Among the herders was a bugler boy, who was remarkable for his bravery in the skirmish and for his untiring endeavours to turn the animals back toward the fort, but all without avail; on they went, with the savages, close to their heels, giving vent to the most vociferous shouts of exultation, and directing the most obscene and insulting gesticulations to the soldiers that were after them.
While this exciting contest for the mastery was going on, an old Apache chief dashed in the rear of the bold bugler boy, and could, without doubt, easily have killed the little fellow; but instead of doing this, from some idea of a good joke, or for some other incomprehensible reason, his natural blood-thirsty instinct was changed, and he merely knocked the bugler's hat from his head with the flat of his hand, and at the same time encouragingly stroked his hair, as much as to say: "You are a brave boy," and then rode off without doing him any harm.
Thirty years ago last August, I was riding from Fort Larned to Fort Union, New Mexico, in the overland coach. I had one of my clerks with me; we were the only passengers, and arrived at Fort Dodge, which was the commencement of the "long route," at midnight. There we changed drivers, and at the break of day were some twenty-four miles on our lonely journey. The coach was rattling along at a breakneck gait, and I saw that something was evidently wrong. Looking out of one of the doors, I noticed that our Jehu was in a beastly state of intoxication. It was a most dangerous portion of the Trail; the Indians were not in the best of humours, and an attack was not at all improbable before we arrived at the next station, Fort Lyon.
I said to my clerk that something must be done; so I ordered the driver to halt, which he did willingly, got out, and found that, notwithstanding his drunken mood, he was very affable and disposed to be full of fun. I suggested that he get inside the coach and lie down to sleep off his potations, to which he readily assented, while I and my clerk, after snugly fixing him on the cushions, got on the boot, I taking the lines, he seizing an old trace-chain, with which he pounded the mules along; for we felt ourselves in a ticklish predicament should we come across any of the brigands of the plains, on that lonely route, with the animals to look out for, and only two of us to do the fighting.
Suddenly we saw sitting on the bank of the Arkansas River, about a dozen rods from the Trail, an antiquated-looking savage with his war-bonnet on, and armed with a long lance and his bow and arrows. We did not care a cent for him, but I thought he might be one of the tribe's runners, lying in wait to discover the condition of the coach—whether it had an escort, and how many were riding in it, and that then he would go and tell how ridiculously small the outfit was, and swoop down on us with a band of his colleagues, that were hidden somewhere in the sand hills south of the river. He rose as we came near, and made the sign, after he had given vent to a series of "How's!" that he wanted to talk; but we were not anxious for any general conversation with his savage majesty just then, so my clerk applied the trace-chain more vigorously to the tired mules, in order to get as many miles between him and the coach as we could before he could get over into the sand hills and back.
It was, fortunately, a false alarm; the old warrior perhaps had no intentions of disturbing us. We arrived at Fort Lyon in good season, with our valorous driver absolutely sobered, requesting me to say nothing about his accident, which, of course, I did not.
As has been stated, the caravans bound for Santa Fe and the various forts along the line of the Old Trail did not leave the eastern end of the route until the grass on the plains, on which the animals depended solely for subsistence the whole way, grew sufficiently to sustain them, which was usually about the middle of May. But a great many years ago, one of the high officials of the quartermaster's department at Washington, who had never been for a moment on duty on the frontier in his life, found a good deal of fault with what he thought the dilatoriness of the officer in charge at Fort Leavenworth, who controlled the question of transportation for the several forts scattered all over the West, for not getting the freight caravans started earlier, which the functionary at the capital said must and should be done. He insisted that they must leave the Missouri River by the middle of April, a month earlier than usual, and came out himself to superintend the matter. He made the contracts accordingly, easily finding contractors that suited him. He then wrote to headquarters in a triumphant manner that he had revolutionized the whole system of army transportation of supplies to the military posts. Delighted with his success, he rode out about the second week of May to Salt Creek, only three miles from the fort, and, very much to his astonishment, found his teams, which he had believed to be on the way to Santa Fe a month ago, snugly encamped. They had "started," just as was agreed.
There are, or rather were, hundreds of stories current thirty-five years ago of stage-coach adventures on the Trail; a volume could be filled with them, but I must confine myself to a few.
John Chisholm was a famous ranchman a long while ago, who had so many cattle that it was said he did not know their number himself. At one time he had a large contract to furnish beef to an Indian agency in Arizona; he had just delivered an immense herd there, and very wisely, after receiving his cash for them, sent most of it on to Santa Fe in advance of his own journey. When he arrived there, he started for the Missouri River with a thousand dollars and sufficient small change to meet his current expenses on the road.
The very first night out from Santa Fe, the coach was halted by a band of men who had been watching Chisholm's movements from the time he left the agency in Arizona. The instant the stage came to a standstill, Chisholm divined what it meant, and had time to thrust a roll of money down one of the legs of his trousers before the door was thrown back and he was ordered to fork over what he had.