Existing comment:
The Twenty Mule Team Wagons
The twenty mule teams were not always 20 mules, but usually 18 mules and 2 horses.
Experience proved that it was advisable to have a pair of fine strong draft horses as "wheelers" hitched to either side of the wagon tongue.
From the tongue stretched a steel chain 120 feet long equipped at proper intervals with spreaders and singletrees for the nine pairs of mules.
The lead pair would take its place at the end of this chain, and the other 16 mules would then fall into place. In front of the wheelers came the pointers who worked on the end of the tongue, ahead of them the "sixes," the "eights", the "tens", and so on to the leaders.
The driver wielded a whip with a 22 foot lash, but the real guide of the team was the "jerkline" -- a tough rope about one half inch thick which was attached to the bridle of the nigh leader, ran the length of the team back to the driver.
This jerkline was the only mean [sic] of communicating order to the lead animals 120 feet away. A steady pull on the rope indicated a left turn; a series of sharp jerks meant a turn to the right. The mules behind the leaders followed instinctively. When rounded a sharp curve, by the time six or seven pairs of animals had turned, tremendous power was being exerted at an angle which could easily pull the wagons off the road. To counteract this, the pointers and sixes were trained to jump over the chain and pull furiously at an angle until the wagons had safely reached the point of the turn. |