It was almost a crime for a bullwhacker to cut a bull and draw the blood, and he seldom did it unless his popper had been wet and then dried. The spot usually aimed for was the hip, and bulls that had been in service any length of time had a spot on the rump that was hairless, resembling the head of a drum. But the spot was tough. The noise of the popper, however, was what startled the team and caused it to "dig in."
Frequently in the summer the afternoon drive lasted until ten or eleven o'clock, especially if there was a moon. You cannot imagine a more impressive, weird, wild sight. The shadows, the rattle of the wagons, perhaps the scream of a night bird or a wild cat—maybe the zip of an arrow from a redskin's bow, or the report of a gun, all calculated to keep even the hardened bullwhacker on his mettle. And for this the bullwhacker got $75 to $100 a month and "grub." He usually spent his money at the end of his trip much after the habit of the sailor who rounds the Horn.
In the cold weather the hardships were many. There were, remember, no bridges and the roads crossed numerous streams, all of which had to be forded; and there was but one way to cross, and that was to wade and guide a team.
Usually the heavy freighting was done before December, but often it was necessary to fight through blizzards and zero weather. It was this kind of work that tried the soul of even the hardy bullwhacker, and not infrequently his hands, feet, ears or face were frozen. It was hard on the cattle, too, although it was almost always possible to find plenty of good feeding ground of buffalo grass, which grew in heavy bunches and was very sweet in its dry state, for the wind usually kept places bare. If not, the bulls would nose it out from under several inches of snow and manage to get something approaching a meal. Otherwise, they went hungry, for no feed of any kind was ever carried for them.
Indians, usually, were too lazy to hunt the white man in winter, so there was seldom any trouble from this source after the first snowfall. But when the grass was green it was different, especially in the mountains or foothills. Redskins seldom fought a real battle in the open. To the bullwhacker he was nearly always an invisible foe, shooting his arrows or his gun from behind a rock, or from the top of a bluff, well out of range himself. When the Indians were known to be following an outfit it was common practice to keep a couple of horsemen outriders on each side of the train where possible. Frequently bull trains were obliged to corral and put up a fight, and usually the Indian lost.
CHAPTER III
Hunton and Clay, Bull-Train Magnates.
Among the bull-train magnates of the early 70's were Charley Clay, said to be a relative of the famous statesman, and Jack Hunton. They were pioneers of Wyoming who have no doubt been quite forgotten, though in their day none in the then sparsely settled frontier territory was better known. They were not only pioneer freighters, but among the very first of the daring frontiersmen to go beyond the limits of civilization, and into the stamping grounds of the warlike tribes of Indians to establish homes. Both built ranches in the Chugwater country along the trail leading from Cheyenne to Fort Laramie. Clay's log house was directly under one of the famous landmarks of the territory—chimney rock—a chalky butte formed, geologists say, by erosion. Hunton built his ranch on the northwest end of the Chugwater at a point near Goshen's Hole, a great basin, where the Laramie trail wheeled directly north to Eagle's Nest, another butte. At Hunton's a trail less used branched off to the northwest, across what was then considered a desert and reaching Fort Fetterman, perhaps 125 miles away on the North Platte river at Lapariel creek. This part of Wyoming is now, I understand, a vast wheatfield. To a bullwhacker of the early 70's this is almost a miracle.
Both Hunton and Clay used their ranches to range their work cattle in off seasons, although both had beef herds and lots of horses. These ranch houses were protected from Indians by less than a dozen men at any time; but these men were fighters and were known to be such by the chiefs of the tribes that frequently roamed the territory south of the Platte, although in a treaty with the Federal government they had promised to stay north of the famous stream, the consideration being, on the part of Uncle Sam, a contribution of hundreds of tons of flour, bacon, tobacco and other things. Strictly speaking, this food was in payment for land south of the Platte.