Chapter 2

The solution to our problem of not enough drivers was both simple and complicated. All of the wagons carried what was known as a “towing bar.” This could be used to replace the bar at the front of the wagon where the draft animals were attached, and the front of one wagon could be hooked to the rear of another. Thus, two wagons could be hooked in tandem, and only one driver was required for two wagons. In extreme situations, even more wagons could be hooked up this way, but the practical limit was three wagons.

We had seven drivers and 18 wagons, counting the chuck wagon, and that meant that the four service wagons could be hooked behind freight wagons. That way, by rearranging loads, we could get all of the wounded into wagons. Cookie, obviously, the cook, was very good at treating broken bones and cuts, but he was no surgeon.

One man was carrying a bullet in his gut, and there was no way to help him except to fill him with laudanum and wait for him to die. He knew his situation as well as did everybody else, so he asked to be shot in the head to end his pain. I had known the man the shortest time, so I was the one who Nina asked to do the man the favor of shooting him. Well, I did, but it sure was difficult.

All of our dead were buried at the edge of the camp ground where there were other graves. Wooden markers were left, but they were not going to last more than two years before the weather destroyed them. The dead bandits were just looted and dumped where the scavengers could find them. The bodies would be gone within two days after we left the camp.

It took us two days to get everything arranged properly, but we were finally ready to leave for Jefferson City. I was driving one of the rigs with only one wagon attached because of my inexperience with a team of 12 mules. Thank God they were mules instead of horses. Horses are so dumb that they require constant attention, but mules are smart enough to follow a safe route once you show them where you want them to go. I admit it, that was the only reason that I was able to handle a 12-mule team.

It took us a day and a half to travel that 15 miles to Jefferson City. We found a place to camp and spent the rest of the day to get set up. I was the least useful at that chore, so Nina took me with her to visit the saloons to look for replacement drivers. She was dressed in men’s clothes, and that kept down the problems of men in the saloons propositioning her for sex, but I was big enough and mean enough looking to make them back down.

We needed 11 drivers, but she was only able to find three. A man was not a drunkard just because he was found in a saloon. There was no other place for an unemployed man to relax with men in similar circumstances, so a saloon was the place to go to hire even skilled men like teamsters. Anyway, the three she found were sent to the camp to be tested on their driving skills before the hiring was done.

Dammit, where could we find the eight more drivers that we needed? It looked like a trip to St. Louis or to Independence/Kansas City would be necessary. Fortunately, Jefferson City was a regular stop for the riverboats plying the Missouri River, so a trip by boat to one place or the other appeared to be the most practical solution.

Nina bought two tickets to St. Louis because that was the next scheduled boat. She took a “state room,” but I only had a “deck pass.” That was not comfortable for me, but I could put up with it for two nights. River pirates were still a problem, so we took our rifles with us, along with a generous supply of extra ammunition.

I took a couple of blankets for bedding and stored them in Nina’s room to keep them from being stolen when I was not looking. That was also where we kept our rifles.

The first day on the boat was reasonably pleasant because of the novelty. Neither one of us had ever been on a boat except to ferry across a wide river such as the Mississippi, so we had a lot of interesting things to see. However, the second day was kind of dull because we had seen everything, and now we were just going from one place to another by boat.

Well, that changed on the early afternoon of the second day. We had just finished dinner and were walking on the upper deck talking about trivial things and just being friendly when it happened. There was the sound of a cannon shot from the shore, and a cannon ball whizzed over our heads. The ball smashed into the pilot house and broke a couple of windows, but that was all of the damage that was done.

The captain had two choices: he could stop and surrender to the pirates or he could put on maximum speed and try to escape. Well, only a fool would surrender to the tender mercies of bloodthirsty pirates, so he put on as much speed as he could. Meanwhile, Nina and I ran to her room to fetch our rifles and extra ammunition.

For some reason we never found out, no more cannon shots were fired at us, but six large rowboats pulled away from shore ahead of us. There were eight oarsmen in each boat, and there were six riflemen in each boat who were shooting in our direction. I don’t know what they expected to hit because the rowboats were not a very stable firing platform, I guess it was just for the intimidation effect.

Nina and I had our rifles by this time and ran toward the front of the riverboat. Our boat’s captain was clever because he aimed the boat directly at one of the rowboats and managed to swamp it before it could do any damage. Unfortunately, that left five rowboats chasing us. Many people on board were now shooting pistols and an occasional rifle at the pirates, but none seem to register any hits. The range was long for a pistol, and that may have been the reason for the poor marksmanship.

Nina and I took a different tactic. We concentrated our rifle fire at the rowers on just one side of a boat as we passed it. We were able to kill or wound enough rowers on one side of a rowboat so that it was not able to travel in a controlled direction. You can imagine what happened when there were four rowers on one side rowing as hard as they could to catch us and there were only one or two rowers on the other side trying to keep up with them. Immediately the rowboat started to turn in an arc. The rowers had to swap around to try to get the rowboat to travel under control, but this cut their speed so that there was no way that they could keep up with the riverboat.

Two pirate boats did reach us and tie on to the riverboat’s safety railing on the side opposite to where we were. As soon as we could, we ran to the other side of our deck and started to shoot at the pirates who were tied up to us. We joined three of the riverboat crew who were already shooting at the pirates who were attempting to climb aboard.

These men were all using the ubiquitous Colt Navy pistols in .36 caliber that almost everybody thought were proper to be used aboard a boat. Naturally, they were not accomplishing much, but we changed that when we joined in with our rifles. I suppose that the pirates never expected to encounter opposition with large caliber rifles and people who knew how to shoot them. The pirates were using the same Colt Navy pistols as the defenders, and, to my surprise, were no better shots.

In a period of less than five minutes, we had killed or wounded enough pirates that they had cut their lines and were trying to escape. Now that we no longer had a relatively stationary target, it was difficult to score on the pirates, but we did hit a couple as they were escaping.

That was the end of the battle, but it did provide an adequate amount of exciting entertainment to fill the rest of the afternoon with fodder for much conversation. Nina and I agreed that the battle was fun, but once was enough.

Later that day, the first mate and purser tracked us down. The captain had ordered that our ticket money be refunded because of the effective defense we had put up against the pirates. He also threw in a $20 reward for each of us, and that was truly appreciated. That was two weeks or more pay for the average working man.