Benjamin "Ben" Holladay hired William Parker Carr, the teamster. When they met, Holladay, forty-four, retained a Kentucky accent from his childhood. As a lad, he helped his Pap lead wagon trains through the Cumberland Gap, so it's not surprising that he now owned the largest stagecoach line in the world, the Overland Stage Company.
But the Stagecoach King, as some called him, didn't hire Carr to drive. Instead, Holladay wanted Carr to shoot deer, elk, and buffalo to feed the stage line that ran from Atchison, Kansas, to San Francisco.
"Locate yourself in the Republican River valley," Holladay said. "It's a world-class place to find game." And so it was.
Carr had excellent timing. He saw the idyllic valley just before it became a hornet's nest of Indian raiders: Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho.
Coming soon in
THIEVES, RASCALS & SORE LOSERS:
A Saucy History of a Nebraska County Seat War
by Marilyn June Coffey
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