Chapter 3

I recall one time coming from Riverdale with a pair of old yellow stags (long horned oxen), staggy in other words. These were so lazy that when I would lay the whip on them, they would stop to dodge the blow. But when I came to the "Hot Springs", now known as "Becks", it was open and covered the road over quite a wide stretch. But right here I got even with these stags. When they stepped into the hot water (and it was hot, for it would take the skin off), they stepped out of it, I'll tell you, and this was the only time I ever got any satisfaction out of them.

Colonel Burton, Bishop Cunningham (of the Fifteenth Ward), and Robert Golding made up a train of cattle in October and loaded the wagons with flour. I hired out as one of the teamsters and we took that flour to Rease River, four hundred miles west of the city, to supply the "Overland Stage Stations".

Yes sir, it was in the summer of 1863, that's not so long ago, and I reckon the wild roses were in bloom then, too. Twas the time of day when the old "Concord" Coach rumbles along over the rocks and ruts from Antelope Springs, Nevada, to "Eight-Mile" Station.

There was but one passenger to mitigate the loneliness, to share the chances of the day with the driver, and he happened to be a boy, or rather a young man.

The road was a crooked one, cut through hill-rocks, up and down. It wormed it's way through cedar and sage brush, and on through shaggy canyons with their butts of ragged rock. You see, a man had a poor chance of looking ahead very far.

Well, the old stage rolled on and sort of lifted to the top of a high place and then came out of a cut in the rocks. From his elevated perch the driver could glimpse the station. What he saw caused him to burn with fury; the station was a rising mass of flames.

"There's some more of their dastardly doin's"!, he shouted to the boy. "They've set fire to the station house. There goes one of the skulking devils now. Lay low!", he whispered, hoarsely.

To turn back to Antelope Springs, from this cut was a twenty-two mile drive. There was but one thing to do, and that was to try and make it on to the next station, a distance of eight miles. Oh, I'll bet you a thousand thoughts surged through the brain of that driver and the lad who rigidly kept to the seat at the back as the struggling horses were lashed on. The leader horse snorted fiercely. It sas a race for life. The animals seeming to sense it, straining every nerve to carry the coach out of the terrible danger.

Faster, faster, cracked the whip, and that old coach jolting, plunging, lunging from side to side rattled loosely over the last stretch of the cross road. The next instant a heavy groan escaped the lips of the driver. "For God's sake, take these lines, I'm shot", and he reeled backward into the boot of the coach, just as the boy clutched the reins. Leaning forward the brave young fellow laid the whip on with a stinging cut and those horses responded with a new burst of speed.

Gradually the gap widened between the coach and the burning "Eight Mile Station" and the blood thirsty yells grew faint and died away on the air. When the lad swung into "Deep Creek", he was really alone, for the driver of the old "Concord" was dead.

Ever heard of William Henry (Bill) Streaper? I knew him well, he was a man who wasn't afraid of anything. It was said of him at his funeral service, which I attended in Centerville, that he was probably the last of the Pony Express Riders and died at the age of 93.

I, John Miller, hired out to drive team for the Overland Company in June of 1863. A few days before I went out on the coach, Wood Reynolds, the coach driver was coming from Camp Floyd. On the Lehi Bench there was a deep hollow and the Indians were laying in ambush there, and as he drove down into the hollow, the Indians closed in on him, killing him and his only passenger. They scalped them, cut the coach to pieces, scattering the mail all over the bench. They cut the harnesses into bits and took for their own the four horses. The next morning, Adam Paul was coming with the mail from the Southern settlements and near Goshen he met this same band of Indians'. One of them was wearing Wood Reynolds gold watch and chain; Adam Paul saw it. They asked Adam if he had heard what had happened to Wood Reynolds. Adam replied, "I haven't heard anything". The Indian answered, "You're a damn liar", and you can bet (Adam told me this, he didn't wait to argue the point with them, he was moving on.

The Overland Train that I was with in June of 1863 was one of ox-teams of thirty wagons, and upon this day of which I speak was filing into Canyon Station, located halfway between Deep Creek and Willow Springs in Utah.

If one of our most noted artists had painted the picture that we gazed upon, and then hung it up for inspection, I am sure the criticism would have been, "It is too horrible, too exaggerated, there is too much of the color it it that looks like fire and death". But that is just what made it so very horrible.

A band of hostile Indians a few days before had closed in on the little station. Riley, the keeper, had been tied upon a towering pile of brush and wood, and was burned. All that was left of the poor fellow was his blackened bones. The horses had sizzled and burned down in their very stalls, and the great white timbers were still burning, cracking, all red hot. Everywhere were mounds of ashes and charcoal. The very air was stifling. In anger mingled with sadness, we gazed long on that awful scene. It was but one of the many of it's type.

In the winter of 1863 I lived in Beaver, but during that summer I drove for the Overland Company. They had two trains of cattle and wagons and I was one of their teamsters.

Chapter 4