AUTHOR FAVOURITES: THE LONG HITCH by MICHAEL ZIMMER

Michael Zimmer, winner of the Western Heritage Wrangler Award, tells me he has 4 favourites of his own westerns. One is THE LONG HITCH.

Utah, 1874. Young Buck McCready finds himself wagon master of a freight outfit in a race with another freight team. Crossing the Great Basin Desert he has to deal with sabotage, rustling and murder. He’s also hunting the killer of the man who raised him.

Before the coming of the railroads, anytime between the 1850s and the 1880s, caravans of freight wagons were the means of bringing goods to the 19^th Century West. One ‘freight train’ might transport as much as 75 tons of food, cloth, implements and machinery. Most freight wagons were made by either the Murphy Company or by the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company.

A Studebaker wagon

These wagons were hauled by oxen, driven on by ‘bullwhackers,’ and mules, whose drivers were nicknamed ‘muleskinners.’ In practise a whip cracked overhead was usually enough to goad both oxen and mules into movement, and little actual ‘skinning’ was required. Bullwhips might have stocks of hickory, ash or pecan, and a rawhide lash between 10 and 20 feet long.

Mule skinners rode mules. Bullwhackers walked at the left of the oxen, directing them by cracking a whip over their heads.

Argument raged over which animals were better. In essence the difference between them was that mules were faster, oxen were cheaper. Mules tended to be more commonly used in desert country, but were more tempting to Indian raiders as, once stolen, they could be ridden.

A mule team

Bullwhackers sketched by WILLIAM HENRY JACKSON in 1866

Each freight team – known as an 'outfit' – was ruled over by a wagonmaster. He often had to be a tough disciplinarian; Mark Twain once described a company of teamsters he encountered as ‘a very, very rough set.’ Texas historian R.D. Holt said their hard, lonely, monotonous lives tended to make freighters ‘taciturn and peculiar.’

Between spring and the first winter snows these outfits hauled their cargoes across plains, deserts and mountains, braving massive distances, raging rivers, a harsh and testing land that gave them blizzards and dust storms, outbreaks of diseases like cholera and hostile Indians. 

MADAME CANUTSON was a very rare individual – a female freighter operating in South Dakota in the 1880s. Another female teamster was ‘CALAMITY JANE.’ I’ve blogged about ‘Calamity Jane’ here: http://andrewmcbrideauthor.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/author-favourites-copperhead-by.html
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Hitch-Western-Story-Five/dp/1432825240/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

As a boy, ‘BUFFALO BILL’ CODY once worked as a messenger for a freight company.

Although freighters were an important part of the real Old West, they’ve only featured occasionally in western movies and TV, including films such as ‘BULLWHIP’ (1958)

Guy Madison and Rhonda Fleming in 'Bullwhip'

And ‘SANTA FE PASSAGE’ (1955)

I spotted these female freighters in the TV Western world:

The Bonanza episode ‘Calamity over the Comstock’ tells a wildly unhistorical tale of Calamity Jane (played by Stefanie Powers) freighting in Nevada.

The High Chaparral episode ‘Lady Fair’ features another lady freighter, played by Joanna Moore.

One of my favourite western films, ‘WAGONMASTER’ (1950) is about wagon trains transporting settlers – in this case Mormon pioneers - rather than freight.

Reviews of THE LONG HITCH:

‘A wonderful book full of believable characters, good and bad, murders and gun fights… Zimmer's prose is as smooth as glass and as lyrical as birdsong.’

‘A story as tight as a fifth chain moving up the trail… knowledge is woven into the narrative so effortlessly that the reader learns without realizing it.’

https://www.amazon.com/Long-Hitch-Western-Story-Five/dp/1432825240/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=