The Prairie Schooner By William Francis Hooker Copyright, 1918 By SAUL BROTHERS Chicago To My Wife MAMIE TARBELL HOOKER A Pioneer of the Jim River (Dakota) Valley [Illustration: Illustration and Patent Color Process by J. D. Johnsen] CONTENTS. Page Introduction 11 I. Letters Pass Between Old Pards 15 II. Trains That Run Without Rails 27 III. Hunton and Clay--Bull-Train Magnates 43 IV. Guarding an Overland Freight Outfit 57 V. Rattlesnakes and Redskins 67 VI. Belated Grace for a Christmas Dinner 75 VII. The Fate of One-Eyed Ed. 85 VIII. Track-Layers Fought Redskins 99 IX. "Bill" Hickok, City Marshal 105 X. When Cheyenne Was Young 113 XI. The Lost Indian at Bedtick Creek 119 XII. A She-Bear and Her Cub 129 XIII. A Kick From a Playful Bullock--and a Joke 135 XIV. The Indian and the Trousers 143 XV. There's a Reason; This Is It! Conclusion 149 INTRODUCTION When the Union Pacific Railroad was completed from Omaha, Nebraska, to Ogden, Utah, it passed through a territory about as barren of business as one can imagine. It apparently was a great Sahara, and in fact some of the territory now growing bumper crops of alfalfa, grains and fruits, was set down in school text-books in the 70's as the "Great American Desert." Its inhabitants were, outside of the stations on the railroad, largely roaming bands of Indians, a few hundred soldiers at military posts, some buffalo and other hunters, trappers, a few freighters, and many outlawed white men. The railroad had no short line feeders, and there was, in the period of which I write, no need for them sufficient to warrant their construction. There were military posts scattered along the North Platte, and other rivers to the north, and the government had begun, as part of its effort to reconcile the Red Man to the march of civilization started by the Iron Horse, to establish agencies for the distribution of food in payment to the tribes for lands upon which they claimed sovereignty. These oases in the then great desert had to be reached with thousands of tons of flour, bacon, sugar, etc., consequently large private concerns were formed and contracts taken for the hauling by ox-teams of the provisions sent to the soldiers as well as the Indians.