LIFE OUT WEST
Striking out from home at the age of thirteen, Billy
had become a man on the plains of Kansas.
Billy Dixon was now just 18, a seasoned veteran, as capable and as experienced as most men. Five years of demanding work had produced an impressive young man. He had learned how to carry himself around the rough teamsters and had earned their respect. No doubt, when it came to swapping stories around the campfire, he could hold his own. He was coming to the realization, that for all the years he had been on his own, most of them were spent working as a Government contractor. Things were already changing in the west. Railroads were being built as fast as track could be laid, with government Forts being built along side, to protect the trains and crew.
Billy wasn’t even a professional buffalo hunter yet, and the railroads were already bringing city people out to the plains. in the comfort of a rail car, wellell dressed upper class people who could afford it, rode the trains through the open plains where buffalo were grazing. There, the locomotives would run down a buffalo herd. The railroads even supplied them the rifles for the killing.
Bison Mounts in front of the Kansas Pacific Railroad headquarters
During the winter of 1867-68, Billy signed on with some of these excursions, stating that he “went out from both Leavenworth and Kansas City with hunting parties, saying “I thirsted for adventure, but as yet had seen only the fringe of it.”
Billy didn’t need a crystal ball to know the west would soon forever change. the old adventure fire that burned in his breast had never been quenched.
In the Spring of 1868, Billy signed on as a muleskinner for a merchant in Baxter Spring, who had purchased six wagons, intending to supply his own mercantile, by hauling goods from Leavenworth City, one hundred seventy miles to the north. Baxter Springs was a the terminus of the Shawnee Trail, one Texas cattle trail across Indian Territory. Accustomed to the rough ways of a teamsters camp, bullwhackers and muleskinners and certainly soldiers at the Forts, Billy had this to say about the country he was now in:
“Indian Territory was infested with the most desperate class of men I ever saw, most of whom were citizens of the lawless country. Baxter Springs supplied in abundance all that the most dissapated character could wish for in the way of whiskey, women, gambling and fighting.”
Billy worked that summer as a teamster, but was still thirsting for adventure. After several months, he went with a group of muleskinners to Leavenworth and hired on to go with a mule train to fort Hays. The government was rushing supplies and troops everywhere, the Indians were on the warpath, and the atmosphere was electric. Billy’s outfit loaded six hundred mules and drivers aboard the Kansas Pacific Railroad Train and headed to Fort Hays. Much to their discomfort, after arriving in Fort Hays they found that the six hundred mules “were all as wild as wolves” and no time to break them. The government wanted supplies rushed to Camp Supply. The twelve day trip was accomplished in spite of ornery mules, snow, mud, and a buffalo stampede directly at the caravan. The latter being avoided by the troop of Cavalry and the men shooting until the buffalo heard turned away. Camp Supply was ate the time only a location on the prairie, not yet constructed. The freight was unloaded on the ground covered with tarps, and the train returned to Fort Hays for another load.
Other than the fight harnessing them every morning, the mules weren’t too hard to handle on the trip out as the wagons were too heavy for them to run away with. But on the trip home, with empty wagons traveling two abreast, something spooked the rear wagons. The rattling of wagons and shouts of the drivers, spooked the entire train. Mules, wagons and men going in every direction, wagons breaking apart, mules tearing away from harness, wagons breaking apart, pieces strung out across the prairie, Billy said “The spectacle of those six hundred mules running away with one hundred wagons was the most remarkable I ever witnessed.” He reported one outfit, including six mules and the wagon, disappeared completely. He found the wreckage in 1871, when hunting buffalo in the same country, about twelve miles from where the stampede started. The mules had spilled over a ravine and the wagon was on top of them. It’s freight, an Army Needle Gun was still loaded in the wagon.
By the fall of 1869, Billy had made a decision:
“I was now eighteen years old, in perfect health, strong and muscular, with keen eye-sight, a natural aptitude for outdoor life, and excellent shot, and had a burning desire to experience every phase of adventure to be found on the Plains”
In November of 1869, Billy and two other muleskinners, Tom Campbell and George Smith decided to put together their own outfit, and work through the winter trapping and hunting. they combined their money and bought a wagon and provisions. George was an experienced fur trapper. They built a small dugout and worked their way north along the Saline river. The did well trapping beaver, otter, and wolves. They also sold game meat in Hays city, where elk brought twenty dollars a piece.
“My happiness now seemed complete, and I enjoyed to the fullest every moment of my life. Storm nor darkness nor hunger nor toil cooled my ardor in the slightest degree… We had a warm comfortable dugout with plenty of wood and water. I had no wish to return to a city.”
Saline River, Kansas
By Spring of 1870, Eastern hide buyers had come to Hays City and other nearby towns on the buffalo range, offering hide prices that made the hunting of buffalo profitable. the first offers were $1 each for cow hides and $2 dollars for bull hides. During the winter of 1870 Billy and his partners ranged all over western Kansas, but principally along the Republican River and it’s tributaries. They would build a dugout and make a semi permanent camp for a month or so, then, as the buffalo thinned out, move on.
By the fall Smith and Campbell had grown tired of the business, so Billy bought them out. He quickly hired to men to work as skinners and went back to work. That fall, he moved his camp about ten miles south of Hays City. There he built a sizeable dugout with a picket house. He was on a well traveled road and established a road ranch. He stocked the road ranch with whiskey, tobacco and groceries, hired a former muleskinner that he had met at Camp Supply, named Billy Reynolds to run the operation. Billy then went back to buffalo hunting. A few months later, returning from a two week hunt, he found the road ranch deserted, all the merchandise gone, and Billy Reynolds no where to be found. Dixon said “during my absence Reynolds sold the whole outfit and skipped the country, without even telling me goodbye.”
For the next two years Billy and different partners hunted buffalo all over western Kansas. Twice surviving nearly freezing to death in blizzards and once being disoriented in the dark of night, it took he and his partner two days of wandering on the prairie to relocate their camp. Billy continued hunting, and kept his own outfit busy.
Fort Dodge 1872.
Billy Dixon on the buffalo range, above.
Dodge City’s first three buildings about 1872.
By the fall of 1872 Billy headed south to fort Dodge to find a new settlement named Dodge City was being built, consisting of only three buildings at the time.
Later in life he could name the first business there, including Wright and Company General store and Zimmerman’s gun and ammunition store, right, where he discovered the newly released “Sharps Big 50” rifle that became his favorite. Rath and company, of Adobe Walls fame, is one of the businesses in the photo at left.
During the fall and winter of 1872-73 Dodge city was the terminus of the Santa Fe railroad, and work was still progressing to the Kansas state line. When work stopped on the line at Granada, hundreds of men were put out of work. Those that didn’t want to leave the country immediately rustled up wagons and teams and rifles and became buffalo hunters. This was the high tide of hunting, because buffalo were close enough to Dodge City, “that the noise of the rifles could be heard on all sides, rumbling and booming hour after hour, as if a heavy battle were being fought. There was a line of camps all the way from Dodge City to Granada.”
Since 1871, Billy had employed the same crew: Jack Callahan, a muleskinner, Perkins, the man he got lost with, a man named Donnely, and an Irishman named “Cranky” McCabe, so named because of his constant bad temper, who worked for Billy at intervals. Because of a life long gambling habit, when he was flush, he would quit his job and go to the nearest town and gamble until all his money was gone, then return to Billy’s camp “as cheerful as ever”.
Buffalo hunters posing
The hunters may have known trouble was coming to their chosen profession, but that didn’t slow the hunting any. Of course, this pressure on the herds was not sustainable. As buffalo grew scarce or herds migrated, eastern hide buyers raised the prices they would offer. Dixon remembers $4 a hide, which just drove more hunter into the business, and cause the demise of more buffalo. The increasing destructiveness of the hunters had been making the Indians more and more hostile. the danger to the hunters was increasing day by day, and they all knew, the Arkansas River was the dead line. It was sometimes patrolled by Government troops, as a support to the Medicine Lodge Treaty. Still, as prices rose and buffalo became scarcer, hunters forayed into forbidden country.
By Spring 1873, Billy’s partner, Callahan quit the business and opened a Saloon in Granada. Billy hired two skinners and headed to western Kansas, and there he prospered, sending hides into Granada. By fall, he had loaded his two wagons and was heading south. He eventually scouted scouted an enormous area, going as far west into ‘no mans land’ as what is now the Panhandle of Oklahoma, and into Texas, crossing the South Canadian River and trailing into Palo Duro Canyon. Billy found buffalo, Indians and very cold weather. Running low on supplies, they returned to Dodge City, arriving in February, 1874.
It didn’t take the buffalo hunters long to decide to form up and move into Texas. They and the Dodge City merchants who made money off of the trade, spent the rest of the winter making plans.
So did the Indians .
NEXT: ADOBE WALLS, TEXAS
