Knights of the Lash by Major Ben C. Truman

Knights of the Lash - Page 3

Hill Beechey, who died at the age of sixty, sixteen years ago at Elko, Nevada, was a crack driver away back in the fifties, and was known all over the Pacific Coast. He was short and stout and weighed two hundred pounds. He owned many stage lines in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho, and died quite rich. He made himself famous by capturing and bringing to justice the murderers of Lloyd Magruder, a Marylander, and four others, who were killed by three cold-blooded ruffians while returning from some Idaho mining camps with a hundred thousand dollars in gold in 1863.

One of the best known Sierra drivers is "Mr. Church," who for nearly thirty years has driven from Truckee to Lake Tahoe in the morning and back in the evening from May until October. It is a fourteen mile drive, up all the way from Truckee to Tahoe

Idaho Mining Camp, Britton and Rey, lithographer

Mr. Church makes the up trip in about four hours and the return in about three. This is one of the most delightful short drives on the continent. The air is pure and invigorating and the summer sunbeams play hide-and-go-seek in the snowdrifts, which may be seen all the way. The warmest days are tempered by the breezes that chase each other from the snow banks in the Sierra canons, which always linger in the "lap of summer." Then you have the Truckee River with you all the way -- that matchless mountain stream of pure, ice-cold water. Tree, brush, and flower stand up in perfection on either side, and a little bird, with a throat like a thrush, warbles sweet canticles from Truckee to Tahoe. There are often quail, grouse, and deer to be seen, and twenty years ago it was not infrequent that a grizzly blocked the way. Mr. Church is a married man and has an interesting family at Truckee. He has carried a good many thousand people up the Truckee River in his life and has never had an accident. He is a stout, strongly built man of about five feet ten and is sixty years old. He is temperate in all things, smoking one or two choice cigars each way, and taking a good horn at the end of each trip. He has never been sick or intoxicated in his life. He knows every tree and rock on the road, and could make all the turns blindfolded. He is as gentle as a young maid, and invariably sees to it before he starts that wagon, seats-under gear, pole, single-trees, double trees, and harness, are in good order. He always carries an ax, oil, wrench, rope, and washers and is ready for any emergency after the agent gives the words "All set!"

Mr. Church has received an endless number of presents in way of hats and gauntlets, as he has driven hundreds of such liberal men as Leland Stanford, William M. Stewart, Newton Booth, John P. Jones, Jim Fair, John W. Mackey, Captain Kohl, Charlie Felton, Charlie Crocker, Dan Freeman, Jim Ayers, Duke Gwin, Dick Oglesby, Tom Scott, Colonel Forney, Rlaine, Burlingame, Joe Lynch, George Francis Train, Lord Lorne, and Arthur Sullivan.

The last time I saw Mr. Church he was in ecstasies over what he considered the event of his life. He had been carrying President and Mrs. Hayes up the Truckee to Tahoe.

"Mrs. Hayes was such a sweet, pretty woman," said Mr. Church; "I knew she was a person of rigid temperance principles, and so I told her about the ice-cold water that she should have where I watered my team. Then all of a sudden it occurred to me that all there was to drink from was an old oyster can, and I would have given a month's salary for a nice cup. I broke the matter gently to her, and she said she would rather drink from a tin can at such a place than from a White House glass or cup. But when we reached the place even the tin can was gone. I just wanted to die right then and there. I fell over a rock in my confusion, took a back seat in my mind, and I also took about ten or fifteen minutes longer than usual to water my team, hoping that some one from Tahoe would come along with a can, a cup, or something to drink from, but at last, I was compelled to tell Mrs. Hayes that the can had been taken away or had fallen into the river. And then I dipped up some water and rinsed the bucket, as I often do, and then dipped up some more and drank from it. And just as soon as I set it down Mrs. Hayes said, 'I must have some of that delicious water, and I want it out of that bucket.'

"I nearly had the staggers. Was it the wife of the President of the United States who had said this or had I suddenly become crazy? Well, I dipped up a third of a pail full and she took it up, as I had done, and drank from it, and then the President and all the other passengers followed suit, and then we all laughed and had a right good time over it. Ah, she was a nice, well-bred, lovely woman. I can just see her now drinking out of that bucket. But out of respect to Mrs. Hayes and her husband, no horse, nor no human being has ever drunk out of that bucket since. Mrs. Church and I consider it the most precious thing we have got in our house next to our children."

This driver was always addressed as "Mr. Church," and although I have known him for nearly thirty years and ridden with him many times, I have never known his Christian name, nor heard him nick-named.

Henry James "Hank” Monk

The most notorious whip of the Sierra and the most sought after by Pacific slope trotters for many years was Hank Monk, who died about ten years ago, aged fifty. And while he was no slouch of a driver, he had never been considered as a strictly first-class or reliable one. But, he stumbled into great notoriety as the man who drove Horace Greeley over the Sierra Nevada Mountains from Carson City to Placerville thirty odd years ago. In 1886 I was in Placerville and stopped at the same inn at which Mr. Greeley had stayed overnight, and the landlord informed me, in speaking of that drive, that the canvas top of the wagon was torn in two or three places; that Mr. Greeley's hat was knocked in; that the team was white with foam; and that the stage, harness, and driver were covered with dirt and mud. Hank Monk was rather under stature, wore no whiskers, and did not have that robust-dandy way of many of the Sierra drivers.

Upon his return to New York, Mr. Greeley sent Monk a gold English hunting case, lever watch and chain, and a pleasant letter. Subsequently, believing that Monk was blamable for the many ridiculous stories told of him in connection with his ride, he let go even his meager appreciation for the driver who took him from Carson City to Placerville on time.

Henry Kinkead, once Governor of Nevada, said to me one day in 1881, while we were being driven by Monk from Glenbrook to Carson: "Hank is greatly overrated as a stage driver. I know scores of better ones. But his getting Horace Greeley over the Sierra and down into Placerville 'on time' gave him great notoriety. It was a dreadful drive, and that it didn't kill the old editor was no fault of Monk's. The road was slow and rough and Hank was full of tarantula juice when he left Carson. Hank was thirty-eight years old. In the goodness of Greeley's heart he presented Hank with a gold watch, which he has many times pawned, sold, and managed to get back. But there were so many ridiculous exaggerations and right up and down falsehoods told of that ride that Greeley became very 'tired,' and in reply to a request of Hank, some twenty years ago, for some favor, Horace wrote: "I would rather see you 10,000 fathoms in hell than ever give you a crust of bread, for you are the only man who ever had the opportunity to place me in a ridiculous light, and you villainously exercised that opportunity, you damned scamp!" The old story, which has been accepted as the true one, and which will bear retelling, is that Monk realized that he was compelled to land Mr. Greeley at Placerville at a certain time, and had determined to carry out his instructions, notwithstanding the bad condition of the grade, and whoever has ridden alone in a mud-wagon down a mountain at the rate of eight or nine miles an hour need not be informed of the affliction of the occupant during, or his appearance at the end of, the ride. As the old story goes, Monk rattled along at a terrific gait, making sharp curves on two wheels at one time, and at the next, whirling within an inch of a precipice. The grand old journalist, statesman, and philosopher, had all he could do to hold on, and occasionally pleaded with the driver to take it a little easier, but he, in his own wild Western way, answered: "Keep your seat, Horace; I'll get you there on time." This same old coach was on exhibit at the Midwinter Fair at San Francisco, and made hourly trips through the grounds between the Forty-nine Mining Camp and the Administration building.

Next to Hank Monk the most widely known and most notorious Jehu on the Pacific Coast was Clark Foss, who drove over the St. Helena Mountain from Calistoga to the Geysers, a distance of twenty-five miles, it being sixty-eight miles by boat and train from San Francisco to Calistoga, part of the route being through one of the most exquisite valleys in the world, with sweeps of vineyards and orchards, and grain lands for more than thirty miles on either side, walled in by spurs of the Coast Range called the Napa Mountains on the right and the Sonoma Mountains on the left.

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