“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!