did not know the facts, they knew that I had got the watch. I had not given the watch any examination until I got up the morning at Jack Morrow's, and it somehow or other had tarnished considerably since I got it, three or four days before, and I gave a good look at it, and saw that I had been fooled. I showed it to Lieutenant Rankin, and he said it was a 'pinchbeck' watch. 'Pinchbeck' was a compound metal made to resemble gold, and in those days was the synonym for bogus gold. I saw in a moment that I had been badly fooled, and fearing that it might get out, and be a good joke on me, I called up the First Sergeant of my company and told him that I had had opportunity of buying a cheap watch for him it which I desired to make him a present of, and I succeeded in escaping the ridicule which otherwise might have followed me for quite a while. I told nobody anything, but I afterwards heard of several similar circumstances. The watches were worth $48 a dozen, and this man or a body of men had scattered them along the road to ranches and pilgrims, from Denver to Omaha. It was in those days a new industry, and the right kind of man could make $1,000 a month at it in the Western country, until discovered.
On July 21, 1864, we went about twenty-five miles, and camped at an abandoned ranch which had belonged to a man named Jereux. Ben Gallagher remained at O'Fallon's Bluffs, but our scout 'John Smith' went with us. On the march up the river we met several large caravans of wagons, all armed. None of them bad less than one hundred armed men, together with a squad of cavalry and from three to half a dozen stages loaded with passengers.
All day long on both sides of the river we saw smoke signals. In the evening at Jereux ranch the wolves howled around us in great numbers. We generally got up early, went into camp early in the afternoon, and grazed our horses until sundown. The grazing of horses was very hazardous. we took our horses and hobbled them by the left fetlock with the halter-strap, tying their left hoof within eighteen inches of their heads, so that when the horse lifted up his head he pulled his foot up from the ground. They were hobbled in that manner successfully, and then the whole company was detailed out between them and the hills on foot, armed, remaining on guard until sundown, when the horses were brought in and tied half-and-half on each side of the picket-rope; then each of the horses was fed a quart of corn, and a guard was stationed out to prevent a run or a stampede.
During the howling of the wolves at night, every once in a while John Smith would say, 'Do you hear that wolf?' pointing in a certain direction, and would say, 'That isn't a wolf – that is a Cheyenne,' and he told us that the Cheyennes by their wolf-calls had a method of signaling or communicating to those far back or in the distance, and communicating many things, such as the number of soldiers which they saw, and whether it was dangerous to attempt an attack or not, and so forth. He said he did not understand the signals, because they were agreed upon for the occasion only, and differed with the occasion.
We noticed while marching that the ground rose in sort of steps on the plateaus and that we were getting up to a higher altitude. These steps were many miles apart, and the surface was getting, if possible, more dry, and desolate than it had been.
The Salt Lake trail went by Fort Laramie. The old route crossed the South Platte a considerable distance east of Julesburg, and went over the dividing ridge to Ash Hollow, and down Ash Hollow to the North Platte. But the hills of Ash Hollow were very steep, and another road had been laid out.
On the south side of the South Platte, perhaps about a mile east of the mouth of 'Lodgepole Creek,' a Frenchman by the name of Jules had started a trading-post. The place was a great Cheyenne crossing-ground going north and south, and a frequent place of Cheyenne rendezvous. It was also much used by the Sioux. The Cheyennes had a great liking for the country on the South Platte at the mouth of Lodgepole, and had had camps there for many years. Jules was said to be a half-breed French-and-Indian trader, and to have established this post for the purpose of trading with the Cheyenne Indians. It was said his name was Jules Beni but everybody called him 'Jules.' He was a man of keen native shrewdness, an exceedingly dangerous man, with a peppery, fierce disposition. He had killed several persons, and had become a great deal of a character in the country. A man who had known him several years told me that Jules once killed two persons of local celebrity, cut off their ears, dried them, and carried these four ears in his pockets. That every once in a while he would take them out and show them to somebody. They were great trophies, as he thought. He kept supplies for the pilgrims, and at one time had a large stock. An old pioneer told me that one time Jules got half drunk, and brought out several sacks of flour which he was selling for a dollar a pound, made a mortar-bed out of it in front of his store, knocked in the bead of a barrel of whisky which he was selling for $10 a quart, got a hoe, poured in the whisky, and got to making mortar in a manner as, he said, he had just seen a fellow doing down at Omaha, where he had been getting a stock of goods. This drunken freak represented the waste of several hundred dollars' worth of his stock. He got to be so bad and dangerous that Slade, the superintendent of the stage company, had to kill him.
At the time of which I write, nothing was left of the Jules ranch; it was gone, but the stage company had a large stable there, and a large boarding-house a blacksmith shop, a telegraph station, a large sod corral, a wareroom built of cedar logs, and about eighty tons of shelled corn in sacks stored therein. There were quite a number of men there – blacksmiths, relays of telegraph operators, perhaps a dozen stage-drivers, and men who were taking care of horses. I would say there were fifty men there, all armed to the teeth, and with everything arranged so they could fight behind sod walls, and make a desperate resistance.
Ben Holladay claimed to be the owner and proprietor of all of this stage line and property, clear through to the Pacific Coast. He was a great celebrity. He was reputed to be very rich, and yet he had a reputation for great daring and a love for wild and dangerous life. His organization of this stage line across the continent in its then unsafe and lawless condition was a wonderful achievement. I saw him twice, passing on the road – once at Fort Kearney and once at Julesburg, and he impressed me as a man of restless and untiring vigor.
'Julesburg Station,' as it was then called, was situated well down on the flats near where the course of the river then turned, and the main wagon-road ran alongside of the houses. There is a present town Julesburg, but it is on the other side of the river, and several miles farther down. The wood that was used was most of it cedar, hauled from Jack Morrow's canyon, and the balance of the building material was sod.
Near this place, which I will call Old Julesburg, the river-crossing started in a little east of the station, not very far down the river, and went around in a curve, coming out say a quarter or half a mile farther up the river. There was another crossing farther up the river, that crossed over west of the mouth of Lodgepole; the two trails went up Lodgepole Creek on opposite sides, until they joined several miles farther up. Those present at that time were in the habit of calling the lower one the 'California crossing,' and the west one the 'Mormon crossing,' because it appears that the Mormon trains crossed there and went quite a distance up the west side of Lodgepole.
The fact that General Mitchell was coming up the Platte to make an inspection, and organize military protection, and visit Fort Laramie, was noised around in advance, a great deal, and before we got to Julesburg wagons for the Salt Lake route had congregated in great numbers at Julesburg, and wanted to go up the road behind General Mitchell. As we approached near Julesburg, we came to a place where the river had at one time flowed close to the bank. There was a long stretch of dry sandy arroyo about eight feet below the sharp edge of the perpendicular bank. Along this bank ran the telegraph line.
Before we reached the place a heavy storm was lowering. The air swirled around, and a cool wave descended. All at once a terrific storm broke in upon us from the southwest. We could hear it coming with continual resounding peals of thunder. Crash was following crash so loud, heavily and quickly that, fearful the horses would become terrified and break away, General Mitchell ordered the horses all to be taken down on the sand under the bank. Finally the General's horse, and the mules from the ambulance, and all were taken down under the bank. The storm at first went over our heads without rain, and furnished us a grand electrical display. The noise finally ceased for a little while, and there came a calm, and the boys got up on the edge of the bank above the horses, sitting down and holding their horses below them in the arroyo by the bridle-rein. We all thought the matter was about over, and were congratulating ourselves that we had not been soaked with a rain. We watched the electric storm roll over on the North Platte bills, when all at once came a flash of lightning and shock of thunder that knocked almost the entire company over. Several were stunned, several fell over the bank, and the balance jumped down. The lightning had struck one of the telegraph poles not far from us, and splintered the poles or damaged them for a great distance on each side. It was such an astonishing peal that it was a little while before anybody spoke. As we saw the wire lying on the ground, and the neighboring poles shattered, General Mitchell ordered two of the soldiers to go each way, and see how many poles were affected by that blow of lightning. The men reported that, taking the poles that were shattered or to some extent visibly damaged, there were thirty-three in number, which was nearly a half-mile on each side of us.
In a little while it began a drizzling rain, and after it had rained enough to wet us all through, we arrived, July 22, 1864, at Julesburg, and found nearly three miles of wagons there. They wanted to go through on the Salt Lake Trail. They were camped along the line of the river; the grass had been pretty well eaten out; everybody in the
