The Young Alaskans on the Missouri, Emerson Hough [books to read as a couple .txt] 📗

a ‘jentle brease,’ and on June 20th a ‘jentle breese’; but not content when he got it right, he calls it a ‘gentle Breeze’ the next time, then drops back to ‘gentle breeze’ on July 21st. He repeats that on August 12th, the next raising it to ‘gentle Breeze’; and then it’s a ‘gentle breeze,’ a ‘jentle Breeze,’ ‘gentle breeze,’ and ‘gentle Brease’—till he gets perfectly irresponsible, up the river!”

“What a funny man!” snickered Jesse, once more.

“He didn’t do it to be funny,” said Rob. “Once I asked a kid cow puncher to make a horse pitch some more for me, so I could make a photo of it; and he said, ‘Why, I didn’t make him pitch—he just done that hisself.’ Well, I guess that’s how to account for Clark’s spelling—he ‘just done that hisself.’”

Uncle Dick had not been paying much attention to the boys just then, but was watching the smoke clouds ahead. Passing trains whistled loudly and frequently. The shores became more populated.

“Two miles more and we’ll round to full view of Kansas City, young men,” said he. “We’ve crossed the whole and entire state of Missouri, three hundred and ninety miles—from one great city to another great one.

“St. Louis—Kansas City! Each in her day has been the Gate to the West. In 1847, Independence, over to the left, was going back, and even the new boat landing of Westport was within the year to be called Kansas City. Then she was the Gate indeed, and so she has remained through various later sorts of transportation.

“When St. Louis laid down the oar and paddle, Kansas City took up the ox whip. When the railroads came, she was sitting on the job.

“You’ve seen one old town site of New Franklin, opposite Boonville, halfway across the state; and now I want you to study this great city here, hardly more than threescore years and ten of age—just a man’s lifetime. Picture this place as it then was—full of the ox teams going west——”

“Oh, can’t we go over the Oregon Trail, too—next year, Uncle Dick?” broke in John.

“Maybe. Don’t ask me too many questions too far ahead. Now, think back to the time of Lewis and Clark—not a settlement or a house of a white man above La Charette, and not one here. To them this was just the mouth of the Kansas, or ‘Kansau,’ River, and little enough could they learn about that river. Look at the big bluffs and the trees. And yonder were the Prairies; and back of them the Plains. No one knew them then.

“As you know, they had been getting more and more game as they approached this place. Now the deer and bears and turkeys fairly thronged. Patrick Gass says, ‘I never saw so much sign of game in my life,’ and the Journals tell of the abundance of game killed—Clark speaks of the deer killed the day they got here, June 26th, and says, ‘I observed a great number of Parrot quetts this evening.’ That Carolina parrakeet is mentioned almost all the way across Kansas by the Oregon Trail men, and it used to be thick in middle Illinois. All gone now—gone with many another species of American wild life—gone with the bears and turkeys and deer we didn’t see. You couldn’t find a parrakeet at the mouth of the ‘Kanzas’ River to-day, unless you bought it in a bird store, that’s sure.

“But think of the giant trees in here, those days—sycamores, cottonwoods, as well as oaks and ash and hickories and elms and mulberries and maples. And the grass tall as a man’s waist, and ‘leavel,’ as they called it. Is it any wonder that Will Clark got worked up over some of the views he saw from high points on the river bends? Those, my boys, were the happy days—oh, I confess, Jesse, many a time I’ve wished I’d been there my own self!”

“How do you check up on the distances with Clark? How long did it take them to get this far?”

“Just forty-three days, sir,” replied Jesse, the youngest of them all, who also had been keeping count.

“Yes—around seven miles a day! We’ve done seven miles an hour, many a time. Where they took a week we’ll take a day, let us say. From here to Mandan, North Dakota, where they wintered, is more than fourteen hundred miles by river, and they took about one hundred and twenty days to it—averaging only nine and a half or ten miles a day of actual travel in that part of the river. Clark fails once or twice to log the day’s distance. Gass calls it sixteen hundred and ten miles from the start to Mandan—I make it about fifteen hundred and fifty, with such figures as I find set down. The River Commission call it fourteen hundred and fifty-two. Give us fifty miles a day for thirty days, and that would be fifteen hundred miles—why, we’re a couple of hundred miles beyond Mandan right now—on paper!

“But I never saw anything that ran by gas that didn’t get its back up sometimes. Suppose we allow a month to get up to Mandan—bringing us there by June 22d—call it June 30th. How’d that do? Do you think we can make it—say forty-odd miles a day—or even thirty?”

“Sure we can!” said Jesse, stoutly.

“Yes—on paper!” repeated Uncle Dick. “Well, there’s many a sand bar between here and Mandan, and many a long mile. Lewis and Clark did not get there until October 26th—four months from here. If we allow ourselves one month, we’ll only have to go four or five times as fast as they did. I’ve known a flat bottom ‘John boat’ do forty miles a day on the Current River of Missouri with only one outboard motor; and that’s a six-mile current, good and stiff. Let us not count our chickens just yet, but keep on plugging. I must say Rob is a wizard with the engines, this far, at least.

“And now, if we’re done with the arithmetic——”

“We’re not,” interrupted Jesse. “I’ve set down the fish I’ve caught this far, and it’s three wall-eyes and twelve catfish. That’s fifteen head of game against their thirty, about!”

“Oh! And you want to know, if a boy of your size could catch fifteen head of fish in eight days, how many could we all catch in thirty days? That’s getting out of my depth, Jesse! I don’t know, but I hope that the gasoline and the catfish both hold out, for they are our main staffs of life just now.”

They ran up the left bluff of the river, mile after mile, under the edge of the great town whose chimneys belched black smoke, noting railway train after train, their own impudent little motors making as much noise as the next along the water front. Many a head was turned to catch sight of their curious twin-screw craft, with the flag at its bow, and on the stern the name Adventurer, of America, but Rob paid no attention to this, holding her stiff into the current and heading in answer to Uncle Dick’s signals.

At last they lay alongside a little landing to which a houseboat was moored, occupied by a riverman whom Uncle Dick seemed to know.

“How do you do, Johnson,” said he, as the man poked his head out of the companionway. “You see we’re here.”

“And more’n I’d of bet on, at that!” rejoined the other. “I never expected ye could make it up at all. How long ye been—a month or so?”

“A week or so,” replied Uncle Dick, carelessly, and not showing his pride in the performance of the party. “You see, we’ve got double engines and we travel under forced draught, with the stokers stripped to the waist and doing eight shifts a day.”

“Like enough, like enough!” laughed Johnson, not crediting their run. “Well, what kin I do fer ye here?”

“Get our tanks filled. Unpack our boat and store the stuff on your boat so it can’t be stolen. Overrun our engines and oil her up. Clean out the bilge and make her a sweet ship.”

“When?”

“To-day. But we’ll not start until to-morrow morning. I’ve got a few friends to see here, and my Company of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery will like to look around a little. We’ll stop at a hotel to-night. I’m trusting you to have everything ready for us by nine to-morrow morning.”

“That’s all right,” replied Johnson. “I’ll not fail ye, and I’ll not let anything git losted, neither.”

“I know that,” said Uncle Dick. “By the way, Johnson, which is the best outfitting store in Westport?”

“As which, sir?”

“In Westport, or say Independence. We could walk down there if we had to. Not so far.”

Old Johnson scratched his head. “Go on, Colonel, you’re always havin’ yer joke. I’m sure I don’t know what ye mean by Indypendence, or Westport. But if you want to get uptown, the street cars is four blocks yan. Er maybe ye’d like a taxi?”

“No, nothing that goes by gas, for one day, anyhow, Johnson. Well, see to the things—the crew have got the batteau about unloaded, and it’s about time for our mess to go ashore to the cook fire. Sergeant McIntyre, issue the lyed corn with the bear and venison stew to-night, and see that my ink horn and traveling desk are at hand!”

“Yes, sir, very good sir!” returned Rob, gravely. And without a smile the four stalked off up the stair, leaving Johnson to wonder what in the world they meant.

CHAPTER VIII HO! FOR THE PLATTE!

Uncle Dick excused himself from the party for a time in the evening, having some business to attend to. He left the three boys in their room at a hotel, declaring they all would rather sleep on the houseboat with Johnson.

“It’s mighty quiet on this trip,” said Jesse.

“Nothing happens?” said Rob, looking up from his maps and the Journal which he had spread on the table. “That’s what the explorers thought when they got here! They wanted to start in killing buffalo, but there were no buffalo so close to the river even then. All our hunters got was deer; they lay here a couple of days and got plenty of deer, and did some tanning and ‘jurking.’ Clark says they took this chance to compare their ‘instrimunts,’ and also they ‘suned their powder and wollen articles.’

“Clark killed a deer below here. Drewyer, one of the best hunters, had a fat bear and a deer, too. And Lewis killed a deer next day, so the party was in ‘fine Sperrits.’”

“Oh, so would I be in fine ‘sperrits’ if I could kill a deer or so,” grumbled Jesse. “Now look at us!”

“Well,” went on Rob, “look at us, then. See here, what Clark says about it: