Ezekiel Thompson sat on the near wheeler of the sixteen mule team and watched the landscape pass by. After six of the month long trips from the rail station in Cheyenne, Wyoming to Denver and back, there wasn't much to see that he hadn't already seen, but it was still a peaceful way to pass the days. There would be work to do tomorrow when the train of freight wagons started down the steep slope into Maverick Valley. Today, he could just sit on the heavy, near wheeler mule, listen to the bells on the collars of the two lead mules, and let the countryside keep him from remembering.
Ezekiel jerked on the jerk line that ran from the near lead mule to start old Herman around the bend to the right in the trail. The mule began to turn and by pushing the jockey stick snapped between them, pushed the far lead mule in the same direction. The other mules did what they'd been trained to do.
The four swing teams behind the lead team began following around the curve. Ezekiel then spoke to the pointers to tell them it was time to do what they'd been trained to do, but most had already jumped the long, heavy chain that connected all the mules to the wagon and were pulling in the opposite direction from the lead team. The wheelers, the rearmost team and the only team hitched to the wagon tongue, began pulling the wagon tongue in the same direction.
The wheelers and pointers, the two teams in front of the wheelers, had been trained to do this, pull the wagon tongue in the opposite direction of the turn, to keep the wagon following the curve instead of following the lead team and cutting off the curve. They would pull by sidestepping around the curve until the trail straightened out. When it did, the wheelers would bring the wagon tongue back straight and the pointers would jump the chain again and resume pulling forward.
There was a slight slope downward at the turn, and Ezekiel pulled the rope tied to the long brake lever that in turn, pulled the linkage connected to the brake bar of the wagon. When the massive wood brake blocks met the iron tires, there was a screeching sound, and Ezekiel felt the drag and saw the chain slack a little. The mules were still pulling, but the drag would keep the heavy wagon from running over the wheelers as they went down the slope.
When the wagons made the descent into Maverick Valley, all the wheels would be chained to the wagons so they wouldn't turn and iron shoes would be chained to those wheels so the rough ground wouldn't wear a flat spot on the iron tires. On this slope though, the rear wheel brakes were enough.
When the trail leveled out, Ezekiel let the brake rope go slack and then looked out over the land in front of him. In the distance, he saw the shining slash of the river where the wagons would spend the night. It was the same river where he'd unrolled his bedroll on this stage of the trip over the past six months after seeing to the mules and then having a meal cooked by Isaac Jones, the man who drove the only normal wagon in the train, the cook's wagon.
The wagon Ezekiel drove, the wagon that clumbered, creaked, and rocked behind the eight teams of mules was a freight wagon, a behemoth of wood held together by strong joinery and iron that weighed almost four tons empty. Depending upon the load, it could carry up to six more tons of freight. That day, Ezekiel's wagon was loaded with picks, shovels, flour, molasses, and corn meal, and all that was headed for Denver where it would eventually end up in the silver mines.
Once in Denver and unloaded, Ezekiel's wagon would be loaded with silver bars smelted from silver ore in Denver and destined for the East. About half a month later, depending upon the weather, those bars would be in a rail car and Ezekiel would be again making his way back to Denver.
On his hip, Ezekiel carried a Remington revolver. Every man in the train of heavy wagons carried a pistol of some sort. That was in case the wagon train was attacked. He had heard the stories of that happening. It was usually a band of outlaws bent on taking the silver.
Ezekiel had not had to use the Remington so far, and fervently hoped he would never have to. He'd been taught to save life, not take life. He wouldn't have to worry much on this half of the trip. All the wagons headed for Denver carried supplies for the Denver stores and mines, and probably wouldn't be attacked.
The other five wagons in the wagon train were the same - huge wagons with seven foot tall wheels with eight inch wide and one inch thick iron tires and hubs as big as a man's chest. Those wheels rolled on cast iron spindles connected to hickory axles almost a foot square in section. It took timbers like that to withstand the torturous twisting and racking the heavily loaded wagons experienced on the rough trail.
On top of those axles, more thick timbers supported the massive bed, a bed three feet wide, sixteen feet long and six feet high, and over the bed, hickory bows supported the canvas top that protected the load from rain.
There was no actual seat on the wagon for the driver. It wasn't really practical to use reins to guide the mules because the reins would have been so long. Just holding the weight of eight pairs of reins, the longest pair of which would be a little over a hundred feet long, was more than a man could manage for very long at a time. The differing lengths would have also made it difficult for the driver to give all the mules the correct pull on the reins at the same time. The mules nearest the driver would have received the command sooner than the lead mules because of the taking up of the slack and the stretch of the reins.
The teamster, known by most as a mule skinner, sat on the left wheel mule and directed the lead mules with a single rein called a "jerk line". A steady pull meant turn left and one quick jerk meant to turn right. Lead mules were smarter and better trained than the other mules, because they were the only mules the mule skinner could directly control. On a sharp bend, the mule skinner couldn't even see the lead mules, so they also had to be smart enough to follow the trail. They wore bells on their collars to give the teamster some idea of where they were and what they were doing.
Mule skinners knew every mule by name and also spoke commands to them. They also carried a long whip to remind the wheelers and pointers of their job. It was that whip that gave them the name "skinners", though most never hurt a mule with the whip. Besides the mules being valuable for the work they did, mule skinners did their job because they just liked mules. The whip was just used as an extension of the mule skinner's arm to deliver a reminding tap to the rump of a mule who didn't act quickly enough.
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As the wagon made its way through the valley between two high hills, the beginnings of the mountains in the distance, Ezekiel mused that he was sitting on a plodding mule in the middle of nowhere. He should have been riding in a carriage pulled by a light and nimble horse down the streets of Philadelphia or some other eastern city.
That had been his plan, but that plan had been rudely interrupted. Ezekiel was in within weeks of graduating from the Perelman School of Medicine when the southern states began seceding from the Union. He saw no reason for alarm, even when the Confederacy shelled Fort Sumpter and forced the Union Army garrison to surrender. If there was to be a war, it would be in the South and it would be quickly won by the Union Army.
That dream ended when the Confederacy attacked the Union Army on northern soil at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. The Union Army stopped the attack and forced the Confederacy to retreat back to Virginia, but the toll on both sides had been heavy. Word quickly reached Philadelphia of thousands dead and many more thousands wounded. Doctors were needed and they were needed badly. Like many doctors in the northern states, Ezekiel traveled to Sharpsburg as quickly as possible and began treating the wounded.
By the time all the casualties of Antietam had either been treated or died, Ezekiel was numb to the sight of mangled bodies and the dead, and saddened by the cause of so much death and suffering. He'd seen young men nearly cut in half by shrapnel from a cannon shell, and other young men who had lost a leg or arm because of the destruction caused by the minié balls used by both sides. Ezekiel knew he couldn't stop the war, but he thought he should do what he could to ease the pain and suffering of the men who would continue to be injured. He enlisted in the Union Army and was given the title of Surgeon with the rank of Captain.
Over the months and then years, what Ezekiel had thought would be the satisfaction of knowing he'd helped men heal and get on with their lives became the despair of knowing no matter what he did, many were going to die. It wasn't just the battle wounds. Disease was rampant on both sides. It was not unusual for dysentery to strike an entire company and render them unfit for battle. Many of those men would die and those who lived faced months of weakness until they recovered. Other diseases like cholera and the grippe caused more sickness and deaths.
Ezekiel could somewhat rationalize the deaths from disease. There were no real cures for most serious diseases, and with so many men living so close together, it only took one or two to infect the others. By the time the disease was identified, it had already spread and there was little that could be done besides make the sick as comfortable as possible. The strong survived and the weak died, just as had always been the case.
What broke him was the battle wounds and specifically, the number of amputations.
Ezekiel had been taught how to properly do amputations. The method was to cut the skin at the amputation site and then peel it back up the damaged limb to form two flaps. The underlying tissue was then cut through to the bone and the bone sawed in two with a small saw. The skin flaps were then used to cover the stump and sewn together.
The method produced a clean, sealed wound that would heal well, but when the doctors on the battlefield attempted to use that method, it took so much time other men were bleeding to death because they weren't being treated quickly enough. After a time, the accepted method of battlefield amputation was to put the wounded man to sleep with chloroform and once he was quiet, to make one cut to the bone around the limb above the injury and then saw the bone in two.
Any large blood vessels were sutured or cauterized shut, and then the stump was covered with a bandage and left to heal on its own. The entire operation could be accomplished in less than two minutes. Many men did heal, but many still died, not from the surgery, but from the infection that spread quickly from the stump to their whole body.
