The Boy Settlers Part 4

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-hys.h.!.+ 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 b.u.t.ternut-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 tw.a.n.g, "Friends?"

"Friends, most a.s.suredly," 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 a.s.sisted 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?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ash.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e, 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, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 Tec.u.mseh, 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 Tec.u.mseh," 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 Tec.u.mseh, 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 n.o.body 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 G.o.d-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 gra.s.s, 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 gra.s.ses.

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, blus.h.i.+ng 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 st.u.r.dy, 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 G.o.d 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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! n.o.body 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!"