Chapter 7

Joe and I rode into Leadville, and I think our heads were on pivots, we smiled at and Joe said it sure smells here. It was nothing like I had expected, I knew it was new but seemed run down already. The streets needed the horse crap cleaned up and everything needed just a spruce up. We stopped in front of the Mercantile store and tied up our horses, Joe stayed outside to keep an eye on things while I went inside. The outside looked rough and when I got inside, I saw a clean and organized store. After looking at the floors and walls it dawned on me that a lot of what looked so bad was that the lumber was green. Then I realized that a new town was built out of the forests around it and green wood was all they had.

The owner introduced himself as Sam and could he help me with anything. I told him we were trying to get supplies for a trip, and we also needed more horses and packsaddles. The livery down the street and to the north should have everything you need in the way of horses and tack. Hopefully, I will have what you may need for supplies, if not the mercantile just down the street may have it. I asked about a place to stay for the night and where we could keep the horses. He told me a couple of places for the night and the boarding house sounded the best. Also, of the three stables, one he figured would be out of business in the next few weeks as he had bad service and short-changed everyone he could. The other two were about equal as far as care of horses went, but the one to the north had more stuff for sale. The other guy made most of his money as a blacksmith. I saw some rock candy in a jar and asked Sam for a few pieces of it and gave him a list of what things I wanted and what quantities. He said he could easily fill the order and could have it ready in about an hour. I told him I would be back later today and go over everything and if it was ok get it tomorrow. Right now, I wanted to put the horses up, get a place for the night and a hot bath if I could find one.

Sam told me to go over to the barber shop and let Bill know I wanted a bath so he could heat up the water. So that’s what we did, I walked out of the store, gave Joe some candy and we walked across the street to let the barber know we both wanted haircuts and baths. Bill said to give him about an hour to get enough water for the baths. We headed to the blacksmith first as I wanted him to check the horse’s feet and do any work that needed to be done. He said he could do anything needed that day. He also agreed to keep our four horses and feeding them for $2.00. He would remove their shoes and trim their hoofs if he could reuse the shoes, it would be $2.00 a horse and .75 per shoe he had to replace. That all sounded fair to me, I asked about horses and packs, he didn’t really have anything that would work and was honest enough to tell me the 2 horses he had needed a lot more TLC before he would sell them.

After leaving there we went to the boarding house, and we got a room with two beds for $2.50 and that included supper and breakfast. Mary, the owner, also said she could wash any clothes we might have, so back over to our horses we got a bag of dirty clothes and a change of clean so after our baths we could get everything washed. We would be good till we made it home, only having to keep a pair of socks clean on the trip. Next to the livery to see if we could find some horses. Horses he had, about fifteen that we could see, and he told us he had more out of town at his small holding there. This was the first person I had ever met with the name of Yancy, a talker he was and soon had Joe and me laughing. Since Joe had run the livery at Green River, I let him go pick some of the horses to be brought in with Yancy’s helper. I told him where we were from and let him know we were heading back to my ranch, and we wanted to pick up enough supplies to feed us all winter. That was why we wanted the horses. I figured to leave the Indians out of it. Yancy took me inside and showed me the pack saddles and tack he wanted to get rid of. All was in good shape, all the leather was cleaned and oiled. All totaled he had about 20 pack saddles made of good hardwood, leather, and brass. He also had a good bit of oiled canvas to make packs with. Joe was back with the horses he thought would work, I was only going to get 4 but went ahead and got 6. Yancy started pretty high, but we found a spot we could both live with and he agreed to keep them till morning and his guy would have them saddled early for me.