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