Copyright, 1918 By SAUL BROTHERS Chicago To My Wife MAMIE TARBELL HOOKER A Pioneer of the Jim River (Dakota) Valley Illustration and Patent Color Process by J. D. Johnsen...

When the Union Pacific Railroad was completed from Omaha, Nebraska, to Ogden, Utah, it passed through a territory about as barren of business as one can imagine. It apparently was a great Sahara, and in fact some of the territory now growing bumper crops of alfalfa, grains and fruits, was set down in school text-books in the 70's as the "Great American Desert." Its inhabitants were, outside of the stations on the railroad, largely roaming bands of Indians, a few hundred soldiers at military post

My Dear Friend : Can you put me in correspondence with any of the old boys we met when the country was new, out in Wyoming? * * * Of the Medicine Bow range, or Whipple, the man I gave the copper specimens to? * * * Have you forgotten the importance you felt while walking up and down the long line of bovines, swinging your "gad" and cursing like a mate on a river boat? You looked bigger to me than a railroad president when you secured that job, as you used to say, breaking on a bull-train. I shou

Before railroads were built in the country west of the Missouri River there was, nevertheless, considerable doing in the transportation line. And even after the Union Pacific was built from Omaha to Ogden to connect with the Central Pacific, which carried the rails to the Golden Gate, most of the transportation of the then great Wild West, in the mountains, on the plains and the "Great American Desert," was done by ox-teams. These were run in trains of from ten to fifty or sixty teams, the teams

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

One of the Buckskins hunting antelope one day in the vicinity of La Bonte Creek crossed the trail of a single tepee or family, and three ponies. This he knew from the lodge pole tracks made by a horse dragging the poles over the ground. The Buckskin took the trail, keeping well out of sight, but finally cut off a lone Indian who had dismounted to drink from a spring, allowing his young buck sons to go on. Buckskin whistled to give his quarry the chance he would give a mad dog—and no more. Then h

Driving seven yoke of oxen hauling two wagons attached by a short rig similar to that used in coupling cars, along a desert road, is enough to keep an able-bodied ox-train brakeman busy. But when, in addition to keeping his wild "leaders" in the road and his "wheelers" filling their yokes, he has to keep an eye on a distant bad land bluff or a roll in the surface, he has his hands more than full. This was the situation when the bull outfit, from Cheyenne to Spotted Tail, was slowly moving along

The night-herder's song awoke me at four a. m.—the first streak of day—and I didn't have time to pull on my boots before the bulls were inside the corral; so, in bare feet, I yoked my fourteen head and then proceeded to pull on the cowhides, roll up my blankets and throw them on my trail wagon. Due to the haste—for nearly everyone else in the outfit was ready to "pull out" in response to the assistant wagon boss' order—I proceeded to pull on the left boot without the usual precautions. My finger

After fighting through a ten-hour blizzard that swept across the plains from the Elk Mountain country our wagon-train reached the foothills of the Medicine Bow range, where there was shelter for the work cattle along a swift running stream. The snow was piled in great drifts everywhere except upon exposed high spots, and it seemed impossible for us to proceed farther, for we knew that along the government trail just beyond, and 1,000 feet higher, that the drifts would be so deep that a long camp

From the cross-tree of a telegraph pole hung the body of a man when the 9:30 Union Pacific Overland Express stopped for a "slow" order across a bridge that a band of Comanche Indians had tried to burn. A Massachusetts woman enroute to 'Frisco stuck her head out of a car window and exclaimed, "How awfully terrible!" Yes, it was. Ed Preston was a one-eyed man. I don't know how he lost the other one, but I do know that he was a dead shot with the one eye that he slanted along the barrel of his pist

When the Union Pacific Railroad was being built the Indians were wild and hostile. The appearance of the locomotive was unwelcome. Surveyors, track-layers, bridge-builders and others if not properly guarded by details of United States troops were attacked from ambush and often killed. It was indeed an adventurous calling to be a railroader in those days, no matter in what capacity; for if it wasn't Indians it was something else that made it so in the then wilderness. Towns were built in a day al

"Wild Bill" Hickok, who had been city marshal at Abilene, Kan., blew into Cheyenne in 1874 along with Texas Charley and a few more "bad men." Things were booming in the Wyoming metropolis. Gold had been discovered in the Black Hills, and the crowds of fortune-seekers from every point of the compass had begun to flock in. Men were there from South Africa, Brazil, California and Australia, intermingling with the New Englander, the Middle Westerners, the cowboys and bullwhackers and others attracte

Let us suppose this is the year 1872, and that we are taking a trip across the continent on the first railroad from the Missouri River to the Golden Gate. We have passed through western Nebraska and its uninhabited hills and plains and we are entering Cheyenne, on a vast plain, yet situated at the foot of a range of the Rocky Mountains known as the lower Black Hills. We are in sight of Long's and other Colorado peaks of the Rockies and while apparently on a wide prairie for several hours we have

This Indian was lost—something that has rarely happened. No Indian could use a compass if he had one, and he wouldn't if he could—not the real Indian of the days of General Custer, Buffalo Bill and a few others. Indian instinct beats any mechanical contrivance man has invented for white sailors, hunters, explorers and lumber cruisers. But the full-blood of this story was lost and was bleating like a sheep away from its flock, and just as timid and gentle. A lost Indian, and a proud, high cheek-b

Before my feet were thoroughly toughened—that is to say, when I was still to some extent a tenderfoot—I joined, single-handed, in an undertaking which had more chances for failure than almost anything that can be imagined. It wasn't a trip to the moon, neither was it an attempt to wipe out the then powerful Sioux nation, but it was worse than either of these. On Wagon-hound creek, one summer day, when our outfit was in camp for several hours, I strolled away from camp alone. It was early summer,

Near Horse Creek lived a ranchman of the name of McDonald, a pioneer, and I believe a religious and perfectly sane and honest Scotchman, although I am not sure of his nativity; however, he had all the good qualities of that race. One June morning I joined a bull outfit owned by him and drove a team attached to the naked gears of two wagons into the virgin parks on Laramie Peak, along the streams and upon the sidehills of which grew the straightest aspen and small pine trees in all the territory.

When the first clothing was issued to the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at Red Cloud Agency the scene was better than a circus. If I am not mistaken Carl Schurz was secretary of the interior, and after a conference with some of the big chiefs it was decided to attempt to abolish the breech-clout. The "Great Father" at Washington, represented by members of Congress and some of the Pennsylvania Quakers and others, discovered that Uncle Sam had a warehouse full of discarded or out of date army coats a

And now let me answer questions that have no doubt arisen in the minds of the readers who have waded through these chapters. "Why isn't this record presented in the regulation way—as a novel with a love story running through it;" or, "What is the moral?" Let me ask such readers to follow me a little farther. On March 22d, 1873, a description of a certain boy who left his Wisconsin home to buffet with the world on his own responsibility would have read as follows: Age, 16 years, 6 mos. and 7 days