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Updated: May 29, 2025
It was a beautiful command, and when strung out on the prairies with, a train of seventy-five six-mule wagons, ambulances, and pack-mules, I felt very proud of my position as guide and chief of scouts with such a warlike expedition. Just as we were going into camp on the Saline River that night we ran into a band of some fifteen Indians.
I was sure some o' them Maumee smart Alecks'd git on to Jed, but they didn't. I declare they wouldn't see a six-mule team if it druv right across the board afore 'em. But I'm onto him every minit. I told him when he tried to ring in that jack on me that he didn't know enough about cards to play with our Sunday school class on Bean Blossom Crick."
Honeybunch was a good girl, but she was as strong as a six-mule team, and a cautious man just naturally shied away from her. Was a pretty free stepper in the mazes of the dance, and once, when she was balancing partners with Doodums, she kicked out sort of playful to give him a love pat and fetched him a clip with her tootsey that gave him water on the kneepan.
And laid his body at the South Gate, beside some scores of others that were awaiting the arrival of the six-mule wagon that hauled them to the Potter's Field, which was to be their last resting-place. John Emerson and John Stiggall, of my company, were two Norwegian boys, and fine specimens of their race intelligent, faithful, and always ready for duty.
Three other wagons immediately followed in the same way, and in half an hour every wagon was in camp, without the least accident having occurred. It was indeed an exciting sight to see the six-mule teams come straight down the mountain and finally break into a full run. At times it looked as if the wagons would turn a somersault and land on the mules.
He sat with the driver, and often rode the whole two hundred and fifty miles of his division without any rest or sleep, except what he could catch sitting on the top of the flying coach. The coach itself was a roomy, swaying vehicle, swung on thorough-braces instead of springs. It always had a six-horse or six-mule team to draw it, and the speed was nerve-breaking.
Let me say here that I have broken thousands of four and six-mule teams that not one of the animals had ever had a strap of harness on when I began with them, and I have driven six-mule teams for years on the frontier, but I have yet to see the first team of unbroken mules that could be driven with any degree of certainty.
"Oh, Mose!" cried the boy, "I've seen the Yankee cavalry, and they have a horse band, and I rode with them, and I asked a general when they were going to have a battle, and the general said he'd let me know!" "Gin'ral?" demanded the old darky suspiciously; "who dat gin'ral dat gwine tell you 'bout de battle? Was he drivin' de six-mule team, or was he dess a-totin' a sack o' co'n?
So I went to work and learned to gee-haw a six-mule team of the stubbornest mules in the world, hauling bacon, but there was no romance in taking care of six mules that would kick so you had to put the harness on them with a pitchfork, for fear of having your head kicked off. If I ever get a pension it will be for my loss of character and temper in driving those mules.
We still lacked one for the Indian Bureau, and as I offered to make it up from my holdings, and on a credit, my active partner consented. I was putting in every dollar at my command, my partners were borrowing freely at home, and we were pulling together like a six-mule team to make a success of the coming summer's work.
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