Leavenworth, Kansas
FREIGHTER, BULLWHACKER, AND MULESKINNER
Three years of hard work, working his way west.
Arriving in Leavenworth City, the tired lads met Tom Hare, a veteran teamster working for a government ox train. Hare bought the boys breakfast at the Railroad Mess Hall. The bull train was about four miles outside of town, waiting for winter break and trying to fill out a crew. Tom Hare introduced the boys to the wagon boss, who immediately hired them for fifty dollars a month, everything provided, even firearms and ammunition. The boys wages were about twice that previous to the outbreak of the Civil War which had caused most of the available labor to dry up. Billy was thrilled. He said:
“I was only fourteen years old but delighted with the prospect that at last I should begin the journey across the Plains.
The bull train pulled out in mid-April for Fort Scott, Kansas, a hundred and ten miles to the south. Each wagon was drawn by six pairs of oxen, while the ‘bullwhacker’ walked beside the teams, urging them on with sixteen feet long leather bullwhips.
While on this journey they noticed black drapery in doorways, and black flags flying. They soon found out that President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated on April 14th, 1865.
After the Civil War ended his outfit was sold at Fort. Leavenworth. All twenty five freight wagons and six hundred oxen were auctioned. The outfits brought $1800.00 each. They were all purchased by a man named Kirkendall, who had served as master of transportation at Fort Leavenworth. Kirkendall hired the wagonmaster, who in turned offered all the men their jobs. While some men moved on, Billy signed on with the new owner. He had grown up while learning the arduous work of freighting.
Soon, word came that the the train of twenty five wagons would soon be on it’s way to Fort Collins, Colorado. Excited to be heading west, the boys spent money outfitting themselves for the trip. “I had more money than I had ever dreamed I would posses at one time.” He bought himself “a big sombrero, a Colt’s revolver, a butcher knife, a belt and a bullwhip”.
Each wagon was loaded with seven thousand pounds of military provisions. This trip proved grueling and extremely difficult. Winter rains had turnd the roads into mudpits. Often times ont the longest stretches as many as twenty four oxen had to be hitched to one wagon to pull it through the quagmire. Beset by flooded river crossings and military escorts across the dangerous country on the Plains, two and a half months later the train pulled into Fort Collins, Colorado. It was the first time Billy had ever seen the mountains.
The wagons made the round trip, hitched three or four together returning to Fort Leavenworth. Being paid off at Fort Leavenworth, Billy said “many of us felt rich, and had enough to carry us through the winter if we were not extravagant.”
There his friend Dan Keller decided to winter at his parents home in Indiana. They parted, and Billy never saw Dan again.
being given good advice not to contract out to a train in the winter, Billy and a new friend, Johnny Baldwin, hired out to help in a teamster’s winter camp of muleskinners, readying for a spring trip. During this time Billy helped the cook and spent many days hunting with his government issued rifle, perfecting his aim and skill. Billy said:
“Where other men found pleasure in cards or horse-racing or other similar amusements, I was happiest when ranging the open country with my gun on my shoulder and a dog at mt my heels, far out among the wild birds and the wild animal.”
About the first of March, the outfit was ordered to move the mules to Fort Leavenworth. The day they moved out a terrible winter storm called a “Blue Norther” moved in. Billy froze two of his fingers very badly. The boys returned to Leavenworth and spent many days touring the town.
Billy spent the next winter working on a farm for a family named McCall, near Leavenworth. A very kind family who treated him as a son. Billy spent the next year there, and even attended school the next winter.
Billy recalled that while he was living with the McCall’s, in 1866 another shocking tragedy unfolded- the suicide of United States Senator James Lane of Kansas. The Senator was a controversial figure in politics, and had been reelected to the Senate in 1865, supporting President Andrew Johnson’s policies. Mrs. Lane and Mrs. McCall were sisters. The Senator was in poor health, and while out riding on day with his family, he shot himself. Strangely enough, the Senator lived for three more days. Billy was with the ambulance that was sent to take the Senator to Leavenworth, where he passed away.
In the Spring of 1867, Billy regretfully left the McCall farm. The west was beckoning again, and he signed with a man named Simpson, outfitting a new mule train of “shave-tails”, wild unbroken mules. Brand new wagons and harness, along with the mules were loaded onto train cars and shipped to fort Harker. The outfit went into camp near the Fort. Breaking and harness training wild mules was a very dangerous proposition. While in this camp, Cholera broke out at the Fort, with an epidemic extending from Fort Harker, Kansas to Fort Union, New Mexico.
Soon the outfit was headed to Fort Hayes, Kansas, then to Fort Wallace . Next, in August 1867, they were sent to Fort Lyon. Up to now Billy had seen and shot a few buffalo, but on this trip he saw thousands. It was breeding season, and he marveled at the huge bulls, their constant low thunder and grunt rising to a roar could be heard all night into the early morning.
Billy had become a young man at seventeen, capable and dependable, and could handle a wagon and team as well as any man, and his rifle better than most.
As luck would have it, by the narrowest of chances, he was selected as one of the wagons to haul supplies for the United States Government’s contingent of Peace Commissioners to treat with the southwestern Plains Tribes at Medicine Lodge, Kansas.
NEXT: AT THE MEDICINE LODGE TREATY OF 1867
