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1 : III'
By Earl C. Brownlee
For my hear), is filled with the days
of yore, t
And oft I do repine
For the days of. old and the days of
fold.
And the days of '49.
rpijAN Dave Horn and Cy Barger,
X perhaps no, man now living can
call from memories of the happy
past a grreajer wealth of vividly
thrilling yarns of the long gone day
of the lumbering old stage coach
yams that have, unfortunately,
been omitted from the dignified
pages of the West's delightful his
tory. Very active, very well satisfied
with having spent adventuresome,
sometimes hazardous lives, close to
the path of heart's desire through
several generations cf the Far
West's upbuilding, Horn is at Pen
dleton and Barger is at San Fran
cisco, still an employe of Wells,
Fargo & do.
Horn, aged 81. is resting on the
laurels of his lifetime. Sometimes
those laurels, in a financial sense
literally poured in upon him. Bar
ger, whose wonderful mother, Re
becca J. Barger, late queen mother
of Oregon pioneers, named him Cy
rus Willard, continues as nearly as
this new automobile infested age
will permit to live in the era of
cumbersome stages, . prancing
horses and resplendent Indians.
r
With Horn and Barger those
fruitful years are separated from
the present In fact alone, and not
In memory. Those were the days
of hard driving gun fighters and of
men who gave both brawn 'and
brain to the solution of the prob
lems of an empire's foundation
upon which an age of flinch has
supplanted an age of faro, youthful
dependence has replaced independ
ence and fiction has exaggerated
the glamor of real romance. An
age, withaj, it is said, whose saddles
and riders and marvelous open ,
skies has gi?en way to soft cush
ions of velvet beneath sheltering
canopies for pampered, silk-draped,
whfte-faced youth. '
Last month, amid the colorful
, pomp of the Pendleton Round-Up,
, these two veterans of the trailtheir
powerful hands yet knotted from
long tugging at the reins of their
sleek horses, reviewed the years of
"tlielr friendship with yarns of the
plains over which they carried the
passengers, ; mails . and freight of
pioneer Oregon..;; . ':'; v;.
Passing before : them were the
;' Tlcktty remnants of their old stages,
" robed replicas of the Indians of the
- - Fendleteji of years ago and bronzed
youths who did their jevel best to
rlt la the pitching, tossing, slippery
v THE :
saddles handed down from the time
of the real cowboy for the pleasure
of the many who delight in this
great Western drama that reflects
the West that is gone.
Mayhap, as they chatted again
for they had not met in many years
and had much to talk about Cy
Barger called to the mind of Dave
Horn that exciting night of August
23, 1881, when Barger picked up at
the east end of his tage coach run
the "treasure chest" from the land
office at La Grande and lashed his
restive horses into a mad run for
Pendleton and the office of the
Utah, Idaho & Oregon Stage com
pany, for which he worked.
The Chinaman of Western, fic
tion was one passenger. The liquor
drummer was another and Miss Ida
Boyd, a school teacher to the fath
ers of today's manhood, was .anoth
er, together with human odds and
ends who happened to be traveling
that night. The stage lurched and
swayed overjts narrow course. Bar-,
ger's "gee" and "haw" echoing over
the plains until, about 3:30 a. m.,
it reached Dead Man's Hill, 14
miles from Pendleton, then a typ-'.
ical Western cowtown.
; Suddenly from out, of nowhere,
two masked men charged into the
roadway, flourishing guns that ef
fectively halted the racing horses.
"Mrs. Boyd and a preacher lined
up with the rest of us, their hands
high in the air," Barger recalls.
"But here were men of the wildest
type, attuned to the spirit of their
day, who refused to profane their
banditry by robbing a woman and
a parson.
' ."They got our, treasure box,
which contained more than $1700,
;i have been told, and they. got.
everything the rest of is had to
yield. The Chinaman had nothing,
but the bullets that snapped about
his feet when his poverty was dis
covered gave him a new use for
those shuffling pedals, and, as he
danced to keep them safe, he got
tti'e fright of his life. He was so
frightened he couldn't talk."
" ' ., "
' Miss Boyd is' known to many who
got their ."learning" in the schools
of the plainsmen. She taught for
many years in many schools of the"
early Northwest. Miss Boyd was
the aunt, of Mrs. "CS.: 'Jackson,
. wife of 'the, publisher of-The Jour
nal. And ' Mr. Jackson, coincident
' ally, became, as a youth, agent, at
' Pendleton for the V.;h &:0. stages,
and, at the same time,' the fast and
. lifelong friend . of , the men who
' drove them. .-- T " - -
But the bandits escaped. ' They
OREGON -SUNDAY -JOURNAL PORTLA- ND,. SUNfiAY.
never were captured, to Barger's
knowledge, at least. Many who
were at one time or another pas
sengers with Barger will testify that
he never cringed before a gunman.
Among those who attest the splen
did qualities, quick' wit and hardi
hood of both Barger and Horn is
George V. Hamilton, superintendent
of The Journal building and him
self a veteran of the transformation
period of the great West before the
railroads smoked out the 'famous
old Concord carriers.
Anyone who J knows Dave Horn
rests assured that when Barger's
recollections were completed there
were many Horn could call to
mind.
"Barger will remember," Horn
said, as his fellow-veteran stood by,
"Joseph A. Slade, who worked so.
long for Ben Holladay. (Holladay
made history in the West as a stage
operator and later as a pioneer rail
roader.) "Slade was a braggart and a bul
ly, "but a man qf iron, even for that
dayf and he furiously hated human .
weakness in muscle or nerve. He
was berating manhood in general
one day for Its lack of nerve, when
he aroused the fire of battle in Dan
Harding, a likeable youngster, but
a tough one, 'who worked for him.
Harding 'called' Slade for his re
marks and mildly attested his own
qualities. He was leaping to dan
ger defiantly, i Sneering, Slade re
torted: 'We'll see ; about your nerve,
sonny!' ?
"Shortly, Hade and Harding
drove out of town with a pair of
wild mustangs trailing their light
wagon.;
"Atop a hill they hitched the
mustangs to the wagon - and. with
a wild whoop from Slade, the"
'nerve' party was on-
"Crashing; down that hill, fren--tied
horses not broken to harness.
. enraged by Siade'8 blanket slapping
at their ears, the wagon and its oc
cupants dashed.
"Both held!, fast as, the wild
horses raced madly to escape the
torments of harness and wagon '
down the hill ; to. a great bluff at
the. edge of the river and over" the .
bluff, horses, wagon, men and all
plunging to-the swirling' waters of
' the river far belowi ,'
"A thunderous crash echoed from
the river's bed as the herve spe
cial struck and splinteted amid
the groans of agony from dying
: horses.' From the wreckage: that;
x- drifted down stream rose Slade and '
Harding. ' bruised, to 'be sure;' bat '
undaunted And as nervy as -over.
" Thertwas' jt test to try mah'g v
. ;.
ttar&Ays' w&zw tzTGteS wzzejs -jzattzoads
stamina, and Slade, .who had ex
pected Harding to leap for .his life
before- he "reached the: treacherous
bluff, 'was Wisfied." 11
It w.as Slade's wife by theway,
who rode a pony to. its death in rac
ing for an: attorney to defend .her
husband from one. of- the frequent
charge of crime against him. But
Slade could not be saved. I He was .
finally sent up for murder, and, as'
Horn recalls, "was hanged. I.
Horn drove stage for some years
between Umatilla and CajrMse but
that was long after he started such
Wisconsin Stags- company. , His r roa.. or5me wennounwin cur.
father a few years before-had, come . s But. Salt Lake,, a) roae In the des
Weat to the California rold fields - ert." didn't- a iite'i suit Horn, who
and wrote regularly of the fortunes--
MORNING,-.; OCTOBER 17
Early Oregon Drivers Tell Some
times Thrilling Stories of Stirring
Days Before the Railroads
i. ,
of the forty-niners until the call of
yellow nuggets drew him to Trailer
river. From that day until her
death Mrs. Horn heard no further
word, from her husband he had
dropped from sight as completely
, as if the earth his pick had scarred
had closed about him as he worked.
Fatherless, Dave Horn came into'
the country of golden treasure to
.work for 12, a month -and found"
until, in '0,' he moved to Hannibal,
, Mo. About that time he got a job
t driving an overlalid: freight, wagon
to Salt Lake -City for Jim Walker.
famous as one of the original Walk-
found 1 a rigorous? rule tin force'
1820.
i 9
against the profane vocabulary of
the trail.
"Couldn't get a kick out of say
ing 'Hell and twenty when I was
mad," he reports, "and that I was
the strongest of the authorized
curses."
He moved to Carson City, Nev.,
and thereafter, between mining,
driving and the like, spent several
years. Horn and a partner struck
a claim in Nevada early in '61 that,
while other prospectors derided
them for "salting" It, yielded
through the sluice boxes in one
afternoon 32 ounces of dust and
nuggets, which they sold for 117.60
an ounce. But for every day he
was wealthy then Horn spent four
days flat broke, repeatedly spend
ing everything he had on fruitless
prospects. .
In 'C4 he started stage driving in
the Far West on a sixrhour night
run out of Austin, Nev. Six hours
was the scheduled time; but when
his company feared loss of the mail
contract to a rival concern, Horn
reduced the speed of his ownToute
to three hours, 18 minutes.
This same prairie pilot drove the
stage that carried Schuyler Colfax
and party over a 5 S -mile route in
186S. Colfax, speaker of the house
of representatives, headed one of
the most notable parties in the,
West up to that time. Horn, too,
drove over a Montana oute for
Wells-Fargo when the treasure his
Concord carried on each trip was
guarded by five shotgun messen
gers. As the railroads eventually re
placed the stage, Horn found other
pursuits and settled definitely in
Pendleton, where, for years he
proved a popular host as propri
etor of the Vlllard hotel and later
the Hotel Pendleton. .Horn was
born on Prince Edward island, De
cember 8, 1839.
Cy Barger, whose stage coach
days are not yet quite over, had
thoroughly fine time at Pendleton
with "Shorty"" Horn and the rest of
the remaining friends of the past.
He came up from San Francisco for
the event. At San , Francisco, In
spite of the encroachments of other
motive power, the company he
works for uses more horses than it
ever did. i Near horses Barger is at
, home. He ts "lord mayor" in
charge of the company's trim
horseflesh and , with his intimate
knowledge of horses there is none
can tell him how to fill his post.
His company keeps, as a cher
lshed relic of Its own historic past.
a Concord from trail days. At the
Salina, Cal., rodeo and other such
shows Barger drives that quaint old
bus behind a beautiful set of horses
as his company's entry. And he
admits freely the thrill he feels as .
the pretty animals, tug at the reins
in his powerful hands.
Barger's driving days in Pendle
ton started in 1S78, and for a long
time he had the run between Pen
dleton and Umatilla. He had spent,
many previous years at driving, and
when the railroads invaded Pendle
ton he moved on to new stage lines
until the Concord made its last
stand as a transportation vehicle. .
En route to Pendleton recently.
Barker stopped in Portland to chat
with Mr. Jackson, and he recalled
again, out of range" of his host's
hearing, the merry. time a bunch of
drivers had in trying to make the
new station agent at Pendleton be
lieve washing and greasing the Con
cords was part of his Job.
"But that new-agent (he pushed
a smart dude with a pinkish suit
'into a basket of over-ripe peaches
once) was Sam Jackson, and, al
though he believed that washing
Job was his for awhile, it didn't take
him long to discover the deception,
and then the rest of us paid for
our folly with our elbow grease,"
Barger said.
Barger was born where Silver
ton now stands on part of his fath- -ers
donation land claim. "Buffalo
BUI" and such men were his
friends; as, in fact, were all who
knew him.
Pendleton in that happy day, as
it is today, was the center of an
active, growing territory and thus
became the hub of a system of
stage coach lines upon which pass
engers and freight, not to mention
government treasure, could be -transported
over land to almost
any given point on the compass,
and, at any rate, to the nearest
railroad.
By virtue of the fact that the
railroads were exceedingly few and
far between the stage coach was
the all-Important carrier of Its day
and it Is pot odd, therefore, that
owners, drivers and the public
looked askance at the invasion of
the railroads. At Pendleton the
rails were greeted with ' a semi
derision that said. In effect, that
the steam carriage could not be
expected to do the work of . the
stage coach and could not last in
public favor.' But the railroad car
ried IS persons on its first trip7
out of Pendleton, against "hot more
than IT in the largest stages and
the Concords " early ; saw thejr
complete finish. , ,
i 7.