 | Eli Perkins (at large) |  |
A FRONTIERSMAN.
Westward, westward,
westward we have been
riding all day over the
Kansas Pacific. From
Kansas City the road runs
straight up the Kansas
River bottom and along
Smoky Hill and the buffalo
country to Denver. On the train are grangers from
Carson and Hugo, and killers and stabbers from Wild
Horse and Eagle Tail.
As we near Salina, Kansas, Conductor Cheeney
comes along to collect the fare. Touching a long-haired
miner on the back, he looks down and says,
“Tickets!”
“Hain't got none,” says the frontiersman, holding
his gun with one hand and scowling out from under
his black slouch hat.
“But you must pay your fare, sir!” expostulated
the conductor.
“Now jes look a-here, stranger; mebbe you're a
doin' your duty, but I hain't never paid yet goin'
through this country, and—”
Just then a slouchy old frontiersman, who had been
compelled to pay his fare in a rear car, stepped up in
front of the mulish passenger, and pointing a six-shooter
at him, said:
“See here, Long Bill, you jes pay yer fare! I've
paid mine, and they don't anybody ride on this train
free if I don't—if they do, damme!”
“All right, you've got the drop on me, pardner, so
put up your shooter an' I'll settle,” said the miner,
going into his pocket for the money.
“Do these incidents often happen?” I asked the
conductor a little while afterward.
“Well, yes, but not so often as they used to in 1868
and 1870, Mr. Perkins. The other day,” continued
the conductor, “some three-card-monte men came on
the train and swindled a drover out of $150. The
poor man seemed to take it to heart. He said his
cattle got so cheap during the grasshopper raid that
he had to just `peel 'em' and sell their hides in Kansas
City—and this was all the money he had. A half-dozen
miners from Denver overheard the talk, and,
coming up, they `drew a bead' on the monte men and
told 'em to pay that money back.
“`Just you count that money back, conductor,' they
said, and after I had done it,” continued the conductor,
“one of the head miners said:
“`Now, pardner, you jes stop this train, an' we'll
hang these three-card fellows to the telegraph pole.”'
“Did they do it?” I asked.
“Well, they hung one of 'em; but the other two,
dog on it, got lost in the grass.”
“But wa'n't there h—l to pay on that train when
we got to Muncie, though,” said Cheney.
“How?” I asked.
“Why, six masked men stopped the train and robbed
ran it forward—two men went through the express
safe and three men went through the passengers. But
O! didn't they play hell, though. Wa'n't it a glorious
day!”
“Did they rob anybody? did—”
“No, they didn't zackly rob 'em, but they frightened
'em almost to death and then laughed at 'em. They'd
stick their blunderbusses in the car windows and shout
`Throw up your hands!' to the passengers, and their
hands would go up like pump handles.
The Rev. Winfield Scott, a devilish good old minister
from Denver, was takin' a quiet game of poker
with another passenger at the time. He had just got
four queens and was raisin' the ante to fifteen dollars
when one of the robbers pointed his pistol at him and
sang out:
“`Harold up your
hands! or I'll blow your
head off!'
“`No, you wont,' says
Parson Scott, standing
up in his seat—`not by
a danged sight! I've been a
preacher of the gospel goin' on
twenty years, and I'm ready to die
in the harness, and I will die, and
any man can shoot me and be danged before I'll throw
up such a hand as that—two trays and four queens!”'
| Eli Perkins (at large) | |