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They stripped the tops from the prairie-schooners and began to make pack-saddles from them with the idea of abandoning the vehicles and following the trail of the Jayhawkers. At midday they were sitting under the wagons for what shade they gave, working at this task.
They said that the chances were ten to one that Manley and Rogers would never get through alive, and if they did they would be fools to attempt coming back. The others watched the two prairie-schooners crawling off into the gray plain until a mirage engulfed them and lifted them distorted into the blazing sky. And now the families faced the question which these men had left with them.
In 1825 it was all carried on with one single annual caravan of prairie-schooners, and now there are four railroads running through the Rio Grande Valley, and one daily freight train of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe into the town unloads more freight than was taken there in a whole year when the "commerce of the prairies" was at its height!
They made the journey in covered wagons called "prairie-schooners," while their goods followed in peddlers' carts. It often happened that out on the plains they missed their way, for there was no travelled road, and a compass was as necessary as if they had been on the ocean. Journeying thus by day, and camping by night, they suffered many hardships while on the way. Disease laid hold of them.
Let us take his cabins and taverns and towers and steeples and use them in the background " "That would be the only way." " and then put in people Hill and McNulty can't be insisting upon mere 'views. Fill up your foregrounds with traders and hunters and Indians and 'early settlers' and 'prairie-schooners' " "Giles has gone out to bring them round to something like that."
Survivors tell how some of the women wept under the covers of the prairie-schooners that night, but none of those mothers raised her voice in favor of retreat. They were pioneers, these people, and it seemed as if they did not know how to turn back.
We were now enabled to get some fresh clothing from our trunks, which were in the depths of the prairie-schooners, and all the officers' wives were glad to go into the post, where we were most kindly entertained. Fort Whipple was a very gay and hospitable post, near the town of Prescott, which was the capital city of Arizona.
I'm a surveyor. But I can ride and shoot. I've a cowboy with me a Texan. He'll go. What's happened?" "Wal, I ain't sure yet. But I fear the wust. I got wind of some Sioux thet was trailin' some prairie-schooners up in the hills. I warned the boss told him to break camp an' run. Then I come fer the troops. But the troops had changed camp an' I jest found them. Reckon we'll be too late."
But great as are the practical benefits derived from the railways, we cannot repress a sigh as we meditate on the picturesque phases of the vanished era. Gone are the bullwhackers and the prairie-schooners! Gone are the stagecoaches and their drivers! Gone are the Pony Express riders! Gone are the trappers, the hardy pioneers, the explorers, and the scouts!
There are few finer places to study genre than the California ranches frequented by the captains of these "prairie-schooners."
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