CHAPTER XII.
WESTWARD HO!—FIGHTING DISSIPATION IN THE SEVENTH CAVALRY—GENERAL CUSTER'S TEMPTATIONS.
The junketing and frolic at St. Louis came to an end in a few days, and our faces were again turned westward to a life about as different from the glitter and show of a gay city in a holiday week as can be imagined. Leavenworth was our first halt, and its well-built streets and excellent stores surprised us. It had long been the outfitting place for our officers. The soldiers drew supplies from the military post, and the officers furnished themselves with camp equipage from the city. Here also they bought condemned ambulances, and put them in order for traveling-carriages for their families. I remember getting a faint glimmer of the climate we were about to endure, by seeing a wagon floored, and its sides lined with canvas, which was stuffed to keep out the cold, while a little sheet-iron stove was firmly fixed at one end, with a bit of miniature pipe protruding through the roof. The journey from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fé, New Mexico, then took six weeks. Everything was transported in the great army wagons called prairie-schooners. These were well named, as the two ends of the wagon inclined upward, like the bow and stern of a fore-and-after. It is hard to realize how strangely a long train of supplies for one of the distant posts looked, as it wound slowly over the plains. The blue wagon-beds, with white canvas covers rising up ever so high, disclosed, in the small circle where they were drawn together at the back, all kinds of material for the clothing and feeding of the army in the distant Territories. The number of mules to a wagon varies; sometimes there are four, and again six. The driver rides the near-wheel mule. He holds in his hand a broad piece of leather, an inch and a half in width, which divides over the shoulders of the lead or pilot mule, and fastens to the bit on either side of his mouth. The leaders are widely separated. A small hickory stick, about five feet long, called the jockey-stick, not unlike a rake-handle, is stretched between a pilot and his mate. This has a little chain at either end, and is attached by a snap or hook to the bit of the other leader.
When the driver gives one pull on the heavy strap, the pilot mule veers to the left, and pulls his mate. Two quick, sudden jerks mean to the right, and he responds, and pushes his companion accordingly; and in this simple manner the ponderous vehicle and all the six animals are guided. . . . The most spirited mules are selected from the train for leaders. They cannot be reached by the whip, and the driver must rely upon the emphasis he puts into his voice to incite them to effort. They know their names, and I have seen them respond to a call, even when not accompanied by the expletives that seem to be composed especially for this branch of charioteering. The driver of our mules naturally suppressed his invectives in my presence. The most profane soldier holds his tongue in a vise when he is in the presence of a woman, but he is sorely put to it to find a substitute for the only language he considers a mule will heed. I have seen our driver shake his head and move his jaws in an ominous manner, when the provoking leaders took a skittish leap on one side of the trail, or turned round and faced him with a protest against further progress. They were sometimes so afraid of buffalo, and always of Indians, they became rebellious to such a degree he was at his wits' end to get any further go out of them. It was in vain he called out, "You Bet, there!" "What are you about, Sal?" He plainly showed and said that he found "such 'ere tongue-lashing wouldn't work worth a rap with them vicious creeturs."
The driver, if he is not a stolid Mexican, takes much pride in his mules. By some unknown means, poor as he is, he possesses himself of fox or small coyote tails, which he fastens to their bridle, and the vagaries in the clipping of the poor beasts' tails, would set the fashion to a Paris hair-dresser. They are shaved a certain distance, and then a tuft is left, making a bushy ring. This is done twice, if Bet or Sal is vouchsafed an appendage long enough to admit of it; while the tuft on the end, though of little use to intimidate flies, is a marvel of mule-dudism. The coats of the beasts, so valued sometimes, shine like the fine hair of a good horse. Alas! not when, in the final stages of a long march, the jaded, half-starved beasts dragged themselves over the trail. Driver and lead mules even, lose ambition under the scorching sun, and with the insufficient food and long water famines.
The old reliability of a mule-team is the off-wheeler. It is his leathery sides that can be most readily reached by the whip called a "black-snake," and when the descent is made into a stream with muddy bed, the cut is given to this faithful beast, and on his powerful muscles depends the wrench that jerks the old schooner out of a slough. The nigh or saddle mule does his part in such an emergency, but he soon reasons that, because he carries the driver, not much more is expected of him.