CHAPTER VII
SHIPPING STOCK TO CHICAGO
As
already stated, the Northwestern was the first
road across Iowa, and the trains were run in a go-as-you-please kind of
style. There was one passenger train each way a day and several
freights. They had a schedule just to look at, but not to run by. They
would stop anywhere for anything or anybody. They tell a story that
Knox Shufelt, a passenger conductor, held his train while he acted as
best man at a wedding at a near-by farm house. Like the governors of
North and South Carolina, it was a long distance between stations. As soon as the railroads got through, we stock men
took advantage of it and commenced shipping our stock over the road to
Chicago. The engineer who ran the freight I usually shipped on was
Johnny Wells,
and the conductor was Jim Folsom. The boys were great hunters and
carried their guns along, and while passing through Carroll County,
where there was a good supply of prairie chickens, they often stopped
the train to knock over a dozen or so. They used to run through
Harrison and Crawford Counties as if the Old Nick was after them, so as
to have plenty of time to hunt in Carroll.
You who are riding on the Northwestern to-day, with its double track
and its frequent and swift-moving trains, think of a freight train
standing on the only track for hours at a time, and the trainmen off on
the prairies hunting chickens. When we arrived at Boone, the end
of the division, the trainmen were often callcd up by the
superintendent to explain why they couhl not make schedule time. The
boys spoke of ''hot boxes," "brokc in two coming over the hills of the
divide," and when they ran out of excuses we stock men would come to
the rescue and tell the superintendent the cattle were getting down
badly and we had to stop and get them on their feet again.
There is an end to everything, and there was a finish to Folsoni
hunting prairie chickens while running a freight train. Jim was caught
red-handed, and I was in at the kill. One morning, bright and early, I
had loaded four cars of cattle and two of hogs at St. John, now
Mlissouri Valley, and Jim came along from Council Bluffs on his way to
Boone. It was a beautiful day in the fall of the vear, and the boys
thought they would take a shot at some prairie chickens. Wells pulled
the throttle wide open, and away we flew up the valley of the Boyer and
over the divide for Carroll County. At a level place in the road the
boys brought the train to a stop, and wver the prairie we went after
chickens. The train was entirely desertcd. We had been gone about an
hour when there came resounding over the prairies a long-drawn-out
whistle of a locomotive. It seems the superintendent had started out on
a prospecting tour from Boone and had found Jim's deserted train. The
cold chills commenced to run up and down the boys' vertebrae as they
caught sight of the superintendent's car. Jim was equal to the
occasion, however. Picking out six of the fattest chickens, he
approached the stern-looking superintendent with a smile, and, handing
out the chickens, said: ''Mr. Superintendent, allow me." Jim by
invitation rode to the next siding in the superintendent's car, and
what took
place at the little seance between them Jim would never tell, but the
next time I went over the road I noticed we did not stop at our
favorite hunting grounds, and as we rolled over the ties through
Carroll County, Jim sat in the corner of the caboose looking through
the window, and would take a long breath every time he saw a prairie
chicken fly over the train. But it did not follow that Jim never got
any more prairie chickens, as they were occasionally lying dead along
the track by coming in contact with the telegraph wires. The prairie
chicken would make a good carrier-pigeon, so to speak, as it is a rapid
flyer. Like the quail, its breast is large and most palatable.
I have had lots of trouble with four-footed animals in stock cars and
have forgotten most of those occurrences, but I will never forget the
set-to on a locomotive, between five of us on one side and a Woodbine,
Iowa, saloonkeeper on the other, who had a sudden attack of delirium
tremens. The material of the first grade of the railroads through Iowa
was prairie dirt. Often the Boyer River was out of its banks from
frequent rains, and the grade of the Northwestern was washed away, and
for miles the track was under water, preventing the moving of trains.
In the early days of railroad building in the West the main object was
to reach distant points as soon as possible and get trains to running,
as there was always some incentive offered for rapid construction;
therefore, proper grades, punching dirt under ties and driving spikes
was often sacrificed to the main point to "get there.'' The first grade
of the Northwestern down the Boyer was only about three feet higher
than the bottom lands, so often in the rainy season the track was under
water, sometimes to the depth of several feet.
While I was at Sioux City on a little business trip there occurred a
terrific storm, and when I arrived at Missouri Valley on my way home no
trains were running on the Northwestern, as the track in places was
covered with water and the wires were down in every direction. There
was an important message at Missouri Valley which was necessary to be sent to Dunlap, the end of the division, and they were
sending a wild engine over the road to deliver it. The engine, if I
recollect rightly, was in charge of Tommy Burling, a friend of mine,
and knowing that I wanted to go to Woodbine,
he invited me to ride on the engine. Besides Burling, his fireman and
myself, the other occupants of the locomotive were the Woodbine
saloon-keeper and two Dunlap men. During my term of office as Mayor of
Woodbine I had considerable trouble with this particular saloonkeeper.
He was a hard drinker and had an attack of delirium tremens during my
term.
We were moving slowly along and occasionally going it blind so far as
the track was concerned, expecting to strike a piece of undermined
track and topple over, when "the man from behind the bar" struck
Burling a terrific blow and grabbed the throttle, pulling it wide open.
I yelled to everybody that the fellow had an attack of delirium
tremens. The fireman struck the saloon-keeper over the head with his
coal shovel, dropping him to the floor. Burling at the same time jumped
for the throttle. The maniac was soon on his feet again, and right
there began the hottest fight in close quarters that I was ever in. We
fought in the narrow space of the locomotive and all over the tender,
on top of the coal, but we finally dumped the saloon-keeper off of the
engine into the water. Burling said he would rather ditch the engine
than let that fellow get aboard again, so he put on more steam, and
luckily for us we pulled away from our guest, and the last we saw of
him he was running and half swimming along the railroad grade.
On our arrival at Woodbine I notified the saloon-keeper's partner of
the occurrence; they immediately dispatched a boat down the valley and
finally landed their man.
I have unloaded a good many carloads of stock, but I never saw cattle
unload themselves except once, and that vras a carload of Texas steers
while going down the steep winding grade of the Northwestern Railroad from Moingona to the Des
Moines River bridge. The grade on both sides was steep, with many
curves, and the boys used to run down those grades as if old Nick was after them, so as to get a
good start for the up-grade on the other side. The time I refer to we
were running wild, being a stock train of twenty-tive cars witli no other freight. The boys liad the customary
orders to keep out of the way of the regular trains. At tlie last
station, the engineer saw he had time to reach Boone to meet the regular passenger train going West if he put on
a little more steam, so when we struck the Moingona grade we were going
about forty miles an hour.
The car containing the Texas steers was out of repair, haying no crossbar at one of the exits. A crossbar prevents any
pressure against the side doors. As the train rounded the
second curve we saw a Texas steer going horns over hoofs down the steep
incline at the side of the traclv, the next moment we saw another. A
side door of the car went next, and then came another steer and then another. The conductor,
Charlie Dow, tried to signal the engineer from the caboose, as none of
the train crew dared to climb onto the top of the train. The engineer never looked back, all he was
thinking about was getting onto a siding at Boone. In fact, he couldn't
have stopped anyway, so on he went.
Notwithstanding I was afraid the caboose would jump the track any
minute, I couldn't help but laugh as I saw steer after steer roll down
the embankment. As we struck the bridge, a single wooden span, I saw the sight of my life, a steer going
through the air turning somersault after somersault, and disappearing
into the river. As we started up the grade towards Boone, the train
slackened and we all climbed on top and ran towards the car which
contained the Texas steers. About half of them were still in the car,
and were rushing each other from one end to the other, and every now
and then a steer would tumble out. As the train came to the switch yard
at Boone, the rest of them jumped out and the country between Moingona
and Boone was alive with Texas steers.
We intended to unload at Boone, spending the night and the next day
there. On account of the defective car, the owner of the Texas steers
put it up to the railroad company, and that night and all the next day Boone and the entire country-side
were rounding up Texas steers. Some were so badly crippled that they
were shot, others were sold to local butchers. One vicious cuss had
wandered down into a slue on the river bottom and had injured two or
three horses and men trying to corral him, and the railroad company
ordered him shot. Nobody dared to go near him, so they got the best
marksman in Boone to wing him. Abont all you could see of the steer was
his head above the slue orass, and at this the fellow fired. He would
fire, and about all the steer would do would be to shake his head. The
fellow fired four times and he said he would take his oath he had hit
the steer between the horns eyery shot. The animal made a charge
towards us and the Boone man plugged him behind one of the fore legs,
and the gentleman from the Lone Star State dropped. I there learned
that an animal's head, especially that of a Texas steer, is not a vital
spot, as eyery one of those four shots had struck him squarely in the
forehead between the eyes.
Not having been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and having to
paddle my own canoe, I naturally have tackled some hard propositions,
but the toughest job I eyer undertook was to start from the Missouri
River and land a consignment of cattle in the Union Stock Yards,
Chicago, without a loss. The first run was three hundred miles across
the State of Iowa to the Mississippi River; it generally took
thirty-six hours, two nights and a day. In loading cattle, on account
of the freight charges, you naturally would get every steer in a car
you could. The steers had "standing room only"; consequently, if a
steer got down, which was a very common occurrence, on account of the
fatigue from standing too long, it was either to get that steer on his
feet again or he would be trampled to death, and away would go the
profit on that car of cattle. Sometimes you could raise him by standing
alongside of the car and using your prod - a pole about six feet long
with a sharp iron point in one end of it - but often you had to climb
into the end window of the car and go right among them, horns,
droppings, and all, and take your chances of ever
getting out alive, the trainmen paying no attention to you, the train
running thirty miles an hour, and maybe it is night and as dark as
pitch. As I look back to the days and nights when I was a shipper of
stock to Chicago, and recall the many horn-breadth escapes I had, the
wonder is I am alive.
Many a time I have started from the Missouri River for Chicago with a
trainload of stock and never got a wink of sleep for twenty-four hours
at a stretch. I recall the night at Belle Plaine that we pulled a dead
Mexican out of a car of Texas steers. Instead of insisting on having
his car sidetracked to get up some steers that were down, he foolishly
crawled into the car and to his finish. What a great relief it was on
our arrival at the yards at Chicago, as we turned the stock and prod
pole over to our commissioner and started for the Transit House for a
bath, shave and a change of raiment, and to enter a clean dining-room
again for the first square meal in four days, and, after the stock was
sold, to return home dressed as gentlemen. No one would have thought
that the well-dressed individual comfortably lounging iu a Pullman with
an ebony employee catering to his wants, was the same unkempt, dirty
citizen who, but a few hours before, with a four-days' growth of
whiskers on his chin, was in a filthy stock car
trying to get a steer on his feet.
A character who traveled under the sobriquet of "Canada Bill" was well
known along the Northwestern as the kingpin three-card monte man of the
Northwest. "Humbug'' Barnum, the greatest showman the world ever knew, said a fool was born
every minute, and the daily and nightly occupation of "Canada Bill" was
trying to confirm the truth of that saying. Bill and his cappers worked
the Northwestern between "the two rivers" and many a bank roll of
persons green as regards the ways of this world, found its way via "the
picture card'' to Bill's exchequer.
On my way back from Chicago, after a shipment of stock, being unable to
sleep, I left my berth and went forward to the smoking car for a smoke.
I walked the length of the smoker to see if I knew anybody. The only
familiar face was that of a fellow by the name of Jack Bridgers.
Bridgers posed as a traveling man. He traveled all right, sometimes
mightv fast. He claimed as his home Fort Laramie, Wyoming. He
was known around the old Herndon House at Omaha - where I made his
acquaintance - as a "road agent,'' one of those fellows who stop stage
coaches in the
lonely passes of the mountains to take up a collection for present
necessities and future wants. As I sat down beside him with a "Hello,
Jack!" he didn't seem to like it being
recognized; at first he denied his identity, but he soon mellowed and
we talked of times along the Big Muddy.
As the train stopped at a small place called Colo, there climbed aboard
a fellow who to all appearances was a typical hayseed. I immediately
recognized the newcomer as "Canada Bill.'' Personating an old farmer
was Bill's favorite role. I don't believe any one but myself knew who
he was except the trainmen. Bill ahvays made himself solid with them.
He had hardly taken his seat, which was just across the passage away
from the one occupied by Bridgers and myself, when in a loud voice he
commenced one of his tales of woe. In regular old farmer parlance he
said he had just come over from the Calhoun County Fair and had been
swindled out of a whole lot of money by some three-card monte men, and he had bought a deck of cards to learn the
trick himself. I told Bridgers who the hayseed was, he said he had
heard of "Canada Bill," but had never met him. It was but a short time
before Bill commenced separating some of the boys from their spare
change.
In the game of three-card monte it is an easy matter to guess the
picture card unless some other card is substituted in the act of
throwing. One of the tricks of the game is that the manipulator changes
the location of the picture card after the three cards have been
thrown. This change is made when the bettor momentarily takes his eyes
off of the cards while hunting for his money. Bridgers said to me, "See
me make my fare from Omaha to Laramie, and I will make it by an old
trick if your man don't smell a mouse." Bill threw the cards. Bridgers
offered to bet twenty he could tell the picture card. Bill said, "I'll
go you, neighbor." Bridgers had his twenty ready, covered Bill's, and
before Bill had time to wink, Bridgers pulled a knife from bis boot,
drove it through the picture eard and pulled his gun, with the remark,
''I have dirked the picture card." Canada William was a good loser and never whimpered as Bridgers raked
in the pot. The display of the artillery of "traveling man" from Fort
Laramie broke up the game; the hayseed from the Calhoun County Fair lit
a perfecto, pulled his hat over his eyes, with the remark, ''Well, I
guess I struck an exception to Old Barnum's rule.''
Chapter 6 -- Chapter 8
