The Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas

CHAPTER XIX.
DOWN THE BIG MUDDY

It is more than six hundred miles from Leavenworth to St. Louis by the river. And as the river is crooked exceedingly, a steamboat travelling that route points her bow at every point of the compass, north, south, east, and west, before the voyage is finished. The boys were impatient to reach home, to be back in dear old Dixon, to see the mother and the fireside once more. But they knew that days must pass before they could reach St. Louis. The three lads settled themselves comfortably in the narrow limits of their little stateroom; for they found that their passage included quarters really more luxurious than they had been accustomed to in their Kansas log-cabin.

“Not much army blanket and buffalo-robe about this,” whispered Oscar, pressing his toil-stained hand on the nice white spread of his berth. “Say, wouldn’t Younkins allow that this was rather comfortable-like, if he was to see it and compare it with his deerskin coverlet that he is so proud of?”

“Well, Younkins’s deerskin coverlet is paid for, and this isn’t,” said Charlie, grimly.

But the light-hearted younger boys borrowed no trouble on that score. As Sandy said, laughingly, they were all fixed for the trip to St. Louis, and what was the use of fretting about the passage money until the time came to pay it?

When the lads, having exchanged their flannel shirts for white cotton ones, saved up for this occasion, came out from their room, they saw two long tables covered with snowy cloths set for the whole length of the big saloon. They had scanned the list of meal hours hanging in their stateroom, and were very well satisfied to find that there were three meals served each day. It was nearly time for the two o’clock dinner, and the colored servants were making ready the tables. The boat was crowded with passengers, and it looked as if some of them would be obliged to wait for the “second table.” On board of a steamboat, especially in those days of long voyages, the matter of getting early to the table and having a good seat was of great concern to the passengers. Men stood around, lining the walls of the saloon and regarding with hungry expectation the movements of the waiters who were making ready the tables. When the chairs were placed, every man laid his hand on the top of the seat nearest him, prepared, as one of the boys privately expressed it, to “make a grab.”

“Well, if we don’t make a grab, too, we shall get left,” whispered Sandy, and the boys bashfully filed down the saloon and stood ready to take their seats when the gong should sound.

To eyes unused to the profuseness of living that then prevailed on the best class of Western steamboats, the display on the dining-tables of the “New Lucy” was very grand indeed. The waiters, all their movements regulated by something like military discipline, filed in and out bearing handsome dishes for the decoration of the board.

“Just look at those gorgeous flowers! Red, white, blue, purple, yellow! My! aren’t they fine?” said Sandy, under his breath.

Oscar giggled. “They are artificial, Sandy. How awfully green you are!”

Sandy stoutly maintained that they were real flowers. He could smell them. But when one of the waiters, having accidentally overturned one of the vases and knocked a flaming bouquet on the carpeted floor of the cabin, snatched it up and dusted it with his big black hand, Sandy gave in, and murmured, “Tis true; they’re false.”

But the boys’ eyes fairly stood out with wonder and admiration when a procession of colored men came out of the pantry, bearing a grand array of ornamental dishes. Pineapples, bananas, great baskets of fancy cakes, and other dainties attracted their wonder-stricken gaze. But most of all, numerous pyramids of macaroons, two or three feet high, with silky veils of spun sugar falling down from summit to base, fascinated their attention. They had never seen the like at a public table; and the generous board of the “New Lucy” fairly groaned with good things when the gong somewhat superfluously announced to the waiting throng that dinner was served.

“No plates, knives, or forks,” said Sandy, as, amid a great clatter and rush, everybody sat down to the table. Just then a long procession of colored waiters emerged from the pantry, the foremost man carrying a pile of plates, and after him came another with a basket of knives, after him another with a basket of forks, then another with spoons, and so on, each man carrying a supply of some one article for the table. With the same military precision that had marked all their movements, six black hands were stretched at the same instant over the shoulders of the sitting passengers, and six articles were noiselessly dropped on the table; then, with a similar motion, the six black hands went back to their respective owners, as the procession moved along behind the guests, the white-sleeved arms and black hands waving in the air and keeping exact time as the procession moved around the table.

“Looks like a white-legged centipede,” muttered Sandy, under his breath. But more evolutions were coming. These preliminaries having been finished, the solemn procession went back to the kitchen regions, and presently came forth again, bearing a glittering array of shining metal covered dishes. At the tap of the pompous head-waiter’s bell, every man stood at “present arms,” as Oscar said. Then, at another tap, each dish was projected over the white cloth to the spot for which it was designed, and held an inch or two above the table. Another tap, and every dish dropped into its place with a sound as of one soft blow. The pompous head-waiter struck his bell again, and every dish-cover was touched by a black hand. One more jingle, and, with magical swiftness and deftness, each dish-cover was lifted, and a delightful perfume of savory viands gushed forth amidst the half-suppressed “Ahs” of the assembled and hungry diners. Then the procession of dark-skinned waiters, bearing the dish-covers, filed back to the pantry, and the real business of the day began. This was the way that dinners were served on all the first-rate steamboats on Western rivers in those days.

To hungry, hearty boys, used of late to the rough fare of the frontier, and just from a hard trip in an ox-wagon, with very short rations indeed, this profusion of good things was a real delight. Sandy’s mouth watered, but he gently sighed to himself, “’Most takes away my appetite.” The polite, even servile, waiters pressed the lads with the best of everything on the generous board; and Sandy’s cup of happiness was full when a jolly darky, his ebony face shining with good-nature, brought him some frosted cake, charlotte russe, and spun sugar and macaroons from one of the shattered pyramids.

“D’ye s’pose they break those up every day?” whispered Sandy to the more dignified Charlie.

“Suttinly, suh,” replied the colored man, overhearing the question; “suttinly, suh. Dis yere boat is de fastest and de finest on de Big Muddy, young gent; an’ dere’s nuttin’ in dis yere worl’ that the ‘New Lucy’ doan have on her table; an’ doan yer fergit it, young mas’r,” he added, with respectful pride in his voice.

“My! what a tuck-out! I’ve ate and ate until I’m fairly fit to bust,” said Sandy, as the three boys, their dinner over, sauntered out into the open air and beheld the banks of the river swiftly slipping by as they glided down the stream.

Just then, glancing around, his eye caught the amused smile of a tall and lovely lady who was standing near by, chatting with two or three rather superior-looking young people whom the lad had first noticed when the question of having the baggage brought on board at Leavenworth was under discussion. Sandy’s brown cheek flushed; but the pretty lady, extending her hand, said: “Pardon my smiling, my boy; but I have a dear lad at home in Baltimore who always says just that after his Christmas dinner, and sometimes on other occasions, perhaps; and his name is Sandy, too. I think I heard your brother call you Sandy? This is your brother, is it not?” And the lady turned towards Charlie.

The lad explained the relationship of the little party, and the lady from Baltimore introduced the members of her party. They had been far up the river to Fort Benton, where they had spent some weeks with friends who were in the military garrison at that post. The young men, of whom there were three in the party, had been out hunting for buffalo, elk, and other big game. Had the boys ever killed any buffalo? The pleasant-faced young gentleman who asked the question had noticed that they had a full supply of guns when they came aboard at Leavenworth.

Yes, they had killed buffalo; at least, Sandy had; and the youngster’s exploit on the bluff of the Republican Fork was glowingly narrated by the generous and manly Charlie. This story broke the ice with the newly met voyagers and, before the gong sounded for supper, the Whittier boys, as they still called themselves, were quite as well acquainted with the party from Baltimore, as they thought, as they would have been if they had been neighbors and friends on the banks of the Republican.

The boys looked in at the supper-table. They only looked; for although the short autumnal afternoon had fled swiftly by while they were chatting with their new friends or exploring the steamboat, they felt that they could not possibly take another repast so soon after their first real “tuck-out” on the “New Lucy.” The overloaded table, shining with handsome glass and china and decked with fancy cakes, preserves, and sweetmeats, had no present attractions for the boys. “It’s just like after Thanksgiving dinner,” said Oscar. “Only we are far from home,” he added, rather soberly. And when the lads crawled into their bunks, as Sandy insisted upon calling their berths, it would not surprise one if “thoughts of home and sighs disturbed the sleeper’s long-drawn breath.”

Time and again, in the night-watches, the steamer stopped at some landing by the river-side. Now it would be a mere wood-pile, and the boat would be moored to a cottonwood tree that overhung the stream. Torches of light-wood burning in iron frames at the end of a staff stuck into the ground or lashed to the steamer rail shed a wild, weird glare on the hurrying scene as the roustabouts, or deck-hands, nimbly lugged the wood on board, or carried the cargo ashore, singing plaintive melodies as they worked. Then again, the steamer would be made fast to a wharf-boat by some small town, or to the levee of a larger landing-place, and goods went ashore, passengers flitted on and off, baggage was transferred, the gang-plank was hauled in with prodigious clatter, the engineer’s bell tinkled, and, with a great snort from her engines, the “New Lucy” resumed her way down the river. Few passengers but those who were to go ashore could be seen on the upper deck viewing the strange sights of making a night-landing. And through the whole racket and din, three lads slept the sleep of the young and the innocent in room Number 56. “Just the number of the year with the eighteen knocked off,” Sandy had said when they were assigned to it.

When the boys had asked in Leavenworth how long the trip to St. Louis would be, they were told, “Three or four days, if the water holds.” This they thought rather vague information, and they had only a dim idea of what the man meant by the water holding. They soon learned. The season had been dry for the time of year. Although it was now November, little or no autumnal rains had fallen. Passengers from Fort Benton said that the lands on the Upper Missouri were parched for want of water, and the sluggish currents of the Big Muddy were “as slow as cold molasses,” as one of the deck-hands said to Sandy, when he was peering about the lower deck of the steamboat. It began to look as if the water would not hold.

On the second afternoon out of Leavenworth, as the “New Lucy” was gallantly sweeping around Prairie Bend, where any boat going down stream is headed almost due north, the turn in the river revealed no less than four other steamers hard and fast on the shoals that now plentifully appeared above the surface of the yellow water. Cautiously feeling her way along through these treacherous bars and sands, the “New Lucy,” with slackened speed, moved bravely down upon the stranded fleet. Anxious passengers clustered on the forward part of the steamer, watching the course of events. With many a cough and many a sigh, the boat swung to the right or left, obedient to her helm, the cry of the man heaving the lead for soundings telling them how fast the water shoaled or deepened as they moved down stream.

“We are bound to get aground,” said Oscar, as he scanned the wide river, apparently almost bare to its bed. “I suppose there is a channel, and I suppose that pilot up there in the pilot-house knows where it is, but I don’t see any.” Just then the water before them suddenly shoaled, there was a soft, grating sound, a thud, and the boat stopped, hard and fast aground. The “New Lucy” had joined the fleet of belated steamers on the shoals of Prairie Bend.

The order was given for all passengers to go aft; and while the lads were wondering what they were so peremptorily sent astern for, they saw two tall spars that had been carried upright at the bow of the boat rigged into the shape of a V upside down, and set on either side of the craft, the lower ends resting on the sand-bar each side of her. A big block and tackle were rigged at the point where the spars crossed each other over the bow of the boat, and from these a stout cable was made fast to the steamer’s “nose,” as the boys heard somebody call the extreme point of the bow.

“They are actually going to hoist this boat over the sand-bar,” said Sandy, excitedly, as they viewed these preparations from the rear of the boat.

“That is exactly what they are going to do,” said the pleasant-faced young man from Baltimore. “Now, then!” he added, with the air of one encouraging another, as the crew, laying hold of the tackle, and singing with a queer, jerky way, began to hoist. This would not avail. The nose of the boat was jammed deep into the sand, and so the cable was led back to a windlass, around which it was carried. Then, the windlass being worked by steam, the hull of the steamer rose very slightly, and the bottom of the bow was released from the river-bottom. The pilot rang his bell, the engine puffed and clattered, and the boat crept ahead for a few feet, and then came to rest again. That was all that could be done until the spars were reset further forward or deep water was reached. It was discouraging, for with all their pulling and hauling, that had lasted for more than an hour, they had made only four or five feet of headway.

“At the rate of five feet an hour, how long will it take us to spar our way down to St. Louis?” asked Charlie, quizzically.

“Oh, Charlie,” cried Sandy, “I know now why the clerk said that there were plenty of fellows who had to spar their way on the river. It is hard work to pull this steamer over the sand-bars and shoals, and when a man is busted and has to work his way along, he’s like a steamboat in a fix, like this one is. See? That’s the reason why they say he is sparring his way, isn’t it?”

“You are quite correct, youngster,” said the young man from Baltimore, regarding Sandy’s bright face with pleasure. “Correct you are. But I never knew what the slang meant until I came out here. And, for that matter, I don’t know that I ever heard the slang before. But it is the jargon of the river men.”

By this time, even sparring was of very little use, for the spars only sank deep and deeper into the soft river-bottom, and there was no chance to raise the bow of the boat from its oozy bed. The case for the present was hopeless; but the crew were kept constantly busy until nightfall, pulling and hauling. Some were sent ashore in a skiff, with a big hawser, which was made fast to a tree, and then all the power of the boat, men and steam, was put upon it to twist her nose off from the shoal into which it was stuck. All sorts of devices were resorted to, and a small gain was made once in a while; but it looked very much as if the calculation of Charlie, five feet in an hour, was too liberal an allowance for the progress towards St. Louis.

Just then, from the boat furthest down the river rose a cloud of steam, and the astonished lads heard a most extraordinary sound like that of a gigantic organ. More or less wheezy, but still easily to be understood, the well-known notes of “Oh, Susannah!” came floating up the river to them. Everybody paused to listen, even the tired and tugging roustabouts smiling at the unwonted music.

“Is it really music?” asked Oscar, whose artistic ear was somewhat offended by this strange roar of sounds. The young man from Baltimore assured him that this was called music; the music of a steam-organ or calliope, then a new invention on the Western rivers. He explained that it was an instrument made of a series of steam-whistles so arranged that a man, sitting where he could handle them all very rapidly, could play a tune on them. The player had only to know the key to which each whistle was pitched, and, with a simple arrangement of notes before him, he could make a gigantic melody that could be heard for many miles away.

“You are a musician, are you not?” asked the young man from Baltimore. “Didn’t I hear you playing a violin in your room last night? Or was it one of your brothers?”

Oscar, having blushingly acknowledged that he was playing his violin for the benefit of his cousins, as he explained, his new-found acquaintance said, “I play the flute a little, and we might try some pieces together some time, if you are willing.”

As they were making ready for bed that night, the pleasant-faced young man from Baltimore, who had been playing whist with his mother and sister, and the “military man,” as the boys had privately named one of the party, came to their door with his flute. The two musicians were fast friends at once. Flute and violin made delicious harmony, in the midst of which Sandy, who had slipped into his bunk, drifted off into the land of dreams with confused notions of a giant band somewhere up in the sky playing “Oh, Susannah!” “Love’s Last Greeting,” and “How Can I Leave Thee?” with occasional suggestions of the “Song of the Kansas Emigrants.”

Another morning came on, cold, damp, and raw. The sky was overcast and there were signs of rain. “There’s been rain to the nor’rard,” said Captain Bulger, meditatively. Now Captain Bulger was the skipper of the “New Lucy,” and when he said those oracular words, they were reported about the steamboat, to the great comfort of all on board. Still the five boats stuck on the shoals; their crews were still hard at work at all the devices that could be thought of for their liberation. The “War Eagle”–for they had found out the name of the musical steamer far down stream–enlivened the tedious day with her occasional strains of martial and popular music, if the steam-organ could be called musical.

In the afternoon, Oscar and the amiable young man from Baltimore shut themselves in their stateroom and played the flute and violin. The lovely lady who had made Sandy’s acquaintance early in the voyage asked him if he could make one at a game of whist. Sandy replied that he could play “a very little.” The thought of playing cards here on a steamboat, in public, as he said to himself, was rather frightful. He was not sure if his mother would like to have him do that. He looked uneasily around to see what Charlie would say about it. But Charlie was nowhere in sight. He was wandering around, like an uneasy ghost, watching for signs of the rising of the river, now confidently predicted by the knowing ones among the passengers.

“My boys all play whist,” said the lady, kindly; “but if you do not like to play, I will not urge you. We lack one of making up a party.”

Sandy had been told that he was an uncommonly good player for one so young. He liked the game; there would be no stakes, of course. With his ready habit of making up his mind, he brightly said, “I’ll play if you like, but you must know that I am only a youngster and not a first-rate player.” So they sat down, the lovely lady from Baltimore being Sandy’s partner, and the military gentleman and the young daughter of the lady from Baltimore being their opponents. Sandy had great good luck. The very best cards fell to him continually, and he thought he had never played so well. He caught occasional strains of music from room Number 56, and he was glad that Oscar was enjoying himself. From time to time the lovely lady who was his partner smiled approvingly at him, and once in a while, while the cards were being dealt, she said, “How divinely those dear boys are playing!”

The afternoon sped on delightfully, and Sandy’s spirits rose. He thought it would be fine if the “New Lucy” should stay stuck on a sand-bar for days and days, and he should have such a good game of whist, with the lovely lady from Baltimore for a partner. But the military gentleman grew tired. His luck was very poor, and when the servants began to rattle dishes on the supper-table, he suggested that it would be just as well perhaps if they did not play too much now; they would enjoy the game better later on. They agreed to stop with the next game.

When they had first taken their places at the card-table, the military gentleman had asked Sandy if he had any cards, and when he replied that he had none, the military gentleman, with a very lordly air, sent one of the cabin waiters to the bar for a pack of cards. Now that they were through with the game, Sandy supposed that the military gentleman would put the cards into his pocket and pay for them. Instead of that he said, “Now, my little man, we will saw off to see who shall pay for the cards.”

“Saw off?” asked Sandy, faintly, with a dim notion of what was meant.

“Yes, my lad,” said the military gentleman. “We will play one hand of Old Sledge to see who shall pay for the cards and keep them.”

With a sinking heart, but with a brave face, Sandy took up the cards dealt to him and began to play. It was soon over. Sandy won one point in the hand; the military gentleman had the other three.

“Take care of your cards, my son,” said the military gentleman; “we may want them again. They charge the extravagant price of six bits for them on this boat, and these will last us to St. Louis.”

Six bits! Seventy-five cents! And poor Sandy had only twenty-five cents in his pocket. That silver quarter represented the entire capital of the Boy Settlers from Kansas. Looking up, he saw Charlie regarding him with reproachful eyes from a corner of the saloon. With great carefulness, he gathered up his cards and rose, revolving in his mind the awful problem of paying for seventy-five cents’ worth of cards with twenty-five cents.

“Well, you’ve got yourself into a nice scrape,” tragically whispered Charlie, in his ear, as soon as the two boys were out of earshot of the others. “What are you going to do now? You can spar your way down to St. Louis, but you can’t spar your way with that barkeeper for a pack of cards.”

“Let me alone, Charlie,” said Sandy, testily. “You haven’t got to pay for these cards. I’ll manage it somehow. Don’t you worry yourself the least bit.”

“Serves you right for gambling. What would mother say if she knew it? If you hadn’t been so ready to show off your whist-playing before these strangers, you wouldn’t have got into such a box.”

“I didn’t gamble,” replied Sandy, hotly. “It isn’t gambling to play a hand to see who shall pay for the cards. All men do that. I have seen daddy roll a game of tenpins to see who should pay for the alley.”

“I don’t care for that. It is gambling to play for the leastest thing as a stake. Nice fellow you are, sitting down to play a hand of seven-up for the price of a pack of cards! Six bits at that!”

“A nice brotherly brother you are to nag me about those confounded cards, instead of helping a fellow out when he is down on his luck.”

Charlie, a little conscience-stricken, held his peace, while Sandy broke away from him, and rushed out into the chilly air of the after-deck. There was no sympathy in the dark and murky river, none in the forlorn shore, where rows of straggling cottonwoods leaned over and swept their muddy arms in the muddy water. Looking around for a ray of hope, a bright idea struck him. He could but try one chance. The bar of the “New Lucy” was a very respectable-looking affair, as bars go. It opened into the saloon cabin of the steamer on its inner side, but in the rear was a small window where the deck passengers sneaked up, from time to time, and bought whatever they wanted, and then quietly slipped away again, unseen by the more “high-toned” passengers in the cabin. Summoning all his courage and assurance, the boy stepped briskly to this outside opening, and, leaning his arms jauntily on the window-ledge, said, “See here, cap, I owe you for a pack of cards.”

“Yep,” replied the barkeeper, holding a bottle between his eye and the light, and measuring its contents.

This was not encouraging. Sandy, with a little effort, went on: “You see we fellows, three of us, are sparring our way down to St. Louis. We have got trusted for our passage. We’ve friends in St. Louis, and when we get there we shall be in funds. Our luggage is in pawn for our passage money. When we come down to get our luggage, I will pay you the six bits I owe you for the cards. Is that all right?”

“Yep,” said the barkeeper, and he set the bottle down. As the lad went away from the window, with a great load lifted from his heart, the barkeeper put his head out of the opening, looked after him, smiled, and said, “That boy’ll do.”

When Sandy joined his brother, who was wistfully watching for him, he said, a little less boastfully than might have been expected of him, “That’s all right, Charlie. The barkeeper says he will trust me until we get to St. Louis and come aboard to get the luggage. He’s a good fellow, even if he did say ‘yep’ instead of ‘yes’ when I asked him.”

In reply to Charlie’s eager questions, Sandy related all that had happened, and Charlie, with secret admiration for his small brother’s knack of “cheeking it through,” as he expressed it, forbore any further remarks.

“I do believe the water is really rising!” exclaimed the irrepressible youngster, who, now that his latest trouble was fairly over, was already thinking of something else. “Look at that log. When I came out here just after breakfast, this morning, it was high and dry on that shoal. Now one end of it is afloat. See it bob up and down?”

Full of the good news, the lads went hurriedly forward to find Oscar, who, with his friend from Baltimore, was regarding the darkening scene from the other part of the boat.

“She’s moving!” excitedly cried Oscar, pointing his finger at the “War Eagle”; and, as he spoke, that steamer slid slowly off the sand-bar, and with her steam-organ playing triumphantly “Oh, aren’t you glad you’re out of the Wilderness!” a well-known air in those days, she steamed steadily down stream. From all the other boats, still stranded though they were, loud cheers greeted the first to be released from the long embargo. Presently another, the “Thomas H. Benton,” slid off, and churning the water with her wheels like a mad thing, took her way down the river. All these boats were flat-bottomed and, as the saying was, “could go anywhere if the ground was a little damp.” A rise of a very few inches of water was sufficient to float any one of them. And, in the course of a half-hour, the “New Lucy,” to the great joy of her passengers, with one more hoist on her forward spars, was once more in motion, and she too went gayly steaming down the river, her less fortunate companions who were still aground cheering her as she glided along the tortuous channel.

“Well, that was worth waiting some day or two to see,” said Oscar, drawing a long breath. “Just listen to that snorting calliope, playing ‘Home, Sweet Home’ as they go prancing down the Big Muddy. I shall never forget her playing that ‘Out of the Wilderness’ as she tore out of those shoals. It’s a pretty good tune, after all, and the steam-organ is not so bad now that you hear it at a distance.”