The excitement at Jules’ trading store had quieted and only the mess of whiskey-sodden flour remained. Billy and Jim paid scant attention to this, except that they, too, were disgusted when they heard what old Jules had been up to. They were more intent upon getting to the wagon train camp. And here Charley Martin and the whole outfit, in fact, received them with a great ado. Everybody in the train seemed to know Billy, and almost everybody knew Hi and Jim.
There was a stranger to Davy in camp. He had arrived in a light buggy drawn by a strong, spirited team of black horses, and was chatting with Charley. His name proved to be B. F. Ficklin—“Ben” Ficklin. He shook hands with Billy, and Billy introduced Dave.
“Mr. Ficklin, this is my friend Dave Scott, youngest bull whacker on the plains.”
“You want to watch out or he’ll catch up with you, Billy,” bantered Mr. Ficklin.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” answered Billy, carelessly. “But I’ve got a head start over him. I’m a prairie sailor sure now, and navigation on the Platte is closed!”
Not only in sailing on the Platte, but in many other feats Dave never did catch up with Billy Cody.
Mr. Ficklin was the general superintendent of the Russell, Majors & Waddell freighting and staging business. He bore the news that the company had taken over the stage outfit of Hockaday & Liggett, which ran twice a month from St. Joseph on the Missouri to Salt Lake on the Platte River Overland Route, and were going to combine the Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak Express with it. He himself was on his way from Denver, back down the trail to inspect the condition of the stations from the Platte crossing to the Missouri.
“We’re going to make this stage line a hummer, boys,” he informed. “Hockaday & Liggett have been running two times a month on a schedule of twenty-one days to Salt Lake; no stations, and same team without change for several hundreds of miles at a stretch. The company are putting in stations every ten and fifteen miles all along the Overland route from the river to Salt Lake, and stocking them with provisions and fodder. We’re buying the best Kentucky mules that we can find and ordering more Concord coaches; and we’re going to put a coach through every day in the year, from the Missouri to Salt Lake, on a ten-day schedule, by the Salt Lake Overland Trail to the crossing here, then north to Laramie and over the South Pass. A stage will be sent down to Denver, too.”
Mr. Ficklin evidently was an enthusiast. Davy had heard of him—a hard worker and a booster for the company that he loved.