THE PERSONNEL OF THE PACK TRAIN. 



G. 0. SHIELDS. 

 Photos by the Author. 



Horses have their individuality, as well 

 as people, and though the horse can not 

 talk, he manages to make characteristics 

 known to those about him in actions 

 which often are more forcible than words. 



Some horses are vicious, others gentle, 

 others wild, others tame, etc. ; but few people 

 who have not handled or studied horses 

 are aware that 2 gentle horses may be as 

 totally different in their mental make up 

 as any 2 good natured people are. Two 

 vicious horses may be entirely opposite in 

 their methods of showing it. 



There is no better place to study the per- 

 sonal peculiarities, whims, eccentricities, or 

 general cussedness of a number of horses 

 than at the tail end of a pack train. 

 Did you ever ride behind one? If not, you 

 have a great treat in store for the future 

 and should not fail to avail of it at some 

 time. Such an experience is a never end- 

 ing source of fun, worry, amusement and 

 provocation by turns ; and you will some- 

 times experience all these emotions within 

 5 minutes. 



The pack train is pre-eminently a West- 

 ern institution. In fact, it is the only way 

 of getting over the wild mountain trails 

 with any comfort. The West is a country 

 of magnificent distances, and a man who 

 undertakes to walk and carry his luggage, 

 or have it carried by other men, as is the 

 custom in the Adirondacks or Maine, is in 

 hard luck. There are few streams in the 

 mountain regions of the West that can 

 be safely run with canoe or boat, as can 

 most of the streams in the East. So for 

 a long tour in the mountains the sad- 

 dle horse is the passenger car and the pack 

 horse is the freight car. An outfit of sad- 

 dle and pack horses is, therefore, called a 

 pack train. 



I rode thousands of miles with 

 such trains, and I always choose the posi- 

 tion of rear guard because the horses or 

 mules are such a never ending source of 

 amusement. Furthermore, I have always 

 had a good deal of valuable property in the 

 loads and naturally wished to be where 

 I could keep an eye on it, to see if any- 

 thing fell off or was damaged in transit. 



During the past summer we traveled 

 about 300 miles in the saddle. By "we" I 

 mean my old hunting companion, W. H. 

 Wright, Tom, our packer, and your Uncle 

 Eli. 



' We had 6 pack horses, named, respec- 

 tively, Buck, Billy, Nitchie, Brownie, 



Darkey and Maude. All were good, faith- 

 ful critters, but some were better than oth- 

 ers. All had good traits about them and 

 some of them had mighty bad ones. Some 

 were brimful of general cussedness and 

 some so faithful and attentive to duty that 

 1 became warmly attached to them. 



These horses were all raised and broken 

 by Indians. Some of them came from the 

 Stonies and some from the Blood Indians. 

 The Stonies live in the mountains and the 

 Bloods on the prairies, and the horses 

 showed, in their work, the results of their 

 early training. Those that came from the 

 Stony camp were typical mountain climb- 

 ers, and nothing was too steep or too diffi- 

 cult for them. The Blood ponies were 

 at a disadvantage in the rough country, but 

 could distance the others when we struck 

 a bit of prairie trail. 



Old Buckskin was a big, stocky, squarely 

 built, flat backed horse with a leg under 

 each corner, as the boy said, and always 

 attended strictly to business. He had his 

 own way of doing his work, which was not 

 always our way,, but he usually got through 

 it safely. 



The packer always rides at the head of 

 the train, and Buckskin's place was next to 

 him. When we finished packing in the 

 morning and Tom mounted his horse and 

 said, "Come on, Buck," that veteran lined 

 in behind Foxy and would be found close 

 behind him when we reached the next 

 camp. 



I said Buckskin was a flat backed horse. 

 That was partly due to the fact that we 

 kept him fat all summer. His back was so 

 flat that the pack lay on it as it would lie 

 on a table. One day he was loitering by 

 the wayside. Wright picked up a bit of 

 shale and shied it at him. It struck the 

 pack, dropped on Buck's rump and lay 

 there until we had gone half a mile. If 

 one should pour water on Buck's back only 

 a part of it would run off. 



Buck is a faithful old horse, but he has 

 a beastly way of going out of the trail 

 when he should stay in it. He always 

 thinks he knows a better way of getting 

 around a hole or a log than the one the 

 packer selects, and whenever the leader 

 struck a bad place, Buck, instead of fol- 

 lowing his file leader as he should, would 

 undertake a flank movement. In many 

 cases he would get in trouble and Wright 

 and I would have to help him out. The trail 

 is always supposed to be made in the best 



