The Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas

CHAPTER XX.
STRANDED NEAR HOME

It was after dark, on a Saturday evening, when the “New Lucy” landed her passengers at the levee, St. Louis. They should have been in the city several hours earlier, and they had expected to arrive by daylight. The lads marvelled much at the sight of the muddy waters of the Missouri running into the pure currents of the Mississippi, twenty miles above St. Louis, the two streams joining but not mingling, the yellow streak of the Big Muddy remaining separate and distinct from the flow of the Mississippi for a long distance below the joining of the two. They had also found new enjoyment in the sight of the great, many-storied steamboats with which the view was now diversified as they drew nearer the beautiful city which had so long been the object of their hopes and longings. They could not help thinking, as they looked at the crowded levee, solid buildings, and slender church spires, that all this was a strange contrast to the lonely prairie and wide, trackless spaces of their old home on the banks of the distant Kansas stream. The Republican Fork seemed to them like a far-off dream, it was so very distant to them now.

“Where are you young fellows going to stop in St. Louis?” asked the pleasant-faced young man from Baltimore.

The lads had scarcely thought of that, and here was the city, the strange city in which they knew nobody, in full sight. They exchanged looks of dismay, Sandy’s face wearing an odd look of amusement and apprehension mixed. Charlie timidly asked what hotels were the best. The young man from Baltimore named two or three which he said were “first-class,” and Charlie thought to himself that they must avoid those. They had no money to pay for their lodging, no baggage as security for their payment.

As soon as they could get away by themselves, they held a council to determine what was to be done. They had the business address of their uncle, Oscar Bryant, of the firm of Bryant, Wilder & Co., wholesale dealers in agricultural implements, Front Street. But they knew enough about city life to know that it would be hopeless to look for him in his store at night. It would be nearly nine o’clock before they could reach any hotel. What was to be done? Charlie was certain that no hotel clerk would be willing to give them board and lodging, penniless wanderers as they were, with nothing but one small valise to answer as luggage for the party. They could have no money until they found their uncle.

Before they could make up their minds what to do, or which way to turn, the boat had made her landing and was blowing off steam at the levee. The crowds of passengers, glad to escape from the narrow limits of the steamer, were hurrying ashore. The three homeless and houseless lads were carried resistlessly along with the crowd. Charlie regretted that they had not asked if they could stay on the boat until Sunday morning. But Sandy and Oscar both scouted such a confession of their poverty. “Besides,” said Sandy, “it is not likely that they would keep any passengers on board here at the levee.”

“Ride up? Free ’bus to the Planters’!” cried one of the runners on the levee, and before the other two lads could collect their thoughts, the energetic Sandy had drawn them into the omnibus, and they were on their way to an uptown hotel. When the driver had asked where their baggage was, Sandy, who was ready to take command of things, had airily answered that they would have it sent up from the steamer. There were other passengers in the ’bus, and Charlie, anxious and distressed, had no chance to remonstrate; they were soon rattling and grinding over the pavements of St. Louis. The novelty of the ride and the glitter of the brightly lighted shops in which crowds of people were doing their Saturday-night buying, diverted their attention for a time. Then the omnibus backed up before a handsome hotel, and numerous colored men came hurrying down the steps of the grand entrance to wait upon the new arrivals. With much ceremony and obsequiousness, the three young travellers were ushered into the office, where they wrote their names in a big book, and were escorted to a large and elegant room, in which were ample, even luxurious, sleeping accommodations for the trio.

The colored porter assiduously brushed off the clothing of the lads. “Baggage?” the clerk at the desk had asked when they registered. “Baggage, sah?” the waiter asked again, as he dusted briskly the jackets of the three guests. Neither Charlie nor Oscar had the heart to make reply to this very natural question. It was Sandy who said: “We will not have our baggage up from the steamer to-night. We are going right on up north.”

But when Sandy tipped the expectant waiter with the long-treasured silver quarter of a dollar, Charlie fairly groaned, and sinking into a chair as the door closed, said, “Our last quarter! Great Scott, Sandy! are you crazy?”

Sandy, seeing that there was no help for it, put on a bold front, and insisted that they must keep up appearances to the last. He would hunt up Uncle Oscar’s place of abode in the city directory after supper, and bright and early Sunday morning he would go and see him. They would be all right then. What use was that confounded old quarter, anyhow? They might as well stand well with the waiter. He might be useful to them. Twenty-five cents would not pay their hotel bill; it would not buy anything they needed in St. Louis. The darky might as well have it.

“And this is one of the swellest and most expensive hotels in the city,” cried Charlie, eyeing the costly furniture and fittings of the room in which they were lodged. “I just think that we are travelling under false pretences, putting up at an expensive house like this without a cent in our pockets. Not one cent! What will you do, you cheeky boy, if they ask us for our board in advance? I have heard that they always do that with travellers who have no baggage.”

“Well, I don’t know what we will do,” said Sandy, doggedly. “Suppose we wait until they ask us. There’ll be time enough to decide when we are dunned for our bill. I suppose the honestest thing would be to own right up and tell the whole truth. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of people have to do that sort of thing when they get into a tight place.”

“But I’m really afraid, Sandy, that they won’t believe us,” said the practical Oscar. “The world is full of swindlers as well as of honest fellows. They might put us out as adventurers.”

“We are not adventurers!” cried Sandy, indignantly. “We are gentlemen when we are at home, able to pay our debts. We are overtaken by an accident,” he added, chuckling to himself. “Distressed gentlemen, don’t you see?”

“But we might have gone to a cheaper place,” moaned Charlie. “Here we are in the highest-priced hotel in St. Louis. I know it, for I heard that Baltimore chap say so. We might have put up at some third-rate house, anyhow.”

“But it is the third-rate house that asks you for your baggage, and makes you pay in advance if you don’t have any,” cried Sandy, triumphantly. “I don’t believe that a high-toned hotel like this duns people in advance for their board, especially if it is a casual traveller, such as we are. Anyhow, they haven’t dunned us yet, and when they do, I’ll engage to see the party through, Master Charlie; so you set your mind at rest.” As for Charlie, he insisted that he would keep out of the sight of the hotel clerk, until relief came in the shape of money to pay their bill.

Oscar, who had been reading attentively a printed card tacked to the door of the room, broke in with the declaration that he was hungry, and that supper was served until ten o’clock at night. The others might talk all night, for all he cared; he intended to have some supper. There was no use arguing about the chances of being dunned for their board; the best thing he could think of was to have some board before he was asked to pay for it. And he read out the list of hours for dinner, breakfast, and supper from the card.

“There is merit in your suggestion,” said Charlie, with a grim smile. “The dead-broke Boy Settlers from the roaring Republican Fork will descend to the banquet-hall.” Charlie was recovering his spirits under Oscar’s cool and unconcerned advice to have board before being in the way of paying for it.

After supper, the lads, feeling more cheerful than before, sauntered up to the clerk’s desk, and inspected the directory of the city. They found their uncle’s name and address, and it gave them a gleam of pleasure to see his well-remembered business card printed on the page opposite. Under the street address was printed Mr. Bryant’s place of residence, thus: “h. at Hyde Park.”

“Where’s that?” asked Sandy, confidently, of the clerk.

“Oh! that’s out of the city a few miles. You can ride out there in the stage. Only costs you a quarter.”

Only a quarter! And the last quarter had gone to the colored boy with the whisk-broom.

“Here’s a go!” said Sandy, for once a little cast down. “We might walk it,” Oscar whispered, as they moved away from the desk. But to this Charlie, asserting the authority of an elder brother, steadfastly objected. He knew his Uncle Oscar better than the younger boys did. He remembered that he was a very precise and dignified elderly gentleman. He would be scandalized greatly if his three wandering nephews should come tramping out to his handsome villa on a Sunday, like three vagabonds, to borrow money enough to get home to Dixon with. No; that was not to be thought of. Charlie said he would pawn his watch on Monday morning; he would walk the streets to keep out of the way of the much-dreaded hotel clerk; but, as for trudging out to his Uncle Oscar’s on Sunday, he would not do it, nor should either of the others stir a step. So they went to bed, and slept as comfortably in their luxurious apartment as if they had never known anything less handsome, and had money in plenty to pay all demands at sight.

It was a cloudy and chilly November Sunday to which the boys awoke next day. The air was piercingly raw, and the city looked dust-colored and cheerless under the cold, gray sky. Breaking their fast (Charlie keeping one eye on the hotel office), they sallied forth to see the city. They saw it all over, from one end to the other. They walked and walked, and then went back to the hotel; and after dinner, walked and walked again. They hunted up their uncle’s store in one of the deserted business streets of the city; and they gazed at its exterior with a curious feeling of relief. There was the sign on the prosperous-looking outside of the building,–“Oscar G. Bryant & Co., Agricultural Implements.” There, at least, was a gleam of comfort. The store was a real thing. Their uncle, little though they knew about him, was a real man.

Then, as the evening twilight gathered, they walked out to the borders of the suburb where he lived. They did not venture into the avenue where they had been told his house was, vaguely fearing that he might meet and recognize them. As they turned their steps towards the hotel, Oscar said: “It’s lucky there are three of us to keep ourselves in countenance. If that wasn’t the case, it would be awfully lonely to think we were so near home, and yet have gone ashore, hard and fast aground; right in sight of port, as it were.”

The parents of these boys had been born and brought up near the seacoast of New England, and not a few marine figures of speech were mingled in the family talk. So Charlie took up the parable and gloomily said: “We are as good as castaways in this big ocean of a city, with never a soul to throw us a spar or give us a hand. I never felt so blue in all my life. Look at those children playing in that dooryard. Pretty poor-looking children they are; but they’ve got a home over their heads to-night. We haven’t.”

“Oh, pshaw, Charlie!” broke in Sandy; “why will you always look on the dark side of things? I know it’s real lonesome here in a strange city, and away from our own folks. But they are not so far away but what we can get to them after a while. And we have got a roof over our heads for to-night, anyway; the Planters’ is good enough for me; if you want anything better, you will have to get outside of St. Louis for it; and, what is more, they are not going to dun us for our board bill until after to-day. I’m clean beat out traipsing around this town, and I give you two fellows notice that I am not going to stir a step out of the hotel to-night. Unless it is to go to church,” he added by way of postscript.

They did go to church that night, after they had had their supper. It was a big, comfortable, and roomy church, and the lads were shown into a corner pew under the gallery, where they were not conspicuous. The music of choir and organ was soothing and comforting. One of the tunes sung was “Dundee,” and each boy thought of their singing the song of “The Kansas Emigrants,” as the warbling measures drifted down to them from the organ-loft, lifting their hearts with thoughts that the strangers about them knew nothing of. The preacher’s text was “In my father’s house are many mansions.” Then they looked at each other again, as if to say, “That’s a nice text for three homeless boys in a strange city.” But nobody even so much as whispered.

Later on in the sermon, when the preacher touched a tender chord in Oscar’s heart, alluding to home and friends, and to those who wander far from both, the lad, with a little moisture in his eyes, turned to look at Sandy. He was fast asleep in his snug corner. Oscar made a motion to wake him, but Charlie leaned over and said, “Leave the poor boy alone. He’s tired with his long tramp to-day.” When they went out after the service was over, Oscar rallied Sandy on his sleeping in church, and the lad replied: “I know it was bad manners, but the last thing I heard the minister say, was ‘Rest for the weary.’ I thought that was meant for me. Leastways, I found rest for the weary right off, and I guess there was no harm done.”

With Monday morning came sunshine and a clear and bracing air. Even Charlie’s face wore a cheerful look, the first that he had put on since arriving in St. Louis, although now and again his heart quaked as he heard the hotel porter’s voice in the hall roaring out the time of departure for the trains that now began to move from the city in all directions. They had studied the railroad advertisements and time-tables to some purpose, and had discovered that they must cross to East St. Louis, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, and there take a train for the northern part of the State, where Dixon is situated. But they must first see their Uncle Oscar, borrow the needed money from him, settle with the steamboat people and the hotel, and then get to the railroad station by eleven o’clock in the forenoon. It was a big morning’s work.

They were at their uncle’s store before he arrived from his suburban home; and, while they waited, they whisperingly discussed the question, Who should ask for the money? Charlie was at first disposed to put this duty on Sandy; but the other two boys were very sure that it would not look well for the youngest of the party to be the leader on an occasion so important; and Charlie was appointed spokesman.

Mr. Oscar Bryant came in. He was very much surprised to see three strange lads drawn up in a row to receive him. And he was still more taken aback when he learned that they were his nephews, on their way home from Kansas. He had heard of his brother’s going out to Kansas, and he had not approved of it at all. He was inclined to think that, on the whole, it would be better for Kansas to have slavery than to do without it. A great many other people in St. Louis thought the same way, at that time, although some of them changed their minds later on.

Mr. Oscar Bryant was a tall, spruce-looking, and severe man in appearance. His hair was gray and brushed stiffly back from his forehead; and his precise, thin, white whiskers were cut “just like a minister’s,” as Sandy afterwards declared; and when he said that going to Kansas to make it a free State was simply the rankest kind of folly, Charlie’s heart sunk, and he thought to himself that the chance of borrowing money from their stern-looking uncle was rather slim.

“But it doesn’t make any difference to you boys whether slavery is voted up or down in Kansas, I suppose,” he continued, less sternly. “You will live to see the day when, if you live in Kansas, you will own slaves and work them. You can never clear up a wild country like that without slave-labor, depend upon it. I know what I am talking about.” And Uncle Oscar stroked his chin in a self-satisfied way, as if he had settled the whole Kansas-Nebraska question in his own manner of thinking. Sandy’s brown cheeks flushed and his eyes sparkled. He was about to burst out with an indignant word, when Charlie, alarmed by his small brother’s excited looks, blurted out their troubles at once, in order to head off the protest that he expected from Sandy. The lad was silent.

“Eh? what’s that?” asked the formal-looking merchant. “Busted? And away from home? Why, certainly, my lads. How much do you need?” And he opened his pocket-book at once. Greatly relieved, perhaps surprised, Charlie told him that they thought that fifty dollars would pay all their bills and get them back to Dixon. The money was promptly handed over, and Charlie, emboldened by this good nature, told his uncle that they still owed for their passage down the river from Leavenworth.

“And did they really trust you three boys for your passage-money? How did that happen?” asked the merchant, with admiration.

Charlie, as spokesman, explained that Sandy had “sparred” their way for them; and when he had told how Sandy still owed for a pack of cards, and how it was his honest face and candid way of doing things that had brought them thus far on their homeward journey, Uncle Oscar, laughing heartily and quite unbending from his formal and dry way of talking, said, “Well done, my little red-hot Abolitionist; you’ll get through this world, I’ll be bound.” He bade the wanderers farewell and goodspeed with much impressiveness and sent messages of good-will to their parents.

“How do you suppose Uncle Oscar knew I was an Abolitionist?” demanded Sandy, as soon as they were out of earshot. “I’m not an Abolitionist, anyhow.”

“Well, you’re a free-State man; and that’s the same thing,” said Charlie. “A free-State boy,” added Oscar.

With a proud heart the cashier of the Boy Settlers paid their bill at the hotel, and reclaimed their valise from the porter, with whom they had lodged it in the morning before going out. Then they hurried to the levee, and, to their surprise, found that the little steamer that conveyed passengers across the river to the East St. Louis railway station lay close alongside the “New Lucy.” Their task of transferring the baggage was easy.

“Say, Sandy, you made the bargain with the clerk to bring us down here on the security of our luggage; it’s nothing more than business-like that you should pay him what we owe,” said Charlie.

“Right you are, Charlie,” added Oscar, “and it’s fair that Sandy, who has had the bother of sparring our way for us, should have the proud satisfaction of paying up all old scores.” So Sandy, nothing loth, took the roll of bills and marched bravely up to the clerk’s office and paid the money due. The handsome clerk looked approvingly at the boy, and said: “Found your friends? Good boy! Well, I wish you good luck.”

The barkeeper said he had forgotten all about the pack of cards that he had trusted Sandy with, when the lad gave him the seventy-five cents due him. “I can’t always keep account of these little things,” he explained.

“But you don’t often trust anybody with cards coming down the river, do you?” asked Sandy, surprised.

“Heaps,” said the barkeeper.

“And do they always pay?”

“Some of ’em does, and then ag’in, some of ’em doesn’t,” replied the man, as with a yawn he turned away to rearrange his bottles and glasses.

With the aid of a lounger on the landing, whom they thought they could now afford to fee for a quarter, the youngsters soon transferred their luggage from the “New Lucy” to the little ferry-boat near at hand. To their great pleasure, they found on board the pleasant-faced lady from Baltimore and her party. She was apparently quite as pleased to meet them, and she expressed her regret that they were not going eastward on the train with herself and sons. “We have had such a pleasant trip down the river together,” she said. “And you are going back to Illinois? Will you return to Kansas in the spring?”

“We cannot tell yet,” replied Charlie, modestly. “That all depends upon how things look in the spring, and what father and Uncle Aleck think about it. We are free-State people, and we want to see the Territory free, you see.”

The pleasant-faced lady’s forehead was just a little clouded when she said, “You will have your labor lost, if you go to Kansas, then; for it will certainly be a slave State.”

They soon were in the cars with their tickets for Dixon bought, and, as Sandy exultingly declared, paid for, and their baggage checked all the way through. Then Sandy said, “I’m sorry that pretty lady from Baltimore is a Border Ruffian.”

The other two boys shouted with laughter, and Oscar cried: “She’s no Border Ruffian. She’s only pro-slavery; and so is Uncle Oscar and lots of others. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to be so–what is it, Charlie? Intolerant, that’s what it is.”

The train was slowly moving from the rude shed that was dignified by the name of railroad depot. Looking back at the river with their heads out of the windows, for the track lay at right angles with the river bank, they could now see the last of the noble stream on which they had taken their journey downwards from “bleeding Kansas” by the Big Muddy. They were nearing home, and their hearts were all the lighter for the trials and troubles through which they had so lately passed.

“We don’t cross the prairies as of old our fathers crossed the sea, any more, do we, Charlie?” said Oscar, as they caught their last glimpse of the mighty Mississippi.

“No,” said the elder lad. “We may not be there to see it; but Kansas will be the homestead of the free, for all that. Mind what I say.”