Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 1.djvu/133

1859] the kind invitation of the United States District Attorney, Alonzo G. Davis, a native of New York, to accompany him on an official mission to Fort Scott. As we were to go on horseback and camp by the way, I thought it would be a good preparation for the trip across the Plains. We were gone a week, during which I rode about one hundred and eighty miles in the saddle. Not having been on a horse in years, the first day's trip made me very sore, so that I had no enjoyment, but constant discomfort and pain all the way. Still, I stood it to the end without any suspicion of my sufferings on the part of my companions. We travelled over an unbroken stretch of rolling prairie of obviously extraordinary fertility. Sometimes we did not see a house for twenty miles, and we were guided most of the way by the compass. We passed only two or three small clusters of frame shanties, styled towns. Fort Scott proved to be an old trading post with a score of houses around it. The United States District Judge held court on two days, and I had a chance to see justice administered under the most primitive circumstances. There was no court-house, but the Judge sat in a school-house equipped with the rudest furniture. Both criminal and civil cases were tried. There being no place to confine prisoners, the United States marshal and his deputies had to keep them under constant watch at the only wretched hotel in the place. The effort to secure a jury failed entirely, owing to the scarcity of settlers.

On my return I learned that, for various reasons, the first stage of the “Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Co.,” as the new enterprise was called, would start a week later than I had been told. There was, however, no further postponement, and at the appointed time I got off, early in the morning, amid the cheers of a crowd of at least a thousand spectators, in one of the red-painted, canvas-covered vehicles, with three inside seats for three passengers each, known as “Concord coaches,” with four fine Kentucky mules attached that started on a full run. Strange