Stage
drivers in Arizona usually have two hands. They are careful men, and can
guide big coaches and four or six horse teams around perilous places,
but as a rule use two hands in doing it.
A one-armed driver is reported from Prescott. He too is a careful
man, likewise guides big teams over dangerous roads, but he only has one
hand with which to do it.
His name is Pete Collack. He drives from Prescott to Jerome, 35
miles, ten of which is rough mountain road, and four, “around the
horseshoe” creeping close to the steep sides of mountains over
precipices 500, 600 and in places 700 feet to the rocks below. Yet one
armed Pete steers his coach and four as safely as though he had never
seen the army and had his left hand to grasp the reins, leaving his
right to swing the whip and “touch up” the leaders when they might shirk
their portion of duty.
C. C. Elyster, of this city, was a passenger on Collack’s coach
recently. From his seat outside looking over the precipice perilously
close and so far to the bottom, and then glancing at the one armed
driver, he said, “Pete, if you had just a lief, I believe I’ll walk
behind.”
“All right, sir, suit yourself.”
The coach made the descent without difficulty. Not having full
confidence in the brakes a lock shoe was put on.
Pete buckles his reins to the stump of his left arm, amputated below
the elbow, and cracks his whip with his one hand. Occasionally he picks
out one or the other reins and the coach jogs safely along.
