Part 10 (1/2)

Bill went from the store straight to the home of the old merchant and told the wife of the merchant that he was ”frash from auld Ireland, and that he had one shawl left, from his large stock, that he would sell her real cheaply. He commenced to talk to the lady, and all the time he was talking he was unwinding the papers from around the shawl. She looked at him in amazement, and he told her that he had sold out a large collection of fine shawls that he had brought from Paris, and that her husband had seen this shawl and greatly admired it, and that he had said to him in the presence of several other men, that he would like to see his wife wear a shawl like it.” She told him that the shawl must be very choice.

At last the wrappers were all off the shawl, and he threw it about her shoulders and told her to look in the gla.s.s. He slapped his hands together, saying, ”beautiful, beautiful--real Parisian.” On talked the talkative Bill, until at last he saw he had won the lady to his view of thinking that she was a real Parisian figure with the shawl gracefully draped about her shoulders, and she asked him what he would take for it.

He told her that she could have it for just $65. and before she could catch her breath, he wheeled her about where she could see her profile in the gla.s.s, and told her to ”just look at the reflection, could anything be handsomer?” He told her that it was the last one he had, and was cheap at the price, that her husband had said so, and that he said he would like to see her wear it.

She paid the money for it and he departed. He met one of his cronies down the street and told him about the transaction. ”Now,” said he, ”you go down and tell him that he had better come over to the saloon and treat, and I will have the other boys over there hidden in the back room, and we will all get a gla.s.s and

”All go down to Rowser, to Rowser, to Rowser, We'll all go down to Rowser and get a drink of beer.”

Well, the merchant ”fell to” and the treats cost him in round figures the sum of $11.00. When Daugherty left to catch his stage out from there to Fort Zara, he was still treating the crowd, and getting pretty full, himself.

After the affair at Leavenworth, Bill Daugherty came to Kansas City on the boat, and asked the stage company if they needed a man to care for some of their stations. Mr. Barnum employed Bill and he went to Fort Zara, out among the Indians, where Bill's tongue helped him to get along very nicely with them.

When he chanced to allude to Fort Leavenworth, he always told the story of his ”contracting” at Leavenworth on the corner of Fifth and Shawnee Streets. Out there at Fort Zara, Bill enjoyed himself as only Irishmen can, but his stumbling block was Captain Conkey, who was the biggest crank on earth, ”take it from me,” for he and I had a little ”set-to.”

Daugherty always sent his ”red, white and blue regards to the old merchant” by whosoever went to Leavenworth.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Captain Conkey.

Captain Conkey was a ”jacka.s.s” to make a long story short. He had a company of soldiers at Fort Zara for the purpose of escorting the mail from one station to another. Once on my way East with a coach full of pa.s.sengers, a snow storm began to rage, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, soon after I had left Fort Larned. It snowed so hard that at 8 o'clock we couldn't tell where the road was, and the pa.s.sengers took it time and about with me running along the road in front of the coach to find the road.

We got to Fort Zara at ten o'clock that night, the orderly sergeant came after the mail about 500 yards from the soldiers' camp. I told the sergeant that I wanted an escort at nine o'clock in the morning. He gave Captain Conkey my orders and the Captain told him to go back and arrest me and put me in chains. The First Lieutenant told the Captain that I would be there in the morning; that they had no place to sleep me, so the Captain let me alone that night, but the next morning he sent his orderly after me. When the orderly came to the station, he said to me, ”that old fool of a captain sent me down here to arrest you.” I asked him what he wanted with me. The orderly told me that he was to arrest me for ordering an escort. I told the orderly to ”fire away,” I would go over and see the old ”mossback.”

Their quarters was a little dugout in the side of the hill along the river bank. They had a gunny sack for the door, and I went into the first room, which was used for a kitchen, and the cook told me to go to the next room, it had a gunny sack door, too, the First and Second Lieutenants were in there. They told me to go on to the next room that the Captain's headquarters was in the other room. I had my mittens and overcoat on, and he said, ”you pull off your hat, you insolent puppy, and salute me.” I replied to the Captain's kind words of greeting that, ”I will not salute you, but excuse me, I should have had manners enough to have removed my hat.” He told me that he ”would put the irons” on me.

I answered him that I did not think he would do such an unmanly thing, at least right then. This exasperated the haughty Captain, and he hollowed for the First Lieutenant to come and put me in irons. I asked him what he was there for, and he told me that it was ”none of my business.” I then got pretty middling hot myself, and I told him that if he did not know his business, that it was ”up to me” to ”put you next,”

or words to that extent. I told him that he was there for the purpose of furnis.h.i.+ng escorts for the United States mail and that it was I, and not he, in command there, then, by virtue with the position I held with the Government, and I told him that I now ordered him to be placed under arrest. I called on the Lieutenant to place the irons on him. I told him that I would take him to Leavenworth, and the Lieutenant, delighted by the change of program, said, ”alright.”

Captain Conkey then told me that he would furnish the escort, and I told him to do so, then, and I would leave him here, that I had no room on the coach for such a ”donkey” as he was, but that I would tell the commanding officer at Fort Leavenworth that we needed a captain for the company here, in order to save time and trouble for the other conductors of the road. I told him that he had not only taken up time, but that he had made a perfect ”donkey” of himself, and of the men who had favored him with this position.

Captain Conkey asked me if the Indians were bad again. I told him that it did not matter whether they were bad or not, I wanted an escort. I got my escort of fifteen soldiers at last and after getting the teams. .h.i.tched, off we started, the soldiers in advance to break the roads.

That is, as a matter of fact, all the use we had for them. We could travel very well when they had ridden ahead and broke the snow so we could follow the trail.

Daugherty built him a new station across the creek from where Conkey was camped, on Walnut Creek. He put up corals for the mules and built a fort-like building for his home. About the time he had finished his buildings, some white hunters had killed some Indians, and trouble began between the white race and the Indian tribes.

One day at about ten o'clock in the forenoon, Mr. Daugherty went up on the top of his house with his field gla.s.ses to inspect the surrounding country. He noticed that Indian smokes were all around, and the Indians seemed to be coming toward them all the time.

He hastened down from the roof and called the orderly from Captain Conkey's company to him and told him that unless the Captain moved to his fort within an hour and a half that they would all be killed by the Indians. There had been bad blood between Conkey and Bill Daugherty for quite a while, and when Daugherty sent the orderly to Conkey with the warning of the coming Indians, Captain Conkey got mad and told the orderly to go over and arrest Daugherty for disturbing his peace. Just as the soldiers coming to arrest him stepped on the bridge, Bill Daugherty halted them. He said, ”if you come another foot, I will fire on you.” You go back and tell Conkey, the fool, that if he don't get you men to this side inside of half an hour, you will all be ”gonners.” If you want the protection of my fort, come over and you will have the same protection as I have, otherwise, you will go up in smoke, holy, or otherwise. Daugherty then took his gun and went to the Captain, and saluting him, said: ”The Indians are coming, 1,000 strong, and unless you get your wagons, etc., out of here, and at once, you will be scalped.” Captain Conkey then decided that for the benefit of his health, he had better decamp to the other side for protection. He just barely escaped when the Indians swooped down on his camp ground. Then Daugherty took his gun and went to the bridge and laid the gun down and walked over it toward the Indians, motioning to them that he came in peace, and for them to come and get something to eat. Daugherty took four of the Indians to his fort and gave them some bacon, coffee and other provisions, and took two other men from the fort with him with axes, to chop wood for a fire, and they cooked a meal and with the Indians the four white persons and Bill Daugherty sat down to ”meat.”

Bill Daugherty showed the Indian chiefs over his fort, explained the working of his guns and cannons. He had 40 port holes in the houses and shelves under each one on which to rest a gun. After giving them a large box of smoking tobacco, he told them they could go on back to their camp and that he would keep the soldiers peaceable if he would keep his braves peaceable. Captain Conkey told Daugherty that he believed he would go down and see the chief, and Bill answered him, to ”go if you d--ed please, and you want to lose your scalp, for they will surely not put up with your palaver.” Conkey concluded that he had better remain in the home of his enemy than risk his precious scalp at the camp of the Indians.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Colonel Moore's Graphic Description of a Fight with Cheyennes.[1]

That Colonel Milton Moore for a quarter of a century has been a prominent pract.i.tioner at the Kansas City bar, a member of the election boards, and is now serving as a school commissioner is well known, but that the old commander of the Fifth Missouri infantry was ever a Santa Fe freighter in the days when freighting was fighting, was not generally known until there appeared a month ago in Hal Reid's monthly, Western Life, a paper written by Colonel Moore for the Kansas Historical Society.

The story is that of an engagement between a party of freighters, with whom was young Moore, and a band of Indians, in 1864, not far from Dodge City.