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