Chapter 18

There were six passengers in the coach, all of them old-timers in the West. And they were known as the Free Thompson party, from the name of the leader. Every one of these men was armed with a late model rifle and was taking full advantage of the company's rule which allowed the carrying of as much ammunition as one pleased. They had several thousand rounds of cartridges.

Such a seasoned company as this was not likely to go into a place like Stein's Pass without taking a look or two ahead; and six hundred Apaches were certain to offer some evidence of their presence to keen eyes. Which probably explains why the horses were not killed at once. For they were not. The driver was able to get the coach to the summit of a low bare knoll a little way off the road. The Free Thompson party made their stand on that hilltop.

They were cool men, uncursed by the fear of death, the sort who could roll a cigarette or bite a mouthful from a plug of chewing-tobacco between shots and enjoy the smoke or the cud; the sort who could look upon the advance of overwhelming odds and coolly estimate the number of yards which lay between.

These things are known of them and it is known that the place where they made their stand was far from water, a bare hilltop under a flaming sun, and round about them a ring of yelling Apaches.

There were a few rocks affording a semblance of cover. You can picture those seven men, with their weather-beaten faces, their old-fashioned slouching wide-rimmed hats, and their breeches tucked into their boot-tops. You can see them lying behind those boulders with their leathern cheeks pressed close to their rifle-stocks, their narrowed eyes peering along the lined sights; and then, as time went on, crouching behind the bodies of their slain horses.

And you can picture the turbaned Apaches with their frowzy hair and the ugly smears of paint across their grinning faces. You can see them creeping on their bellies through the clumps of coarse bear-grass, gliding like bronze snakes among the rocks, slowly enough--the Apache never liked the music of a rifle-bullet--but coming closer every hour. Every gully and rock and clump of prickly pear for a radius of a half-mile about that knoll sheltered its portion of the venomous brown swarm.

Night followed day; hot morning grew into scorching noontide; the full flare of the Arizona afternoon came on; and night again. The rifles cracked in the bear-grass. Thin jets of pallid flame spurted from behind the rocks. The bullets kicked up little dust-clouds.

So for three days and three nights. For it took those six hundred Apaches that length of time to kill the seven white men.

But before the last of them died, the Free Thompson party slew between 135 and 150 Indians.

In after years Cochise told of the battle.

"They were the bravest men I ever saw," he said. "They were the bravest men I ever heard of. Had I five hundred warriors such as they, I would own all of Chihuahua, Sonora, New Mexico, and Arizona."

That was the breed of men who kept the Butterfield stage line open, and the affair at Stein's Pass is cited to show something of their character, although it took place after the company began removing its rolling-stock. For in 1860 Russel, Majors & Waddel accomplished a remarkable coup and brought the overland mail to the northern route.

They performed what is probably the most daring exploit in the history of transportation. The story of their venture bristles with action; it is adorned by such names as Wild Bill Hickok, Pony Bob Haslam, Buffalo Bill, and Colonel Alexander Majors.

Colonel Majors held the broadhorn record on the old Santa Fe trail, ninety-two days on the round trip with oxen. He was the active spirit of the firm of Russel, Majors & Waddel. In 1859 these magnates of the freighting business had more than six thousand huge wagons and more than 75,000 oxen on the road between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Salt Lake City, hauling supplies for government posts and mining companies; they were operating a stage line to Denver where gold excitements were bringing men in droves.

One day in the winter of 1859-60 Senator W. M. Gwinn of California had a meeting with Majors' senior partner, William H. Russel, and several New York capitalists in Washington. Senator Gwinn proposed a plan to show the world that the St. Joseph-San Francisco route was practical throughout the year.

That scheme was the pony express; men on horseback with fresh relays every ten or twelve miles, to carry letters at top speed across the wilderness. Congress had pigeonholed his bill to finance such a venture. He urged now that private capital undertake it, and he talked so convincingly that Russel committed himself to enlist his partners in the enterprise.

Russel went back to Leavenworth, Kansas, the headquarters of the firm, and put the matter up to Majors and Waddel. They showed him in a very few minutes that he had been talked into a sure way of losing several hundred thousand dollars. But he reminded them that he had committed himself to the undertaking. They said that settled it; they would stand by him and make his word good.

Their stage line had stations every ten or twelve miles as far as Salt Lake; beyond that point there was not a single building; but within two months from the day when Russel had that talk with Senator Gwinn, the firm had completed the chain of those stations clear to Sacramento, purchased five hundred half-breed mustang ponies which they apportioned along the route, hired eighty riders and what stock-tenders were necessary, and hauled feed and provisions out across the intermountain deserts. They had droves of mules beating down trails through the deep drifts of the Sierras and the Rockies.

On April 3, 1860, Henry Roff swung into the saddle at Sacramento and Alexander Carlyle leaped on a brown mare in St. Joseph, Missouri. While cannon boomed and crowds cheered in those two remote cities, the ponies came toward each other from the ends of that two-thousand-mile trail on a dead run.

At the end of ten miles or so a relay mount was waiting for each rider. As he drew near the station each man let out a long coyote yell; the hostlers led his animal into the roadway. The messenger charged down upon them, drew rein, sprang to the earth, and while the agent lifted the pouches from one saddle to the other--as quickly as you read these words describing the process--gained the back of his fresh horse and sped on. At the end of his section--the length of these intervals varied from seventy-five to a hundred and twenty-five miles--each rider dismounted for the last time and turned the pouches over to a successor.

In this manner the mail went across prairie and sage-brush plain, through mountain passes where the snow lay deep beside the beaten trail and across the wide silent reaches of the Great American Desert. And the time on that first trip was ten days for both east and west bound pouches.

The riders were light of weight; they were allowed to carry no weapons save a bowie-knife and revolver; the letters were written on tissue-paper; the two pouches were fastened to a leathern covering which fitted over the saddle, and the thing was lifted with one movement from the last horse to the relay animal. When one of these messengers came within earshot of a station he always raised his voice in the long shrill coyote yell, and by day or night, as that signal came down the wind to them, the men who were on duty scrambled to get the waiting horse into its place.

Many of these half-breed mustangs were unbroken; some were famous for their ability at bucking. There is a man in my town, Joe Hand--he would hate to acknowledge that he is getting on in years even now--who used to ride the western end, and he said:

"They'd hold a bad horse for a fellow long enough to let you get the rowels of those big Mex spurs fastened in the hair cinch. Then it was you and that horse for it. The worst of it was that the pony would usually tire himself out with his pitching, and you'd lose time. I remember one that left me pretty badly stove up for a while, but I had the satisfaction of knowing he'd killed himself trying to pile me."

But bad horses were a part of the game; like bad men every one in the business expected them and took them as a matter of course. The riders of the pony express hardly recall such incidents because of the larger adventures with which their lives were filled.

There was the ride of Jim Moore, for a long time famous among the exploits on the frontier. His route went from Midway station to old Julesburg, one hundred and forty miles across the great plains of western Nebraska. The stations were from ten to fourteen miles apart. Arriving at the end of that grueling journey, he would rest for two days before making the return trip.

One day Moore started westward from Midway station, knowing that his partner, who carried the mail one way while he was taking it the other, was sick at Julesburg. It was a question whether the man would be able to take the eastbound pouches, and if he should not be there was no substitute on hand.

Realizing what might lie ahead of him, Moore pressed each fresh horse to its utmost speed during that westward ride. A man can endure only so long a term of punishment, and he resolved to save himself what minutes he could at the very beginning. He made that one hundred and forty miles in eleven hours.

The partner was in bed, and there was no hope of his rising for a day or two. The weary messenger started toward one of the bunks to get a bit of rest, but before he had thrown himself on the blankets, the coyote yell of the eastbound rider sounded up the road.

It was up to Moore to take the sick man's place now. While the hostlers were saddling a pony and leading it out in front of the station, he snatched some cold meat from the table, gulped down a cup of lukewarm coffee, and hurried outside. He was just in time to swing into the saddle. He clapped spurs to the pony and kept him on a run. So with each succeeding mount; and when he arrived at Midway he had put the two hundred and eighty miles of the round trip behind him in twenty-two hours.

In western Nevada, where the Paiute Indians were on the war-path, several of the stations were little forts, and riders frequently raced for their lives to these adobe sanctuaries. Pony Bob Haslam made his great three hundred and eighty mile ride across this section of scorching desert.

He rode out of Virginia City one day while the inhabitants were frantically working to fortify the town against war-parties whose signal-fires were blazing at the time on every peak for a hundred miles.

When he arrived at the Carson River, sixty miles away, he found that the settlers had seized all the horses at the station for use in the campaign against the savages. He went on without a relay down the Carson to Fort Churchill, fifteen miles farther. Here the man who was to relieve him refused to take the pouches.

Within ten minutes Haslam was in the saddle again. He rode thirty-five miles to the Carson sink; got a fresh horse and made the next thirty miles, without a drop of water; changed at Sand Springs and again at Cold Springs; and after one hundred and ninety miles in the saddle turned the pouches over to J. G. Kelley.

Here, at Smith's Creek, Pony Bob got nine hours' rest. Then he began the return trip. At Cold Springs he found the station a smoking shambles; the keeper and the stock-tender had been killed, the horses driven off by Indians. It was growing dark. He rode his jaded animal across the thirty-seven-mile interval to Sand Springs, got a remount, and pressed on to the sink of the Carson. Afterward it was found that during the night he had ridden straight through a ring of Indians who were headed in the same direction in which he was going. From the sink he completed his round trip of three hundred and eighty miles without a mishap, arriving at the end within four hours of the schedule time.

Nine months after the opening of the line the Civil War began, and the pony express carried the news of the attack on Fort Sumter from St. Joseph to San Francisco in eight days and fourteen hours.

Newspapers and business men had awakened to the importance of this quick communication, and bonuses were offered for the delivery of important news ahead of schedule. President Buchanan's last message had heretofore held the record for speedy passage, going over the route in seven days and nineteen hours. But that time was beaten by two hours in the carrying of Lincoln's inaugural address. Seven days and seventeen hours--the world's record for transmitting messages by men and horses!

The firm of Russel, Majors & Waddel spent $700,000 on the pony express during the eighteen months of its life; they took in something less than $500,000. But they accomplished what they had set out to do. In 1860 the Butterfield line was notified to transfer its rolling-stock to the west end of the northern route; their rivals got the mail contract for the eastern portion.

The Wells-Butterfield interests were on the under side now. The change to the new route involved enormous expense; and with the withdrawal of troops at the beginning of the Civil War, Apaches and Comanches plundered the disintegrating line of stations. The company lasted only a short time on the west end of the overland mail and retired. Its leaders now devoted their energies to the express business.

At this juncture a new man got the mail contract. Ben Holliday was his name, and in his day he was known as a Napoleon. Perhaps it was the first time that term was used in connection with American promoters. Holliday, who had begun as a small storekeeper in a Missouri village, had made one canny turn after another until, at the time when the mail came to the northern route, he owned several steamship lines and large freighting interests and was beginning to embark in the stage business. The firm of Russel, Majors & Waddel was losing money, owing in part to bad financial management and in part to the courageous venture of the pony express. Holliday absorbed their property early in the sixties. He was the transportation magnate of his time, the first American to force a merger in that industry.

One of his initial steps was to improve the operation of the stage line. Some of the efficiency methods of his subordinates were picturesque to say the least. In Julesburg, which was near the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek in northeastern Colorado, the agent was an old Frenchman, after whom the place had been named. This Jules had been feathering his own nest at the expense of the company, and the new management supplanted him with one Jack Slade, whose record up to that time was either nineteen or twenty killings. Slade was put in charge at Julesburg with instructions to clean up his division.

While the new superintendent was exterminating such highway robbers and horse-thieves as Jules had gathered about him in this section, his predecessor was biding in the little settlement, watching for a chance to play even.

One day Slade came into the general store near the station, and the Frenchman, who had seen a good opportunity for ambush here, fired both barrels of a double-barreled shotgun into his body at a range of about fifty feet.

Slade took to his bed. But he was made of the stuff which absorbs much lead without any great amount of permanent harm. He was up again in a few weeks. He hunted down Jules, who had taken refuge in the Indian country to the north on hearing of his recovery. He brought the prisoner back to Julesburg, and bound him to the snubbing-post in the middle of the stage company's corral.

Accounts of what followed differ. Some authorities maintain that Slade killed Jules. Others, who base their assertions on the statement of men who said they were eye-witnesses, tell how Slade enjoyed himself for some time filling the prisoner's clothing with bullet holes and then exclaimed,

"Hell! You ain't worth the lead to kill you." And turned the victim loose.

But all narrators agree on this; before Slade unbound the living Jules--or the dead one, whichever it may have been--he cut off the prisoner's ears and put them in his pocket.

It may be noted in passing that this truculent efficiency expert went wrong in after years and wound up his days at the end of a rope in Virginia City, Montana.

Ben Holliday carried the mails overland throughout the early sixties. But during the summer of 1864 the Indians of the plains, for the first time in their history, made a coalition. They united in one grand war-party against the outposts along the line, and for a distance of four hundred miles they destroyed stations, murdered employees, and made off with live stock. The loss to the company was half a million dollars.

It crippled Holliday. And the government so delayed consideration of his claims for reimbursment that he was glad to sell the property. The firm of Wells Fargo, who had been increasing their express business until they virtually monopolized that feature of common carrying throughout the West at the close of the Civil War, took the line over. Wells Fargo! It was the old Wells Butterfield Co. again. The first winners in the struggle were the last.

The railroad came. Men said that the day of adventure was over. But this adventure has not ended yet.

While this story was being written another pioneer died on that overland mail route. And when his aero-plane came fluttering down out of a driving snowstorm to crash, in a mass of tangled wreckage, on the side of Elk Mountain, Wyoming, Lieutenant E. V. Wales went to his death within a rifle-shot of the road where so many of his predecessors gave up their lives trying--even as he was then striving--to quicken communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

BOOT-HILL

Boot-Hill! Back in the wild old days you found one on the new town's outskirts and one where the cattle trail came down to the ford, and one was at the summit of the pass. There was another on the mesa overlooking the water-hole where the wagon outfits halted after the long dry drive. The cow-boys read the faded writing on the wooden headboards and from the stories made long ballads which they sang to the herds on the bedding grounds. The herds have long since vanished, the cow-boys have ridden away over the sky-line, the plaintive songs are slipping from the memories of a few old men, and we go riding by the places where those headboards stood, oblivious.

Of the frontier cemeteries whose dead came to their ends, shod in accordance with the grim phrase of their times, there remains one just outside the town of Tombstone to the north. Here straggling mesquite bushes grow on the summit of the ridge; cacti and ocatilla sprawl over the sun-baked earth hiding between their thorny stems the headboards and the long narrow heaps of stones which no man could mistake. Some of these headboards still bear traces of black-lettered epitaphs which tell how death came to strong men in the full flush of youth. But the vast majority of the boulder heaps are marked by cedar slabs whose penciled legends the elements have long since washed away.

The sun shines hot here on the summit of the ridge. Across the wide mesquite flat the granite ramparts of the Dragoons frown all the long day, and the bleak hill graveyard frowns back at them. Thus the men who came to this last resting-place frowned back at Death.

There was a day when every mining camp and cow-town from the Rio Grande to the Yellowstone owned its boot-hill; a day when lone graves marked the trails and solitary headboards rotted slowly in the unpeopled wilderness. Many of these isolated wooden monuments fell before the long assaults of the elements; the low mounds vanished and the grass billowed in the wind hiding the last vestiges of the leveled sepulchers. Sometimes the spot was favorable; outfits rested there; new headboards rose about the first one; for the road was long and weary, the fords were perilous from quicksands; thirst lurked in the desert, and the Indians were always waiting. The camp became a settlement, and in the days of its infancy, when there was no law save that of might, the graveyard spread over a larger area. There came an era when a member of that stern straight-shooting breed who blazed the trails for the coming of the statutes wielded the powers of high justice, the middle, and the low. Outlaw and rustler opposed the dominion of this peace officer. Then the cemetery boomed like the young town. Finally things settled down to jury trials and men let lawyers do most of the fighting with forensics instead of forty-fives. Churches were built and school-houses; a new graveyard was established; brush and weeds hid the old one's leaning headboards. Time passed; a city grew; the boot-hill was forgotten.

This is a chronicle of men whose bones lie in those vanished boot-hills. If one could stand aside on the day of judgment and watch them pass when the brazen notes of the last trump are growing fainter, he would witness a brave procession. But we at least can marshal the shadowy host from fast waning memories and, looking upon some of their number, recall the deeds they did, the manner of their dying.

Here then they come through the curtain of time's mists, Indian fighter, town marshal, faro-dealer, and cow-boy. There are a few among them upon whom it is not worth while to gaze, those whose lives and deaths were unfit for recording; there are a vast multitude whose heroic stories were never told and never will be; and there are some whose deeds as they have come down from the lips of the old-timers should never die.

Thus in the forefront pass lean forms clad for the most part in garments fringed with buckskin. You can see where some have torn off portions of the fringes to clean their rifles.

Old-fashioned long-barreled muzzle-loaders, these rifles; and powder-horns hang by the sides of the bearers. They are long-haired men; and their faces are deeply burned by sun and wind, one hundred and eighty-three of them; and where they died, fighting to the last against four thousand of Santa Ana's soldiers, rose the first boot-hill. That was in San Antonio, Texas, at the building called the Alamo; and in this day, when schoolboys who can describe Thermopylae in detail know nothing of that far finer stand, it will do no harm to dwell on a proud episode ignored by most text-book histories.

On the fifth day of March, 1836, San Antonio's streets were resonant with the heavy tread of marching troops, the clank of arms and the rumble of moving artillery. Four thousand Mexican soldiers were being concentrated on one point, a little mission chapel and two long adobe buildings which formed a portion of a walled enclosure, the Alamo.

For nearly two weeks General Santa Ana had been tightening the cordon of cavalry, infantry, and artillery about the place. It housed one hundred and eighty-three lank-haired frontiersmen, a portion of General Sam Houston's band who had declared for Texan independence. The Mexicans had cut them off from water; their food was running low. On this day the dark-skinned commander planned to take the square. His men had managed to plant a cannon two hundred yards away. When they blew down the walls the infantry would charge. It only remained for them to load the field-piece. Bugles sounded; officers galloped through the sheltered streets where the foot soldiers were held in waiting. There came from the direction of the Alamo the steady rat-tat-tat of rifles. The hours went by but the cannon remained silent.