Horses

Horses are the expedition’s mounts and a fragile counterweight to its slow, load-bearing oxen: they make travel and hunting possible, but their dependence on water, feed, and careful handling repeatedly exposes the party’s vulnerability. Their changing condition traces the expedition from its preparations in Butcher’s Crossing through the winter in the valley and toward the fatal river crossing.

Role in the Expedition

When Miller explains the expedition’s requirements to Andrews, he distinguishes the horses’ role from that of the oxen. Oxen can graze along the route and pull heavy loads, though slowly; the party will need a horse for Andrews and may need another for the skinner. The arrangement makes the horses essential for riding without assigning them the wagon’s burden.

Miller’s return to Butcher’s Crossing makes that division visible: he rides a black horse and leads a saddled but riderless chestnut. At dawn on August 25, four men assemble behind the stables beside a wagon provisioned for six weeks. Three mount horses while Charley Hoge climbs onto the wagon, setting out with the riding animals alongside the ox-drawn supply train.

On reaching the Smoky Hill River, the horses’ need for water becomes an immediate practical danger. They are tense and eager, and Miller warns Andrews to hold his horse firmly because it can bolt at the scent of water. After Andrews reaches the river, the animal breaks free and plunges into the brush. Later, as the party continues west in search of water, Miller lets the horses choose their own pace rather than forcing them, conserving their strength until the animals can drink.

Water, Winter, and the Return

The horses’ dependence on scarce water becomes especially stark during the crossing of the dry plains. When the party has only about an inch and a half of muddy water left in the keg, Miller estimates that it will keep the animals going until night. The men wet the oxen’s mouths one by one, a task that takes nearly an hour; the horses, like the oxen, must endure the journey on carefully rationed water. Miller’s decision to let them set their own pace rather than force them reflects how little margin the expedition has for exhausting its animals before reaching water.

The blizzard that traps the party in the valley carries the horses into a different kind of danger. On the fourth day after the storm, Miller rides out to look for a bison because the men are short of meat, but returns nearly six hours later without finding one. He reports that the oxen have survived and that the horses look poor, though he hopes they will hold out. Two horses have escaped during the winter. When the thaw comes, Miller finds them and brings them back; after months at liberty they have grown nearly wild, retreating from attempts to catch them, their manes tossed by the wind. Fresh grass gradually makes them more manageable, but their starvation remains visible: the men can saddle them again, yet cannot fasten the girths around their shrunken bodies. Miller reckons that a little more bad weather might have left the party without horses and forced them to walk back to Butcher’s Crossing.

At the river crossing on the return journey, Miller tests the water by guiding his horse across first. The animal hesitates, then follows a zigzag route through the current, stopping on slick submerged stones while Miller calms it with a hand on its back and quiet words. After reaching the far bank, he brings it back along the same route. That cautious passage gives way to disaster when the others follow: a large, broken-ended tree trunk strikes Fred Schneider’s horse, which loses its footing and falls on him. The animal’s belly is torn open, and it is then struck again as the current carries horse and rider into the water. Miller tells William Andrews that Fred Schneider is already dead and that searching for him would be futile, pointing to the speed with which the oxen have vanished. The horse’s death, amid the loss of the wagon and the expedition’s winter’s work, makes the animals’ role more than logistical: their strength has sustained the return, but cannot protect the party from the river’s violence.

Winter's Unequal Shelter

The horses did not face winter under identical conditions. Miller kept his own horse in the enclosure, where a meager diet of grain and scant forage left it thin; when spring grass appeared, he turned it out to graze until it had cropped the ground bare in front of camp. The two horses that had escaped spent the winter at liberty and returned nearly wild, while Miller’s horse had been sheltered but weakened by confinement and poor feed. Their contrasting condition makes the valley’s seasonal change tangible: the thaw brought fresh pasture, but survival depended on what little food each animal had been able to find.

Riding Through the Aftermath

Horses also place the expedition within a landscape already transformed by hunting. Miller recalls that only five or six years earlier riders could pass for miles among mountains of bison bones, from Pawnee Fork to the end of the Smoky Hill River. The mounted journey thus crosses not untouched wilderness but the remains of a recent slaughter: Miller expects farmers to gather the bones for fertilizer, even as he dismisses their worth. Against that history, the horses are both practical means of moving through the plains and witnesses, through the hunters’ route, to how quickly a living abundance becomes residue.