From Kearney westward to Julesburg are little towns, around some of which cluster memories of earlier days. To Ogalalla, for instance, in Texas cattle-driving time were driven thousands of long-horns from the Lone Star State to start by rail for the eastern markets.
[Illustration: THE ROUTE RUNS BY A SEA OF WIND-WAVED GRAIN NEAR SHELTON AND GIBBON, NEBRASKA]
The West had many styles of wildness, and the cowboy style was one. It was different from all others. The writer was familiar with them and can discriminate. There was system usually in the frontier wildness; men killed each other, but for some cause great or small. But cowboy wildness was not to be measured by rule or reason. The cowboy was picturesque. He wore a roll around his broad brimmed hat, a red sash around his waist, big spurs, high heeled boots with the Lone Star of Texas embroidered on the top, an open shirt and two six-shooters. In appearance he was one-half Mexican and the other half savage. Opportunity to shoot down a man or “up a town” meant the more fame was his when he should return to the Brazos. His touch upon the trigger was as “light and free” as the touch of Bret Harte’s Thompson and there was no limit, while ammunition and targets lasted, to the “mortality incident upon that lightness and freedom.”
[Illustration: THE “OVERLAND ROUTE” STATION AT COLUMBUS]
Julesburg, 372 miles west of Omaha, was in 1865 an important stage station on the Overland Route, and as a supply point was the subject of much attention from the Indians. On one occasion a thousand Sioux and Cheyennes attacked it, but were finally driven off. The station was named after one Jules, agent for Ben Holladay’s stage line. He was killed by J. A. Slade, a noted desperado, who fought both for and against law and order. His career and that of his faithful wife are set forth in Mark Twain’s “Roughing It.”
[Illustration: AT NORTH PLATTE, NEBRASKA, COLONEL CODY (BUFFALO BILL) HAS A RANCH WHICH HE NAMED “SCOUT’S REST” IN MEMORY OF FRONTIER DAYS]
Long after Julesburg was an Overland Route railway station, the buffalo fed on the plains around it. These animals should have some share in the credit for the construction of the Overland Railways. Their destruction, if deplorable, was a factor in the success of the builders. They provided sustenance for the brawn of the workman almost all the way across the plains from Omaha to the Rockies, and while rib steaks and succulent humps comforted the inner man their robes kept warm the outer one. The camp hunter did not have to travel far for meat those days. Time was, and not so many years ago, when an Indian would trade a buffalo robe for a cup of sugar or a yard of red flannel, but now save in a few parks and exhibition places the buffalo has passed away. The plains were at one time strewn with their white bones. It was the custom of the Mormons to use the frontal bones of their skulls as tablets whereon to write brief messages to the wagon trains following. One may be seen in the Commercial Club museum, Salt Lake City, bearing in Brigham Young’s writing the inscription: