Concords cost about $1,500 new, were fitted with side lights and interior candle lamps. Leather curtains were supposed to keep out rain and dust, but on the Plains nothing could have kept out rain or dust. Mail sacks and ordinary baggage went into, the boot at the rear; valuables were stored in a treasure box beneath the driver’s seat. Each passenger was allowed 25 pounds of free baggage, paid $1.00 a pound for extra weight. The fare from Atchison to California was $450. Nine passengers could ride shoulder to shoulder on three inside seats, and if necessary seven additional passengers could ride behind the driver on top.
Holladay insisted that his drivers wear flamboyant dress—broad-brimmed sombreros, corduroys trimmed in velvet, high-heeled boots. He furnished them with nine-foot rawhide whips, elaborately decorated with silver. In cold weather they wore overcoats of Irish frieze, lined with blue shaker flannel, cut long with capes that reached to their hands.
The U.S. Volunteers soon learned that in the social ranking of road drivers, the coachmen were lords of the lash. Next in order came the horse and mule teamsters, and then the lowest class—the bullwhackers, who drove oxen. As time passed the escort troopers identified themselves with the stagecoach drivers, soon knew them well enough to call them by their nicknames—One-eyed Tom, Rattlesnake Pete, Happy Jack, Fiddler Jim, Cross-Eye Jack. On the Kearney-Plum Creek run, there was a William Cody, who later would be known as Buffalo Bill. The soldiers took as much pride in the flashy operation of the Overland Stage Line as did the drivers, and joined them in shouting scornful phrases mixed with colorful oaths at the lowly teamsters and bullwhackers: “Clear the road for the U.S. Mails! Git out of the way thar with your damned bull teams!”
It was the custom to bring the horses to full speed when a coach approached a station, making a dramatic entrance with manes flying, wheels spinning, harness metal jingling, and the drivers shouting or blowing a fanfare on a bugle. The military escorts added flair by galloping their mounts in alongside, the soldiers’ blue uniforms contrasting with the brilliant red coach body, striped with black and labeled in bold letters: OVERLAND STAGE LINE.
The coach carrying General Connor and his charges ran into a fierce storm a few miles east of Kearney, a small tornado which overturned wagons on the road, tore baggage loose from the top of the coach, and frightened the team to a halt. Bullet-sized hail set the four horses to rearing, and Connor advised his passengers to join him in leaving the coach. Bowles later said the military escort proved themselves real heroes by preventing the coach from overturning and the team from running away. “The horses were quieted and restored to their places, and we got into a drowned coach, ourselves like drowned rats, and hastened to refuge over a prairie flooded with water.”30
The refuge was Fort Kearney, headquarters for A and B Companies of the 3rd, and the western terminus of the first division of the line from Atchison. The stage station was a short distance west of the fort, with an office, tavern, stables, and blacksmith shop. By late May, the U.S. Volunteers had been at Fort Kearney long enough to know their way around, and only the most confirmed gamblers and the hardest drinkers of the two companies spent much time anymore in Kearney City, or Dobytown, a collection of sod buildings where “large quantities of the meanest whiskey on earth were consumed,” and where professional gamblers secured their livings from gullible travelers in games of poker, old-sledge, and seven-up.31
General Connor’s party remained at Fort Kearney long enough to dry out, and then a detail from Company A saddled up to escort the coach over the next 10 miles to Platte Station. In a dispatch to his newspaper, Albert Richardson noted that the escort consisted of rebel prisoners who had taken the oath of allegiance. “They styled themselves ‘galvanized’ Yankees; were faithful, prompt and well-disciplined.” He also related an account of how one of the escort, “with a cavalry rifle at four hundred yards, brought down an antelope with great branching horns, which he flourished wickedly about our soldier, who boldly seized them and then cut his throat. Strapping the fallen chieftain to our coach, we contributed him to the larder of the next station-keeper.”32
Both Richardson and Bowles were fascinated by the road ranches, where the food was plain but unexpectedly good, where news of the outside world flashed by on the telegraph wires to enliven the lonely lives of the telegraphers, station-keepers, and soldiers. “We met the California papers daily in the coaches coming east,” said Richardson, “and were permitted to read the dispatches from the Associated Press at telegraph stations. The breakfast … was the more palatable, when the New York bulletins of the same morning were spread upon the board—literally the board—in the hurried handwriting of the operator, who caught and transfixed them flying on the lightning’s wing to San Francisco.”
The escort detail ate army fare—hardtack and bacon—but occasionally after payday a soldier might join the passengers and squander a dollar at one of the better ranche taverns and dine on hot biscuits, ham and eggs, and dried-apple pie.
Life was strenuous, life was dangerous, for these soldiers new to the West, but most of them would have agreed with Samuel Bowles’s comment that the Plains country was an exciting place to be in late spring of 1865. With the coming of fine weather, it seemed that every adult male in the East was heading West. Recently discharged Civil War veterans were going to the mines or searching for homestead sites. Politicians, land speculators, theatrical companies, parties of Mormons, government contractors, railroad surveyors—everybody was on the road. And each day there were more and more freighting trains, sometimes stretching as far as one could see, lines of heavy wagons with their white canvas billowing over loads of corn, hardware, groceries, whiskey, clothing, kerosene, machinery. To the Galvanized Yankees, the Overland Route must have seemed the highway of the world, and they were the guardians for its surging stream of humanity.
To add zest was the ever present threat of Indians. Westward from Plum Creek (35 miles beyond Fort Kearney) vigilance was redoubled. “There seemed to be something in the very air at Plum Creek,” a teamster recorded, “that was different from what we had left behind. A feeling of danger, invisible but present, was openly manifested when an escort of U.S. soldiers moved out ahead of us when the bull train started.”33
All along this section of trail were signs of recent Indian raids—burned ranches, wrecked corrals, freshly mounded graves. But after a few escort marches, the Volunteers scarcely noticed these grim reminders. There were too many interesting things to see along the way, too much vitality in the continually changing traffic on the road.
Among the sights to see and be taken in by was a huge square stone beside the trail west of Plum Creek. “Daniel Boone” had been carved into its surface, and below that well-known name was a mysterious message advising passersby to turn the stone over and learn some very important information. Many westbound travelers paused here, hitched teams to the stone, and struggled desperately until they turned it over only to read the same words on the other side.
West of Julesburg, the men of Captain Thomas Kenny’s Company H became well acquainted with a road ranche built like a medieval fort. The inner structure was of thick sod and adobe, surrounded by a moat and an outer wall of stone. It was impervious to bullets, arrows, or fire, and above the entrance a crudely lettered sign informed the world that this was
FORT WICKED
KEPT BY W. GODFREY
GROCERY STORE
When asked why he called his place Fort Wicked, Mr. Godfrey would usually reply: “Well, I guess the Sioux and Cheyenne know well enough.” He had survived several strong attacks during the raids of 1864.34
Every day was new and different on that highway of the world. Some days the wind blew up great clouds of black stifling dust. Other days there would be sudden rain squalls, but after a rain the sky would turn sapphire and the air would be as bracing as a swig of brandy, so clear that distant landmarks seemed to move into the foreground of vision.
Almost every day brought a magnificent sunset against clouds or dust
, the sun’s rays flaming fire and gold, crimson, purple, pink and rose. Occasionally a great swarm of grasshoppers would sweep over the land like a snow shower, glittering in sunlight, filling the air in all directions, piling upon the ground. And everywhere along the way were prairie-dog villages, the inhabitants amusing to watch, their holes dangerous to horses’ legs.
The rarest sight of all was a pretty girl. Most of the travelers on the road were men, but sometimes among a party of Mormon emigrants the U.S. Volunteers would catch brief glimpses of fair faces beneath sunbonnets. One day a party of Mormons, all females, passed Plum Creek heading west for Salt Lake City. Their effect upon the males they met along the way was recorded by Billy Dixon: “Not a man among them, and they could not speak a word of English; I was told that they were Danes. All the women wore wooden shoes. They drove ox wagons. … The sight of these women so excited our curiosity that the trainmaster called a halt until they passed us.”35
The Plains country was rough on women in 1865. They had to contend with shortages of water, wood, food staples, clothing, and furnishings. Household duties occupied most of their waking hours. They bore their children without benefit of doctors. They endured insects, blizzards, and drouths. Dust and sun ruined their complexions. And always in their minds was the threat of captivity by Indians—a fate which they feared more than death itself.
The men of Companies E and F on escort and guard assignments west of Julesburg often passed a neat grave beside the ruins of a road ranche. The large headboard told them that it covered the remains of W. J. Morris, killed by Indians January 10, 1865. Missing and supposed captured by the Indians were his wife, Sarah Morris, and her two children, Charles and Joseph. All along the Platte Valley, soldiers were told to keep an alert watch for white women and children who might be traveling with bands of Indians during the summer hunts, for there were several others missing in addition to the Morrises.
One day in June, the routine of post construction and garrison duty at Julesburg was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Lucinda Eubanks, who had been a captive for almost a year. She had been recovered near Fort Laramie and brought down to General Connor’s headquarters for interrogation. Mrs. Eubanks reported that she had seen Sarah Morris some weeks earlier with a band of Cheyennes moving north. (By an odd coincidence, on the very day Lucinda Eubanks was telling her story at Julesburg, Sarah Morris was being delivered to the commanding officer of the 1st U.S. Volunteers 500 miles to the north, at Fort Rice, Dakota Territory. An account of her ordeal is told in Chapter IV.)
Lucinda Eubanks was only 24 years old, but the soldiers who saw her at Julesburg would have believed her to be twice that age. She had seen her home burned, her husband killed, and then she and her two children, a six-year-old nephew, and a 16-year-old girl, Laura Roper, had been taken prisoners by Cheyennes.
Soon after being captured, Lucinda Eubanks was claimed by an elderly chief. “He forced me, by the most terrible threats and menaces, to yield my person to him,” she testified. After a few weeks, the Cheyenne sold her to a Sioux named Two Face. “He did not treat me as a wife, but forced me to do all menial labor done by squaws, and he beat me terribly. Two Face traded me to Black Foot (another Sioux) who treated me as his wife, and because I resisted him his squaws abused and ill-used me. Black Foot also beat me unmercifully, and the Indians generally treated me as though I was a dog.” Lucinda Eubanks’ three-year-old daughter and her nephew were taken from her and she never saw them again. (Both died later from harsh treatment.) She was nursing her infant son, and refused to wean him for fear he would also be taken from her. “During the winter the Cheyennes came to buy me and the child, for the purpose of burning us, but Two Face would not let them have me. … We were on the North Platte. … The Indians were killing the whites all the time and running off their stock. They would bring in the scalps of the whites and show them to me and laugh about it.”36
In the same North Platte region (now east-central Wyoming) where Lucinda Eubanks spent her terrible winter, Companies I and K of the 3rd U.S. Volunteers were having their troubles with these same Indians during the summer of 1865. Captain A. S. Lybe of Company I reported in June and July that Indians “were very annoying” between the Sweetwater and South Pass stations. “The garrison consisting of two non-commissioned officers and twelve men at Sweetwater had several spirited fights with the Indians near that station, in one of which First-Sergeant William R. Moody took command and fought heroically, bringing off all his men except one killed and one wounded.”37
One of Lybe’s routine reports is indicative of the damage done by Indians to telegraph service. At 6:00 P.M. on July 12, Lybe started west from Sweetwater with a detachment to find and repair a break in the line. After a 12-mile march, he discovered almost a mile of wire had been ripped out and taken away. In the vicinity was a recently abandoned Indian camp. “I had not wire enough to fix it,” Lybe reported. “July 13, 4 P.M. I telegraphed Platte Bridge for wire which arrived July 16, 8 A.M. by freight train. 5 P.M. July 16 wire up.”38
Lybe’s company was given favorable notice by Captain Stephen E. Jocelyn, an inspecting officer who passed through the district in July. “At South Pass,” he said, “there is a detachment of fourteen infantry of the 3rd U.S. Volunteers … a portion of what is called the ‘galvanized regiment’ of which there are several on the plains, recruited from the ‘Bull Pen’ at Rock Island, Illinois. … Generally they are a fine looking lot of men, hailing from nearly every state in the South, generally however from Georgia and Alabama—quite a few belonging unmistakably to the class called ‘poor whites’ and very few can write their names, as we saw by an examination of their muster rolls. Yet they are intelligent and obedient, standing in the latter respect, as in efficiency, much above the ‘jayhawkers.’”*39
Before Company I marched from Fort Laramie to man these stations, the section of telegraph line beyond Platte Bridge had been guarded by units of the 11th Ohio and 11th Kansas Cavalry. Lybe expected to take over rations and corn left by the cavalrymen, who were preparing to march East for mustering out, but these supplies were almost exhausted in July. As the long-overdue payroll for his men was being held in Laramie for an appropriate officer, Lybe arranged to go there himself with a platoon escort, and draw the pay as well as such rations, corn, and blankets as were obtainable.40
Early on the morning of July 25, a wagon train and detachment of 11th Kansas cavalrymen under Sergeant Amos Custard left Lybe’s Sweetwater headquarters en route for Fort Laramie. A few hours later Lybe and his platoon, with Captain Henry Bretney and six 11th Ohio cavalrymen, saddled up and started for the same destination. At Willow Spring Creek, Lybe and Bretney overtook Sergeant Custard’s wagon train as it was going into camp. The two officers informed Custard that they intended to make a night march to Platte Bridge, and suggested it might be advisable for the train to accompany them because of reported heavy concentrations of hostiles between Willow Spring and the bridge. The sergeant respectfully declined, saying that his teams were fatigued; he also expressed confidence in the ability of his men to resist any attacks by Indians.
Lybe and Bretney resumed march, and about two o’clock in the morning as they were coming down the river road near Platte Bridge, they caught a strong smell of horses and the unmistakable sound of many animals grazing off to their left. Certain that these must be Indian ponies, they urged their own mounts to a faster pace. A few minutes later the clatter of their horses’ hoofs brought a loud challenge from a picket at the north end of the bridge. After they identified themselves, the picket opened the bridge gate; they crossed to the stockade, where to their surprise they found about half the station’s 100 defenders doing duty as guards, molding bullets, and making cartridges.
The new arrivals soon learned that a large party of hostiles had raided Platte Bridge that afternoon, driving off several horses and putting up a sharp fight when soldiers went in pursuit. Major Martin Anderson, commanding post, had withdrawn his 11th Kansas cavalrymen from the field be
cause of a shortage of ammunition, which explained the night bullet-molding detail. The general opinion inside the stockade was that a full-scale attack on the station was imminent.
Lybe and Bretney informed Anderson of Sergeant Custard’s wagons, which would be approaching the bridge the next day, and suggested that a relief party be sent out under cover of darkness, but Anderson decided to wait until morning. The Laramie-bound horsemen dropped their saddles on the ground inside the stockade, unrolled their blankets, and stretched out to sleep during the remaining two or three hours before daylight.
When the 14 U.S. Volunteers awoke in the summer dawn of July 26, they found themselves inside a small but solidly built fort. The telegraph station was buttressed by warehouses, stables, squad rooms, officers’ quarters, and a blacksmith shop, all protected by a 14-foot pine-log stockade with heavy gates. A howitzer commanded the bridge, the south end of which lay a few yards north of the post.
At the first show of light on the hills across the Platte, sentinels called a warning of Indians, and the Company I men went to the gate to have a look for themselves. Morning mists were rolling away from the thousand-foot span across the Platte—the most magnificent bridge west of the Missouri—heavy Cottonwood, logs resting on cribs of stone. Beyond the bridge was a screen of green willows, and above them a V-shaped ridge of hills. On the hilltops a hundred or so Indians were scattered, some on foot, some mounted—all watching the station. “They looked as if they were out of a job and did not know just where to find one.”41
As yet the U.S. Volunteers felt no sense of alarm. In their two months of service west of Laramie they had grown accustomed to seeing Indians almost every day. They rolled their blankets, prepared their breakfasts, and waited for Captain Lybe to give the order to resume march to Fort Laramie.