by Ralph Moody
As soon as Doc had gone for his harness, I told the others, “Let’s get the rest of these wild cayuses lined up in pairs. Each of you pick the team he wants for his wheelers, and tie them up to the back wheel of a wagon. Then pick your snap team, and tie it to the front wheel. I want you all to have as much choice as I can give you, but I may have to do some switching around to balance the pulling power.”
Until I could translate what I’d said for Paco, he looked up at me like the little dog in the advertisements for Victor talking machines, then was off at a run.
Before the men ever started away, I could have come awfully close to telling which teams each one would pick, and for which positions. The only place I’d have missed was on Gus and Lars. They picked the eight I’d been sure they would, but Gus took the steadiest four, and Lars the liveliest. The four left for me were Kitten’s four- and five-year-old, and a pair of tough, skittish bays that would weigh about nine hundred pounds apiece.
I’m afraid I acted a bit like Doc. I walked back and forth along the wagons, pretending to size up the pulling power of each team, then told the fellows to go ahead and harness up, that they’d picked the teams better than I could have done it myself. Really, the pulling power didn’t make too much difference, since all the horses were fairly evenly matched for size and strength. What counted was that each man believed his team to be the best, for a man can get the best out of horses only if he thinks those horses are the best.
Although Jaikus had only the old mares to harness, and had been the first to start, he was the last to finish. When he led them out of the corral the reins and straps were so mixed up that they looked like cat’s cradles. Paco straightened them out for him, then we hitched the mares to one of the two loaded rigs. The traces were barely hooked to the doubletrees before Jaikus climbed to the high seat, forgetting in his excitement to take the reins with him. I passed them up, told him to start the mares slowly, and to try making a full circle of the yard without stopping. He braced his feet, clutched the reins as though they were wheelbarrow handles, and began shouting, “Git up! Git up! Git up!”
The old mares set their feet, leaned against the collars, and walked away with the heavily loaded wagons as easily as if they’d been pulling a carriage. To them it was just another job to be done, but to Jaikus it was a new and thrilling experience. He sat up as proudly as though he were driving the fire engine down the main street of Dublin, shouted encouragement to his steeds, and hauled on one rein, then the other, as if he were trying to pull a bucket of water out of a well. Almost any other team would have balked under such handling, but the old mares were used to Hudson’s rough hands, and shuffled around the yard with their ears flopping.
“That’s fine!” I called to Jaikus when he’d completed the round. “You’ll be able to pull us out of many a tight spot before this hauling season is over. Now suppose you unharness them, and give them a real good currying and brushing. Horses will always do best if you keep them well cleaned and brushed.” It was easier for me to tell it to Jaikus than to the rest of the crew, and I wanted my teams well-groomed while they were being used on the roads.
I had Gus, Lars, Bill, and Paco hitch their teams to empty rigs, while Doc and I hitched ours to loaded ones. I knew my snap team was grass-green, and the most headstrong pair among the Hudson horses. If hitched to an empty rig, along with wheelers that were tough and skittish, they might give me more excitement than I could handle, but they couldn’t run far with a four-ton load—not when I had brakes that were stout enough to lock the wheels. As for Doc, I didn’t want him to take any gulch at a faster gait than a trot, so had decided to put him through his practice first, and separate from the other drivers.
As the men had hitched their rigs up I’d had them form in a line; Old Bill in the lead, then Paco, Lars, Gus, Doc, and I. That was the safest method of guarding against any runaways, and it put Bill in a position to set the pace and patterns. When we were all ready, I went up and told him, “Take them out in a stubble field, and give them a good workout on square cornering, figure 8’s, and wide circles. You can let them step out a bit on the figures and circles, so they’ll work off a little steam and ginger before we put them through the roller coasters. While you’re doing it I’ll take Doc out to the first gulch we’ll have to cross, and let him and his team try a couple of runs with a full load. You bring the others out after they’ve worked up a good sweat.” On the way back to my rig, I stopped just long enough to tell Doc what he and I were going to do.
When Old Bill led the wagons out of the yard it looked like a caravan setting out on the Overland Trail. He had his brakes set tight enough to skid the wheels, but he held the lines lightly, and kept his fast-stepping broncs to a head-bobbing, prancing walk. Paco’s team, including the bronc he’d ridden to the pasture, tried to buck the harness off, but he kept them tight behind Bill’s trailer, and they settled down within a few lengths. Neither Gus nor Lars had any trouble, and there was none that Doc, with a heavy load and the steadiest horses in the outfit, could have.
I was the one who had the trouble. My snap team didn’t like the idea of being out in front, with a pair of strange horses behind them, and they had no intention of following Doc’s trailer. The moment his rig moved away from in front of their noses, they tried to make a break toward the corral. Then when I checked them they tried to turn the other way, and when I pulled them back they slacked off, letting the singletrees bump them on the heels. That did it! They got the notion in their heads that the strange team behind them was responsible, and that it was time to defend themselves. I never saw heels fly so fast and high as those little broncs flung theirs, or two wheelers that became more panicked. Heels were flying past their heads like blackbirds leaving a swamp, and they sat back in the breeching with every ounce of their strength, trying to escape the barrage. On the hard-packed yard, the wagons rolled backwards, but not in line. Within less than a minute the trailer was turned at a right angle, anchoring us solidly.
The only thing that saved me from having a bad accident and getting some horses’ legs broken was Judy’s quick thinking. She and the children had come out to see us off, and when my snap team went hay-wire she’d run for Hudson’s blacksnake. When I was as tangled up as I could possibly be, she shouted, “Here, Bud! Here!” and tossed the long whip up to me.
When I’d hung that blacksnake away in the barn, I’d promised myself that it would never be used on a horse of mine. It wasn’t, but I don’t think it missed by more than a quarter of an inch. I swung it back over my head, and lashed it out above the snap team’s backs, hard enough to make the cracker thongs pop like pistol shots. There was no need of biting them with the whip. Hudson had done that so often they had learned to associate the sound of the cracker with the pain. Half a dozen good loud cracks were all it took to straighten them out and throw them into their collars. Once pulling, it took only an occasional reminder to keep them lined out, but I was as sparing as possible with the reminders. I was no artist with a blacksnake, and I didn’t want to risk biting one of my horses with those hide-cutting cracker thongs.
Doc had opened up a good lead, and Bill had turned his little caravan into the stubble field, before I got out of the yard. Before I caught up I’d worked my team into a good sweat, but after a week in the pasture that was what the leaders needed, and with every drop of sweat a bit more of their orneriness oozed out of them. Doc’s hands might not have been the best in the world on a set of reins, but he wasn’t a bad driver. At the corners he kept his wagons squarely in the roadway. Just before reaching the sharp rise beyond the Hudson place, he stopped his horses for a breather, then put them into the pull briskly.
I didn’t do so well at the corners. At the first one it became evident that my snap team had never been used elsewhere than in the fields, or trained to be driven with reins. It was probable that Hudson had never trained them at all, but used each at the center of a three-horse team, where it could be forced into turning by jockey poles wired to
the collar of the horse on either side. Though, in using them on the header, I had replaced the poles with check reins, it hadn’t taught the colts anything about reining; they had simply learned to follow along with their teammates at each turn. Worse still, Hudson’s rough handling and the rigid jockey poles had toughened their mouths and taught them to move only their heads in answer to any reasonable pull on the bit.
It is natural for any horse to follow a path or roadway, but in turning a corner with a four-horse hitch and a pair of loaded wagons, the lead team can’t be allowed to follow the wheel tracks. If they do, the trailer wagon will be turned far too soon, will cut the corner short, and quite probably be overturned in a ditch. If the turn is to the left, the lead team must veer off slightly to the right just as it reaches the corner, pull straight ahead for two lengths, then side-step in a quarter-circle to the left, pulling all the while.
My first turn was to the left, and just as the muzzles of my lead team reached the corner I drew in a little on the right rein, to veer the leaders off and widen the arc for the wagons. I might as well have had my reins fastened to a swivel as snapped to the bit rings of my little lead mustangs. They simply let their heads be turned to the right, while their feet followed the wheel tracks around to the left. I could have yanked them back, as Hudson would have done, but it would only have confused and ruined them. So I drew more firmly on the rein, and the broncs turned their heads until they were nearly touching their shoulders, but kept right on following the wheel tracks.
I could think of only one thing to do—and it worked. I reached for the blacksnake, lashed it out, and made the cracker pop just to the left of the near leader’s shoulder. He shied away from the well-known sound, crowding his teammate back to the right, and straining against his collar. From then until the corner was finally turned, I was busier than a cub bear with a hornets’ nest. I slung the four reins around my neck, and played them with one hand, as though they were the stops on an organ, while I kept the cracker of the blacksnake popping with the other. I never let the whip come within a foot of either leader, but they would answer a light pull on the rein only if it was accompanied by a pop of the cracker on the opposite side.
It took no more than two or three pops to convince the leaders that I wasn’t going to cut them with the whip, so they only veered away from the sound, but the skittish wheelers weren’t a bit convinced. Though they answered the reins to either side, they reared and plunged, alternately sitting back in their breeching and lurching into their collars. Actually, they gave me more trouble than the snap team, because I could pretty well fence the leaders in with pops of the whip. It must have taken me ten minutes to turn that one corner, but I kept both wagons on the roadway, although the wheels were almost everywhere but in the tracks. After we were around, I set the brakes and stopped the horses for a five-minute rest, while I stroked their muzzles to quiet them, and to let them know I was well pleased with the job they’d done. And I was pleased. Rough as it had been, it was a good turn for green broncos to make on their first try.
The two other corners I had to turn before reaching the gulch went better, though far from good, and I had to crack the whip only a few times to remind the leaders about obeying a light pull on the reins. Doc was waiting for me, pulled over to the side of the road, a few wagon lengths short of the gulch. I pulled in behind him, set my brakes, hobbled both leaders, and went to climb up on the seat beside Doc.
After explaining that I planned to let the wagons gain a little momentum on the way down, so as to ease the pull up the far side, I said, “Suppose you give it a try, Doc. As you go over the edge, set the brake on your trailer, then hold your lead wagon back just enough to keep it from crowding your horses, but let them pick up a fairly smart trot. Then, near the bottom, turn everything loose, to give your load a good shove as you take it into the uphill pull. If you see that you’re going to get stuck before you reach the top, lock down your brakes and hold tight till I’ve had time to trig the wheels.”
Taking a pair of heavily loaded wagons down a hill as steep as that one was, even at a trot, is rather ticklish business the first time a fellow tries it, and Doc was a little over-cautious. He let his wheelers sit back in the breeching, and didn’t get his team into a trot until he was halfway down. Then he was late in turning the brakes loose, so he had little momentum when he hit the steep upgrade. His team buckled down and pulled in good shape, but it was a losing battle right from the start. Before we were a third of the way up, the wagons were moving at a crawl, and I had to shout to Doc to set his brakes quick and hard.
If a load starts rolling backward on a steep hill there are only two things for a driver to do; set his brakes, and jump quick. With every foot, the runaway wagons will gain speed, the chances are ten to one that the horses will be dragged off their feet, that the trailer will run off the roadway, and that the whole rig will end up in a tangled heap at the bottom of the gulch.
Doc had no sooner tramped the brakes down, locking them in their lowest notches, than I leaped to the ground, kicked the wires off a fence post, yanked it loose, and jammed it tight behind a wheel. Then I stood there for a minute or two, blowing and telling myself that my high-flown scheme for wheat hauling was nothing but a crazy pipe dream. There was little doubt that the two loads of dirt weighed nearly half a ton more than two loads of wheat would, but Doc’s team weighed nearly half a ton more than mine, and at least five hundred pounds more than any other team I had. If they could get only a third of the way up that hill, what chance would a lighter team have? And if I had to cut the load of each wagon down to fifty bushels, or put tote teams in the gulches, there wouldn’t be enough profit in the business to pay for wagons and harness, let alone the horses. My success depended entirely on being able to haul an extra twenty bushels on each trip, and in getting over the roads in a hurry.
Of course, I could have unhitched my team, put it in front of Doc’s and pulled him to the top of the hill easily enough, but there was no sense in that. What I needed was to find out how much weight my heaviest team could pull up that hill. Fortunately, we’d brought shovels along, so we threw off what we thought to be about half a ton from each wagon. If our guess had been good, that would leave each load at about the same weight as fifty bushels of wheat. When we’d finished, I took the reins myself, set the horses hard into their collars, and released the brakes. With the horses straining every sinew, and with me driving them in a weaving course, they were barely able to pull the lightened loads to the top of the hill.
I let them rest a few minutes, went on a short ways, found a place where I could turn the wagons, and brought them back to the drop-off into the gulch. That time I did the driving, trying to do it just as I told Doc to at the start of our first try. When we reached the spot where we had stalled on the way up, I kicked the brakes loose, crowding the horses into a spanking trot before they reached the bottom of the gulch. The momentum was enough to give us a good start upward, but not enough to do the trick; the horses had to pull with all their strength to haul the loads to the top of the hill.
While we were resting the blowing team, I saw Bill’s caravan coming, about half a mile away. I hadn’t expected him quite so soon, and wanted Doc to make a run each way by himself, so turned the wagons and passed him the reins. That time, with a little coaching, he made his run just about as I had made mine—as fast as I dared let him learn to make it—and again his team had to strain to reach the top of the hill. He made his run back through the gulch in the same way, but by that time the caravan had arrived, and the drivers stood at the brink of the hilltop, watching the run.
With the afternoon fairly well spent, I wanted to get right on with the practice, but didn’t want Doc to see a team put through that gulch at a dead run, so had him unhitch, change wagons with Gus, and go back to the Hudson place. I wasn’t too much concerned about Old Bill and Paco, but I was a bit worried about Gus and Lars. They were slow, methodical workmen, and if they tried to put their light teams through t
hat gulch too cautiously, they probably wouldn’t do even as well as Doc had done on his first try. Besides, that gulch would probably be an awesome thing to men who were not used to hill or mountain country.
As Gus turned the wagons I climbed to the seat beside him, had him stop at the brink of the hill, and gave him exactly the same instructions I’d given Doc. I might as well have been whistling to the birds. He gathered the four lines between his bananalike fingers, planted a foot solidly on each brake pedal, and shouted, “Hud up!”
His little mustangs hudded. They hit their collars like four battering-rams, and we pitched down the hillside as if we’d been falling into a well. With the broncs almost flying, and with Gus shouting, “Yaa! Yaa! Yaa!” we tore through the bottom of the gulch and rocketed up the far side. The thrust was so great that I doubt the traces were even tightened till we were halfway up, then the teams dug their toes in and snaked us to the top as though the wagons had been practically empty.
I don’t often lose my head completely, but I came awfully close to it that time. I hugged Gus around the neck, and told him he was the best driver I’d ever seen in my life.
“Aw, go ’vay,” he told me. “I do it yust like you do vit de load from town. Yimminy! Dat is fun!”
It might have been fun for him, but it was certainly a lifesaver for me and my hauling business. When he had made his run back in the same way, I wanted to dance and whoop. There was only one worry left in my mind; the run had been made with Doc’s lightened loads. I hurried to my own team, unhobbled the leaders, and climbed to the seat. I knew well enough how risky it was to put my unmatched and untrained broncos down that hill on the fly, but I was so near flying myself that I didn’t mind the risk.
If anything, I shouted encouragement louder than Gus, and my little leaders responded with every bit of the fire they’d inherited from old Kitten. They just about had to, or be run over by the wheelers, and by the time we reached the top of the hill every hoof was scrabbling like crazy, but we were still moving faster than a man could walk. When I stopped them for a breather and a pat on the shoulder, I wouldn’t have traded any of them for Man o’ War. With my lightest team swooping a four-ton load through that gulch as they had, my biggest worries were pretty well behind me.