The road was not only rough and wearisome; it was dangerous. For a time the Indians were so troublesome that a soldier was sent with every stage. We should have felt safer without these soldiers though, for we knew how the Indians hated soldiers. The worst danger, however, was not from Indians; they got lots of blame that didn’t belong to them. It was the “road agents” that infested the country during those days that gave us most trouble.
Two Gosiute braves of Overland Stage days.
Many a time these desperadoes would hold up the stage on some lonely place on the road. They would spring out before the horses and order the driver to stop, or would shoot down a horse to stop the stage; then after robbing the passengers and rifling the mail bags of their valuables, they would dash away with their plunder to their hiding places in the hills.
Some drivers, when these outlaws came upon them, would put the whip to their horses and try to dash by them to safety. At times the boys managed to give the robbers the slip, but oftener the driver would be shot down in the attempt to escape. Then the horses, mad with fright, if no passenger was aboard to grab the lines, would run away, upset the coach, perhaps, and string things along the trail in great shape. Sometimes they have dashed into a station with nothing but the front wheels dragging behind them.
I was lucky enough to escape such mishaps. The robbers never held me up; but one day I did have one of my wheel horses shot down, by some skulking desperado or Indian, we never knew which. I was swinging along a dugway down hill about two miles west of Canyon station when it happened. Three passengers—two men and a woman—were in the stage. A shot rang out and my off wheel horse dropped dead.
Antelope Jake, an aged Gosiute Indian who won his name by killing antelope for Overland Stage stations.
I flung off the brake, knowing what was up, cracked my whip and away we went plunging down the hill, dragging the dead horse with us till I thought we were out of gunshot. No more shots came, so I stopped the team, jumped down and began to unhitch. The man inside the coach jumped out too, but instead of helping me, he grabbed the whip and begun to lash the team, yelling to me to go on. He was so scared he acted like a crazy man till his wife jumped out, grabbed the whip from his hand, and told him to behave himself. Then he cooled down a little; and with the help of the other passenger, I got the dead horse out of the harness, hitched one of the leaders in his place, and drove on to the next station, without any more trouble. I never found out who did that devilish trick, but I don’t believe it was stage robbers, though, for they would have followed us up and finished their mischief. Other drivers, however, were not so lucky. Three different times Major Egan brought in the stage with the driver dead in the boot and the stage shot full of holes. At one time a driver who had been wounded by outlaws was loaded into my stage. We were trying to get him through to Salt Lake, but the poor fellow died while he was with me. No other passenger was along at the time. I couldn’t help the sufferer much. It was a terrible experience, I tell you, for him and me too, that long night on the lonely Nevada desert.
