“Two Indians were behind them, both on an old horse of mine.”CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVEFRONTIER TROUBLES
“Two Indians were behind them, both on an old horse of mine.”
“Two Indians were behind them, both on an old horse of mine.”
“Two Indians were behind them, both on an old horse of mine.”
Later, we moved back into the Bear Lake, where we made our home for twenty years. During this time I was often called on to do dangerous service in the interest of our settlements. After the Indian troubles were over, we had outlaws to deal with who were worse than Indians. For a long time the frontier communities suffered from depredations committed by cattle rustlers and horse thieves. Organized bands operated from Montana to Colorado. They had stations about a hundred miles apart in the roughest places in the mountains. They would often raid our ranges and steal all the cattle and horses they could pick up, driving them into their mountain retreat. They got so daring finally that they even came into the settlements and robbed stores and killed men. The colonists did not get together to stop these outrages till after a fatal raid was made upon Montpelier, when a store was robbed and a clerk was shot dead. This roused the people of the valley to action. Gen. Charles C. Rich called upon the leaders of the towns to send twomen from each settlement—the best men to be had—to pursue and punish the outlaws. Fourteen men responded to the call, among them four of the leaders themselves. It fell to my lot to be one of this posse.
We struck across the mountains east of Bear Lake, following the trail of the robbers to their rendezvous on the Big Piney, a tributary of the Green River. We knew that they had hidden themselves in this country, for two of the men with us, whose stock had been stolen, had followed the robbers to their den to recover their property. Finding the outlaws in such force, they didn’t dare to claim their stolen stock but returned to Bear Lake for help.
These men led us to the place where they had come upon the outlaws; but the outlaws had evidently feared pursuit and moved camp. To hide their tracks they had driven their wagons up the creek right in the water for over a mile. Then they had left the creek and driven up a little ravine and over a ridge. As we rode up this ravine, to the top of the ridge, the two men who were in the lead sighted the tepees of the robbers in the hollow below. They dodged back to keep out of sight, and we all rode down into the thick willows on the Big Piney, hiding our horses and ourselves among them. The two men that had sighted the outlaw camp then slipped up the hill again on foot, secreting themselves in the sagebrush at the top of the ridge, and watched the rest of the afternoon to see whether the outlaws had mistrusted anything; but they showed no sign of having seen us. At dark they came and reported.
We held council then to decide what plan to pursue to capture the outlaws. As the robbers outnumbered us, more than two to one, and were well armed, it was serious business. Our sheriff weakened when the test came; hesaid he couldn’t do it, and turned his papers over to Joseph Rich, as brave a man as ever went on such a trip. There were others who felt pretty shaky and wanted to turn back, but Mr. Rich said we had been picked as the best men in Bear Lake and he didn’t feel like going back without making an attempt to capture the thieving band. One man said he was ready to go cut the throats of the whole bunch of robbers if the captain said so, but Mr. Rich said, “No; we did not come out to shed blood. We want to take them alive and give them a fair trial.”
Every man was given a chance to say how he felt. Most of us wanted to make the attempt to capture the outlaws, and the majority ruled.
How to do it was the next problem. It would have been folly for so few of us to make an open attack on so many well-armed men. The only way we could take them was by surprise, when they were asleep. This plan agreed upon, Mr. Rich proposed that we go down the hill with our horses and pack animals, get in line at the bottom, then, just at the peep of day, charge upon their camp, jump from our horses, run into their tents and grab their guns. When we had decided on this plan of action, Mr. Rich said that this probably meant a fight. If it did we should let them fire first. Should they kill one of us, we must not run; for if we did so they would kill us all. We should give them the best we had. With our double-barreled shotguns loaded with buckshot, we would make things pretty hot for them if they showed fight.
In order that we might know exactly the situation, and have our tents picked out beforehand, so as not to get in amixup, two volunteers were called for to go down through their camp in the night and get the lay of things. Jonathan Hoopes and I offered to go. Their tepees were pitched on both sides of a little stream, which wasdeep enough for us to keep out of sight by stooping a little. Down this stream we stole our way, wading with the current so as not to make any noise, till we got right among the tepees. The biggest one was pitched on the brink of the stream. We could hear some of the men inside of it snoring away lustily. Hoopes reached his hand up and found a blanket on which were some service berries spread out to dry. Being hungry, we helped ourselves, filling our pockets with them. After taking in the situation fully, we slipped back to our boys.
There were seven tents in all, and fourteen of us—two to each tent. Hoopes and I were to take the largest, the other boys were assigned theirs. We waited for day to break; just as it did, the word was given; we popped spurs to our horses and away we went. A few seconds and we had leaped from them, rushed into the tents and begun to grab the guns from the robbers, who, wakened so rudely, stared stupidly, while we gathered in their weapons. By the time Hoopes was through passing them out to me, I had my arms loaded with rifles and revolvers. Mr. Rich told me to carry them up the hill a piece and stack them. “Shoot the first man who makes a move to touch them,” was his order. When I looked around, there sat three of our men on their horses; they hadn’t done their duty, so some of the tents were yet untouched. I told Hoopes, and he jumped over the creek to one of them. I was just gathering up some weapons I had dropped when a big half-breed made a jump at me, grabbed my shotgun and we had a lively tussle for a few minutes. He might have got the better of me, for he was a good deal bigger than I, but Hoopes jumped to the rescue and cracked him on the head with his revolver so hard that it knocked him senseless for some time.
When the outlaws rallied themselves enough to sensewhat had happened, they broke out of their tents in double-quick time, swearing and cursing and demanding what we wanted.
Captain Rich told them to keep quiet, that they were all under arrest, that we had the advantage, but we would not harm them if they behaved themselves. Seeing that it was useless to resist, they settled down.
The captain then ordered them to kill a calf for us, as we had not had anything to eat since noon the day before. They obeyed orders and we soon had a good breakfast. Later in the day part of our men went out and searched their herds. A good many cattle and horses belonging to our men were found among them.
The leaders of the outlaws were not in this band. They were off making another raid somewhere. One of the band of outlaws was deaf and dumb. Captain Rich took this fellow aside and carried on a conversation with him by writing. From the man he learned that the rest of the band were expected in that night, but as they didn’t come, we concluded that they had seen us and were lying off in the hills waiting a chance to ambush us and rescue their comrades. We were too sharp to give them the chance to do that. For three days we waited, guarding our prisoners. Then, as we thought it too risky to try to take so large a band of desperate men through the rough timbered country we must pass to get home, we took forty head of their horses as bond for their appearance at court in thirty days, and let the prisoners go.
When we were ready to set out, we carried their guns to the top of a hill, and Hoopes and I were left to guard the weapons till we were sure our men were far enough away to be safe; then we left the weapons and struck out for home after them.
As no one ever came to redeem the horses, they weresold at auction. This nest of outlaws was broken up for good the following year. Since then that part of the country has had no serious trouble with horse thieves and robbers.
One more rather exciting experience that befell me and then I shall close these stories of my life in the rugged West.
It happened in 1870. Jim Donaldson, Charley Webster, or “Webb,” as we called him, and I were taking a peddling trip to Fort Stanbow, the soldier post that was temporarily established near South Pass for the protection of the miners and emigrants. We had loaded up our three wagons with butter, eggs, and chickens.
The Sioux Indians were then on the warpath. We had been warned to keep an eye on our horses, but we thought little about it till one day we were nooning on the Big Sandy—about where Lot Smith burnt the government wagon trains—when, just as we sat down to eat, “Webb” looked up to see our horses, which we had turned loose to graze, disappearing in a cloud of dust. Two Indians were behind them, both on an old horse of mine, and they were whooping the others across the hills to beat time.
Jumping to our feet we dashed after them afoot. This was useless, of course. “Webb” and Donaldson jerked out their revolvers and took several shots at the rascals, but they were out of revolver reach and getting farther away every second, while we stared and damned them.
It was a pretty pickle we were in—forty miles from nowhere, with three wagons loaded with perishable stuff, and not a horse to move them. We got madder and madder as we watched the thieving devils gradually slip out of sight beyond the sand hills.
Then we went back to our wagons—cussing and discussing the situation. For an hour or more we tried to puzzle a way out of our difficulty. It was no use. Themore we worried the worse it looked. All the money I had was invested in those eggs and butter and they would soon be worse than nothing in the hot sun. The other boys were in as bad a fix as I was. We just couldn’t see a way out of it; but we kept up our puzzling till suddenly we heard a rumbling noise.
A few minutes later a covered wagon drawn by a pair of mules came in sight.
An old man—“Boss Tweed” the boys had nicknamed him—was the driver. In the seat with him was a boy, who had a saddle horse tied behind. They were surely a welcome sight to us.
We told them of our trouble. The old man reckoned he could help us out. He proposed that we load the supplies of two of our wagons on his larger wagon, then trailing our other wagon behind, his old mules he thought could haul us into South Pass. It looked like our only chance, but “Webb” thought he had a better plan.
The Indians, he said, must make their way out of the country through a certain pass. There was no other route they could escape by. If we three would take the mules and boy’s horse and ride hard through the night, we might get ahead of the thieves and retake our horses.
“Anything for the best,” said the old man; but the boy objected. We shouldn’t take his horse. He started to untie his animal, but we stopped him. Our situation was a desperate one; he had to give in.
We unhitched the mules, and strapped quilts on their backs. Donaldson and I jumped on them; “Webb” took the horse. Then we struck the trail single file, my old mule on lead with Jim to whip him up and “Webb” behind him to whip Jim’s mule. It was a funny sight. I never meet Jim but he calls up that circus parade loping along over the hills out on the Big Sandy.
S. N. Leek, Jackson, WyomingUncle Nick (E. N. Wilson, author of this book), landing a big trout out of Jackson Lake, Wyoming.
S. N. Leek, Jackson, WyomingUncle Nick (E. N. Wilson, author of this book), landing a big trout out of Jackson Lake, Wyoming.
S. N. Leek, Jackson, Wyoming
Uncle Nick (E. N. Wilson, author of this book), landing a big trout out of Jackson Lake, Wyoming.
The old mules were slow, but they were tough. They kept up their steady gait mile after mile through the night. We couldn’t see any trail—just the gap in the mountains against the sky to guide us as we loped and jogged and jogged and loped through the long night.
When daylight came to light our way, we found ourselves at the place where the trail took up over the pass. Soon it forked, the two branches of the trail going up tworavines which were separated by a low, narrow ridge. We saw no fresh tracks on either trail, so we knew the Indians had not passed this point. It looked as if we had got ahead of them as “Webb” hoped.
We rode up one ravine about a mile from the forks, keeping out of the trail so as to leave no tracks to alarm the thieves if they came our way. Here we stopped and “Webb” went up on the ridge to where he could overlook the country and at the same time watch both trails. Our plan was to wait till we found out which trail the Redskins took. Then we could post ourselves on either trail and head them off as they came up the one or the other ravine, it being but a short distance between the trails.
“Webb” had not been on watch long before he sighted them coming about six miles away. He waited till they reached the forks. Luck favored us. They took our trail. Seeing this “Webb” slipped down to tell us. We hastily hid our horses in the tall brush that bordered the little creek, chose a place where the big birches hung over the trail, and got ready. “Webb” and Donaldson, having revolvers, were to take the lead Indian, while with my rifle I was to settle accounts with the other.
We hadn’t long to wait till here they came crowding our horses full tilt along the trail. We held ourselves till we had the dead drop on them, then we all fired. My companions both caught their Indian in the head. I took mine right under the arm. Their horses jumped and they both tumbled off so dead they didn’t know what struck them. It may seem a cruel thing to do, but we were not going to take any chances.
I never have found any joy in killing Indians. And I never have killed any except when circumstances compelled it; nor have I ever felt like boasting about such bloody work. These rascals certainly deserved what theygot. They had stolen all we had and left us in a very serious difficulty. They were Sioux Indians who were escaping from a battle with the soldiers of Fort Stanbow.
You can easily believe we were mighty glad to get back those horses and strike the trail again towards our wagons. We found things all right there. The old man had taken good care of our produce while we were away. He was just as happy as we were over our success. But do you think he would take any pay for his trouble? Not a cent. It was pay enough, he said, to feel so good because he had helped us out of a bad fix. When we got to South Pass, however, we found his home and left him some supplies with our good wishes. He was away at the time, so he couldn’t object.
The boy who had refused us his horse didn’t object, though, to taking five dollars for his pay. I’ve always found a heap of difference among the human beings one meets in his travels.
The years that have followed these wild days have not been so filled with exciting adventures, yet no year has passed without its rough and trying experiences; for it has been my lot to live always on the frontier. Even now my home is in Jackson’s Hole—one of the last of our mountain valleys to be settled. In 1889 I first went into this beautiful valley, and a few years later I pioneered the little town now called Wilson, in my honor.
It was here that I was brought again into close contact with my Shoshone friends—the Indians from whom for many years I had been all but lost. In 1895, when the so-called Jackson’s Hole Indian war broke out and several Indians were killed and others captured and brought to trial for killing game, I was called on to act as interpreter. My sympathies went out to the Indians at this time.They were misunderstood and mistreated as they always have been. The Indian has always been pushed aside, driven, and robbed of his rights.
It is a sad thought with me to see the Redmen giving away so rapidly before our advancing civilization. Where thousands of the Indians once roamed free, only a scattered few remain. The old friends of my boyhood days with Washakie have almost entirely passed away. Only once in a great while do I find one who remembers Yagaki, the little boy who once lived with their old chief’s mother. But when I do happen to meet one—as I did last year when I found Hans, a wealthy Indian, who lives now on his ranch at the Big Bend in Portneuf Canyon—then we have a good time, I tell you, recalling the days of long ago when Uncle Nick was among the Shoshones.
Caspar W. HodgsonA lily pond in the Yellowstone Park, which was part of the land of the Shoshones.
Caspar W. HodgsonA lily pond in the Yellowstone Park, which was part of the land of the Shoshones.
Caspar W. Hodgson
A lily pond in the Yellowstone Park, which was part of the land of the Shoshones.