TO THE LAND OF THE BUFFALO. 29 



I was captain of guard No. 4. This meant that I had the 

 most of the work to do and got the blame for what was undone. 

 It was nice to write home that I was a " captain," even if it 

 was over a scurvy crew of four. It did to accompany the 

 other fiction that our employers would hire no one who swore 

 or drank. To be sure, the men were clear of drinking — when 

 they could get none. It pleased me to hear how particular our 

 bosses w^ere, and I so wrote ; but I never told my parents that 

 my cojnrades, with few^ exceptions, sw^ore like pirates and stole 

 what little there was to steal. At first they stole the best oxen 

 from the w^eaker drivers, when they found their merits and 

 before each one well knew his cattle ; then they would steal 

 pipes and tobacco, tinware and bow-keys, as w^ell as the w^ood, 

 got with so much labor in readiness for cooking breakfast. 

 They were a nice set, take them all around ; but there were 

 three or four, I hope the reader will believe, who did not 

 train wdtli the crowd. 



I was routed out by the captain of " No. 3," suppositiously at 

 midnight, although we were sometimes defrauded of our sleep 

 by being prematurely awakened. I would be acquainted with 

 the condition of the herd, when I would awaken the rest of 

 my men and start forth to relieve the old guard. Our prede- 

 cessors had had a hard night of it to keep the cattle from being 

 incorporated with the buffaloes which were surrounding them. 

 The shaggy brutes were on their way to water from their graz- 

 ing grounds, and were making the air tremble with their ter- 

 rible roaring. In the darkness we could not tell one beast 

 from another, and we were often in danger of being run over 

 by the buffaloes which seemed to be trying to stampede our 

 herd. It was claimed that they purposely did that. One of 

 our men, " Dutch Bill," said that while on a return trip from 

 Laramie, in 1857, his train was overtaken by a snow-storm 

 near the junction of the North and South Platte. The oxen 

 were turned out to graze, but the grass was so covered with 

 snow that they half perished by starvation and cold. One day, 



