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.
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 19th
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.
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=
