The Oregon Trail

by Rinker Buck

  I had read about Fort Fetterman since I was a boy and was delighted to make this unexpected stop. The fort was built in 1867 and named after another frontier bounder, Civil War veteran Captain William J. Fetterman. The winter before, while marching out to protect a wood-gathering detail in the Bighorn Mountains, Fetterman had disobeyed orders and allowed a small decoy party led by Lakota warrior Crazy Horse to lure him over the nearby ridges. Contemporary accounts claimed that Crazy Horse and his braves taunted the soldiers by dismounting their war ponies, pulling down their loincloths, and contemptuously flashing bare-ass moons. Whatever Crazy Horse did, it worked. Fetterman chased the braves over Lodge Trail Ridge, where a mixed ambush party of Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota fighters promptly annihilated his entire command of eighty-one soldiers and civilians. The military disaster quickly became one of those events that typified the lurid distortion of fact during the Indian wars of the late 1860s and 1870s. In the eastern press, Fetterman was lauded as a hero and the outcome of his tactical lunacy was labeled a “massacre.” Vengeance would have to be exacted, and the final, genocidal campaign of the Americans against the Indians began. During the subsequent Powder River War the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho were eventually surrounded, starved out, and forced into the cultural obliteration of reservation life.

  At the time, the renewed traffic of covered wagons that began after the Civil War was gradually shifting to the Child’s Route along the north banks of the Platte, and the new fort became an important waypoint and resupplying center in eastern Wyoming. Fetterman was also a major stop along the famed Bozeman Trail, which was established in the 1860s to funnel traffic north after gold was discovered in the Dakotas and Montana, and it became the primary route into the Powder River country for cavalry units, miners, and ranchers who were invading Cheyenne and Sioux lands, breaking still more government treaties that had promised the tribes exclusive use of their traditional hunting grounds. After its twenty-year spell as a lonely, frigid gulag for cavalrymen, the fort area was developed into a busy ranching and outfitting center, Fetterman City, which was known throughout the west for its bustling tavern and whorehouse, called the Fetterman Hog Ranch, which drew cowboys, soldiers, and railroad men from miles around. The fort and Hog Ranch eventually fell into disuse after the city of Douglas was founded in the 1880s.

  Fetterman was a relaxing hiatus for us, but I was worried about the fencing arrangement around the fort. In addition to a cattle guard near the entrance, a second cattle guard along the distant fencing to the east glimmered in the sunlight as we set up camp. After filling their bellies with grass, the mules would get bored and begin exploring the fence perimeters, and I knew they would be tempted to jump the cattle guards. We were carrying portable electric fencing, which could easily be strung across the cattle guards and, after retrieving it from underneath our gear in the wagon, I headed off across the plateau with the fencing kit cradled in my arms.

  Nick was standing nearby with a crowd of cowboys, tourists, and Civil War reenactors gathered around him, yapping away in his booming baritone about our trip. This was not a favorable environment for me. A willing audience brought out Nick’s boastyboy, feeding his need to chide the older, more cautious brother, and after six weeks on the trail he was tired of my fastidious attention to detail.

  “Nick, would you like to help me fence off the cattle guards?” I said. “The mules might try to jump them.”

  “Oh, here we go,” Nick said to the crowd out past my shoulder. “My brother is the trail boss on the trip, you know? So I have to be the brains of this frickin operation. Rinker, there is no way those mules are goin to jump a cattle guard. I guarantee it.”

  Everyone laughed at Nick’s touching burlesque of family. I was annoyed at him for humiliating me in front of strangers but decided to give up. Forget it. This was just another case of my worrywart nature spoiling the spontaneity of the trip. I stowed the portable fencing back in the wagon and wandered off to explore the fort.

  There was a warm breeze up on the plateau and I felt lazy and supremely contented about our trip so far. Back in Nebraska, I had made one of my most useful purchases of the trip—a cheap pair of imitation-suede slippers bought at the Scottsbluff Wal-Mart. After long afternoons scouting ahead of the wagon, my feet were sore and I wanted to get out of my boots once we made camp. But the ground underfoot was prickly with scrub grass and sage, and I needed something at least moderately sturdy against the ground. As the afternoon wore on at Fetterman, I put on my Wal-Mart slippers to relax, sat down in my camp chair, pulled the brim of my hat down against the sun, and fell into a dreamy haze. Fort Fetterman on the Fourth of July. It just doesn’t get better than this.

  Half an hour later, I was abruptly wakened by the sound of a pickup skidding into the fort parking lot. A cloud of dust blew over the wagon and a voice yelled out through the open window of the truck.

  “Hey! Them mules of yours are jumping the cattle guard! They’re headed east, back to Missouri!”

  Shit. Damnitall, why did I listen to Nick? Running across the fort grounds, I could see the last mule—it looked like Bute—vaulting the cattle guard and galloping uphill. Her shoes glinted in the sunlight as she kicked sideways with joy and then disappeared over the far ridge. The team was already a half mile away.

  Nick half ran, half limped over to the pickup, pulled open the door, yanked Olive Oyl in on his lap, and yelled to the rancher at the steering wheel, “Let’s go!”

  “Nick, no,” I said. “Don’t chase the mules. They’ll just run farther. And your foot. We can’t afford to hurt your foot, here.”

  “Nah. I’ll get ’em. Olive Oyl will help me herd.”

  As the pickup spun gravel leaving the lot, heading southeast toward the mules, I called to Nick to stop at the top of the ridge, where he could keep the mules in sight.

  I was all alone at the fort now, but I did have Bill Sinnard’s cell phone number. I called and told him what happened, and he said that he’d be back at the fort in fifteen minutes, as soon as he could load his four-wheeler onto a trailer. He knew the country east of the fort and could help us catch the mules. But Sinnard didn’t know how far they could run.

  “How many miles is it to the next fence?” I asked him. “How far can they get?”

  “Oh, hell, we don’t do miles in Wyomin,” Sinnard said. “That pasture east of the fort is at least a thousand acres.”

  I ran back to the wagon, scooped some oats into a bucket, and grabbed our three lead chains, carrying them wrapped around my neck. There wasn’t time to change into my boots, so I just charged east across the sage in my Wal-Mart slippers.

  I have made some pathetic hikes in my life, but my Fort Fetterman mule-recovery recon ranks right up there with Wrong Way Corrigan or Evel Knievel’s ride in the Skycycle over the Snake. I was going for the D. B. Cooper Award. I was headed off on a steeply sloped sagebrush plain, with three heavy stainless steel chains around my neck, carrying a full bucket of oats, in my Wal-Mart slippers.

  From the window of a car along a highway, a walk through the sagebrush looks like the most attractive thing that a body can do with its legs. But, up close, sagebrush is not very negotiable. First of all, sagebrush is tall—waist-high in some places, more than shoulder-high in others. It grows so irregularly that there is no linear path through it, requiring a mule recon man like me to make several twists and turns around every sagebrush. The cowboy novelists have grievously ignored this aspect of their favorite vegetation. On foot through the sage, at best, there is an overland gain of about thirty yards for every hundred yards walked. I stumbled a lot, dropped my bucket, trying to skirt the sage too close, and then hanging up my Wal-Mart slippers on the clingy branches.

  I was winded when I got to the top of the first rise. I could see the mules far off, still more than half a mile ahead of me, with no fence line in sight. They were having a fine time down there, kicking up their heels and galloping together, rolling around in the dirt, free mules again, in the largest pas
ture of their life. The mule that I could tentatively identify as Beck stared back toward me with a sublime look of utter satisfaction, expressing with her body demeanor and ears exactly how she felt about me.

  “Fuck you, Rinker Buck. I’ve taken seven hundred miles of your shit and now I get to enjoy a real playdate with Jake and Bute.”

  I didn’t want the mules to gain on me so I started running, especially on the descending slopes. But it was too much work darting around a large sagebrush plant every ten or fifteen yards. What the hell, I thought. I have an advantage here without my heavy boots on. Wal-Mart slippers are light. So I started jumping the sage, to maintain a more consistent bearing toward the mules.

  Steeplechasing across Wyoming sage in Wal-Mart slippers, however, does present one problem. In Wyoming, wildlife biologists have recently compiled reports showing that the pronghorn antelope population is temporarily declining, probably due to drought and energy projects, but there are still thousands of them in every herd. Apparently, antelope die with intense regularity. Carcasses do not decay quickly in the high, arid air, and antelope seem to prefer dying on the east side of sagebrush clusters. Antelope rib cages are particularly resilient and remain fully deployed, about eighteen inches high, many years after death. Antelope bones are also exquisitely camouflaged a sun-bleached brown and yellow, which perfectly blends in with the desert floor and the sage branches. Unseen, and as dangerous as the tangle-wires of a World War I battle trench, the antelope rib cages lurk behind the sage bushes—not behind every one, but in random sequences that are quite unpredictable to someone making a run like mine.

  I was philosophical about this. You learn something new on every trip. It was hard going, but at least I was familiarizing myself with what must have been a common problem for the pioneers—bushwhacking through a hazmat site of camouflaged antelope rib cages.

  Every time I encountered a new sagebrush plant in my way, there was a delightful sense of vaulting into the unknown. Leap, reach my apex over the center of the sagebrush plant, phew! No antelope rib cage on the other side. But this was merely temporary relief. The next time it was: leap, reach my apex, oh, shit, there’s an antelope rib cage in my way.

  When a man in my situation says, Okay, don’t panic now, it means that he is already panicking. Instinctively, at the first rib cage, I spread my legs to miss the highest ribs, but this just forced me into a very awkward, wheels-up landing, and then a somersault into the next sagebrush plant. I lost a third of my load of oats and two lead chains. After standing up and re-straightening myself and my load, I continued to vault downhill, determined not to make the same mistake twice.

  Leap, reach my apex, fuck me, another rib cage. Okay, let’s try tucking the legs into a cannonball descent this time.

  I can now report with authority that a $6.99 pair of imitation-suede Wal-Mart slippers is just a magnet for antelope ribs. You cannot get past your apogee over a sagebrush plant without a Wal-Mart slipper hanging up either on the highest antelope rib, a sage branch, or the other Wal-Mart slipper. The result is severe face-plants on the sandy, abrasive Wyoming soil.

  After another quarter mile of this, my cheeks and hands were burnished down to a raspberry luster, the shoulders of my shirt were ripped open again, and there was a sore spot on my right knee where the heavy metal clips on the lead chains banged hard every time I hung up on another antelope rib and cratered into the dust. My new Wal-Mart slippers were tattered and ripped.

  But I told myself that I had to retain focus and keep going. I was following the path of the pioneers, and maybe even Winston Churchill. Don’t lose sight of the mission, no matter the odds.

  For once, Nick had followed instructions. The rancher had dropped him off at the top of the tallest rise, where he could keep the mules in sight. The sagebrush thinned out at the higher elevation and I had an easier time trudging up there. Nick had sat down between two clumps of sage with Olive Oyl sitting on her haunches beside him.

  “God, you look uglier than a stump post,” he said. “What did you do, fall down?”

  “Antelope rib cages, Nick. They’re all over the place out here.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have known that. In the truck, we just plowed through. By the way, why the fuck did you bring an empty bucket?”

  “It wasn’t empty when I left the fort, douche bag. The oats spilled out when I fell over.”

  “Oh, okay. I just figured you were more coordinated than that.”

  “Thanks, Nick,” I said. “How’s the foot?”

  “I’m on the edge. I shouldn’t push it any more. But you can’t catch the mules alone.”

  “Don’t worry. Bill Sinnard is coming with his four-wheeler.”

  I explained my plan to Nick. When Sinnard arrived, I would motion for him to pick up Nick, while I herded the mules toward what had to be a distant fence line. I would hold them against the fence corner from a distance and then, when Nick and Bill got there, we would catch Jake first, because he would walk over expecting us to scratch his ears. Bute would be easy after that. Beck would be her usual pain in the ass but she wasn’t going to let Bute out of her sight.

  “Okay, but take Olive Oyl,” Nick said. “She’ll help you hold the team.”

  Nick stood up and made shooing motions with his arms.

  “Olive Oyl,” he said. “Help the boss herd the mules. Okay? Listen to him.”

  Olive Oyl cocked her head and nodded, and then ran off down the hill for the mules.

  It was a long march east, but the pasture seemed more heavily grazed on the far side of the rise, with less sagebrush growth, and I could make easier progress in my slippers. On the flats, I frequently lost site of the mules, but I was confident that they would eventually be stopped by a fence line. When Bill Sinnard arrived on his four-wheeler, he skittered off the bottom side of the canyon and braked in a cloud of dust beside me. He was carrying lead lines around his neck and had a bucket of oats clutched on his lap. I told him that I had lost sight of the mules.

  “It’s all right,” Sinnard said. “I could see them from up top. There’s a corner in the fence by the wash down there. They’re already near it.”

  “Go back for my brother. He’s got a bad ankle and shouldn’t be walking anymore. I’ll head east and you and Nick can catch up.”

  Bill roared off on the four-wheeler, taking the hill in a diagonal climb. He motioned for Nick to climb onto the seat behind him, and they bounced back down the rise together, with Nick’s big belly bobbing over the bumps against Bill’s waist and ass, Brokeback Mountain–style.

  Olive Oyl was a real team player that afternoon. Chasing cattle in Nebraska and running interference with the prairie dogs and snakes in the Black Hills had honed her herding skills. When I motioned for her to hold the mules along the south fence, she yapped and leaped up on her hind feet, snarling at the mules and nipping at their legs whenever they tried to break from the fence corner. Meanwhile, I was holding the mules on the other side by running back and forth in an arc northwest.

  As we approached the mules in tighter circles, they were trapped in the corner of the fence and knew it. Jake took a few tentative steps toward me, hoping for the eventual payoff of an ear massage. Bute was very curious about the bucket in my hand, which she knew meant sweet oats. Beck was still expressing Screw you! with her rump. The mule body language was clear.

  Okay, we’re done. But we’ve had our fun. And, Boss, you sure look asinine in those Wal-Mart slippers.

  When Nick bounced down with Bill on the four-wheeler, I didn’t want him to think that I was angry, so I deferred to his feelings of superiority about managing mules.

  “Here, Nick,” I said, handing him two lead chains. “You catch the team. But get Jake or Bute first. Don’t mess with that goddamn Beck.”

  Of course, just to prove himself, he caught Beck first, costing us an extra ten minutes while he slowly approached her and then bobbed and wove in the scrub brush as Beck wheeled away from him. But as soon as he had a lead on her, Ja
ke walked over for ear scratches, and Bute for oats, and we had all three on lines.

  We were now about two and a half miles from camp, and it was a glum walk back over the hills. Bill puttered off on his four-wheeler, leading Beck with one of the chains. I didn’t want Nick to place his weight on his ankle all the way back to the fort, so I clasped my hands together to make a step and hoisted him up onto Jake’s back. He led Bute from there while I led Jake. Beside us on the sandy hills, the late-afternoon sun cast tall diagonal shadows of our pathetic little caravan—one beefy brother riding bareback on a mule, the other leading the way on foot, tripping against the sage in his Wal-Mart slippers.

  Back at the fort, after we had the mules secured, I wanted to be alone and I grabbed my toilet kit, scrambled down the plateau, and hiked east across the plains to the banks of the North Platte. The sandy oxbow there was shaded by a cottonwood grove, with a flock of American white pelicans swimming in a still pool and snowy egrets wading on the edges. I stripped bare, dived into the river, and washed and shaved.

  Under a low, falling sun, the North Platte was bathed in light orange and blue. I swam out across the pelican lagoon and floated on my back, staring at the sky while the feathery river current turned me in circles. I felt so free out there, cast off from the world. It didn’t matter to me that our progress toward Oregon was so farcical. The trail was my inebriate against depression, my hedge against boredom with life. I didn’t care what happened next on the Child’s Route. We would let the mules rest for another day at Fort Fetterman. Then all I wanted to do was wake at dawn in the sage-scented air of the Wyoming plains, call the mules for Casper, and pick up the pink ruts toward Independence Rock and South Pass.

  • • •

  Laying over for an extra day at Fort Fetterman yielded one of the best surprises of the trip. In the early afternoon a living legend of the Oregon Trail showed up. Randy Brown, a trail historian who lived nearby in Douglas, had driven over to Fetterman to enjoy Independence Day at the fort, but he was also curious about the two easterners traveling through in a covered wagon and wondered if we needed help negotiating the cutoffs ahead. I had used Brown’s Graves and Sites on the Oregon and California Trails all the way across from Missouri and found it an invaluable resource. Grave locations are important waypoints along the trail, comprising a kind of gritty, forensic record of the ground the pioneers actually crossed, offering an infinitely more detailed map than the generalized trail descriptions offered by academic historians. Brown’s exacting account of each grave and how it got there, and his biographies of buried pioneers, also provide vital historical and geographic information on the various fords of the Platte or why major cutoff routes were used in certain years. I had not expected to meet Brown, but now I was sitting beside the wagon with him, my maps spread across our knees, absorbing a wealth of detail about the trail ahead.