Ft. Laramie essays

Ft. Laramie essays We are now on the Platte, 100 miles from Fort Laramie. Our journey so far, has been pleasant. The water for a part of the way has been mediocre, but at no time have the cattle suffered for it. Wood is now very in short supply, but buffalo chips are excellent; they fire up quick and retain heat amazingly. More than half of the immigrants ran out of supplies and had to live on beef, but as it happened we had plenty of flour and bacon to last us through. But worse than all this, sickness and death attended us the rest of the way. We feel no fear of Indians. The cattle graze quietly around our encampment unmolested. Two or three men will go hunting twenty miles out from camp. Our wagons have not needed much repair. The road is nothing more than a graveyard. Travel 28 miles today. When we started this morning there were two large droves of cattle and about 50 wagons ahead of us, and we either had to stay poking behind them in the dust or hurry up and drive past them. It was no fool of a job to be mixed up with several hundred head of cattle, and only one road to travel in, and the drovers threatening to drive their cattle over you if you attempted to pass them. They even took out their pistols. My husband came up just as one man held his pistol at Frank and saw what the fuss was and said, boys, follow me, and he drove our team out of the road entirely, and the cattle seemed to understand it all, for they went into the trot most of the way. The rest of the boys followed with their teams and the rest of the stock. I had quite a rough ride to be sure, but was glad to get away from such unruly set, which we did by noon. The head teamster done his best by whipping and hollowing to his cattle. He found it no use and got up into his wa gon to take it easy. We left some swearing men behind us. We drove a good ways ahead and stopped to rest the cattle and eat some dinner. We had buffalo steaks broiled upon them that...