The Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas
by Noah Brooks · English · Gutenberg #29129 · 356,316 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas
Author: Noah Brooks
Illustrator: W. A. Rogers
Release date: June 15, 2009 [eBook #29129]
Language: English
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THE BOY SETTLERS
* * * * *
In Uniform Style.
THE BOY SETTLERS. By NOAH BROOKS. $1.25.
THE BOY EMIGRANTS. By NOAH BROOKS. $1.25.
A NEW MEXICO DAVID. By C. F. LUMMIS. $1.25.
* * * * *
[Illustration: SURE ENOUGH, THERE THEY WERE, TWENTY-FIVE OR THIRTY
INDIANS.]
THE BOY SETTLERS
A Story of Early Times in Kansas
by
NOAH BROOKS
Illustrated by W. A. Rogers
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1891
Copyright, 1891,
by Charles Scribner's Sons.
TO
John Greenleaf Whittier
Whose patriotic songs were the inspiration of the prototypes of
THE BOY SETTLERS
This little book is affectionately inscribed
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Settlers, and Whence They Came. 1
II. The Fire Spreads. 9
III. On the Disputed Territory. 20
IV. Among the Delawares. 36
V. Tidings from the Front. 53
VI. Westward Ho! 62
VII. At the Dividing of the Ways. 72
VIII. The Settlers at Home. 85
IX. Setting the Stakes. 95
X. Drawing the First Furrow. 105
XI. An Indian Trail. 116
XII. House-Building. 126
XIII. Lost! 134
XIV. More House-Building. 150
XV. Play Comes After Work. 158
XVI. A Great Disaster. 181
XVII. The Wolf at the Door. 187
XVIII. Discouragement. 200
XIX. Down the Big Muddy. 215
XX. Stranded Near Home. 236
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE PAGE
SURE ENOUGH, THERE THEY WERE, TWENTY-FIVE OR THIRTY
INDIANS. _Frontispiece_
IN CAMP AT QUINDARO. THE POEM OF "THE KANSAS
EMIGRANTS." 34
THE YANKEE EMIGRANT. 54
OSCAR WAS PUT UP HIGH ON THE STUMP OF A TREE, AND,
VIOLIN IN HAND, "RAISED THE TUNE." 60
THE POLLS AT LIBERTYVILLE. THE WOBURN MAN IS
"HOISTED" OVER THE CABIN. 70
THE SETTLERS' FIRST HOME IN THE DESERTED CABIN. 90
YOUNKINS ARGUED THAT SETTLERS WERE ENTITLED TO ALL
THEY COULD GET AND HOLD. 102
SANDY SEIZED A HUGE PIECE OF THE FRESHLY-TURNED SOD,
AND WAVING IT OVER HIS HEAD CRIED, "THREE CHEERS FOR
THE FIRST SOD OF BLEEDING KANSAS!" 106
MAKING "SHAKES" WITH A "FROW." 128
FILLING IN THE CHINKS IN THE WALLS OF THE LOG-CABIN. 142
LOST! 146
THEY WERE FEASTING THEMSELVES ON ONE OF THE DELICIOUS
WATERMELONS THAT NOW SO PLENTIFULLY DOTTED THEIR OWN
CORN-FIELD. 160
HE GENTLY TOUCHED THE ANIMAL WITH THE TOE OF HIS BOOT
AND CRIED, "ALL BY MY OWN SELF." 176
A GREAT DISASTER. 188
THE RETREAT TO BATTLES'S. 194
"HOME, SWEET HOME." 204
THE BOY SETTLERS.
CHAPTER I.
The Settlers, and Whence They Came.
There were five of them, all told; three boys and two men. I have
mentioned the boys first because there were more of them, and we shall
hear most from them before we have got through with this truthful
tale. They lived in the town of Dixon, on the Rock River, in Lee
County, Illinois. Look on the map, and you will find this place at a
point where the Illinois Central Railroad crosses the Rock; for this
is a real town with real people. Nearly sixty years ago, when there
were Indians all over that region of the country, and the red men were
numerous where the flourishing States of Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin
are now, John Dixon kept a little ferry at the point of which I am now
speaking, and it was known as Dixon's Ferry. Even when he was not an
old man, Dixon was noted for his long and flowing white hair, and the
Indians called him Na-chu-sa, "the White-haired." In 1832 the Sac
tribe of Indians, with their chief Black Hawk, rose in rebellion
against the Government, and then there happened what is now called the
Black Hawk war.
In that war many men who afterwards became famous in the history of
the United States were engaged in behalf of the government. One of
these was Zachary Taylor, afterwards better known as "Rough and
Ready," who fought bravely in the Mexican war and subsequently became
President of the United States. Another was Robert Anderson, who, at
the beginning of the war of the Rebellion, in 1861, commanded the
Union forces in Fort Sumter when it was first fired upon. Another was
Jefferson Davis, who, in the course of human events, became President
of the Southern Confederacy. A fourth man, destined to be more famous
than any of the others, was Abraham Lincoln. The first three of these
were officers in the army of the United States. Lincoln was at first a
private soldier, but was afterwards elected captain of his company,
with whom he had come to the rescue of the white settlers from the
lower part of the State.
The war did not last long, and there was not much glory gained by
anybody in it. Black Hawk was beaten, and that country had peace ever
after. For many years, and even unto this day, I make no doubt, the
early settlers of the Rock River country loved to tell stories of the
Black Hawk war, of their own sufferings, exploits, hardships, and
adventures. Father Dixon, as he was called, did not choose to talk
much about himself, for he was a modest old gentleman, and was not
given, as they used to say, to "blowing his own horn," but his memory
was a treasure-house of delightful anecdotes and reminiscences of
those old times; and young and old would sit around the comfortable
stove of a country store, during a dull winter evening, drinking in
tales of Indian warfare and of the "old settlers" that had been handed
down from generation to generation.
It is easy to see how boys brought up in an atmosphere like this, rich
in traditions of the long-past in which the early settlement of the
country figured, should become imbued with the same spirit of
adventure that had brought their fathers from the older States to this
new region of the West. Boys played at Indian warfare over the very
ground on which they had learned to believe the Sacs and Foxes had
skirmished years and years before. They loved to hear of Black Hawk
and his brother, the Prophet, as he was called; and I cannot tell you
with what reverence they regarded Father Dixon, the white-haired old
man who had actually talked and traded with the famous Indians, and
whose name had been given him as a title of respect by the great Black
Hawk himself.
Among the boys who drank in this sort of lore were Charlie and
Alexander Howell and their cousin Oscar Bryant. Charlie, when he had
arrived at his eighteenth birthday, esteemed himself a man, ready to
put away childish things; and yet, in his heart, he dearly loved the
traditions of the Indian occupation of the country, and wished that he
had been born earlier, so that he might have had a share in the
settlement of the Rock River region, its reclamation from the
wilderness, and the chase of the wild Indian. As for Alexander,
commonly known as "Sandy," he had worn out a thick volume of Cooper's
novels before he was fifteen years old, at which interesting point in
his career I propose to introduce him to you. Oscar was almost exactly
as many years and days old as his cousin. But two boys more unlike in
appearance could not be found anywhere in a long summer day. Sandy was
short, stubbed, and stocky in build. His face was florid and freckled,
and his hair and complexion, like his name, were sandy. Oscar was
tall, slim, wiry, with a long, oval face, black hair, and so lithe in
his motions that he was invariably cast for the part of the leading
Indian in all games that required an aboriginal character.
Mr. Howell carried on a transportation business, until the railroads
came into the country and his occupation was gone. Then he began to
consider seriously the notion of going further west with his boys to
get for them the same chances of early forestalling the settlement of
the country that he had had in Illinois. In the West, at least in
those days, nearly everybody was continually looking for a yet
further West to which they might emigrate. Charlie Howell was now a
big and willing, good-natured boy; he ought to be striking out for
himself and getting ready to earn his own living. At least, so his
father thought.
Mr. Bryant was engaged in a profitable business, and he had no idea of
going out into another West for himself or his boy. Oscar was likely
to be a scholar, a lawyer, or a minister, perhaps. Even at the age of
fifteen, he had written "a piece" which the editor of the Dixon
_Telegraph_ had thought worthy of the immortality of print in his
columns.
But about this time, the Northern States were deeply stirred by the
struggle in the new Territory of Kansas to decide whether freedom or
slavery should be established therein. This was in 1854 and
thereabout. The Territory had been left open and unoccupied for a long
time. Now settlers were pouring into it from adjacent States, and the
question whether freedom should be the rule, or whether slave-holding
was to be tolerated, became a very important one. Missouri and
Arkansas, being the States nearest to Kansas, and holding slavery to
be a necessity, furnished the largest number of emigrants who went to
vote in favor of bringing slavery into the new Territory; but others
of the same way of thinking came from more distant States, even as far
off as South Carolina, all bent on voting for slavery in the laws
that were to be made. For the most part, these people from the slave
States did not go prepared to make their homes in Kansas or Nebraska;
for some went to the adjoining Territory of Nebraska, which was also
ready to have slavery voted up or down. The newcomers intended to stay
just long enough to vote and then return to their own homes.
The people of the free States of the North heard of all this with much
indignation. They had always supposed that the new Territories were to
be free from slavery. They saw that if slavery should be allowed
there, by and by, when the two Territories would become States, they
would be slave States, and then there would be more slave States than
free States in the Union. So they held meetings, made speeches, and
passed resolutions, denouncing this sort of immigration as wrong and
wicked. Then immigrants from Iowa, Illinois, and other Northern
States, even as far off as Massachusetts, sold their homes and
household goods and started for the Promised Land, as many of them
thought it to be. For the men in Kansas who were opposed to slavery
wrote and sent far and wide papers and pamphlets, setting forth in
glowing colors the advantages of the new and beautiful country beyond
the Missouri River, open to the industry and enterprise of everybody.
Soon the roads and highways of Iowa were dotted with white-topped
wagons of immigrants journeying to Kansas, and long lines of
caravans, with families and with small knots of men, stretched their
way across the country nearest to the Territory.
Some of these passed through Dixon, and the boys gazed with wonder at
the queer inscriptions that were painted on the canvas covers of the
wagons; they longed to go with the immigrants, and taste the sweets of
a land which was represented to be full of wild flowers, game in great
abundance, and fine streams, and well-wooded hills not far away from
the water. They had heard their elders talk of the beauties of Kansas,
and of the great outrage that was to be committed on that fair land by
carrying slavery into it; and although they did not know much about
the politics of the case, they had a vague notion that they would like
to have a hand in the exciting business that was going on in Kansas.
Both parties to this contest thought they were right. Men who had been
brought up in the slave States believed that slavery was a good
thing--good for the country, good for the slave-owner, and even good
for the slave. They could not understand how anybody should think
differently from them. But, on the other hand, those who had never
owned slaves, and who had been born and brought up in the free States,
could not be brought to look upon slavery as anything but a very
wicked thing. For their part, they were willing (at least, some of
them were) to fight rather than consent that the right of one man to
own another man should be recognized in the Territories of Kansas and
Nebraska. Some of these started at once for the debatable land; others
helped their neighbors to go, and many others stayed at home and
talked about it.
Mrs. Bryant, Oscar's mother, said: "Dear me, I am tired and sick of
hearing about 'bleeding Kansas.' I do wish, husband, you would find
something else to talk about before Oscar. You have got him so worked
up that I shouldn't be the least bit surprised if he were to start off
with some of those tired-looking immigrants that go traipsing through
the town day by day." Mrs. Bryant was growing anxious, now that her
husband was so much excited about the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, as it
was called, he could think of nothing else.
CHAPTER II.
THE FIRE SPREADS.
One fine morning in May, Mr. Bryant was standing at his front gate
watching for his brother-in-law, Mr. Howell, to come down the street.
He held a newspaper in his hand, and with this, loosely rolled, he was
impatiently tapping on the gate as Mr. Howell drew near. Evidently
something had happened to disturb him.
"See here, Aleck," he exclaimed, as soon as his brother-in-law was
within the sound of his voice, "I can stand this sort of thing no
longer. I'm bound to go to Kansas. I've been thinking it over, and I
have about made up my mind to go. Brubaker will take my store and the
good-will of the concern. Oscar is wild to go, and his mother is
perfectly able to take care of the house while I am getting ready for
her to come out. What d'ye say? Will you go too?"
"Well," said Mr. Howell, slowly, "you nearly take my breath away!
What's happened to stir you up so?"
"Just listen to this!" cried the other, "just listen!" and, unfolding
his newspaper, he read, with glowing cheeks and kindling eyes, an
account of an attack made by some of the "pro-slavery men," as they
were named, on a party of free-State immigrants who had attempted to
cross the river near Kansas City. His voice trembled with excitement,
and when he had finished reading, he asked his companion what he
thought of that.
Mr. Howell looked pensively down the street, now embowered with the
foliage of early summer, noted the peaceful aspect of the village, and
the tranquil picture which gardens, cottages, and sauntering groups of
school-children presented, and then said slowly, "I never was much of
a hand at shooting, Charles, leastways, shooting at folks; and I don't
know that I could take steady aim at a man, even if I knew he was a
Border Ruffian out gunning for me. But I'm with you, Charles. Charlie
and Sandy can do a heap sight better in Kansas, after things get
settled, than they can here. This place is too old; there's too much
competition, and the boys will not have any show if they stay here.
But what does Amanda say?"
Now, Amanda was Mr. Bryant's wife, Mr. Aleck Howell's sister. When
Aleck asked this question, the two men looked at each other for a
moment, queerly and without speaking.
"Well, she'll hate to part with Oscar; he's the apple of her eye, as
it were. But I guess she will listen to reason. When I read this piece
in the paper to her this morning, at the breakfast-table, she was as
mad as a wet hen. As for Oscar, he's so fired up about it that he is
down in the wood-shed chopping wood to blow off steam. Hear him?" And
Mr. Bryant laughed quietly, notwithstanding his rising anger over the
news of the day.
At that moment Sandy came whooping around the corner, intent on
overtaking a big yellow dog, his constant companion,--Bose by
name,--who bounded along far in advance of the boy. "See here, Sandy,"
said his uncle, "how would you like to go to Kansas with your father,
Oscar, Charlie, and myself?"
"To Kansas? shooting buffaloes, deer, Indians, and all that? To
Kansas? Oh, come, now, Uncle Charles, you don't mean it."
"But I do mean it, my laddie," said the elder man, affectionately
patting the freckled cheek of the lad. "I do mean it, and if you can
persuade your father to go along and take you and Charlie with him,
we'll make up a party--just we five--that will scare the Border
Ruffians 'way into the middle of next year." Then, with a more serious
air, he added, "This is a fight for freedom, my boy, and every man and
every boy who believes in God and Liberty can find a chance to help.
I'm sure _we_ can." This he said with a certain sparkle of his eye
that may have meant mischief to any Border Ruffian that might have
been there to see and hear.
As for Sandy, he turned two or three hand-springs by way of relieving
his feelings; then, having once more assured himself that the two men
had serious thoughts of migrating to Kansas, he rushed off to the
wood-shed to carry the wonderful news to Oscar. Dropping his axe, the
lad listened with widened eyes to the story that Sandy had to tell.
"Do you know, Sandy," he said, with an air of great wisdom, "I thought
there was something in the wind. Oh, I never saw father so roused as
he was when he read that story in the Chicago _Press and Tribune_ this
morning. Why, I thought he'd just get up and howl when he had read it
out to mother. Jimmini! Do you really suppose that he will go? And
take us? And Uncle Aleck? Oh, wouldn't that be too everlastingly bully
for anything?" Oscar, as you will see, was given to the use of slang,
especially when under great excitement. The two boys rushed back to
the gate, where the brothers-in-law were still talking eagerly and in
undertones.
"If your mother and Aunt Amanda will consent, I guess we will go,"
said Mr. Bryant, with a smile on his face as he regarded the flushed
cheeks and eager eyes of Sandy and Oscar. Sandy's father added: "And
I'll answer for your mother, my son. She and I have talked this thing
over many a time, more on your account and Charlie's than for the sake
of 'bleeding Kansas,' however. I'm bound to say that. Every man is in
honor bound to do his duty by the country and by the good cause; but
I have got to look after my boys first." And the father lovingly laid
his hand on Sandy's sturdy shoulder. "Do you think you could fight, if
the worst comes to the worst, Sandy, boy?"
Of course the lad protested confidently that he could fight; certainly
he could protect his rights and his father's rights, even with a gun,
if that should be found necessary. But he admitted that, on the whole,
he would rather shoot buffaloes and antelope, both of which species of
large game he had already learned were tolerably plentiful in Kansas.
"Just think of it, Oscar, we might have some real Indian-fighting out
there, like that Father Dixon and the rest of the old settlers had in
the time of the Black Hawk war."
His father assured him, however, that there was no longer any danger
from the red man in Kansas. The wild Indians were now far out on the
frontier, beyond the region to which emigrants would probably go in
search of homestead lands for settlement. Sandy looked relieved at
this explanation. He was not anxious for fighting with anybody. Fun
was more to his liking.
The two mothers, when they were informed of the decision of the male
members of the family, made very little opposition to the emigration
scheme. In fact, Mrs. Howell had really felt for some time past that
her boys would be better provided for in a new country. She had been
one of the "old settlers" of Dixon, having been brought out from the
interior of New York when she and her brother were small children. She
had the same spirit of adventure that he had, and, although she
remembered very well the privations and the discomforts of those early
days, it was more with amusement than sorrow that she recalled them to
mind, now that they were among the traditions of long-past years. The
two young Howells were never weary of hearing their mother tell of the
time when she killed a wildcat with her father's rifle, or of her
walking fifteen miles and back to buy herself a bonnet-ribbon to wear
to her first ball in the court-house. Now her silent influence made it
easier for the Kansas Exodus (as they already called their scheme) to
be accepted all around.
The determination of the two families to migrate made some stir in the
town. It was yet a small place, and everybody knew every other body's
business. The Bryants and Howells were among the "old families," and
their momentous step created a little ripple of excitement among their
friends and acquaintances. The boys enjoyed the talk and the gossip
that arose around them, and already considered themselves heroes in a
small way. With envious eyes and eager faces, their comrades
surrounded them, wherever they went, asking questions about their
outfit, their plans, and their future movements. Every boy in Dixon
looked on the three prospective boy settlers as the most fortunate of
all their young playfellows.
"I wish my father would catch the 'Kansas fever,'" said Hiram Fender,
excitedly. "Don't you suppose your father could give it to him,
Charlie? Do you suppose your uncle would take me along if Dad would
let me go? Oh, wouldn't that be just gaudy, if I could go! Then there
would be four of us boys. Try it on him."
But the two families resolutely attended to their own business, asking
help from nobody, and not even so much as hinting to anybody that it
would be a good thing for others to go with them to the Promised Land.
The three boys were speedily in the midst of preparations for their
migration. It was now well along in the middle of May. If they were to
take up land claims in Kansas and get in a crop, they had no time to
spare. The delightful excitement of packing, of buying arms and
ammunition, and of winding up all the small concerns of their life in
Dixon made the days pass swiftly by. There were all the details of
tents for camping-out, provisions for the march, and rough clothing
and walking gear for the new life beyond to be looked after.
Some of the notions of the boys, in regard to what was needed and what
was to be expected from the land beyond, were rather crude. And
perhaps their fathers were not in all cases so wise as they thought
themselves. The boys, however, cherished the idea that absolutely
everything they should require in Kansas must be carried from
Illinois. "Why," said the practical Mr. Howell, "if we cannot buy
ploughs, cattle, and seed, cheaper in Missouri than we can here, we
can at least save the labor and cost of transportation. We don't want
to haul a year's provisions, either. We expect to raise something to
eat, don't we?"
Charlie, to whom this remonstrance was addressed, replied, "Well, of
course we can raise some garden truck, and I suppose we can buy bacon
and flour cheaper in Missouri than here."
"Then there's the game," interrupted Oscar and Sandy, both in one
breath. "Governor Robinson's book says that the country is swarming
with game," added Sandy, excitedly.
The boys had devoured a little book by Mr. Robinson, the free-State
Governor of Kansas, in which the richness of the Promised Land was
glowingly set forth.
"Much time we shall have to shoot buffaloes and antelope when we are
breaking up the sod and planting corn," Mr. Howell answered with a
shade of sarcasm in his voice.
"And we may have to fire at bigger game than either of those," added
Mr. Bryant, grimly.
"Border Ruffians?" asked Sandy, with a feeble attempt at a grin. His
mother shuddered and hastily went out of the room. The Kansas scheme
seemed no longer pleasant to her, when she read the dreadful stories
of violence and bloodshed with which some of the Western newspapers
were teeming. But it was settled that most of the tools needed for
farming could be bought better in Missouri than in Illinois; the long
haul would be saved, and the horses with which they were to start
could be exchanged for oxen to good advantage when they reached "the
river." They had already adopted the common phrase, "the river," for
the Missouri River, then generally used by people emigrating
westward.
"But perhaps the Missourians will not sell you anything when they know
that you are free-State men," suggested Mrs. Bryant, timidly, for this
was a family council.
"Oh, well," answered Mr. Howell, sturdily, "I'll risk that. I never
saw a man yet with anything to sell who wouldn't sell it when the
money was shaken in his face. The newspapers paint those border men
pretty black, I know; but if they stop to ask a man's politics before
they make a bargain with him, they must be queer cattle. They are more
than human or less than human, not Americans at all, if they do
business in that way." In the end they found that Mr. Howell was
entirely right.
All was settled at last, and that, too, in some haste, for the season
was rapidly advancing when planting must be attended to, if they were
to plant that year for the fall harvest. From the West they heard
reports of hosts of people pouring into the new Territory, of land
being in great demand, and of the best claims near the Missouri being
taken by early emigrants. They must be in a hurry if they were to get
a fair chance with the rest and a fair start on their farm,--a farm
yet existing only in their imagination.
Their wagon, well stored with clothing and provisions, a few books,
Oscar's violin, a medicine chest, powder, shot, and rifle-balls, and
an assortment of odds and ends,--the wagon, so long a magical
repository of hopes and the most delightful anticipations, was ready
at last. It stood at the side gate of Mr. Bryant's home, with a "spike
team" (two horses at the pole, and one horse for a leader) harnessed.
It was a serious, almost solemn, moment. Now that the final parting
had come, the wrench with which the two families were to be broken up
seemed harder than any of the members had expected. The two mothers,
bravely keeping up smiling faces, went about the final touches of
preparations for the lads' departure and the long journey of their
husbands.
Mr. Howell mounted the wagon with Sandy by his side; Mr. Bryant took
his seat with the other two boys in an open buggy, which they were to
drive to "the river" and there trade for a part of their outfit. Fond
and tearful kisses had been exchanged and farewells spoken. They drove
off into the West. The two women stood at the gate, gazing after them
with tear-dimmed eyes as long as they were in sight; and when the
little train disappeared behind the first swale of the prairie, they
burst into tears and went into the house which was now left unto them
desolate.
It was a quiet party that drove over the prairie that bright and
beautiful morning. The two boys in the buggy spoke occasionally in
far-off-sounding voices about indifferent things that attracted their
attention as they drove along. Mr. Howell held the reins, with a
certain stern sense of duty on his dark and handsome face. Sandy sat
silently by his side, the big tears coursing down his freckled
cheeks.
CHAPTER III.
ON THE DISPUTED TERRITORY.
The straggling, unkempt, and forlorn town of Parkville, Missouri, was
crowded with strangers when the emigrants arrived there after a long
and toilsome drive through Iowa. They had crossed the Mississippi from
Illinois into Iowa, at Fulton, on the eastern shore, and after
stopping to rest for a day or two in Clinton, a pretty village on the
opposite bank, had pushed on, their faces ever set westward. Then,
turning in a southwesterly direction, they travelled across the lower
part of the State, and almost before they knew it they were on the
sacred soil of Missouri, the dangers of entering which had been
pictured to them all along the route. They had been warned by the
friendly settlers in Iowa to avoid St. Joseph, one of the crossings
from Missouri into Kansas; it was a nest of Border Ruffians, so they
were told, and they would surely have trouble. They must also steer
clear of Leavenworth; for that town was the headquarters of a number
of Missourians whose names were already terrible all over the Northern
States, from Kansas to Massachusetts Bay.
"But there is the military at Fort Leavenworth," replied Mr. Bryant.
"Surely they will protect the citizens of the United States who are
peaceful and well-behaved. We are only peaceable immigrants."
"Pshaw!" answered an Iowa man. "All the army officers in this part of
the country are pro-slavery men. They are in sympathy with the
pro-slavery men, anyhow, and if they had been sent here to keep
free-State men out of the Territory, they couldn't do any different
from what they are doing. It's an infernal shame, that's what it is."
Bryant said nothing in reply, but as they trudged along, for the roads
were very bad, and they could not often ride in their vehicles now,
his face grew dark and red by turns. Finally he broke out,--
"See here, Aleck," he cried, "I don't want to sneak into the
Territory. If these people think they can scare law-abiding and
peaceable citizens of a free country from going upon the land of these
United States, we might just as well fight first as last. For one, I
will not be driven out of a country that I have got just as much right
to as any of these hot-headed Missouri fellows."
His brother-in-law looked troubled, but before he could speak the
impetuous and fiery Sandy said: "That's the talk, Uncle Charlie!
Let's go in by the shortest way, and tackle the Border Ruffians if
they tackle us. Who's afraid?" And the lad bravely handled his
"pepper-box," as his old-fashioned five-barrelled revolver was
sportively called by the men of those days; for the modern revolver
with one barrel for all the chambers of the weapon had not then come
into use. "Who's afraid?" he repeated fiercely, looking around.
Everybody burst out laughing, and the valorous Sandy looked rather
crestfallen.
"I am afraid, for one," said his father. "I want no fighting, no
bloodshed. I want to get into the Territory and get to work on our
claim, just as soon as possible; but if we can't get there without a
fight, why then, I'll fight. But I ain't seeking for no fight." When
Aleck Howell was excited, his grammar went to the four winds. His view
of the situation commended itself to the approval of Oscar, who said
he had promised his mother that he would avoid every appearance of
hostile intention, keep a civil tongue in his head, have his weapons
out of sight and his powder always dry.
The emigrants decided to go into Kansas by way of Parkville.
At Claybank, half-way between the Iowa line and the Missouri River,
they encountered a drover with a herd of cattle. He was eager to
dicker with the Kansas emigrants, and offered them what they
considered to be a very good bargain in exchanging oxen for their
horses. They were now near the Territory, and the rising prices of
almost everything that immigrants required warned them that they were
not far from the point where an outfit could no longer be bought at
any reasonable price. The boys were loth to part with their buggy;
for, although they had been often compelled to go afoot through some
of the worst roads in the States of Iowa and Missouri, they had clung
to the notion that they might have a pair of horses to take into the
Territory, and, while the buggy was left to them, they had a refuge in
times of weariness with walking; and these were rather frequent. The
wagon was exchanged for another, suitable for oxen.
The immigrants drove gayly into Parkville. They were in sight of the
Promised Land. The Big Muddy, as Missourians affectionately call the
turbid stream that gives name to their State, rolled sluggishly
between the Parkville shore and the low banks fringed with cottonwoods
that were the eastern boundary of Kansas. Looking across, they could
see long lines of white-covered wagons, level plains dotted with
tents, and the rising smoke of many fires, where people who had gone
in ahead of them were cooking their suppers; for they entered
Parkville late in the afternoon. It was a commonplace-looking view of
Kansas, after all, and not at all like what the lads had fancied it
would be. Sandy very emphatically expressed his disappointment.
"What would you have, Sandy?" asked his uncle, with some amusement.
"Did you expect to see wild honey dripping out of the cottonwoods and
sycamores, buffaloes and deer standing up and waiting to be shot at,
and a farm ready to be tilled?"
"Well," replied the boy, a little shamefacedly, "I didn't exactly
expect to see all those things; but somehow the country looks awful
flat and dull. Don't you think so?"
For answer, Mr. Bryant pointed out a line of blue slopes in the
distance. "Those are not very high hills, my boy, to be sure, but they
are on the rolling prairie beyond, and as soon as we get away from the
river we shall find a bluffy and diversified country, I'll warrant
you."
"Yes; don't you remember," broke in Oscar, eagerly, "Governor
Robinson's book told all about the rolling and undulating country of
the Territory, and the streams that run under high bluffs in some
places?"
Sandy admitted that this was true of the book; but he added, "Some
books do lie, though."
"Not Governor Robinson's book," commented his brother Charlie, with a
slight show of resentment. For Charlie had made a study of the reports
from the Promised Land.
But a more pressing matter was the attitude of the border-State men
toward the free-State emigrants, and the question of making the
necessary purchases for their farming scheme. Parkville was all alive
with people, and there were many border-State men among them. Some of
these regarded the newcomers with unmistakable hostility, noting
which, Sandy and Oscar took good care to keep near their two grown-up
protectors; and the two men always went about with their weapons
within easy reaching distance. All of the Borderers were opposed to
any more free-State men going into the Territory; and many of them
were disposed to stop this by force, if necessary. At one time, the
situation looked very serious, and Sandy got his "pepper-box" into
position. But the trouble passed away, and the arrival of fifteen or
twenty teams, accompanied by a full complement of men, checked a
rising storm of wrath.
From Platte City, a short distance up the river, however, came doleful
and distressing stories of the ill-treatment of the free-State men who
had gone that way. They were harassed and hindered, and, in some
cases, their teams were deliberately turned about and driven back on
the road by which they had come. It was useless to remonstrate when
the rifles of a dozen men were levelled at the would-be immigrants.
But our travellers in Parkville heard a good story of the bravery of
one free-State man who had been refused transportation across the
ferry at Platte City, kept by an ardent pro-slavery man. The intending
immigrant, unconscious of any hindrance to his crossing, was calmly
driving down to the ferry-boat, a flat-bottomed craft propelled by
long oars, or sweeps, when the ferryman stopped him with the question,
"What hev ye got into yer waggin?"
"Oxen," sententiously replied the newcomer.
"And what's them thar cattle follering on behind?" he asked, pointing
to a drove of milch-cattle in the rear.
"Caouws," answered the immigrant, in the broad pronunciation peculiar
to provincial people of the New England States.
"All right," was the rejoinder; "a man that says 'caouws' can't go
over this yere ferry withouten he's got the tickets." No argument
would induce the ferryman to explain what the tickets were and where
they could be procured. Finally, his patience exhausted, the
free-State man suddenly drew from the big pockets of his frock a pair
of tremendous pistols, ready cocked, and, holding them full in the
face of the surprised ferryman, he said,--
"Here are my tickets, and I'm going across this ferry right off,
caouws or no caouws!" And he went.
Even at Parkville, where there was very little difficulty in crossing,
as compared with what there had been earlier in the struggle for
Kansas, they were advised by discreet friends and sympathizers to be
on the lookout for opposition. Every fresh arrival of free-State men
angered yet more the Borderers who were gathered there to hinder and,
if possible, prevent further immigration. Mr. Bryant chafed under the
necessity of keeping his voice hushed on the topic that engaged all
his thoughts; and Oscar and Sandy were ready to fight their way
across the river; at least they said so.
They did find, however, that the buying of provisions and farming-tools
required for their future use, was out of the question in Parkville.
Whether it was the unexpected demand, or a refusal of the Missourians
to sell to free-State men, they could not determine. But the prices of
everything they wanted were very high. What should they do? These
articles they must have. But their cost here was far beyond their
most extravagant estimates. When Mr. Howell was reminded by his
brother-in-law how he had said that no politics could interfere with
trade and prices, he was amused.
"Of course," he said, "it does look as if these Missourians would not
sell at fair prices because they want to hinder us; but don't you see
that the demand is greater than the supply? I know these folks are
bitterly hostile to us; but the reason why they have so small a stock
of goods on hand is that they have sold out to other free-State men
that have come before us to buy the same things. Isn't that so?"
Mr. Bryant was obliged to admit that this was a reasonable explanation;
but as he had begun by thinking that every Borderer hated a free-State
man and would do him an injury if he could, he did not give up that
notion willingly. He was certain that there was a plot in the high
prices of bacon, flour, corn-meal, and ploughs.
In this serious dilemma, Charlie came to the relief of the party with
the information that a free-State man, whose team had just recrossed
the river for a load of supplies sent him by a wagon that was to
return to Iowa, brought news that a large trading-post had been opened
at a new Kansas town called Quindaro. He said that the Iowa man told
him that prices were just now lower in Quindaro than they had ever
been in Parkville.
"Quindaro?" said Oscar, musingly;--"why, that must be an Indian
name,--feminine Indian name, too, unless I miss my guess."
Mr. Bryant had heard of Quindaro. It was a brand-new town, a few miles
down the river, settled by free-State men and named for a young,
full-blooded Indian girl of the Delaware tribe. The town was on the
borders of the Delaware reservation, which in those days came close to
the Missouri River. Charlie, also, had gathered some facts about the
town, and he added that Quindaro was a good place to start from, going
westward. The party had laid in a stock of groceries--coffee, tea, and
other articles of that description--before leaving home. Now they
needed staple provisions, a few farming tools, a breaking-plough, and
some seed corn. Few thought of planting anything but corn; but the
thrifty settlers from Illinois knew the value of fresh vegetables, and
they were resolved to have "garden truck" just as soon as seeds could
be planted and brought to maturity.
"And side-meat?" asked Sandy, wonderingly, as he heard his father
inquiring the price of that article of food. Side-meat, in the South
and West, is the thin flank of a porker, salted and smoked after the
fashion of hams, and in those parts of the Southwest it was (and
probably is) the staple article of food among the people. It is sold
in long, unattractive-looking slabs; and when Sandy heard its name
mentioned, his disgust as well as his wonder was kindled.
"Side-meat?" he repeated, with a rising inflection. "Why, I thought we
were going to live on game,--birds and buffalo and the like!
Side-meat? Well, that makes me sick!"
The two men laughed, and Mr. Howell said,--
"Why, Sandy, you are bent on hunting and not on buckling down to farm
work. How do you suppose we are going to live if we have nothing to
eat but wild game that we kill, and breadstuffs and vegetables that we
buy?"
Sandy had thought that they might be able to step out into the woods
or prairie, between times, as it were, and knock down a few head of
game when the day's work was done, or had not begun. When he said as
much, the two heads of the party laughed again, and even Charlie
joined in the glee.
"My dear infant," said his father, seriously, but with a twinkle in
his eye, "game is not so plenty anywhere as that; and if it were, we
should soon tire of it. Now side-meat 'sticks to the ribs,' as the
people hereabouts will tell you, and it is the best thing to fall back
upon when fresh meat fails. We can't get along without it, and that is
a fact; hey, Charlie?"
The rest of the party saw the wisdom of this suggestion, and Sandy was
obliged to give up, then and there, his glowing views of a land so
teeming with game that one had only to go out with a rifle, or even a
club, and knock it over. But he mischievously insisted that if
side-meat did "stick to the ribs," as the Missourians declared, they
did not eat much of it, for, as a rule, the people whom they met were
a very lank and slab-sided lot. "Clay-eaters," their new acquaintance
from Quindaro said they were.
"Clay-eaters?" asked Charlie, with a puzzled look. "They are
clayey-looking in the face. But it can't be possible that they
actually eat clay?"
"Well, they do, and I have seen them chewing it. There is a fine, soft
clay found in these parts, and more especially south of here; it has a
greasy feeling, as if it was a fatty substance, and the natives eat it
just as they would candy. Why, I should think that it would form a
sand-bar inside of a man, after awhile; but they take to it just as
naturally!"
"If I have got to choose between side-meat and clay for a regular
diet," said Sandy, "give me side-meat every time."
That night, having made their plans to avoid the prying eyes of the
border-State men, who in great numbers were now coming in, well-armed
and looking somewhat grimly at the free-State men, the little party
crossed the river. Ten dollars, good United States money, was demanded
by the ferryman as the price of their passage; it looked like robbery,
but there was no other way of getting over the river and into the
Promised Land; so it was paid, with many a wrench of the patience of
the indignant immigrants; and they pitched their tent that night under
the stars and slept soundly on the soil of "bleeding Kansas."
Bright and early next morning, the boys were up and stirring, for now
was to begin their camp life. Hitherto, they had slept in their tent,
but had taken their meals at the farm-houses and small taverns of the
country through which they had passed. They would find few such
conveniences in the new country into which they had come, and they had
been warned that in Kansas the rule was "every man for himself."
They made sad work with their first breakfast in camp. Oscar had taken
a few lessons in cooking from his mother, before leaving home, and the
two men had had some experience in that line of duty when out on
hunting expeditious in Illinois, years before. So they managed to make
coffee, fry slices of side-meat, and bake a hoe-cake of Indian-corn
meal. "Hog and hominy," said Sandy's father. "That's the diet of the
country, and that is what we shall come to, and we might as well take
it first as last."
"There's worse provender than this, where there's none," said Mr.
Bryant, cheerfully; "and before we get through we shall be hungry more
than once for hog and hominy."
It was an enlivening sight that greeted the eyes of the newcomers as
they looked around upon the flat prairie that stretched along the
river-side. The tents of the immigrants glistened in the rising sun.
The smoke of many camp-fires arose on the summer air. Groups of men
were busily making preparations for their long tramp westward, and,
here and there, women and children were gathered around the
white-topped wagons, taking their early breakfast or getting ready for
the day's march. Here, too, could now be seen the rough and
surly-looking border men who were on the way to points along the route
that were to be occupied by them before too many free-State men should
come in. An election of some sort, the newcomers could not exactly
make out what, was to take place in a day or two, and the Missourians
whom they had seen flocking into Parkville were ready to vote as soon
as they got into the Territory.
Breakfast over, the boys sauntered around through the camps, viewing
the novel sights with vast amusement. It was like a militia muster at
home, except that the only soldier element they saw was the band of
rough-looking and rough-talking men who were bound to vote and fight
for slavery. They swaggered about with big pistols girt at their hips
and rifles over their shoulders, full-bearded and swarthy, each one a
captain apparently, all without much organization, but very serious in
their intention to vote and to fight. It really seemed as if they had
reached the fighting-ground at last.
"See here, daddy," said Oscar, as he came in from the camps when the
Dixon caravan was ready to move; "see what I found in this newspaper.
It is a piece of poetry, and a mighty fine piece, too"; and the boy
began to read some lines beginning thus,--
"We cross the prairie as of old
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!"
"Oh, well; I can't bother about poetry, now," said the father,
hastily. "I have some prose work on hand, just about this time. I'm
trying to drive these pesky cattle, and I don't make a very good fist
at it. Your Uncle Aleck has gone on ahead, and left me to manage the
team; but it's new business to me."
"John G. Whittier is the name at the top of these verses. I've heard
of him. He's a regular-built poet,--lives somewhere down East."
"I can't help that, sonny; get on the other side of those steers, and
see if you can't gee them around. Dear, dear, they're dreadful
obstinate creatures!"
That night, however, when they were comfortably and safely camped in
Quindaro, amid the live-oaks and the tall sycamores that embowered the
pretty little town, Oscar again brought the newspaper to his father,
and, with kindling eyes, said,--
"Read it out, daddy; read the piece. Why, it was written just for us,
I do declare. It is called 'The Kansas Emigrants.' We are Kansas
Emigrants, aren't we?"
The father smiled kindly as he looked at the flushed face and bright
eyes of his boy, and took from him the paper folded to show the
verses. As he read, his eyes, too, flashed and his lip trembled.
"Listen to this!" he cried. "Listen to this! It is like a trumpet
call!" And with a voice quivering with emotion, he began the poem,--
"We cross the prairie as of old
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!"
"Something has got into my eyes," said Mr. Howell, as the last stanza
was read. "Great Scott! though, how that does stir a man's blood!" And
he furtively wiped the moisture from his eyes. It was time to put out
the light and go to sleep, for the night now was well advanced. But
Mr. Bryant, thoroughly aroused, read and re-read the lines aloud.
[Illustration: IN CAMP AT QUINDARO. THE POEM OF "THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS."]
"Sing 'em," said his brother-in-law, jokingly. Bryant was a good
singer, and he at once tuned up with a fine baritone voice, recalling
a familiar tune that fitted the measure of the poem.
"Oh, come now, Uncle Charlie," cried Sandy, from his blankets in the
corner of the tent, "that's 'Old Dundee.' Can't you give us something
lively? Something not quite so solemn?"
"Not so solemn, my laddie? Don't you know that this is a solemn age we
are in, and a very solemn business we are on? You'll think so before
we get out of this Territory, or I am greatly mistaken."
"Sandy'll think it's solemn, when he has to trot over a piece of newly
broken prairie, carrying a pouchful of seed corn, dropping five grains
in each sod," said his father, laughing, as he blew out the candle.
"It's a good song; a bully good song," murmured the boy, turning over
to sleep. "But it ought to be sung to something with more of a
rig-a-jig-jig to it." So saying, he was off to the land of dreams.
CHAPTER IV.
AMONG THE DELAWARES.
Quindaro was a straggling but pretty little town built among the
groves of the west bank of the Missouri. Here the emigrants found a
store or trading-post, well supplied with the goods they needed,
staple articles of food and the heavier farming-tools being the first
required. The boys looked curiously at the big breaking-plough that
was to be of so much consequence to them in their new life and labors.
The prairies around their Illinois home had been long broken up when
they were old enough to take notice of such things; and as they were
town boys, they had never had their attention called to the implements
of a prairie farm.
"It looks like a plough that has been sat down on and flattened out,"
was Oscar's remark, after they had looked the thing over very
critically. It had a long and massive beam, or body, and big, strong
handles, suggestive of hard work to be done with it. "The nose," as
Sandy called the point of the share, was long, flat, and as sharp as a
knife. It was this thin and knife-like point that was to cut into the
virgin turf of the prairie, and, as the sod was cut, the share was to
turn it over, bottom side up, while the great, heavy implement was
drawn along by the oxen.
"But the sod is so thick and tough," said Oscar, "I don't see how the
oxen can drag the thing through. Will our three yoke of cattle do
it?"
The two men looked at each other and smiled. This had been a subject
of much anxious thought with them. They had been told that they would
have difficulty in breaking up the prairie with three yoke of oxen;
they should have four yoke, certainly. So when Mr. Howell explained
that they must get another yoke and then rely on their being able to
"change work" with some of their neighbors who might have cattle, the
boys laughed outright.
"Neighbors!" cried Sandy. "Why, I didn't suppose we should have any
neighbors within five or ten miles. Did you, Oscar? I was in hopes we
wouldn't have neighbors to plague us with their pigs and chickens, and
their running in to borrow a cupful of molasses, or last week's
newspaper. Neighbors!" and the boy's brown face wore an expression of
disgust.
"Don't you worry about neighbors, Sandy," said his uncle. "Even if we
have any within five miles of us, we shall do well. But if there is to
be any fighting, we shall want neighbors to join forces with us, and
we shall find them handy, anyhow, in case of sickness or trouble. We
cannot get along in a new country like this without neighbors, and
you bear that in mind, Master Sandy."
The two leaders of this little flock had been asking about the
prospects for taking up claims along the Kansas River, or the Kaw, as
that stream was then generally called. To their great dismay, they had
found that there was very little vacant land to be had anywhere near
the river. They would have to push on still further westward if they
wished to find good land ready for the pre-emptor. Rumors of fighting
and violence came from the new city of Lawrence, the chief settlement
of the free-State men, on the Kaw; and at Grasshopper Falls, still
further to the west, the most desirable land was already taken up, and
there were wild stories of a raid on that locality being planned by
bands of Border Ruffians. They were in a state of doubt and
uncertainty.
"There she is! There she is!" said Charlie, in a loud whisper, looking
in the direction of a tall, unpainted building that stood among the
trees that embowered the little settlement. Every one looked and saw a
young lady tripping along through the hazel brush that still covered
the ground. She was rather stylishly dressed, "citified," Oscar said;
she swung a beaded work-bag as she walked.
"Who is it? Who is it?" asked Oscar, breathlessly. She was the first
well-dressed young lady he had seen since leaving Iowa.
"Sh-h-h-h!" whispered Charlie. "That's Quindaro. A young fellow
pointed her out to me last night, just after we drove into the
settlement. She lives with her folks in that tall, thin house up
there. I have been looking for her to come out. See, she's just going
into the post-office now."
"Quindaro!" exclaimed Sandy. "Why, I thought Quindaro was a squaw."
"She's a full-blooded Delaware Indian girl, that's what she is, and
she was educated somewhere East in the States; and this town is named
for her. She owns all the land around here, and is the belle of the
place."
"She's got on hoop-skirts, too," said Oscar. "Just think of an Indian
girl--a squaw--wearing hoops, will you?" For all this happened, my
young reader must remember, when women's fashions were very different
from what they now are. Quindaro--that is to say, the young Indian
lady of that time--was dressed in the height of fashion, but not in
any way obtrusively. Charlie, following with his eyes the young girl's
figure, as she came out of the post-office and went across the ravine
that divided the settlement into two equal parts, mirthfully said,
"And only think! That is a full-blooded Delaware Indian girl!"
But, their curiosity satisfied, the boys were evidently disappointed
with their first view of Indian civilization. There were no blanketed
Indians loafing around in the sun and sleeping under the shelter of
the underbrush, as they had been taught to expect to see them. Outside
of the settlement, men were ploughing and planting, breaking prairie,
and building cabins; and while our party were looking about them, a
party of Delawares drove into town with several ox-carts to carry away
the purchases that one of their number had already made. It was
bewildering to boys who had been brought up on stories of Black Hawk,
the Prophet, and the Sacs and Foxes of Illinois and Wisconsin. A
Delaware Indian, clad in the ordinary garb of a Western farmer and
driving a yoke of oxen, and employing the same curious lingo used by
the white farmers, was not a picturesque object.
"I allow that sixty dollars is a big price to pay for a yoke of
cattle," said Mr. Howell, anxiously. He was greatly concerned about
the new purchase that must be made here, according to the latest
information. "We might have got them for two-thirds of that money back
in Illinois. And you know that Iowa chap only reckoned the price of
these at forty-five, when we traded with him at Jonesville."
"It's no use worrying about that now, Aleck," said his brother-in-law.
"I know you thought then that we should need four yoke for breaking
the prairie; but, then, you weren't certain about it, and none of the
rest of us ever had any sod-ploughing to do."
"No, none of us," said Sandy, with delightful gravity; at which
everybody smiled. One would have thought that Sandy was a veteran in
everything but farming.
"I met a man this morning, while I was prowling around the settlement,"
said Charlie, "who said that there was plenty of vacant land, of
first-rate quality, up around Manhattan. Where's that, father--do you
know? _He_ didn't, but some other man, one of the New England
Society fellows, told him so."
But nobody knew where Manhattan was. This was the first time they had
ever heard of the place. The cattle question was first to be disposed
of, however, and as soon as the party had finished their breakfast,
the two men and Charlie sallied out through the settlement to look up
a bargain. Oscar and Sandy were left in the camp to wash the dishes
and "clean up," a duty which both of them despised with a hearty
hatred.
"If there's anything I just fairly abominate, it's washing dishes,"
said Sandy, seating himself on the wagon-tongue and discontentedly
eyeing a huge tin pan filled with tin plates and cups, steaming in the
hot water that Oscar had poured over them from the camp-kettle.
"Well, that's part of the play," answered Oscar, pleasantly. "It isn't
boy's work, let alone man's work, to be cooking and washing dishes. I
wonder what mother would think to see us at it?" And a suspicious
moisture gathered in the lad's eyes, as a vision of his mother's tidy
kitchen in far-off Illinois rose before his mind. Sandy looked very
solemn.
"But, as daddy says, it's no use worrying about things you can't
help," continued the cheerful Oscar; "so here goes, Sandy. You wash,
and I'll dry 'em." And the two boys went on with their disagreeable
work so heartily that they soon had it out of the way; Sandy remarking
as they finished it, that, for his part, he did not like the business
at all, but he did not think it fair that they two, who could not do
the heavy work, should grumble over that they could do. "The worst of
it is," he added, "we've got to look forward to months and months of
this sort of thing. Father and Uncle Charlie say that we cannot have
the rest of the family come out until we have a house to put them
in--a log-cabin, they mean, of course; and Uncle Charlie says that we
may not get them out until another spring. I don't believe he will be
willing for them to come out until he knows whether the Territory is
to be slave or free. Do you, Oscar?"
"No, indeed," said Oscar. "Between you and me, Sandy, I don't want to
go back to Illinois again, for anything; but I guess father will make
up his mind about staying only when we find out if there is to be a
free-State government or not. Dear me, why can't the Missourians keep
out of here and let us alone?"
"It's a free country," answered Sandy, sententiously. "That's what
Uncle Charlie is always saying. The Missourians have just as good a
right here as we have."
"But they have no right to be bringing in their slavery with 'em,"
replied the other. "That wouldn't be a free country, would it, with
one man owning another man? Not much."
"That's beyond me, Oscar. I suppose it's a free country only for the
white man to come to. But I haven't any politics in me. Hullo! there
comes the rest of us driving a yoke of oxen. Well, on my word, they
have been quick about it. Uncle Charlie is a master hand at hurrying
things, I will say," added Sandy, admiringly. "He's done all the
trading, I'll be bound!"
"Fifty-five dollars," replied Bryant, to the boys' eager inquiry as to
the price paid for the yoke of oxen. "Fifty-five dollars, and not so
very dear, after all, considering that there are more people who want
to buy than there are who want to sell."
"And now we are about ready to start; only a few more provisions to
lay in. Suppose we get away by to-morrow morning?"
"Oh, that's out of the question, Uncle Aleck," said Oscar. "What makes
you in such a hurry? Why, you have all along said we need not get away
from here for a week yet, if we did not want to; the grass hasn't
fairly started yet, and we cannot drive far without feed for the
cattle. Four yoke, too," he added proudly.
"The fact is, Oscar," said his father, lowering his voice and looking
around as if to see whether anybody was within hearing distance, "we
have heard this morning that there was a raid on this place threatened
from Kansas City, over the border. This is the free-State headquarters
in this part of the country, and it has got about that the store here
is owned and run by the New England Emigrant Aid Society. So they are
threatening to raid the place, burn the settlement, run off the stock,
and loot the settlers. I should like to have a company of resolute men
to defend the place," and Mr. Bryant's eyes flashed; "but this is not
our home, nor our fight, and I'm willing to 'light out' right off, or
as soon as we get ready."
"Will they come to-night, do you think?" asked Sandy, and his big blue
eyes looked very big indeed. "Because we can't get off until we have
loaded the wagon and fixed the wheels; you said they must be greased
before we travelled another mile, you know."
It was agreed, however, that there was no immediate danger of the
raid--certainly not that night; but all felt that it was the part of
prudence to be ready to start at once; the sooner, the better. When
the boys went to their blankets that night, they whispered to each
other that the camp might be raided and so they should be ready for
any assault that might come. Sandy put his "pepper-box" under his
pillow, and Charlie had his trusty rifle within reach. Oscar carried
a double-barrelled shot-gun of which he was very proud, and that
weapon, loaded with buckshot, was laid carefully by the side of his
blankets. The two elders of the party "slept with one eye open," as
they phrased it. But there was no alarm through the night, except once
when Mr. Howell got up and went out to see how the cattle were getting
on. He found that one of the sentinels who had been set by the
Quindaro Company in consequence of the scare, had dropped asleep on
the wagon-tongue of the Dixon party. Shaking him gently, he awoke the
sleeping sentinel, who at once bawled, "Don't shoot!" to the great
consternation of the nearest campers, who came flying out of their
blankets to see what was the matter. When explanations had been made,
all laughed, stretched themselves, and then went to bed again to dream
of Missouri raiders.
The sun was well up in the sky next day, when the emigrants, having
completed their purchases, yoked their oxen and drove up through the
settlement and ascended the rolling swale of land that lay beyond the
groves skirting the river. Here were camps of other emigrants who had
moved out of Quindaro before them, or had come down from the point on
the Missouri opposite Parkville, in order to get on to the road that
led westward and south of the Kaw. It was a beautifully wooded
country. When the lads admired the trees, Mr. Howell somewhat
contemptuously said: "Not much good, chiefly black-jacks and
scrub-oaks"; but the woods were pleasant to drive through, and when
they came upon scattered farms and plantations with comfortable
log-cabins set in the midst of cultivated fields, the admiration of
the party was excited.
"Only look, Uncle Charlie," cried Sandy, "there's a real flower-garden
full of hollyhocks and marigolds; and there's a rose-bush climbing
over that log-cabin!" It was too early to distinguish one flower from
another by its blooms, but Sandy's sharp eyes had detected the leaves
of the old-fashioned flowers that he loved so well, which he knew were
only just planted in the farther northern air of their home in
Illinois. It was a pleasant-looking Kansas home, and Sandy wondered
how it happened that this cosey living-place had grown up so quickly
in this new Territory. It looked as if it were many years old, he
said.
"We are still on the Delaware Indian reservation," replied his uncle.
"The Government has given the tribe a big tract of land here and away
up to the Kaw. They've been here for years, and they are good farmers,
I should say, judging from the looks of things hereabouts."
Just then, as if to explain matters, a decent-looking man, dressed in
the rude fashion of the frontier, but in civilized clothes, came out
of the cabin, and, pipe in mouth, stared not unkindly at the passing
wagon and its party.
"Howdy," he civilly replied to a friendly greeting from Mr. Howell.
The boys knew that "How" was a customary salutation among Indians, but
"Howdy" struck them as being comic; Sandy laughed as he turned away
his face. Mr. Bryant lingered while the slow-moving oxen plodded their
way along the road, and the boys, too, halted to hear what the
dark-skinned man had to say. But the Indian--for he was a "civilized"
Delaware--was a man of very few words. In answer to Mr. Bryant's
questions, he said he was one of the chiefs of the tribe; he had been
to Washington to settle the terms of an agreement with the Government;
and he had lived in that cabin six years, and on the present
reservation ever since it was established.
All this information came out reluctantly, and with as little use of
vital breath as possible. When they had moved on out of earshot, Oscar
expressed his decided opinion that that settler was no more like James
Fenimore Cooper's Indians than the lovely Quindaro appeared to be.
"Why, did you notice, father," he continued, "that he actually had on
high-heeled boots? Think of that! An Indian with high-heeled boots!
Why, in Cooper's novels they wear moccasins, and some of them go
barefoot. These Indians are not worthy of the name."
"You will see more of the same sort before we get to the river," said
his father. "They have a meeting-house up yonder, by the fork of the
road, I am told. And, seeing that this is our first day out of camp on
the last stage of our journey, suppose we stop for dinner at Indian
John's, Aleck? It will be a change from camp-fare, and they say that
John keeps a good table."
To the delight of the lads, it was agreed that they should make the
halt as suggested, and noon found them at a very large and comfortable
"double cabin," as these peculiar structures are called. Two
log-cabins are built, end to end, with one roof covering the two. The
passage between them is floored over, and affords an open shelter from
rain and sun, and in hot weather is the pleasantest place about the
establishment. Indian John's cabin was built of hewn logs, nicely
chinked in with slivers, and daubed with clay to keep out the wintry
blasts. As is the manner of the country, one of the cabins was used
for the rooms of the family, while the dining-room and kitchen were in
the other end of the structure. Indian John regularly furnished dinner
to the stage passengers going westward from Quindaro; for a public
conveyance, a "mud-wagon," as it was called, had been put on this part
of the road.
"What a tuck-out I had!" said Sandy, after a very bountiful and
well-cooked dinner had been disposed of by the party. "And who would
have supposed we should ever sit down to an Indian's table and eat
fried chicken, ham and eggs, and corn-dodger, from a regular set of
blue-and-white plates, and drink good coffee from crockery cups? It
just beats Father Dixon's Indian stories all to pieces."
Oscar and Charlie, however, were disposed to think very lightly of
this sort of Indian civilization. Oscar said: "If these red men were
either one thing or the other, I wouldn't mind it. But they have shed
the gaudy trappings of the wild Indian, and their new clothes do not
fit very well. As Grandfather Bryant used to say, they are neither
fish nor flesh, nor good red herring. They are a mighty uninteresting
lot."
"Well, they are on the way to a better state of things than they have
known, anyhow," said Charlie. "The next generation will see them
higher up, I guess. But I must say that these farms don't look very
thrifty, somehow. Indians are a lazy lot; they don't like work. Did
you notice how all those big fellows at dinner sat down with us and
the stage passengers, and the poor women had to wait on everybody?
That's Indian."
Uncle Charlie laughed, and said that the boys had expected to find
civilized Indians waiting on the table, decked out with paint and
feathers, and wearing deerskin leggings and such like.
"Wait until we get out on the frontier," said he, "and then you will
see wild Indians, perhaps, or 'blanket Indians,' anyhow."
"Blanket Indians?" said Sandy, with an interrogation point in his
face.
"Yes; that's what the roving and unsettled bands are called by white
folks. Those that are on reservations and earning their own living, or
a part of it,--for the Government helps them out considerably,--are
called town Indians; those that live in wigwams, or tepees, and rove
from place to place, subsisting on what they can catch, are blanket
Indians. They tell me that there are wild Indians out on the western
frontier. But they are not hostile; at least, they were not, at last
accounts. The Cheyennes have been rather uneasy, they say, since the
white settlers began to pour into the country. Just now I am more
concerned about the white Missourians than I am about the red
aborigines."
They were still on the Delaware reservation when they camped that
evening, and the boys went into the woods to gather fuel for their
fire.
They had not gone far, when Sandy gave a wild whoop of alarm, jumping
about six feet backward as he yelled, "A rattlesnake!" Sure enough, an
immense snake was sliding out from under a mass of brush that the boy
had disturbed as he gathered an armful of dry branches and twigs.
Dropping his burden, Sandy shouted, "Kill him! Kill him, quick!"
The reptile was about five feet long, very thick, and of a dark
mottled color. Instantly, each lad had armed himself with a big stick
and had attacked him. The snake, stopped in his attempt to get away,
turned, and opening his ugly-looking mouth, made a curious blowing
noise, half a hiss and half a cough, as Charlie afterward described
it.
"Take care, Sandy! He'll spring at you, and bite you in the face! See!
He's getting ready to spring!"
And, indeed, the creature, frightened, and surrounded by the agile,
jumping boys, each armed with a club, seemed ready to defend his life
with the best weapons at his command. The boys, excited and alarmed,
were afraid to come near the snake, and were dancing about, waiting
for a chance to strike, when they were startled by a shot from behind
them, and the snake, making one more effort to turn on himself,
shuddered and fell dead.
Mr. Howell, hearing the shouting of the boys, had run out of the camp,
and with a well-directed rifle shot had laid low the reptile.
"It's only a blow-snake," he said, taking the creature by the tail and
holding it up to view. "He's harmless. Well! Of course a dead snake is
harmless, but when he was alive he was not the sort of critter to be
afraid of. I thought you had encountered a bear, at the very least, by
the racket you made."
"He's a big fellow, anyhow," said Oscar, giving the snake a kick, "and
Sandy said he was a rattlesnake. I saw a rattler once when we lived in
Dixon. Billy Everett and I found him down on the bluff below the
railroad; and he was spotted all over. Besides, this fellow hasn't any
rattles."
"The boys have been having a lesson in natural history, Charlie," said
Mr. Howell to his brother-in-law, as they returned with him to camp,
loaded with firewood; Sandy, boy-like, dragging the dead blow-snake
after him.
CHAPTER V.
TIDINGS FROM THE FRONT.
Supper was over, a camp-fire built (for the emigrants did their
cooking by a small camp-stove, and sat by the light of a fire on the
ground), when out of the darkness came sounds of advancing teams.
Oscar was playing his violin, trying to pick out a tune for the better
singing of Whittier's song of the Kansas Emigrants. His father raised
his hand to command silence. "That's a Yankee teamster, I'll be
bound," he said, as the "Woh-hysh! Woh-haw!" of the coming party fell
on his ear. "No Missourian ever talks to his cattle like that."
As he spoke, a long, low emigrant wagon, or "prairie schooner," drawn
by three yoke of dun-colored oxen, toiled up the road. In the wagon
was a faded-looking woman with two small children clinging to her.
Odds and ends of household furniture showed themselves over her head
from within the wagon, and strapped on behind was a coop of fowls,
from which came a melancholy cackle, as if the hens and chickens were
weary of their long journey. A man dressed in butternut-colored
homespun drove the oxen, and a boy about ten years old trudged behind
the driver. In the darkness behind these tramped a small herd of cows
and oxen driven by two other men, and a lad about the age of Oscar
Bryant. The new arrivals paused in the road, surveyed our friends from
Illinois, stopped the herd of cattle, and then the man who was driving
the wagon said, with an unmistakable New England twang, "Friends?"
"Friends, most assuredly," said Mr. Bryant, with a smile. "I guess you
have been having hard luck, you appear to be so suspicious."
"Well, we have, and that's a fact. But we're main glad to be able to
camp among friends. Jotham, unyoke the cattle after you have driven
them into the timber a piece." He assisted the woman and children to
get down from the wagon, and one of the cattle-drivers coming up,
drove the team into the woods a short distance, and the tired oxen
were soon lying down among the underbrush.
"Well, yes, we _have_ had a pretty hard time getting here. We are the
last free-State men allowed over the ferry at Parkville. Where be you
from?"
"We are from Lee County, Illinois," replied Mr. Bryant. "We came in by
the way of Parkville, too, a day or two ago; but we stopped at
Quindaro. Did you come direct from Parkville?"
[Illustration: THE YANKEE EMIGRANT.]
"Yes," replied the man. "We came up the river in the first place, on
the steamboat 'Black Eagle,' and when we got to Leavenworth, a big
crowd of Borderers, seeing us and another lot of free-State men on the
boat, refused to let us land. We had to go down the river again. The
captain of the boat kicked up a great fuss about it, and wanted to put
us ashore on the other side of the river; but the Missouri men
wouldn't have it. They put a 'committee,' as they called the two men,
on board the steamboat, and they made the skipper take us down the
river."
"How far down did you go?" asked Bryant, his face reddening with
anger.
"Well, we told the committee that we came through Ioway, and that to
Ioway we must go; so they rather let up on us, and set us ashore just
opposite Wyandotte. I was mighty 'fraid they'd make us swear we
wouldn't go back into Kansas some other way; but they didn't, and so
we stivered along the road eastwards after they set us ashore, and
then we fetched a half-circle around and got into Parkville."
"I shouldn't wonder if you bought those clothes that you have got on
at Parkville," said Mr. Howell, with a smile.
"You guess about right," said the sad-colored stranger. "A very nice
sort of a man we met at the fork of the road, as you turn off to go to
Parkville from the river road, told me that my clothes were too
Yankee. I wore 'em all the way from Woburn, Massachusetts, where we
came from, and I hated to give 'em up. But discretion is better than
valor, I have heern tell; so I made the trade, and here I am."
"We had no difficulty getting across at Parkville," said Mr. Bryant,
"except that we did have to go over in the night in a sneaking fashion
that I did not like."
"Well," answered the stranger, "as a special favor, they let us
across, seeing that we had had such hard luck. That's a nice-looking
fiddle you've got there, sonny," he abruptly interjected, as he took
Oscar's violin from his unwilling hand. "I used to play the fiddle
once, myself," he added. Then, drawing the bow over the strings in a
light and artistic manner, he began to play "Bonnie Doon."
"Come, John," his wife said wearily, "it's time the children were
under cover. Let go the fiddle until we've had supper."
John reluctantly handed back the violin, and the newcomers were soon
in the midst of their preparations for the night's rest. Later on in
the evening, John Clark, as the head of the party introduced himself,
came over to the Dixon camp, and gave them all the news. Clark was one
of those who had been helped by the New England Emigrant Aid Society,
an organization with headquarters in the Eastern States, and with
agents in the West. He had been fitted out at Council Bluffs, Iowa,
but for some unexplained reason had wandered down as far south as
Kansas City, and there had boarded the "Black Eagle" with his family
and outfit. One of the two men with him was his brother; the other
was a neighbor who had cast in his lot with him. The tall lad was John
Clark's nephew.
In one way or another, Clark had managed to pick up much gossip about
the country and what was going on. At Tecumseh, where they would be
due in a day or two if they continued on this road, an election for
county officers was to be held soon, and the Missourians were bound to
get in there and carry the election. Clark thought they had better not
go straight forward into danger. They could turn off, and go west by
way of Topeka.
"Why, that would be worse than going to Tecumseh," interjected
Charlie, who had modestly kept out of the discussion. "Topeka is the
free-State capital, and they say that there is sure to be a big battle
there, sooner or later."
But Mr. Bryant resolved that he would go west by the way of Tecumseh,
no matter if fifty thousand Borderers were encamped there. He asked
the stranger if he had in view any definite point; to which Clark
replied that he had been thinking of going up the Little Blue; he had
heard that there was plenty of good vacant land there, and the land
office would open soon. He had intended, he said, to go to Manhattan,
and start from there; but since they had been so cowardly as to change
the name of the place, he had "rather soured on it."
"Manhattan?" exclaimed Charlie, eagerly. "Where is that place? We have
asked a good many people, but nobody can tell us."
"Good reason why; they've gone and changed the name. It used to be
Boston, but the settlers around there were largely from Missouri. The
company were Eastern men, and when they settled on the name of Boston,
it got around that they were all abolitionists; and so they changed it
to Manhattan. Why they didn't call it New York, and be done with it,
is more than I can tell. But it was Boston, and it is Manhattan; and
that's all I want to know about _that_ place."
Mr. Bryant was equally sure that he did not want to have anything to
do with a place that had changed its name through fear of anybody or
anything.
Next day there was a general changing of minds, however. It was
Sunday, and the emigrants, a God-fearing and reverent lot of people,
did not move out of camp. Others had come in during the night, for
this was a famous camping-place, well known throughout all the region.
Here were wood, water, and grass, the three requisites for campers, as
they had already found. The country was undulating, interlaced with
creeks; and groves of black-jack, oak, and cottonwood were here and
there broken by open glades that would be smiling fields some day, but
were now wild native grasses.
There was a preacher in the camp, a good man from New England, who
preached about the Pilgrim's Progress through the world, and the
trials he meets by the way. Oscar pulled his father's sleeve, and
asked why he did not ask the preacher to give out "The Kansas
Emigrant's Song" as a hymn. Mr. Bryant smiled, and whispered that it
was hardly likely that the lines would be considered just the thing
for a religious service. But after the preaching was over, and the
little company was breaking up, he told the preacher what Oscar had
said. The minister's eyes sparkled, and he replied, "What? Have you
that beautiful hymn? Let us have it now and here. Nothing could be
better for this day and this time."
Oscar, blushing with excitement and native modesty, was put up high on
the stump of a tree, and, violin in hand, "raised the tune." It was
grand old "Dundee." Almost everybody seemed to know the words of
Whittier's poem, and beneath the blue Kansas sky, amid the groves of
Kansas trees, the sturdy, hardy men and the few pale women joyfully,
almost tearfully, sang,--
We crossed the prairie, as of old
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!
We go to rear a wall of men
On freedom's Southern line,
And plant beside the cotton-tree
The rugged Northern pine!
We're flowing from our native hills
As our free rivers flow;
The blessing of our Mother-land
Is on us as we go.
We go to plant her common schools
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells.
Upbearing, like the Ark of old,
The Bible in our van,
We go to test the truth of God
Against the fraud of man.
No pause, nor rest, save where the streams
That feed the Kansas run,
Save where our pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the setting sun!
We'll tread the prairie as of old
Our fathers sailed the sea,
And make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!
"It was good to be there," said Alexander Howell, his hand resting
lovingly on Oscar's shoulder, as they went back to camp. But Oscar's
father said never a word. His face was turned to the westward, where
the sunlight was fading behind the hills of the far-off frontier of
the Promised Land.
[Illustration: OSCAR WAS PUT UP HIGH ON THE STUMP OF A TREE, AND, VIOLIN
IN HAND, "RAISED THE TUNE."]
The general opinion gathered that day was that they who wanted to
fight for freedom might better go to Lawrence, or to Topeka. Those who
were bent on finding homes for themselves and little ones should press
on further to the west, where there was land in plenty to be had for
the asking, or, rather, for the pre-empting. So, when Monday morning
came, wet, murky, and depressing, Bryant surrendered to the counsels
of his brother-in-law and the unspoken wish of the boys, and agreed to
go on to the newly-surveyed lands on the tributaries of the Kaw. They
had heard good reports of the region lying westward of Manhattan and
Fort Riley. The town that had changed its name was laid out at the
confluence of the Kaw and the Big Blue. Fort Riley was some eighteen
or twenty miles to the westward, near the junction of the streams that
form the Kaw, known as Smoky Hill Fork and the Republican Fork. On one
or the other of these forks, the valleys of which were said to be
fertile and beautiful beyond description, the emigrants would find a
home. So, braced and inspired by the consciousness of having a
definite and settled plan, the Dixon party set forth on Monday
morning, through the rain and mist, with faces to the westward.
CHAPTER VI.
WESTWARD HO!
The following two or three days were wet and uncomfortable. Rain fell
in torrents at times, and when it did not rain the ground was steamy,
and the emigrants had a hard time to find spots dry enough on which to
make up their beds at night. This was no holiday journey, and the
boys, too proud to murmur, exchanged significant nods and winks when
they found themselves overtaken by the discomforts of camping and
travelling in the storm. For the most part, they kept in camp during
the heaviest of the rain. They found that the yokes of the oxen chafed
the poor animals' necks when wet.
And then the mud! Nobody had ever seen such mud, they thought, not
even on the black and greasy fat lands of an Illinois prairie.
Sometimes the wagon sunk in the road, cut up by innumerable wheels, so
that the hubs of their wheels were almost even with the surface, and
it was with the greatest difficulty that their four yoke of oxen
dragged the wagon from its oozy bed. At times, too, they were obliged
to unhitch their team and help out of a mud-hole some other less
fortunate brother wayfarer, whose team was not so powerful as their
own.
One unlucky day, fording a narrow creek with steep banks, they had
safely got across, when they encountered a slippery incline up which
the oxen could not climb; it was "as slippery as a glare of ice,"
Charlie said, and the struggling cattle sank nearly to their knees in
their frantic efforts to reach the top of the bank. The wagon had been
"blocked up," that is to say, the wagon-box raised in its frame or bed
above the axles, with blocks driven underneath, to lift it above the
level of the stream. As the vehicle was dragged out of the creek, the
leading yoke of cattle struggling up the bank and then slipping back
again, the whole team of oxen suddenly became panic-stricken, as it
were, and rushed back to the creek in wild confusion. The wagon
twisted upon itself, and cramped together, creaked, groaned, toppled,
and fell over in a heap, its contents being shot out before and behind
into the mud and water.
"Great Scott!" yelled Sandy. "Let me stop those cattle!" Whereupon the
boy dashed through the water, and, running around the hinder end of
the wagon, he attempted to head off the cattle. But the animals,
having gone as far as they could without breaking their chains or the
wagon-tongue, which fortunately held, stood sullenly by the side of
the wreck they had made, panting with their exertions.
"Here is a mess!" said his father; but, without more words, he
unhitched the oxen and drove them up the bank. The rest of the party
hastily picked up the articles that were drifting about, or were
lodged in the mud of the creek. It was a sorry sight, and the boys
forgot, in the excitement of the moment, the discomforts and
annoyances of their previous experiences. This was a real misfortune.
But while Oscar and Sandy were excitedly discussing what was next to
be done, Mr. Howell took charge of things; the wagon was righted, and
a party of emigrants, camped in a grove of cottonwoods just above the
ford, came down with ready offers of help. Eight yoke of cattle
instead of four were now hitched to the wagon, and, to use the
expressive language of the West, the outfit was "snaked" out of the
hole in double-quick time.
"Ho, ho, ho! Uncle Charlie," laughed Sandy, "you look as if you had
been dragged through a slough. You are just painted with mud from top
to toe. Well, I never did see such a looking scarecrow!"
"It's lucky you haven't any looking-glass here, young Impudence. If
you could see your mother's boy now, you wouldn't know him. Talk about
looks! Take a look at the youngster, mates," said Uncle Charlie,
bursting into a laugh. A general roar followed the look, for Sandy's
appearance was indescribable. In his wild rush through the waters of
the creek, he had covered himself from head to foot, and the mud from
the wagon had painted his face a brilliant brown; for there is more or
less of red oxide of iron in the mud of Kansas creeks.
It was a doleful party that pitched its tent that night on the banks
of Soldier Creek and attempted to dry clothes and provisions by
the feeble heat of a little sheet-iron stove. Only Sandy, the
irrepressible and unconquerable Sandy, preserved his good temper
through the trying experience. "It is a part of the play," he said,
"and anybody who thinks that crossing the prairie, 'as of old the
pilgrims crossed the sea,' is a Sunday-school picnic, might better
try it with the Dixon emigrants; that's all."
But, after a very moist and disagreeable night, the sky cleared in the
morning. Oscar was out early, looking at the sky; and when he shouted
"Westward ho!" with a stentorian voice, everybody came tumbling out to
see what was the matter. A long line of white-topped wagons with four
yoke of oxen to each, eleven teams all told, was stringing its way
along the muddy road in which the red sun was reflected in pools of
red liquid mud. The wagons were overflowing with small children; coops
of fowls swung from behind, and a general air of thriftiness seemed to
be characteristic of the company.
"Which way are you bound?" asked Oscar, cheerily.
"Up the Smoky Hill Fork," replied one of the ox-drivers. "Solomon's
Fork, perhaps, but somewhere in that region, anyway."
One of the company lingered behind to see what manner of people these
were who were so comfortably camped out in a wall-tent. When he had
satisfied his curiosity, he explained that his companions had come
from northern Ohio, and were bound to lay out a town of their own in
the Smoky Hill region. Oscar, who listened while his father drew this
information from the stranger, recalled the fact that the Smoky Hill
and the Republican Forks were the branches of the Kaw. Solomon's Fork,
he now learned, was one of the tributaries of the Smoky Hill, nearer
to the Republican Fork than to the main stream. So he said to his
father, when the Ohio man had passed on: "If they settle on Solomon's
Fork, won't they be neighbors of ours, daddy?"
Mr. Bryant took out a little map of the Territory that he had in his
knapsack, and, after some study, made up his mind that the newcomers
would not be "neighbors enough to hurt," if they came no nearer the
Republican than Solomon's Fork. About thirty-five miles west and south
of Fort Riley, which is at the junction of the Smoky Hill and the
Republican, Solomon's Fork branches off to the northwest. Settlers
anywhere along that line would not be nearer the other fork than
eighteen or twenty miles at the nearest. Charlie and Sandy agreed with
Oscar that it was quite as near as desirable neighbors should be. The
lads were already learning something of the spirit of the West. They
had heard of the man who had moved westward when another settler drove
his stakes twenty miles from his claim, because the country was
"gettin' too crowded."
That day, passing through the ragged log village of Tecumseh, they got
their first letters from home. When they left Illinois, they had not
known just where they would strike, in the Territory, but they had
resolved that they would not go further west than Tecumseh; and here
they were, with their eyes still fixed toward the west. No matter;
just now, news from home was to be devoured before anybody could talk
of the possible Kansas home that yet loomed before them in the dim
distance. How good it was to learn all about the dear ones left at
home; to find that Bose was keeping guard around the house as if he
knew that he was the protector of the two mothers left to themselves
in one home; to hear that the brindle calf had grown very large, and
that a circus was coming to town the very next day after the letter
was written!
"That circus has come and gone without our seeing it," said Sandy,
solemnly.
"Sandy is as good as a circus, any day," said his uncle, fondly. "The
greatest show in the country would have been willing to hire you for
a sight, fixed out as you were last night, after we had that upset in
the creek." The boys agreed that it was lucky for all hands that the
only looking-glass in camp was the little bit of one hidden away in
Uncle Charlie's shaving-case.
The next day, to their great discomfiture, they blundered upon a
county election. Trudging into Libertyville, one of the new mushroom
towns springing up along the military road that leads from Fort
Leavenworth to Fort Riley, they found a great crowd of people gathered
around a log-house in which the polls were open. Country officers were
to be chosen, and the pro-slavery men, as the Borderers were now
called in this part of the country, had rallied in great numbers to
carry the election for their men. All was confusion and tumult.
Rough-looking men, well armed and generally loud voiced, with slouched
hats and long beards, were galloping about, shouting and making all
the noise possible, for no purpose that could be discovered. "Hooray
for Cap'n Pate!" was the only intelligible cry that the newcomers
could hear; but who Captain Pate was, and why he should be hurrahed
for, nobody seemed to know. He was not a candidate for anything.
"Hullo! there's our Woburn friend, John Clark," said Mr. Howell. Sure
enough, there he was with a vote in his hand going up to the cabin
where the polls were open. A lane was formed through the crowd of men
who lounged about the cabin, so that a man going up to the door to
vote was obliged to run the gauntlet, as it were, of one hundred men,
or more, before he reached the door, the lower half of which was
boarded up and the upper half left open for the election officers to
take and deposit the ballots.
"I don't believe that man has any right to vote here," said Charlie,
with an expression of disgust on his face. "Why, he came into the
Territory with us, only the other day, and he said he was going up on
the Big Blue to settle, and here he is trying to vote!"
"Well," said Uncle Charlie, "I allow he has just as good a right to
vote as any of these men who are running the election. I saw some of
these very men come riding in from Missouri, when we were one day out
of Quindaro." As he spoke, John Clark had reached the voting-place,
pursued by many rough epithets flung after him.
He paused before the half-barricaded door and presented his ballot.
"Let's see yer ticket!" shouted one of the men who stood guard, one
either side of the cabin-door. He snatched it from Clark's hand,
looked at it, and simply said, "H'ist!" The man on the other side of
the would-be voter grinned; then both men seized the Woburn man by his
arms and waist, and, before he could realize what was happening, he
was flung up to the edge of the roof that projected over the low door.
Two other men sitting there grabbed the newcomer by the shoulders and
passed him up the roof to two others, who, straddling the ridge-pole,
were waiting for him. Then the unfortunate Clark disappeared over the
top of the cabin, sliding down out of sight on the farther side. The
mob set up a wild cheer, and some of them shouted, "We don't want any
Yankee votes in this yer 'lection!"
"Shameful! Shameful!" burst forth from Mr. Bryant. "I have heard of
such things before now, but I must say I never thought I should see
it." He turned angrily to his brother-in-law as Mr. Howell joined the
boys in their laugh.
"How can you laugh at such a shameful sight, Aleck Howell? I'm sure
it's something to cry over, rather than to laugh at--a spectacle like
that! A free American citizen hustled away from the polls in that
disgraceful fashion!"
"But, Charlie," said Uncle Aleck, "you'll admit that it was funny to
see the Woburn man hoisted over that cabin. Besides, I don't believe
he has any right to vote here; do you?"
"He would have been allowed to vote fast enough if he had had the sort
of ballot that those fellows want to go into the box. They looked at
his ballot, and as soon as they saw what it was, they threw him over
the cabin."
[Illustration: THE POLLS AT LIBERTYVILLE. THE WOBURN MAN IS "HOISTED"
OVER THE CABIN.]
Just then, John Clark came back from the ravine into which he had slid
from the roof of the log-house, looking very much crestfallen. He
explained that he had met some pro-slavery men on the road that
morning, and they had told him he could vote, if he chose, and they
had furnished him with the necessary ballot.
"They took in my clothes at a glance," said Clark, "and they seemed to
suppose that a man with butternut homespun was true-blue; so they
didn't ask any questions. I got a free-State ballot from another man
and was a-goin' to plump it in; but they were too smart for me, and
over I went. No, don't you worry; I ain't a-goin' up there to try it
ag'in," he said, angrily, to an insolent horseman, who, riding up,
told him not to venture near the polls again if he "did not want to be
kicked out like a dog."
"Come on, neighbor; let's be goin'," he said to Uncle Aleck. "I've had
enough voting for to-day. Let's light out of this town." Then the men,
taking up their ox-goads, drove out of town. They had had their first
sight of the struggle for freedom.
CHAPTER VII.
AT THE DIVIDING OF THE WAYS.
The military road, of which I have just spoken, was constructed by the
United States Government to connect the military posts of the Far West
with one another. Beginning at Fort Leavenworth, on the Missouri
River, it passed through Fort Riley at the junction of the forks of
the Kaw, and then, still keeping up the north side of the Republican
Fork, went on to Fort Kearney, still farther west, then to Fort
Laramie, which in those days was so far on the frontier of our country
that few people ever saw it except military men and the emigrants to
California. At the time of which I am writing, there had been a very
heavy emigration to California, and companies of emigrants, bound to
the Golden Land, still occasionally passed along the great military
road.
Interlacing this highway were innumerable trails and wagon-tracks, the
traces of the great migration to the Eldorado of the Pacific; and here
and there were the narrow trails made by Indians on their hunting
expeditions and warlike excursions. Roads, such as our emigrants had
been accustomed to in Illinois, there were none. First came the faint
traces of human feet and of unshod horses and ponies; then the
well-defined trail of hunters, trappers, and Indians; then the
wagon-track of the military trains, which, in course of time, were
smoothed and formed into the military road kept in repair by the
United States Government.
Following this road, the Dixon emigrants came upon the broad, bright,
and shallow stream of the Big Blue. Fording this, they drove into the
rough, new settlement of Manhattan, lately built at the junction of
the Blue and the Kaw rivers.
It was a beautiful May day when the travellers entered Manhattan. It
was an active and a promising town. Some attempt at the laying out of
streets had been made. A long, low building, occupied as a hotel, was
actually painted, and on some of the shanties and rude huts of the
newly arrived settlers were signs giving notice of hardware,
groceries, and other commodities for sale within. On one structure,
partly made of sawed boards and partly of canvas, was painted in
sprawling letters, "Counsellor at Law."
"You'll find those fellows out in the Indian country," grimly remarked
one of the settlers, as the party surveyed this evidence of an
advancing civilization.
There was a big steam saw-mill hard by the town, and the chief
industry of Manhattan seemed to be the buying and selling of lumber
and hardware, and the surveying of land. Mounted men, carrying the
tools and instruments of the surveyor, galloped about. Few wheeled
vehicles except the ox-carts of emigrants were to be seen anywhere,
and the general aspect of the place was that of feverish activity.
Along the banks of the two streams were camped parties of the latest
comers, many of whom had brought their wives and children with them.
Parties made up of men only seldom came as far west as this. They
pitched their tents nearer the Missouri, where the fight for freedom
raged most hotly. A few companies of men did reach the westernmost
edge of the new settlements, and the Manhattan Company was one of
these.
The three boys from Illinois were absorbed with wonder as they
strolled around the new town, taking in the novel sights, as they
would if they had been in a great city, instead of a mushroom town
that had arisen in a night. During their journey from Libertyville to
Manhattan, the Dixon emigrants had lost sight of John Clark, of
Woburn; he had hurried on ahead after his rough experience with the
election guardians of Libertyville. The boys were wondering if he had
reached Manhattan.
"Hullo! There he is now, with all his family around him," said
Charlie. "He's got here before us, and can tell all about the lay of
the land to the west of us, I dare say."
"I have about made up my mind to squat on Hunter's Creek," said
Clark, when the boys had saluted him. "Pretty good land on Hunter's,
so I am told; no neighbors, and the land has been surveyed off by the
Government surveyors. Hunter's Creek? Well, that's about six miles
above the fort. It makes into the Republican, and, so they tell me,
there's plenty of wood along the creek, and a good lot of oak and
hickory not far off. Timber is what we all want, you know."
As for Bartlett, who had come out from New England with the Clarks, he
was inclined to go to the lower side of the Republican Fork, taking to
the Smoky Hill country. That was the destination of the Jenness party,
who had passed the Dixon boys when they were camped after their upset
in the creek, several days before. This would leave the Clarks--John
and his wife and two children, and his brother Jotham, and Jotham's
boy, Pelatiah--to make a settlement by themselves on Hunter's Creek.
Which way were the Dixon boys going? Charlie, the spokesman of the
party because he was the eldest, did not know. His father and uncle
were out prospecting among the campers now. Sandy was sure that they
would go up the Republican Fork. His father had met one of the
settlers from that region, and had been very favorably impressed with
his report. This Republican Fork man was an Arkansas man, but "a good
fellow," so Sandy said. To be a good fellow, according to Sandy's way
of putting things, was to be worthy of all confidence and esteem.
Mr. Bryant thought that as there were growing rumors of troublesome
Indians, it would be better to take the southern or Smoky Hill route;
the bulk of the settlers were going that way, and where there were
large numbers there would be safety. While the lads were talking with
the Clarks, Bryant and his brother-in-law came up, and, after greeting
their former acquaintance and ascertaining whither he was bound, Mr.
Howell told the boys that they had been discussing the advantages of
the two routes with Younkins, the settler from Republican Fork, and
had decided to go on to "the post," as Fort Riley was generally
called, and there decide which way they should go--to the right or to
the left.
As to the Clarks, they were determined to take the trail for Hunter's
Creek that very day. Bartlett decided to go to the Smoky Hill country.
He cast in his lot with a party of Western men, who had heard glowing
reports of the fertility and beauty of the region lying along
Solomon's Fork, a tributary of the Smoky Hill. It was in this way that
parties split up after they had entered the Promised Land.
Leaving the Clarks to hitch up their teams and part company with
Bartlett, the Dixon party returned to their camp, left temporarily in
the care of Younkins, who had come to Manhattan for a few supplies,
and who had offered to guide the others to a desirable place for
settlement which he told them he had in mind for them. Younkins was a
kindly and pleasant-faced man, simple in his speech and frontier-like
in his manners. Sandy conceived a strong liking for him as soon as
they met. The boy and the man were friends at once.
"Well, you see," said Younkins, sitting down on the wagon-tongue, when
the party had returned to their camp, "I have been thinking over-like
the matter that we were talking about, and I have made up my mind-like
that I sha'n't move back to my claim on the south side of the
Republican. I'm on the north side, you know, and my old claim on the
south side will do just right for my brother Ben; he's coming out in
the fall. Now if you want to go up our way, you can have the cabin on
that claim. There's nobody living in it. It's no great of a cabin, but
it's built of hewed timber, well chinked and comfortable-like. You can
have it till Ben comes out, and I'm just a-keeping it for Ben, you
know. P'raps he won't want it, and if he doesn't, why, then you and he
can make some kind of a dicker-like, and you might stay on till you
could do better."
"That's a very generous offer of Mr. Younkins's, Charles," said Mr.
Howell to Bryant. "I don't believe we could do better than take it
up."
"No, indeed," burst in the impetuous Sandy. "Why, just think of it! A
house already built!"
"Little boys should be seen, not heard," said his elder brother,
reprovingly. "Suppose you and I wait to see what the old folks have to
say before we chip in with any remarks."
"Oh, I know what Uncle Charlie will say," replied the lad, undismayed.
"He'll say that the Smoky Hill road is the road to take. Say, Uncle
Charlie, you see that Mr. Younkins here is willing to live all alone
on the bank of the Republican Fork, without any neighbors at all. He
isn't afraid of Indians."
Mr. Bryant smiled, and said that he was not afraid of Indians, but he
thought that there might come a time when it would be desirable for a
community to stand together as one man. "Are you a free-State man?" he
asked Younkins. This was a home-thrust. Younkins came from a slave
State; he was probably a pro-slavery man.
"I'm neither a free-State man nor yet a pro-slavery man," he said,
slowly, and with great deliberation. "I'm just for Younkins all
the time. Fact is," he continued, "where I came from most of us are
pore whites. I never owned but one darky, and I had him from my
grandfather. Ben and me, we sorter quarrelled-like over that darky.
Ben, he thought he oughter had him, and I knowed my grandfather left
him to me. So I sold him off, and the neighbors didn't seem to like
it. I don't justly know why they didn't like it; but they didn't.
Then Ben, he allowed that I had better light out. So I lit out, and
here I am. No, I'm no free-State man, and then ag'in, I'm no man for
slavery. I'm just for Younkins. Solomon Younkins is my name."
Bryant was very clearly prejudiced in favor of the settler from the
Republican Fork by this speech; and yet he thought it best to move on
to the fort that day and take the matter into consideration.
So he said that if Younkins would accept the hospitality of their
tent, the Dixon party would be glad to have him pass the night with
them. Younkins had a horse on which he had ridden down from his place,
and with which he had intended to reach home that night. But, for the
sake of inducing the new arrivals to go up into his part of the
country, he was willing to stay.
"I should think you would be afraid to leave your wife and baby all
alone there in the wilderness," said Sandy, regarding his new friend
with evident admiration. "No neighbor nearer than Hunter's Creek, did
you say? How far off is that?"
"Well, a matter of six miles-like," replied Younkins. "It isn't often
that I do leave them alone over night; but then I have to once in a
while. My old woman, she doesn't mind it. She was sort of skeary-like
when she first came into the country; but she's got used to it. We
don't want any neighbors. If you folks come up to settle, you'll be
on the other side of the river," he said, with unsmiling candor.
"That's near enough--three or four miles, anyway."
Fort Riley is about ten miles from Manhattan, at the forks of the Kaw.
It was a long drive for one afternoon; but the settlers from Illinois
camped on the edge of the military reservation that night. When the
boys, curious to see what the fort was like, looked over the premises
next morning, they were somewhat disappointed to find that the post
was merely a quadrangle of buildings constructed of rough-hammered
stone. A few frame houses were scattered about. One of these was the
sutler's store, just on the edge of the reservation. But, for the most
part, the post consisted of two- or three-story buildings arranged in
the form of a hollow square. These were barracks, officers' quarters,
and depots for the storage of military supplies and army equipments.
"Why, this is no fort!" said Oscar, contemptuously. "There isn't even
a stockade. What's to prevent a band of Indians raiding through the
whole place? I could take it myself, if I had men enough."
His cousin Charlie laughed, and said: "Forts are not built out here
nowadays to defend a garrison. The army men don't propose to let the
Indians get near enough to the post to threaten it. The fact is, I
guess, this fort is only a depot-like, as our friend Younkins would
say, for the soldiers and for military stores. They don't expect ever
to be besieged here; but if there should happen to be trouble anywhere
along the frontier, then the soldiers would be here, ready to fly out
to the rescue, don't you see?"
"Yes," answered Sandy; "and when a part of the garrison had gone to
the rescue, as you call it, another party of redskins would swoop down
and gobble up the remnant left at the post."
"If I were you, Master Sandy," said his brother, "I wouldn't worry
about the soldiers. Uncle Sam built this fort, and there are lots of
others like it. I don't know for sure, but my impression is that Uncle
Sam knows what is best for the use of the military and for the defence
of the frontier. So let's go and take a look at the sutler's store. I
want to buy some letter-paper."
The sutler, in those days, was a very important person in the
estimation of the soldiers of a frontier post. Under a license from
the War Department of the Government, he kept a store in which was
everything that the people at the post could possibly need. Crowded
into the long building of the Fort Riley sutler were dry-goods,
groceries, hardware, boots and shoes, window-glass, rope and twine,
and even candy of a very poor sort. Hanging from the ceiling of this
queer warehouse were sides of smoked meat, strings of onions, oilcloth
suits, and other things that were designed for the comfort or
convenience of the officers and soldiers, and were not provided by
the Government.
"I wonder what soldiers want of calico and ribbons," whispered Sandy,
with a suppressed giggle, as the three lads went prying about.
"Officers and soldiers have their wives and children here, you
greeny," said his brother, sharply. "Look out there and see 'em."
And, sure enough, as Sandy's eyes followed the direction of his
brother's, he saw two prettily dressed ladies and a group of children
walking over the smooth turf that filled the square in the midst of
the fort. It gave Sandy a homesick feeling, this sight of a home in
the wilderness. Here were families of grown people and children,
living apart from the rest of the world. They had been here long
before the echo of civil strife in Kansas had reached the Eastern
States, and before the first wave of emigration had touched the
head-waters of the Kaw. Here they were, a community by themselves,
uncaring, apparently, whether slavery was voted up or down. At least,
some such thought as this flitted through Sandy's mind as he looked
out upon the leisurely life of the fort, just beginning to stir.
All along the outer margin of the reservation were grouped the camps
of emigrants; not many of them, but enough to present a curious and
picturesque sight. There were a few tents, but most of the emigrants
slept in or under their wagons. There were no women or children in
these camps, and the hardy men had been so well seasoned by their past
experiences, journeying to this far western part of the Territory,
that they did not mind the exposure of sleeping on the ground and
under the open skies. Soldiers from the fort, off duty and curious to
hear the news from the outer world, came lounging around the camps and
chatted with the emigrants in that cool, superior manner that marks
the private soldier when he meets a civilian on equal footing, away
from the haunts of men.
The boys regarded these uniformed military servants of the Government
of the United States with great respect, and even with some awe.
These, they thought to themselves, were the men who were there to
fight Indians, to protect the border, and to keep back the rising tide
of wild hostilities that might, if it were not for them, sweep down
upon the feeble Territory and even inundate the whole Western
country.
"Perhaps some of Black Hawk's descendants are among the Indians on
this very frontier," said Oscar, impressively. "And these gold-laced
chaps, with shoulder-straps on, are the Zack Taylors and the Robert
Andersons who do the fighting," added Charlie, with a laugh.
Making a few small purchases from the surly sutler of Fort Riley, and
then canvassing with the emigrants around the reservation the question
of routes and locations, our friends passed the forenoon. The elders
of the party had anxiously discussed the comparative merits of the
Smoky Hill and the Republican Fork country and had finally yielded to
the attractions of a cabin ready-built in Younkins's neighborhood,
with a garden patch attached, and had decided to go in that
direction.
"This is simply bully!" said Sandy Howell, as the little caravan
turned to the right and drove up the north bank of the Republican
Fork.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SETTLERS AT HOME.
A wide, shallow river, whose turbid waters were yellow with the
freshets of early summer, shadowed by tall and sweeping cottonwoods
and water-maples; shores gently sloping to the current, save where a
tall and rocky bluff broke the prospect up stream; thickets of oaks,
alders, sycamores, and persimmons--this was the scene on which the
Illinois emigrants arrived, as they journeyed to their new home in the
far West. On the north bank of the river, only a few hundred rods from
the stream, was the log-cabin of Younkins. It was built on the edge of
a fine bit of timber land, in which oaks and hickories were mingled
with less valuable trees. Near by the cabin, and hugging closely up to
it, was a thrifty field of corn and other garden stuff, just beginning
to look promising of good things to come; and it was a refreshing
sight here in the wilderness, for all around was the virgin forest and
the unbroken prairie.
Younkins's wife, a pale, sallow, and anxious-looking woman, and
Younkins's baby boy, chubby and open-eyed, welcomed the strangers
without much show of feeling other than a natural curiosity. With
Western hospitality, the little cabin was found large enough to
receive all the party, and the floor was covered with blankets and
buffalo-skins when they lay down to sleep their first night near their
future home in the country of the Republican Fork. The boys were very
happy that their journey was at an end. They had listened with delight
while Younkins told stories of buffalo and antelope hunting, of Indian
"scares," and of the many queer adventures of settlers on this distant
frontier.
"What is there west of this?" asked Charlie, as the party were
dividing the floor and the shallow loft among themselves for the
night.
"Nothing but Indians and buffalo," said Younkins, sententiously.
"No settlers anywhere?" cried Sandy, eagerly.
"The next settlement west of here, if you can call it a settlement, is
Fort Kearney, on the other side of the Platte. From here to there,
there isn't so much as a hunter's camp, so far as I know." This was
Younkins's last word, as he tumbled, half dressed, into his bunk in
one corner of the cabin. Sandy hugged his brother Charlie before he
dropped off to sleep, and whispered in his ear, "We're on the frontier
at last! It's just splendid!"
Next day, leaving their cattle and wagon at the Younkins homestead,
the party, piloted by their good-natured future neighbor, forded the
Fork and went over into the Promised Land. The river was rather high
as yet; for the snow, melting in the far-off Rocky Mountains as the
summer advanced, had swollen all the tributaries of the Republican
Fork, and the effects of the rise were to be seen far down on the Kaw.
The newcomers were initiated into the fashion of the country by
Younkins, who directed each one to take off all clothes but his shirt
and hat. Then their garments were rolled up in bundles, each man and
boy taking his own on his head, and wading deliberately into the
water, the sedate Younkins being the leader.
It seemed a little dangerous. The stream was about one hundred rods
wide, and the current was tolerably swift, swollen by the inrush of
smaller streams above. The water was cold, and made an ominous
swishing and gurgling among the underbrush that leaned into the margin
of the river. In Indian file, Mr. Howell bringing up the rear, and
keeping his eyes anxiously upon the lads before him, they all crossed
in safety, Sandy, the shortest of the party, being unable to keep dry
the only garment he had worn, for the water came well up under his
arms.
"Well, that was funny, anyhow," he blithely remarked, as he wrung the
water out of his shirt, and, drying himself as well as he could,
dressed and joined the rest of the party in the trip toward their
future home.
Along the lower bank of the Republican Fork, where the new settlers
now found themselves, the country is gently undulating. Bordering the
stream they saw a dense growth of sycamores, cottonwoods, and birches.
Some of these trees were tall and handsome, and the general effect on
the minds of the newcomers was delightful. After they had emerged from
the woods that skirted the river, they were in the midst of a lovely
rolling prairie, the forest on the right; on their left was a thick
growth of wood that marked the winding course of a creek which, rising
far to the west, emptied into the Republican Fork at a point just
below where the party had forded the stream. The land rose gradually
from the point nearest the ford, breaking into a low, rocky bluff
beyond at their right and nearest the river, a mile away, and rolling
off to the southwest in folds and swales.
Just at the foot of the little bluff ahead, with a background of
trees, was a log-cabin of hewn timber, weather-stained and gray in the
summer sun, absolutely alone, and looking as if lost in this untrodden
wild. Pointing to it, Younkins said, "That's your house so long as you
want it."
The emigrants tramped through the tall, lush grass that covered every
foot of the new Kansas soil, their eyes fixed eagerly on the log-cabin
before them. The latch-string hung out hospitably from the door of
split "shakes," and the party entered without ado. Everything was just
as Younkins had last left it. Two or three gophers, disturbed in
their foraging about the premises, fled swiftly at the entrance of the
visitors, and a flock of blackbirds, settled around the rear of the
house, flew noisily across the creek that wound its way down to the
Fork.
The floor was of puncheons split from oak logs, and laid loosely on
rough-hewn joists. These rattled as the visitors walked over them. At
one end of the cabin a huge fireplace of stone laid in clay yawned for
the future comfort of the new tenants. Near by, a rude set of shelves
suggested a pantry, and a table, home-made and equally rude, stood in
the middle of the floor. In one corner was built a bedstead, two sides
of the house furnishing two sides of the work, and the other two being
made by driving a stake into the floor, and connecting that by
string-pieces to the sides of the cabin. Thongs of buffalo-hide formed
the bottom of this novel bedstead. A few stools and short benches were
scattered about. Near the fireplace long and strong pegs, driven into
the logs, served as a ladder, on which one could climb to the low loft
overhead. Two windows, each of twelve small panes of glass, let in the
light, one from the end of the cabin, and one from the back opposite
the door, which was in the middle of the front. Outside, a frail
shanty of shakes leaned against the cabin, affording a sort of outdoor
kitchen for summer use.
"So this is home," said Charlie, gazing about. "What will mother say
to this--if she ever gets here?"
"Well, we've taken a heap of comfort here, my old woman and me," said
Younkins, looking around quickly, and with an air of surprise. "It's a
mighty comfortable house; leastways we think so."
Charlie apologized for having seemed to cast any discredit on the
establishment. Only he said that he did not suppose that his mother
knew much about log-cabins. As for himself, he would like nothing
better than this for a home for a long time to come. "For," he added,
roguishly, "you know we have come to make the West, 'as they the East,
the homestead of the free.'"
Mr. Younkins looked puzzled, but made no remark. The younger boys,
after taking in the situation and fondly inspecting every detail of
the premises, enthusiastically agreed that nothing could be finer than
this. They darted out of doors, and saw a corral, or pound, in which
the cattle could be penned up, in case of need. There was a small
patch of fallow ground, that needed only to be spaded up to become a
promising garden-spot. Then, swiftly running to the top of the little
bluff beyond, they gazed over the smiling panorama of emerald prairie,
laced with woody creeks, level fields, as yet undisturbed by the
ploughshare, blue, distant woods and yet more distant hills, among
which, to the northwest, the broad river wound and disappeared.
Westward, nothing was to be seen but the green and rolling swales of
the virgin prairie, broken here and there by an outcropping of rock.
And as they looked, a tawny, yellowish creature trotted out from
behind a roll of the prairie, sniffed in the direction of the boys,
and then stealthily disappeared in the wildness of the vast expanse.
[Illustration: THE SETTLERS' FIRST HOME IN THE DESERTED CABIN.]
"A coyote," said Sandy, briefly. "I've seen them in Illinois. But I
wish I had my gun now." His wiser brother laughed as he told him that
it would be a long day before a coyote could be got near enough to be
knocked over with any shot-gun. The coyote, or prairie-wolf, is the
slyest animal that walks on four legs.
The three men and Charlie returned to the further side of the Fork,
and made immediate preparations to move all their goods and effects to
the new home of the emigrants. Sandy and Oscar, being rather too small
to wade the stream without discomfort, while it was so high, were left
on the south bank to receive the returning party.
There the boys sat, hugely enjoying the situation, while the others
were loading the wagon and yoking the oxen on the other side. The lads
could hear the cheery sounds of the men talking, although they could
not see them through the trees that lined the farther bank of the
river. The flow of the stream made a ceaseless lapping against the
brink of the shore. A party of catbirds quarrelled sharply in the
thicket hard by; quail whistled in the underbrush of the adjacent
creek, and overhead a solitary eagle circled slowly around as if
looking down to watch these rude invaders of the privacy of the
dominion that had existed ever since the world began.
Hugging his knees in measureless content, as they sat in the grass by
the river, Sandy asked, almost in a whisper, "Have you ever been
homesick since we left Dixon, Oscar?"
"Just once, Sandy; and that was yesterday when I saw those nice-looking
ladies at the fort out walking in the morning with their children. That
was the first sight that looked like home since we crossed the Missouri."
"Me, too," answered Sandy, soberly. "But this is just about as fine as
anything can be. Only think of it, Oscar! There are buffalo and
antelopes within ten or fifteen miles of here. I know, for Younkins
told me so. And Indians,--not wild Indians, but tame ones that are at
peace with the whites. It seems too good to have happened to us;
doesn't it, Oscar?"
Once more the wagon was blocked up for a difficult ford, the lighter
and more perishable articles of its load being packed into a dugout,
or canoe hollowed from a sycamore log, which was the property of
Younkins, and used only at high stages of the water. The three men
guided the wagon and oxen across while Charlie, stripped to his
shirt, pushed the loaded dugout carefully over, and the two boys on
the other bank, full of the importance of the event, received the
solitary voyager, unloaded the canoe, and then transferred the little
cargo to the wagon. The caravan took its way up the rolling ground of
the prairie to the log-cabin. Willing hands unloaded and took into the
house the tools, provisions, and clothes that constituted their all,
and, before the sun went down, the settlers were at home.
While in Manhattan, they had supplied themselves with potatoes; at
Fort Riley they had bought fresh beef from the sutler. Sandy made a
glorious fire in the long-disused fireplace. His father soon had a
batch of biscuits baking in the covered kettle, or Dutch oven, that
they had brought with them from home. Charlie's contribution to the
repast was a pot of excellent coffee, the milk for which, an
unaccustomed luxury, was supplied by the thoughtfulness of Mrs.
Younkins. So, with thankful hearts, they gathered around their frugal
board and took their first meal in their new home.
When supper was done and the cabin, now lighted by the scanty rays of
two tallow candles, had been made tidy for the night, Oscar took out
his violin, and, after much needed tuning, struck into the measure of
wild, warbling "Dundee." All hands took the hint, and all voices were
raised once more to the words of Whittier's song of the "Kansas
Emigrants." Perhaps it was with new spirit and new tenderness that
they sang,--
"No pause, nor rest, save where the streams
That feed the Kansas run,
Save where the pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the setting sun!"
"I don't know what the pilgrim's gonfalon is," said Sandy, sleepily,
"but I guess it's all right." The emigrants had crossed the prairies
as of old their father had crossed the sea. They were now at home in
the New West. The night fell dark and still about their lonely cabin
as, with hope and trust, they laid them down to peaceful dreams.
CHAPTER IX.
SETTING THE STAKES.
"We mustn't let any grass grow under our feet, boys," was Mr. Aleck
Howell's energetic remark, next morning, when the little party had
finished their first breakfast in their new home.
"That means work, I s'pose," replied Oscar, turning a longing glance
to his violin hanging on the side of the cabin, with a broken string
crying for repairs.
"Yes, and hard work, too," said his father, noting the lad's look.
"Luckily for us, Brother Aleck," he continued, "our boys are not
afraid of work. They have been brought up to it, and although I am
thinking they don't know much about the sort of work that we shall
have to put in on these beautiful prairies, I guess they will buckle
down to it. Eh?" and the loving father turned his look from the grassy
and rolling plain to his son's face.
Sandy answered for him. "Oh, yes, Uncle Charlie, we all like work!
Afraid of work? Why, Oscar and I are so used to it that we would be
willing to lie right down by the side of it, and sleep as securely as
if it were as harmless as a kitten! Afraid of work? Never you fear
'the Dixon boys who fear no noise'--what's the rest of that song?"
Nobody knew, and, in the laugh that followed, Mr. Howell suggested
that as Younkins was coming over the river to show them the stakes of
their new claims, the boys might better set an extra plate at
dinner-time. It was very good of Younkins to take so much trouble on
their account, and the least they could do was to show him proper
hospitality.
"What is all this about stakes and quarter-sections, anyway, father?"
asked Sandy. "I'm sure I don't know."
"He doesn't know what quarter-sections are!" shouted Charlie. "Oh, my!
what an ignoramus!"
"Well, what is a quarter-section, as you are so knowing?" demanded
Sandy. "I don't believe you know yourself."
"It is a quarter of a section of public land," answered the lad.
"Every man or single woman of mature age--I think that is what the
books say--who doesn't own several hundred acres of land elsewhere (I
don't know just how many) is entitled to enter on and take up a
quarter of a section of unoccupied public land, and have it for a
homestead. That's all," and Charlie looked to his father for
approval.
"Pretty good, Charlie," said his uncle. "How many acres are there in a
quarter-section of land?"
"Yes, how many acres in a quarter of a section?" shouted Sandy, who
saw that his brother hesitated. "Speak up, my little man, and don't be
afraid!"
"I don't know," replied the lad, frankly.
"Good for you!" said his father. "Never be afraid of saying that you
don't know when you do _not_ know. The fear of confessing ignorance is
what has wrecked many a young fellow's chances for finding out things
he should know."
"Well, boys," said Mr. Bryant, addressing himself to the three lads,
"all the land of the United States Government that is open to
settlement is laid off in townships six miles square. These, in turn,
are laid off into sections of six hundred and forty acres each. Now,
then, how much land should there be in a quarter-section?"
"One hundred and sixty acres!" shouted all three boys at once,
breathlessly.
"Correct. The Government allows every man, or single woman of mature
age, widow or unmarried, to go upon a plot of land, not more than one
hundred and sixty acres nor less than forty acres, and to improve it,
and live upon it. If he stays there, or 'maintains a continuous
residence,' as the lawyers say, for a certain length of time, the
Government gives him a title-deed at the end of that time, and he owns
the land."
"What?--free, gratis, and for nothing?" cried Sandy.
"Certainly," said his uncle. "The homestead law was passed by Congress
to encourage the settlement of the lands belonging to the Government.
You see there is an abundance of these lands,--so much, in fact, that
they have not yet been all laid off into townships and sections and
quarter-sections. If a large number of homestead claims are taken up,
then other settlers will be certain to come in and buy the lands that
the Government has to sell; and that will make settlements grow
throughout that locality."
"Why should they buy when they can get land for nothing by entering
and taking possession, just as we are going to do?" interrupted
Oscar.
"Because, my son, many of the men cannot make oath that they have not
taken up Government land somewhere else; and then, again, many men are
going into land speculations, and they don't care to wait five years
to prove up a homestead claim. So they go upon the land, stake out
their claim, and the Government sells it to them outright at the rate
of a dollar and a quarter an acre."
"Cash down?" asked Charlie.
"No, they need not pay cash down unless they choose. The Government
allows them a year to pay up in. But land speculators who make a
business of this sort of thing generally pay up just as soon as they
are allowed to, and then, if they get a good offer to sell out, they
sell and move off somewhere else, and do the same thing over again."
"People have to pay fees, don't they, Uncle Charlie?" said Sandy. "I
know they used to talk about land-office fees, in Dixon. How much does
it cost in fees to enter a piece of Government land?"
"I think it is about twenty-five dollars--twenty-six, to be exact,"
replied Mr. Bryant. "There comes Younkins," he added, looking down the
trail to the river bank below.
The boys had been washing and putting away the breakfast things while
this conversation was going on, and Sandy, balancing in the air a big
tin pan on his fingers, asked: "How much land can we fellows enter,
all told?" The two men laughed.
"Well, Alexander," said his father, ceremoniously, "We two 'fellows,'
that is to say, your Uncle Charlie and myself, can enter one hundred
and sixty acres apiece. Charlie will be able to enter the same
quantity three years from now, when he will be twenty-one; and as for
you and Oscar, if you each add to your present years as many as will
make you twenty-one, you can tell when you will be able to enter and
own the same amount of land; provided it is not all gone by that time.
Good morning, Mr. Younkins." Sandy's pan came down with a crash on the
puncheon floor.
The land around that region of the Republican Fork had been surveyed
into sections of six hundred and forty acres each; but it would be
necessary to secure the services of a local surveyor to find out just
where the boundaries of each quarter-section were. The stakes were set
at the corner of each section, and Younkins thought that by pacing off
the distance between two corners they could get at the point that
would mark the middle of the section; then, by running lines across
from side to side, thus: [Transcriber's note: An image of a square
subdivided into four smaller squares appears here] they could get at
the quarter-sections nearly enough to be able to tell about where
their boundaries were.
"But suppose you should build a house, or plough a field, on some
other man's quarter-section," suggested Charlie, "wouldn't you feel
cheap when the final survey showed that you had all along been
improving your neighbor's property?"
"There isn't any danger of that," answered Younkins, "if you are smart
enough to keep well away from your boundary line when you are
putting in your improvements. Some men are not smart enough,
though. There was a man over on Chapman's Creek who wanted to have
his log-cabin on a pretty rise of ground-like, that was on the upper
end of his claim. He knew that the line ran somewhere about there;
but he took chances-like, and when the line was run, a year after
that, lo, and behold! his house and garden-like were both clean
over into the next man's claim."
"What did he do?" asked Charlie. "Skip out of the place?"
"Sho! No, indeed! His neighbor was a white man-like, and they just
took down the cabin and carried it across the boundary line and set it
up again on the man's own land. He's livin' there yet; but he lost his
garden-like; couldn't move that, you see"; and Younkins laughed one of
his infrequent laughs.
The land open to the settlers on the south side of the Republican Fork
was all before them. Nothing had been taken up within a distance as
far as they could see. Chapman's Creek, just referred to by Younkins,
was eighteen or twenty miles away. From the point at which they stood
and toward Chapman's, the land was surveyed; but to the westward the
surveys ran only just across the creek, which, curving from the north
and west, made a complete circuit around the land and emptied into the
Fork, just below the fording-place. Inside of that circuit, the land,
undulating, and lying with a southern exposure, was destitute of
trees. It was rich, fat land, but there was not a tree on it except
where it crossed the creek, the banks of which were heavily wooded.
Inside of that circuit somewhere, the two men must stake out their
claim. There was nothing but rich, unshaded land, with a meandering
woody creek flowing through the bottom of the two claims, provided
they were laid out side by side. The corner stakes were found, and
the men prepared to pace off the distance between the corners so as to
find the centre.
"It is a pity there is no timber anywhere," said Howell, discontentedly.
"We shall have to go several miles for timber enough to build our
cabins. We don't want to cut down right away what little there is
along the creek."
"Timber?" said Younkins, reflectively. "Timber? Well, if one of you
would put up with a quarter-section of farming land, then the other
can enter some of the timber land up on the North Branch."
Now, the North Branch was two miles and a half from the cabin in which
the Dixon party were camped; and that cabin was two miles from the
beautiful slopes on which the intending settlers were now looking for
an opportunity to lay out their two claims. The two men looked at each
other. Could they divide and settle this far apart for the sake of
getting a timber lot?
It was Sandy who solved the problem. "I'll tell you what to do,
father!" he cried, eagerly: "you take up the timber claim on the North
Branch, and we boys can live there; then you and Uncle Charlie can
keep one of the claims here. We can build two cabins, and you old
folks can live in one, and we in another."
The fathers exchanged glances, and Mr. Howell said, "I don't see how I
could live without Sandy and Charlie."
[Illustration: YOUNKINS ARGUED THAT SETTLERS WERE ENTITLED TO ALL THEY
COULD GET AND HOLD.]
Younkins brightened up at Sandy's suggestion; and he added that the
two men might take up two farming claims, side by side, and let the
boys try and hold the timber claim on the North Branch. Thus far,
there was no rush of emigration to the south side of the Republican
Fork. Most of the settlers went further to the south; or they halted
further east, and fixed their stakes along the line of the Big Blue
and other more accessible regions.
"We'll chance it, won't we, Aleck?" said Mr. Bryant.
Mr. Howell looked vaguely off over the rolling slope on which they
were standing, and said: "We will chance it with the boys on the
timber land, but I am not in favor of taking up two claims here. Let
the timber claim be in my name or yours, and the boys can live on it.
But we can't take up two claims here and the timber besides--three in
all--with only two full-grown men among the whole of us. That stands
to reason."
Younkins was a little puzzled by the strictness with which the two
newcomers were disposed to regard their rights and duties as actual
settlers. He argued that settlers were entitled to all they could get
and hold; and he was in favor of the party's trying to hold three
claims of one hundred and sixty acres each, even if there were only
two men legally entitled to enter homesteads. Wouldn't Charlie be of
age before the time came to take out a patent for the land?
"But he is not of age to enter upon and hold the land now," said his
father, stiffly.
So it was settled that the two men should enter upon the quarter-section
of farming land, and build a cabin as soon as convenient, and that the
claim on the North Fork, which had a fine grove of timber on it,
should be set apart for the boys, and a cabin built there, too. The
cabin in the timber need not be built until late in the autumn; that
claim could be taken up by Mr. Howell, or by Mr. Bryant; by and by they
would draw lots to decide which. Before sundown that night, they had
staked out the corners of the one hundred and sixty acre lot of
farming land, on which the party had arrived in the morning.
It was dark before they returned from looking over the timber land in
the bend of the North Fork of the Republican.
CHAPTER X.
DRAWING THE FIRST FURROW.
The good-natured Younkins was on hand bright and early the next
morning, to show the new settlers where to cut the first furrow on the
land which they had determined to plough. Having decided to take the
northwest corner of the quarter-section selected, it was easy to find
the stake set at the corner. Then, having drawn an imaginary line from
the stake to that which was set in the southwest corner, the tall
Charlie standing where he could he used as a sign for said landmark,
his father and his uncle, assisted by Younkins, and followed by the
two other boys, set the big breaking-plough as near that line as
possible. The four yoke of oxen stood obediently in line. Mr. Howell
firmly held the plough-handles; Younkins drove the two forward yoke of
cattle, and Mr. Bryant the second two; and the two younger boys stood
ready to hurrah as soon as the word was given to start. It was an
impressive moment to the youngsters.
"Gee up!" shouted Younkins, as mildly as if the oxen were petted
children. The long train moved; the sharp nose of the plough cut into
the virgin turf, turning over a broad sod, about five inches thick;
and then the plough swept onward toward the point where Charlie stood
waving his red handkerchief in the air. Sandy seized a huge piece of
the freshly-turned sod, and swinging it over his head with his strong
young arms, he cried, "Three cheers for the first sod of Bleeding
Kansas! 'Rah! 'Rah! 'Rah!" The farming of the boy settlers had begun.
Charlie, at his distant post on the other side of the creek, saw the
beginning of things, and sent back an answering cheer to the two
boys who were dancing around the massive and slow-moving team of
cattle. The men smiled at the enthusiasm of the youngsters, but in
their hearts the two new settlers felt that this was, after all, an
event of much significance. The green turf now being turned over was
disturbed by ploughshare for the first time since the creation of
the world. Scarcely ever had this soil felt the pressure of the foot
of a white man. For ages unnumbered it had been the feeding-ground
of the buffalo and the deer. The American savage had chased his game
over it, and possibly the sod had been wet with the blood of
contending tribes. Now all was to be changed. As the black, loamy
soil was turned for the first time to the light of day, so for the
first time the long-neglected plain was being made useful for the
support of civilized man.
No wonder the boys cheered and cheered again.
[Illustration: SANDY SEIZED A HUGE PIECE OF THE FRESHLY-TURNED SOD, AND
WAVING IT OVER HIS HEAD CRIED, "THREE CHEERS FOR THE FIRST SOD OF
BLEEDING KANSAS!"]
"We go to plant her common schools,
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells."
This is what was in Mr. Charles Bryant's mind as he wielded the
ox-goad over the backs of the animals that drew the great plough along
the first furrow cut on the farm of the emigrants. The day was bright
and fair; the sun shone down on the flower-gemmed sod; no sound broke
on the still air but the slow treading of the oxen, the chirrup of the
drivers, the ripping of the sod as it was turned in the furrow, and
the gay shouts of the light-hearted boys.
In a line of marvellous straightness, Younkins guided the leading yoke
of cattle directly toward the creek on the other side of which Charlie
yet stood, a tall, but animated landmark. When, after descending the
gradual slope on which the land lay, the trees that bordered the
stream hid the lad from view, it was decided that the furrow was long
enough to mark the westerly boundary line of the forty acres which it
was intended to break up for the first corn-field on the farm. Then
the oxen were turned, with some difficulty, at right angles with the
line just drawn, and were driven easterly until the southern boundary
of the patch was marked out. Turning, now, at right angles, and
tracing another line at the north, then again to the west to the point
of original departure, they had accurately defined the outer
boundaries of the field on which so much in the future depended; for
here was to be planted the first crop of the newcomers.
Younkins, having started the settlers in their first farming, returned
across the river to his own plough, first having sat down with the
Dixon party to a substantial dinner. For the boys, after the first few
furrows were satisfactorily turned, had gone back to the cabin and
made ready the noon meal. The ploughmen, when they came to the cabin
in answer to Sandy's whoop from the roof, had made a considerable
beginning in the field. They had gone around within the outer edge of
the plantation that was to be, leaving with each circuit a broader
band of black and shining loam over which a flock of birds hopped and
swept with eager movements, snapping up the insects and worms which,
astonished at the great upheaval, wriggled in the overturned turf.
"Looks sorter homelike here," said Younkins, with a pleased smile,
as he drew his bench to the well-spread board and glanced around at
the walls of the cabin, where the boys had already hung their
fishing-tackle, guns, Oscar's violin, and a few odds and ends that
gave a picturesque look to the long-deserted cabin.
"Yes," said Mr. Bryant, as he filled Younkins's tin cup with hot
coffee, "our boys have all got the knack of making themselves at
home,--runs in the blood, I guess,--and if you come over here again
in a day or two, you will probably find us with rugs on the floor and
pictures on the walls. Sandy is a master-hand at hunting; and he
intends to get a dozen buffalo-skins out of hand, so to speak, right
away." And he looked fondly at his freckled nephew as he spoke.
"A dibble and a corn-dropper will be more in his way than the rifle,
for some weeks to come," said Mr. Howell.
"What's a dibble?" asked both of the youngsters at once.
The elder man smiled and looked at Younkins as he said, "A dibble, my
lambs, is an instrument for the planting of corn. With it in one hand
you punch a hole in the sod that has been turned over, and then, with
the other hand, you drop in three or four grains of corn from the
corn-dropper, cover it with your heel, and there you are,--planted."
"Why, I supposed we were going to plant corn with a hoe; and we've got
the hoes, too!" cried Oscar.
"No, my son," said his father; "if we were to plant corn with a hoe,
we shouldn't get through planting before next fall, I am afraid. After
dinner, we will make some dibbles for you boys, for you must begin to
drop corn to-morrow. What ploughing we have done to-day, you can
easily catch up with when you begin. And the three of you can all be
on the furrow at once, if that seems worth while."
The boys very soon understood fully what a dibble was, and what a
corn-dropper was, strange though those implements were to them at
first. Before the end of planting-time, they fervently wished they had
never seen either of these instruments of the corn-planter.
With the aid of a few rude tools, there was fashioned a staff from the
tough hickory that grew near at hand, the lower part of the stick
being thick and pointed at the end. The staff was about as high as
would come up to a boy's shoulder, so that as he grasped it near the
upper end, his arm being bent, the lower end was on the ground.
The upper end was whittled so as to make a convenient handle for the
user. The lower end was shaped carefully into something like the
convex sides of two spoons put together by their bowls, and the lower
edge of this part was shaved down to a sharpness that was increased by
slightly hardening it in the fire. Just above the thickest part of the
dibble, a hole was bored at right angles through the wood, and into
this a peg was driven so that several inches stuck out on both sides
of the instrument. This completed the dibble.
"So that is a dibble, is it?" said Oscar, when the first one was shown
him. "A dibble. Now let's see how you use it."
Thereupon his Uncle Aleck stood up, grasped the staff by the upper
end, pressed his foot on the peg at the lower end of the tool, and so
forced the sharp point of the dibble downward into the earth. Then,
drawing it out, a convex slit was shown in the elastic turf. Shaking
an imaginary grain of corn into the hole, he closed it with a stamp of
his heel, stepped on and repeated the motion a few times, and then
said, "That's how they plant corn on the sod in Kansas."
"Uncle Aleck, what a lot you know!" said Oscar, with undisguised
admiration.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bryant, taking a pair of old boots, cut off the legs
just above the ankles, and, fastening in the lower end of each a round
bit of wood, by means of small nails, quickly made a pair of
corn-droppers. Sandy's belt, being passed through the loop-strap of
one of these, was fastened around his waist. The dropper was to be
filled with corn, and, thus accoutred, he was ready for doing duty in
the newly ploughed field. When the lad expressed his impatience for
another day to come so that he could begin corn-planting, the two
elders of the family laughed outright.
"Sandy, boy, you will be glad when to-morrow night comes, so that you
can rest from your labors. You remember what I tell you!" said his
father.
Nevertheless, when the two boys stepped bravely out, next morning, in
the wake of the breaking-team, they were not in the least dismayed by
the prospect of working all day in the heavy furrows of the plough.
Bryant drove the leading yoke of oxen, Charlie tried his 'prentice
hand with the second yoke, and Howell held the plough.
"'He that by the plough would thrive,
Must either hold the plough or drive,'"
commented Oscar, filling his corn-dropper and eyeing his father's
rather awkward handling of the ox-goad. Uncle Aleck had usually driven
the cattle, but his hand was now required in the more difficult
business of holding the plough.
"'Plough deep while sluggards sleep,'" replied his father; "and if you
don't manage better with dropping corn than I do with driving these
oxen, we shall have a short crop."
"How many grains of corn to a hole, Uncle Aleck? and how many bushels
to the acre?" asked Oscar.
"Not more than five grains nor less than three is the rule, my boy.
Now then, step out lively."
And the big team swept down the slope, leaving a broad and shining
furrow behind it. The two boys followed, one about twenty feet behind
the other, and when the hindermost had come up to the work of him who
was ahead, he skipped the planted part and went on ahead of his
comrade twenty feet, thus alternating each with the other. They were
cheerily at work when, apparently from under the feet of the forward
yoke of oxen, a bird somewhat bigger than a robin flew up with shrieks
of alarm and went fluttering off along the ground, tumbling in the
grass as if desperately wounded and unable to fly. Sandy made a rush
for the bird, which barely eluded his clutches once or twice, and
drew him on and on in a fruitless chase; for the timid creature soon
recovered the use of its wings, and soaring aloft, disappeared in the
depths of the sky.
"That's the deceivingest bird I ever saw," panted Sandy, out of breath
with running, and looking shamefacedly at the corn that he had spilled
in his haste to catch his prey. "Why, it acted just as if its right
wing was broken, and then it flew off as sound as a nut, for all I
could see."
When the ploughmen met them, on the next turn of the team, Uncle Aleck
said, "Did you catch the lapwing, you silly boy? That fellow fooled
you nicely."
"Lapwing?" said Sandy, puzzled. "What's a lapwing?" But the ploughmen
were already out of earshot.
"Oh, I know now," said Oscar. "I've read of the lapwing; it is a bird
so devoted to its young, or its nest, that when it fancies either in
danger, it assumes all the distress of a wounded thing, and,
fluttering along the ground, draws the sportsman away from the
locality."
"Right out of a book, Oscar!" cried Sandy. "And here's its nest, as
sure as I'm alive!" So saying, the lad stooped, and, parting the grass
with his hands, disclosed a pretty nest sunk in the ground, holding
five finely speckled eggs. The bird, so lately playing the cripple,
cried and circled around the heads of the boys as they peered into the
home of the lapwing.
"Well, here's an actual settler that we must disturb, Sandy," said
Oscar; "for the plough will smash right through this nest on the very
next turn. Suppose we take it up and put it somewhere else, out of
harm's way?"
"I'm willing," assented Sandy; and the two boys, carefully extracting
the nest from its place, carried it well over into the ploughed
ground, where under the lee of a thick turf it was left in safety.
But, as might have been expected, the parent lapwing never went near
that nest again. The fright had been too great.
"What in the world are you two boys up to now?" shouted Uncle Aleck
from the other side of the ploughing. "Do you call that dropping corn?
Hurry and catch up with the team; you are 'way behind."
"Great Scott!" cried Sandy; "I had clean forgotten the corn-dropping.
A nice pair of farmers we are, Oscar!" and the lad, with might and
main, began to close rapidly the long gap between him and the steadily
moving ox-team.
"Leg-weary work, isn't it, Sandy?" said his father, when they stopped
at noon to take the luncheon they had brought out into the field with
them.
"Yes, and I'm terribly hungry," returned the boy, biting into a huge
piece of cold corn-bread. "I shouldn't eat this if I were at home, and
I shouldn't eat it now if I weren't as hungry as a bear. Say, daddy,
you cannot think how tired my leg is with the punching of that dibble
into the sod; seems as if I couldn't hold out till sundown; but I
suppose I shall. First, I punch a hole by jamming down the dibble with
my foot, and then I kick the hole again with the same foot, after I
have dropped in the grains of corn. These two motions are dreadfully
tiresome."
"Yes," said his uncle, with a short laugh, "and while I was watching
you and Oscar, this forenoon, I couldn't help thinking that you did
not yet know how to make your muscles bear an equal strain. Suppose
you try changing legs?"
"Changing legs?" exclaimed both boys at once. "Why, how could we
exchange legs?"
"I know what Uncle Aleck means. I saw you always used the right leg to
jam down the dibble with, and then you kicked the hole full with the
right heel. No wonder your right legs are tired. Change hands and
legs, once in a while, and use the dibble on the left side of you,"
said Charlie, whose driving had tired him quite as thoroughly.
"Isn't Charlie too awfully knowing for anything, Oscar?" said Sandy,
with some sarcasm. Nevertheless, the lad got up, tried the dibble with
his left hand, and saying, "Thanks, Charlie," dropped down upon the
fragrant sod and was speedily asleep, for a generous nooning was
allowed the industrious lads.
CHAPTER XI
AN INDIAN TRAIL.
The next day was Sunday, and, true to their New England training, the
settlers refrained from labor on the day of rest. Mr. Bryant took his
pocket Bible and wandered off into the wild waste of lands somewhere.
The others lounged about the cabin, indoors and out, a trifle sore and
stiff from the effects of work so much harder than that to which they
had been accustomed, and glad of an opportunity to rest their limbs.
The younger of the boy settlers complained that they had worn their
legs out with punching holes in the sod while planting corn. The soles
of their feet were sore with the pressure needed to jam the dibble
through the tough turf. In the afternoon, they all wandered off
through the sweet and silent wilderness of rolling prairie into the
woods in which they proposed to lay off another claim for pre-emption.
At a short distance above their present home, cutting sharply through
the sod, and crossing the Republican Fork a mile or so above their own
ford, was an old Indian trail, which the boys had before noticed but
could not understand. As Charlie and Oscar, pressing on ahead of
their elders, came upon the old trail, they loitered about until the
rest of the party came up, and then they asked what could have cut
that narrow track in the turf, so deep and so narrow.
"That's an Injun trail," said Younkins, who, with an uncomfortably new
suit of Sunday clothes and a smooth-shaven face, had come over to
visit his new neighbors. "Didn't you ever see an Injun trail before?"
he asked, noting the look of eager curiosity on the faces of the boys.
They assured him that they never had, and he continued: "This yere
trail has been here for years and years, long and long before any
white folks came into the country. Up north and east of yer, on the
head-waters of the Big Blue, the Cheyennes used to live,"--Younkins
pronounced it Shyans,--"and as soon as the grass began to start in the
spring, so as to give feed to their ponies and to the buffalo, they
would come down this yere way for game. They crossed the Fork just
above yere-like, and then they struck down to the head-waters of the
Smoky Hill and so off to the westwards. Big game was plenty in those
days, and now the Injuns off to the north of yere come down in just
the same way--hunting for game."
The boys got down on their knees and scanned the trail with new
interest. It was not more than nine or ten inches across, and was so
worn down that it made a narrow trench, as it were, in the deep sod,
its lower surface being as smooth as a rolled wagon-track. Over this
well-worn track, for ages past, the hurrying feet of wild tribes had
passed so many times that even the wiry grass-roots had been killed
down.
"Did war parties ever go out on this trail, do you suppose?" asked
Sandy, sitting up in the grass.
"Sakes alive, yes!" replied Younkins. "Why, the Cheyennes and the
Comanches used to roam over all these plains, in the old times, and
they were mostly at war."
"Where are the Cheyennes and the Comanches now, Mr. Younkins?" asked
Uncle Aleck.
"I reckon the Comanches are off to the south-like somewhere. It
appears to me that I heard they were down off the Texas border,
somewheres; the Cheyennes are to the westwards, somewhere near Fort
Laramie."
"And what Indians are there who use this trail now?" inquired Oscar,
whose eyes were sparkling with excitement as he studied the well-worn
path of the Indian tribes.
Younkins explained that the Pottawottomies and the Pawnees, now
located to the north, were the only ones who used the trail. "Blanket
Indians," he said they were, peaceable creatures enough, but not good
neighbors; he did not want any Indians of any sort near him. When one
of the boys asked what blanket Indians were, Younkins explained,--
"There's three kinds of Injuns, none on 'em good,--town Injuns,
blanket Injuns, and wild Injuns. You saw some of the town Injuns when
you came up through the Delaware reserve--great lazy fellows, lyin'
round the house all day and lettin' the squaws do all the work. Then
there's the blankets; they live out in the woods and on the prairie,
in teepees, or lodges, of skins and canvas-like, moving round from
place to place, hunting over the plains in summer, and living off'n
the Gov'ment in winter. They are mostly at peace with the whites, but
they will steal whenever they get a chance. The other kind, and the
worst, is the wild ones. They have nothing to do with the Government,
and they make war on the whites whenever they feel like it. Just now,
I don't know of any wild Injuns that are at war with Uncle Sam; but
the Arapahoes, Comanches, and Cheyennes are all likely to break loose
any time. I give 'm all a plenty of elbow room."
As the boys reluctantly ceased contemplating the fascinating Indian
trail, and moved on behind the rest of the party, Charlie said: "I
suppose we must make allowance for Younkins's prejudices. He is like
most of the border men, who believe that all the good Indians are
dead. If the Cheyennes and the Comanches could only tell their story
in the books and newspapers, we might hear the other side."
The idea of a wild Indian's writing a book or a letter to the
newspapers tickled Sandy so much that he laughed loud and long.
Some two miles above the point where the settlers' ford crossed the
Republican Fork, the stream swept around a bluffy promontory, and on a
curve just above this was the tract of timber land which they now
proposed to enter upon for their second claim. The trees were oak,
hickory, and beech, with a slight undergrowth of young cottonwoods and
hazel. The land lay prettily, the stream at this point flowing in a
southerly direction, with the timber claim on its northwesterly bank.
The sunny exposure of the grove, the open glades that diversified its
dense growth, and the babbling brook that wound its way through it to
the river, all combined to make it very desirable for a timber claim.
At a short distance from the river the land rose gradually to a high
ridge, and on the top of this grew a thick wood of spruce and fir.
"That's what you want for your next cabin," said Younkins, pointing
his finger in the direction of the pines. "Best kind of stuff for
building there is in these parts." Then he explained to the boys the
process of cutting down the trees, splitting them up into shakes, or
into lengths suitable for cabin-building, and he gave them an
entertaining account of all the ways and means of finishing up a
log-cabin,--a process, by the way, which they found then more
entertaining in description than they afterward found it in the
reality.
That night when Sandy lay down to refreshing sleep it was to dream of
picturesque Indian fights, witnessed at a safe distance from afar.
Accordingly, he was not very much surprised next morning, while he was
helping Charlie to get ready the breakfast, when Oscar ran in
breathless, with the one word, "Indians!"
"Come out on the hill back of the cabin," panted Oscar. "There's a lot
of 'em coming out on the trail we saw yesterday, all in Indian file.
Hurry up!" and away he darted, Sandy hastening with him to see the
wonderful sight.
Sure enough, there they were, twenty-five or thirty Indians,--blanket
Indians, as Younkins would have said,--strung along in the narrow
trail, all in Indian file. It amazed the lads to see how the little
Indian ponies managed to keep their feet in the narrow path. But they
seemed to trot leisurely along with one foot before the other, just as
the Indians did. Behind the mounted men were men and boys on foot,
nearly as many as had passed on horseback. These kept up with the
others, silently but swiftly maintaining the same pace that the
mounted fellows did. It was a picturesque and novel sight to the young
settlers. The Indians were dressed in the true frontier style, with
hunting-shirt and leggings of dressed deerskin, a blanket slung
loosely over the shoulder, all bareheaded, and with coarse black hair
flowing in the morning breeze, except for the loose knot in which it
was twisted behind. Some of them carried their guns slung on their
backs; and others of them had the weapons in their hands, ready for
firing on the instant.
"There they go, over the divide," said Oscar, as the little cavalcade
reached the last roll of the prairie, and began to disappear on the
other side. Not one of the party deigned even to look in the direction
of the wondering boys; and if they saw them, as they probably did,
they made no sign.
"There they go, hunting buffalo, I suppose," said Sandy, with a
sigh, as the last Indian of the file disappeared down the horizon.
"Dear me! don't I wish I was going out after buffalo, instead of
having to dibble corn into the sod all day! Waugh! Don't I hate
it!" And the boy turned disconsolately back to the cabin. But he
rallied with his natural good-humor when he had his tale to tell at
the breakfast-table. He eagerly told how they had seen the Indians
passing over the old trail, and had gazed on the redskins as they
went "on the warpath."
"Warpath, indeed!" laughed Charlie. "Pot-hunters, that's what they
are. All the warfare they are up to is waged on the poor innocent
buffalo that Younkins says they are killing off and making scarcer
every year."
"If nobody but Indians killed buffalo," said Mr. Bryant, "there would
be no danger of their ever being all killed off. But, in course of
time, I suppose this country will all be settled up, and then there
will be railroads, and after that the buffalo will have to go. Just
now, any white man that can't saddle his horse and go out and kill a
buffalo before breakfast thinks they are getting scarce. But I have
heard some of the soldiers say that away up north of here, a little
later in the season, the settlers cannot keep their crops, the buffalo
roam all over everything so."
"For my part," put in Charlie, "I am not in the least afraid that the
buffalo will be so plenty around these parts that they will hurt our
crops; and I'd just like to see a herd come within shooting distance."
And here he raised his arms, and took aim along an imaginary rifle.
Later in the forenoon, when the two younger boys had reached the end
of the two rows in which they had been planting, Sandy straightened
himself up with an effort, and said, "This is leg-weary work, isn't
it, Oscar? I hate work, anyhow," he added, discontentedly, leaning on
the top of his dibble, and looking off over the wide and green prairie
that stretched toward the setting sun. "I wish I was an Indian."
Oscar burst into a laugh, and said, "Wish you were an Indian!--so you
could go hunting when you like, and not have any work to do? Why,
Sandy, I didn't think that of you."
Sandy colored faintly, and said, "Well, I do hate work, honestly; and
it is only because I know that I ought, and that father expects me to
do my share, that I do it, and never grumble about it. Say, I never do
grumble, do I, Oscar?" he asked earnestly.
"Only once in a while, when you can't help it, Sandy. I don't like
work any better than you do; but it's no use talking about it, we've
got to do it."
"I always feel so in the spring," said Sandy, very gravely and with a
little sigh, as he went pegging away down another furrow.
Forty acres of land was all that the settlers intended to plant with
corn, for the first year. Forty acres does not seem a very large tract
of land to speak of, but when one sees the area marked out with a
black furrow, and realizes that every foot of it must be covered with
the corn-planter, it looks formidable. The boys thought it was a very
big piece of land when they regarded it in that way. But the days soon
flew by; and even while the young workers were stumping over the
field, they consoled themselves with visions of gigantic ripe
watermelons and mammoth pumpkins and squashes that would regale their
eyes before long. For, following the example of most Kansas farmers,
they had stuck into many of the furrows with the corn the seeds of
these easily grown vines.
"Keep the melons a good way from the pumpkins, and the squashes a good
way from both, if you don't want a bad mixture," said Uncle Aleck to
the boy settlers. Then he explained that if the pollen of the
squash-blossoms should happen to fall on the melon-blossoms, the fruit
would be neither good melon nor yet good squash, but a poor mixture of
both. This piece of practical farming was not lost on Charlie; and
when he undertook the planting of the garden spot which they found
near the cabin, he took pains to separate the cucumber-beds as far as
possible from the hills in which he planted his cantaloupe seeds. The
boys were learning while they worked, even if they did grumble
occasionally over their tasks.
CHAPTER XII.
HOUSE-BUILDING.
There was a change in the programme of daily labor, when the corn was
in the ground. At odd times the settlers had gone over to the wood-lot
and had laid out their plans for the future home on that claim. There
was more variety to be expected in house-building than in planting,
and the boys had looked forward with impatience to the beginning of
that part of their enterprise. Logs for the house were cut from the
pines and firs of the hill beyond the river bluff. From these, too,
were to be riven, or split, the "shakes" for the roof-covering and for
the odd jobs of work to be done about the premises.
Now, for the first time, the boys learned the use of some of the
strange tools that they had brought with them. They had wondered over
the frow, an iron instrument about fourteen inches long, for splitting
logs. At right angles with the blade, and fixed in an eye at one end,
was a handle of hard-wood. A section of wood was stood up endwise on a
firm foundation of some sort, and the thin end of the frow was
hammered down into the grain of the wood, making a lengthwise split.
In the same way, the section of wood so riven was split again and
again until each split was thin enough. The final result was called a
"shake." Shakes were used for shingles, and even--when nailed on
frames--for doors. Sawed lumber was very dear; and, except the sashes
in the windows, every bit of the log-cabin must be got out of the
primitive forest.
The boys were proud of the ample supply which their elders had brought
with them; for even the knowing Younkins, scrutinizing the tools for
woodcraft with a critical eye, remarked, "That's a good outfit, for a
party of green settlers." Six stout wedges of chilled iron, and a
heavy maul to hammer them with, were to be used for the splitting up
of the big trees into smaller sections. Wooden wedges met the wants of
many people in those primitive parts, at times, and the man who had a
good set of iron wedges and a powerful maul was regarded with envy.
"What are these clumsy rings for?" Oscar had asked when he saw the
maul-rings taken out of the wagon on their arrival and unloading.
His uncle smiled, and said, "You will find out what these are for, my
lad, when you undertake to swing the maul. Did you never hear of
splitting rails? Well, these are to split rails and such things from
the log. We chop off a length of a tree, about eight inches thick,
taking the toughest and densest wood we can find. Trim off the bark
from a bit of the trunk, which must be twelve or fourteen inches long;
drive your rings on each end of the block to keep it from splitting;
fit a handle to one end, or into one side of the block; and there you
have your maul."
"Why, that's only a beetle, after all," cried Sandy, who, sitting on a
stump near by, had been a deeply interested listener to his father's
description of the maul.
"Certainly, my son; a maul is what people in the Eastern States would
call a beetle; but you ask Younkins, some day, if he has a beetle over
at his place. He, I am sure, would never use the name beetle."
Log-cabin building was great fun to the boys, although they did not
find it easy work. There was a certain novelty about the raising of
the structure that was to be a home, and an interest in learning the
use of rude tools that lasted until the cabin was finished. The maul
and the wedges, the frow and the little maul intended for it, and all
the other means and appliances of the building, were all new and
strange to these bright lads.
[Illustration: MAKING "SHAKES" WITH A "FROW."]
First, the size of the cabin, twelve feet wide and twenty feet long,
was marked out on the site on which it was to rise, and four logs were
laid to define the foundation. These were the sills of the new house.
At each end of every log two notches were cut, one on the under side
and one on the upper, to fit into similar notches cut in the log
below, and in that which was to be placed on top. So each corner was
formed by these interlacing and overlapping ends. The logs were piled
up, one above another, just as children build "cob-houses," from odds
and ends of playthings. Cabin-builders do not say that a cabin is a
certain number of feet high; they usually say that it is ten logs
high, or twelve logs high, as the case may be. When the structure is
as high as the eaves are intended to be, the top logs are bound
together, from side to side, with smaller logs fitted upon the upper
logs of each side and laid across as if they were to be the supports
of a floor for another story. Then the gable-ends are built up of
logs, shorter and shorter as the peak of the gable is approached, and
kept in place by other small logs laid across, endwise of the cabin,
and locked into the end of each log in the gable until all are in
place. On these transverse logs, or rafters, the roof is laid. Holes
are cut or sawed through the logs for the door and windows, and the
house begins to look habitable.
The settlers on the Republican Fork cut the holes for doors and
windows before they put on the roof, and when the layer of split
shakes that made the roof was in place, and the boys bounded inside to
see how things looked, they were greatly amused to notice how light it
was. The spaces between the logs were almost wide enough to crawl
through, Oscar said. But they had studied log-cabin building enough to
know that these wide cracks were to be "chinked" with thin strips of
wood, the refuse of shakes, driven in tightly, and then daubed over
with clay, a fine bed of which was fortunately near at hand. The
provident Younkins had laid away in his own cabin the sashes and glass
for two small windows; and these he had agreed to sell to the
newcomers. Partly hewn logs for floor-joists were placed upon the
ground inside the cabin, previously levelled off for the purpose. On
these were laid thick slabs of oak and hickory, riven out of logs
drawn from the grove near by. These slabs of hard-wood were
"puncheons," and fortunate as was the man who could have a floor of
sawed lumber to his cabin, he who was obliged to use puncheons was
better off than those with whom timber was so scarce that the natural
surface on the ground was their only floor.
"My! how it rattles!" was Sandy's remark when he had first taken a few
steps on the new puncheon floor of their cabin. "It sounds like a
tread-mill going its rounds. Can't you nail these down, daddy?"
His father explained that the unseasoned lumber of the puncheons would
so shrink in the drying that no fastening could hold them. They must
lie loosely on the floor-joists until they were thoroughly seasoned;
then they might be fastened down with wooden pins driven through holes
bored for that purpose; nails and spikes cost too much to be wasted on
a puncheon floor. In fact, very little hardware was wasted on any part
of that cabin. Even the door was made by fastening with wooden pegs a
number of short pieces of shakes to a frame fitted to the doorway cut
in the side of the cabin. The hinges were strong bits of leather, the
soles of the boots whose legs had been used for corn-droppers. The
clumsy wooden latch was hung inside to a wooden pin driven into one of
the crosspieces of the door, and it played in a loop of deerskin at
the other end. A string of deerskin fastened to the end of the
latch-bar nearest the jamb of the doorway was passed outside through a
hole cut in the door, serving to lift the latch from without when a
visitor would enter.
"Our latch-string hangs out!" exclaimed Charlie, triumphantly, when
this piece of work was done. "I must say I never knew before what it
meant to have the 'latch-string hanging out' for all comers. See,
Oscar, when we shut up the house for the night, all we have to do is
to pull in the latch-string, and the door is barred."
"Likewise, when you have dropped your jackknife through a crack in the
floor into the cellar beneath, all you have to do is to turn over a
puncheon or two and get down and find it," said Sandy, coolly, as he
took up two slabs and hunted for his knife. The boys soon found that
although their home was rude and not very elegant as to its furniture,
it had many conveniences that more elaborate and handsomer houses did
not have. There were no floors to wash, hardly to sweep. As their
surroundings were simple, their wants were few. It was a free and easy
life that they were gradually drifting into, here in the wilderness.
Charlie declared that the cabin ought to have a name. As yet, the land
on which they had settled had no name except that of the river by
which it lay. The boys thought it would give some sort of distinction
to their home if they gave it a title. "Liberty Hall," they thought
would be a good name to put on the roof of their log-cabin. Something
out of Cooper's novels, Oscar proposed, would be the best for the
locality.
"'Hog-and-hominy,' how would that suit?" asked Sandy, with a laugh.
"Unless we get some buffalo or antelope meat pretty soon, it will be
hog and hominy to the end of the chapter."
"Why not call it the John G. Whittier cabin?" said Uncle Aleck,
looking up from his work of shaping an ox-yoke.
"The very thing, daddy!" shouted Sandy, clapping his hands. "Only
don't you think that's a very long name to say in a hurry? Whittier
would be shorter, you know. But, then," he added, doubtfully, "it
isn't everybody that would know which Whittier was meant by that,
would they?"
"Sandy seems to think that the entire population of Kansas will be
coming here, some day, to read that name, if we ever have it. We have
been here two months now, and no living soul but ourselves and
Younkins has ever been in these diggings; not one. Oh, I say, let's
put up just nothing but 'Whittier' over the door there. We'll know
what that means, and if anybody comes in the course of time, I'll
warrant he'll soon find out which Whittier it means." This was Oscar's
view of the case.
"Good for you, Oscar!" said his uncle. "Whittier let it be."
Before sundown, that day, a straight-grained shake of pine, free from
knot or blemish, had been well smoothed down with the draw-shave, and
on its fair surface, writ large, was the beloved name of the New
England poet, thus: WHITTIER.
This was fastened securely over the entrance of the new log-cabin, and
the Boy Settlers, satisfied with their work, stood off at a little
distance and gave it three cheers. The new home was named.
CHAPTER XIII.
LOST!
"We must have some board-nails and some lead," remarked Uncle Aleck,
one fine morning, as the party were putting the finishing touches to
the Whittier cabin. "Who will go down to the post and get them?"
"I", "I", "I", shouted all three of the boys at once.
"Oh, you will all go, will you?" said he, with a smile. "Well, you
can't all go, for we can borrow only one horse, and it's ten miles
down there and ten miles back; and you will none of you care to walk,
I am very sure."
The boys looked at each other and laughed. Who should be the lucky one
to take that delightful horseback ride down to the post, as Fort Riley
was called, and get a glimpse of civilization?
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Sandy, after some good-natured
discussion. "Let's draw cuts to see who shall go. Here they are. You
draw first, Charlie, you being the eldest man. Now, then, Oscar. Why,
hooray! it's my cut! I've drawn the longest, and so I am to go. Oh, it
was a fair and square deal, daddy," he added, seeing his father look
sharply at him.
The matter was settled, and next morning, bright and early, Sandy was
fitted out with his commissions and the money to buy them with.
Younkins had agreed to let him have his horse, saddle, and bridle.
Work on the farm was now practically over until time for harvesting
was come. So the other two boys accompanied Sandy over to the Younkins
side of the river and saw him safely off down the river road leading
to the post. A meal-sack in which to bring back his few purchases was
snugly rolled up and tied to the crupper of his saddle, and feeling in
his pocket for the hundredth time to make sure of the ten-dollar gold
piece therein bestowed, Sandy trotted gayly down the road. The two
other boys gazed enviously after him, and then went home, wondering,
as they strolled along, how long Sandy would be away. He would be back
by dark at the latest, for the days were now at about their longest,
and the long summer day was just begun.
At Younkins's cabin they met Hiram Battles, a neighbor who lived
beyond the divide to the eastward, and who had just ridden over in
search of some of his cattle that had strayed away, during the night
before. Mr. Battles said he was "powerful worrited." Indians had been
seen prowling around on his side of the divide: but he had seen no
signs of a camp, and he had traced the tracks of his cattle, three
head in all, over this way as far as Lone Tree Creek, a small stream
just this side of the divide; but there he had unaccountably lost all
trace of them.
"Well, as for the Indians," said Charlie, modestly, "we have seen them
passing out on the trail. But they were going hunting, and they kept
right on to the southward and westward; and we have not seen them go
back since."
"The lad's right," said Younkins, slowly, "but still I don't like the
stories I hear down the road a piece. They do say that the Shians have
riz."
"The Cheyennes have risen!" exclaimed Charlie. "And we have let Sandy
go down to the post alone!"
Both of the men laughed--a little unpleasantly, it seemed to the
boys, although Younkins was the soul of amiability and mildness. But
Charlie thought it was unkind in them to laugh at his very natural
apprehensions; and he said as much, as he and Oscar, with their
clothes on their heads, waded the Republican Fork on the way home.
"Well, Charlie," was Oscar's comforting remark, as they scrambled up
the opposite bank, "I guess the reason why they laughed at us was that
if the Cheyennes have gone on the warpath, the danger is out in the
west; whereas, Sandy has gone eastward to-day, and that is right in
the way of safety, isn't it? He's gone to the post; and you know that
the people down at Soldier Creek told us that this was a good place to
settle, because the post would be our protection in case of an Indian
rising."
Meanwhile, Sandy was blissfully and peacefully jogging along in the
direction of the military post. Only one house stood between
Younkins's and the fort; and that was Mullett's. They all had occasion
to think pleasantly of Mullett's; for whenever an opportunity came for
the mail to be forwarded from the fort up to Mullett's, it was sent
there; then Sparkins, who was the next neighbor above, but who lived
off the road a bit, would go down to Mullett's and bring the mail up
to his cabin; when he did this, he left a red flannel flag flying on
the roof of his house, and Younkins, if passing along the trail, saw
the signal and went out of his way a little to take the mail up to his
cabin. Somehow, word was sent across the river to the Whittier boys,
as the good Younkins soon learned to call the Boy Settlers, and they
went gladly over to Younkins's and got the precious letters and papers
from home. That was the primitive way in which the mail for the
settlers on the Republican Fork went up the road from Fort Riley, in
those days; and all letters and papers designed for the settlers along
there were addressed simply to Fort Riley, which was their nearest
post-office.
So Sandy, when he reached Mullett's, was not disappointed to be told
that there were no letters for anybody up the river. There had been
nobody down to the post very lately. Sandy knew that, and he was
confident that he would have the pleasure of bringing up a good-sized
budget when he returned. So he whipped up his somewhat lazy steed and
cantered down toward the fort.
Soon after leaving Mullett's he met a drove of sheep. The drivers were
two men and a boy of his own age, mounted on horseback and carrying
their provisions, apparently, strapped behind them. When he asked them
where they were going, they surlily replied that they were going to
California. That would take them right up the road that he had come
down, Sandy thought to himself. And he wondered if the boys at home
would see the interesting sight of five hundred sheep going up the
Republican Fork, bound for California.
He reached the fort before noon; and, with a heart beating high
with pleasure, he rode into the grounds and made his way to the
well-remembered sutler's store where he had bought the candy,
months before. He had a few pennies of his own, and he mentally
resolved to spend these for raisins. Sandy had a "sweet tooth", but,
except for sugar and molasses, he had eaten nothing sweet since
they were last at Fort Riley on their way westward.
It was with a feeling of considerable importance that Sandy surveyed
the interior of the sutler's store. The proprietor looked curiously
at him, as if wondering why so small a boy should turn up alone in
that wilderness; and when the lad asked for letters for the families
up the river, Mullett's, Sparkins's, Battles's, Younkins's, and his
own people, the sutler said: "Be you one of them Abolitioners that
have named your place after that man Whittier, the Abolition poet?
I've hearn tell of you, and I've hearn tell of him. And he ain't no
good. Do you hear me?" Sandy replied that he heard him, and to himself
he wondered greatly how anybody, away down here, ten miles from the
new home, could possibly have heard about the name they had given to
their cabin.
Several soldiers who had been lounging around the place now went out
at the door. The sutler, looking cautiously about as if to be sure
that nobody heard him, said: "Never you mind what I said just now,
sonny. Right you are, and that man Whittier writes the right sort of
stuff. Bet yer life! I'm no Abolitioner; but I'm a free-State man, I
am, every time."
"Then what made you talk like that, just now?" asked Sandy, his
honest, freckled face glowing with righteous indignation. "If you like
Mr. John G. Whittier's poetry, why did you say he wasn't any good?"
"Policy, policy, my little man. This yere's a pro-slavery guv'ment,
and this yere is a pro-slavery post. I couldn't keep this place one
single day if they thought I was a free-State man. See? But I tell you
right here, and don't you fergit it, this yere country is going to be
free State. Kansas is no good for slavery; and slavery can't get in
here. Stick a pin there, and keep your eye on it."
With some wonder and much disgust at the man's cowardice, Sandy
packed his precious letters in the bosom of his shirt. Into one end
of his meal-sack he put a pound of soda-biscuit for which his Uncle
Charlie had longed, a half-pound of ground ginger with which
Charlie desired to make some "molasses gingerbread, like mother's,"
and a half-pound of smoking-tobacco for his dear father. It seemed
a long way off to his father now, Sandy thought, as he tied up
that end of the bag. Then into the other end, having tied the bag
firmly around, about a foot and a half from the mouth, he put the
package of nails and a roll of sheet lead. It had been agreed that
if they were to go buffalo-hunting, they must have rifle-balls and
bullets for their shot-guns.
The sutler, who had become very friendly, looked on with an amused
smile, and said, "'Pears to me, sonny, you got all the weight at one
end, haven't you?"
Sandy did not like to be called "sonny," but he good-naturedly agreed
that he had made a mistake; so he began all over again and shifted
his cargo so that the nails and a box of yeast-powder occupied one
end of the meal-sack, and the other articles balanced the other. The
load was then tied closely to the crupper of the saddle and the boy
was ready to start on his homeward trip. His eyes roved longingly over
the stock of goodies which the sutler kept for the children, young and
old, of the garrison, and he asked, "How much for raisins?"
"Two bits a pound for box, and fifteen cents for cask," replied the
man, sententiously.
"Give me half a pound of cask raisins," said the boy, with some
hesitation. He had only a few cents to spare for his own purchases.
The sutler weighed out a half-pound of box raisins, did them up, and
handed them across the counter, saying, "No pay; them's for
Whittier."
Sandy took the package, shoved it into his shirt-bosom, and, wondering
if his "Thank you" were sufficient payment for the gift, mounted his
steed, rode slowly up the road to a spring that he had noticed
bubbling out of the side of a ravine, and with a thankful heart,
turning out the horse to graze, sat down to eat his frugal lunch, now
graced with the dry but to him delicious raisins. So the sutler at
Fort Riley was a free-State man! Wasn't that funny!
It was a beautifully bright afternoon, and Sandy, gathering his
belongings together, started up the river road on a brisk canter. The
old horse was a hard trotter, and when he slackened down from a
canter, poor Sandy shook in every muscle, and his teeth chattered as
if he had a fit of ague. But whenever the lad contrived to urge his
steed into an easier gait he got on famously. The scenery along the
Republican Fork is (or was) very agreeable to the eye. Long slopes of
vivid green stretched off in every direction, their rolling sides
dropping into deep ravines through which creeks, bordered with dense
growths of alder, birch, and young cottonwood, meandered. The sky was
blue and cloudless, and, as the boy sped along the breezy uplands, the
soft and balmy air fanning his face, he sung and whistled to express
the fervor of his buoyant spirits. He was a hearty and a happy boy.
Suddenly he came to a fork in the road which he had not noticed when
he came down that way in the morning. For a moment he was puzzled by
the sight. Both were broad and smooth tracks over the grassy prairie,
and both rose and fell over the rolling ground; only, one led to the
left and somewhat southerly, and the other to the right. "Pshaw!"
muttered Sandy, and he paused and rubbed his head for an idea. "That
left-hand road must strike off to some ford lower down on the Fork
than I have ever been. But I never heard of any ford below ours."
[Illustration: FILLING IN THE CHINKS IN THE WALLS OF THE LOG-CABIN.]
With that, his keen eyes noticed that the right-hand road was cut and
marked with the many hoof-tracks of a flock of sheep. He argued to
himself that the sheep-drivers had told him that they were going to
California. The California road led up the bank of the Republican Fork
close to the trail that led him from Younkins's to the ford across the
river. The way was plain; so, striking his spur into the old sorrel's
side, he dashed on up the right-hand road, singing gayly as he went.
Absorbed in the mental calculation as to the number of days that it
would take that flock of sheep to reach California, the boy rode on,
hardly noticing the landmarks by the way, or taking in anything but
the general beauty of the broad and smiling landscape over which the
yellow light of the afternoon sun, sinking in the west, poured a flood
of splendor. Slackening his speed as he passed a low and sunken little
round valley filled with brush and alders, he heard a queer sound like
the playful squealing of some wild animal. Slipping off his saddle and
leading his horse by the bridle over the thick turf, Sandy cautiously
approached the edge of the valley, the margin of which was steep and
well sheltered by a growth of cottonwoods. After peering about for
some time, the lad caught a glimpse of a beautiful sight. A young doe
and her fawn were playing together in the open meadow below,
absolutely unconscious of the nearness of any living thing besides
themselves. The mother-deer was browsing, now and again, and at times
the fawn, playful as a young kitten, would kick its heels, or butt its
head against its mother's side, and both would squeal in a comical
way.
Sandy had never seen deer in a state of living wildness before, and
his heart thumped heavily in his breast as he gazed on the wonderful
sight. He half groaned to himself that he was a great fool to have
come away from home without a gun. What an easy shot it was! How
nicely he could knock over the mother, if only he had a shot-gun! She
was within such short range. Then he felt a sinking of the heart, as
he imagined the horror of death that would have overtaken the innocent
and harmless creatures, sporting there so thoughtless of man's hunting
instincts and cruelty. Would he kill them, if he had the weapon to
kill with? He could not make up his mind that he would. So he crouched
silently in the underbrush, and watched the pretty sight as if it were
a little animal drama enacted here in the wilderness, mother and child
having a romp in their wildwood home.
"Well, I'll give them a good scare, anyhow," muttered the boy, his
sportive instincts getting the better of his tender-heartedness at
last. He dashed up noisily from the underbrush, swung his arms, and
shouted, "Boo!" Instantly deer and fawn, with two or three tremendous
bounds, were out of the little valley and far away on the prairie,
skimming over the rolls of green, and before the boy could catch his
breath, they had disappeared into one of the many dells and ravines
that interlaced the landscape.
But another animal was scared by the boy's shout. In his excitement he
had slipped the bridle-rein from his arm, and the old sorrel,
terrified by his halloo, set off on a brisk trot down the road. In
vain Sandy called to him to stop. Free from guidance, the horse
trotted along, and when, after a long chase, Sandy caught up with his
steed, a considerable piece of road had been covered the wrong way,
for the horse had gone back over the line of march. When Sandy was
once more mounted, and had mopped his perspiring forehead, he cast his
eye along the road, and, to his dismay, discovered that the
sheep-tracks had disappeared. What had become of the sheep? How could
they have left the trail without his sooner noticing it? He certainly
had not passed another fork of the road since coming into this at the
fork below.
"This is more of my heedlessness, mother would say," muttered Sandy to
himself. "What a big fool I must have been to miss seeing where the
sheep left the trail! I shall never make a good plainsman if I don't
keep my eye skinned better than this. Jingo! it's getting toward
sundown!" Sure enough, the sun was near the horizon, and Sandy could
see none of the familiar signs of the country round about the Fork.
But he pushed on. It was too late now to return to the fork of the
road and explore the other branch. He was in for it. He remembered,
too, that two of their most distant neighbors, Mr. Fuller and his
wife, lived somewhere back of Battles's place, and it was barely
possible that it was on the creek, whose woody and crooked line he
could now see far to the westward, that their log-cabin was situated.
He had seen Mr. Fuller over at the Fork once or twice, and he
remembered him as a gentle-mannered and kindly man. Surely he must
live on this creek! So he pushed on with new courage, for his heart
had begun to sink when he finally realized that he was far off his
road.
The sun was down when he reached the creek. No sign of human
habitation was in sight. In those days cabins and settlements were
very, very few and far between, and a traveller once off his trail
might push on for hundreds of miles without finding any trace of human
life.
In the gathering dusk the heavy-hearted boy rode along the banks of
the creek, anxiously looking out for some sign of settlers. It was
as lonely and solitary as if no man had ever seen its savageness
before. Now and then a night-bird called from a thicket, as if
asking what interloper came into these solitudes; or a scared
jack-rabbit scampered away from his feeding-ground, as the steps of
the horse tore through the underbrush. Even the old sorrel seemed
to gaze reproachfully at the lad, who had dismounted, and now led
the animal through the wild and tangled undergrowths.
[Illustration: LOST!]
When he had gone up and down the creek several times, hunting for some
trace of a settlement, and finding none, he reflected that Fuller's
house was on the side of the stream, to the west. It was a very
crooked stream, and he was not sure, in the darkness, which was west
and which was east. But he boldly plunged into the creek, mounting his
horse, and urging the unwilling beast across. Once over, he explored
that side of the stream, hither and yon, in vain. Again he crossed,
and so many times did he cross and recross that he finally had no idea
where he was. Then the conviction came fully into his mind: He was
lost.
The disconsolate boy sat down on a fallen tree and meditated. It was
useless to go farther. He was tired in every limb and very, very
hungry. He bethought himself of the soda-biscuits in his sack. He need
not starve, at any rate. Dobbin was grazing contentedly while the lad
meditated, so slipping off the saddle and the package attached to it,
Sandy prepared to satisfy his hunger with what little provisions he
had at hand. How queerly the biscuits tasted! Jolting up and down on
the horse's back, they were well broken up. But what was this so hot
in the mouth? Ginger? Sure enough, it was ginger. The pounding that
had crushed the biscuits had broken open the package of ginger, and
that spicy stuff was plentifully sprinkled all over the contents of
the sack.
"Gingerbread," muttered Sandy, grimly, as he blew out of his mouth
some of the powdery spice. "Faugh! Tobacco!" he cried next. His
father's package of smoking-tobacco had shared the fate of the ginger.
Sandy's supper was spoiled; and resigning himself to spending the
night hungry in the wilderness, he tethered the horse to a tree, put
the saddle-blanket on the ground, arranged the saddle for a pillow,
and, having cut a few leafy boughs from the alders, stuck them into
the turf so as to form a shelter around his head, and lay down to
pleasant dreams.
"And this is Saturday night, too," thought the lost boy. "They are
having beans baked in the ground-oven at home in the cabin. They are
wondering where I am. What would mother say if she knew I was lost out
here on Flyaway Creek?" And the boy's heart swelled a little, and a
few drops of water stood in his eyes, for he had never been lost
before in his life. He looked up at the leaden sky, now overcast, and
wondered if God saw this lost boy. A few drops fell on his cheek.
Tears? No; worse than that; it was rain.
"Well, this is a little too much," said Sandy, stoutly. "Here goes for
one more trial." So saying, he saddled and mounted his patient steed,
and, at a venture, took a new direction around a bend in the creek. As
he rounded the bend, the bark of a dog suddenly rung from a mass of
gloom and darkness. How sweet the sound! Regardless of the animal's
angry challenge, he pressed on. That mass of blackness was a
log-barn, and near by was a corral with cows therein. Then a light
shone from the log-cabin, and a man's voice was heard calling the
dog.
Fuller's!
The good man of the house received the lad with open arms, and cared
for his horse; inside the cabin, Mrs. Fuller, who had heard the
conversation without, had made ready a great pan of milk and a loaf of
bread, having risen from her bed to care for the young wanderer. Never
did bread and milk taste so deliciously to weary traveller as this!
Full-fed, Sandy looked at
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