Hay wagon

“ Imagine that you see coming out of a side street into Peco Street, a team of medium-sized horses wearing a set of heavy tin-bespangled harness, attached to a regulation wide-tread ranch wagon with canvas top, with a water barrel on each side. A bale of alfalfa hay is seen on the carrier behind, and a lantern swings from one of the bows. Inside are two spring seats, the second being occupied by a large, brown, yellow-eyed dog, and the front seat by two very ordinary-looking individuals of uncertain age. Following the wagon is a tall slim man on a bay mare. ”

“ Five days after Charlie's arrival, the freight teams arrived in camp. Each wagon had on a big rack, built like hay-racks. The hides were piled in this rack with a lap and boomed down tight like a load of hay. I have seen 200 bull-hides piled on one wagon. A dry bull-hide, as a rule, would weigh about fifty pounds. So the reader may have some idea of a train of six yokes of oxen to the team, lead and trail wagon to each team, the lead wagon hauling nearly 200 hides, and the trail hauling from 100 to 150. In bad places the trail was uncoupled while the lead wagon was drawn to good going. ”

“ Remembering that the hay after its drying has begun should be handled as little as possible, the cocks have been made small enough so that two men may lift them bodily onto a wagon, if a wagon is used in the stacking. From the wagon, the hay is lifted by a hayfork to the stack. Or, more careful still, the farmer will use three slings to each wagon, which are lifted by a hook to the stack or mow. A sling is a heavy sheet the size of the wagon hayrack. ”

“ They watched the approach of the wagon, which lumbered along slowly, although drawn by a pair of powerful looking horses. At last, the wagon reached a side entrance to the ranch and came to a halt, and the driver dismounted.
Five minutes passed, and then four or five men came up to the wagon. The hay, which was on top, was cast aside, revealing some machinery resting on the bottom of the wagon.
"Some farming machinery," said Fred. ”

“ Skeletons of cattle, bodies not yet skeletons, aroused no more than a casual look. Furniture lay cast aside, even broken wagons, their wheels fallen apart, showing intimate disaster. The actual hardships of the great trek thrust themselves into evidence on every hand, at every hour. Often was passed a little cross, half buried in the sand, or the tail gate of a wagon served as head board for some ragged epitaph of some ragged man.
It was decided to cross the South Fork at the upper ford, so called. Here was pause again for the Wingate train. ”

“ So they jolt homeward over the rough, frozen road or toil through sticky mud, as the case may be, well pleased with their purchases and their glimpse of town, and content to take up again the round of monotonous life on their isolated prairie farm.
Sometimes on spring-like days, when the roads are good, two women or a woman and one or two half-grown children drive by in a spring-wagon, bringing chickens, eggs, and butter to market. Heavy wagons loaded with large clear blocks of ice go by every day, the men walking and driving or seated on a board seat at the extreme rear of the wagon. ”

“ Mexican and Indian horses and mules will make long journeys without being shod, as their hoofs are tough and elastic, and wear away very gradually; they will, however, in time become very smooth, making it difficult for them to travel upon grass.
A train of wagons should always be kept closed upon a march; and if, as often happens, a particular wagon gets out of order and is obliged to halt, it should be turned out of the road, to let the others pass while the injury is being repaired. As soon as the broken wagon is in order, it should fall into the line wherever it happens to be. ”

“ Perhaps within sight, at one time, under guard for the evening feed on the fresh young grass, there would be two thousand head of cattle. In the wagon village men, women and children would be engaged as though at home. There was little idleness in the train, and indeed there was much gravity and devoutness in the personnel. ”

“ The men now mounted the wagon seats, two to each wagon. Flankers drove up the loose cattle, ready for their turn later. Men rode on each side the lead yoke of oxen to hold them steady on their footing, Wingate, Price, Kelsey and Hall, bold men and well mounted, taking this work on themselves. ”

“ As night drew near, trains of emigrants were passed, three or four wagons usually travelling together, for mutual protection. The great white-hooded vehicles, drawn by heavy cattle, moved slowly along. The family, with all their household goods, are packed away in the wagon, which is almost invariably attended by a pair of dogs and several cows. It is a weary road which they must travel over. Long lines of nodding sunflowers at intervals mark out the path of the overland trail.
To Farwell their golden beauty was an intense pleasure ”

“ As the fighting men approached the wagons they saw a group of stern-faced women weeping around something which lay covered by a blanket on the ground. Molly Wingate stooped, drew it back to show them. Even Bridger winced.
An arrow, driven by a buffalo bow, had glanced on the spokes of a wheel, risen in its flight and sped entirely across the inclosure of the corral. It had slipped through the canvas cover of a wagon on the opposite side as so much paper and caught fair a woman who was lying there, a nursing baby in her arms, shielding it, as she thought, with her body. ”

“ It is almost suffocating in the forests when the wind does not blow, and the army is unused to the scorching American summer which has come early this year. The wagon train is very long, and though the van may have halted on level ground, the line behind stretches down and up the shadowy ravines. The wagons are blocked in all conceivable positions on the hillsides. The condition of the horses is pitiful beyond description. If some are near to the brook or spring, others are far away. Some horses will never find water tonight. ”

“ And then, and it is always so, some of the lively stock, as it approaches the corral, takes the notion that there is some nice sweet buffalo bunch grass to the rear that looks better than a day's work, and there is a bolt often approaching a stampede. Curses? You never heard the like, for the wagon boss and an assistant are already in their saddles helping the herder. If you tried to sleep just a minute longer it would be impossible, therefore you roll out from your bed on the ground, fold up your blankets, tie them with a strap and throw them on your trail wagon. ”

“ The creaking of wheels and axles, the muffled plunge of hoofs, and the cough of a horse in the dust thus stirred presently broke the profound woodland silence. Then a dirty white canvas-covered emigrant wagon slowly arose with the dust along the ascent. It was travel-stained and worn, and with its rawboned horses seemed to have reached the last stage of its journey and fitness. The only occupants, a man and a girl, appeared to be equally jaded and exhausted, with the added querulousness of discontent in their sallow and badly nourished faces. ”

“ But it was not the buffalo, nor yet the frightened herd, nor yet her mules. Out of the smoke curtain broke a rider, his horse flat; a black horse with flying frontlet--she knew what horse. She knew what man rode him, too, black with smoke as he was now. He swept close to the wagon and was off. Something flickered there, with smoke above it, beyond the wagon by some yards. Then he was in saddle and racing again, his eyes and teeth white in the black mask of his face. ”

“ But as the people fed full there began a curious sloughing off of the social compact, a change in personal attitude. A dozen wagons, short of supplies or guided by faint hearts, had their fill of the Far West and sullenly started back east. Three dozen broke train and pulled out independently for the West, ahead of Wingate, mule and horse transport again rebelling against being held back by the ox teams. More and more community cleavages began to define. The curse of flies by day, of mosquitoes by night added increasing miseries for the travelers. ”

“ No one could walk in the deep mud: the whole family were obliged to huddle together in the back part of the wagon, wrapped in bed-quilts or other covers, while the driver, generally the head of the family, sat on the seat in front, exposed to the cold or driving rain. The horses slowly dragged the heavily-laden wagon through the mud, and the progress toward their new home was tedious in the extreme. The wagons were usually common farm-wagons with hoops of wood, larger and stouter than barrel hoops, arched over the bed and covered with white cotton cloth. ”

“ From the barn-yard, 344 a very variable number, per day. In my own case, two men with three horses have been hauling six and seven loads of sixty bushels, fine compost, a distance of from one-half to three-fourths of a mile, up a long and rather steep hill, and spreading from the wagon, as hauled, upon grass-sod.
Our larger farmers often have one driver and his team, two wagons, one loading, while the other is drawn to the field; the driver slips off one of the side-boards, and with his dung-hook draws off piles at nearly equal distances, to be spread as convenient. ”

“ Spring wagons made in Concord, New Hampshire, are used to transport passengers and the mails upon some of the routes across the plains, and they are said, by those who have used them, to be much superior to any others. They are made of the close-grained oak that grows in a high northern latitude, and well seasoned. The pole of the wagon should have a joint where it enters the hounds, to prevent the weight from coming upon it and breaking the hounds in passing short and abrupt holes in the road. ”

“ The riflemen flanked the train on the danger side and fired continually at the long string of running horses, whose riders had flung themselves off-side so that only a heel showed above a pony's back, a face under his neck. Even at this range a half dozen ponies stumbled, figures crawled off for cover. The emigrants were stark men with rifles. But the circle went on until, at the running range selected, the crude wagon park was entirely surrounded by a thin racing ring of steel and fire stretched out over two or three miles. ”

“ It carries his grub, his "war bag" (bag of clothes) , his bedding, and strips of rawhide which he salts down and sometimes cuts into strings and braids things like "bosals" (nose bands) or such.
"The Wagon" moves camp most every day, and sometimes twice and three times a day, all depends on how quick the country is "worked." The "circle" starts from "The Wagon." The twenty or more riders and the cow foreman ride straight to some point for ten or fifteen miles. On top of some butte the bunch stops, then the cow foreman "scatters the riders." ”

“ No wagon is complete without a bucket hanging from the axle.
The spare horses are driven with the herd, the men taking turns at the task. At daybreak each morning the cowboys scatter from the mess-wagon, riding up and down the draws and over the hills, driving in the cattle for branding and the "cutting out," or separating from the herd, of marketable beeves. ”

“ He went without obtaining any private interview with Molly Wingate.
Camped for the night along the old trail.
These matters none the less had their depressing effect. Few illusions remained to any of them now, and no romance. Yet they went on--ten miles, fifteen sometimes, though rarely twenty miles a day. Women fell asleep, babes in arms, jostling on the wagon seats; men almost slept as they walked, ox whip in hand; the cattle slept as they stumbled on, tongues dry and lolling. All the earth seemed strange, unreal. ”

“ Following the sturdy caravan of pack-horses, the lumbering coaches, and broad-wheeled wagons of last century came the "fly wagons" in the early years of this century, and with them the possibility of poor people once in a life time getting a few miles from home, in case of absolute necessity. The old tilted fly-wagon was used not only for taking up and delivering goods too heavy to go by coach, but persons who could not afford the coach fare of 3d. a mile or thereabouts, would find a place wedged in among the goods at the back of the tilted wagon, sometimes packed away in straw to keep warm. ”

“ Molly Wingate, now assured that the Pawnees no longer were in the vicinity, ventured out for pasturage with her team of mules, which she had kept tethered close to her own wagon. She now rapidly was becoming a good frontierswoman and thoughtful of her locomotive power. Taking the direction of the cattle herd, she drove from camp a mile or two, resolving to hobble and watch her mules while they grazed close to the cattle guards. ”

“ Sometimes two columns of wagons trav- eling on parallel lines and near each other would serve as a barrier to prevent loose stock from crossing; but usually there would be a confused mass of cows, young cattle, horses, and footmen moving along the outskirts. Here and there would be the drivers of loose stock, some on foot and some on horseback .... Over all, in calm weather at times, the dust would settle so thick that the lead team of oxen could not be seen from the wagon—like a London fog, so thick one might almost cut it. ”