TO CHICAGO ON A STOCK TRAIN
By Olaf J. Bue
Fanning the Embers, © 1971, Range Rider Reps, Miles City, Montana

I was heading home over a stretch of sage scented benchland after an afternoon of searing prairie chickens when I came upon Jim Burnett bringing in a bunch of two-year-olds.

Old Jim, veteran of the days of Indians and vast open ranges, weather beaten to the color of his saddle, erect astride a big roan, what a picture he made!

"Roundups ain't what they used to be," he said, easing over sidewise in his saddle. "Only a few of the big outfits left. Too much barb wire 'round here. I'll be through when I get these devils to the yard in town."

"When are you shipping?"

"Johnnie Shaw and I are shipping Tuesday. This bunch will about fill out my last car. Say, got any smokin'? Have you ever been to Chicago?

"No," I hesitated.

"Well, why don't you come along with us; we'll load day after tomorrow."

"Fine! I'm Chicago bound with you."

Amid the disconsolate bawling of cows recently taken from overgrown calves and the "eeyah" and "yip" of cowhands at work, I arrived the next afternoon to deposit my blanket and lunch box in the day coach which had been hooked in for us ahead of the caboose. Under a seat I cached a change of clothes.

With dusk the last steer had been crowded up the chute and when the "Connie's" red lantern highballed the engineer down the length of 39 bawling cars we were on our way to Chicago. It was Tuesday night; we'd be in the big town Sunday morning.

Thus behind a trainload of beeves I was reversing the trek of my grandfather who some 50 years earlier had bumped most of the weary distance westward behind a yoke of oxen. Bump, bump in a dead-ox wagon, a dozen jolts then for every swift railclick now; at the end of a good day he had strained over as many miles as we could wheel off in 15 or 20 minutes of ordinary running.

Some soul lighted the kerosene lamp in the coach and kindled a fire in the rusty heater. Shaw put on to boil a big can of coffee. There was a general movement toward lunch boxes until Jim put all end to it by announcing that for the first night at least, we would all eat of his provisions and forthwith uncovered a large grocery box piled full of fried chicken. There was buttered bread in another box, thus chicken in one hand, bread in the other, the ten of us ate our fill and brought out our pipes with the coffee that followed.

A bottle went the rounds and the evening was growing merry with song and story when the train squealed to a stop. Burnett, the plainsman, was on his feet.

"Come on. boys. Grab a stick and let's see how the stuff is riding."

The sticks he referred to were some willows which he had provided earlier. Experience left the other boys in need of no instuction as to their purpose. I traipsed out with him onto the gravelled side track.

"Now," he said, as we walked toward the head of the train in the moonlight, "everytime the train stops for any length of time we'll have to make a run up along the cars to see that nothing gets down. If a steer gets down in a car the rest of them will trample him in a little while. You take these four cars and I'll take the next four; the other boys will split up the rest."

And sure enough. in my second eat, I found a lazy critter who had decided to take his repose at the risk of his life. applying my willow through the cracks in the car I roused him. Two blasts of the whistle sent me dashing back to the car.

Frosty dawn and a squint out of the window, we were in the plains country. Vision of the Rosebud mountains; on one side of us the muddy Yellowstone river with its poplars and cottonwoods; badlands on the other.

The roof of the cattle car beckoned and timorously, awkwardly I clambered up for a look. After an hour or so of wind and cinders and constant shaking I climbed down again, not completely cured but no longer envious of hoboes. At the first stop Jim found a tramp perched between two cars and brought him in for food.

On through Miles City, once the world's greatest horse market, across Powder River. Evening brought us to Sunnyside, N.D., there to unload our live cargo for food and rest. Four at a time the cars were "spotted" at the yard gates, the car doors opened and the cattle chased down the chutes to gorge themselves. The interval provided an opportunity for a hot dinner at the beanery; I had the audacity to complain of a steak by asking for a hatchet with which to cut it, only to be told that with a face like mine I should have no need for a hatchet.

I passed the night in our "private car" unwilling that a desire for a bath should convince me of being a tenderfoot or high-hat.

Dawn, breakfast and reloading. At unloading, each carload had been placed in a separate pen in order that the animals might be returned to their respective cars. As each penful is turned into the runway at loading it is necessary, on account of cow psychology, to hurry the animals with whip and shout to keep them from turning back when they reach the inclined chute at the car door.

At home this was done by men on horseback, but here there were no horses. Anxious to be of some assistance I was crowding a penful toward the chute when an old bull took offense at the sting of my blacksnake and came near to spoiling my whole trip. One sharp horn rent my pants from boot to belt as I took to the fence. It was not until later that I learned that the really fine points in the matter of narrow escapes are to be acquired in Chicago traffic.

John Branger had two big steers down in one of his cars. Of course it became imperative for me to find John and I came near spoiling my trip for the second time. Up and forward, John was on the next car, I saw his lantern. Then I fell-grinding wheels and mangled bones was all I could think of. Something knocked the wind out of me. I clutched it and drew myself up. The light had tricked me and I had fallen between two cars and caught myself on the projecting boards that serve brakemen for foot-paths. I felt rather like the fool I had been and tried to laugh it off, but in my ears there was a crunching of wheels over bones that would not stop.

The car was cut out and a switch engine took it to the yard to be unloaded. Harry Haterlik and I rode down about a mile to get a cup of coffee and a sandwich. Walking back we heard the highball we had feared. We stopped and watched fade into the darkness the lights that should have taken us to Chicago.

We sought out the train dispatcher but he assured us that we might board a sheep train which would be through in two hours and thus catch our own crowd when they would stop to feed at Staples, Minn., the following night.

Banger's car was hooked into the sheep train and like so many prowlers the three of us crept in among the snoring sheepherders. In the dark we could find no place to lie down so we dozed sitting around their stove, waiting dawn. Once they bestirred themselves there was no lack of hospitality among our friends from Washington and night found our original crowd reunited.

St. Paul the next evening. At last we reached a city. Contrary to the admonition of the "brakey" we rode in on the roof; sunset on the dome of the State capital, the Mississippi, historic river town St, Paul - Jim Hills' home, a vague feeling that we had left the west and arrived on the fringe of the east.

An unusually vicious jerk of the train had awakened me to look out upon what seemed an infinity of grimy warehouses. and smoke befouled drizzle. Tortuously we were dragging through a terrifying jangle and confusion of locomotives over a puzzle of tracks and switches. I lost my direction, to this day east seems north. Then a surprise for my nostrils. Sweet aroma of branding time, and I thought I knew livestock odors! Came to mind some words of Sandburg, "hog butcher to the world, handler of the nation's freight burly brawling."

"And now," drawled one of my best listeners, "I begin to understand why cows have such long faces."