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Updated: June 24, 2025
I never felt before, so strongly, how many vices attend civilization, which it seems as if men might just as well be free from, as when I compared these Indians with the common white people about us, the stage-drivers, mill-men, and others, with no smoking nor drinking nor tobacco-chewing, and so strong and graceful, and sure in their aim, that no gymnast I have ever seen could compare with them.
We permitted no tell-tale shudders and winces in our countenances, for we wanted to seem pioneers, or Mormons, half-breeds, teamsters, stage-drivers, Mountain Meadow assassins anything in the world that the plains and Utah respected and admired but we were wretchedly ashamed of being "emigrants," and sorry enough that we had white shirts and could not swear in the presence of ladies without looking the other way.
The line of march was now taken up for Sweetwater Bridge, and here, four days later, the plainsmen brought up, with their own horses and about a hundred Indian ponies. This successful sadly repressed the hostilities for a space. The recovered horses were put back on the road, and the stage-drivers and express-riders resumed their interrupted activity. "Billy," said Mr.
While we were thus nearly all lying idle, a party was organized to go out and search for stolen stock. This party was composed of stage-drivers, express-riders, stock-tenders, and ranchmen forty of them altogether and they were well-armed and well-mounted.
This party I joined. Stage-drivers, express-riders, stock-tenders and ranchmen, forty in number, composed this party. All were well armed; all were good shots, and brave, determined men. "Wild Bill" Hickock, another of the Western gunmen of whom I shall have something to tell later, was captain of the expedition.
He was on chatty terms with all the stage-drivers, hostlers, and servants about the premises, and also got acquainted with many strangers who stopped there for a season.
'Oh, yes! and he took his long coach-whip and licked the man of Boston dressin' till he went and caught them mules. How does that strike you for a joke?" It didn't strike me as much of a joke to pay a hundred and seventy-five dollars in gold fare, and then be horse-whipped by stage-drivers, for declining to chase mules.
He seems always to have had a special liking for this class of workmen. One of the house surgeons of the old New York Hospital relates that in the latter part of the fifties Whitman was a frequent visitor to that institution, looking after and ministering to disabled stage-drivers. "These drivers," says the doctor, "like those of the omnibuses in London, were a set of men by themselves.
Exercise on such days seems to produce no warmth; one's limbs appear ready to break on any sudden motion, like icy boughs. Stage-drivers and dray-men are transformed to mere human buffaloes by their fur coats; the patient oxen are frost-covered; the horse that goes racing by waves a wreath of steam from his tossing head.
The joke of the matter is that those forty-odd saddle-animals have been over that trail so many times that one would have difficulty in heading them off from it once they got started. Very much the same criticism would hold as to the popular notion of the Yosemite stage-drivers. They drive well, and seem efficient men.
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