by Rinker Buck
On the Pennsylvania side, I was surprised by how many trees along the banks were emerging into my vision, and that we were above them. I looped and knotted Texas’s reins around his neck, let him go free, and then stepped forward with my buggy whip to get Betty across the metal grating at the end of the wooden walkway. When she balked at the grating, I gripped the whip handle and reached high with both hands and swung down hard, like trying to hit a pitch for a home run, cracking her hard on the rump. When Betty jumped, I leaped right behind her across the grate and dived for the lead line attached to her bridle.
I just managed to grab the line and then quickly rolled over and held on for dear life, sitting down on the grass as Betty cantered downhill off the bridge embankment. That was my arrival in Pennsylvania. It was all one fluid motion: leap, grab the line, flip over to a sitting position, and then get hauled on my ass by a big draft mare for the Nantucket sleigh ride into New Hope. But I had her, and after she got to the bottom Betty stopped, walked over to a tall green patch, and began browsing on grass.
We still have a wonderful photograph of my father, in a simple denim work shirt with sweat laving off his face, pulling the wagon across the Lambertville–New Hope bridge as my younger brother Bryan contentedly sucked his thumb up on the wagon seat. By this time a state trooper had arrived and held the traffic up behind the wagon. My father was tall and strong, six feet four inches with big, tabletop shoulders, so keeping the wagon moving after he got it started was not much for him. The iron wagon wheels bumped and sang across the metal grating, and my father wore the mien of a man struggling without complaint against a heavy load. I was so elated about getting the team and the wagon across that I forgot my embarrassment about my family, and of course I admired how strapping a man my father was. He could do all of these things despite his amputation, on a wooden left leg.
The image of my father pulling the wagon by hand across the Delaware still resonates more than fifty years later.
New Hope, a busy tourist town, was festive that day. The tourists and the residents poured out of the ice cream shops and antique stores and crowded around the covered wagon, asking us what we were doing. We carried some water and oats over for the team and then relaxed in town. My father bought us all ice cream cones and we sat on benches in a small, shaded park that overlooked the river and watched the motorboats race by. It was pleasant to be out of the sun and we all felt a sense of accomplishment about getting our rig across the Delaware River.
We camped that night in a park built beside the old towpath of the Delaware Canal. In camp, I loved to rest in the evening the way that I had seen Ward Bond and his trail hands do it on Wagon Train. They would make a semicircle of saddles around the campfire, put their saddle blankets on top of the saddles, and then recline with their heads on the saddles, with pieces of straw clasped in their teeth. That’s how I did it. With our campfire burning, I was resting against my saddle staring at the flames when my father walked over with his camp stool, sat beside me, and squeezed my knee.
“Hey, you and your brother did a good job with the team today, son. You were a big help getting across the river.”
“Dad. I didn’t do anything. I let the horses go.”
“Nope. I saw you from the bridge. Betty dragged you all the way down the hill.”
“Big deal, Dad. I didn’t do anything. First I let the horses go, and then Betty dragged me down the hill.”
“All right, son. You’re not listening to me, but it’s okay.”
“Dad. I’m listening. You keep saying that I’m not listening, but I’m listening.”
My father lit his pipe and blew out a smoke ring. He stared at the flames of the campfire for a while.
“Okay, son. All I am saying is that sometimes you’re doing quite a lot by not doing anything. You’re not quitting. You just keep going. That’s the pioneer spirit.”
The idea that I could be doing quite a lot by not doing anything at all, just by not quitting, was quite beyond me at the time, but I did feel that night that I had the pioneer spirit. With the embers of the fire glowing at my feet, I dozed off with my head resting on my saddle. My father let me sleep there all night and I woke in the morning draped in the blanket he had placed over me before he went to bed.
• • •
I was momentarily relieved when we got to the bridge over the Big Blue. The mules looked ahead on the road, saw the uphill climb to the span, and pushed their ears forward. They bowed into their collars with determination to pull hard for the incline. Jake had this enormously attractive habit of skipping a stride, swinging his head from side to side, and then bending low for the work ahead. The mules didn’t seem to mind the river. Still, I kept my lines gathered in case we had trouble.
“These mules have been over water before,” I said to Nick. “They seem fine with the bridge.”
“It looks that way,” he said. “We’ll see.”
As we climbed the bridge a wide black line of heavy metal, bisecting the pavement, began to emerge in front of us. Beck threw her ears forward, turned her head sideways to look at the ominous black line, and then began pulling hard on her bit, trotting sideways and then even cantering in her harness, kicking with her rear legs. She was spooking the other two mules, who began to fuss and try to break away too. It’s the herd instinct in mules. One mule running and starting to break away is very dangerous because the other members of the team don’t want to be left behind. I held back the mules as hard as I could, but they were threatening now to run away.
“Oh, fuck,” Nick said. “That’s an expansion joint. The mules don’t like that.”
It was the runaway approach. Beck was kicking up an enormous fuss now, frothing at the mouth and jumping sideways, trying to break into a gallop by launching off her hind legs. Bute, who would imitate anything Beck was doing, started to fuss too. We were about to lose the team. Nick is a much better driver than me, and much stronger, and I gave the lines to him and reached over with both hands for the brake.
“Hold them back, Nick!” I said. “But we can’t turn around. We have to get them over the joint.”
Expansion joints are intersecting sections of heavy-gauge steel, fitting like a huge zipper, that allow a bridge to flex with changes in humidity and heat, and to vibrate gently under the stress of heavy traffic. They are just the kind of heavy man-made shape, like manhole covers, that provoke the fiendish imagination of mules. There’s a bogeyman there, crouching on the road, just waiting to leap up and bite you in the belly when you get close to it. Big, dark, man-made shapes. To a mule, they’re the devil.
Beck and Bute were fussing terribly in their harness now, breaking into short gallops and pushing off their hind legs, dancing against the pole, wanting to run away but knowing that they wouldn’t cross the expansion joint ahead. As we got closer they began to rear, leaping up and down off the concrete pavement.
Only Jake was being sensible. He pushed his ears forward and looked at the joint. Then he swayed his head from side to side with a grim expression. His body language said, “C’mon, girls. It’s just another bogeyman out there. We’re going to get to the joint and then we’re going to jump it. Cut the crap.”
We were at the joint now and Beck and Bute were panicked, rearing and refusing to cross. Desperate to escape the joint, they swayed violently sideways, pushing the pole from one side to the other, all the way to the wheel stops. I could feel the wagon tipping almost up on two wheels.
“Nick, it’s Jake! Jake is key here. Jake will jump the joint. Jake! Jake! Jump the joint, Jake!”
“Get the whip, Boss,” Nick yelled. “When I say so, give Beck a good crack on the ass.”
It was madness now at the joint. The oncoming traffic from the other side of the bridge raced past us as the team shied into their lane. The driver of a white minivan stopped right beside us, rolled down her window, and began spooking the team even more by taking pictures with a strobe flash. More minivan morons came on after this. These drivers were crazy, pu
lling even closer to the team to get pictures, completely oblivious of the danger. It was a circus show for them, even as the mules spooked sideways and were now rearing just inches from their front fenders.
I had the whip in my hands but I knew that I wasn’t going to lash Beck. We were about to lose the team and any moment now they were going to rear backward and bolt sideways, snapping the pole and overturning the wagon. Fuck it, I thought, we’ll rebuild the wagon somehow. We’ll walk the mules across. It will be a mess up here. I knew that we’d have problems at bridges—it was a big dread hour fear. I had handled this all wrong.
Nick was expertly holding the team back and still calling for the mules to cross the joint, but Beck was crazy now, rearing, kicking her tug chains, frothing at the bit. But I knew that if I lashed her, this early in the trip, she would expect it every time and run away at every bridge.
Jake was swaying back and forth, ready to jump. The morons in their minivans kept stopping right beside the rearing team. But this was good, I realized. The line of idle cars on our left was herding the team from that side, and there were guardrails to the right. We might just gallop through this chute and get the mules stopped later. But, Christ, I would have to hold the right line for Nick. But how could I do that and manage the brake? We had only a second or two left before a runaway.
I held the whip high so the mules could see it and yelled to Jake.
“Jake! It’s coming, Jake. I’ll tap you and then you jump! Lead these mollies over the joint! Here it comes, Jake.”
I reached down from the seat and tapped Jake gently but firmly on his right rump.
Oh, that was one great Andalusian spawn right there. Royal Gift left behind such dignity and strength. As soon as I tapped him on the rump Jake swung his head down, curled his massive neck, leaned back on his powerful rear legs, and crouched to jump.
Beck is crazy. Her psychology is fantastically neurotic. The bogeyman was waiting there under the joint to jump up and bite her, but there was no way, now that she saw Jake crouching to jump, that she would let him get ahead of her in harness. Now the second Andalusian was back on her rear legs too, rearing. Jake and Beck were bodies in unison, crouching, getting ready to vault.
The moment when Jake and Beck vaulted the joint together showed me why mules are now winning jumping competitions all over the country.
The power and athleticism of a big draft mule are extraordinary. Just before the mules jumped, Nick screamed at them in his booming voice—“Beck, you odd bugger, JUMP, you crazy mule!”—and then he released the lines and slapped the mules on the rear at just the right moment, when their rumps were way low and their front knees were bent, poised to jump. Whaboom, with little Bute in the middle yanked upward, just along for the ride, with a glorious rattle and bang of the harness chains and the pole, and all the whippletrees straining, we were airborne over the Big Blue River in Kansas and catapulting over the joint.
The touch-and-go that we made over the joint on the Marysville bridge lasted longer than I believed possible. For a second or two, I could see space between the front wheels and the concrete floor of the bridge.
The wagon landed with a loud bang on the other side of the joint, jolting us, and we both had to brace our legs against the footrest to stay on the seat. Nick managed the team adroitly after that, loosening the lines for a second or two so that Beck could race forward against her harness and release her need to flee, but then he pulled the mules back to an anxious walk, constantly releasing and then restraining the team with his strong, brawny arms.
We were in runaway deacceleration mode now, putting out the spoilers and reversing thrust to slow the big jet down on the runway. I slammed the brake home every time the mules threatened to gallop away, then released it when they slowed down again. The rear wheels skidded sideways on the wet concrete every time I applied the brake. This was a moment when Nick’s supreme comfort in the face of danger, his calm during chaos, saved us. Build to a crisis, enjoy it. Each time Beck turned sideways and threatened to gallop, he pulled her in the other direction, to distract her attention from running away. He didn’t yell at the mules—which would just spook them more. He merged his personality with theirs. His voice—calling them gently, but firmly—was their brain now.
At this moment, loving forgiveness of your mules and the ability to calm them were key. Nick worked at genius level on that.
“Oh, Big Team. Goooooood Team. Gooooooood Team. It’s all right, Beck. Beck, it’s all right. We just won the National Steeplechase, girls. You won the steeplechase, team. Jake, you’re a pisser. You did well, Jake.”
There were two more expansion joints on the bridge, and both times Beck and Bute reared again on their hind legs, refused to cross, and swayed sideways against the pole. Nick handled this by steering the team against the right guardrails on the bridge, with our wheel hubs just an inch or two from the heavy metal rails, which prevented Beck from jumping in that direction. He held his right line rock hard against Beck’s bit, so that she had no leeway and could rear only straight ahead.
I got into Nick’s head and tried to time my next move with his. Tap Jake’s rump, and he led the team over the joint. It was all one choreographed moment. Mules, taxi into position and jump. We were gold medalists at jumping mules by the third joint.
As we trotted down the western portal of the bridge, Nick calmed the mules by calling them in a low voice, while I worked the brake in and out.
We stopped the mules below the bridge, after turning north along the Big Blue. My arms and stomach muscles were trembling and my chest was heaving in and out. I felt desperate for air.
“Rink, you handled that just right,” Nick said. “It was a good idea not to whip Beck. I was wrong and you were right.”
“Yeah, but I planned this poorly,” I said. “I should have walked ahead and shown the mules that the joints were safe. That way, I could have stopped the traffic.”
“Oh, see? That’s so you, Rinker. We’ve just had a big success here, gettin across our first long bridge, but Rinker says he blew it. Why do you have to blame yourself like that?”
“Nick, I am not the horseman you are. I’m a standardbred driver.”
“Boss, no,” Nick said. “When we get to Oregon?”
“What?”
“You’re not goin to believe how good you are at drivin team. I will make you better.”
• • •
The sun occasionally came out as we headed north on the section roads and I was jubilant, late that afternoon, when we crossed the Nebraska line, in mixed scrub country and mowed fields a few miles below Steele City. By dead reckoning, and carefully consulting my geodetic maps, we managed to find two markers for the old Independence Road and then our first marker for the Oregon Trail. We were making what the pioneers called the Big Blue–Little Blue transit, up through a choke point on the trail called The Narrows. The Flint Hills were receding behind us.
“Trail Hand,” I said, looking at my maps. “We’ve made one hundred twenty-five miles in five days.”
Still, we were in Oregon Trail purgatory for the next several days. At Steele City, the same storm system that would level Joplin, Missouri, a few hours later passed directly over our heads, forcing us into an emergency camp in the equipment shed of an abandoned farm. The Little Blue reached flood stage over the local roads, and we had to remain in our soggy bivouac for an extra day, and then more rains forced us into a quick camp in Strang, Nebraska, where we lost our Coleman lantern and gave up on using any artificial light. At night, the local farmers would drive over to our camps, splashing through the puddles in their pickups. They begged us to stay at their places for a few days. This was the worst high-water year in a century, they told us, and all of the creek crossings would be flooded. Across southern Nebraska, there were roads closed all the way up past Aurora and Grand Island.
But I wanted to make more miles across what I was now calling the lake district of southern Nebraska. Several times, along a lovely stretch o
f rolling hills called the Little Sandy Creek country, we slid the wagon down a muddy hill to find, along the creek bottoms, a bridge that was flooded with almost two feet of rushing water, with no way to get the rig turned around on the narrow road. But by walking over the submerged bridge with my arms outstretched—my boots sank above the ankles in the mud and gravel, and the water splashed up past my knees—I was able to show the mules that crossing the swollen creeks was safe. Bute was the only mule who balked at the water. But by goading the much stronger Jake and Beck at the water’s edge, we yanked her across.
We pushed on through several fords a day like that, and through a series of miserable, wet camps. At our squalid, swampy camp on the abandoned farm in Steele City, I cooked our meals on top of a John Deere rotary mower in the equipment shed, tenting myself with a blanket to keep the flies and the cinder dust off our food. At night, I could at least retreat outside to the wagon, but Nick and Olive Oyl were trapped inside the implement shed, coughing and heaving all night from the dust stirred up by the mules.
But there were compensations, at least for me. At Steele City, I spent my first night sleeping in the covered wagon during a thunderstorm, and it was surprisingly comfortable and warm in there. Purple bursts of light flashed through the wagon cover as lightning landed on the plains. The constant, rolling thunder nearby shook the ground, passing up through the wheels and gently rocking the wagon. The rain pounding hard on the canvas top sounded like a timpani drum, but I was always dry. I realized that the pioneers had fashioned an almost perfect roof design against the rain, with the semicircular top preventing the moisture from ever gaining purchase on a flat surface.