CHAPTER V.
TIDINGS FROM THE FRONT.
Supper was over, a camp-fire built (for the emigrants did theircooking by a small camp-stove, and sat by the light of a fire on theground), when out of the darkness came sounds of advancing teams.Oscar was playing his violin, trying to pick out a tune for the bettersinging of Whittier's song of the Kansas Emigrants. His father raisedhis hand to command silence. "That's a Yankee teamster, I'll bebound," he said, as the "Woh-hysh! Woh-haw!" of the coming party fellon his ear. "No Missourian ever talks to his cattle like that."
As he spoke, a long, low emigrant wagon, or "prairie schooner," drawnby three yoke of dun-colored oxen, toiled up the road. In the wagonwas a faded-looking woman with two small children clinging to her.Odds and ends of household furniture showed themselves over her headfrom within the wagon, and strapped on behind was a coop of fowls,from which came a melancholy cackle, as if the hens and chickens wereweary of their long journey. A man dressed in butternut-coloredhomespun drove the oxen, and a boy about ten years old trudged behindthe driver. In the darkness behind these tramped a small herd of cowsand oxen driven by two other men, and a lad about the age of OscarBryant. The new arrivals paused in the road, surveyed our friends fromIllinois, stopped the herd of cattle, and then the man who was drivingthe wagon said, with an unmistakable New England twang, "Friends?"
"Friends, most assuredly," said Mr. Bryant, with a smile. "I guess youhave been having hard luck, you appear to be so suspicious."
"Well, we have, and that's a fact. But we're main glad to be able tocamp among friends. Jotham, unyoke the cattle after you have driventhem into the timber a piece." He assisted the woman and children toget down from the wagon, and one of the cattle-drivers coming up,drove the team into the woods a short distance, and the tired oxenwere soon lying down among the underbrush.
"Well, yes, we _have_ had a pretty hard time getting here. We are thelast free-State men allowed over the ferry at Parkville. Where be youfrom?"
"We are from Lee County, Illinois," replied Mr. Bryant. "We came in bythe way of Parkville, too, a day or two ago; but we stopped atQuindaro. Did you come direct from Parkville?"
THE YANKEE EMIGRANT.]
"Yes," replied the man. "We came up the river in the first place, onthe steamboat 'Black Eagle,' and when we got to Leavenworth, a bigcrowd of Borderers, seeing us and another lot of free-State men on theboat, refused to let us land. We had to go down the river again. Thecaptain of the boat kicked up a great fuss about it, and wanted to putus ashore on the other side of the river; but the Missouri menwouldn't have it. They put a 'committee,' as they called the two men,on board the steamboat, and they made the skipper take us down theriver."
"How far down did you go?" asked Bryant, his face reddening withanger.
"Well, we told the committee that we came through Ioway, and that toIoway we must go; so they rather let up on us, and set us ashore justopposite Wyandotte. I was mighty 'fraid they'd make us swear wewouldn't go back into Kansas some other way; but they didn't, and sowe stivered along the road eastwards after they set us ashore, andthen we fetched a half-circle around and got into Parkville."
"I shouldn't wonder if you bought those clothes that you have got onat Parkville," said Mr. Howell, with a smile.
"You guess about right," said the sad-colored stranger. "A very nicesort of a man we met at the fork of the road, as you turn off to go toParkville from the river road, told me that my clothes were tooYankee. I wore 'em all the way from Woburn, Massachusetts, where wecame from, and I hated to give 'em up. But discretion is better thanvalor, I have heern tell; so I made the trade, and here I am."
"We had no difficulty getting across at Parkville," said Mr. Bryant,"except that we did have to go over in the night in a sneaking fashionthat I did not like."
"Well," answered the stranger, "as a special favor, they let usacross, seeing that we had had such hard luck. That's a nice-lookingfiddle you've got there, sonny," he abruptly interjected, as he tookOscar's violin from his unwilling hand. "I used to play the fiddleonce, myself," he added. Then, drawing the bow over the strings in alight and artistic manner, he began to play "Bonnie Doon."
"Come, John," his wife said wearily, "it's time the children wereunder cover. Let go the fiddle until we've had supper."
John reluctantly handed back the violin, and the newcomers were soonin the midst of their preparations for the night's rest. Later on inthe evening, John Clark, as the head of the party introduced himself,came over to the Dixon camp, and gave them all the news. Clark was oneof those who had been helped by the New England Emigrant Aid Society,an organization with headquarters in the Eastern States, and withagents in the West. He had been fitted out at Council Bluffs, Iowa,but for some unexplained reason had wandered down as far south asKansas City, and there had boarded the "Black Eagle" with his familyand outfit. One of the two men with him was his brother; the otherwas a neighbor who had cast in his lot with him. The tall lad was JohnClark's nephew.
In one way or another, Clark had managed to pick up much gossip aboutthe country and what was going on. At Tecumseh, where they would bedue in a day or two if they continued on this road, an election forcounty officers was to be held soon, and the Missourians were bound toget in there and carry the election. Clark thought they had better notgo straight forward into danger. They could turn off, and go west byway of Topeka.
"Why, that would be worse than going to Tecumseh," interjectedCharlie, who had modestly kept out of the discussion. "Topeka is thefree-State capital, and they say that there is sure to be a big battlethere, sooner or later."
But Mr. Bryant resolved that he would go west by the way of Tecumseh,no matter if fifty thousand Borderers were encamped there. He askedthe stranger if he had in view any definite point; to which Clarkreplied that he had been thinking of going up the Little Blue; he hadheard that there was plenty of good vacant land there, and the landoffice would open soon. He had intended, he said, to go to Manhattan,and start from there; but since they had been so cowardly as to changethe name of the place, he had "rather soured on it."
"Manhattan?" exclaimed Charlie, eagerly. "Where is that place? We haveasked a good many people, but nobody can tell us."
"Good reason why; they've gone and changed the name. It used to beBoston, but the settlers around there were largely from Missouri. Thecompany were Eastern men, and when they settled on the name of Boston,it got around that they were all abolitionists; and so they changed itto Manhattan. Why they didn't call it New York, and be done with it,is more than I can tell. But it was Boston, and it is Manhattan; andthat's all I want to know about _that_ place."
Mr. Bryant was equally sure that he did not want to have anything todo with a place that had changed its name through fear of anybody oranything.
Next day there was a general changing of minds, however. It wasSunday, and the emigrants, a God-fearing and reverent lot of people,did not move out of camp. Others had come in during the night, forthis was a famous camping-place, well known throughout all the region.Here were wood, water, and grass, the three requisites for campers, asthey had already found. The country was undulating, interlaced withcreeks; and groves of black-jack, oak, and cottonwood were here andthere broken by open glades that would be smiling fields some day, butwere now wild native grasses.
There was a preacher in the camp, a good man from New England, whopreached about the Pilgrim's Progress through the world, and thetrials he meets by the way. Oscar pulled his father's sleeve, andasked why he did not ask the preacher to give out "The KansasEmigrant's Song" as a hymn. Mr. Bryant smiled, and whispered that itwas hardly likely that the lines would be considered just the thingfor a religious service. But after the preaching was over, and thelittle company was breaking up, he told the preacher what Oscar hadsaid. The minister's eyes sparkled, and he replied, "What? Have youthat beautiful hymn? Let us have it now and here. Nothing could bebetter for this day and this time."
Oscar, blushing with excitement and native modesty, was
put up high onthe stump of a tree, and, violin in hand, "raised the tune." It wasgrand old "Dundee." Almost everybody seemed to know the words ofWhittier's poem, and beneath the blue Kansas sky, amid the groves ofKansas trees, the sturdy, hardy men and the few pale women joyfully,almost tearfully, sang,--
We crossed the prairie, as of old The pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free!
We go to rear a wall of men On freedom's Southern line, And plant beside the cotton-tree The rugged Northern pine!
We're flowing from our native hills As our free rivers flow; The blessing of our Mother-land Is on us as we go.
We go to plant her common schools On distant prairie swells, And give the Sabbaths of the wild The music of her bells.
Upbearing, like the Ark of old, The Bible in our van, We go to test the truth of God Against the fraud of man.
No pause, nor rest, save where the streams That feed the Kansas run, Save where our pilgrim gonfalon Shall flout the setting sun!
We'll tread the prairie as of old Our fathers sailed the sea, And make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free!
"It was good to be there," said Alexander Howell, his hand restinglovingly on Oscar's shoulder, as they went back to camp. But Oscar'sfather said never a word. His face was turned to the westward, wherethe sunlight was fading behind the hills of the far-off frontier ofthe Promised Land.
OSCAR WAS PUT UP HIGH ON THE STUMP OF A TREE, AND, VIOLININ HAND, "RAISED THE TUNE."]
The general opinion gathered that day was that they who wanted tofight for freedom might better go to Lawrence, or to Topeka. Those whowere bent on finding homes for themselves and little ones should presson further to the west, where there was land in plenty to be had forthe asking, or, rather, for the pre-empting. So, when Monday morningcame, wet, murky, and depressing, Bryant surrendered to the counselsof his brother-in-law and the unspoken wish of the boys, and agreed togo on to the newly-surveyed lands on the tributaries of the Kaw. Theyhad heard good reports of the region lying westward of Manhattan andFort Riley. The town that had changed its name was laid out at theconfluence of the Kaw and the Big Blue. Fort Riley was some eighteenor twenty miles to the westward, near the junction of the streams thatform the Kaw, known as Smoky Hill Fork and the Republican Fork. On oneor the other of these forks, the valleys of which were said to befertile and beautiful beyond description, the emigrants would find ahome. So, braced and inspired by the consciousness of having adefinite and settled plan, the Dixon party set forth on Mondaymorning, through the rain and mist, with faces to the westward.
Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas Page 6
