The Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas. Noah Brooks
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