USA > Kansas > Ford County > Dodge City > Dodge City, the cowboy capital, and the great Southwest in the days of the wild Indian, the buffalo, the cowboy, dance halls, gambling halls and bad men > Part 3
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would have been marked in unbroken crimson, from Westport to Santa Fe, and from Leavenworth to Denver. Moreover, the tragedy was greater than will ever be known, for mute evidences of mysterious bloodshed were not wanting along the old trails. Many times, in the early days of Fort Dodge, I have picked up little bunches of cattle wandering on the plains aimlessly that had been run off by the Indians, as well as horses and mules, and turned them over to some Mexican train from which they had been stampeded. Once I found a buggy all smashed to pieces in the timbered breaks of Duck Creek, but we could never discover whom the unfortunate occupants had been. They had been killed and dumped out, no doubt, miles from where the vehicle was wrecked. One day I found one of the most beautiful horses I ever saw, with a fine saddle on his back. The saddle was completely satu- rated with blood.
In 1863, the fall before Fort Dodge was established, on the bluffs where you first get a sight of the Arkansas on the dry route from Fort Larned, a little Mexican train of ten or twelve wagons loaded with corn, groceries and other goods, many sacks of flour, together with a feather- bed or two, camped one day to get dinner. Soon after they had corralled a band of Indians rode up, with their customary, "How-how, heap Hungry," and wanted some "chuck-a-way." gorging themselves, they sat around the small fire of buffalo chips smoking, they arose, shook hands all around, mounted their ponies, and, as they arrived at the rear of the corral, suddenly turned and killed every one of the Mexicans, excepting the day herder, who had started off in advance to his animals that were quietly grazing in the grassy bottoms. The moment he heard the firing he lit out mighty lively for Fort Lyon, closely followed by the red devils, but he managed to escape; the only one left to tell the horrid tale.
We camped with the mail en route several times that
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winter, and fed our mules on corn, and ourselves ate of the canned goods that were scattered all over the trail. It was certainly a curious spectacle, and could be seen for quite a distance, where the savages had cut open feather beds and scattered their contents around, which had caught in the weeds and grass of the prairie. They also emptied many sacks of flour to get the sacks for breech- clouts. In nearly the same spot, and in the vicinity, have I many times helped bury the mutilated and scalped re- mains of men who had been ruthlessly murdered there by the Indians.
For many years, and several years before Dodge City was started, Barlow, Sanderson & Company ran a tri- weekly stage line through Fort Dodge, over the old Santa Fe trail. They used a large Concord coach, containing three inside seats, capable of holding nine persons com- fortably. Then there was a driver's box where three more could be comfortably seated, besides an upper deck where more passengers and baggage could be stowed away; and also what was called a front and hind boot, where still more trunks and baggage could be carried, with a large feather apron strapped down over them, to hold things in place and keep out the weather. There were five mules attached to the coach, two mules on the wheel and three on the lead, and relays were provided from thirty to fifty miles apart, except from Fort Larned to Fort Lyon which were two hundred and forty miles apart. In addition to the stage, a light wagon was taken along to carry grub and bedding. It was seven hundred miles from Kansas City to Santa Fe, and the coach made it in seven days.
One time, before Fort Dodge was established, we had to abandon a big Concord coach, at the foot of Nine-mile Ridge, on account of the muddy condition of the trail, and went on to the stage station with a light spring wagon. On the way we met a band of friendly Indians who were going to Fort Larned, and we told them to haul the coach in. Of course they didn't follow the trail, but
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struck across the country on to Pawnee Fork. After a long time had elapsed, Little Raven, the chief, rode into the fort and told us he had left the coach twenty miles up the creek, and blessed if he could get it any farther, as he had pulled the tails out of nearly every one of his herd of ponies to get it that far. You see their methods of hauling the coach was by tying it to the tails of their ponies.
The summer of 1866, I was closing up my business at Fort Aubrey, preparatory to moving to Fort Dodge, where I had a contract to fill for wood, with the army quarter- master at that post. For a few years previous to this, I had been ranching at the abandoned government post of Fort Aubrey (which I had strongly fortified against the Indians), and erecting stage stations every thirty-five or forty miles, wherever a suitable location could be found, about that distance apart, for the overland stage line of Barlow, Sanderson & Company. This line started from Kansas City, Missouri, but branched off at Bent's old fort, the main line going to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the branch to Denver, Colorado. After crossing the Arkansas river, the former wended its way southwest, over the Ra- ton mountains, while the branch, following up the Ar- kansas to Pueblo, and from thence, the Fountain Gulch to Colorado Springs, crossed over the divide to Denver.
I was also furnishing these small stations with hay, cut in the river bottoms near each station, and I kept a small mule train constantly on the road, hauling grain from the Missouri river (we simply called it "the River" those days, every one knowing, as a matter of course, that we meant the Missouri) to keep the stations supplied with feed for the stage stock. This is the way we built these stations. We first hunted a steep bank facing the south and the river-as the Arkansas ran east and west-and dug straight into this bank a suitable distance, wide enough to suit our convenience, and ten or twelve feet deep at the deepest place, with a gradual slope to the south
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THESE INDIANS WOULD ONLY BE PHOTOGRAPHED IN COMPANY WITH THE INTERPRETER THEY WERE AFRAID THE CAMERA WOULD SHOOT THEM
of seven or eight feet. Now this formed three sides of an excavation, you understand, and only left the south open- ing exposed. This we built up with sod or adobes. The top we covered with poles laid across, and on the poles we placed hay, covering the whole business with dirt, and sloping it down with the natural fall of the ground.
I had hard work to get men to keep these stations, as it was dangerous as well as lonely work. Indians were bad -not in regular open warfare, but occasionally murder- ing small parties, and we had to keep constantly on the lookout for them. One of the stations about twenty-five miles west of Aubrey, was called Pretty Encampment. After much persuasion, I got a Dutchman by the name of Fred to keep this station. Fred was a big burly devil, strong as an ox, but a big coward. He continually sent me word, by drivers, that he was going to quit, and, in consequence I had to ride up twenty-five miles every few days, to brag on him and encourage him to stay. Well, the Indians had lately been committing little devilments, and one morning I met Fred, a half-mile from the sta- tion, a horrible looking sight, blood all over him, his dirty shirt bloody and torn, and a big, sharp butcher-knife in his hand. He was terribly excited and almost raving, go- ing on at a terrible rate, in broken English and Dutch, flourishing his bloody knife and saying, "G-d-him, the son of a b -; I killed him-I cut his throat and his guts out!" I was sure he had killed an Indian. I said, "Fred, you have raised the devil. This will bring on an Indian war. Don't you know it is against orders from headquarters and the commander of the fort to kill an Indian or shoot at him first, under any circumstances ? (And so it was, a standing order). Let's go see about it."
We went up, and the house looked like a tornado had struck it. The roof was torn partly off, the room covered with blood, the bed broken down, the old furniture smashed, and everything in disorder, while in the midst of all this lay a big dead bull buffalo. You see, there was
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some hay sticking up from the covering of the roof, and some time before day, an old bull had crept down on this roof after the hay, and had broken through, one foot first. It struck Fred, who was soundly sleeping, and with the noise and dirt falling upon him, suddenly awakened him. He grabbed the foot and leg, feeling the hair on it, it scared him to death, and being a powerful man, he held on to the leg and foot, like grim death to a nigger's heel, thinking the devil had got him. Then they fought and struggled in the dark, until, at last, the buffalo fell through, and still Fred did not know what it was. But his butcher-knife was under his pillow, and he grabbed it and went to cutting and slashing.
Whenever I thought of it afterwards, I had to laugh at his actions and looks when he met me. But I could get him to stay at Pretty Encampment no longer, and well he did not, for less than a week afterwards, two drivers of teams I had just sold, for the purpose of hauling supplies to these ranches, were killed within two miles of this ranch, and the mules and harness stolen. Fortunately, Fred had not yet been replaced with another stock tender or he would have been killed.
Not among the least of the hardships and dangers incident to the early pioneer of the southwest was the "Kansas blizzard;" like all the storms in the arid belt, a great majority of them were local, but nevertheless severe and terrible in their destructive fury. A blizzard is de- fined as "a fierce storm of bitter, frosty wind, with fine, blistering snow." No definition, however save that of ac- tual experience, can define its terrible reality. I have wit- nessed a change in temperature from seventy-four degrees above zero to twenty degrees below in twenty-four hours, and during this time the wind was blowing a gale, ap- parently from the four points of the compass. The air was so full of the fine, blistering snow and sand that one could not see ten feet in advance. Turn either way, and it is always in front. The air is full of subdued noises, like
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the wail of lost spirits; so all-absorbing in its intensity is this wailing, moaning, continuous noise, that one's voice cannot be heard two yards away. The historical blizzards of 1863, 1866, 1873 and 1888, were general embracing a very large area of country. The early pioneers were, of necessity, nomadic, and were in no way prepared for these sudden changes; and hundreds have lost their lives by suf- focating in blizzards when the temperature was not zero, it being a physical impossibility to breathe, the air being so full of fine, blistering snow and sand.
The spirit of the blizzard, as the background to pic- tures of the wild west, in early days, is well brought out in Eugene Ware's vivid little poem, "The Blizzard."
"The fiddler was improvising; at times, he would cease to play,
Then, shutting his eyes, he sang and sang, in a wild ecstatic way; 1135461
Then, ceasing his song, he whipped and whipped the strings with his frantic bow,
Releasing impatient music, alternately loud and low;
Then, writhing and reeling, he sang as if he were dream- ing aloud.
And wrapping the frenzied music around him like a shroud;
And this is the strange refrain, which he sang in a minor key,
'No matter how long the river, the river will reach the sea.'
"It was midnight on the Cimarron, not many a year ago; The blizzard was whirling pebbles and sand, and billows of frozen snow:
He sat on a bale of harness, in a dugout roofed with clay; The wolves overhead bewailed, in a dismal, protracted way;
They peeped down the 'dobe chimney, and quarreled and sniffed and clawed;
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But the fiddler kept on with his music, as the blizzard stalked abroad;
And, time and again, that strange refrain came forth in a minor key,
'No matter how long the river, the river will reach the sea.'
"Around him, on boxes and barrels, uncharmed by the fiddler's tune,
The herders were drinking and betting their cartridges on vantoon;
And, once in awhile, a player, in spirit of reckless fun,
Would join in the fiddler's music, and fire off the fiddler's gun.
An old man sat on a sack of corn and stared with a vacant gaze;
He had lost his hopes in the Gypsum Hills, and he thought of the olden days.
The tears fell fast when the strange refrain came forth in a minor key,
'No matter how long the river, the river will reach the sea.'
"At morning the tempest ended, and the sun came back once more;
The old, old man of the Gypsum Hills had gone to the smoky shore;
They chopped him a grave in the frozen ground where the Morning sunlight fell;
With a restful look he held in his hand an invisible asphodel;
They filled up the grave, and each herder said, 'Good-by till the judgment day.'
But the fiddler stayed, and he sang and played, as the herders walked away-
A requim in a lonesome land, in a mournful minor key- 'No matter how long the river, the river will reach the sea."
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As an illustration of the terrible nature of a Kansas blizzard in early times, another poem may be quoted, which describes a real experience, in the neighborhood of Dodge City, by some cowboys on the trail. This poem is written by Henry C. Fellow, the cowboy poet of Okla- homa, and is used in this work by special permission of the author.
PASSING OF THE WRANGLER
"Wrangle up yer broncks, Bill, Let us hit the trail; Cinch 'em up a knot er two, 'Fore there comes a gale.
"Fill the wagon full o' chuck, 'Fore we cut adrift; Fer we'll have a time, Bill With this winter shift.
"My bones they feel a blizzard A hatchin' in the west,
An' I must load my gizzard With some pizen-piker's best.
"Sam, git yer chips together, An' stack 'em in a box; An' gether up the tether, Ropes, shirts, an' dirty socks,
"An' lash 'em to the cayuse, An' strap 'em tight an' strong; Fer we given to ha'f t' ride, Sam, Kase 'tseems they's sumthing' wrong.
"Pards, see the clouds a shiftin'; They's given to turn a trick, An' make us go a driftin', Afore we reach the crick.
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"It's a hundred miles, ye know, boys, To reach the O X camp, An' we'll ha'f to keep a rollin' Er we'll ketch a frosty cramp.
"So skin the mules a plenty, With yer double triggered crack; An' keep the broncks a goin', Jist so ye know the track."
So with a whoop an' holler, The rounders, full o' pluck, An' tanked up to the collar- With their wagon load o' chuck,
They left the Dodge behind 'em, An' started fer the South, With the wind a blowin' A peck o' dirt a mouth.
They skase could see the other Feller, lopin' through the cloud; Er hear nothin' but the thunder, An' the flappin' o' their shroud.
Tumble weeds a rollin', With a forty minit clip, An' the clouds a pilin' Up like a phantom ship.
With 'er double triggered action, The wind she turned her tail, An' kicked out all the suction Fer the souther's gale.
She started into rainin', An' follered with a sleet; An' kept 'er speed a gainin', A throwin' down 'er sheet;
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Till everything wuz covered, A frozen glare o' ice; Yet still she closter hovered, An' pinched us like a vise.
That blizzard came a peltin' With 'er frozen shot; An' sich snow a driftin', I never have forgot!
We couldn't see a nothin', Ner hear a rounder croak; But the gurgle o' the pizen A puttin' us to soak.
We kept the broncks a movin' Frum bein' froze to death; While waitin' fer the mornin' To thaw us with his breath.
But when the snowy mornin' Had come in with his smile, He'd left a ghastly warnin' Fer many and many a mile.
A thousand head of cattle, Caught driftin' with the storm, Were frozen, while a millin', A tryin' to keep warm.
Poor Sammy, with the wagon, Wuz found a mile alone; Wuz stuck adrift, an' frozen, An' harder'n a stone.
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Ol' Bill, he froze his fingers, An' blistered up his face, Tryin' to pitch his ringers, An' a fightin' fer the ace.
I fell into a canyon, With my cayuse an' my traps, An' shuffled fer the joker, With the cinchin' straps.
I warmed myself a plenty A keepin' up the fight, A skinnin' ol' McGinty, Till a comin' of' the light.
Poor Sam! he boozed a plenty, To stack 'im in a heap; An' the devil swiped his ante, When he went to sleep.
So Bill an' me together, Stood in silence by the wag- On, not a knowin' whether To swig another jag,
'Er cut the cussed pizen That had foggled up our breath, An' kept our spirits risin', Without a fling o' death.
So me an' Bill, we tackled The job without a drop, An' in the hill we hackled A grave with icy top,
An' shuffled Sammy in it, An' banked 'im in with snow, An' 'rected up a monument, To let the Nesters know
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We had done our solemn dooty, An' planted 'im in style, With the whitest snow o' heaven Heaped on 'im in a pile.
Poor Bill! he sniffed a little When I lifted up my hat, An' let some weepin' splatter On Sammy's frozen mat.
Sam wan't no idle rustler; No one could ride the range Better'n he, ner brand 'em, Ner dip 'em fer the mange.
His check book showed a balance, Fer a wrangler o' the stuff, Fer a hilpin' of his mither No one could spake enough.
His heart wuz where God put it; His blood was always red; His mouth he alluz shut it, When troubles wuz ahead.
An' if the storm wuz ragin', He rode the line alone, An' never once a stagin' Some other's stunt his own.
Fer his larnin' he wuz known, Figgered with the letter X; Never had to once be shown; Wuz no mangy maverick.
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Set an' count a herd o' stars, Driftin' frum the hand o' God; Tell us all about the flowers Playin' bo-peep in the sod.
Hope the jedge will let 'im thru, When he rounds up at the gate; But, ol' pard, I'm fearin', though, Sam'll be a little late.
Peace be then to Sammy's ashes, Till the round up o' the race, When each wrangler's check book cashes What it's worth, an' at its face.
Speaking of blizzards, makes me think of John Riney who was one of the very first citizens to settle in Dodge City. He helped build the Santa Fe road into Dodge, and was also the first tollgate keeper for the only bridge over the Arkansas for miles each way; which position he held for many years and was always found strictly honest in his receipts. Before this he was a freighter and froze both of his feet in our big blizzard of 1873, which crippled him for life. He now, (1913), resides peacefully on his big alfalfa farm, a short distance west of Dodge, and has raised a large family, all of whom are much re- spected citizens of Dodge City.
As a closing word in this brief discussion of the bliz- zard in pioneer days, I will narrate one of the many expe- riences I have had with them. In the summer and fall of 1872 I was freighting supplies from Fort Dodge to Camp Supply, I.T. Up to the middle of December we had had no cold weather-plenty of grass all along the route. I loaded some twenty-mule wagons with corn, along about the twentieth of December, and the outfit crossed the river at Fort Dodge, and went into camp that night at Five- mile Hollow, about five miles from Fort Dodge. It had
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been a warm, pleasant day, and the sun disappeared in a clear sky. Along in the night the wind whipped around in the north, and a blizzard set in. By morning the draw that they were camped in was full of snow, and the air so full that one could not see from one wagon to the other. The men with the outfit were all old experienced plainsmen, but the suddenness and severity of the storm rendered them almost helpless. They had brought along only wood enough for breakfast, and that was soon ex- hausted. They then tried burning corn, but with poor success. As a last resort they began burning the wagons. They used economy in their fire, but the second day saw no prospect of a letting up of the storm, in fact, it was getting worse hourly. It was then that P. G. Cook, now living at Trinidad, and another whose name escapes me, volunteered to make an effort to reach Fort Dodge, only five miles distant, for succor. They bundled up in a way that it seemed impossible for them to suffer, and, each mounting a mule, started for the fort. The first few hours, Cook has told me, they guided the mules, and then recog- nizing that they were lost, they gave the animals a loose rein and trusted to their instinct. This was very hard for them to do, as they were almost convinced that they were going wrong all the time, but they soon, got so numbed with the cold that they lost their sense of being. They reached the fort in this condition after being out eight hours. They each had to be thawed out of their saddles. Cook, being a very strong, vigorous man, had suffered the least, and soon was in a condition to tell of the troubles of his comrades. Major E. B. Kink, the quartermaster at the fort, immediately detailed a relief party, and, with Cook at their head, started for the camp. The storm by this time had spent itself, and the relief party, with an ample supply of wood, reached them with- out great hardship, and the entire outfit, minus the three wagons which had been burned for fuel, were brought
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back to the fort. Cook's companion was so badly frost- bitten that amputation of one of his limbs was necessary to save his life.
In the winter of 1869 I made a contract with the set- tlers at Camp Supply to freight a trainload of goods from Dodge to that point. I hurriedly caught up my cattle, and picked up what drivers I could find. So little time had I to prepare, and so scarce were hands, that I was glad to get anyone that could handle a whip. Of course I had a motley crew-some good men and a few very worthless. Among the latter was one Jack Cobbin. Now Jack had been a scout during the war, down around Fort Gibson and Fort Smith, and was as great a drunkard as ever drank from a bottle. The first night out we camped at Mulberry, about fifteen miles from Dodge. A little snow had fallen, and the night herders lost about half the cattle. Of course the cattle drifted back to Dodge. Next morning I sent my extra hand and night herder back on the only two horses I had, and pulled one wing of the train ten miles on the divide half way between Mulberry and Rattlesnake creek, and went back and pulled the other wing up about nightfall. That night these cattle got away, but I found them next day and drove them over on a little spring creek three miles from the main road, where there was plenty of water, grass and shelter, and placed a guard with them.
I will here have to anticipate a bit. I was loaded with several wagons of liquor. Jack Cobbin had been drunk ever since we had left Dodge, and I had broken every pipe-stem, quill or straw I could find, as this was the only , means he could use to get the liquor out of the barrels, after drilling a hole in the top, so I concluded that I would take him along that night to relieve the guard and keep him sober. About two hours before sundown he and I started out to the cattle. The Indians were at war and killing everybody; so I supplied each man with a dozen rounds of cartridges, in case of a sudden attack,
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to be used until our ammunition could be got out of the mess wagon, with strict orders not to fire a gun, under any circumstances, unless at an Indian. Well, we had gone about two miles in the direction of the cattle when Jack began to lag behind, and pretty soon a jackrabbit jumped up and Cobbin blazed away at it. I went back to chide him, when I found he had something slushing in the coffee pot he was carrying with his blankets. I asked him what it was, and he said water. I said: "Throw it out; you are a bright one to carry water to a creek." He said: "Maybe we won't find any creek." I told him that if we did not find the creek we would not find the cattle. So he went on with the coffee pot slushing, slush- ing, and I cursing him, and ordering him to throw it out. At last we reached the creek and relieved the other boys. I went at once to round up the cattle.
When I got back it was late and very dark and the fire nearly out. Jack was sound asleep. I built up a big fire and sat down to enjoy it. After sitting some time I awakened Jack, but he refused to go out to the cattle. I felt very uneasy and went again myself. I found that the cattle had stopped grazing and wanted to ramble. I stayed with them several hours, until it was almost im- possible to hold them alone, and then went back after Jack, but found him too drunk to be of any assistance. Then I found out what was in the coffee pot. It was whisky which he had drawn with his mouth out of the barrels and spit into the coffee pot. I kicked the pot over, which very much enraged him and he tried to kill me, but I was too quick for him and disarmed him. I went back to the cattle, and after awhile got them quiet and they lay down. I then went back and rebuilt the fire. When I had my back turned to get some more wood the devil threw a handful of big cartridges on the fire. Part of them exploded almost in my face, and the creek being situated in a little canyon with high rocky walls on each side, it sounded like heavy cannonading. I was frightened,
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