The Prairie Schooner

by William Francis Hooker

Both Hunton and Clay had a knack of dealing with these roaming bands, however, that prevented any serious raids, although at one time, when Clay had closed a contract with the government and found himself in Cheyenne with his big bull outfit, consisting of a couple of hundred head of oxen and thirty or forty men, word was brought to him that on his return trip to his Chugwater quarters, a band of Sioux would attack him. So he left Cheyenne one night, and taking a course almost due east avoided the Laramie trail, and by a circuitous route reached the Chugwater without having traveled a mile on a trail.

Hunton's and Clay's ranch houses were loaded with firearms, looked like armories, and at the height of the shoulder in the log walls were fort holes through which guns could be fired. These were used several times, but none of the skirmishes approached in any degree the present-day pictures one sees in the movies, and I doubt if they ever did, in the West. In the first place, while the Sioux, Cheyenne and other redskins were considered especially bloodthirsty, none of them was fond of exposing his worthless carcass to a shower of bullets, even though outnumbering the whites 100 to 1. The Indian of that day—of the day that history was making on the frontier—was a most miserable coward when dealing with frontiersmen of the Hunton or Clay calibre.

Of course, there were open battles with United States troops, but even then only when, as in the case of Custer and his Seventh Cavalry, the troops were outnumbered and trapped. Even Sitting Bull's band, which has wrongly been represented by some historians as brave, were entitled to no credit of that kind. Custer was trapped in a big bowl and his 300-odd fighters surrounded on all sides by several thousand well mounted and well-armed young bucks. The Custer and the earlier so-called Indian battles both at old Fort Phil Kearney and earlier in Minnesota, were not battles at all—simply massacres. There is no record of an even fight between redskins and whites in the settlement of the country between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. The Modocs fought for months in the lava beds, but seldom did a soldier see a Modoc. So it was with old Geronomo and his Apache followers. They fought from cover, never in the open unless overtaken and surrounded.

Nevertheless, the raiding bands of Ogalala Sioux that slipped over the Platte in the season of good grass were a problem for these pioneer ranchmen and transportation outfits, and it was not an uncommon thing for a bullet or an arrow to reach a vital spot in a bullwhacker from some hiding place just in range of the road. When this happened it was the common practice for members of the outfit to mount their saddle horses, with which every bull-train was well supplied, and give chase unless the lead of the Indians was too great, and usually it was.

Once in a while, however, the Indian made a miscalculation, and the bullwhacker would return to the temporarily corralled outfit with a scrubby Indian pony, a few rawhide thongs, and an Indian's ear freshly amputated for use as evidence at the first camp of bullwhackers or army post that one more "Good Indian" had been put on the list.

This cutting off of ears was reprisal, for the Indians scalped their white victims and mutilated their bodies when they had a chance. Hunton and Clay hauled with their big outfits, at one time, about everything that was sent to the northern line of forts by Uncle Sam. Clay's contracts were largely confined to Port Laramie, although Hunton hauled a good deal of the provisions to that post. Hunton and others supplied Fort Fetterman, the principal route being from Medicine Bow station on the Union Pacific across the mountain range of the same name.

It took several days to load the prairie schooners from the freight cars on a sidetrack that was laid upon the sod; and while this work was going on there was sometimes a good deal of drinking and many gun fights.

It was while a bull outfit was loading for one of the fall trips to Fetterman that the first billiard table came to Medicine Bow. I think it was the only one in the territory outside of Cheyenne and Laramie City, both division points on the Union Pacific. There were no women in Medicine Bow, good or bad, at the time and not more than 100 regular residents, yet the town had a saloon because the bull outfits, Hunton's and others, in their occasional trips, and a few adventurers who were prospecting south and west of the "Bow," furnished ample patronage to make the enterprise profitable. It was this saloonkeeper who conceived the idea of importing a billiard table, and also a back bar and mirror.

The bullwhackers watched the installation of the new furniture, and that night informed the saloonkeeper that as there were no women in the camp it had been decided to have a stag dance in the saloon. He protested, but it did no good. A few drinks in a dozen leaders was followed by a deliberately aimed shot which shattered the mirror, after which the operation of removing the billiard table began. It was a rough job, and would have given a Brunswick-Balke man a chill. The table went out onto the prairie in sections, and the sections were not always separated at the regulation point. The green cover was ruined.

Then the dance began. The German saloonkeeper smiled his protests, but when he became too much concerned about what was going on, someone would snuff a light or plug a barrel of whisky with a bullet. So the night's debauch continued, and it did not end until daybreak. The place was a wreck, and the saloonkeeper was in despair when the wagon boss came along with a roll of money as big around as a ship's cable, saying: