Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/287

270 27b ON THE OVEEIiAND TRAIL. Kennekuk, Atchison county. The average nnmhor of oxen would he about six yoke or twelve; head, hut in 1866 two wagons, each loaded with b, boUer, passed through Seneca; one wagon had eleven yoke or twen- ty-two head of cattle, the other nine yoke, so the wagon with eleven yoke would stretch out a dista,nce of about 130 feet. If kodacks had been in vogue dur- ing the overland travel, what thrOling pictures could be presented! Men trying to get west without cattle but by the aid of sails, and many an outfit had only hand-carts which they pushed all the way to th& Gold Elelds in X^alifornia, and frequently their hand-bar- rows would have a Uttle saU. Then there was the means of propulsion by dogs; this in many of the European countries at the present time is utilized by hitching the dog to the axle under the cart, the man, or fre- quently a woman, doing the steering, and giving the team a kick if becoming lax. BefcH-e leaving the Overland Route, it is believed you will enjoy liie following digression: Robert Sewell, alias Bob Ridley, was for many yestrs a resident of Nemaha county, and when taking up with the vocation of stage driving was a young man above the average for size. On one of his trips he had four extra good mules, and when near Cottonwood Spring, Lincoln county, Nebraska, the first thing Bob discovered was bullets whizzing past him. Such a sound was a reminder that Indians were on the war path, but more common in those days a party of them had turned into common highwaymen; but Bob knew his business, as well as how to handle a repeating Winchester, which every driver carried. So the mules