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The train consisted of twenty-five wagons, under Lew Simpson, then an assistant wagon-master, next Billy, the "extra," a night herder, a cavallard driver, whose duty was driving the loose and lame cattle, and the bullwhacker for each team.
Afterward there was a journey with a freight outfit which lasted days and days. June was in charge of a bullwhacker. All she remembered about him was that he had been kind to her and had expended a crackling vocabulary on his oxen. The end of the trek brought her to Piceance Creek and a father now heavily bearded and with long, unkempt hair. They had lived here ever since.
Holmes knew perfectly well that, only for the fun of the thing, some of those teamsters and scouts would form a "queue," and, with unimpeachable gravity, march up to the window and inquire if there was anything for Red-Handed Bill, or Rip-Roaring Mike, or the Hon. G. Bullwhacker, of Laramie Plains. He wanted time to think a bit before he returned to the doctor's house, anyhow.
She had learned to stand the gaff, in the phrase of the old bullwhacker who had brought her down from Rawlins. It was a part of her code that physical pain and discomfort must be trodden under foot and disregarded. A long détour brought her back to the river. She plodded on through the storm, her leg paining at every step. She was chilled to the marrow and very tired.
The "bull-train" took its name from the fact that each of the thirty-five wagons making up a full train was hauled by several yoke of oxen, driven by one man, known as a bullwhacker. This functionary's whip cracked like a rifle, and could be heard about as far.
The wagon train pulled out of Leavenworth, all heavily freighted, each one carrying about six thousand pounds weight, and each also drawn by four yoke of oxen under charge of a driver, or "bullwhacker."
A rope was placed over the horns of the animal and his head was drawn tight to the hub of a heavy laden prairie schooner. A bullwhacker, tightly grasping the tail of the beast, would twist him to attention. The man with the branding implement heated to a white heat would quickly jab the ox on the hind quarter, burning through hair and hide and into the flesh.
After making application to several of the freighters and receiving the same reply as from the wagon bosses, we went a short distance down the river to the last of the warehouses. On our approach we discovered a genuine bullwhacker as all ox drivers were called in that day in conversation with a short, stout-built fellow with red hair and whiskers to match.
Thus, as a Boy Bullwhacker, Billy made his first trip across the plains, and months after, upon his return home, found that the Gobels had forgiven the past, and that Mary Hyatt had, little coquette that she was, found another beau.
When Billy returned home, after his first Indian-killing expedition, he carried with him the pay of a bullwhacker, and all of it he placed in his mother's hands, for the death of Mr. Cody had left the family in indigent circumstances. Finding that she could not keep Billy at home when he had found out that by his exertions, boy though he was, he could support the family, Mrs.
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