 CHAPTER XXI A few of the railroad men under whom I have served. George M. Pullman, the town of Pullman, Illinois. American railroads lead the world. A few figures. Among the large number of railroad men I have served under and worked with during the fifteen years I have been on the road, it gives me pleasure to recall the names of a few with whom I was more intimately acquainted, and to whom I am indebted for many favors given in courtesies extended, and the pleasant duty devolves on me to mention the always courteous, obliging, and most competent head of the Pullman department in Denver, Mr. Runnels, and his assistant Mr. Wright, who sent me out on my first run in 1890. Next comes the well-known name of district superintendent J. M. Smith, who one year later sent me out in the run that marked the beginning of my Pullman service. To Mr. Smith, more than to any other railroad man, I am indebted for advice, counsel, and countless favors shown me while I was in the service in the department over which he presided so long. I always found him courteous and obliging, and never too busy to listen, or to give a kind word of advice or counsel to all who approached him on company business or on the private affairs of the employees of the road. I had charge of a car for several years in his territory, and many a time I have had him for a passenger, and at such times he seemed more like an old friend than he did like the superintendent of the Pullman service. I next transferred to the Ogden division. Here I met and came to know very well superintendent Baker and his assistant Johnny Sears, and to these two gentlemen I am also indebted for many favors shown me, as they tried in every way possible to make my employment pleasant and profitable while I was in their territory. I was sent out on runs that covered the greater portions of the United States, and while on some of my longer runs I often started from and returned to stations in different districts under different superintendents. But I always looked on Ogden as my home station and superintendent Baker as my chief, until another superintendent was given charge of the district, and I was transferred to Salt Lake and started to run on Senator Clark's new road, the SPLA and SL Road, between Salt Lake and Los Angeles, under the superintendency of Mr. Twining and his assistant Mr. Cotton, and these gentlemen also during the time I have been with them have shown me every favor and consideration, which goes far towards making my work a pleasure. In this connection also I mention the names of Jim Donahue, traveling engineer, W. H. Smith, trained master, and P. Randolph Morris, and Joseph Jones, special agents, all jolly railroad men from A to Izard. During my fifteen year service I have met and served under many different superintendents, and to mention the names of them all would require a separate volume, but I will always hold them in kindly remembrance as they all have, without exception, been kindness itself to me. Another old friend I have recently met on the Steel Road is William H. Blood, at present one of the popular conductors on the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad. In the early seventies Billy was one of the best cowboys ranging over the western cattle country. He was with me on many of the old trails and in many a tight place, and like myself he always came out right side up with care, and none the worse for wear. E. W. Gillette, at present general passenger agent of the Salt Lake Road, and one of the best known and most popular railroad men of the West, is another friend of the old days it is my pleasure to meet often now. I first met him under the following circumstances. I think it was in the year 1874, along in the fall. I had been up the trail with some cattle and was returning through Wyoming, enroute to Arizona. I had been riding hard all day and as it began to get dark I sighted a small station on the main line of the Union Pacific, and I concluded to give it a passing call out of curiosity. As I drew near I noticed several rough-looking customers hanging around in a suspicious manner, and I at once concluded that they were robbers there for the purpose of holding up the station. Events immediately following proved that I was right. They had not noticed me and they proceeded to hold up the agent in true western style, but that they had caught a tartar was evidenced by the rattle of the agent's artillery. Of course it was out of the question for me to miss such fun, so not waiting for an invitation I lost no time in getting my own forty-fives in active operation. And in less time than it takes to tell it what was left to those greasers were making tracks for the nearest state line, while a red-headed youngster with a smoking forty-five in his fist was shaking hands with me and trying to say something about my saving his life. I took a shine to him at once, on account of his pluck, and our friendship thus begun has lasted through the years, until now time and fate have thrown us both together on the same line of railroad. The railroad men as a class had the most jovial set of men one could find in any profession, well educated, broad-minded, and always considerate of others, and at the same time they know their business thoroughly, as they have to serve many years as apprentices, so to speak, in railroading, before they are given places of trust and responsibility, and the man who has reached the position of president or general manager of a railroad system has learned pretty much all there is to be learned about the iron horse in the steel road, and they use that knowledge in providing for the safety and comfort of the millions of lives that are annually entrusted to their keeping. The general manager is responsible not only for the lives of the traveling public, but of the army of railroad employees under him, and he is supposed to know everything and must always be prepared to do the right thing in the right place at the right time, and as in many cases life and death depend on it, he must know how. A college education does not make a railroad manager, although it may help to do so. He in a great measure gets his education in the school of experience, and in some cases it is a hard school and the most exact thing of all schools, but at the same time it is a school in which one can learn anything under the sun and learn it well, and in these days of the 20th century's activity and progress, it is the man who knows how to do things that makes the world move, and after boiling everything down there is left in the pot two undisputable facts. They are that the railroad men cause the world to move by knowing how to do things. The other is that the railroad men move the people who live in the world, thus they move things all around, and they are continually on the move themselves, which goes to prove that they are different from many other people in as much as they practice what they preach. And from these men of all classes from the President down I have received courtesies in the kindest of consideration, and these pleasant associations are pleasant memories to me and will always remain so. It was my pleasure to meet and to chat several times with George M. Pullman, the father of the sleeping car, and I found him to be a fine man, fraud-minded in every sense of the word, always approachable and with always a kind word for every one of the large army of his employees that he met on his travels, and he always tried to meet them all. It was also my pleasure to meet his two boys who are veritable chips off the old block. One of the legends connected with the western mining history is that early in the sixties George M. Pullman was a poor prospector and had secured a lease on a piece of mining-ground in Colorado and that he formed the idea of the sleeping-car from the tears of bunks in the miner's lodging-house, bunk-houses they are called. However that may be, Mr. Pullman has been the recipient of many a blessing from the weary traveler, and the idea whatever it was that led him to invent the sleeping-car that has proved such a comfort to the traveler of today deserves to go down in history as the greatest idea that ever came from the place where ideas come from. It has been my pleasure to visit all the large shops of the Pullman Company, including the town of Pullman, Illinois, which is a good-sized city named after Mr. Pullman, and was owned by him principally and the large number of men employed in his shops there. The town contains fine churches and public buildings, a splendid library and reading-rooms and amusement halls. And while I was there I failed to see a single saloon. It seems such places are taboo there. The shops are the finest in this country containing all the modern machinery of the finest kind, and the men employed there are all past masters of their trades. Here are built all the finest sleeping-cars and many of the finest special-cars and railway-cars seen on the railroads of this country. In addition, there is also a very large amount of repairing done. As soon as anything goes wrong with a Pullman car, it is at once sent into the shops for repair, and soon comes out in apple pie order. You may see the Pullman cars all over this country where there is a steel road, and other countries have their eyes on the model of light, and in the near future it will be possible to sleep in a Pullman car whether you are traveling in England, France, Sweden, or China. They are a good thing and are sure to be pushed or rather pulled along. In 1893 I went to Mr. Pullman and told him I was thinking of getting the porters of the Pullman car company to club together and contribute fifty cents per month apiece for the purpose of investing the proceeds in land and view of eventually owning what we would call the porter's home. Mr. Pullman told me he thought that was a good idea and said if we succeeded in buying one thousand acres of land he would erect us a building on it and signed a statement to that effect. I then went to work and communicated with all the divisions of the Pullman company presenting this proposition to the porters of these different districts, but only succeeded in getting about twenty-five subscribers, the rest of them refusing to go into such a proposition. Some of them saying all I wanted was to get the money and make away with it in as much as this amount was to be sent to the main Pullman office in Chicago and I was to be there each month to see this money deposited. Others refused to go into it upon the ground that they were liable to be discharged from the Pullman service at any time and many other various excuses were offered. There were many of the Pullman conductors, however, who promised to contribute from one to five dollars towards this enterprise when we were ready to purchase the land. My object was to have a home and hospital with a joining farming land for the benefit of old and disabled porters who were not able to perform their duties as Pullman car porters. Had this been accomplished at that time we would by now have had a large farm and a house and hospital connected there with and all the porters who are now unable to work would have had a good home and been cared for the rest of their lives. I hope to live long enough to yet see this plan become a reality. At present the American Railway leads the world. In no other country does the traveler find so much comfort, so many conveniences, so much pleasure, safety, and speed as does the dweller in this robust young country belonging to our Uncle Samuel. At the present time there are in the United States upwards of 260,000 miles of railroad open and in operation, not to mention several thousand miles now building and projected. This immense mileage is divided between over one thousand different roads, while in 1851 there were only 149 different railroads with a total mileage of 9,000 miles. The railroads today have a capital back of them amounting to over 14 billion dollars, and they pay their employees wages that put up over 7 million dollars annually, while their earnings amount to the tidy sum of 2,500 million dollars in the same length of time. They carry somewhat more than 800 million passengers every 12 months and 2,200 million tons of freight. These figures do not include the several million tons of trunks, satchels, grips, hat boxes, and carpet bags that the average traveler considers it necessary to load him or herself down with on starting on a journey of any distance, and which comes in such large quantities sometimes as to make life a burden for us porters. Read these figures again, dear reader. They are a conservative estimate of the business transacted by the railroads of this fair land of ours. You can count a million. Can you count a billion? Immense, isn't it? It seems to show that the people of this country are great travelers, forever on the move, yet they tell us this is a country of homes and that the average American loves his home and home life above all things. These figures seem to show there are a few people who haven't any home, or if they have they are looking for one they like better, which like the will of the wisp evades them always, but they continue to shift around, always hopeful, never satisfied, and they will continue to shift around until Gabriel blows on his little tin horn. But this class of people make but a small percentage of the traveling public. Business in this latter day of strife and competition makes long journeys necessary, and as the business of the world grows apace and the countries of the earth crowd closer together in the struggle for the almighty dollar, there will be need of more railroads to make the globe smaller and to cut off the hours and minutes of precious time that means of money to the man of today. And as a man makes and saves money so will he spend it for the pleasure of himself and family, and as he must travel to find pleasure there must be railroads to carry him. And hence these figures I right now will look insignificant beside the magnificent total that will be put before the reader of that day, because if they increase in the next century as they have in the past, walking will be out of fashion and everybody will ride, and I hope sleep in a poleman sleeping car. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, written by Nat Love. Chapter 22 A few reminiscences of the range. Some men I have met. Buffalo Bill, the James Brothers, Yellowstone Kelly, the murder of Buck Cannon by Bill Woods, the suicide of Jack Zimmick. It has now been many years since I quit the range, and as my mind wanders back over those years as it often does, memories both pleasant and sad pass in review, and it is but fitting that I record a few of them as a finale to the history of my life which has been so full of action, which is but natural as the men of those days were men of action. They had to be, and probably their actions were not all good that I freely admit, but while that is so it is equally so that their actions were not all bad, far from it. And in the history of the frontier there is recorded countless heroic deeds performed, deeds and actions that required an iron nerve, self-denial and all that these words imply, the sacrificing of one life to save the life of a stranger or a friend, deeds that stamp the men of the western plains as men worthy to be called men, and while not many of them would shine particularly in the polite society of today or among the four hundred of Gotham, yet they did shine big and bright in the positions and at the time when men lived and died for a principle and in the line of duty. A man who went to the far west or who claimed it as his home in the early days found their a life far different from that led by the duty of Fifth Avenue. There a man's work was to be done and a man's life to be lived, and when death was to be met he met it like a man. It was among such men and surroundings that I spent so many years of my life and there I met men some of whom are famous now, while others never lived long enough to reach the pinnacle of fame, but their memory is held no less sacred by the men who knew them well. Some men I met in the cattle country are now known to the world as the baddest of bad men, yet I have seen these men perform deeds of valor, self-sacrifice and kindness that would cause the deeds recorded as performed by gentlemen in the olden time when knighthood was in flower to look insignificant in comparison, and yet these men lay no claim to the title of gentlemen. They were just plain men. It was my pleasure to meet often during the early seventies a man who is now famous in the old world and the new world, Buffalo Bill, William F. Cody, cowboy, ranger, hunter, scout and showman, a man who carried his life in his hands day and night in the wild country where duty called and has often bluffed the grim reaper death to a standstill and is living now, hail, hearty and famous. Others who are equally famous but in another way are the James Brothers, Jesse and Frank. I met them often in the old days on the range and became very well acquainted with them and many others of their band. Their names are recorded in history as the most famous robbers of the new world, but to us cowboys of the cattle country who knew them well, they were true men, brave, kind, generous and considerate, and while they were robbers and bandits, yet what they took from the rich they gave to the poor. The James Brothers band stole thousands of dollars, yet Jesse was a poor man when he fell victim to the bullet of a cowardly traitorous assassin and Frank James is a poor man today. What then did they do with the thousands they stole? The answer is simple. They gave it away to those who were in need. That is why they had so many friends and the officers of the law found it so hard to capture them. And if they were robbers, by what name are we to call some of the great trust, corporations and brokers who have for years been robbing the people of this country. Some of them I am glad to say are now behind prison bars. Still others are even now piling up the dollars that they have been and are still stealing from the American people. And who on account of these same dollars are looked up to, respected and are honored members of society. And the only difference between them and the James Brothers is that the James Brothers stole from the rich and gave to the poor, while these respected members of society steal from the poor to make the rich richer. And which of them think you reader will get the benefit of the judgment when the final day arrives and all men appear before the great white throne and final judgment. Jesse James was a true man, a loving son and husband, true to his word, true to his principles and true to his comrades and his friends. I had the pleasure of meeting Frank James quite recently on the road while he was on route to the coast with his theatrical company and enjoyed a pleasant chat with him. He knew me and recalled many incidents of the old days and happenings in no man's land. Quite a different sort of man was Yellowstone Kelly, government scout, hunter and trapper. He was one of the men who helped to make frontier history and open up the pathless wilds to the march of civilization. He was in the employ of the government as a scout and guide when I first met him, and thereafter during our many wanderings over the country, I with my cattle, he with Uncle Sam's soldiers are on a lone scout, we often bumped up against each other, and these meetings are among my treasured memories. He was a man who knew the country better than he knew his own mother. Absolutely fearless, kind and generous to a fault. He was the sort of man that once you met him you could never forget him, and us boys who knew him well considered in the chief of all the government scouts of that day. I also had the pleasure of meeting Kit Carson in Arizona and nearly all the government scouts, hunters and trappers of the western country, and they can all be described in one sentence. They were men whom it was a pleasure and an honor to know. Billy the Kid was another sort of a man and there has never been another man like him, and I don't think there ever will be again. Writers claim that he was a man all bad, this I doubt, as I knew him well and I have known him to do deeds of kindness. He had many traits that go to make a good man, but fate and circumstances were against the Kid. Yet I know he always remembered a kindness done him, and he never forgave an enemy. I have rode by his side many a long mile, and it is hard to believe he was as bad as he is pictured to be, but the facts are against him. And when his career was ended by the bullet from Sheriff Garrett's Colt, the world was better off. Likewise were some men who stood in mortal fear of the Kid, and I suppose they had good reason to be afraid as the Kid always kept his word. During my employment with the Duval outfit and Pete Galligan, I often made trips on the trail with herds of cattle and horses belonging to other ranch owners, and on these trips many incidents occurred amusing and sad. The following incident happened in the fall of 1878, when I went up the trail with a half-circle box brand outfit belonging to Arthur Gorman and Company. We had a small herd of horses to take to Dodge City, where we arrived after an uneventful trip, and after disposing of the horses we started out to do the town as usual. But in this we met an unexpected snag. Our bookkeeper, Jack Zimmick, got into a poker game and lost all the money he had to pay the cowboys off with, which amounted to about two thousand dollars and also about the same amount of the boss's money. The boys had about one and a half years wages coming to them, and consequently they were in a rather bad humor when they heard this bit of news. They at once got after Zimmick so hard that he took me and went to Kensley, Kansas, where Mr. Gorman was. Arriving there he went to the Smith Saloon to get a room, as Smith ran a rooming-house over his saloon, and it was the custom for all the cattlemen to make it their headquarters when in the city. Here he met Mr. Gorman, and we were sitting around the room and Zimmick had only told Mr. Gorman a few things. When all of a sudden Zimmick drew his forty-five Colt revolver remarking as he did so, here is the last of Jack Zimmick. He placed the gun to his head and before we could reach him he pulled the trigger, and his brains were scattered all over the room. They arrested Mr. Gorman and myself and held us for a short time until things could be explained. Mr. Gorman was very much overcome by the act as Jack was one of his best men and had been with him a long time. Mr. Gorman had the body sent to Zimmick's friends in Boston and he personally paid off all the boys, taking the money out of his own pocket to do so. But when the boys heard of Jack's rash deed they said they would rather have lost every dollar they had than have had Jack kill himself as he was a favorite among all the cowboys, especially so among those in Mr. Gorman's employee. Zimmick had been in the employ of Gorman and company for over ten years and he was Mr. Gorman's right-hand man, and this was the first time he ever went wrong. Jack did not have the nerve to face his comrades again and so I suppose he concluded that his Colt-45 was the only friend he had to help him out of it. In May, 1882, I was in Durango, Colorado, and chanced to be in a saloon on Main Street where a lot of us boys were together, among them being Buck Cannon and Bill Woods. The drinks had been circulating around pretty freely when Cannon and Woods got into a dispute over Cannon's niece to whom Woods had been paying attention much against that young lady's wish. After some hot words between the men, Woods drew his Colt-45 revolver remarking as he did so, I will kill you, and in raising it his finger must have slipped as his gun went off and the bullet hit a glass of beer in the hand of a man who was in the act of raising it to his lips, scattering the broken glass all over the room, then passing through the ceiling of the saloon. In an instant Woods threw three bullets into Cannon, remarking as he did so, I will kill you for your niece is my heart's delight and I will die for her. Buck Cannon's dying words were, Boys, don't let a good man die with his boots on. Along in the spring of 1879 we went to Dodge City, Kansas with a herd of cattle for the market, and after they were disposed of we boys turned our attention to the search of amusement. Some of the boys made for the nearest saloon and card-table, but I heard there was to be a dance at Bill Smith's Dance Hall and in company with some of the other boys decided to attend. There was always quite a large number of cowboys in Dodge City at this time of the year, so we were not surprised to find the dance hall crowded on our arrival there. Smith's Place occupied a large, low-frame building down by the railroad tracks on the south. We found many old acquaintances there, among them being Kiowa Bill, a colored cattleman and ranch owner of Kansas whose ranch was on Kiowa Creek. I had met him several times, but this was the first time I had seen him in a couple of years, but as he was dancing with a young lady I could not get to speak with him at once. So I looked up a wall-flower and proceeded to enjoy myself. We had not been dancing long when I became aware of a commotion over near the bar and all eyes were turned in that direction. I soon ascertained the cause of the commotion to be a dispute between Kiowa Bill and Bill Smith, the proprietor of the Place, who was behind the bar. Kiowa Bill, after finishing the dance with his fair partner, took her to the bar to treat her. Smith, who was tending bar, refused to serve her, saying she had enough already. Kiowa Bill told Smith he, Kiowa Bill, was paying for what she wanted to drink and that he wanted her to get what she wanted. Smith said no, she could not have anything more to drink as she had too much already. At this, Kiowa Bill reached over the bar and struck Smith over the head with a whiskey bottle, partly stunning him. But he recovered in an instant and grabbed his forty-five colt. Kiowa Bill, doing the same, and both guns spoke as one. Smith fell dead behind the bar with a bullet through his heart. Kiowa Bill rolled against the bar and slowly sank to the floor and was dead when we reached him. The next day they were hauled to the cemetery, laying side by side in the same wagon and were buried side by side in the same grave. Kiowa Bill had made his will a short time before and it was found on his body when he was killed. I had known Kiowa Bill for several years and was present at a shooting scrape he had two years before down in Texas near the Arizona line. At one of the big round-ups there in 1877, myself and quite a crowd of the other boys were in camp eating our dinner when Kiowa Bill rode up. He had been looking after his own cattle as he owned over two thousand head himself. One of the boys in our party who did not like Bill, there being a few between them for some time, on noticing Bill approaching remarked, if that fellow comes here I will rope him. True to his word as Bill rode up the cowboy threw his lariot. Kiowa Bill, seeing the movement, threw the rope off at the same time, springing down on the opposite side of his horse. The cowboy enraged at his failure to rope Bill, shouted, I will fight you from the point of a jackknock to the point of a forty-five. At the same time, reaching for his forty-five, which was in the holster on his saddle, which was lying on the ground a short distance away. At that, Kiowa Bill fired, striking the cowboy in the neck, breaking it. Bill then sprang in the saddle and put spurs to his horse in an effort to get away. Several of the cowboys commenced shooting after Bill who returned the fire. One of the cowboys, squatting down and holding his forty-five with both hands, in an effort to get a better aim on Bill, received a bullet in the leg from Bill's revolver that knocked him over backwards and caused him to turn a couple of somersaults. Bill got away and went to New York. He was later arrested in St. Louis and brought back. At his trial he went free as it was shown that he killed the cowboy in self-defense. His appearance at the dance was the first time I had seen him since the scrape in Texas. Kiowa Bill was of a peaceful disposition and always refrained from bothering with others. But if others bothered with him, they were liable to get killed as Kiowa Bill allowed no one to monkey with him. Such was life in the western ranges when I rode them, and such were my comrades and surroundings, humor and tragedy. In the midst of life we were in death, but above all shown the universal manhood, the wild and free life, the boundless plains, the countless thousands of longhorn steers, the wild, fleet-footed mustangs, the buffalo and other game, the Indians, the delight of living and the fights against death that caused every nerve to tingle, and the everyday communion with men whose minds were as broad as the plains they roamed and whose creed was every man for himself and every friend for each other, and with each other till the end. Another friend of the old times is Charles R. Campbell, superintendent of the Kelso Mines. Chats with these good-hole-sold people of the cattle range bring back reminiscences of the past that would fill volumes, but space and time in these days of hustle-and-bustle-arbit dreams, and the world is full of them now. I am at the present time connected with the General Securities Company in Los Angeles, Mr. A. A. C. Ames is President, Mr. James O. Butler Vice President, Mr. Jacob E. Meyer Secretary, and Mr. George W. Bishop Treasurer. These gentlemen are always extremely kind to me, and the appreciation I feel for the kindnesses shown me will be fully rewarded. As I stop to ponder over the days of old so full of adventure and excitement, health and happiness, love and sorrow, isn't it a wonder that some of us are alive to tell the tale? One moment we are rejoicing that we are alive, the next we are so near the jaws of death that it seems it would be almost a miracle that our lives be saved. Life to-day on the cattle range is almost another epoch. Laws have been enacted in New Mexico and Arizona, which forbid all the old-time sports, and the cowboy is almost a being of the past. But I, nat love, now in my fifty-fourth year, hail, hearty and happy, will ever cherish a fond and loving feeling for the old days on the range. It's exciting adventures. Good horses, good and bad men, long venturesome rides, Indian fights, and last but foremost the friends I have made, and friends I have gained.