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There we remained for some time, adding to our knowledge of the cattle business such things as can only be learned at a large cattle ranch. On our way home we passed through Laramie, Wyoming. As fate would have it, we arrived at Laramie City on July 4, 1875, just as the notorious Jack Watkins escaped from the Albany county jail, and the excitement in the town was at fever heat.
To catch his syllables, listeners crowded in and craned their necks. Few men withdrew but everyone courteously and sedulously got out of the prospective line of fire. What it cost Laramie even to stand on his feet and talk, Tenison could most shrewdly estimate. From behind the bar he coldly regarded the wounded man.
"And a high country," cried Lefever with flashing eyes, "a country where you can't see a damned thing in any direction for a hundred and fifty miles!" Though talking vigorously he was eating, without protest from Laramie, everything in sight. Kate could not help listening; Lefever's high spirits were contagious. "Jim," came next between mouthfuls.
From Independence on the Missouri this famous pathway led to Fort Laramie, a distance of 672 miles; another 800-mile climb brought the traveler through South Pass; and so, by way of Fort Bridger, Salt Lake, and Sutter's Fort, to San Francisco. The route, well known by hundreds of Oregon pioneers in the early forties, became a thoroughfare in the eager days of the Forty-Niners. *
This apartment, the best in Fort Laramie, was that usually occupied by the legitimate bourgeois, Papin; in whose absence the command devolved upon Bordeaux. The latter, a stout, bluff little fellow, much inflated by a sense of his new authority, began to roar for buffalo robes. These being brought and spread upon the floor formed our beds; much better ones than we had of late been accustomed to.
Thus died one more of the sparse race of original mountaineers, now fast passing away, bravely meeting the fate that has hitherto usually awaited this band of fearless men. We again turn to the adventures of Kit Carson. On the fifth day of May, 1850, accompanied by an old mountaineer named Timothy Goodel, he started with fifty head of mules and horses for Fort Laramie.
Stone paused over a glass of whisky; his face brightened: "I tumbled him off his horse, if you call that getting him." Van Horn asked questions impatiently. Stone answered with the indifference of the man that had turned a big trick. But Van Horn insisted on knowing what had become of Laramie. "He tumbled into a hole," said Stone. "I didn't cross the creek to look for him."
They revolted sixty miles this side of Laramie, killing Captain Fouts, who was in command, and four soldiers, and wounding seven; also killed four of their own chiefs who refused to join them; fifteen Indians were killed; the Indians fled north with their ponies, women, and children, leaving all their camp equipage. Troops are in pursuit. Mail-stages have stopped west of Camp Collins.
I was accordingly somewhat surprised to find that the modern Laramie had suddenly shot up into a place of some population and importance. The streets are broad and well laid out; the houses are numerous, and some of them large and substantial. The place is already provided with schools, hotels, banks, and a newspaper.
Fort Morgan, Wyo., not far from Sidney, Wyo., established May, 1865, abandoned May, 1868. Fort D. A. Russell, near Cheyenne, Wyo., established July, 1867, still occupied as an army post. Fort Sanders, Wyo., near Laramie, established June, 1866. Fort Fred Steele, fifteen miles east of Rawlins, established June, 1868. Fort Halleck, twenty-two miles west of Medicine Bow, abandoned 1866.
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