“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.