CHAPTER III
WE FIND AN OUTFIT
When the dusty bull train came rolling along the road past the garrison it found us waiting. Our property was stowed in an empty wagon, and, again shouting good-bys to the comrades who had come out to see us off, we began our tedious, dusty, dirty march with the bull train.
At that time Majors & Russell, of Leavenworth, Kansas, had the contract for transporting government supplies to all frontier posts. Mr. Majors had the reputation of being a very religious man, and in fitting out trains required all wagon-masters and teamsters to sign a written contract agreeing to use no profane language and not to gamble or to travel on Sundays. At starting he furnished each man with a Bible and hymn-book, and exhorted him to read the gospel and hold religious services on the Sabbath. This statement is regarded by many people of the present day as an old frontier joke, but it is actual fact.
The wagons—called prairie-schooners—were large and heavy and usually drawn by six yoke of oxen to the team. When outward bound they were loaded at the rate of one thousand pounds of freight to the yoke. Twenty-five such teams constituted a train, in charge of a wagon-master and assistant, who were mounted on mules. The travel was slow, dusty, and disagreeable beyond description. At camping time the trains corralled across the road, a half circle on either side, leaving the open road running through the centre of the corral.
Our route was down the Arkansas River on the north bank, but the train itself did not go to the water. That used for cooking and drinking was carried along in casks, which were replenished at every opportunity. The detail of this travel, while interesting, cannot be given here, but on the journey we learned a great deal that was absolutely new to us.
On the first night out from Fort Wise we were awakened by a bull-whacker, who brought to our bed two men who had asked for us and who proved to be deserters. We felt the sympathy for them which the average soldier feels for a deserter, gave them a little money and some rations, and recommended them to hurry on, travelling at night and lying hid in the daytime. They went on, as advised.
The next morning a sergeant and two privates from Fort Wise galloped up behind us and stopped to speak to us, asking if we had seen a couple of deserters. We gravely told them that we had seen no such men and suggested that they might have gone west from Fort Wise. The sergeant made a perfunctory search of the wagons and then went on, to camp a little farther along and kill time until it was necessary to return to the post. In those days such pursuing parties often overtook the deserters they were after, gave them part of their rations, and sent them along on their road.
At the Big Timbers, on the Arkansas, we met with a large band of Cheyenne Indians on the way up to Fort Wise to receive their annuities; and when we reached the Santa Fé road, where it crossed the Arkansas, coming from the Cimarron River by the sixty-mile dry stretch called the jornada, we saw a government six-mule train, travelling east, just going into camp on the river bank.
Here, we thought, was an opportunity to get along faster and travel more comfortably if we could arrange for a transfer to the mule train. Its days' drives were about twice as long as those of the bull train, which seldom exceeded twelve miles a day. We therefore sent Tom back to the mule train, and he found in the wagon-master of the train an old acquaintance, who cheerfully agreed to take us on to Fort Leavenworth without charge. Next morning, as the mule train passed us, we bade good-by to our kind but dirty friends the bull-whackers and tumbled ourselves and our baggage into one of the empty mule wagons and went on.