Part 11

“I guess I am,” admitted the little fellow. “Life out here is fierce unless you’re used to it.”

“How are the diggin’s?” queried Davy, eagerly.

“Forty miles into the mountains――and then always a little farther,” asserted the young fellow. “If you can stick it out and don’t freeze to death or starve to death you may make a few hundred dollars――and you may not. Did you ever mine?”

“No,” said Davy, and Mr. Baxter shook his head, smiling.

“Then you’re tenderfeet like I am. That’s the trouble in there. Half the people don’t know how to find gold and the other half don’t know it when they do find it. It’s fierce, I tell you. _I’m_ bound home, busted. I had to walk in, fifty miles; but I’ve earned just enough to take me through to the Missouri.”

“How?” asked Davy.

“Sweeping out for one of the gambling houses,” and with a gesture of disgust the slender youngster turned away.

Mr. Baxter watched him a moment.

“Davy,” he uttered, “that’s no boy. That’s a girl. Great Scott! What a place for a girl!”

And later they found out that Mr. Baxter had spoken the truth. They were glad to learn that the pretended boy took the next stage back to Leavenworth and reached there safely.

“Let’s try our luck at the post-office,” proposed Mr. Baxter. “I’d like to get a letter, myself.”

They threaded their way in the direction of the office. The mail had recently come in, for from the post-office window a line of men, single file, extended over a block. However, before they two took their places Billy Cody stopped them.

“I asked for your mail,” he announced. “There wasn’t any. I got a letter from ma. All she said was: ‘Dear Will. Let us know how you are. We are well. Mother.’ And I had to pay fifty cents for it down from Laramie. The new stage line carries letters for twenty-five cents. Wish ma had written more for the money. She might just as well.”

“What’s the news, Billy? What are you and the rest of the outfit going to do?”

“Hi and Jim and I are going on up to the diggin’s right away. See that line of travel?” And Billy pointed to the constant procession of wagons and of people afoot, extending from the settlement as far as the eye could reach, westward into the hills fifteen miles distant. They’re all going. Left-over’s quit and joined another outfit. He couldn’t wait. Jim and Hi are buying supplies. Did you notice the prices? Eggs are two dollars and a half a dozen. Milk fifty cents a quart. Flour ten dollars for a fifty-pound sack. Reckon beans and sowbelly will do for us. They say even game is scarce around the diggin’s.

“If you fellows don’t mind I believe I’ll stay around here for a while till people cool down a little,” said the Reverend Mr. Baxter.

“Cool down!” exclaimed Billy. “Huh! The stage driver says he passed ten thousand emigrants all heading this way!”

“Then I guess I won’t be missed,” laughed Mr. Baxter.

“How about you, Dave?” asked Billy.

Davy hesitated. What the “boy” (who was a girl) had told them rather weighed on his mind. And the same old story of “beans and sowbelly” did not sound inviting any longer.

“We saw Mr. Majors. He offered Dave a job freighting and a pass to Leavenworth,” put in Mr. Baxter.

“Take it if you want to, Dave,” said Billy, quickly. “Life in the diggin’s will be mighty tough, but I’ve got started and I’m going in. You do as you please.”

“Well,” faltered Dave, “I reckon maybe I’ll stay out a while.”

“All right,” quoth Billy. “We’ll see you before we leave. We want to pull right out, though.”

Nothing could stop Hi and Jim and Billy; and sure enough that afternoon they did pull out for the diggings forty and more miles west, among the mountains. They settled with Mr. Baxter and Dave for the two shares in the Hee-Haw outfit, and left with a cheer.

Davy felt a momentary twinge of regret that he was not going, too; but when he remembered what Mr. Majors had said about “haphazard looking” and a “bird in the hand” he decided that, after all, he had done what was best. The work of bridging the plains was a great work and very necessary if these settlements at the mountains were to live.

“Let’s go over to Auraria and see that, Dave,” invited Mr. Baxter. “Then we can find a place to stop in over night. I’m tired of bedding out on the ground.”

Cherry Creek was almost dry. Camps and cabins had been located right in the middle of it, so they easily walked across. Auraria was larger than Denver, but the buildings were not so good. They were of rough cottonwood logs, whereas the Denver logs were smoothed and many were of pine brought down from the timber in the hills. Auraria had the newspaper, the _Rocky Mountain News_, whose press and type and so forth had been hauled overland by the editor, Mr. W. N. Byers. Like Denver City, Auraria was bustling with all kinds of people.

“How are you, strangers? Don’t you want to buy a city lot and make your fortune?” invited an alert man of the two Hee-Haws.

“What’s the price?” asked Mr. Baxter.

“What’ll you give? Cash or trade? The best lots in the city. Can’t be beat.”

“Will you take a sack of flour?” demanded Mr. Baxter.

“Done!” snapped the man. “Flour’s better than money, friend. Where’s your flour?”

“Where are your lots?”

“Right yonder. I’ll show you.”

The man promptly led them on. The lots proved to be somewhere in the midst of bare, sandy ground half a mile out from the business street. They looked forlorn and lonely, and Davy did not think much of them. Neither, evidently, did Mr. Baxter. One rude cabin stood there.

“Cabin too?” queried Mr. Baxter.

“Sure.”

“How many lots?”

“Five, my friend. Five of the finest lots in this bustling metropolis for your sack of flour. And remember this is Auraria; ’tain’t measley Denver. I reckon you could buy half of Denver for your flour and then you’d be cheated.”

“All right. We’ll take you, won’t we, Davy?” responded Mr. Baxter, off-hand. “And we’ll move right in.”

“Show me your flour and we’ll go to the land office and close the deal.”

So they delivered to him the flour. At the land office the clerk asked their names.

“This is the Jones’ flour, Dave,” reminded Mr. Baxter, eyeing Davy. “We’ll have that deed made out to Jasper Jones; he’s on the way. Meanwhile we’ll occupy the cabin.”

That was certainly a good scheme――besides, as occurred to Dave, being very honest. Only it seemed rather a high price to pay for just five lots away from everywhere. The next time that Davy saw those lots they were quoted at a thousand dollars apiece!

XIV

DAVY SIGNS AS “EXTRA”

One more day in Denver and Auraria satisfied Dave. He had seen about all there was to see, and had loafed long enough. He wanted to go to work. However, many other people wanted to go to work, too. But work was scarce and money scarcer, and provisions were tremendously high. Travellers were constantly coming back from the mountains with tales of woe and with empty pockets and sore feet. The great editor, Horace Greeley, had advised people to plant crops; then he had continued on west, for California. But the people were bent on getting rich all at once by mining instead of waiting for crops. This made the situation bad, especially for a boy.

“You’d better take the stage back to-morrow, Dave,” counselled Mr. Baxter. “I’ll see you later.”

“Guess I will, then,” said Dave. “What will you do, though?” For he did not like to desert his partner.

“Oh,” laughed Mr. Baxter, “there’s a good living in hauling timber in from the foothills. Another fellow has offered to furnish the team and do the hauling if I’ll do the chopping. But that’s no life for a boy, Dave. You’ll learn more, freighting out of Leavenworth; and then you can go to school in the winter. See?”

That sounded sensible. Thus the Hee-Haw outfit had divided: Billy Cody and Hi and Jim and Left-over mining; Mr. Baxter cutting timber, and Davy freighting across the plains. Such was life in the busy West.

Davy engaged passage in the next morning’s Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak stage, east bound to the States. It had taken the Hee-Haw outfit forty days to come out; now Davy was going back in six. This was luxury. The coach held six passengers, with one on the seat. There was a school-teacher from Vermont, a merchant from Ohio, a banker from Chicago, an army officer from Fort Leavenworth, a man and wife from Boston, and Davy. All, except Davy, had been to the “diggin’s”――and the Ohio merchant let slip the fact that he had located a good claim there where he and his partner were washing out two hundred dollars a day! So he was returning for his family.

Yes, it was an interesting company; but as best of all, the driver was Hank Bassett!

“Why, hello!” greeted Hank of Dave. “Bully for you. Get up here on the seat. I’ll take you through in style.”

“I engaged that seat,” objected the school-teacher.

“Not much,” retorted Hank. “It’ll make you seasick. I can have what I want in this seat; and the boy rides there. I can depend on him if I need a hand, and that’s very important, mister.”

“You know him, do you?”

“You’re right I know him. We’ve worked together before, haven’t we, Dave?”

Davy blushed, somewhat embarrassed by Hank’s hearty manner; but Hank had ordered, and Hank was boss, and Dave climbed to the seat beside him.

With crack of whip and cheer from the crowd gathered to watch, at a gallop out surged the four mules for the nigh seven hundred miles to the Missouri River and the States. Davy thoroughly enjoyed that trip. Hank sent his mules forward at a rattling pace; for, as he explained, he changed teams at every station, eighteen or twenty miles apart. Night and day the stage travelled, making its one hundred miles each twenty-four hours, halting only to change teams and for meals.

And night and day the Pike’s Peak pilgrims were in sight. The westward travel was even more pronounced than earlier in the year, when the Hee-Haws had joined in it. There were new signs, too, on the wagons. “Bound for the Land of Gold.” “Family Express; Milk for Sale!” “Mind Your Own Business.” “We Are Off for the Peak. Are You?” “Hooray for the Diggin’s!” These and other announcements Davy read on the prairie schooners as the hurrying stage passed.

“Horace Greeley, the New York editor, wrote back east that the Pike’s Peak country is O. K.,” said Hank to Davy. “That’s what’s set the tide flowin’ in earnest. People were waitin’ to get his opinion. He inspected the diggin’s, and he says the gold is thar――although most people would do better to take up land in Kansas and go to farmin’. If you call this trail a busy one you ought to see the Salt Lake Overland Trail up the Platte. I hear three hundred wagons a day pass Fort Kearney. This booms the freightin’ business. The old man (Hank meant Mr. Majors) and his pards are puttin’ on every team they can lay hands to for haulin’ goods an’ provisions. Why, this hyar stage line is usin’ a thousand mules and fifty coaches. You’re thinkin’ of bull whackin’, are you?”

“Mr. Majors offered me a job,” answered Davy.

Hank spat over the lines.

“It’s a good firm to work for,” he said. “And a man’s job. After you’ve bull whacked a while you’ll be drivin’ stage like I am.”

That sounded attractive. To handle four mules at a gallop, dragging a coach across the plains in spite of Indians and weather, appeared quite a feat. Driving stage meant taking care of people as well as of animals.

However, holding up one’s end with a freight outfit was not to be despised, these days. On arriving at Leavenworth Davy lost no time in reporting at the Russell, Majors & Waddell office. Mr. Majors was not here. He had removed his family up to Nebraska City, on the Missouri above Leavenworth, where a branch office had been established in order to relieve the crowded state of the Leavenworth shipping yards. However, if Mr. Majors was gone, here was Mr. Russell, as snappy and alert as ever, taking care of whatever came his way.

“All right, my boy,” he greeted promptly. “If you want a job you’re just in time. When did you get in?”

“This noon, Mr. Russell.”

“I suppose you’re ready to start back again for the mountains?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. We’ve got a train made up to leave in about an hour. Charley Martin’s wagon master. You’ll find him a fine fellow. He comes from a wealthy family in my home town, Lexington, Missouri. You’ll be an ‘extra’ at forty dollars a month, and have a mule to ride. I expect you to do as well as Billy Cody’s done. You know what your duties are, do you? You’ll act as the wagon master’s orderly, or messenger, to carry word along the line; and if necessary you’ll fill the place of any hand who’s sick. Let’s see――you signed the pledge once, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Mr. Russell.”

“Well, we changed that pledge a little to make it stronger. Mr. Majors has drawn up a new one. Read it before you sign,” and Mr. Russell reached out his tanned, freckled hand for a pad of printed forms.

Davy read: “I, ――――, do hereby swear, before the Great and Living God, that during my engagement and while I am in the employ of Russell, Majors & Waddell, I will, under no circumstances, use profane language; that I will drink no intoxicating liquors; that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employe of the firm, and that in every respect I will conduct myself honestly, be faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts as to win the confidence and esteem of my employers. So help me God.”

This was an impressive promise, but it sounded just like the strict and Christian Mr. Majors. Dave had no hesitation in signing it.

“All right,” crisply approved Mr. Russell. “If you keep that pledge you’ll never be far wrong. Here’s your Bible. To every man employed in our trains we give a Bible. There’s no time or place when the Bible isn’t a help and a comfort. The more of them we get on the plains the better. Now I’m going out to the camp. You come along and I’ll start you off.”

Davy tucked the compact little leather-bound Bible into his pocket, and followed Mr. Russell’s wiry active figure out of the door. Russell, Majors & Waddell certainly organized their business on somewhat unusual lines; Davy had heard the pledge and the Bible both laughed at by outsiders as being foolishness for running bull trains. But nobody was enabled to point out the harm done, and few denied that considerable good might result. At any rate, no better bull outfits crossed the plains than those of Russell, Majors & Waddell. They did what no other outfits could do; nothing stopped them.

The streets of Leavenworth were busier than ever, with emigrants, teamsters, rivermen, soldiers, and Indians――Kickapoos, Osages and Pottawattamies; with wagons, oxen, mules and horses. The company’s freight trains were started from a large camp on the outskirts of town. Hither Mr. Russell, with Davy in tow, hastened.

Charley Martin was speedily found working hard――together with the assistant wagon master, who was nicknamed “Yank.”

“Here’s your ‘extra,’ Charley,” announced Mr. Russell.

Charley paused and wiped his forehead. He gazed, rather puzzled.

“What name does he go by, Mr. Russell?”

“Davy Scott.”

“Sometimes they call me ‘Red,’ too,” volunteered Davy.

Charley Martin smiled; and when he smiled, Davy instantly liked him.

“Oho! This must be Billy Cody’s pard on the trail and at the Cody home, I reckon. I’ve heard about him, but I never had the pleasure of meeting him. You must have been growing some, haven’t you, Red? I thought you were a runt.” And Davy fidgeted, embarrassed. During his sturdy life in the open air he had indeed been growing; he had shot up and broadened out, and had acquired a steady eye and a manner of self-reliance. “Where’ve you been keeping yourself lately?” continued Charley.

“I’ve just got back from Pike’s Peak.”

“Good for you. Well, if you’ve travelled with Billy Cody, and Mr. Russell recommends you, too, you’ll do.” And Charley called to his assistant: “Here’s our ‘extra,’ Yank.”

Charley was small and compact, tanned and gray-eyed, and so quick and cheery that anybody felt like calling him by his first name at once. “Yank,” the assistant wagon boss, was high-shouldered, long-legged, slouchy, and very different from Charley. His sullen face was bristly with carroty stubble, his eyes were small and close together, and his lips were thin and hard-set, leaking tobacco-juice. Him, Davy did not fancy at all; and by his glance and contemptuous grunt he evidently did not fancy Davy.

Further exchange of conversation was interrupted by the incisive voice of Mr. Russell reproving a teamster who had a perverse ox in hand.

“My man, don’t you understand there’s to be no cursing while you’re working for this company?”

“I’m not cursing,” retorted the man, with a dreadful oath.

“But you’re cursing right this minute!” asserted Mr. Russell, sharply.

“I’m not, either,” answered the man, with another oath.

“Why, you curse every time you open your mouth,” asserted Mr. Russell, red with anger.

“I don’t,” insisted the man, as before.

That was too much for Mr. Russell. As if not knowing quite what to do with such an ignoramus as this he walked off, scratching his head, and left the puzzled teamster scratching his.

“Well, Red, get busy if you’re to travel with this outfit,” bade Charley to Davy; and proceeded to give orders right and left.

The train was made up and almost ready to start. The last covers were being drawn taut, and the last wagon, which had been delayed to load in town, was approaching.

“All set?” shouted Charley to the teamster who, standing beside the rear pair of his team, seemed to have been appointed as the leader.

The teamster nodded.

“All set.”

“String out,” ordered Charley, and the word was carried along: “String out, boys! Fall in!”

The lead teamster flung his lash; it flipped forward and cracked like a pistol-shot over the backs of his twelve oxen.

“Spot! Dandy! Yip! Yip with you!”

The twelve oxen lunged all together as a well-trained team; and creaking, the huge wagon rolled ahead.

“Haw! Whoa――haw! Hep! Hep!”

To the shouts, and the volley of whip-snappers, the grunts of the oxen, creakings of the wagons and yokes, and rattle of the ox-chains, the train uncoiled from the mass that it had formed and lengthened out into a long line. Led by that first teamster whose “bulls,” sleek-coated, evidently were his pride, the white-topped bull train stretched out for the farther West.

Charley, the wagon master, rode well up with the leading team, and Davy, his assistant, as his aide or orderly, rode at his elbow ready for orders. Yank, assistant wagon master, was down the line. At the rear, behind the few loose cattle taken along for use in case of accidents, rode on a mule the “cavvy” herder――a young Eastern chap who was Mr. Waddell’s nephew and wanted to learn plains life. “Cavvy” of course was the short for “cavvy-yard,” and “cavvy-yard” was the slang for “caballada,” Spanish of “horse-herd.”

There were twenty-six wagons in the train: twenty-five loaded with freight and one mess-wagon carrying the supplies. They were enormous wagons, some of them seventeen feet long, the broad boxes five or six feet deep, the great wheels wide tired; and over all a flaring hood of canvas labelled “Osnaburg” (the trademark of the famous mills which furnished most of the duck and sheeting used on the plains), stretched upon bows, nailed fast at the edges to the wagon-box, but at either end puckered tight by draw ropes, leaving an oblong hole. As Davy knew, the wheels, axles and other running gear were the very best of wood. Even the ends of the axles, on which fitted the wheels, were wood. The wheels were held on by an iron linch-pin thrust through the axle outside the hub. These wooden axles on the sandy, dusty plains required much greasing, and from the rear axle of each wagon hung a pot of tar for greasing. On the reach-pole, which was the pole projecting from underneath the box, out behind the wagon, was slung a ten-gallon keg of water.

Each wagon was drawn by twelve oxen, yoked together in six pairs. This was the regular fashion; twenty-five freight wagons to a train, and six yoke of bulls to a wagon. There were thirty-one men in the outfit: a teamster for each of the twenty-six wagons, the wagon master and the assistant wagon master, Davy the “extra” another “extra” (who was a regular teamster), and the cavvy herder. The teamsters trudged beside their teams; the only persons who rode were Charley and Yank and Davy and the cavvy herder, on their mules.

The freight train was called a “bull train”; the wagons were “bull wagons”; the oxen were “bull teams”; the teamsters were “bull whackers”; the wagon master was the “bull wagon boss”; and the whole array was a “bull outfit.”

Stretched out in a line a quarter of a mile long, the train made a handsome sight to Davy, proudly looking back from his post at the flank of Charley’s mule. The oxen, fresh for the start, with heads low and necks fitted into great wooden yoke and bow, pulled stanchly, at a dignified, steady plod, keeping the heavy ox-chains tight. The majority of the “bulls” were spotted white and red or black; there were a number of roans and reds and a few black. The head team were black, except the pair next to the wagon, which were red. Several had been dehorned because they were fighters.

The teamsters strode sturdily, cracking their whips, shouting to their teams and to one another, and occasionally singing. One and all wore neither coat nor vest, but heavy flannel shirt of red or blue, and a silk or cotton handkerchief about the neck. Their shirts were tucked into coarse trousers, and the trousers into high, stout cowhide boots. On their heads were the regular broad-brimmed, flat-crowned felt hats that plains travellers liked best. About the waists of the most of the men were strapped one or two big Colt’s revolvers, and through the belt was thrust a butcher-knife. They all had a gun somewhere, either belted on or else as a yager or a rifle stowed handily in the wagon. And every teamster carried, trailing or coiled, his long-lashed whip.

The train was, as Charley remarked roundly to Dave, “a crack outfit.”

“We’ve got some of the top-notcher teams and whackers of the whole Russell, Majors & Waddell concern,” he said. “There’s not a better bull-whip slinger or a better six yoke of bulls on the trail than right here with this lead wagon. Of course, I suppose we’ve some crooked sticks, like every train has; but they’ve got to behave themselves while I’m boss.”

The train was bound for Denver by the regular Overland Trail up the Platte River, through central Nebraska. The Government road from Leavenworth, to strike the main trail, was that travelled road which crossed the Salt Creek Valley; Davy seized the chance to dart aside for a moment and say “how-de-do” to Mother Cody and the girls. He gave them what word he could of Billy, but they gave him none, for they had not had time to hear from Billy since he had reached the diggings.

The bull train toiled on over the hill and out of the valley. Now it was fairly launched upon its day-by-day journey of 700 miles. It did not travel alone. The trail before and behind was alive with other outfits, chiefly emigrants, likewise bound for the “Peak,” and Charley asserted that when the main trail was entered, at Fort Kearney, where the travel from Omaha and St. Joe and Nebraska City joined with the travel from Leavenworth, there’d scarcely be room to camp!

“How long will we be on the road, do you think?” asked Dave.

“Leavenworth to Denver? About fifty days if we have reasonable luck. The trail’s so crowded and dusty and fodder’s so scarce I don’t reckon we’ll average more than twelve miles a day. We’re hauling seventy hundred pounds in some of those wagons. But I have averaged fifteen miles a day; and travelling empty a smart bull train headed for home can make twenty.”

It now was past midsummer; it would be fall when the train reached the mountains, and winter before it got home again.

XV

FREIGHTING ACROSS THE PLAINS