The Prairie Schooner Part 6

However, it is the truth that a crew engaged in track-laying in the vicinity of North Platte was one day almost overwhelmed by a band of Comanches that came up from the south following a herd of buffalo across the Republican River. There were less than fifty men in the gang, including a locomotive engineer, fireman, conductor, foreman and track-layers, among the rest two Chinese cooks. The Indians had come upon the crew unexpectedly, for the buffalo herd, in pa.s.sing near at hand, kicked up such a cloud of dust that the crew was unseen until it was too late for the Comanches to retreat without a fight.

The buffaloes rushed on past the right-of-way of the road, and when the Indians followed the first they knew of the locomotive was when the engineer sounded his whistle to bring the scattered crew to the shelter afforded by a train of flat cars and the engine. The country all about was flat. The Indians scattered in a circle and at a distance of perhaps 500 yards began to shoot. The crew was well supplied with guns and ammunition and the battle lasted for half an hour, resulting in the death of one Indian and the wounding of not one white man. Still it had all the elements of a movie show, and would have made a fine reel. In another hour track-laying proceeded as usual.

Outside of a few clashes of this kind the U. P. went its glorious way without open battle with so-called redskins. Indians look good in pictures, and they are picturesque--in pictures and paintings; but when you were near them in those days you found them nearly always good-for-nothing, insect-infested, diseased, hungry and cowardly, with less nerve than a regular tramp.

When the U. P. was building it should be remembered the Indians had been seeing the pioneer going across the plains with wagons for many years.

The pony express rider, the bullwhacker and the California and Utah emigrant had been his almost daily companion; therefore he had learned to be circ.u.mspect. Those hardy people had shot straight and to kill, and by the time track-laying began the Indian was about as cautious as a mountain sheep. He knew the range of the white man's gun, the fleetness of his big American horse, and he governed himself accordingly, devoting all his time, when doing anything at all, to impede the progress of railroad building, to pure and unadulterated murder from ambush.

CHAPTER IX

"BILL" HICKOK, CITY MARSHAL.

"Wild Bill" Hickok, who had been city marshal at Abilene, Kan., blew into Cheyenne in 1874 along with Texas Charley and a few more "bad men."

Things were booming in the Wyoming metropolis. Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills, and the crowds of fortune-seekers from every point of the compa.s.s had begun to flock in. Men were there from South Africa, Brazil, California and Australia, intermingling with the New Englander, the Middle Westerners, the cowboys and bullwhackers and others attracted by the reports of fabulous discoveries. Cheyenne was the chief outfitting point for a trip into the hills, although thousands tramped through the sands of the Bad Lands to the new Eldorado via Fort Pierre.

It meant big work for the small police force of Cheyenne, for there were, besides the "killers" of the "Wild Bill" order, garroters and other crooks from near and far to look after. Gambling didn't bother the authorities at all, and such characters as "Canada Bill," the most famous of all the confidence men, were, as a matter of fact, able to ply their trade almost unmolested.

"Canada Bill" had the appearance of a Methodist preacher of that period, wearing a black broadcloth, long-tailed coat, trousers of the same material, a black felt hat, "biled" s.h.i.+rt and black bow tie. He carried an old-fas.h.i.+oned satchel made of oil cloth, a pattern of which is seen nowadays only on the vaudeville stage. "Bill" was certainly an innocent-looking individual--solemn-faced and perfectly harmless--apparently. He spent most of his time on the U. P. pa.s.senger trains between Omaha and Cheyenne and is said to have swindled travelers out of an aggregate of $100,000 at three-card monte, a form of swindling in great vogue at that time. Cheyenne was his headquarters and he was almost as well known as any man in the town; but he followed his profession practically undisturbed for several years, and I doubt if he ever spent a day in jail. Has victims included some men who prided themselves on their shrewdness.

"Wild Bill" Hickok was perhaps the best known "character" in Cheyenne in the 70's. He, too, was a ministerial-looking person, but was not a confidence operator. He was just a plain gambler, and not a very good one, but he managed to escape the halter every time he put a notch in his gun. "Bill" killed no one in Cheyenne; in fact, his days there were quiet and prosy. His killings were all done in Kansas at the time the K.

P. was being built from the Missouri to Denver. When in Cheyenne he was on his last legs--had begun, as they say nowadays, to slow up.

Nevertheless, he was feared by a great many, owing to his reputation, although among certain cla.s.ses it was generally understood that he had lost his nerve. This was demonstrated while the Black Hills excitement was at its height. "Bill" was more than six feet tall, straight and thin. He carried two big revolvers in his belt and they protruded sometimes from the side of his long broadcloth coat. He also carried a bowie knife. But for all this and his reputation, he weakened one night when an undersized little California _buccaro_ challenged him to walk into the street and fight a duel at twenty paces. "Bill" laid down, saying his eyes had gone back on him and that his shooting days were over.

Shortly after this incident the Cheyenne authorities decided to rid the town of a few of the worst criminals, so they tacked a notice on telegraph poles containing a list of a dozen or more names of men, headed by "Wild Bill," giving them twenty-four hours' time to get out of town. When "Bill" saw the notice he smiled, and with his bowie knife cut the notice into ribbons, and he stayed until he got ready to leave some months later. He went to Custer City, then to Deadwood, where he met his death at the hands of an avenger, who shot him in the back as he sat in a poker game. His murderer claimed "Bill" had killed his brother in Kansas and said he had followed him for two years, waiting for a chance to kill him. "Bill" had a rule of life that he violated the night he died, and that was never to sit with his back to a door or window. On the fatal night he sat with his back to a half-open door into which the avenger crept.

"Wild Bill" was a "road agent" (a highwayman) long before the Black Hills stampede and frequently entertained a crowd with descriptions of the raids he and his pals made upon the Mormon emigrants when they were enroute from Nauvoo, Ill., to Salt Lake. According to his own stories he was a heartless brute. Many deeds, however, that have been laid at his door, and others that he bragged about, were never committed. It has been estimated that he murdered all the way from fifteen to thirty men, but most of these were killed while he was marshal.

One story that used to be told in Cheyenne, but which was not authenticated, was that on one occasion at Abilene he entered a restaurant for breakfast and ordered ham and eggs "turned over." The waiter returned with the eggs fried on one side and "Bill" angrily said:

"I told you to have them eggs turned over!"

Whereupon the waiter playfully gave the dish a flip and turned them over. This so angered "Bill" that he shot the waiter dead, and then finished his meal, the poor waiter's body lying at his feet.

There was so much garroting of men who came to Cheyenne to join the rush into the hills that some of the wiser ones slipped outside the town at night and slept on the prairie, while others, armed to the teeth, either walked the streets or formed companies with guards for protection. It was a condition of affairs that gave the authorities more than they could handle at the start. However, after the first few months of excitement Cheyenne began to be good, and soon the civilization and order of older communities was apparent on every hand.

The railroad shortened the distance between the frontier and "G.o.d's Country," and before one could realize it Cheyenne was as orderly and well behaved as Worcester, Ma.s.s. So it is today. "Wild Bill," "Texas Jack," "Canada Bill" and the thieves and gamblers, with their guns and daggers, are forgotten; and if some of them could come back and tramp the streets again they would be as great curiosities as they would be on Broadway, New York, or State Street, Chicago--and they would land in jail or get out of town unless they walked a chalk-mark.

Cheyenne has long been in "G.o.d's country," although at the time discussed it was a long way over the line.

CHAPTER X

WHEN CHEYENNE WAS YOUNG.

Let us suppose this is the year 1872, and that we are taking a trip across the continent on the first railroad from the Missouri River to the Golden Gate. We have pa.s.sed through western Nebraska and its uninhabited hills and plains and we are entering Cheyenne, on a vast plain, yet situated at the foot of a range of the Rocky Mountains known as the lower Black Hills. We are in sight of Long's and other Colorado peaks of the Rockies and while apparently on a wide prairie for several hours we have nevertheless been climbing a steep grade all the way from Sidney, the last division point.

Cheyenne is (in '72, remember) a city of boards, logs and canvas, but is beginning to shake off the very first things of a "camp," and is entering the brick age, with good prospects of acquiring fame as a substantial city.

But there are some hundreds of things here that are strange to the eyes of an Eastern man. For example, in all his life he has never seen a man, outside a military encampment, with a revolver strapped in a holster to a belt around his waist. Perhaps he has never seen a faro game in his life, and chuck-a-luck is as mysterious to him as the lingo of the broad-hatted men who recommend it to the fortune-seeker instead of a gold mine or honest toil of any kind. He has never seen, much less heard of, a hurdy-gurdy where the men and the scarlet women "waltz to the bar"

to the tune of the "Arkansaw Traveler."

He used to see his Uncle Cyrus plow with a slow-plodding team of oxen among the cobble stones of a Vermont farm; but this is the first time in his life that he ever saw seven yokes of oxen hitched together in front of two big wagons and every team pacing a gait that would bring praise from the judge's stand at a county fair.

He starts down the main street and he sees "The Gold Room" in big letters on a big wooden building. "This is where they keep it," he muses, and he goes in. It is where they sell it--"forty-rod," "squirrel"

and the rest. But that is not all we see in the "Gold Room," run by Jack Allen. We also see a woman called Madam Moustache dealing the game of "twenty-one," at which "Wild Bill" Hickok, Texas Jack and a lot more celebrities are "sitting in." Then in another corner is a faro game. Men here are so eager to get their money on the cards that some of them are standing on the back rungs of chairs and reaching over sitting players to put stacks of golden twenties on the table, either "calling the turn"

or betting that the nine-spot or some other card will win or lose as the dealer slips the paste-boards out of his silver box.

It is night, of course, and after a while, when the gambling begins to drag, the tables are shoved a little closer to the wall and the big floor is given up to dancing, even though through it all--dancing and gambling--a stage performance is going on. Some painted female person of uncertain age, but positive reputation, is either shouting personalities at characters in the crowd or bellowing and butchering a popular song in a male voice. Smoke is thick and not fragrant to the nostrils of the new-comer--the tenderfoot. The "Gold Room" roof is also occupied--that is, the inside part of it--with boxes crowded with men and women, the women being known as "beer jerkers." In the early hours of morning it is difficult to find a sober man or woman.

The same thing is going on in "McDaniels' Variety," opposite Tim Dyer's Tin Restaurant. McDaniels, bald-headed and also smooth of voice, is circulating around among his top-booted guests like a pastor among his flock, and you wonder that such a fine-looking, well-spoken man is not in a pulpit instead of a dive.

But this is some of Cheyenne in 1872 to 1875. Go to Cheyenne today--and what do you find? Nothing like this, that's certain. It is doubtful if you will round up more than a handful of men who remember there ever was such a place as Allen's "Gold Room" or the McDaniels' Variety, or even Tim Dyer's Tin Restaurant--tin because the plates and cups were tin when the big place was first opened. But see Cheyenne today. There isn't a city 200 years old on the Atlantic coast that has more civilization, a finer lot of railroad men, more culture and good order to the square yard.

Cheyenne had a bad reputation, but it soon reformed when the natural resources of Wyoming began to be developed, and today, while we who pioneered it there so many years ago spoke of it as a "desert metropolis," are witnessing every little while either in agricultural or horticultural shows its progress in wheatfield and orchard.

CHAPTER XI

THE LOST INDIAN AT BEDTICK CREEK.

This Indian was lost--something that has rarely happened. No Indian could use a compa.s.s if he had one, and he wouldn't if he could--not the real Indian of the days of General Custer, Buffalo Bill and a few others. Indian instinct beats any mechanical contrivance man has invented for white sailors, hunters, explorers and lumber cruisers.

But the full-blood of this story was lost and was bleating like a sheep away from its flock, and just as timid and gentle. A lost Indian, and a proud, high cheek-boned, breech-clouted, bronzed specimen, too; six feet tall in his moccasins--hungry, unarmed, footsore, tribeless.

He came into the camp of the wagon train at Bedtick Creek not far from the site of the deserted and famous overland stage station run by Jules Slade, whose life was saved by his wife, who rode 200 miles on a horse from Julesburg to a gold camp in Montana just in time to stop the lynching being conducted by the Vigilantes.

And the day the Lost Indian was found was Christmas, a time when every man--plainsman and mountaineer, far from civilization and living in the open, as well as those toasting their s.h.i.+ns at comfortable firesides in snug homes in "G.o.d's country"--has a sense of something mysteriously elevating in his soul.

Everyone in the frost-bitten bunch of overland freighters knew his program for the day was to have no change so far as the bill of fare of bacon, beans and venison was concerned, and everyone thought it was pretty good; but there was to be no Christmas tree or happy children--no church services or anything else--everyone was contented, nevertheless, and surely full of the spirit of the day, though far out of reach of anything that would give the slightest flavor to a proper celebration, even informally.

The breakfast had been disposed of, the tin dishes washed and plans made for a full day's rest for man and beast, for it was also Sunday, and the wagon boss, old Ethrop, while loaded down with revolvers and bowie knifes, was of a religious turn and was known as "The Parson."

Far away to the south, across a rolling plain, was the blue-white outlines of Laramie Peak. A long way this side, according to the eagle-eye of Farley, driver of the lead team, something was winding a crooked course toward camp. It was a mere dark object reflected against the snow-covered surface, but when viewed through a field gla.s.s was plainly discernible--it was a man, all agreed; but with the gla.s.s in Farley's hands it was a buck Indian.

So the boys watched and waited for an hour, and finally the Lost Indian was within hailing distance and stopped, circled and began to close in.

Farley waved him to come on, and as insurance of friendliness went through the ceremony of placing a rifle in its sling on the side of a prairie schooner. Then the Lost Indian came forward at a trot and landed at the camp-fire.

Between grunts, motions and words on the part of the Lost Indian, and as many from several plainsmen, none of which seemed to be clearer than Hottentot, this was, in simple language, the story told by the Lost Indian at Bedtick Creek: