sinking spells at times, specially when the two sheepmen and Jackdo were all three in the car in at once, and at such times we were obliged to take a prod pole and drive Jackdo and the two sheepmen out the car and make them ride on top till Chuck revived. We made some smelling salts out of asafœtida and Limburger cheese for him to use when he had these fainting spells, as he frequently did when the car got warm and Jackdo and the sheepmen were there. We also found the decomposed body of a dog lying beside the track one day, and gathering it up in a gunnysack would hang it round Chuck's neck at night when the sheepmen and Jackdo had to ride inside, and in that way he would get a little sleep. But if he happened to be out of reach of any of these remedies when one of the sheepmen come near him he immediately began to strike at the end of his nose and mutter something about glue factories.
Poor old Chuckwagon! In my mind I can still see his rugged, tear-stained face as he would piteously hold out his hands for his sack of decomposed dog when one of the sheepmen or Jackdo came in the way-car.
All I know of Chuckwagon's life before he come West was what he told me on this trip. He said as a boy he had worked cleaning sewers in Chicago and after that was watchman for glue factories till he come West, but with all this training had never got hardened enough to stand the smell of Jackdo, Cottswool Canvasback and Rambolet Bill in a way-car.
He died like a hero. When we see he was going, Packsaddle Jack took a prod pole and drove Jackdo and the sheepmen down the track a ways so Chuck could breathe some purer air. Then we gave him a whiff of decomposed dog, propped him up against an old railroad tie and took his post-mortem statement in writing as to cause of his death. We let some cattlemen who had formed themselves into a committee for the public safety up in the New Fork country, in Wyoming, have his statement. We now went to the nearest town, got the best coffin we could and after selecting a place right under a big cliff, we buried old Chuck and piled up a lot of rock at the grave so we could come back and get him and give him a good decent burial on his own ranch. We didn't have much funeral services, but Dillbery Ike made a talk which just filled all our ideas exactly, and here is what he said:
Chuck was a good man. While he never joined church and drunk a heap of whiskey, bucked faro and monte, cussed mighty hard at times, yet he always paid his debts. Never killed other people's beef and didn't take mavericks till they was plum weaned from the cows. He believed mighty strong in ghosts and God Almighty; believed in angels, 'cause he loved a little, blonde, blue-eyed girl away up in the mountains in Idaho. He had a strong belief in heaven, but a heap stronger one in hell, 'cause he said there must be some place to keep the sheepmen by themselves in the other world. He never had a father or mother and no bringing up, but lived a better life 'cording to what he knowed than some people who knowed more. He always gave his big-jawed cattle to Injuns to eat, place of hauling the meat to town and peddling it out to white folks. He'd been known to even cut stove wood for married men when their wives were off visiting, and once he gave all the tobacco and cigarette papers he had to a sick Digger Injun and went without for a week himself. He always let the tenderfoot visitor at the ranch fish all the strips of bacon out the beans and pretended to be looking the other way, and when old Widow Mulligan, who ran a little milk ranch, died of fever and left four little red-headed kids he took them all home and took care of them, told them bear stories till they all went to sleep nights in his bed, washed them, fed them and never said a cross word, and even when they drowned his pet cat in the well, let out his pigs, turned the old cow in his garden and stoned all his young Plymouth Rock chickens to death, he just said, "Poor little fellars, they hain't got no mother now," and he guessed they didn't mean any harm, and took care of them till a relative came and took them away.
We figured all these things up and made up our minds that no fair-minded God would send a great, big-hearted, innocent cowman, who never harmed anybody in his life, to a place like hell was supposed to be. Even if God couldn't let him into heaven on 'count of his wearing his pants in his boots, eating with his knife at the table place of his fork, drinking his coffee out his saucer and other ignorant ways, yet He might give him a pretty decent place away out where there wasn't any sheepmen, and if He didn't have somebody handy to keep old Chuck company just let him have a deck or two of cards to play solitaire with and Chuck wouldn't mind.
Old Chuckwagon was mighty fond of white-faced cattle, and just as he breathed his last he sorter roused up and stretched out his arms, with his eyes as bright as 'lectric lamps, and said: "Boys, I see another country, just lots of big grass, with running streams of water, big herds of white-face cattle, and they are all mavericks, not abrand on 'em, and not a sheep-wagon in sight." And them was his last words.
He lay on the sidetrack, poor honest Chuckwagon,The pallor of death creeping fast o'er his brow;Said he to the cowboys, "My rope is a dragging,I'm going o'er the divide and going right now."I've often faced death with the bronks and the cattle,And meeting him now doesn't take so much sand.For sooner or later with death all must grapple,And all that we need is to show a straight brand."I would like one more glimpse at the side of the mountain,Before I saddle up for Eternity's divide;The ranch house, the meadow, the spring like a fountain,But, alas for poor Chuck, my feet are hogtied."Down his bronzed hardy cheeks the warm tears were stealing,At the memory of his cow ranch, so pleasant and bright.A smile like an angel played over each feature,And the soul of the cowboy rode out of sight.
After we buried Chuckwagon we walked across abend in the road and caught up with the stock train and strolled on ahead with sad hearts and silent lips till we arrived at the top of Sherman Hill. We prepared to wait for the arrival of the stock train, so selecting a site on the south side of Ames monument, we built a snow hut by rolling up huge snowballs and piling them up one on top of the other for walls to a height of about seven and one-half feet, leaving a space for our room of about twelve feet square inside, and gradually drawing them together at the top for a roof, and making a big snowball for the door. After it was all finished we let the sheepmen and Jackdo go over across the canyon about two miles and build another hut for themselves. We moved our luggage (which we had carried to lighten up the train) inside, and after closing the door with the big snowball, we ate a hearty supper of boiled rawhide, and spreading down a sheet of mist, we rolled up in a blanket of fog and went to sleep.
We hadn't no more than got to sleep before a lightning rod agent by the name of Woods came along and put up lightning rods all over our snow hut and woke us up to sign $350 worth of notes for the rods. This matter attended to, we went to sleep again and the lightning rod agent went over across the canyonto the sheepmen's hut and put rods on it. This man Woods was a good fellar, got people to sign notes by the wholesale, but never did anything so low as to collect them, just turned them over to a lawyer and let him attend to that. He was always broke and borrowed your last "five" in a way that endeared him to you for life. He never bothered with paying for anything, always said, "Just put it down, or charge it," in such a lofty way that everyone in hearing would begin to hunt for pencils right off. He put lightning rods on everything, even to prairie dogs' houses and ant heaps, took anybody's note with any kind of signature.
Cottswool Canvasback, Rambolet Bill and Jackdo couldn't write, but he had Rambolet Bill make his mark to the note and then Cottswool Canvasback and Jackdo witnessed it by affixing their mark; then he had Cottswool Canvasback sign his mark as security and Rambolet Bill and Jackdo witness the signature with their marks; then had Jackdo sign his mark as security and Rambolet and Cottswool witness it with their marks.
We had put out a signal flag on our snow hut so the trainmen would know where to find us when theycame along with the stock. When we awoke next morning and went outdoors a strange sight greeted our astonished vision. There had come a[1]chinook wind in the night and melted the snow off up to within one hundred feet of our altitude. As Jackdo and the two sheepmen had built their snow residence about 150 feet lower altitude on the other side of the canyon, their house had melted down over their heads, and as they were nowhere in sight it was safe to presume they had been carried away in the ruins. We had quite an argument now, whether we should try to find them or not. Dillbery Ike maintained they was human beings and as such was entitled to our looking for them. Packsaddle Jack said he didn't know for sure whether sheepmen were humans or not. He guessed it was a mighty broad word and covered a heap of things. Eatumup Jake said he reckoned they would turn up all right, that sheepmen didn't die very easy, that he knowed them to pack off more lead than an antelope would and still live; he guessed being washed off the side of the mountain wouldn't kill them. He said we'd better wait till the trainmen came along and then report the matter to them, as the sheepmen would want damages off the railroad or somebody and we'd better not hunt them up too quick as it might jeopardize their case. We all agreed there was some difference in sheepmen, and that Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback certainly belonged to the better class, and we all fell to telling stories of the generous, open-handed things that sheepmen of our acquaintance had done.
C. J. Lane, General Freight Agent and Pass Distributer to Live Stock Shippers.
Packsaddle Jack said he knowed a sheepman once by the name of Black Face, who was so good-hearted that he paid $20 towards one of his herder's doctor bill when he lost both feet by their being frozen in the great Wyoming blizzard in '94. The herder stayed with the sheep for seventy-two hours in the Bad Lands and saved all the 3,000 head except seven, that got over the bank of the creek into ice and water and drowned. The herder having got all but these seven head out and getting his feet wet they froze so hard that Black Face said his feet was rattling together like rocks when he found him stillherding the sheep. Of course, the sheep might have all perished in the storm if the herder didn't stay with them, and of course, the herder didn't have anything to eat the entire three days in the storm, as he was miles from any habitation and that way saved Black Face 30 cents in grub. But we all agreed that while Black Face would feel the greatest anguish at the loss of the seven sheep and giving up the $20, yet the satisfaction of doing a generous deed and the pride he would experience when it was mentioned in the item column of the local county paper would partially alleviate that anguish.
Eatumup Jake said he knew a sheepman by the name of Hatchet Face from Connecticut, who had sheep ranches out there in Utah, and he was so kind-hearted that when one of his herders kept his sheep in a widow neighbor's field till they ate up everything in sight, even her lawn and flower garden, he apologized to the widow when she returned from nursing a poor family through a spell of sickness, and told her he would pay her something, and while he never did pay her anything, yet he always seemed sorry, while a lot of sheepmen would have laid awake nights to have studied a way how to eat out the widowagain. Eatumup Jake said old Hatchet Face, when he prayed in church Sundays (he being a strict Presbyterian), he always prayed for the poor and widows and orphans, and that showed he had a good heart, to use what influence he had with God Almighty and get Him to do something for widows and orphans and poor people.
Dillbery Ike said he knew a sheepman by the name of Shearclose, and while he never gave his hired help any meat to eat except old broken-mouthed ewes in the winter and dead lambs in the spring and summer, and herded his sheep around homesteaders' little ranches till their milk cows mighty near starved to death, yet old Shearclose gave $5 for a ticket to a charity ball once when a list of the names of all the people who bought tickets was printed in the county paper.
After we summed all these things up, our hearts got so warm thinking of these acts of generosity by sheepmen that we concluded to make a hunt for Rambolet Bill, Cottswool Canvasback and Jackdo. We now discussed a great many plans how to rescue them. While we were arguing the stock train came, and when we told the conductor, he immediately had the agent wire General Freight Agent C. J. Lane atOmaha the following message:
"Two prominent sheepmen swept away by freshet while camping ahead of special stock train No. 79531. Please wire instructions how to find them."
Lane immediately wired back not to find them, and if there was any trace left of them to obliterate it at once.
We now sauntered down Sherman Hill ahead of the train to Cheyenne, expecting to get some help there to find Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback, and was much surprised to discover Jackdo asleep riding on the trucks of a car in a special that went by, and on waking him up he told us the following story of his escape:
He said when the flood came he got astride a big snowball and making a compass out of a piece of lightning rod he pointed it for the north star so as to not lose his bearings and started for Cheyenne. He said it was a wild ride, that he passed cattle and horses, forests and ranches in quick succession and his snowball was almost worn out when he got below the altitude of the chinook wind and struck a country ofice and snow again. But it was impossible to stop, he had acquired such a momentum going down the mountain that he slid through nine miles of cactus and prickly pears without having changed the sitting position he started in. However, after his snowball wore out, he just held up his feet and kept on till he struck a special stock train going East, and after knocking two of the cars off the rails and breaking the bumpers of a half-dozen more, he checked up enough to crawl on a brake beam and go to sleep. He knew nothing of Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback.
We arrived in Cheyenne, and after reporting to the dispatcher what time our special stock train would arrive, we exposed Jackdo to the gentle breeze, which is always on tap in Cheyenne, and it blew all the cactus slivers out of his anatomy that he had accumulated in his nine miles slide in just thirteen seconds. We then started out to see the town. We asked an expressman on the corner of Main Street—he was the only live human being in sight—what was the main features of Cheyenne. He said Tom Horn and Senator Warren. We asked him what they was noted for, and he said that Tom Horn was noted for killing people that took things that didn't belong to them and then blowing his horn about it afterwards, and Senator Warren was noted for building wire fences on government Land and taking everything in sight.
Not seeing anyone on the streets, we asked him if it was Sunday, and he said every day was Sunday in Cheyenne except when they had a political rally, and then it was a durn Democratic funeral from sun to sun, burying the Democratic party over and over again, they rehearsed them same old services. Whenever people saw the politicians on the streets with clean shirts on they knew the Democratic party was going to have another funeral. The folks in Cheyenne was always going to church, or else burying the Democratic party. We asked him what the prevailing religion of the town was, and he said, "High-priced wool."
Just then Senator W—— came along, and hearing of the disappearance of two sheepmen, and it being near election time, he immediately had all the troops called out, got together a vast army of United States deputy marshals and wired the president of the Overland, who immediately chartered a special train loaded with detectives, and two cars loaded with blood-hounds in charge of a lawyer by the name of Ashby from Lincoln; one car loaded with automobiles, two cars loaded with bottled goods and other useful supplies and two pianos with pianola attachments, seven trunks full of mechanical music in air-tight bottles, and one steam calliope near the engine on a flat car. The Governor of Wyoming met the special train at Cheyenne, and after issuing a proclamation offering a large reward for the sheepmen dead or alive, joined the U. P. president in his car. They now started the steam calliope, and the Governor playing one of the pianola-attachment pianos, the U. P. president playing the other. The state chairman of the Republican party sang the old familiar hymn, "Ninety and Nine Were Safely Laid in the Shelter of the Fold," and Senator W—— made a speech something like this:
He said: "Fellow sheepmen and what few other citizens there are in Wyoming: What's the matter with the sheep business? Have we deteriorated in the eyes of the world in the last two thousand years? Who writes poetry of the sheep and sheepherder of the present time? What artist puts priceless paintings on canvass of the sheep business to-day? Why, fellow sheepmen, in ancient times all the poetry that was written was of the shepherd and hisflock, and in every palace, in the most conspicuous place, was a picture of a tall shepherd with venerable beard and flowing locks, with his serape thrown carelessly over his shoulder, a long shepherd's crook in his hand, leading his sheep over the hill into some fresher pasture. And when the people saw the original of this painting in ye ancient time appearing over the hill in the sunset glow, they cried: 'Lo, behold the shepherd cometh.' Now what do they say? This is what you hear: 'Well, look at that lousy sheepherding scoundrel coming over the divide with his sheep. Boys, get your black masks and the wagon spokes.'
"Now," he says, "wouldn't that Ram you? What would our party have amounted to in Wyoming if I hadn't Bucked everything in sight? I've Lambed the stuffing out of the Democrats and Pulled Wool over the eyes of the would-be party leaders till we have Pretty Good Grazing and Fair We(a)thers.
"In a few days we will be called on to decide a great question at the polls, whether Billy Bryan will build your house out of cold, clammy, frosty silver bricks, or whether we will have houses built out of all wool. You must make a choice between the two. If you vote for me, it means a good, warm woolen house, good woolen underclothes, good woolen overclothes."
Judge Carey tried to say something about a gold plank, but everybody frowned at him so that he slunk off in the crowd and shortly afterwards was seen in a back alley having a heart-to-heart talk with two bow-legged cowpunchers who, while they did not know much about any kind of gold, let alone a big gold standard, knew anything was better than all this talk about sheep and wool.
Senator W—— kept talking as long as he could keep the Governor and the U. P. president making music. He said everybody who voted right could sit on his right hand with the sheep, otherwise they would have to associate with the goats on his left that was herded by Billy Bryan. Some of the crowd grumbled about associating with either one, but the Senator said there was no choice if they stayed in Wyoming.
A carriage now dashed up, all emblazoned with a coat-of-arms, which consisted of a panel of barbed wire fence with a rampant sheep leaning against it. The Senator entered this carriage, rolled away and the crowd followed him.
Although there had been no effort made to findthe sheepmen, yet apparently the object of the railroad expedition had been accomplished, and they were about to return when they discovered that three of the highest-priced detectives were missing. They were found almost immediately on the trail of the man who could tell why a life-long Democrat in Wyoming, as soon as he starts in the sheep business, gets a public office in place of a life-long Republican who didn't own any sheep. The detectives were called off the trail and the president of the great Overland began his return. We heard afterwards that Captain Ashby claimed that two of the most valuable blood-hounds escaped from the hound car and he demanded that the U. P. pay him $700 for the dogs. He claimed that if they struck the trail of anything they would follow it to the death. A couple of mangy fox-hounds were found dead in an alley back of one of the Cheyenne hotels the next morning after the president's train left, and as it was known that one of the hotel cooks had been down to the train, these were supposed to be the dogs, and the claim was allowed. What caused their death was a matter of conjecture. There was quite a pile of hotel grub laying near the dogs. The hotel boarders differed in opinion. Some said the dogs died of indigestion and some said of starvation.
The skeletons of Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback were found a long time after this all happened by one of the Warren Live Stock Company's fence riders. This fence commences in northeastern Colorado near the 27th degree of longitude west from Washington, and extends west over hills and valleys, plains and mountains, through all kinds of latitudes, longitudes and vicissitudes. There is a legend in regard to the building of this fence that is told in whispers when the fire burns low of a night in western homes. It runs something like this:
Years ago Senator Warren, Manager Gleason and some other Massachusetts Yankees started in the sheep business in southern Wyoming and northern Colorado, and as the country was large they thought it would be a good thing to fence in a few hundred thousand acres of government land and save the grass so fenced in case of hard winters and other things and graze their sheep in this enclosure only when there was no more grass around the little homesteads taken here and there by settlers. So hiring a young German from the Old Country, who couldn't speak a word of English, to dig the post-holes, they got him a brand-new shovel, a post-bar about eight feet long, the famous receipt for cooking jackrabbits, and started him digging near the 27th degree of longitude west from Washington. Pointing toward the setting sun in the west, they went off and left him. The German was never seen alive again, but he left a never-ending line of post-holes behind him. The Warren Live Stock Company, it is said, put on a great many men setting the posts in these holes and stringing barbed wire on them, and although they kept ever increasing the force that built the fence, yet they never caught up with the German, and time after time the post-setters would come to the top of a high hill or a range of mountains and thought they would come in sight of the German, only to see a long line of post-holes stretching away over hill and valley towards the setting sun.
After a while the Mormons alongthe line of Utah and Wyoming complained of seeing a ghost about the time they drove their cows home of an evening. They said it was a German with grizzled locks and flowing beard, with a large meerschaum pipe in his mouth and a shovel in one hand from which the blade was worn down to the handle and a post-bar no bigger than a drag tooth in the other hand. He was always looking toward the setting sun, shading his eyes with his hand and muttering these words: "Das sinkende Sonne, ich fange sie nicht."
But when they approached close to him, or spoke to him, he immediately vanished. When the ghost wasn't disturbed it seemed to be digging holes. It would go through the motions of digging a hole in the ground, then rising up, take thirteen steps in a westerly direction, look back to see if the line was straight, dig another hole, and go on. Sometimes the ghost seemed to be studying a well-worn piece of paper, which was undoubtedly the receipt for cooking jackrabbits, and would mutter in German, "O wohene, O wohene ist er gegangen, mit Schwanz so kurz und Ohr so lang? O wohene ist mein Hase gegangen?"
After awhile the ghost began to appear in western Utah and still later on in Nevada, always digging a never-ending imaginary line of post-holes. No one never knew where the actual post-holes left off and the imaginary ones commenced.
As the Routt County cattlemen in western Colorado never allowed any sheepmen to encroach on their range, and they always killed all the sheep and sheepmen who dared to intrude, of course, the Warren Live Stock had to stop building fence west and turn north before they got there.
When the ghastly skeletons of Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback were found lying by this fence, their bones picked clean by coyotes and vultures, a small book was picked up near them which proved to be a diary of their adventures and last hours of suffering. It will be remembered that Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback couldn't write, but they had drawn pictures in the book, and when we had gotten another sheepman who couldn't write to examine them he read them just like print. The first picture was a mountain with a lot of marks, which was interpreted as the flood, and two men drawn crosswise laying down was the sheepmen being washed away. The next picture was a wire fence with two men clinging to it. He said that was when they washed into the fence. The next was another fence picture showing two men walking along it. There was about fifty pictures after this one, but they always had a section of a wire fence in them. Several pictures in the front part of the book showed the two men eating jackrabbits, but later on some of the pictures showed them chasing a prairie dog, or trying to slip up on one, indicating that they couldn't find any more jackrabbits. There was pictures of them chewing bits of their clothes to get the sheep grease out of them. Then there was pictures of them pointing to their mouths and stomachs, finally in the last picture they were in the act of eating a piece of paper with some writing on it, which was probably the receipt for cooking jackrabbits. They probably had walked hundreds of miles along this fence before they finally succumbed, and as it was a country where they had herded large bands of sheep the grass had become so exterminated that no jackrabbits could live there, and consequentlyRambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback had gradually starved to death.
Two guileless sheepmen lay sleeping on the side of a barren hill,One's name was Cottswool Canvasback, the other was Rambolet Bill.They were dreaming, sweetly dreaming, the fore part of the nightOf grazing their sheep on a homesteader's claim when he was out of sight.But hark! to the wind that's rising; 'tis coming fast and warm;Little recked the sleepers that it would do them harm;But the roar was growing louder, as the pine trees bent and shook,And the birds were screaming loudly, "Beware of the warm chinook."When that hot blast struck their hut, built out of walls of snow,That house turned into a river in a way that wasn't slow;Washed off these dreaming sheepmen in the middle of the night.As the waters swept the dreamers away, what must have been their fright,Till tangled up in Warren's fence that's built o'er mountain and vale,They followed it the rest of their lives, winding o'er hill and dale.When found by the annual fence rider, they long since had been dead,Their bones picked clean by coyotes, with vultures hovering o'erhead.
Dillbery Ike as a Shipper.
One night while we were in Cheyenne we were going from the dispatcher's office down to our way car, which was, as usual, about one mile from the depot. The railroad company had quite a number of police on duty in the yards to watch for strikers, there having been a machinists' strike on for a long time. No strikers had ever come around the railroad yards nights or even interfered with any one at any time, but a lot of fellows who wanted soft jobs as watchmen made the officials of the road think the strikers were going to do something, and these night watch men had, it seems, been looking for a long time for some weak tramp to beat to death and then claim the tramp was working in the interest of the strikers and was about to injure railroad property when those awful sleuths caught him in the act and put his light out. Thus they could get a fresh hold on their jobs. However, they had been unable to catch a tramp, and as they had to get somebody in order to hold their jobs, they cornered Dillbery Ike, who had loitered behind the rest, and one of the valiant watchmen swiping him over the head with a six-shooter, scalped him as clean as a Sioux Injun would have done it with a scalping knife. Hearing Dillbery Ike's cries for help, we went to his rescue, and none too soon, as the watchman was still beating him. When we had got a doctor for Dillbery, of course the first thing he asked for was Dillbery's scalp, so he could sew it on again. But although we made a long search for the scalp, we only found a few bloody hairs, and undoubtedly some hungry canine prowling around had ate it up. However, the railroad company, after some parleying, agreed to pay for having a new one grafted on, and as grafting is the long suit of the Cheyenne doctors, there was a general scramble for the job. 'Twas finally agreed to divide the job amongst them, or rather divide the space and the money. The doctors immediately advertised for contributions of pieces of scalp to graft on Dillbery's head, but no one responding they offered to buy some sections of scalp, and this ad was responded to in a mysterious way by a midnight visitor at each of their offices, with a small piece of very close shaven fresh scalp, which the visitor (who was a woman in each case and so muffled up that her features couldn't be seen) claimed she had cut off Billy's or Johnny's or Jimmy's head after putting them under the influence of ether.
Each of the four doctors paid her $25 and hiked off to plaster the piece of hide on Dillbery Ike's cranium. The scalped place had been carefully laid off by a civil engineer, so each of the four doctors knew his corner in the block, and without any courtesies to one another they each trimmed down his $25 piece of hide to fit his corner and then fastened it on. The grafting took at once and in a few days was healed over nicely, despite the fact it turned out that the woman had taken a different piece of scalp off from different pet animals which she kept. One was a pet pig, another a pet goat, another a pet sheep and the fourth a pet dog of the Newfoundland breed. When the hair, wool and bristles all began to make a luxuriant growth on Dillbery's new scalp, he seemed to be more or less affected by the dispositions of each animal from which a part of the wonderful scalp was removed, and when the different colored hair, wool and bristles had grown to a good length the effect of this unique head covering was very striking to strangers. However, Dillbery Ike was justly proud of it, as the doctors had charged the Union Pacific $1,200 for this variegated scalp. Of course, no other cowpuncher could boast of such a valuable head covering.
There was one little white bare spot in the center which was above timber line, as it were, where the doctors, making these four corners, had each been a little shy of material, and here was a little open, or park, on the top of his head in which sheep ticks, hog lice, dog fleas and goat vermin could have a common ground to assemble and sun themselves in.
After learning the fate of the two sheepmen we prepared to leave Cheyenne and catch up with our stock train, which we figured would take us a day or so. We interviewed the dispatcher, superintendent and station agent at Cheyenne, asking each one of them to wire down the road and see if they could locate the special. Every one of them wired and the next day about noon the agent got word the stock was at Egbert. That evening the superintendent got a message that they was between Egbert and Pine Bluffs. About midnight the dispatcher got a message that they were hourly expected in Pine Bluffs, so we started on to overtake them.
We had noticed with a great deal of anxiety that the wrinkles had commenced to accumulate on our cattle's horns, as a new wrinkle grows each year after an animal is two years old, and we had been advised by several cattlemen who had been in the habit of taking their cattle by rail to market in place of driving them, to procure files and rasps and remove these wrinkles before we got to Omaha. So we secured a lot of rasps and files at Cheyenne and had Jackdo carry them for us, and when we caught up with the train we went to work to take off the sign of old age which had come on our stock since shipping them, as the Nebraska corn-raisers only want young stock to feed. When we first loaded our cattle we were informed that they were a little bit too fat for the killers, but, of course, the next day, they was about four pounds too thin for the killers, but too fat for the feeders. However, by this time they were nothing but petrified skeletons, and Dillbery Ike wanted to leave the wrinkles on their horns and sell the entire outfit for antiques. But the more we discussed it, the more we made up our minds that as this railroad done a large business hauling stock, the antique cattle market must be overstocked. So we finally concluded to take off the wrinkles that had grown since we started and sell the cattle on their merits. We arranged to run two day shifts and one night shift of six hours each and to commence up next the engine and work back. So getting in the first car we climbed astride the critters' necks and commenced to file. Day after day, night after night, we kept at this wearisome task, and when our files and rasps became worn we sent Jackdo (who wouldn't work, but who didn't mind tramping) to the nearest town to get fresh files and rasps. Sometimes we became discouraged when we saw the wrinkles starting again that we had removed to commence with, and our eyes filled with bitter tears when we thought how much better it would have been to have trailed our cattle through, or even sold them to some Nebraska sucker and taken his draft on a commission house. Dillbery Ike, who had some education, made up a song for us to sing while we were at work, called "The Song of the File," and one of us would sing a verse and then all join in the chorus, and this song helped us a great deal. Here it is:
Oh! we are a bunch of cattlemen.Going to market with our stock again,And, as we ship over a road that's bum,The days they go and the days they come.
Chorus.
Cheer up, brave hearts, and list to the fileAs the wrinkles keep dropping below in a pile;Never fear, my boys, we have plenty of timeTo remove old age that's known by the wrinkle sign.And as time goes by the wrinkles growOn the horns of the cattle in a train that's slow;For every year after the second a cow that's bornAnother wrinkle grows upon each horn.While we have a job that isn't so soft,A-trying to rasp these wrinkles off,To make their horns look smooth and bright,We file all day and we file all night.And as we file, we whistle and sing,Trying to make it a jolly thing,To remove the wrinkles that are sure to growOn the horns of cattle with a road that's slow.Astride their necks, we sit and file,And through our tears, we try to smile.Cheer up, brave hearts, cheer up, we say again,As we camp along with the bum stock train.
The boys all got to talking about stampedes one night while we were waiting on a sidetrack, and I related to them an experience of my own.
A number of years ago, I bought some 15,000 steers in southern Arizona, and shipping them to Denver, Colorado, divided them up into herds of about 3,500 head in each herd and started to trail these herds north to Wyoming. About 4,000 head of these steers were from 1 to 10 years old and were known as outlaws in the country where they were raised. These steers were almost as wild as elk; very tall, thin, raw-boned, high-headed, with enormous horns and long tails, and as there was great danger of their stampeding at any time, I put all of them in a herd by themselves and went with that herd myself. I worried about these steers night and day, and talked to my men incessantly about how to handle them and what to do if the cattle stampeded. There is only one thing to do in case of a stampede of aherd of wild range steers, and that is for every cowboy to get in the lead of them with a good horse and keep in the lead without trying to stop them, but gradually turn them and get them to running in a circle, or "milling," as it is commonly known among cowboys. Cattle on the trail never stampede but one way, and that is back the way they come from. If you can succeed in turning them in some other direction, you can gradually bring them to a stop. These long-legged range steers can run almost as fast as the swiftest horse.
So we kept our best and swiftest horses saddled all night, ready to spring onto in case the herd ever got started. We were driving in a northerly direction all the time, and every night took the herd fully a mile north of the mess wagon camp before we bedded them down. I had fourteen men in the outfit, half of them old-time cowboys and the other half would-be cowboys; several of them what we used to call tenderfeet.
Amongst the green hands at trailing cattle was the nephew of my eastern partner, a college-bred boy, with blonde, curly hair and a face as merry as a girl's at a May day picnic. The boys all called him Curley. He was as lovable a lad as I ever met, but positively refused to take this enormous herd of old outlaw,long-horned steers as a serious proposition.
We had always four men on night herd at a time, each gang standing night guard three hours, when they were relieved by another four men. The first gang was 8 to 11 o'clock in the evening; the next 11 till 2 and the last guard stood from 2 till daylight, and then started the herd traveling north again. I kept two old cow hands and two green ones on each guard, and had been nine days on the trail; had traveled about a hundred miles without any mishap. We had bright moonlight nights. The grass was fine, being about the first of June, and I was beginning to feel a little easier, when one night we were camped on a high rolling prairie near the Wyoming line.
Curley and three other men had just went on guard at 2 o'clock in the morning. The moon was shining bright as day. Everything was as still as could be, the old long-horned outlaws all lying down sleeping, probably dreaming of the cactus-covered hillsides in their old home in Arizona. Curley was on the north side of the herd and rolling a cigarette. He forgot my oft-repeated injunction not to light a parlor match around the herd inthe night, but scratched one on his saddle horn. When that match popped, there was a roar like an earthquake and the herd was gone in the wink of an eyelid; just two minutes from the time Curley scratched his match, that wild, crazy avalanche of cattle was running over that camp outfit, two and three deep. But at that first roar, I was out of my blankets, running for my hoss and hollering, "Come on, boys!" with a rising inflection on "boys." The old hands knew what was coming and were on their hosses soon as I was, but the tenderfeet stampeded their own hosses trying to get onto them, and their hosses all got away except two, and when their riders finally got on them, they took across the hills as fast as they could go out the way of that horde of oncoming wild-eyed demons. The men who lost their hosses crawled under the front end of the big heavy roundup wagon, and for a wonder the herd didn't overturn the wagon, although lots of them broke their horns on it and some broke their legs. When I lit in the saddle, and looked around, five of my cowboys was lined up side of me, their hosses jumping and snorting, for them old cow hosses scented the danger and I only had time to say, "Keep cool; hold your hosses' heads high, boys, and keep two hundred yards ahead of the cattle for at least five miles. If your hoss gives out try to get off to one side," and then that earthquake (as one of the tenderfeet called it when he first woke up) was at our heels, and we were riding for our own lives as well as to stop the cattle, because if a hoss stumbled or stepped in a badger hole there wouldn't be even a semblance of his rider left after those thousands of hoofs had got through pounding him. I was riding a Blackhawk Morgan hoss with wonderful speed and endurance and very sure footed, which was the main thing, and I allowed the herd to get up in a hundred yards of me, and seeing the country was comparatively smooth ahead of me, I turned in my saddle and looked back at the cattle.