Just How We Were To Pass Those Huge Wagons I Did Not See.

But the driver stopped his horses and two of the men got out, the third stopping on the step

And holding on to the stage so it was impossible for me to get out, unless I went out the other door and stood on the edge of an awful precipice. The driver looked back, and not seeing me, bawled out, "Where is the lady?" "Get the lady out!" The man on the step jumped down then, but the driver did not put his reins down, or move from his seat until he had seen me safely on the ground and had directed me where to stand.

In the meantime some of the train men had come up, and, as soon as the stage driver was ready, they proceeded to lift the stage - trunks and all - over and on some rocks and tree tops, and then the four horses were led around in between other rocks, where it seemed impossible for them to stand one second. There were three teams to come up, each consisting of about eight yoke of oxen and three or four wagons. It made me almost ill to see the poor patient oxen straining and pulling up the grade those huge wagons so heavily loaded. The crunching and groaning of the wagons, rattling of the enormous cable chains, and the creaking of the heavy yokes of the oxen were awful sounds, but above all came the yells of the drivers, and the sharp, pistol-like reports of the long whips that they mercilessly cracked over the backs of the poor beasts. It was most distressing.

After the wagons had all passed, men came back and set the stage on the road in the same indifferent way and with very few words. Each man seemed to know just what to do, as though he had been training for years for the moving of that particular stage. The horses had not stirred and had paid no attention to the yelling and cracking of whips. While coming through the canons we must have met six or seven of those trains, every one of which necessitated the setting in mid-air of the stage coach. It was the same performance always, each man knowing just what to do, and doing it, too, without loss of time. Not once did the driver put down the reins until he saw that "the lady" was safely out and it was ever with the same sing-song, "balance to the right," voice that he asked about me - except once, when he seemed to think more emphasis was needed, when he made the canon ring by yelling, "Why in hell don't you get the lady out!" But the lady always got herself out. Rough as he was, I felt intuitively that I had a protector. We stopped at Rock Creek for dinner, and there he saw that I had the best of everything, and it was the same at Spitzler's, where we had supper.

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