Part 2 (2/2)
Eatumup Jake said he knew a sheepman by the name of Hatchet Face from Connecticut, who had sheep ranches out there in Utah, and he was so kind-hearted that when one of his herders kept his sheep in a widow neighbor's field till they ate up everything in sight, even her lawn and flower garden, he apologized to the widow when she returned from nursing a poor family through a spell of sickness, and told her he would pay her something, and while he never did pay her anything, yet he always seemed sorry, while a lot of sheepmen would have laid awake nights to have studied a way how to eat out the widow again. Eatumup Jake said old Hatchet Face, when he prayed in church Sundays (he being a strict Presbyterian), he always prayed for the poor and widows and orphans, and that showed he had a good heart, to use what influence he had with G.o.d Almighty and get Him to do something for widows and orphans and poor people.
Dillbery Ike said he knew a sheepman by the name of Shearclose, and while he never gave his hired help any meat to eat except old broken-mouthed ewes in the winter and dead lambs in the spring and summer, and herded his sheep around homesteaders' little ranches till their milk cows mighty near starved to death, yet old Shearclose gave $5 for a ticket to a charity ball once when a list of the names of all the people who bought tickets was printed in the county paper.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _C. J. Lane, General Freight Agent and Pa.s.s Distributer to Live Stock s.h.i.+ppers._]
After we summed all these things up, our hearts got so warm thinking of these acts of generosity by sheepmen that we concluded to make a hunt for Rambolet Bill, Cottswool Canvasback and Jackdo. We now discussed a great many plans how to rescue them. While we were arguing the stock train came, and when we told the conductor, he immediately had the agent wire General Freight Agent C. J. Lane at Omaha the following message:
”Two prominent sheepmen swept away by freshet while camping ahead of special stock train No. 79531. Please wire instructions how to find them.”
Lane immediately wired back not to find them, and if there was any trace left of them to obliterate it at once.
JACKDO'S STORY OF HIS ESCAPE.
We now sauntered down Sherman Hill ahead of the train to Cheyenne, expecting to get some help there to find Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback, and was much surprised to discover Jackdo asleep riding on the trucks of a car in a special that went by, and on waking him up he told us the following story of his escape:
He said when the flood came he got astride a big s...o...b..ll and making a compa.s.s out of a piece of lightning rod he pointed it for the north star so as to not lose his bearings and started for Cheyenne. He said it was a wild ride, that he pa.s.sed cattle and horses, forests and ranches in quick succession and his s...o...b..ll was almost worn out when he got below the alt.i.tude of the chinook wind and struck a country of ice and snow again. But it was impossible to stop, he had acquired such a momentum going down the mountain that he slid through nine miles of cactus and p.r.i.c.kly pears without having changed the sitting position he started in.
However, after his s...o...b..ll wore out, he just held up his feet and kept on till he struck a special stock train going East, and after knocking two of the cars off the rails and breaking the b.u.mpers of a half-dozen more, he checked up enough to crawl on a brake beam and go to sleep. He knew nothing of Rambolet Bill and Cottswool Canvasback.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] For the benefit of our readers who do not know what a chinook wind is, I will explain that it is a hot, violent coast wind which blows at certain periods of the year at certain alt.i.tudes in the West.
CHAPTER XI.
OUR ARRIVAL IN CHEYENNE.
We arrived in Cheyenne, and after reporting to the dispatcher what time our special stock train would arrive, we exposed Jackdo to the gentle breeze, which is always on tap in Cheyenne, and it blew all the cactus slivers out of his anatomy that he had acc.u.mulated in his nine miles slide in just thirteen seconds. We then started out to see the town. We asked an expressman on the corner of Main Street--he was the only live human being in sight--what was the main features of Cheyenne. He said Tom Horn and Senator Warren. We asked him what they was noted for, and he said that Tom Horn was noted for killing people that took things that didn't belong to them and then blowing his horn about it afterwards, and Senator Warren was noted for building wire fences on government Land and taking everything in sight.
Not seeing anyone on the streets, we asked him if it was Sunday, and he said every day was Sunday in Cheyenne except when they had a political rally, and then it was a durn Democratic funeral from sun to sun, burying the Democratic party over and over again, they rehea.r.s.ed them same old services. Whenever people saw the politicians on the streets with clean s.h.i.+rts on they knew the Democratic party was going to have another funeral. The folks in Cheyenne was always going to church, or else burying the Democratic party. We asked him what the prevailing religion of the town was, and he said, ”High-priced wool.”
Just then Senator W---- came along, and hearing of the disappearance of two sheepmen, and it being near election time, he immediately had all the troops called out, got together a vast army of United States deputy marshals and wired the president of the Overland, who immediately chartered a special train loaded with detectives, and two cars loaded with blood-hounds in charge of a lawyer by the name of Ashby from Lincoln; one car loaded with automobiles, two cars loaded with bottled goods and other useful supplies and two pianos with pianola attachments, seven trunks full of mechanical music in air-tight bottles, and one steam calliope near the engine on a flat car. The Governor of Wyoming met the special train at Cheyenne, and after issuing a proclamation offering a large reward for the sheepmen dead or alive, joined the U. P.
president in his car. They now started the steam calliope, and the Governor playing one of the pianola-attachment pianos, the U. P.
president playing the other. The state chairman of the Republican party sang the old familiar hymn, ”Ninety and Nine Were Safely Laid in the Shelter of the Fold,” and Senator W---- made a speech something like this:
He said: ”Fellow sheepmen and what few other citizens there are in Wyoming: What's the matter with the sheep business? Have we deteriorated in the eyes of the world in the last two thousand years? Who writes poetry of the sheep and sheepherder of the present time? What artist puts priceless paintings on canva.s.s of the sheep business to-day? Why, fellow sheepmen, in ancient times all the poetry that was written was of the shepherd and his flock, and in every palace, in the most conspicuous place, was a picture of a tall shepherd with venerable beard and flowing locks, with his serape thrown carelessly over his shoulder, a long shepherd's crook in his hand, leading his sheep over the hill into some fresher pasture. And when the people saw the original of this painting in ye ancient time appearing over the hill in the sunset glow, they cried: 'Lo, behold the shepherd cometh.' Now what do they say? This is what you hear: 'Well, look at that lousy sheepherding scoundrel coming over the divide with his sheep. Boys, get your black masks and the wagon spokes.'
”Now,” he says, ”wouldn't that Ram you? What would our party have amounted to in Wyoming if I hadn't Bucked everything in sight? I've Lambed the stuffing out of the Democrats and Pulled Wool over the eyes of the would-be party leaders till we have Pretty Good Grazing and Fair We(a)thers.
”In a few days we will be called on to decide a great question at the polls, whether Billy Bryan will build your house out of cold, clammy, frosty silver bricks, or whether we will have houses built out of all wool. You must make a choice between the two. If you vote for me, it means a good, warm woolen house, good woolen underclothes, good woolen overclothes.”
Judge Carey tried to say something about a gold plank, but everybody frowned at him so that he slunk off in the crowd and shortly afterwards was seen in a back alley having a heart-to-heart talk with two bow-legged cowpunchers who, while they did not know much about any kind of gold, let alone a big gold standard, knew anything was better than all this talk about sheep and wool.
<script>