Charley scanned him quizzically for a moment.
“You must have fallen mighty hard,” he remarked. “Who hit you, Yank?”
“That lead teamster o’ yours,” growled Yank, with a string of oaths. “I’ll get him for that. No man can strike me and stay long on this earth. The dirty hound!” And he abused Joel horridly.
Joel heard the loud words, and suddenly leaving his team where it stood, came walking fast.
“None of that!” he called. “You keep a quiet tongue in your head. You can see what he did to my bulls, Charley. He laid my whip on them. I allow no man to cut my bulls. I never cut them myself. They were doing as well as they could.”
Charley quickly stepped between the two—for the hand of each was poised for the dart to revolver butt.
“That’s enough,” he bade. “There’s to be no fighting in this train and no swearing. You both know that. Give me your guns. Pass ’em over.”
“All right, Charley,” answered Joel. “Here are mine if you say so. I don’t need a gun to deal with that fellow.” And unbuckling his belt he tossed it aside.
“Now it’s up to you, Yank,” addressed Charley.
Yank flushed.
“My guns are my own, an’ I’m goin’ to wear ’em as long as I please,” he blurted.
“No, you aren’t, Yank,” retorted Charley, coolly. Looking him in the eye, he walked straight to him. “You needn’t give them to me; I’ll take them. See?”
He was a little man, was Charley, but he had a great heart and the nerve to back it up. Reaching, while Yank stood uncertain and cowed, he jerked both revolvers from the holsters; then he stepped back to put his foot on Joel’s belt.
“That’s enough,” he said. “I want this matter to end right here. If you laid whip on another man’s bulls when there wasn’t any need of it I reckon you got about what you deserved. We’re not bull skinners in this train. But I’ll have no fighting in the outfit. You fellows can settle your differences after you leave. Go on and finish your corralling, Joel. Yank, you saddle a fresh mule from the cavvy and ride out and help Kentuck and Andy butcher those buffalo. Your mule’s plumb worn out. Hear me?”
Yank glared at him for a moment, but Charley returned eye for eye. Presently Yank whirled on his heel, and snatching the bridle of his mule strode off, muttering, to the cavvy. Joel went back to his team. Charley shook the cylinders out of the four revolvers, dropped them into his pockets, and stowed the useless weapons in one of the wagons. The train proceeded about the business of the hour, and Davy, whose heart had been beating high, helped.
“The ride out yonder will help to cool his blood a bit,” commented one of the teamsters, referring to Yank—who, leading Andy and Kentuck, was galloping furiously away. As for Joel, he was acting as if the recent trouble was ancient history—except that when he examined the wounds on his two beloved oxen he shook his head.
The teams had been unhitched from the wagons and were being led aside to water and pasture, when a sudden shout arose.
“Look at Yank! Look at him, will you! Where’s he going?”
Everybody stared. Leaving Andy and Kentuck behind, Yank, without slackening pace, was galloping on and on through the area where the buffalo herd had been and where the carcasses were lying. Andy and Kentuck yelled at him, but he paid no heed. And from the wagon train welled another chorus of cries.
“He’s taking French leave! He’s deserting!”
“Let him go, boys,” quoth Charley, coloring, but making no move. “I’ll send him his guns sometime; but he’s forfeited his pay. If he wants to have things that way, good enough. We’re better off without him.”
The men grunted, satisfied; nobody liked the unruly, foul-mouthed Yank. Soon he disappeared over a rise and he was not seen again by Davy for a year.
The camp that evening seemed much pleasanter without the presence of Yank. With him absent and with plenty of buffalo meat on hand, the men laughed and joked to even an unusual extent. It was a carefree camp.
“Here are your guns, Joel,” said Charley, returning them. “Guess I can trust you with them now. Well, we’re a short train, with two men shy. I’d rather lose Yank than Sailor Bill; but they’re both gone. Kentuck, you’re promoted to assistant wagon boss; and I’ll have to turn your team over to Dave, here. They’re well broken and I reckon he can drive them. How about it, Dave?”
Davy was somewhat flustered. He to be a bull whacker? Hurrah!
“I’ll try,” he stammered.
“Sure you will; and you’ll make good. Fact is, those bulls drive themselves. But you can learn a heap, anyway. All right. You take Kentuck’s outfit in the morning and go ahead. The boys will help you if you get in trouble. I can’t spare Joel; he’s too good a man in the lead, and we need him there.”
That night Davy could scarcely go to sleep. He was excited. He wondered if he really could “make good” as a bull whacker. He had practised with the whip and could “throw” it pretty well, although it was a long lash for a boy. But he had found out that to wield a bull whip and “pop” it required a certain knack rather than mere strength; and, besides, the bull teams behind kept up with the wagons before as a matter of habit. Of course, corralling and yoking were the chief difficulties. But he had watched closely what the men did every day, and he thought that he knew how, at least. At any rate, he was bound to try. To handle twelve oxen seemed to him a bigger job than being a messenger.
It was a proud Dave who, early in the morning, after breakfast, at the cry “Catch up, men! Catch up!” shouldered his yoke and the two bows, and sturdily trotted for the corral. He knew how to begin. The proper method was to lay the heavy yoke across one shoulder with the bows hanging from your arm. One pin was carried in your mouth, the other in your hand. The ends of the bows passed up through the yoke, so that only one end needed a pin thrust through above the yoke to hold it; the other end stayed of itself.
Davy felt that the men were watching him out of the corners of their eyes. He heard somebody say, aside, bantering: “Look out, boys, or that kid will beat us!” Of course he could not do that! Not yet. But Charley called to him from the forward gap, where somebody must stand to keep the cattle in: “The wheel team first, Dave. You know them, do you? A pair of big roans.”
Davy nodded. He remembered them; he had marked them well by a good scrutiny when the herd was being driven in from pasture.
“All right,” said Charley. “You’ll find them together. The whole bunch ought to be together.”
The corral was crowded with oxen and men, and appeared a mass of confusion; but there was little confusion, for by this time the oxen and the men all knew their business. Davy pushed his way straight to the two big roans (the largest and stoutest bulls always were chosen for the wheel team, because they must hold up the heavy pole and also must stand up to the weight of the wagon down hill), and in approved fashion laid the yoke across the neck of one.
“Be sure you yoke ’em like they’re used to travellin’, lad,” warned a kind teamster. “The near and the off bull, or you’ll have trouble.”
Davy nodded again. He had noted this also. The “near” bull meant the bull that was yoked to stand on the left; the “off” bull was the right-hand one. The near bull of this team had a short horn, he remembered. He slipped the bow under the near bull’s neck, and standing on the outside, or left, inserted the ends of the bow up through the yoke and slipped the pin in to hold it. Then he hustled around to the opposite side of the “off” bull, who was standing close to his mate, shoved him about (“Get ’round there, you!” ordered Davy, gruffly), and reaching for the yoke lifted it across, adjusted the bow (from the outside), slipped in the pin from his mouth—and there he had his wheel pair yoked together!
Now proud indeed, he led his yoke out through the other bulls to his wagon. They took position on either side of the pole, although they seemed a little puzzled by the change in manager. Now it only remained to lift the pole and put the end through the ring riveted to extend below the middle of the yoke.
“Lead team next,” said Davy, wisely, to himself, leaving his wheel team and hurrying to shoulder another yoke and its bows and re-enter the wagon corral.
Every man was supposed to know his twelve bulls as a father knows his children. Davy’s lead team were spotted fellows, with long black horns. He went straight to them where they stood, waiting; yoked them masterfully and led them, too, out to the wagon. He put them in position, and with the four other yokes built his whole team—starting from the rear. The train was ready and watching, but not impatient. The men gave him time.
From the middle of each yoke the massive log chain by which they pulled ran between them back to the yoke of the pair behind—save that the wheel team pulled by the tongue and had no chain. Davy worked hard to hook the chains. A man stepped forward to help him; but Charley called promptly:
“Let him alone, boys. He’s doing well. He’ll get the hang of it. Every man to his own team, you know.”
And Davy was glad.
“All set,” he announced shrilly, for his team were hooked at last.
“All set,” repeated Charley. “Line out, boys.”
To brisk shout from Joel and crack of his whip the lead team straightened their chains and the wagon moved ahead. One after another the other wagons followed; and Davy’s team fell into place almost before he had “popped” his whip and had joined in the cries:
“Haw, Buck! Hep! Hep with you!”
The train retook the trail, Davy trudging like any other bull whacker on the left side of his wheel yoke, his whip over his shoulder, his hat shoved back from his perspiring forehead. He doubted if even Billy Cody could have done better; and he wished that Billy might see him.
Ever the trail unfolded on and on, sometimes skirting the shallow Platte, sometimes diverging a little to seek easier route. It traversed a country very unattractive, broken by the clayey buttes and by deep washes, and running off into wide, sandy plateaus and bottoms, rife with jack-rabbits, coyotes, prairie-dogs, antelope, and occasional buffalo. The rattlesnakes were a great nuisance; the men killed them with the whip lashes by neatly cutting off their heads as they coiled or sometimes shot them. And almost every morning somebody complained of a snake creeping into his warm blanket.
The processions of emigrants continued as thick as ever, bound for “Pike’s Peak,” for Salt Lake, California and Oregon. Each day the stage for Denver and the stage for Leavenworth passed, dusty and hurrying; and now was given a glimpse, once in two weeks, of the Hockaday & Liggett stages, which travelled twice a month between St. Joseph, above Leavenworth, and Salt Lake City. Occasionally Indians—Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Pawnees and Sioux—came into the camps begging for “soog” and “cof” and “tobac.”
Davy enjoyed every mile and he did splendidly. He enjoyed even the never-varying diet of “sowbelly” (salt pork), baked beans, hot bread, and sugarless, milkless coffee, eked out by buffalo meat and antelope meat when they could get it. Some of the men tried prairie-dogs—which weren’t so bad as they sound, tasting and looking like chicken or rabbit. The main difficulty was to get them after they had been shot, for they almost always managed to tumble into their holes. Then, when anybody put a hand in to drag them out, it was met by the angry whirr of a rattle-snake. A rattle-snake and a little owl seemed to live in each hole along with the prairie-dog family!
There were storms, coming up with startling suddenness. One storm, at Cottonwood Springs a hundred miles west of Kearney, Davy never forgot. It was a hail storm. First a mighty cloud of deep purple shot through with violet lightning, swelled over the trail in the west. Emigrants scuttled to secure their wagons, and at Charley’s sharp commands so did the bull train.
“It looks like a twister, boys,” shouted Charley, riding back along the train. “Better corral. I’m afraid for these bulls.”
So the train corralled in a jiffy; and, unyoked, the bulls were driven inside. The tongues were hung in the draw ropes of the wagon covers and the wheels were chained, wagon to wagon. Slickers were jerked out from the wagons and donned; and the men prepared to crawl under the wagon boxes if necessary.
With angry mutter and swollen shape the purple cloud came on at a tremendous pace. The spin-drift of it caught the plain far ahead, and one after another the trains of the emigrants were swallowed in the blackness. When the first gust struck the bull train the touch was icy cold.
“Hail, boys! Hail!” shouted Charley. “Watch the bulls!”
Now sounded a clatter like rain on a sheet-iron roof; and across the landscape of sand and clay, and a cottonwood grove at the mouth of the creek, swept a line of white. The men dived for cover like prairie-dogs whisking into their holes.
Yes, it was hail! Such hail! Driven by a gale the stones, some as large as hickorynuts, and all as large as filberts, lashed the huddled train; whanged against canvas and wagon-box and with dull thuds bounded from the bulls’ backs. Some of the animals shifted uneasily, for the stones stung. The others stood groaning and grunting with discomfort, shaking their heads when a particularly vicious missile landed on an ear. Under the wagons the men were secure; but Dave felt sorry for the poor bulls who turned and sought in vain.
As quickly as it had come the storm passed, leaving the ground white with the hail. Almost before the men had crawled out from underneath their wagons the sun was shining.
The hail had not damaged the bull train to any extent. There were dents in the tough wood where the heavy stones had struck, and several of the wagon sheets, forming the hoods, had been punctured in weak spots; but thanks to Charley’s promptness in corralling, the animals had not stampeded. However, some of the emigrants had not fared so well, because they had not known what to do. After the bull train was yoked up again and was travelling on, it passed two emigrant outfits stalled by the trail, trying to recover their teams which had run away. Many of the flimsy cotton hoods used by the emigrants were riddled into strips.
The Overland Trail followed up the south side of the Platte, the same way by which Dave had come down with the Lew Simpson train a year before, after the fight in the mule fort. Where the North Platte and the South Platte joined current it continued on up the South Platte—and now to the north a short distance was the place where the mule fort had been located so hastily by Billy Cody and Lew and George Woods.
Soon the main trail for Salt Lake and California forded the South Platte to cross the narrow point of land for Ash Hollow at the North Platte and for Laramie and Salt Lake City. But the Denver branch proceeded on into the west by the newer trail to the mountains and Denver.
This branch of the Overland Trail down to Denver was only six months old, but already it was a well-worn trail, scored deep by the stages and by the thousands of emigrants and the constant freight outfits. The travel eastward, toward the States, was almost as great now as that westbound, for fall had come and everybody who was intending to return to the States had started so as to get there before winter. A winter journey by wagon across these plains was no fun.
After the parting of the trail, the next station on the route was Jules’ Ranch. Jules was an old French-Indian trapper and trader, whose full name (as he claimed) was Jules Beni. His mother was a Cheyenne Indian, and Jules had built a trading post here, a mile beyond Lodgepole Creek, for trade with the Cheyennes. Now Jules had turned his attention to the new business that had opened, and he was selling flour to the Pike’s Peak “pilgrims” at a dollar a pound. He had been smart enough to break a new trail that would bring the travel between the North and the South Platte past his place—for the regular crossing was east of him. He was smart, was Old Jules, and now he had just been made stage agent.
“I want all you fellows to keep clear of Old Jules,” cautioned Charley, as the train approached what some of the men jokingly called “Julesburg.” “I’ve never seen him when he wasn’t drunk and he’s a corker for losing his temper and picking fights. Then he wants to kill somebody. When he’s in liquor he’s plumb crazy. He’s shot two men and carries their ears in his pocket. I’m not afraid of him, and neither are you; but to-morrow’s Sunday and we’ll tie up near his place, and I don’t want trouble.”
“Why don’t you pull right through, Charley?” asked Andy Johnson, as a spokesman. “We’re agreeable. ‘Dirty Jules’ is no great attraction.”
“Well,” said Charley, “we usually do ease off on Sunday, and it’s company orders and I don’t propose to change the programme at this stage of the game.”