THE HOYS WATCH THK STRANGE FIGURE. Paae 27? THE BOY EMIGRANTS BY NOAH BROOKS With Illustrations by Thomas Moran and W. L. Sheppard NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1895 COPYRIGHT, isre, BY ARMSTRONG A To^ ARTHUR H. PERKINS, HARTFORD, CONN. My Dear Artie: This little story of the "Boy Emigrants" is written that you and other boys like you may learn something of the strange, eventful history of the early overland travelers to California. If you shall be amused and entertained while you read this simple tale of real adventure I shall be glad; for, although this is in some sense a historical sketch, it is not so long since 1 was a boy that I have forgotten that mere history is very dry reading to most young folks. The scenery of the book is all taken from nature ; many of the char acters were real people; and almost all the incidents which here befall the Boy Emigrants came under my own observation, or under that of people whom 1 knew on the trail or in California. I have said that this is a historical sketch : and I ought to add that it is a diffident attempt to rescue from forgetfulness some of the traits of a peculiar move ment of American population. Many, perhaps most, of 154225O the people who undertook the toilsome journey across the continent have passed away. The trail, worn smooth by countless thousands of weary feet, is covered by an iron road ; railway trains flash in a few days over the vast spaces where once the wagon of the emigrant crept i painfully through months of travel. Towns and vil- '> lages occupy the old camping-places of the wandering gold-seeker; and the telegraph wire sings through lonely hollows once lighted by his watch-fires. This is all right and natural; but it is only just that those who come after the pioneers should sometimes recall their trials, struggles and triumphs. The little company whose haps and mishaps form the slender plot of this story are pleasant types of some of those whom we used to meet on the plains. I hope you will be interested in their varying fortunes ; and I am sure you will have no occasion to be ashamed of the young emigrant for whom I have taken the liberty of borrowing your name. Affectionately yours, NOAH BROOKS. New York November, 1876. CONTENTS fan CHAPTER I. Hard T'mes at Home ... 1 CHAPTER n. Great Preparations 8 CHAPTER III. Camping Out 19 CHAPTER IV. " The Jumping-off Place" 29 CHAPTER V. New Partners . 41 CHAPTER VI. Adrift 53 CHAPTER VH. Trouble in the Camp 66 CHAPTER VHL Some New Acquaintances 79 CHAPTER IX. A Misadventure. . CHAPTER X. Among the Buffaloes 103 CHAPTER XL In which the Boston Boys lose an Old Friend, and find a New Friend, lltf CHAPTER XII. la the Heart of the Continent 128 CHAPTER XIII. Laughter and Tears 146 CHAPTER XIV. In Mormondom . 158 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. A Great Disaster 166 CHAPTER XVL IntheDesert 178 CHAPTER XVH The Golden Land 19i CHAPTER XVIIL Crow-bait Gulch 203 CHAPTER XIX. Gold 2131 CHAPTER XX. House-Building 221 CHAPTER XXI. An Expedition, and What Came of It. 230 CHAPTER XXII. Privation and Deliverance 239 CHAPTER XXIIL Luck in Streaks. 249 CHAPTER XXIV. Wandering Once More 260 CHAPTER XXV. A Separation and a Calamity 268 CHAPTER XXVL AStrangeCase 275 CHAPTER XXVII. News and Discoveries 282 CHAPTER XXVin. Developments , 292 CHAPTER XXLX. Reckoning Up the Gains 801 CHAPTER XXX. Homeward Bound. .... 804 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FAG1 THE BOYS WATCH THE STRANGE FIGURE. (Frontispiece.) LOOKING OFF DOWN THE VALLEY OF THE BOCK 11 DEPARTURE OF THE GOLD HUNTERS 17 THE CAMP AT THE JUMPING-OFF PLACE 28 AWAY FLEW THE TENT LIKE A HUGE BALLOOH 55 HntAM 70 ARTHUR AND THE BUFFALO 85 EVERYBODY BUSHED TO THE WRECK 98 NANCE APPEARS 99 MONT 10(5 JOHNNY 119 CAUGHT IN THK ACT 135 ARTHUR 134 BUSH'S GO-CART 153 THE STAMPEDE 154 TIIE MIRAGE 187 THE AVALANCHE 237 QB PRESSED THE PRECIOUS HANDFUL TO HIS LIPS 891 i ING HOMEWARD 306 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. CHAPTER L HAKD TIMES AT HOME. no use talking, Arty, there art too many of us. The pie don't go round." Arthur smiled a little ruefully as he added to Barnard's com plaint: "And Sam and Oliver wear their clothes all out before they can be made over for me." Barnard whose whole name, by the way, was Barker Barnard Stevens showed his confidence in his younger brother's judg- * K ment when he said : " As we are a too numerous family, what is to be dono about it? Kill off a few?" Arthur was one of seven great hearty < boys all of them. His trousers were in herited from his elder brother Sam, and had been "turned" in the legs and were already inconveniently short-. With an impatient little jerk at the knee of one of these objectionable legs, he said: "Let's emigmte!" 2 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. Barnard, five years older, and more cautious, asked: "Whereto?" " Oh, anywhere, BO that 'ire have a chance to strike out for ourselves. Father emigrated from Vermont with all of us young ones, and why shouldn't we put out for the Far West, I'd like to know ? It isn't so far from Illinois to Somewhereelse now, as it was from Vermont to Illinois when we were brought here." " A great deal you know about it, young Arthur boy. Why, you were only six years old when we came here." " All right, Barney, but I'm fifteen now, and have not studied geography for nothing." " Boys ! boys ! it's time to turn in. You've got to gc down to Turner's to-morrow after those grain sacks ; and your ma says there's no rye-meal in the house for Satur day's baking." This was the voice of Farmer Stevens from the porch. The boys had been sitting on the rail-fence in front of the house while the twilight fell. The evening was tranquil but gloomy, and they had taken a somewhat sombre view of family affairs, considering what cheery, hopeful young fellows they were. But it was a fact that there were too many of them. There were four boys older than Arthur, two younger, and a baby sister. Since the Stevens family hud settled in Northern Illinois, things had gone wrong all over the country. First, the chinch-bag came upon them and ato up their crop and it was not much of a crop, either Then they had a good year and felt encouraged ; but next there fell a sort of blight on the Rock River region. It was dry in seeding-time and wet in harvest. The smut got into the wheat and nobody planted anything besides wheat in those days. So, what with rust, mildew, and HARD TIMES AT HOME. * other plagues, poor Farmer Stevens was left without much more than grain enough to feed his growing boys. His cattle went hungry or to the butchers. From year to year things alternated between bad and worse. It was dis couraging. As the boys climbed down from their perch, Barnard said to liis father : " Arty and I are going to emigrate." " Yes, to Turner's mill ; and be sure you bring back all those grain-sacks, Arthur." But the watchful mother heard the remark, and said, as the boys lumbered upstairs to bed : "Barnard was cut-up to-night because he missed his piece of pie. Joe Griffin was here, and it did not go round." " Well, I must say, mother," replied Farmer Stevens, " it's hard lines when the boys fall out with their prov ender ; but Barney is dreadful notional, and he's out of conceit with Illinois." " Yes, father, he is a restless boy, and he and Arty set so much by each other ; when one goes the other will." The poor mother laid her sleeping baby in the cradle, and sat for a moment looking out over the dim landscape beyond the open window. Sugar Grove was a small settlement on a broken rise of ground. Behind stood a dense grove of sugar-maples, extending two miles east and west. In front of the few houses and the row of wheat-farms was a broad valley belted with trees, and through which Rock River wound in big curves, now faint in the early summer night. The crop was mostly in the ground, and the little farm looked tidy. But the fences were not in good repair, the house 4 TEE BOY EMIORAS TS. had never been painted, and the whole place seemed pinched and poor. This isn't the ' rich West,' after all," sighed Mrs. Ste vens, Badly; and the tears gathered in her eyes as she thought of her noble boys growing up in such strait cir cumstances, with defeat and poverty continually before them. " So the pie wouldn't go round ? Poor Barney ! " The mother laughed a sad little laugh to herself, as she thought of Barnard's grim discontent. Returning from Turner's, next day, Arthur brought the family mail, which had been left at the mill by some of the neighbors down the road, on their way home from town. It was not a heavy mail ; and, as Arthur jogged along on Old Jim, sitting among the grain-sacks, he opened the village newspaper. The Lee County Banner was published once a week, and the local news usually occu pied half a column. This week that important part of the paper was led off with a long paragraph headed "Latest News from California! Arrival of Joshua Gates, Esq. 1 " Arthur held his breath and read as fol lows: We take great pleasure in informing our friends and patrons, as well as the public generally, that Joshua Gates, Esq., our esteemed and highly-respected fellow-citizen, has just arrived from California, over land. Accompanied by a bold and adventurous band of Missourians, he has crossed the continent in the unprecedented time of sixty-five days, stopping in Mormoniom two days to recruit. Our fortunate fellow-citizen brings ample confirmation of the richness of the gold dis coveries of California. To say that he brings tangible proof of all this would be to put the case in its mildest form. Our hands have handled and our optics have gazed upon the real stuff brought by our enterprising fellow-citizen, who assures us that the half has not been told us, and that he proposes to return as soon as possible to what may now with extreme propriety be called the Land of Gold, where we are told that \ "strike" of hundreds of thousands is a common thing, and a*iy in- HARD TIMES AT HOME. 5 dustrious man may make from $15 to $1,500 per day. We welcome our distinguished fellow-citizen home again, and congratulate him on his well-deserved success. We append a few of the reigning prices in California: Flour, $15 per bbl. ; pork, $1.50 per Ib. ; fresh beef, $1.00 to $1.50 ditto ; mining boots, $50 per pr. ; quinine, $50 per oz. ; newt- papers, anywhere from $1.00 to $5.00 each. " Gold I Gold ! Gold ! Gold ! Bright and yellow, hard and cold, Molten, graven, hammer'd and rolled ; Heavy to get and light to hold." Arthur did not stop to read the poetry ; he folded up the paper with emphasis, jammed it into his pocket, pulled his straw hat tightly on his head, and said : " The very thing ! " Old Jim, who had been browsing off the hazel brush as his young rider absorbed the news, looked around with meek surprise. " Yes, you old rascal, that's the very thing ! "We'll go to California, my boy ; and when we are picking up the diamonds and gold-dust, won't we tell Old Turner to go hang for an old hunks 1 " Jim neighed and pricked up his ears, just as if he un derstood that the miller had taken more toll from the rye than young Arthur thought he was entitled to. " Digging up gold in California ! Hey, Jim I " and Arthur went cantering up the road as blithely as if he were already in the Land of Gold. " Say, mother, Josh Gates has got back." " Has that worthless, miserable vagabond come back to plague his poor old mother once more ? " asked the plain- speaking Mrs. Stevens. " Well, well, he's the bad penny, that's certain sure." " But he's rich got lots of gold from California and the Banner says he's a distinguished fellow-citizen," re ft THE EOT EMIGRANTS. monstrated Arthur, who suddenly reflected, however, thai Josh Gates had gone off " between two days," when he departed from Lee County, and that he had been indicted for stealing hens, and that his former reputation in the town of Richardson was not at all fragrant. Arthur was a little crestfallen, but he handed Sam the paper, and said : " Perhaps Gates is a liar, as well as a chicken-stealer ; but you see the newspaper man says that he has seen his gold-dust ; so there ! " " Oh, pshaw 1 " said his mother, returning to her wash- tub ; " these gold stories about California are all got up to help the shipping people. They are selling their vessels, and advertising to take folks out at great prices. So the Chicago papers say 1 " " But Josh Gates came back overland, ma," said the boy. " ' Tis my opinion that that scamp has never been farther west than Iowa," cried Sam, holding up the paper with a knowing air. " Hi Fender saw him over to Council Bluffs last fall, sweeping out a billiard saloon. He went from there to St. Louis as deck hand on a steamboat. He ain't worth shucks." Having so said, Sam went on mending his ox-yoke, as if the case were finally settled. That day, Arthur and Barnard worked together in the field, putting in a second crop where the first seeding had been winter-killed. They talked over and over again the chances of the journey to California, the story of the gold discoveries, the truth or falsehood of Josh Gates, and all the ways and means of getting across the continent About this last branch of the subject there was a great deal of doubt. It would cost mich money. HARD TIMES AT HOME. 7 " But only think, Barney, how grand 't would be if we could come home in a year or two with lots of gold, pay off the mortgage, build a new house, and fix things com fortable for the folks during the rest of their lives! Wouldn't that pay?" And Arthur, in a great glow cf anticipation, scattered the seed- wheat far and wide by big handfuls. " Take care there, boy 1 you 're throwing away that grain," grumbled Barnard, who was twenty years old, and a little less enthusiastic than Arthur. But he added, " I do just believe there 's gold in California ; and if we can only figure it out to satisfy the folks, we '11 go there by hook or crook." "It's a whack >r cried Arthur, who was ardent, and i le slangy. THE BOY EMIGRANTS. CHAPTER II. GREAT PJBEPABATIONS. "Now, if I was in a story-book," said Aitlmi to him self, one day, " I should find a wallet in the road, with one hundred and fifty dollars in it." One hundred and fifty dollars was just about the sura which the boys had found they needed to complete an outfit for California. Without any formal declaration of their intention, or any expres sion of opinion from father and mother, Barnard and Arthur had gone on with their plans ; but these were all in the air, BO far. The details worried them a great deal. There was a spare wagon on the farm which might be fixed up and mended well enough to last for the journey across the Plains. Old Jim could be taken from the plow ; but they must have another horse, some mining tools, harness, and provisions. From a New England newspaper they cut a list of articles considered necessary for the journey. It was fascinating, but formidable. Thie is the way it ran : 1 Wagon $125 00 Wagon Cover 12 00 2 Horses or Mules 15000 Harness 0000 Tent 2500 4 Picks 500 5 Shovels 4 40 GREAT PREPARATIONS Brought forward $381 40 4 Gold-PaiiB. . 1 00 2 Axes 550 8 Cwt. Flour 8400 1 Bush. Beans 1 25 2 Bush, Corn Meal 475 1 Cwt. Pork 10 00 4 Cwt. Bacon M 00 1 Cwt. Sugar 8 00 50 Lbs. Rice : 5 50 60 Lbs. Coffee 10 80 Sundry Small Stores 10 00 Ammunition 12 00 Medicines. . , 6 00 Total |523 20 "More than five hundred dollars!" Arthur would say, over and over again. " More than five hundred dollars, and we haven't five hundred cents!" By degrees, however, the boys had managed to reduce the sum total somewhat. The wagon, they thought, might be taken out of the list. So might one of the horses, if Old Jim could be put instead. Then the sixty dollars for harness could be brought down to less than half that amount. They could make some of the old harness on the farm available with their father's consent. They could take less pork and more bacon. " I hate pork, any how," said Barnard, who had w:rked one season of haying with a neighbor, and had been fed OB fiied pork and hot bread three times a day for five weeks. "But we can't have hams and shoulders," objected Arthur. " Don't they cost a good deal ? '' " Side meat's the thing, Arty. No bones in it ; easy tc carry, and cheap. Nine cents a pound ; and we've got a r x ' 10 THE HOT EMIGRANTS. lot in the smoke-house, you know, that perhaps f tither will let us have some from." " And this fellow has got down bacon at eleven cents a pound 1 " said Arthur, with great disdain. " And what he should put in ' Sunday small stores ' at ten dollars for, is more than I know. What are ' Sunday small stores,' any how?" "Ho, you goose! those are ' sundry small stores.' You've made an a out of an r; that's all. 'Sunday small stores!' Well, that's a good one! lie's guessed at the lot : and I guess it's high for a little salt, spice, and such knick-nacks. Besides, there's five dollars for medi cine. Who's going to be sick on the Plains, I'd like to know?" A multitude of such discussions as these, with much contriving and figuring, put the young emigrants where they could see their way clear to an outfit if they had only one hundred and fifty dollars in cash. That was a big sum; and, even with this, they had calculated on ob taining permission to take from the farm many things which were needed. The boys studied over the ways and means of getting to California with real enjoyment. Hubert, the big brother, who was employed in a store in town, and came home on Sundays, declared that Arthur carried the printed slip from the Plowman to bed with him. Nevertheless, the whole family joined in the debate over the propriety of taking corn-meal on such a long journey, or the cost of extra boots and clothing for the travelers, with a glow of satis faction. It was a novelty, and, though none but Barney and Arthur really thought anything would come of it, all the boys discussed the route, outfit, and dangers of the way, at morning, noon and night. GREAT PREPARATIONS. \\ They made out new lists of things indispensable for the trip, and fingered these with a certain sort of fascination for the items and figures which was quite satisfactory. As Sam said one day, they had the fun of talking about it, even if nobody should go. The careworn mother looked on and listened. Ske could not contentedly think of these dear young fledglings of hers flying so far away from the home nest There were dreadful tales of Indians on the way, disease, and death, and violence and crime in the gold diggings. What would become of her boys, alone and unfriended, in that rude country, even if they should ever reach it? She looked at Arthur's golden head, deep in the mysteries of the cookery-book, which he was studying for future use ; and she sighed and smiled together. Could she trust her boy to the chances of a roving life on the Plains? "Would he find there the romance and fun which he anticipated ? " If I was only in a story-book, now, I should find a wallet in the road with one hundred and fifty dollars in it." Arthur had said this to himself a great many times. This time, as he lay at full length on top of the hill behind the house, looking off down the valley of the Rock, he built once more his golden dream. Beyond the brown, newly-plowed fields, suggesting only hard work ; beyond the tall cottonwoods that bordered the stream, and beyond the pale blue line where the valley of the Rock River melted into the sky, was the promised land So far away it was ! Yet he could see, he thought, the gay caravans pressing on to the golden shores of the Pacific. There were long trains of brave men with wagons, horses, and arms. There were the rolling prairies dotted with buffalo, deer, and strange game. The red man lurked by the 1 2 THE BO T EMIGRANTS. trails, but fled away to the snow-capped mountains as th white conqueror came on apace. The grand Rocky Moun tains, whose devious line he had painfully studied on hia school-map, rose majestically on the horizon, lying like clouds against the sky. How mean and narrow the little farm below him looked ! 11 ow small the valley and how wearisome the plowed fields ! He remembered that his back had ached with the planting of that ten-acre lot ; and he remembered, too, how his father had said that little boys' backs never ached ; that little boys thought their backs ached, but they didn't. Arthur turned his eyes westward again with a vague and restless longing. Surely, there was a place for him some where outside the narrow valley, where he could make a name, see the world, and learn something besides plowing, sowing, harvesting and saving. " One hundred and fifty dollars," he murmured once more, as his eyes fell on Hiram Fender, slowly plodding his way through the tall grass below the hill. " Oh, Hi ! " called Arthur, and Hiram, shading his eyes from the sink ing sun, looked up where Arthur lay on the ledge. Every body liked the cheery Arthur; and Hi Fender climbed the hill with " Well, now, youngster, what's up ? " " Nothing, only Barney wanted me to ask you, whenevei I saw you, what you'd take for that white marc of yours. She is yours, isn't she ? " " Well, yes, I allow she's mine. Dad said he'd gin he to me on my twenty-first birthday, and that was Aprile the twenty-one." " What'll you take for her ? " " Don't want to sell. Besides, what d'ye want her for! ' " To go to California with." " Be you fellers going to Californy ? " ORE A T PREP AM A Tl ON8. \ g u Yes, if wo can get up an outfit." Hiram Fender looked languidly over the glowing land scape. He was a " slow-molded chap," Farmer Stevens said ; and he never was excited. But the sun seemed to burn in his eyes aa he said : " Will you take a fellow along ? " "Who? You?" " Sartin, sartin ; I've been a-thinkin' it over, and I'll gc if you fellers go." Arthur jumped up, swung his ragged hat two or three times, and said : " Good for you. Hi 1 and the list is made out for four ! " Hiram looked on him with a mild query expressed on his freckled face, and Arthur took out of his pocket the well-worn list for the outfit and read : " The following list is calculated for four persons, making a four months' trip from the Mississippi to the gold diggings." Hiram looked at it and said : " Five hundred and twenty three dollars 1 Phew ! " Hiram's father was a thrifty Illinois farmer. The neigh bors said he was " forehanded ; " but he had brought up his boys to look at least twice at a dollar before spending it ; therefore, when Hiram looked at the sum total of the list, he said " Phew 1 " with an expression of great dismay. " But," cried Arthur, " it is for four persons, and we have figured it down so that we only want one hundred and fifty dollars. Can't you think of some other felloe that would go ? Then we should have a party of four." " I allow that Tom might go. He wants to go to Cali- forny powerful bad ; but I ain't right sure that dad'll let him." Now, Tom -was Hiram's younger brother and Arthur'! 14 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. particular aversion. So Arthur dubiously said : " Wculdii'l Bill go?" "Billl" repeated Hiram, with great disgust. "Bill hasn't got spunk enough to go across the Mississippi. Why, he's that scared of Injuns that he gets up in the middle of the night, dreaming like enough, and yelling " Injuns ! In juns ! " He was scart by a squaw when he was a baby, and he goes on like mad whenever he hears 'em mentioned." Arthur laughed. " And he's older than you, Hi ? " " Yes, Bill's the oldest of the family. But there's little f om, now. Aint he peart, though ? He can yoke up a pair of young steers, or shuck a bushel of corn equal to any grown man about these parts. And he's only fifteen coiue harvest, too ! He's just afraid of nothing. He'll go fast enough." " That is if your father will let him." " Yes, if dad '11 let him. And we can put in my white mare agin your Old Jim. But my white mare will kick your Old Jim all to pieces, I allow ; " and Hiram grinned at what he thought was the great contrast between the twc horses. Arthur was very much elated at the prospect of rein forcements to the party, though he could not regard Tom Fender as a desirable recruit. Tom was an awkward, loutish lad, disposed to rough ways, and holding very con temptuous views of the manners of the Stevens family, whom he called " stuck-up Boston folks." Arthur had felt obliged to challenge Tom to open combat on one occasion, when that young gentleman, secure behind Old Fender's corn-crib, bawled out "mackerel-catchers!" at Arthur and his brothers as they were jogging along to church one Sunday morning. The consequence was that both boy woreblack-and-blue eyes after that encounter, and suffered GREAT PREPARATIONS. 15 some family discipline besides. They had since been on very distant terms of acquaintance. " 1 don't care. Hi Fender is a downright good fellow," said Arthur, when Barnard opened his eyes at the informa tion that the two Fender boys might be secured for their party. " Yes, but how about Tom?" Arthur hesitated. " Well, I want to get off across the plains. That's a fact. I think I could get along witb Tom, if you can. He is real smart with cattle and horses, you know." " Oh, I don't care for Tom," said Barnard, disdainfully. " He's only a little chap, smaller than you, and he won't worry me. Besides, his brother Hi is a mighty good fellow, even if he is rough. He is pretty close, I know, but we sha'n't quarrel about that. We've all got to be economical, if we are to get across to California." So it was agreed, and when word came up the road that Mr. Fender had consented that his boys should go, there was great excitement in the Stevens house. It really seemed as if the boys were going to California. They had insensibly glided into the whole arrangement without taking any family vote on it. Neither father nor mother had once consented or refused that the boys should go with so much of an outfit as they might pick up. " Oh, father," said Mrs. Stevens, " it is heart- break ing to think of those boys going off alone into the wilderness. I'm sure I shall never see them again, if they go." " Well, mother, I should like to keep them on the place ; but they are getting restive, and I don't much blame them. They've got the gold fever pretty bad ; and if I was as young as they, I don't know but what I'd go myself. It s H THE BOY EMIGRANTS. pretty hard pickings here." Farmer Stevens had ti roving disposition, which lie had not quite outgrown. " But," remonstrated the mother, " they haven't mone^ enough to give them a good outfit. It would be a frightful thing to let those thoughtless boys go out on the great plains without food and other things sufficient to take them through." " Now, mother, I've been thinking that we might sell the wood off the lower half of the woodlot down by the marsh. Page has offered me one hundred dollars for the cut. That, with what the Fenders put in and what we have on the place, would give the boys a tolerable fit-out." That wood-lot was the special pride of the family. "' Timber," as every species of tree was called in those parts, was scarce. Wood was dear, and in some seasons the prairie farmers used corn for fuel, it was so much cheaper than wood ; and it cost a great deal to get the grain to market. It was a great sacrifice to cut down those maples and sell them for fire-wood. But Farmer Stevens, poring over maps, estimates of provisions, and California news, with his boys, had been secretly fired with the gold fever. He could not go ; but he was willing to give up the stand ing timber in order that Barnard and Arthur should have a good outfit. It cost him a struggle. But, old as he was he sympathized with the boys in their adventurous ambi tion. He was not so sanguine about the gold of California holding out long. But it was there now. He had seen and handled Josh Gates' pile of dust ; and Solomon Book- Btaver, who went to the Columbia River, five years before, had j ust come back from California and had fired the entire population of Lee Centre with his display of golden nug gets, or chispas, as Sol called them. When the father's determination to sell the wood off hii r * m ALl l" . I " Jv^-", f^ GREAT PREPARATIONS. 1] wood-lot was made known the next day, in family council, Barnard's face glowed, and Sam said : " Well, I swan to man ! " Arthur dashed out by the back door, turned five or six " flip-flaps " to calm himself, came back, and, putting his arm about his father's neck, whispered in his eai " You are the best old father a boy ever had ! " So it was finally settled that the boys should go to Cali fornia, across the plains, the party consisting of Barnard and Arthur Stevens, and Hiram and Thomas Fender. Great were the preparations. The provisions available on the two farms were laid under contribution. The tent, a marvel of comfort and lightness, was made and set up before the house, to the great curiosity of the passing neighbors, who stopped their teams, and asked, " Gwino toCaliforny?" In those days, groceries and clothing were cheaper than now, and, with the cash which the party had collected, they laid in a very fair supply, and had a little money left to use when absolutely necessary on the journey. The young fellows hugely enjoyed getting ready. The woolen shirts and jean overalls, wide bats and leather belts, which were to be their uniform, were put on with solid satisfac tion. Tom swaggered around with a seven-barreled Colt's revolver, nearly as big as himself, slung on Ids hip. Those delightful days of packing flew quickly. The wagon was crammed full to the ash bows which supported the canvas cover. A sheet-iron camp-stove was tied ou behind. Water-pail and tar-bucket dangled underneath. Thus equipped, one fine May morning, the gold hunters drove away. Old Jim and White Jenny trotted gayh down the road, their faces turned towards the West. Father and mother stood at the gate. Hi Fender drove the wagon, the rest of the party trudging along by the side 18 THE BO T EMIGRANTS. Hubert, who had come over from town to see the depar ture, with Sam and Oliver, accompanied the young adven turers to the top of the divide, where they left them. And so they were off. Behind them was home. Before them an unknown sea of privation, danger, want and ad venture. The wagon disappeared over the ridge. The boja were gone. CAMPING OUT. 19 CHAPTER IIL CAMPING OUT. IOWA was not a thickly settled State in those days, and a journey across it was not so very different from the pro gress of a caravan across the continent. But there were farm-houses along the road where the emigrants could procure milk, fresh vegetables, and bread. They had little money, and only bought such things as would help them to economize their stock of provisions. By and by they would be out of the reach of all other supplies. Camping out was, at first, great fun. Their tent was new, fresh and clean. It was big enough for six people, and a man could stand upright in the middle, where the ridge pole sustained the roof. This roof was in the shape of the letter Y turned upside down, thus: _A^. But about two feet from the ground the canvas came straight down and was fastened by wooden pins driven in. The main body of the tent was kept up by ropes, or stays, secured at the lower edge of the roof and stretched out to large woodec pins driven into the ground two or three feet off. Then, guy roves, extending from each end of the ridge-pole and made last to other stakes, kept the whole concern steady when the wind blew. So the house of this migrating party was dry and strong enough for most occasions, and it was easily packed in a small space. When the tent was get up at the end of a day's march, the two upright poles were held up, with the ridge-pole laid on top and secured 20 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. at each end by an iron pin, which passed thi ough a hole at each end of the pole. Two boys held this frail house- frame together while another threw the canvas over it and fastened it in two or three places to keep it from tumbling over. Then all hands stretched out the ropes, pinned the cloth at the bottom, and, in a few minutes, the house was ready for the night. "While travelling, the tent, with it8 ropes and pins, was stuffed into a stout sack. The door had no hinges, nor name-plate, nor door-bell ; it was a slit in the canvas and was fastened with strings, instead of lock and key. Under shelter of tills the emigrants spread their blankets and buffalo robes, and slept soundly and well. But the cooking was a dreadful burden. Barnard had taken some lessons in bread-making from his mother before starting, and he made the first batch of bread. No, it was not exactly bread, either. First, he carefully put some dour, salt and yeast powder into a pan and mixed them thoroughly with a big spoon, the others looking on with admiration. Then he poured in boiling water until he had a thick paste, which he mixed round and round as before. It was fearfully sticky, but Barney bravely put his hands into it and attempted to mould the mass into biscuits. It would not be moulded ; such obstinate dough was never before seen. When poor Barney tried to pick it off from one hand it would stick to another. lie rubbed more flour in to make it dryer, and then the lumps of dough all wasted away into " chicken feed," as 11 iram satirically called it, and there was no consistence to it, and when they added water to it the stuff became again just like glue. " You want to pat the cakes round and round in you? hands, so," said Arthur. "That's the way mother does.'' "Pat 'em yourself, if you know so much about it, v said Barnard angrily ; and he sat down in the grass, and tried CAMPING OUT. 21 to scratch his bothered head with his elbows, his handa being helpless wads of dough. Arthur, rolling up his sleeves, dipped into the pan and succeeded in sticking his lingers together so fast that each hand looked like a ver\ big and very badly shaped duck's foot web-fingered, in fact. " Hang the bread ! " he exclaimed ; and the rest of the family rolled over in the grass roaring at the comical figure he cut. He was daubed with dough up to the elbows and unable to use his hands ; a mosquito had lighted on his face, and, involuntarily slapping at him, Arthur had left a huge blotch of paste on his forehead, completely closing his left eye. Poor Arthur rested his helpless paws on the edge of the pan and said, " I give it up." " Oh, dump her into the baking-pan and let her flicker ! " said Hiram, as soon as he could get his breath again. " We don't care for biscuits ; it's the bread we want. This ia camping out, boys, you know." So the mass was tumbled into the baking-pan and put into the oven of their handy little sheet-iron camp-stove. For a table they had a wide, short piece of pine board, which, laid across a couple of mining-pans turned bottom op, answered as well as " real mahogany," as Arthur said. On this occasion, however, the tin plates and cups, the smoking coffee-pot, and even the fried meat, we^e on the board long before that obstinate bread showed signs of be ing done. It would not rise up light " like mother's," and ^*hen a straw was run cautiously into it the inside seemed as law as ever. An hour's baking seemed to make no impression on it, and the boys finally supplied its place with dry crackers and supped as merrily as if they had not made their first great failure. They tiled to throw a-way the provoking mess of 22 THE SOY EMIGRANTS. that would not bake, but it stuck in the pan as obstinately as it had refused to be cooked. They scraped away at it with all sorts of tools, but the stuff, which now resembled a small bed of mortar, adhered to the pan with determination " Did you grease that pan ? " demanded Arthur. " No," said Barney, with a sudden flush. " Who ever heard of such a thing." There was another shout of laughter, for everybody at once recollected that the pan should have had flour, or some kind of grease, put in it to keep the dough from sticking. While they laughed, a farm-wagon, in which rode an old man and a young woman, came jogging along the road by which they were camped. The girl wore a faded red calico frock which hung straight down from her waist to her bare brown feet. A huge gingham sun-bonnet with a cape protected her head and shoulders. Arthur ran down to the edge of the road, and heard the old man say, " Them's Calif orny emigrants." It was the first time the boy had ever heard himself called an emi grant, and he did not like it. But suddenly remembering that he was one, he checked his rising glow of indignation and said, " Say, miss, will you tell us what's the matter with this bread ? " The girl looked at her father, who looked at the queer group by the tent, then at Arthur's flushed and honest face, and said, " Go, Nance." So Nance, declining Arthur's proffered hand, leaped to the ground, and wading through the grass, went up and cast a critical glance at the objeo- tioiiable dough. " How d'ye make this yere ? " she asked, pointing her elbow at the bread. Barnard described the process by which he had compounded that famous preparation of floui and other things. CAMPING OUT. 23 " What sort of water did you pat into it ? " she next demanded. u Why, good spring water, of course ? " was the reply. "Cold or hot?" " Oh, boiling hot, to be sure." The girl suddenly clasped her hands to her stomach, sat down in the grass and doubled herself up like a jackknife. Then, sitting up again, she pushed back her sun-bonnet, and, as if addressing herself to the camp-stove, she said : "My goodness gracious me! if these ornery fellers haven't been and gone and scalded their flour I Oh, uiy I Oh, my ! I'm j ust fit to bust ! " And she doubled herself up again. " So we should not have scalded the bread, Miss Sun- bonnet, should we ? " asked Barnard, who felt ridiculed and was somewhat nettled. The girl wiped her eyes on her sleeve and said : " Bread ! it ain't bread ; it's flour paste." Recovering herself, Nance good-naturedly explained that cold water or milk should be used in mixing the flour; and, adding some other general instructions, she strode off through the grass to the wagon. As she climbed up and rode away the boys saw her double herself up once more, and they thought she said, " Scalded his flour, the ornery critter 1" Though this was a severe lesson in housekeeping, it was not the only one of their mortifying failures. Even when they learned to make bread with cold water, it was not imtii they had spoiled much good flour that they were ftble to make bread that was even eatable. And it was not in Iowa that they succeeded well enough to satisfy themselves. After they had crossed the Missouri, long after, and were well out in Nebraska, Arthur made the 34 THE EOT EMIGRANTS. first bread of which the others proudly said that it \vaa " good enough for anybody." Cooking beans was another perplexity. They baked them dry with a piece of pork, and when they were " done," they rolled out of the baking kettle like gravel stones, harder than when they went into it. Then, when they discovered that the beans should have been soaked and boiled, or parboiled, before baking, they took two quarts and soaked and boiled them. The beans swelled and swelled until the big camp kettle overflowed. They were put into other dishes, but would not stop swelling, and before those beans were ready to bake every dish in camp was full and overflowing. A satirical wood-chopper, loafing up to their camp in the midst of the crisis, in quisitively asked : " Be you fellows peddlin' beans across to Calif orny ? " But, notwithstanding all these drawbacks, the boys began to enjoy themselves very much. Some days it was very hot and tedious tramping along in the dusty road, especially when they reflected that they were so far from the end of their journey. Even though days of travel were behind them, before them the road stretched out for more than a thousand miles. They seemed to have been on the journey a good while, but they knew that months must pass before they could reach the end of it. " This is awful slow work," Barney would say, when they reckoned up the day's progress. " Only twenty-one miles to-day, and a couple of thousand, more or less, to get over." Hiram, however, a patient and plodding fellow, " al lowed" that it took so many steps less for next day's jour ney, because those of to-day had been taken, one by one .Ajid Arthur used to look back at their camping-place when they had moved on for an hour or so, and blithely VAMPING OUT. 25 say : " Now I am two miles nearer California than I wae this morning.' 5 " Two miles ain't much, especially when a chap has got the dishes to wash at the end of every twenty miles," says Tom., surlily. Washing dishes was a very, disagreeable part of camp duty. It was a continual subject of conten* lion. Nobody wanted to wash dishes. To be sure, the whole camp equipage did not amount to more than four or five tin plates and as many cups and knives and forks. An active kitchen-maid would have disposed of the whole lot in a few minutes. But the boys were not kitchen- maids, and, what was more, they would not appear as though they were. Hiram thought that as long as he was responsible for fire-wood and water, dish-washing should not be included in his duties. Barnard usually drove the team, and had general charge of that important branch of the service. Tom and Arthur attended to pitching the tent at night, unloading the wagon of things needed dur ing camping time, and taking down the tent, packing up and collecting camp furniture in the morning preparatory to a start. All hands, with equal unsuccess, tried the cooking ; and all hands, though ready to find fault with each other's cooking, declared that they would do anything but cook unless it was to wash dishes. " Perhaps you had better hire a girl to go along and wash dishes, Arty," said Barnard, reproachfully. " I don't care, Barney ; I didn't ship to wash dishes, and I won't ; so there," was Arthur's invariable reply t which Barnard as invariably met with u Who did ? " Obviously nobody did. So the dishes went unwashed, sometimes for days together. One morning, Hiram, taking up his plate, said : " I wonder what was in this yere plate last ? There's bacon fat and corn-dodger crumbe, boiled 2 26 THE BO 7 3MIGRANT& rice, molasses and I allow that there gray streak in thai nor'-nor'-west corner is chicken. Tell yer what, boys, I don't allow that I'm agoin' to drive horses, chop wood, or Ing water for fellers that won't wash dishes for decency's Bake. I'm willin' to do my share of the cookin', turn and turn about. You two boys ought to wash the dishes regu lar. I'm the oldest feller in this yere camp, and if you, Tom and Arthur, don't find some way of doin' up those yere dishes between ye, before we git to the Bluffs, ye may as well make up yer minds to go back from there." This was a long speech from Hiram, who always meant what he said. Barnard supported him in this decision ; and the younger boys, though feeling very much " put upon,' 1 agreed to take turns at playing house-maid. The first experiment was attended by a serious disaster. They drew lots for the first week's duty, and Arthur was " stuck," as he expressed it, for the service. Sitting some what morosely on the ground, one evening, at work on this unwelcome job of dish-washing, he turned the only crock ery plate of the establishment about in his hands, wiping it and scolding to himseF. Torn, who was not a little elated that he was exempt from this service, at least for one week, stood by, and aggravatingly pointing with his foot at the plate, said : " Be careful of that yere crockery, Arty, it's Hi's favor ite dish. He'll dress ye down if ye smash it." Arthur, with a gust of rage, cracked Tom over his too with the plate, breaking it into pieces. " There, now ! I" But before Tom could say any further, Hiram, who had watched the whole proceeding, seized both boys by the collar and hustled them towards a creek which flowed near camp. VAMPING OUT. 2? " Where are you going with those boys ? " shouted Bar navd, amazed and laughing as he saw stout Hiram, wrest ling with the two squirming boys. " I'm going to drown 'em, like I would a pair of qrarrel some cats," said Hiram, manfully struggling with the youngsters. "No you don't, though," said Tom, dexterously twisting one of his legs in between Hiram's feet. The young man staggered a little, and, in his effort to save himeclf from falling into the creek, let both boys go loose. They stood a little way off, looking defiantly at each other and at Hiram. " Your family government does not seem to work well/'' said Barnard. " I guess we'll have to send the boys back from Council Bluffs. They never'll go through thia way." Arthur, who still held in his hand a bit of the plate that had been the innocent cause of this outburst, said : "Well, Tom pestered me; but I'm willing to try it again. Give us a fair trial, Barney." Tom was sulky, but admitted that he should not have provoked Arthur. u Tom, I'll tell ye what I'll do with you? said Hiram. " If ye don't behave yerself, I'll take away yer revolver and put you on the first boat bound down, after we get to the Bluffs." " That will be binding him over to keep the pwi;;e,'* Aaid Barnard. "No," added Arthur, opening his hand and shewing, with a blush, the fragment of Hiram's pet plate, " I'm going to keep the piece.' And he did. 2$ THE BOY EMIQRA3T8. CHAPTER IV. " THE JDMPING-OFF PLACE." A cirr of tents covered the flat banks cf the Missouri, below Council Bluffs, when our party reached the river In those days, Council Bluffs was a scattered and rongh looking town, about four miles from the Missouri River ; and, where its edges were frayed out toward the south, was a long, level strip of land, extending to the broad sweep of the stream. Westward, this plain was dotted with thousands of cattle, belonging to emigrants; and in that part of the plain nearest the town were the carts and wagons of those whose faces were now turned toward Cali fornia. It was a novel sight. Here were men mending wagons, cooking in the open air, repairing their tents or clothes, trading off some part of their outfit, or otherwise making ready for the final start across the plains. Looking across the flat bottom land, Arthur could barely catch a glimpse of the Big Muddy, as the people called the Missouri River. A fringe of low trees showed where the stream flowed by ; and occasionally a huge three-story steamboat went gliding down in the distance, looking ex actly as if it were moving through the meadows. Beyond, * O O t/ the western side of the river was somewhat bluffy and broken. A few wooden shanties were grouped about the ferry landing, a huge scow being the ir.eans of transit, The ferry was a primitive affair, guided by a rope stretched across the stream. On cine eminence stood a weather TEE JUMPING- OFF PL A CE. n 23 beaten structure, partially boarded over. This was de signed to be the capital when the country should be erected into the Territory of Nebraska. The groups of e han ties scattered about over the hills had no name. Omaha has since arisen on that site. Then, however, the whole country was one of great expectations. With eyes wide open, scanning the curious sights on every side, the boys drove their team down the river road, ill searcli of a good camping-place. Their experience in traveling through Iowa had taught them that they must find a dry, smooth spot for their tent, water for the camp, and grass for the horses. On the edge of this strange city of tents they found all of these, and there they encamped. But they were not allowed to do this unnoticed. Al though people were continually going and coming, there were enough idle fellows to watch the new-comers and make remarks upon them. " Here's more candidates foi California fortunes." " Going to the Pacific with that raw-boned hoss?" " Oh, get out of that wagon and walk to the digging." " What are you going to do with that gold-pan?" " Say, sonny, does yer mammy know you're out?" These were some of the rude salutations which greeted the party as they drove sturdily down through the city of tents. Arthur's eyes snapped a little, and his cheeks burned ; but Hiram, perched in the wagon, flung back the rudo observations with cheerful readiness. One kindly-faced man, who walked along beside the boys, said : "You mustn't mind these chaps; they're rough, but good-natured ; and if you should happen to get into diffi culty, they would help you readily enough." Their new acquaintance showed them where parties from various parts of the Western States were encamped ; 30 THE EOT EMIGRANTS. and they pitched their tent near that of some men from Hancock County, Illinois, and soon made themselves at home. They felt that they had reached " the jumping- off place." Beyond, across the river, was nothing but that vast un broken stretch of country which used to be laid down in the school maps as " Unexplored Regions." Even now it was unexplored except by a few people who had gone over to Oregon, Utah, or California. Contradictory reports about the value of the gold diggings were coining into thia canvas city of emigrants. The very day that they arrived there ran a rumor through the camp that two men had just come in from California with very discouraging news. It was said that they, had come through in twenty-eight days, running their mules all the way ; had had narrow escapes from Indians, and had got so far back on their way to " the States," as everybody called the country east of the Missouri. After the boys had settled their camp for the night, they went out and hunted up these bearers of ill tidings. Press ing into a little knot of men near the camp of some New Englanders, who had fitted out at Council Bluffs, they saw a rough, bearded, ragged and seedy-looking man, sitting on a wagon-tongue. He was smoking a short pipe with great enjoyment, and occasionally he dropped a word by way of answer to the questions that were showered upon him. " Gold ! no ! " he replied, with great scorn, " thar's no gold in the hull country. How do I know ? Why, I war tbar a week ; that's how I know." " Where were you? " asked one of the bystanders. ^ I was on the Tuba, jest whar it jines into the Amen can. Thai's \vhar I war." " THE JUMP1NO-OFF PLACE." 31 u But I did'nt know the Yaba emptied into the Ameri can; the Yuba is further north," said Barnard, irapul sively, and before he thought. " Been thar ? " growled the returned Californian. " No," said Barnard, with a blush. " Wai, I have, yon bet yer," rejoined the other. " And it's no use o' yer talkiii', men ; I have mined it more nor a sveek in them diggins ; never got so much as a color." "Did you hear of anybody who did find gold ?" some body asked. " Here and thar war a man who said as how he had seed some other feller as had seed another who had heerd tell on some other chap as had found somethin' that looked like gold. I don't put no trust into any on 'em." " You look as if you'd had a hard time," said a sym pathizing visitor. " Misery in my bones, wust way; I ain't been so power ful bad in my life afore. Fever 'n ager wuss than in Arkansaw. You bet yer." " Why did'nt you keep on down the Yuba, prospecting ? " "Keep on?" replied the veteran, with infinite scorn. " We war nigh ont of grub. No gold in sight. We'd rastled with our luck long enough, me and my pard. So we jist lit out 'n that 'tween two days. Powerful glad we are to be yar, too, you bet yer." " You look it," said one of the emigrants, who seemed to regard this dampening report as a sort of personal injury. Younkins, for this was the name of the returned pros pector, told the same story all through the camps. No gold in California, but much sickness; cholera, fever and ague, and a plenty of men glad to get away, if they could only find the means to travel with. Some of the emigrants did 32 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. not belie re these reports. Some said : " Oh, these chaps are discouraging emigration to the diggins. They want it alt themselves. They can't fool us that way." But others were downright discouraged. A day or two after, four men crossed the river from the Nebraska side, driving an ox-team with a shabby wagon. They had gone as far west as Fort Laramie, where they heard bad news and had turned back. The boys sought out this party, and heard their story. They had lost a comrade, who had died on the way to Laramie. They were gloomy, disheartened, and out of spirits. They overtook people coming back. Some had been through to California; or they said they had. Others had turned their faces homeward after hearing the reports of others. This bad news had its effect in the camps. " The mines have given out," was the cry around many of the camp- fires ; and not a few wagons were packed up, or sold out at auction, and the disheartened owners returned to " the States," out of pocket as well as out of spirits. In a few days outfits were to be had for low prices. The weekly newspaper at Council Bluffs vainly tried to keep up the excitement. Reports from California were discouraging. If there ever had been any gold there, it was exhausted. It was useless to say that there never was any of the pre cious stuff found in the mines. Many of the emigrants had seen some that had been brought to their own homes. Arthur and Barney had touched and handled Gates' golden ore But the mines had given out, and that was the end of the matter. " I don't believe any such yarn," said Barnard, stoutly w I don't want to influence the rest of you boys ; but I'nz going through. For one, I shall not turn back." "Nor 1 1 " said Arthur, with a burst of enthusiasm. THE JUMPING- OFF PLA CE. ' 33 Nor I," added Tom. " It's Calif orny or bust, with me," said Hiram, son' lentiously. So they were agreed. But things looked rather blue at times ; and when those who had turned back diove slowly up the road and disap peared among the bluffs, Arthur locked after them with some misgivings, and with a touch of home-sickness in hia heart. Then he turned his eyes westward where the sun dipped below the western hills. As, at one glance, he saw the long trail stretching over the unknown land, it was a mysterious and untried way. The boy hesitated only for a moment, and stretching out his arms toward the setting sun, said to himself, " I'm bound to go through ! " After all, however, there were very few who turned back, compared with the number remaining at the Bluffs. And every steamboat that came up the river brought fresh recruits from the towns and cities below. These had only part of their outfit with them ; some of them at once bought out the entire equipment of those who were return ing, and so stepped into possession of all that was needed to take them through. In a few days the city of tents grew a great deal ; and, on the western side of the Mis souri, where the bottom land spread out, as on the Iowa side, there was a considerable encampment. These, like the camps across the river, were changing all the while. Every day a train of wagons would roll out over the hills, bound for California at last ; and new additions were im mediately made. This was the place where emigrants tc California found what was yet to be added to their equip rnent. Supplies were plenty, and sold at reasonable prices. People who, like our boys, had traveled across the countrj by team, had used some of th^ir pro visions before reaching 2* 34 THE EOT EMIGRANTS. the Bluffs ; and their brief experience in camping out and traveling showed them where their equipments were im perfect. Council Bluffs was a busy place ; everybody had {something to sell ; and the citizens of that thriving town strolled among the canvas tents of the emigrants with calm satisfaction. There was much hunting to and fro for people who had come across the country, by their comrades who had fol lowed after by the speedier transit of railroad and steam boat. Some of these parties were never made up again It oftened happened that those who arrived first grew tired of waiting for those who were to come after. Al though there was much delay at the Bluffs, everybody was feverish and excited. If they were going on to the land of gold, they were in a hurry to start. If they had de cided to return, they had no time to waste at the river. So little companies broke up, some going on and some turn ing back. Friends, neighbors and families were thus dispersed, never to meet again. And, wandering around from camp to camp, were those who expected to find their comrades, but who, too often, found that they had gone on before. Some of these belated ones were dis heartened, and went no farther ; but most of them joined themselves to other parties and so pushed on to Cali fornia. Our boys began to think that their two-horse team was hardly heavy enough to draw their wagon across the con tinent. They saw that most people had at least two spare horses ; and many more oxen than horses were used by the emigrants. " Oxen is the things, I allow, after all, boys." said Hi- ram, who had studied the subject carefully while coining through Iowa. " Just suppose one of these bosses sheuW " THE J UMP1NG- OFF PLA CE 3ft ap and die; where'd ye be then? We'd hare to haul through with one hoss." " But suppose we were chased by Indians," remonstrated A rthur. " We couldn't get away with oxen, could we ? " " Indians ! pshaw ! " said Hiram ; " there ain't no In dians, so far as heerd from. And if there were, bosses won't save us, you may bet on that." " We might trade off our horses for oxen," said Barn ard, " but we couldn't expect to get two yoke of oxen for a pair of horses ; and unless we had two yoke we should be no better off than we are now." " Cattle are cheap," explained Hiram. "We can buy a yoke for fifty or sixty dollars. Old Jim is worth that much money, and my Jenny could sell for more than the cost of another yoke. The farmers around here are bring ing in their cattle." " Golly ! how it rains," broke in Tom, who had been trying to keep the beating current out of the tent. The water flowed in under the edge of the canvas from the sloping ground in the rear. Arthur jumped up in con sternation. He had been sitting in a little pool of water. " All hands out to dig trenches," shouted Barnard. The night was pitch dark, and the boys seized their lantern, shovels and ax, and sallied out to dig a narrow ditch about the tent. The water poured into this, and so was carried off on each side, and their canvas-house stood on a little island of its owe. But the rain fell in torrents, and the tent flapped wildly in the wind. " Tell you what, fellerE," said Hiram, shaking the water from him, as they crouched inside again, " this ain't whai it's cracked up to be. Camping in a rain-storm ain't grea> fun; hey, Arty?" Arthur was just going tc say that they might be woree 30 THE EOT EMIGRANTS. off before they got across the plains, when a pair of very thin hands were thrust in at the opening of the tent, now tied together for the night, and a thin voice said, " Please may I come in \ " " Sartin, sartin," said Hiram heartily. " Walk in and make yourself to hum, whosumever you be." Arthur unfastened the tent curtain, and a boyish figure, elender and woe-begone, struggled into the group. The stranger might have been about thirteen years old. lie looked as if he had lived about forty years. He wore a pair of trousers made of striped jean, resembling bed- ticking ; and his jacket of linsey-woolsey homespun, and died with butternut juice, was much too short at the wrists. His face was pale, but sweet and pleasant, and he had mild blue eyes. Under his arm he carried a large bundle, and on his head he wore a very seedy coon-skin cap, wet and dripping with the rain. He put his bundle carefully on the ground, and tied the tent together again ; then, turning about, he surveyed the little party in the tent with mild inquiry, but without a word. "What mought yer name be?" asked Hiram, when no body else had broken silence. " Johnny." Hiram paused. He felt that the boy's name was not, after all, of much consequence to anybody ; but to ask for it was one way to begin a conversation. And he had not got far. " Johnny " was rather vague. "Johnny what?" spoke up Tom. ' " That's all. Only just Johnny," was the reply. " Oh, don't bother the boj about his name," broke in Barnard. "Where are your folks? Are you going to California?" " Yes, I'm going to Californy ; and I don't know when THE JUMPINO-OFF PLAVE" 37 my folks are. Perhaps you've seen 'em, sir. There's a tall one with red hair, and a short one with harelip, and another one with a game leg. Oh, sir, haven't you seen 'em nowhere ? " and the poor boy's eyes filled with tears as lie spoke. " A game leg ? " repeated Hiram. " Boys, don't you remember that thar mean skunk as stele Josh Davis's ox- chain over on the west side ? He mought have been the chap. Did he wear a red shirt, with a blue handkercLer around his neck \ " he asked of Johnny. "Yes," said the boy; "and his name was Bunce Bill Bunce and we are from Yermillion County, Illi nois." " I allow he and his pardners have gone on ahead," said Hiram. " I was over on the Omaha side when they drove out," added Tom ; and they had a big yaller dog named Pete with them. Golly! but that dog was a master-hand to hunt chipmunks ! How he would " " Oh, you talk too much with your mouth," interrupted Hiram, impatiently. Johnny showed signs of breaking into tears. He sat down and told his story. He had lived in Vermillion County with a man who was called a doctor, he said. Evidently he had been hardly used, and had never known father or mother. A drudge in a country doctor's house, he had been kept in ignorance of the world outside, of his own friends, and of his father and mother. He bad never even been told his own name. How did he get here ? That was simple enough. Three or four oi the doctor's neighbors were going to California. They offered to take the boy along. He was too glad to get away from the brutal and quick-tempered doctor, to wait for a second hint. They had journeyed on together to 38 TEE EOT EMIGRANTS. Quincy, on the Mississippi, where the men left Johnny to follow them by steamer, while they went "another way," as they said. They promised to write to him when to start for Council Bluffs. He waited several weeks at the mis erable little boarding-house where they had lodged him. Alarmed at the long delay, he had started off by himself, and here he was. " Probably their letters miscarried," said Arthur, with pity in his eyes. " More likely they never wrote," added his wiser brother. The youngster looked distressed, but spoke up cheer fully : " Perhaps they haven't gone. They said they would wait here for me." But Hiram was sure about " the man with the game leg ; " he was not positive as to the others. Both Arthur and Tom remembered the lame man with the big yellow dog, especially the dog ; and nobody was sure whether the tall man with him had red hair. " Well, you can can bunk down with us to-night," said Hiram, " and in the morning we'll take a hunt through the camps, and if your fellows haven't lighted out, we'll find 'em." The next morning broke fair and bright. The rain had ceased in the night, and great drops were shining on the grass and on the bushes that bordered the plain. With a bound of exhilaration, Arthur sprang out of his damp blankets and began to make ready for breakfast. Johnny oiep 1 . out into the sunshine, and, having followed Arthur's example by taking a wash from the tin wash-hand basin that was produced from the wagon, he sat watching the prcpaiations about the camp-stove. " MHV I stay to breakfast with you? " he asked. " IVe ot money enough to pay for it." " THE JUMPING- OFF PLA CE." 39 "I dcn't know," said Arthur, doubtfully. "You have to ask Barney. Well, yes, you shall stop too,'' ho added, as he saw the boy's face fall. You shall have iny breakfast, anyhow." " But I can pay for it. I've got some money sewed into my jacket." " How much ? " demanded Tom, who was splitting up a fence-rail for fire-wood. "Eighty dollars," said Johnny, simply. " Jerusalem crickets ! " exclaimed Tom. " Where did you get so much ? " " Dr. Jeuness gave it to me before I left. He said it was mine, and that he had been keeping it for me." Before any more talk could be made, a bright-faced. handsome young fellow, with a citified and jaunty air, walked up to the group, and asked, " Can you tell me where I can find the Lee County boys, as they call them ? " " That's us," said Tom, with a good-natured grin. " Well, I'm in luck ; and where's the captain? " Barnard, who was coming out of the tent with an armful of bedding, said : " We have no captain. What's your will?" " I hear you want a yoke of cattle. I have a yoke which I should like to turn in as part of my outfit, if you will take another partner. I'm going through." Barnard eyed him suspiciously, and said, " Where from ? " " Well, I'm from Boston last ; born in Vermont, though ; have been in the dry-goods trade ; got tired of selling goods over the counter. I'm going through.-' The boys looked curiously at the Boston dry-goods ld news should "peter out" by the time he reached that point. " Gosh ! how that Boston fellow do walk," sighed Hi ram, who found it difficult to keep up with their new comrade. Morse strode on ahead, talking eagerly ovei his shoulder; and the hard buds of the "rosinweed ; plants that covered the meadow rattled against his boot legs as he measured uff the ground. Arthur trotted alony NEW PARTNERS. 45 somewhat laboriously, and wondered if all Boston people walked like Mr. Montague Morse. They found the men who had the ox and cow for sale rdiir great hulking fellows who had four yoke of cattle among them. They had two wagons, one of which they uad exchanged for provisions and cash in the town of Council Bluffs, and the other they retained. They would 6<;11 the ox and cow together for sixty-five dollars. The cow was " skittish and a little wild-like," but a good milker and was first-rate in the yoke. The steer well, there he was, a small black fellow, with one horn crumpled down in the oddest sort of way. "Strong as a steam-ingine," explained the owner. "Strong as a steam-ingine and tame as a kitten. And, stranger, he's just the knowingest critter you ever see. 'Pears like he was human, sometimes hey, Tige ! " and the man affectionately patted the little black steer on his nose. " Is this all you've got to sell \ " asked Hiram, rather discontentedly. " AVell, the fact is, stranger," replied the man, " w r e don't really want to sell. 'Pon my word, we don't. But we've no need fur all these cattle, and we do need the money, I just hate like poison to part wiih Old Tige. (His name's Tiger, you see, and we call him Tige, for short.) But we've got three other yoke and a light load ; and we allow to go through right peart, without no trouble." The boys walked around the cattle two or three tnnca more, their owner treating them to a long string of praises of his odd yoke, as he sat on the wagon-tongue and talked fast. " Come now, say sixty d ^llars and it's a trade. I wan) the money powerful bad," he concluded. 1C THE BOY EMIGRANTS. Arthur pulled Hiram's sleeve and said : " Take him, Hi ; take him. I like that little blar k steer." Hiram spoke up : "Give us the refusal of this ycr yoka of cattle until to-morrow ? " " We have not yet concluded whether we shall buy any cattle here, or go on with our horses," explained Barnard. Mcrse looked a little disappointed, but said nothing. It was agreed that the boys should have until next day to make up their minds about buying the cattle at sixty dollars for the yoke. As they walked back, Morse, thought fully whipping off the weed-tops with his ox-goad, said: " You fellows take account of stock wagon, outfit, pro visions, and team. I'll put in my yoke of cattle and my share of provisions and outfit, or money to buy them, and will pay you my proportion of the cost of the wagon. Partnership limited ; the concern to be sold out when we get through ; share and share alike. How's that ? " " That's fair," said Barnard. But Hiram nudged him, and then he added : " We'll talk it over. You come across and see us the first thing to-morrow morning." It was agreed, and the boys went back to their camp to discuss the proposition. Barnard and Hiram were really the final authorities in the matter ; but Arthur and Tom exercised the younger brother's privilege of saying what they thought about it. Arthur thought the Boston man must be a good fellow. lie was bright and smart ; and Arthur had noticed that he spoke cheerily to the white- headed children in the Arkansas wagon. Besides, he waa always pleasant and full of jokes, added the boy, with a feeling that that was not conclusive, though he had f brined his opinions partly by it. " I suppose we have really made up our minds to go NEW PARTNERS. 47 with oxen. 1 like that Boston chap. We can't get another yoke of cattle if we sell your horse and buy the ox-and- cow yoke any better than by taking this man into camp with us," argued Barnard. " But them store clothes ! " said Hiram, with some dis gust, " Why, he can't help it if he has to wear out his old city clothes," said Arthur, eagerly. " He is not foolish enough to throw them away. So he wears 'em out for common ones. Don't you see ? " " And he's a powerful walker," added Hiram, with an expression of admiration on his freckled face. " Golly 1 how that chap kin walk, though ! " And this turned the scale. The Boston man was sol emnly voted into the partnership. Tom once more objected that Morse was " stuck up," and he was once more suppressed by his brother, who re minded him that he talked too much with his moutlL This frequent rebuke having silenced Tom, Hiram added : " A feller that knows as much about cattle as he does, and kin walk like he does, isn't stuck up. Besides, he'll put in just about eighty dollars inter the company's mess." At this, little Johnny, who still clung to the boys, started ii]). " Eighty dollars ! Oh, I've got eighty dollars. Won't you take me through for that ? " Hiram looked with some disdain on the little fellow, who was trembling with excitement, and said : "You got eighty dollars my little kid ! Where ? " Johnny hastily stripped off his striped trousers, and, turniLg out the lining of the waistband, showed four (kt, round disks of something hard, carefully sewed in. " Them's it! them's it ! " Fonr on 'em ; four twenty dol lar gold pieces, all sewed in." And, slitting little holes IF *g THE EOT EMIGRANTS. the cloth, he showed the coins, sure enough, each sewed in separately from the other. lains with cattle instead of horses. One bright May morning, they took down their tent, packed their bedding, loaded the wagon, yoked up the cattle, and began their long, long tramp across the continent. Numerous other emigrant trains were stretching their way over the rolling prairies to the westward, and the undula ting road was dotted with the w r hite-covered wagons of their old neighbors of the canvas settlements by the Mis souri Iliver. Looking behind, they saw, with a little pang of regret, the well-beaten spot where they had made their home so long. Around that place still lingered a few emi grants, who waved their hats to them by way of cheer, aa the long procession of adventurers w r ound its way over the ridges. Beyond and behind was the flowing river ; the bluffs which give their name to the town bounded the horizon, and beyond these was the past life of these young fellows, with all its struggles ; there was home. Before them lay the heart of the continent with ifa mysteries, difficulties, and dangers. They tramped on right bravely, for beneath the blue horizon that lured them forward vere wealth, fame, adventure, and what thes bright young spirits most longod for opportunities for making their own way in the world. At any rate, they had turned their backs on civilization and home. ADRIF1 55 Their patience was tested somewhat severely during their very first week on the track across the continent They expected disagreeable things, and they found them. They had been traveling through a rolling country, desti tute of timber and dotted with only a few bunches of brushwood by the creeks. Barney, Arthur, and Tom took turns at driving the team. Mont strode on ahead. Hi and Johnny " changed off " with riding Old Jim, for whose back a saddle had been " traded " for at the Bluffs. The young emigrants were in first-rate spirits, and when a light rain came up at night, they laughed blithely over the prospect of soon getting used to the "hardships" of which they had been so often warned. It was discouraging work, however, cooking supper ; for, by the time they had camped, the rain fell in torrents. They got their camp- stove into the tent, and, by running out its one joint of pipe through the open entrance, they managed to start a tire. More smoke went into the tent than out of it, for the wind had veered about and blew directly into it. Then they decided to strike the tent and change it around so as to face to the leeward. This was a difficult job to do while the rain fell and wind blew. But the boys packed their camp stuff together as well as they could, and took down the tent. " Hold on tight, boys ! " shouted Barnard, cheerily, for the canvas was flapping noisily in the wind, and threat- fined to fly away before it could be secured. Arty held up cne pole and Barnard the other, while Mont, Hi, and Tom ran around to pin the canvas to the earth, Johnny following with the bag of tent-pins. Just then a tre mendous gust came, and away flew the tent like a huge balloon, jerking Tom head over heels as it went. Poor little Johnny clung to it desperately, having caught hold 66 THE BO Y EMIGEANTS. of one of the ropes as it went whirling over his head He was dragged a short distance and gave it up, his hand* being cut and torn by the line. "Stop her! stop her!" yelled Hi, and away they all ran after the flying canvas. The cattle were cowering under the lee of a few bushes across the road, and tho apparition of the collapsed tent coining over their heads, startled them so that they ran wildly in all directions. The cow was caught by the horns, a fold of the tent-cloth having been entangled on them, and she set off, frantically bellowing, across the prairie. The canvas by this time was so wet and heavy that it could not be dragged far. and, when the boys came up, poor Molly was a prisoner They rescued their fugitive house, and, in a sony plight took it back to where their camp was now exposed to ? pelting rain. " Ain't this fun, Arty ? " said Hi, grimly, when the}- were once more under cover. "Fun alive ! " replied Arty ; " and so long as we have a roof over us for the night, we are in great luck. But how we are ever to get supper is more than I know." " Supper ? " retorted Barnard. " I'd like to know where we are going to sleep to-night. Every inch of ground is Bopping wet, and no fire that we can build will dry it. " " We can get a good fire in the stove," said Mont, saga ciously, " and keep moving it about until we dry the worst of it; and, when it stops raining, it will drain off a great deal. But it does not look much like holding up," he added, as he looked out at the sheets of rain. ;< And if it don't hold up, we may as well not go to bed at all." Indeed, the prospect was rather gloomy, and the yonnsr emigrants began to thHk themselves early introduced to the disagreeable part of their trip. They managed tc ADRIFT. 57 keep up a roaring fire in their camp-stove, however, and the air in the tent was dry and warm. They made tea, and fried their meat, and with dry crackers secured a tolerable meal. By midnight the rain abated and ceased flowing under the canvas. They then lay down on the damp blankets, and slept as best they might. Toward morning Arty awoke, and, hearing the rain on the canvas roof, reached out his hand and found the ground near by covered with water. Water was everywhere around him. He lay in a puddle which had accumulated under him. At first, he thought he would turn over and find a dry spot. But he immediately discovered that that would not be a good plan. He had warmed the water next him with the natural heat of his body. To turn over was to find a colder place. So he kept still and slept again as soundly as if he were not in a small pond of water. They were wakened after sunrise by the sound of wagons driving by. Jumping up from their damp beds, the young emigrants found themselves somewhat be draggled and unkempt. But the rain had ceased, the sun was shining brightly, and what discomfort can long withstand the influence of a fair day, sunshine, and a warm wind ? The cattle, fastened up the night before to the wagon- wheels, were lowing for freedom ; and the boys were at once ready to begin preparations for another day's journey. They spread their bedding and spare clothing in the sun shine, brought out their camp-stove, built a fire, and had a jolly breakfast with hot biscuits and some of the little luxuries of camp fare. All that day the boys traveled with their blankets spread over the wagon-top, in order to dry them in the hot sun ; but not one of the partv complained of the 8* 58 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. forts of the previous night, nor showed any sign of beii;g any worse for sleeping in the rain. " It gets me, Mont/' said Hi Fender, " that a city feller like yon, should put up with such an uncommon hard night without growling." " Oh, that's nothing when you get used to it," said Mont, lightly. " But you are getting used to it sooner than 1 am,'' re plied Barnard, with admiration for the young city fellow's pluck. " There ain't much such accommodations in Boston, I allow ? " said Hi. " No sleepin' out in canvas tents, with the water creeping under your blankets, in that village, is there ? " " "Well, no ; but we cannot bring city ways out on the plains, you know, Hi ; and as long as we have a canvas roof over us, we ought to be satisfied and thankful. By the way, I wonder how those Pike County fellows got on last night. They intend to sleep in their wagon when they have reduced their load, but they sleep on the ground now. Must have found it a little damp last night." Barnard thought that Busli, with his heifer and go-c.art, would be worse off than anybody they knew. Bush was a jolly emigrant, travelling all alone with a hand-cart fixed up with shafts, into which was harnessed a young cow. He had quarrelled with his partner at Council Bluffs, and had gone off in a fit of disgust. His entire wordly >vealth was packed into the little cart, with one or two racks of flour, some " side meat," beans, and coffee. His cooking apparatus consisted of a frying-pan and a tin pot, in which latter useful utensil he made his coffee and cooked everything that could not be cooked in his frying-pan. " I don't believe Bush put in much time singing last ADRIFT. 5V night/' said Tom. " If his fiddle wasn't drowned out, he. was, I'll just bet." " There he is now ! " said Arty, and as he spoke they saw Bush's tall form stalking beside his queer little team, and rising over a swell of the prairie, just ahead. At camping-time that night they overtook Bush, who was as gay and light-spirited as ever. He hailed the boya with heartiness, and begged the privilege of baking a cake of dough in their camp-stove. " The fact is, boys," he explained, " me and Sukey had a rough time of it last night, and I guess a hot corn-dodger will help us both mightily. Hey, Suke ! " he said, lovingly for Bush and his vicious little cow were on very good terms. " Rain ? " he said in answer to the boys' inquiries. " Rain ? Oh, no, I guess not. It didn't rain at all worth mentioning. It jest came down on the run. Well, it did. [ crawled under the go-cart, where the water wa'n't more than a foot deep. It wasn't dry quarters ; but I could have got along as gay as you please only for my legs. They're so all-fired lengthy that they stuck out and got wet. When 1 pulled 'em in, my head stuck out, and when I pulled my head in agin, my legs stuck out. Pity about them legs, ain't it, boys ? " he added, looking down at his canvas- covered limbs. " Howsomever, I thought of you chaps I'm used to it, but you Boston fellers ain't seasoned yet. I was camping by myself over behind the divide, to keep out of the wet, and when 1 saw your tent get up and dust, I started to lend you a hand. But you corraled the pesky thing before I could get to you." " Much obleeged, I'm sure," said Hi. " But we caught ner on the critter's head afore she went far." " Yes, yes, a tent's a mighty onhandy thing, I do be lieve. Good enough for them that can't get along without 60 THE EOT EMIGRANTS. it ; but as for me, as the revolutionary feller said, gimme liberty or gimme death. I'd rather sleep out o' doors.' J " Queer feller, that Bush," said Hi, when they were Bq uatted about their camp-table at supper-time. " He's tough as sole-leather and chipper as a cricket. And he allows to go clean through to Californy with that 'ere go- cart and heifer. Why, the Mormons will steal him, hia cow, and his cart, and all, if he ever gets so far as Salt Lake." " They'll be smart, then, for he sleeps with both eyes open," said Barnard, who admired Bush very much. They were camped in a low, flat bottom, by the river Platte. Tall cotton-wooas fringed the river-bank, on the north side of which the emigrant road then ran. Here were wood, water, and grass, in plenty ; and at this gener ous camping-ground many emigrants pitched their tents for the night. After supper was over, the boys strolled out among the camps and enjoyed the novel sight. The emi grants had now got into the ways of the plains were doing their own cooking and washing, and put on their roughest manners and roughest clothes, and were already beginning to talk about the Indians. The Cheyennes, it was said, were very troublesome just beyond Fort Laramie ; and it was reported that one party of emigrants had been attacked near the Point of Rocks, and all hands killed. At one camp-fire where our boys lingered, Bush was the centre of a large party, to whom he was singing his one great song, " Lather and Shave." It was a famous song of many verses ninety-nine, Bush said ; but he never had time to sing them all, though often invited to give them. His violin had so far survived all misadventures, and fur nished lively music for the company. One handsome ADRIFT. 61 young fellow, with a tremendous voice, sang a ditty about emigrating to the gold mines, of which the refrain was : " Ho ! ho ! and the way we go, Digging up the gold on the Sacramento I " All the bystanders and loungers joined in this chorni with spirit, the last syllable of Sacramento being shot out with a will" Toe ! " At another camp, they found a forlorn little woman dandling a child on her knee, sitting on a wagon-tongue, while her husband was trying to get supper under her directions. The fire would not burn, the man was awk ward, and his patience seemed clean gone as he finally squatted back on the ground and caught his breath, after blowing at the fire until he was red in the face. " Yes, we've had a powerful bad streak of luck," he complained. " First, she took sick at the Bluffs," he said, jerking his head toward the woman on the wagon-tongue. That kep' us there nigh onto a month ; and my pard, he got out of patience and lit out and left us. Then the young one up and had the cholery yesterday, and we broke down in that thar slew just beyond Papes's, and we had to double up teams twicet that day. And now then this yere blamed fire won't burn, and we be agoin' to Calif orny. We be," he added, with great sarcasm. " I never could build a fire ; hit's woman's work, hit is ! Oh, look at yer, smolderin' and smudgin' thar!" he continued, addressing the sulky fire. With a sudden burst of rage, he kicked the smoking embers to the right and left with his heavy boots, and said, " Blast Californy ! " " Here> let me try," said Tom. " I'm right smart at fire bildin' ; " and the boy gathered the half -charred embers together, and deftly fanned a flame from them bj 62 THE BC T EMIGRANTS. wafting his hat before the coals, into which he poked Borne dry steins and grass. The fire recovered itself cheerily, and the man looked down on Tom's stooping figure with a sort of unwilling admiration. Arthur did not like the looks of a husband who seemed so indifferent to his wife and baby. " Here, give me the baby," said the boy ; " I'll tend it while you get your supper. And, Mister, you had better look after your cattle. I see they've got all snarled up with that ox-chain." " Drat the cattle ! " said the man ; and he went off to swear at the poor beasts which had managed to turn theii yokes and worry themselves generally into a tangle, while waiting for their master to take care of them for the night. " Don't mind him," sighed the woman, relinquishing the sick baby to his volunteer nurse. "Don't mind him. He's got a right smart of a temper, and he do get con- trairywise when things goes con trairy wise, and the good Lord knows they have gone con trairy wise ever since we left the States. Now trot the young one easy -like, if he hollers, and I'll just rattle up some supper for my ole man." Arty held the baby as tenderly as he could, softly moving up and down on his knee the unpleasant-looking feather pillow on which it was laid. A tall young girl camo around from behind the wagon ; looked at the emigrant's wife, who was kneading biscuit, kneeling on the ground; looked at Arthur, who was crooning a little song to the lick baby ; and then she remarked : " Goodness, gracious me ! " " Nance ! " said Arthur, looking up. " Yes, it's Nance," retorted the tall young girl, with ADRIFT. 08 some asperity. " Leastways, I'm called sicL by folks that haven't got no more manners than they have room for." " Beg pardon, Miss Nancy. But you surprise me so. you know." " I suppose you don't allow I'm surprised. Oh no, not the leastest bit. You a-tendiug baby out here or the perarie ! Howsomever, I like it, I like it ! I declare to gracious, I do! " she added in a milder tone. " It's just what boys are fit for. Hope you've learned to make bread by this time. Scalded their flour, the ornery critters ! Oh, my ! " and, overcome by the recollection of that first great experiment of the boys when in Iowa, the tall young girl sat down on the wagon-tongue and doubled herself up again. " Never mind," she said, disengaging herself from her laugh. " If you'll come over to our camp, I'll give yon some yeast real hop-yeast; brought it all the way fi< Iowa} 7 myself. It's good enough to bust the cover of you* camp-kettle off." " Your camp ! Are you going to California ? " asked Arthur, with surprise. " Goin' to Californy ! Of course we be. What else do you suppose we'd be campin' out here on the Platte, miles and miles away from home, for ? " " But how did you pass us \ " " Couldn't say. Dad, he allowed he wouldn't stop at the Bluffs more'n one day. Oh, he's got the gold fever just awful ! " " Was he thinking of going to California when we passed your place in Iowa ! " "Couldn't say. He seen the folks piling by on the emigrant road, bound to the gold mines. He used to set on the fence and swap lies with 'em by the hour, and ma 64 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. just hollerin' at him from the back-door all the while. Oh my ! wasn't she mad, though ! " " Didn't she want to come ? " " Not at first ; but she got to talking with some of the women- folks on the road, and then she and dad talked gold all night and all day. They jest got wild. So one day, dad, he let the place, picked up his traps, bundled ua into the wagon, and here we be." " How do you like it, as far as you've got ? " asked Torn, who by this time had become very much interested in Nance's story. " Pretty tolerble-like. How's yerself ? " " Oh, it's pretty good fun, all but washing dishes," replied Tom, bashfully. " Washin' dishes ! " retorted the girl, with great scorn. " And you call yer handful of tin plates and things washiii' dishes. Don't I wish you had to do up the dishes I had at home in loway ! Oh, it's real persimmons, this, just nothing to do. Barefooted, you see," and Nance put. out a brown foot, to show that she had left her shoes with civilization. " Where's your other fellers ? " she asked, " specially that one that scalded his flour ? " Arthur explained that they were about the camps, having tarried where Bush was playing his violin for a "stag dance," as it was called, down by the cotton- woods. " Well, you come over to our camp to-morrow, early, and I'll give you some real hop-yeast. It's worth a hull raft of bakin' powder and self -risers. We're off at sun-up Bo long ! ", And Nance was gone. " Right smart chance of a gal, that," commented the emigrant, whose anger had cooled, and who was sitting or: an ox -yoke contentedly smoking his pipe. "So Miss SuubDimet is going to California, is she?" said Barnard, when the boys related their interview with that young woman. "Yes," replied Arthur, remembering Nance's Brown foot ; " she's going a-digging up the gold on the Sfxsramen toe t ' 63 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. CHAPTER VII. TROUBLE IN THE CAMP. THE next few days of travel were very wearisome and tedious. The road was a dull level, stretching along bj the banks of the Platte River. Repeated rains had made the ground soft, and the teams moved with great difficulty, for all of the emigrants were loaded heavily. From Council Bluffs to Salt Lake City was an uninter rupted wilderness, with only here and there a little trading-post. The provisions consumed on the trip could not be replaced until the Mormon capital was reached ; and even at that place only flour and meat could be bought at reasonable prices. So the supplies of groceries, clothing, and small goods needed for the journey must last from the Missouri to the Sacramento. The weather was \varm, and our young emigrants found it very uncomfortable trudging along in the heat of the day, with the sun's rays pouring down upon them. Hi grumbled a great deal at the disagreeable things he had to encounter. It was disagreeable walking, and disagree able driving. It was particularly disagreeable to be pur sued as they were by mosquitoes. At night, while they camped in the flat valley of the Platte, these pests were simply intolerable. " Let's make a smudge, boys," said Barnard, one night, when they had in vain tried to eat their supper in com fort. Clouds of mosquitoes hovered about their head*. TROUBLE IN THE GAMP. 67 filling their eyes, ears, and noses, and making the air shrill with their music. "We might as well be smoked to death as stung tc death," growled Hi. " I never see anything so disagree able. It's wuss than small-pox." So the boys collected some hazel-boughs and grass, made a fire on the ground and covered it with the green etuff, and soon had a thick " smudge " of stifling smoke about them. The mosquitoes seemed to cougli a little among themselves, and then they gradually withdrew in disgust. " That worries the pests," said Mont. " 1 think I see five or six hundred of them on that hazel brush, waiting for the thing to blow over ; then they will make another rush at us." " Yes," added Hi, " and there's one big he feller ; I see him now, cavorting through the under-brush like mad. He got some smoke in his left eye, and he'll make us smart for it when he comes back. Ugh ! ugh ! but this smoke is wuss than git-out. I can't stand it no longer ! " and Hi, choking with the effects of the " smudge," seized his plate of bread and bacon, and ran. The others stayed as long as they could, and then left everything and retired to a little distance from the fire. The mosquitoes were ready for them, and descended upon them in millions. The boys, finishing their supper as best they might, got inside the tent, leaving a circle of smoking fire-heaps all about it. Sleep was impossible that night. They visited some of the neighboring camps, of which there were a great many; and everybody was fighting mosquitoes. Smoldering fires all about were kindled, and public feel- vag ran very high against the great nuisance of the night 88 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. One man remarked that there ought to be a mass-meeting called and resolutions passed. Another suggested that the mosquitoes were the original settlers on the place, aud that they had rights which even a white man was oound to respect. During the night, too, the cattle, which were chained up as usual, were so frantic with the annoyance that they were in danger of injuring themselves. They ran to and fro with their short allowance of chain, snorted, tore the earth, and lashed themselves into a frenzy. It was de cided to unyoke them and take the chances of finding them in the morning. " Tige," as soon as he was at liberty, walked deliberately up to one of the smudge fires, where he turned his tail toward it and stood contentedly chewing his cud. " Sagacious Tige," said Mont, " I believe I will follow your example." Tige appreciated this compliment, apparently, for he lay down, having tested the value of smoke as a shield against mosquitoes. Mont rolled himself in his blanket and lay down by another fire, and managed to sleep almost as well as Tige. The others did the same, though it was hard work to keep up the fires and find sleep also. Arthur woke up long before daybreak, with the insects buzzing and stinging about his face. He jumped up in sheer desperation and ran wildly out on the level road, half a mile or more, without stopping. lie could hear the bodies of the mosquitoes striking on his hat as he tied. Tben he turned and ran back again, leaving a long train of the pests behind him. But they caught up with him by the time he had reached the camp. In despair, he covered hia head with a blanket, and sat down by a tree trunk to sleep again, having first stirred up a good smudgp? TROUBLE IN THE CAMP. 69 for Tige, who looked on complacently at this provision for his comfort. Arthur stooped and brushed a few mosquitoes from Tige's black muzzle, and the steer loot ed up at him intelligently, as if to say, " Hard lines, these, my boy." " Arouse ye ! arouse ye ! my merry Swiss boys ! " sang Mont, bright and early next morning, while the rest of the party were yet struggling with mosquitoes in their dreams. " We have a long drive to the crossing of Loup Fork, to-day ; and if we don't get there in good season, we shall have to wait a whole day to get a chance on the ferry." The boys turned out of their various lairs with many expressions of discomfort. They had just had a tiresome day's travel and almost no rest at all. The air was now moist and warm, with the promise of another hot day. They were smarting with mosquito bites, and were gen erally uncomfortable. " Well, I allow this is reely disagreeable," said Hi, half sitting up, clasping his hands across his knees, and looking excessively miserable. The picture of Hi, squatted there forlornly, with his hat crumpled over his head, his face blotched with bites, and his eyes heavy with sleep, was too funny for Barnard, who laughed outright and said : " Well, I declare, Hi, but you do look like the vory last rose of summer that ever was ! " " See here, Barney Crogan ! " said Hi, angrily, " I don't want none of your sass. And I jest give you notice of that." " What are you going to do about it ? " sharply replied Uarnard, who felt his anger rieing. " You sit there like 70 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. a bump on a log, saying that things are ' disagreeable, I don't see that that helps it." " Well. I don't want anybody's chin about it that'i HIBAM. what I don't want. And I allow I ain't agoin' to stand no nonsense from a feller that don't take his regular speli ftt drivinV TROUBLE IN THE CAMP. 71 " What do you mean?" said Barnard, advancing threat eningly toward Hi, who, by this time, had risen to his feet and stood with his blanket still clinging about him. " What do you mean ? If you mean to say that I don't do my share of work, I'll " "Oh, stop! stop! boys," interposed Mont. "There's really no use of quarreling. I suppose we all feel cross and unhappy, after such a miserable night. I'm sure I do. But we needn't quarrel." " Who's quarrelin', I'd like to know. I ain't. It's that stuck-up " But before he had time to finish his sentence, Mont had playfully put his hand on Hi's mouth, saying : " Well, I know I am a stuck-up Boston chap, but 111 try to get over it." Barnard was secretly amused at this ingenious turn, but he was too angry to say anything, and he turned his atten tion to the cattle. Tom and Johnny, the latter somewhat alarmed at the warlike appearance of things in camp, scoured the under brush for dry wood for their breakfast fire. " If Barney had sassed me like that," commented Tom, when out of earshot of his elders, " I would have punched his head for him." " Appears to me that Hi had no cause to fire up so Barney didn't mean anything ; and I'm sure Hi did look queer-like, sitting there with his hat mussed and his head all swelled up." " I'll swell your head for ye, yer ongratef ul little weaseL Yer always takin' Crogan's side " and Tom dealt him a blow behind the ear. Johnny tumbled over a clump of brush, crying, not so much with pain as with anger and 72 TEE BOY EMIGRANTS mortification. Tom only muttered, " You can't sass me you know." Loaded with their fuel, they went back to the camp, where Arthur, with a lowering brow, was busy over the Are, making ready for breakfast. " What's the matter with you f " he asked with amaze ment and some asperity, as he noticed the tears on Johnny's face." " I punched his head for his sass," said Tom, defiantly. Without a word, Arthur banged Tom over the head with the sheet-iron stove-cover, which he happened to have in his hand. The boy felt the indignity, for his face waa covered with soot and his eyes smarted. But, before he could get at Arthur, who stood by the stove, his eyes sparkling, and his lithe young form swelling with anger, Mont seized Tom and drew him away. Johnny threw him self on Arty and entreated him not to fight on his account, meanwhile protesting that it was nothing at all. Luckily, the other late combatants were not at hand, and Mont, helping Tom to remove the soot from his face and hair, soothed his angry feelings and asked him to promise to leave off quarreling. " You shouldn't have st/uck little Johnny ; you know that, Tom. He is a little chap, much smaller than you, and it was a cowardly thing for you to knock him over." " But that's no reason why Art should whack me over the snoot with a griddle," answered the lad. " Certainly not, certainly not ; but he did that in a mo- mont of passion. I dare say he is sorry for it by this time. If he is not, I shall be sorry for Arty ; he usually means to do what is right. It was wrong for him to strike you j there's no doubt about that. But you will forgive him, if he asks you 'i " TROUBLE IN THE CAMP. 73 u I allow he won't ask," said Tom, with great grimness But if he does \ " " All right, let him come on. I'm ready for him, anyway." It was not a merry party which sat down to breakfast together that morning. Mont found it difficult to keep up fin animated conversation. Hi had only one word, and that was " disagreeable." Perhaps they should not have eaten mifch breakfast, as the usual result of bad feelings is to destroy one's appetite. On the plains this rule does not always hold good. I am bound to say that they ate very heartily, for they had had almost no supper on the night before. When the cattle were yoked up and the caravan was ready to move, Mont picked up the whip and said, with a cheery look at the others : " Let me drive to-day." " You can't, " said Hi, stiffly, but not unkindly. " Let me try," and Mont moved off with the team as steadily as if he had driven oxen all his life. He had watched the driving of Hi and Barnard, and had practised some with the cattle when they were turned out at noon, yoked together, for a short rest. Molly, the skittish little cow, would occasionally " gee," or bolt out of the track, which was always a great source of annoyance even to Hi, for Molly was on the " off " side, and it was sometimes necessary to run around the head of the cattle to get tho mischievous animal back into the track again. But Mont got on capitally ; he walked by the side of the docile and knowing Tige, who seemed able to keep all the rest of the team in gotd spirits. Tige was fond of potatoes, sugar iread, and many other luxuries usually denied to cattle , and Mont kept on good terms with the queer little steer 4 7 1 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. by carrying Lie odds and ends of his own rations in hit pocket for Tige. But even Tige's good-nature, combined with Mont's, could not cheer np the rest of the party. Little Johnny, porahed on old Jim's back, paced along beside the wagon, never galloping off on brief excursions by the roadside, as he usually did when allowed to ride the horse. Hi trudged along sulkily behind ; Arthur walked on ahead to Loup Fork Ferry; and Barney, in defiance of rules and usage, climbed into the wagon, where, on top of the load and close against the wagon-bows, he went to sleep. Before noon they reached the ferry, so long looked for and talked about. The Loup is one of the forks of the Platte, and in those days it was crossed by a rope-ferry, which some enterprising man had put in there. A long scow, large enough to take on two wagons, with the usual number of cattle, slid across the stream, attached by slings and pulleys to a rope tightly stretched from shore to shore. The current was swift, and, by keeping the scow partly headed up stream, the pressure forced the unwieldy craft across. Here were numerous teams waiting their chance to cross, each being numbered in turn. Some of them had waited two days for their turn to come ; but to-day their number had been reduced by the departure of several who had gone to a place farther up the Fork, where it waa reported that a ford had been found. Our party ascer tained that they could cross by sundown ; so they un hitched their cattle and waited, having first paid the ten dollars for ferriage which the avaricious ferry-keepei demanded for each team. The young fellows took this opportunity to rest. Bar nard sat lazily on the bank angling for catfish. Hj TROUBLE IN THE CMAP. 75 climbed into the wagon and went to sleep, Mont ehattod with the ferry-master, who sat in the doorway of his log hut and surveyed the busy scene below him with the air of a wealthy proprietor. " I should suppose that you would get the gold fever, seeing so many people pressing on to the mines," said Mont. The ferryman chuckled, and waving his pipe toward the rude ferry, said : " Thar's my gold mine. Ten dollars a pop." " Yes, that's so. I suppose you are making a mint of money." " Not so dreffle much, not so dreffle much," the man replied uneasily. " Ye see, repa'rs and w'ar and far are mighty bindin' on a man, cl'ar out hyar on the plains. Why, I hev to go cl'ar to K'amey for every scrap of any thing.'* " But your receipts must be enormous. Let me see You can make at least twelve trips a day ; you get, saj twenty dollars a trip, sometimes more, and that is two hundred and forty dollars a day." " Powerful smart on figgers you be, young feller," said the man, and he laughed with a cunning leer in his eye at Mont. Meanwhile, Tom leaned over the slight fence with which the ferryman had inclosed his " garding," as he called it. The boy coveted the young onions just begin ning to show their bulbs half out of the warm soil ; and he meditated on the scarcity of potatoes which their appetites were making in their own stores. Arthur came up and laid his hand on Tom's shoulder, and looked over too. " Lx>ks something like home, don't it, Tom? " "Yes," replied Tom. " I was just a-thinkin' how fG THE BO Y EMIGRANTS never would plant garden truck. Always wheat, wheat wheat. Blast the wheat, when a feller has to go to the neighbors for garden sass." " Bit, then, we sometimes get ' sass ' without going foi it," said Arty, with a smile. Tom's face darkened at this allusion to the difficulties of the morning ; but Arty continued : " I am real sorry, Tom, that I struck you as I did. It was awful mean, and I didn't intend it." " Yes, you did. How else could you done it ? " " Well, Tom, it's a hard case to explain. My hand just flew up before I knew what I was about. The first thing I knew I had hit you. Come now, I assure you I am sorry, and I want to make up." " All right," grumbled Tom. "You forgive me, honor bright? Well, give us your hand." Tom looked around awkwardly at Arthur, for he had kept his eyes fixed on the onion-bed during this brief dia logue. He glanced into Arthur's pleasant boyish face, and said frankly : " Quits ! we'll call it square, and there's my fist on it." As the sun began to drop behind the horizon, the turn for our young party to cross came at last. They had waited nearly ten hours, and were right glad when they were able to see the way across clear for them. The scow could not reach the farther shore, as there was a long akallow all along that side. So the clumsy craft was run across until it grounded ; then a wooden flap or apron wa? let down, and the teams were driven oat into the water wading the rest of the way. It was a poor way of cross ing a stream, but it was the best practicable then and there. TROUBLE IN THE CAMP. 77 "Whh much hallooing, shouting, and running hither and thither, the cattle were driven into the scow. The current was swift, and the channel deep ; the crossing looked perilous, especially when the cattle were restive. Molly was particularly troublesome, and Hi went around on thai side to quiet her. She would not be quieted, and with one vicious toss of her horns, ehe lifted Hi by his leather belt. In an instant he was overboard, struggling in the stream. No one else was on that side of the boat ; but Barney saw the accident, and exclaiming, " He can't swim ! he can't swim ! " rushed around to the rear of the craft, pull- ino; off his clothes as he ran. o All was confusion, the scow being crowded with men, cattle, and teams. The frail craft quivered in the tide, while the startled boatmen were puzzled what to do. Diving under the rear wagon, Barney reached the gunwale of the boat just in time to see Hi's hands clutch ineffec tually at the edge. He made a lunge and seized one hand as it disappeared, and, falling on his knees, reached over and seized Hi's shoulders. " Never mind, Barney boy, I'm on bottom," said Hi. Just then he stood on his feet, and the boat grounded on the shoal. Barnard drew a long sigh of relief, and looked for an instant straight down into Hi's blue eyes. They were friends again. Hi was helped on board, none the worse for his unex pected ducking. They drove off the scow, waded acrosa the shoal, and struggled up the bank with much turmoil and bother. They camped near the river, and surrounded themselves with a cordon of smudge-fires. The mosqui toes troubled them Tery much ; but, notwithstanding that, 78 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. they passed the evening cheerily. Tom observed, with much inward surprise, that Hi had exchanged his wet clothea for a spare suit of Barney's. Ani yet Hi had clothes enough of his own. tiOM E NEW AC Q VAINTANCES. CTTAPTEE VIIL SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES. FOB many days after leaving Columbus, as the ferryman facetiously called his log-house, our emigrants traveled with an immense company. One train alone had nearly two hundred head of cattle, either in yoke or loose, and fifteen wagons. It was a brave sight to see this long cara van winding along the track, with its white-covered wagons gleaming in the sun, and the animals walking along behind in the most orderly manner. Many of the men were on horseback, and skirmished to the rear, to the front, or by the flanks of the train as it moved. Arthur declared that it looked like a traveling circus or menagerie, a compari son which was made more striking by the dress of the emigrants. They wore all sorts of queer garments, which they had picked up from abandoned camps. In those days of the gold rush, people were reckless about waste, and the trail was strewn, in many places, with valuable goods, thrown away by emigrants who were in such haste to get on that they were continually overhauling their loads to see what they could leave behind to lighten them. These things were picked up by those who came after only to be again thrown out for others to find and reject One of the emigrants, attached to this long Missouri train, wore a woman's straw bonnet, of the Shaker pattern, with a large green cape. Another was decorated with a richly embroidered hunting- frock, of Pawnee make; and ht 80 THE BO T EMIGRANTS. tvore a black silk " stove-pipe " hat, surmounted with a tall eagle-plume. Some of the women of this company rode well, and one little girl, riding a fiery Texan pony, seated astride, excited much admiration by her skilful manage ment of her steed. A party of Pawnees, who had lodges, or "tepees," near by, grouped themselves on a little knoll and gazed on this passing show with great solemnity. At camping-time, some of these red children of the desert came to the tent of our young emigrants begging and selling moccasins. The Pawnee moccasin is a plain, inartistic affair, shaped almost exactly like the foot of a stocking, with one seam running from the heel downward and lengthwise through the sole and up to the instep over the toe. But as these were the first of " wild Indian " manufacture that the boys had ever seen, each was eager l<> secure at least one pair. The Indians were dressed in buckskin hunting-shirts and leggings, were bareheaded, and wore a coarse blanket slung about them. One of them produced from a dirty buckskin pouch a piece of paper, which he impressively submitted to Mont, as the apparent leader of the party, saying, as he did so, " Heap good Indian me ! " The paper read as follows : This Indian, Mekonee, otherwise known as The-Man-that-Champs- with-his-Teefch, wants a recommendation. I give it with pleasure. Ha is a lying, thieving, vagabond Pawnee. He will steal the tiies off of your wagon-wheels and the buttons from your trousers. Watch him. (Signed) JAKE DAWSON, And thirteen others of the Franklin Grove Company. "Heap good Indian me," said The-Man-that-Champs- with-his-Teeth, when the boys had examined his document. "Oh, yes," eaid Hi, "I allow you aie the inly gooj Indian that ain't dead yet." SOME NE WACQ UAINTANCES. 81 The-Han-tliat-Champs-with-his-Teetli assented with a grunt of approval, folded up his " recommendation " and pi.it it carefully away, as a very precious thing. While he was walking softly about the camp, as if looking for some thing to steal, another o the tribe dived into the bosom ol his hunting shirt and extracted a lump of dough. Hold ing it out to Arthur, who was getting ready the supper, he made signs toward the stove and said, " Cook him ? " Arthur assented, but Barnard cried, " No, no, Arthur 1 Don' let that dirty fellow's dough go into our oven. H<5 has stolen it somewhere, and has carried it about in hia dirty clothes, nobody knows how long." " I'll let him cook it on top of the stove then," said Arthur ; and the Pawnee put his cake on the outside of the camp-stove, where Arthur covered it with a tin dish. The Indian, with an expression of intense satisfaction, squatted by the hot stove, and never took his eyes off of it until his dough was bread and delivered, blazing hot, into his hand. The Indians carried bows and arrows, and one had a battered army-musket, which he declared, proudly, was " heap good killed buffalo six mile off." This piece of brag tickled Hi so much that the Indian seized that opportunity to beg powder, shot, or lead. These were not given him ; and he renewed his application for " whisk " (whisky) or " sugee " (sugar), both of which the Indians particularly hanker after. These persistent beggars got very little for their trouble, Arthur having vainly inter-, ceded in behalf of The-Man-that-Champs-with-his-Teeth, who offered to give " heap moccasin " for a red silk hand kerchief of Barnard's which he very much desired. " Where you from ? " asked the Indian, as if attracted by Arthur's good-natured and pleasant face. f; From Richardson, Lee County, Illinois." said Arthur 4* 82 fHE SC Y EMIGRANTS. " You know it is the land cf the prairie, one of the great States that belongs to your Great Father and mine. The people in that land are many ; they are like the leaves OL the trees, they are so many. They are going to the lanti of the setting sun, where the gold shines in the waters oi the Sacramento. The pale-faces are covering the conti nent. They will leave no room for the red man, the deei and the buffalo. Are you not sorry for this '( " " Whisk," said the red man, stolidly. " A good oration, Arty ! " laughed Mont. " But Mr. Man-that-Champs-with-his-Teeth don't understand it. He understands ' whisk ' and ' sugee,' and he don't care for the pale-faces as long as he get these. Look out ! there goes the cover of your camp kettle ! " Arthur turned just in time to see the Indian who wa? squatted by the stove calmly fold his arms over a suspi cious bunch in his blanket. Mont stalked over, pulled the blanket from the Indian's unresisting arm, and the iron cover rolled out upon the ground. The copper-colored rascal smiled cunningly, as one should say, " 1 missed it that time, but never mind. It's a good joke on me." After that the boys mounted guard at night-watch and watch, as they had been told long before that it would be necessary to do while passing through the Indian country. Next to " wild " Indians, the boys longed for a sight of the buffalo on his native plain. This came in due time. They had passed up the long tongue of land which lies between Loup Fork and the Platte, and had reached a Bmall stream making in from the north and known as Wood River. Crossing this, they bore off to the north west, with the little river on their right. One hot afternoon, while the party were wearily drag ging themselves along Barnard went ahead with the horse SOME NEWACq UAINTANGE8. 83 to spy out a good camping-place. Arthur walked or. in advance of the team in the dusty road, half asleep, and feeling as if he should be happy if he could fall down in the dust and take a long nap. It was very tiresome, this continual tramp, tramp, tramp, with each day's journey making almost no difference in their progress. Arthur grumbled to himself, and scarcely heard the boyish talk of Johnny, who trudged along with him. Once in a while he felt himself dropping to sleep as he walked. His heavy eyes closed ; he lost sight of the yellow wagon-track, the dusty grass, and the earth, which seemed to reel ; the blinding glare of the sun was gone for an instant, and ho stumbled on as in a dream. Then he nearly fell over forward, and he knew that he had slept by the painful start of awaking. He looked dreamily at the rough soil by the side of the trail, dimly longing to lie down and sleep, sleep, sleep. Johnny said, " Oh my ! Arty ! what big black cattle ! " Arty looked languidly across the river, which was here only a narrow, woody creek. In an instant his sleepiness was gone. " Buffalo 1 buffalo ? " he shouted, and, very wide awake indend, ran back to the wagon. He was in a fever of ex citement, and the news he brought set his comrades into commotion. Each rushed for his favorite fire-arm. Tom extracted his long-unused revolver from the wagon, where it lay unloaded. " Now, boys, we can't all go over the creek," said Hi. u You, Tom, stay here with the team. Mont, Arty, and I will go over and see if we can knock over a brace of them buffalo." Tom handled his revolver with a very bad grace, but wad mollified when Johnny said he urould stay, and perhap* H4 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. they might see the buffalo cross over ar.d break through the woods below. The banks of the creek were tilled with a thick growth of box-elders, but through some of the gaps they could see five buffalo quietly feeding in a Y-shaped meadow formed by the junction of two small branches cf Wood River. " We must get above them," said Hi, as they were recon- noitering, " or they will make off by that open place. Ii we take 'era in the rear they can't mizzle so easy-like." Mont thought it unsafe to go to the upper part of the meadow, because the wind came from that direction. "And they are very sensitive to any unusual odor in the air," added Arthur. " They can smell a man two miles off, when they are to the leeward." The boy was trembling with excitement at the sight of this large game, but he re membered his natural history, for all that. Even as he spoke one of the feeding buffalo lifted his large shaggy head and sniffed suspiciously to the windward. The three young fellows separated, Arthur going down the creek, Hi up toward the open, and Mont crossing in the middle of the Y, directly opposite where the animals were feeding. They were huge fellows, ponderously mov ing about and nibbling the short, tender grass. Their humped shoulders were covered with dark, shaggy hair, and their long, beard-like dewlaps nearly swept the ground as they bent their heads to graze. They were not in very good condition, apparently, and the hide of one of them was clouded with a dingy, yellowish tinge. " Just like our old buffalo- robe," secretly commented Arthur to hiir^elf, as he lay breathless, near the creek, waiting for a signal from Hi. Suddenly, to his amazement, a shot burst out from tho orush on the farther side of the meadow, and, as the ' p- ' ' ' 1 viM^ ; JIMjjii^.jj^ SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES. S3 alanned animals dashed away like cats, another report banged out from the sair.e spot. The buffalo, scattering in different directions, were almost immediately out of reach. Two pitched down into the creek near where they were feeding and disappeared in the woods beyond. One broke through the timber just below where Arthur was posted; scrambled across the stream, and, with incredible agility, crashed through into the road near the wagon, where Torn gallantly, but ineffectually, assaulted him with his " pep per-box " revolver as he galloped away. The fourth raced up the Y-shaped meadow, receiving a shot each from Mont's musket and Hi's rifle in his rapid flight. The fifth made as if he would plunge down into the creek at the foot of the meadow, but, baulked by something, turned and raced up the side of the triangle next the road, head ing directly for Arthur, who was concealed behind a bush. " Now or never," said the boy, with his heart standing still and his eye glancing along the sights of his rifle. The buf falo was coming directly toward him, his head down and his enormous feet pounding the earth. Arthur fired, and the buffalo swerved sharply to the right ; at the same in stant another shot came from the opposite side of the meadow. The buffalo ambled on for a few paces, fell on his knees, dug his horns madly into the ground, rolled over ou his side, and was still. As Arthur, scarcely believing his eyes, ran out into tho open, a tall young fellow, carrying a double-barreled shot gun, rushed up from the other side, and drawing hi hunting-knife, cut the animal's throat. There was no need. The great creature was dead. " My fust buffalo," said the stranger, drawing himself jp proudly. Arthur looked on, with his heart beating, and said, " I fired at him toe " 8e THE BOY EMIGRANTS. All this took place in a very few minutes, The firing in all directions was almost simultaneous. Mont and Hi came running up, chagrined at their ill luck, but excited by the sight of the first slain buffalo. " Who shot him \ " eagerly cried Hi, who had not seen what happened below him. "Well, I allow that I'm the fortnit individual," said the stranger. " Leastways, thar's my mark," and he inserted his finger into a smooth round hole in the centre of the animal's forehead, directly between and a little above the eyes. " That's just where I aimed," said Arthur, with some excitement. "No, little chap," said the stranger, superciliously ; " I seen you shoot, and your ball must 'a gone clean over him. Mine's a slug. No or'nery rifle ball's goin' to kill a critter like this," and he gave the dead monster a touch with his boot. " Let's look at that ball," said Mont, curiously, as the emigrant handled one of the clumsy sluga which had been fitted for the big bore of his gun. Taking it in his hand and glancing at the wound in the head of the buffalo, he stooped to put it into the wound. The skull was pierced with a sharply defined hole. The stranger's slug rested in the edge of it like a ball in a cup. " That ball don't go into that hole, stranger," said Mont " The mate of it never went in there. Give me a ball, Arty." - And Mont, taking one of Arty's rifle-balls, slipped it in at the wound ; it dropped inside and was gone. " It's a clear case, Cap," said Hi. " You may as well give it up. That buffalo belongs to our camp, and Arty J the boy that fetched him you bet ye." SOME NEW ACQ UAINTANCES. 87 "Well," said the stranger, discontentedly, " thar'a no neod o' jawin' about it. I allow thar'a meat enough foi all hands. I'll pitch in and help dress the critter, anj how," and he stripped to work. There was certainly no need of disputing over the dead Iriffalo. It was Arthur's game, however, clearly enough. He received the congratulations of his friends with natu- r al elation, but with due modesty. He crossed the creek again for knives to help prepare the buffalo meat for immediate use. Barnard had come tearing back down the road at the sound of fire-arms, and now stood waiting with, " What luck ? what luck ? " as Arty waded the creek, yet unconscious of his having been up to his waist in the stream a few minutes before. Arty told his story with some suppresssd excitement, but without any self-glorification. The water fairly stood in Barnard's joyful eyes as he clapped his young brother on the back and said, " Good for you, my old pard." You ace Barnard was beginning to catch the slang of the plains. They camped right there and then. The buffalo was dressed and the choice parts cut off and cooled in the air, for the sun was now low and night came on. The stran ger's comrades, camped on the north side of Wood River, came over and helped the party of amateur butchers, and earned their share of fresh meat, which was all they could carry away and take care of. This was a luxury in the camp. The emigrants had had almost no fresh meat since leaving the Missouri River. Small game was scarce, and only a few birds, shot at rare intervals, had given variety to their daily fare. The beys stood expectantly around the camp-stove as the operation of frying buffalo steaks went on under the 88 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. Biiperintendence of Mont and Arthur. Sniffing the de licious odor of the supper which had been so unexpectedly given them, Barnard said, " Obliged to you, Arty, for this fresh beef. You know I hate bacon." " And the best of it is," added little Johnny, " there's enough of it to go round." " Which is more than some chaps can say of their pie," said Barnard. Arty raised his hot face from the frying-pan and laughed. A MISADVENTURE. 9 CHAPTER IX. A MISADVENTURE. THE next few days of the journey were toilsome and nncomfortable. The nights were hot, and cur emigrants were greatly annoyed with mosquitoes, so that Hi gave notice that he should go crazy if they did not " let up " on him. Long rains had swollen the streams; the Platte overflowed its banks in some places, and the bottom lands opposite Fort Kearney were overflowed. The boys had depended on crossing the river for the sake of visiting the fort, which was on the south side, but they were prevented by the high water. They had no special errand at the fort, but as they had now been a month on the road, they thought it would be pleasant to go over and " see where folks lived," as Barney expressed it. He and Mont made the attempt, but gave it up after wading - a long distance through the overflow, without reaching deep water. This was a disappointment, and they pushed on with a slight feeling of loneliness. They all wanted to see what a frontier fort was like, though they knew that it was only a collection of substantial buildings barracks and store houses surrounded by a stockade. There was something romantic and adventurous about a military post in the Indian country, which to Arthur, at least, was very attrac tive. The next fort on their route was Fort Laramie, and to this stage on their journey they now passed on, keeping by the north bank of the Platte. tfO THE BOY EMIGRANTS. There was no occasion for loneliness, however, as tn road was now all alive with teams. It was the custom foi emigrant companies to combine in trains of several com panies each. These stopped sometimes, for a day or two at a time, in order to rest, repair the wear and tear oi teams, and get ready for a fresh start. On such occasions the camp was busy, though our young fellows enjoyed the rest when it came. It was tedious work, marching all day, camping at night, packing up and beginning another march next day. They knew they must be three or four months crossing the continent, and a " lay-by " of two or three days was always welcome ; and nobody thought such a stoppage was a serious delay. After a few weeks, every body got over all feverish eagerness to be the first at the mines. Now and then some small party of horsemen, lightly equipped and traveling rapidly, pushed by the body of emigrants, their faces eagerly set toward the land of gold, and scarcely taking time to sleep. From such rapid travelers as these our boys ascertained who was behind, and they soon learned the names, origin, and character of most of the companies between the Sierra Nevada and the Missouri. While they were camped for a day's rest Sunday's rest near Dry Creek, Bush came up with his little cow and cart. He had been traveling with a Wisconsin company, but had left them behind when near Fort Kearney and had pushed on by himself. Bush was full of news. He had passed several parties of whom oui boys had heard ; and he had been passed by several others, some of whom were ahead, and others of whom were again behind. It was in this way that the intelligence on the trail went back and forth. Emigrants thus learned all about the fords, the grass, wood and water, and the condition of tie road before them. Somehow., A MISADVENTURE. 91 the gossip of the great moving population of tlie plains flowed to and fro, just as it does in a small village. Men sat around their camp-fires at night, or lounged in the sun, of a leisure day, and retailed to each other all the infor mation they picked up as they traveled. Every man waa a newspaper to the next man he met. There was 110 news from far countries, none from towns, and only a very little from the land to which they were bound. The long column of emigration that stretched across the continent had its own world of news. It was all compressed in the Bpace that lay between the Missouri and the Sierra Nevada. Thousands of camp-fires sparkled at night along the winding trail that ran on and on across the heart of the continent. Thousands of wagons moved slowly to the westward, an almost unbroken procession through an unknown land ; by each fire was a community of wanderers; each wagon was a moving mansion car rying its own family with its worldly possessions, and laden with the beginnings of a new State beyond tho mountains. Just now, camped on a level greensward, with a bright June sun lighting up the landscape, our boy emigran th en joyed their day of rest very much. They were grouped under the shelter of the tent, which was caught up at tho sides to let in the air, for the weather was now growing hot. " 'Pears to me." said Bush, " this tent is mighty fine, but it lets the sun in. It's too all-fired white inside." "Bush likes to camp under his go-cart," laughed II i. " But I allow a tent is uncommonly handy when it coinei on to rain." " As for the sun shining in through the cloth," said Mont, "I think I see a way to help that." Su he canghl 92 THE BO T EMIGRANTS. up one or two of the blankets which were opened out Dn tn grass to air, and flung them over the ridge-pole. " You are a powerful knowin' creeter, Mont," said Bush, admiringly. "A feller'd suppose you had been on the plains all your life. And you a counter-jumper at that/'' Barney remonstrated that Mont was not a counter- jumper. "Besides," he added, "it don't follow that a young fellow don't know anything beyond his counter because he has spent some of his days behind one." " Jess so, jess so," said Bush. " Mont is on hand here to prove just that. There's fellers as takes to rough work and plains tricks and doin's as a cat does to cream. Then again there's fellers as ain't no more use around a team than a cow won Id be in a parlor." Mont listened with some amusement to this conversa tion, as he lay on the ground looking up at the shaded roof of the tent. He explained, " You see, Bush, I like teaming, roughing it, and living out in the open air. Would you like to tend store, lay bricks, or work in a fac tory?" " Nary time," rejoined Bush. "I don't believe you would take to any such business, nor do well in it, if you were put to it- Do you ? " "No. If Pwas to be sot to work, at regular work, you know, why, I should go right straight down to where flour's fifteen dollars a bar'l, and no money to buy with at that. Oh, no, I'm gay and chipper at trappin', lumberin', gcttin' out rock, teamin', or any of them light chores ; but c.ome to put me to work, regular work, I'm just miser able." " Then there's Arty," put in Barney. " lie's all for animals. Just see that steer follow him round aftez ugar." A MISADVENTURE. 03 Tige had been loitering around the camp instead o* keeping with the cattle, which grazed near by, and Arty, having allowed him to smell of a little sugar which he carried in his hand, was enticing him abcut the camping ground. " Dreffle waste of sugar," commented Tom. "Never you mind about the sugar," said Hiram, re provingly. " That's the knowingest critter on the plains ; and if Arty has a mind to give him a spoonful, now and then, it's all right. We've got enough to carry us through." Hearing the debate, Arty approached the tent, holding out his hand toward the docile Tige, who still followed him, snuffing the coveted sugar. " Take care ! take care ! don't come in here ! " yelled Hi. But Arty kept on, laughing at Tige, who seemed also to be much amused. Arty stepped over the body of Barney, who lounged by the door, the steer immediately following him. O " He'll wallop your tent over," shouted Bush, but Tige, still stepping after his master as lightly as a full-grown steer could step, kept on with his nose close to the boy's open hand, and drawing long breaths as he smelled the sugar. Arty circled about the interior of the little tent, and over the prostrate forms of his comrades, who hugged the ground in terror lest the unwieldy beast should trample on them. They were too much surprised to move, and Tige marched after Arty, turning around inside the canvas house as gingerly as if he had always lived in one. " Why, he is as graceful as a kitten, and he steps ovei you as if he were treading among egg-shells," said Arty shaking with fun. '' See how carefully he misses Ili's bio feet. Why, Tige is almost as spry as you are, Hi." " if Tige knocks d awn that pole I'll trounce y 0^1 witl; 94 THE EOT EMIGRANTS. it,'* said Hi, whc did not relish the common camp joke about his large feet. But the wise little steer passed safely out by the front of the tent, having gone in at one side of the pole and out at the other, without doing any damage. lie was rewarded with the sugar which he had pursued into the presence of so much danger, and he lay down at a distance, contemplating the group which he hud just visited. " I think you said something about a cow in a parlor, Bush," said Arty. " What do you think of a steer in a tent ? " " Well, youngster, between you and me and the post, I think the best place for me, as I said afore, is out of doors. It's close, this living in a tent ; and when it comes tc makin' cattle to hum in one of 'em, I aint there." Tige's friendship for his young master was put to the test the very next day. It was a bright Monday morning when they reached Dry Creek. But the creek was by no means dry. Its steep banks were slippery w r ith moisture, and four or five feet of water flowed through its bed. A large number of teams had been passing over, and when our young emigrants came up, there were several com panies laboriously making their way across, or waiting an opportunity to strike into the trail ; except at one place, a crossing was almost impossible. The wagons were " blocked up," as the water was deep enough in places to flow into the wagon boxes. "Blocking up" was done by drivirg wide blocks of wood under the box or body of the wagon, said box being loosely fitted into the bed or frame work. Thus raised on these, the body of the wagon ii kept in place by the uprights at the sides, and is set ujr high enough to be drawn over an ordinary stream withoul wetting its contents. A MISADVENTURE. 9ft The descent into the creek was no steeper thua the rcay out on the other side. It was hard enough to get down to the stream without damage. It would be still more difficult to get out. Those who were then crossing made a prodigious racket shouting to their animals, at each other, and generally relieving their excited feelings with noise as they worked through the difficulty. " We shall have to double up, and there's nobody to double up with us," said Barnard, ruefully. The boys had resorted to the expedient of " doubling up," or uniting their team with that of some passing ac quaintance, before this. The spirit of good-fellowship prevailed, and two or more parties would combine and pull each other's wagons through by putting on each the horses or cattle of the whole, until the hardest place was eafely passed. Here, however, all the travelers but them selves were busy with their own affairs. There was no body ready to " double up " with others. " Howdy ? youngsters," said a languid, discouraged- looking man, coming around from behind a red-covered wagon. " Powerful bad crossing this yere." "Yes," said Arthur, who immediately recognized him as the man who could not make his fire burn when they were camped near Pape's. Just then the sallow woman put her head out of the wagon, and said, " Glad to see you Me baby's wuss." " She takes yer for a doctor, Arty," whispered Hi, who remembered that Arthur had tended the sick baby while ths mother was cooking supper. " We 'uns is bavin' a rough time, ye bet yer life, but I allow we'll pull through. Want to double np, you " Yes," replied Mont. " This is a pretty bad crossing 06 THE BOY EMIGRANTS and, as you have a strong team, we should be glad to join forces and go across together." " Jiue '\ Oh, yes, we'll hitch up with ye. Things ia cutting up rough, and my old woman she allows we ain't goin' through. " " Not going through ?" " Oh, you keep shut, will ye, ole man?" said the woman from the wagon. If you had a sick baby to nuss, you wouldn't be so peart." " I aint so peart," said the husband, grimly. " But I allow we'll double up, seem' it's you. I war agoin' to wait for Si Beetles, but we'll just snake your wagon over; then we'll come back for mine." The blocks were got out and put under the wagon-bed, and the stranger's cattle were hitched on ahead of those of our boys. The wheels were chained together, front and rear, so that they could not turn and hurry the wagon down the steep bank. " Ye' 11 have to wade for it, boys ; you'd better strip," advised Messer, for that was the stranger's name. " Oh, it's only a short distance," said Mont, measuring .he width of the creek with his eye, and observing the depth to which the men then in the water were wading. " Roll up your trousers, boys, and we '11 try it that way." The party, except Hi, who sat in the forepart of the wagon and drove, rolled up their trousers ; and the chained wagon, drawn by four pair of cattle, pitched down the muddy bank, attended on either side by the young emi grants, Bush, and Messer. Slipping and sliding, the^ reached the bed of the stream in safety, unlocked the wheels and plunged boldly in, though the cattle were be wildered by the cries of the owners and the confusion of the crowd crossing the creek. A MISADVENTURE. 97 By dint of much urging and some punching from be hind, the wagon was " snaked " up the opposite bank, and our boys drew breath a few minutes before taking hold of llie rest of their job. " Laws-a-massy me ! " cried the poor woman, as tho team slid down the bank. " This is wuss than get-out. I 'd sooner wade the branch myself." But, before she could utter any more complaints, the wagon was at the bottom of the slope and the chains taken from the wheels. The cattle went into the stream with some reluctance, and Hi, who was driving, yelled " Haw, there, haw ! " with great anxiety. But the beasts would not " haw." Little Tigc held in now with sullen courage ; the rest of the team persisted in pushing up stream. Arty and Barnard were on the " off " or upper side of the team, but they could not keep the oxen from running wildly away from the opposite bank. The animals were panic-stricken and angry ; turning short around they were likely to overturn the wagon ; Arty rushed out to the leading yoke and tried to head it off. Tige was in the second yoke, resolutely pulling back his mate, Molly. It was in vain. Bally, tho DX just behind Tige, made a vicious lunge at Arty, who, n dodging to escape the horns of the creature, slipped and fell headlong into the water, there about up to his waist. Immediately, he was struggling among the cattle, where he could not swim, and was in danger of being trampled by the excited beasts. Hi, shouted with alarm, and, all clothed as he was, leaped from the wagon. There was no need. Before any of the party could reach him, Arty had scrambled out and had laid hold of Tige's head, that sagacious brute having stood perfectly Btill and stooping as his young master floundered under his belly. 5 98 THE BO 7 EMIGRANTS. Dripping with muddy water, and breathless, Art? struggled to his feet just as Hi, similarly drenched, waded up to him. This all took place in an instant, and the cattle, left for a moment to themselves, sharply turned toward the bank down which they had come, still heading "p the stream. The wagon toppled on two wheels, quiv ered, and went over witli a tremendous splash. Everybody rushed to the wreck and dragged out the woman and her sick baby. Both were wet through and through. The cattle stood still now. The water gurgled merrily through the overturned wagon, on which the owner looked silently for a moment, and then said: "Just my ornery luck! " "Luck, man!" said Mont, impatiently. "Why don't yon bear a hand and right up your wagon before your stuff is all spoiled ? " " Thar's whar yer right, strannger," replied the poor fellow. " But this is the wust streak yit. It sorter stalls me." Help came from the various companies on both sides of the creek, and Messer's wagon was soon set up on its wheels again, though nearly all of its load was well soaked. The woman and her baby were taken out on to dry land and comforted by some women who were with the wagons already on the farther side of the creek. When the party finally struggled up and out of this unfortunate place, they found that Messer's wife had been taken in and cared for at a wagon which, covered with striped tick ing, stood apart from the others, with the cattle unyoked near by. " Why, there's Nance ! " said Johnny ; and, as he spoke that young woman descended from the wagon and ay proached. A MISADVENTURE. " Ye're wet, young feller," she remarked to Arty. " Yes," he responded, wringing out his trousers-lega as as he could. " We were with the team that upset, and I wua upset first." " Jest like ye. Always in sonic body's mess. I'd lend ye a go and, but haven't got but one." " Thank you kindly. I don't think your gowns would fit me. But that yeast of yours did first-rate." Arthur thought lightly of his own troubles. " I k no wed it would. Have you kept your risin' right along ? " " Oh yes, we have saved lea ven from day to day, and so we have 'riz bread,' as you call it, every time we bake." " Glad of it. We'll have to divide with these Missouri folks. I reckon they've lost all their little fixin's ; but then they use salt risin'. Them ornery critters from Pike always do." The Missouri ans were in bad plight. Whatever waa liable to damage by water was spoiled, and our party of emigrants felt obliged to stop and help the poor fellow unload his wagon, spread out his stuff to dry, and get him self together again for a fresh start. The sun shone brightly and the weather was favorable to the unhappy NANCK APPEABS. 100 THE EOT EMIGRANTS. emigrant, whc sat around among his wet goods, bewail ing his hard Ijick, while his chance acquaintances repaired damages acd saved what they could of his effects. His wife, loosely clad in a dress telonging to Nance's mother, a large and jolly woman, fished out from the crushed wagon-bows, where it had been suspended in a cotton bag, the wreck of an extraordinary bonnet. It waa made of pink and yellow stuff, and had been a gorgeoua affair. She regarded it sadly, and said : " It was the gay est bunnit I ever had." Nance contemplated the parti-colored relic with some admiration, but said : " Just you hang that there up in the sun alongside of that feller, and they'll both on 'em come out all right. Fact is," she said, condescending to approve Arty, " lie's all right, anyhow; and if that big chap hadn't jumped out of the wagon and left the cattle to take care of them selves, the wagon wouldn't have gone over. So now ! " " But Hi thought Arty was getting killed," remonstrated Johnny. " So he jumped out into the water, head over heels, when he saw Arty fall." " Don't care for all that," retorted Nance, with severity. " Te're altogether too chipper. If yer Hi hadn't upset that wagon, I might have seen this yer bonnet before it was mashed." " Never mind," said Arty. " Perhaps Mont will show JDTI how to straighten out that bcnnet, when he has fin ished mending Messer's wagon-bows. Mont knows almost everything." " Who i& that yer Mont, as you call him, anyhow ? *' asked Nance. " He's from Boston, is real smart, and just about kuowi everything, as I told you," A MISADVENTURE. 10J "Oho! and that's why you are called 'The Boston Boys,' is it ? " " But they call us ' The Lee County Boys. We came from Lee County, Illinois." " Lee County, Illin ;>y ! " repeated the girl, with a know ing air. " Folks on the prairie calls you ' The .Boston Boys.' So now 1 " THE 130 Y EMIGRANTS. CHAPTEK X. AMONG THE BUFFALOES. WHILE the wagon was yet heavily loaded, the boy! spared the oxen, and so seldom rode. At first, the mem ber of the party who drove the team was permitted to sit in the wagon, part of the time. But the roads were now very hard for the cattle, and so all hands walked. Old Jim's back was sore ; he could not be saddled, and he was left to follow the team, which he did with great docility. The boys hardened the muscles of their legs, but they complained bitterly of sore feet. Much walking and poorly made boots had lamed them. The moccasina which they wore at times were more -uncomfortable than the cow-hide boots they had brought from home. " Confounded Indians ! " complained Tom, " they don't put no heels to their moccasins ; they tire a fellow's feet just awful." " Sprinkle some whisky in your boots ; that's all the use the stuff can be to us ; and whisky is good to toughen jour feet." This was Mont's advice. " But why don't the Indians put heels on their moc- Cfesins ? That's what I'd like to know." " "Wh \ , Tom, it isn't natural. Those Sioux that we saw down at Buffalo Creek can outrun and outjump any white man yon ever saw. They couldn't do it if they had beer, brought up with heels on their moccasins." "But for all that, them moccasins are powerful vreah AMONG THE BUFFALOES. 103 in the sole," grumbled Hi. "'Pears to me, sometimes,. aa if my feet was all Df a blister, after traveling all day in the dod-rotted things. Hang Indian shoemakers, any how ! " and Hiram contemplated his chafed feet with great discontent. "Then there's old Bally," chimed in Arty. "He's gone and got lame. He don't wear moccasins, though." " But," said Mont, " we may be obliged to put moo casins on him or, at least, on his sore foot." "What for?" " "Well, we've fixed his foot now two or three times, and he gets no better of his lameness. We might put a leather shoe, like a moccasin, filled with tar, on his foot. That's good for the foot-rot, or whatever it is." "Gosh!" said Hi. "How much that feller do know ! " " Well," laughed Mont, " I picked that up the other day. Those Adair County men said that if Bally didn't get better, tar would be healing ; and they said to bind it on with a shoe made out of an old boot-leg." " Lucky I picked up those boot-legs you thought were of no use, Barney Crogan," said Arthur. "They'll be just the things for Bally 's moccasins." The boys had put up with many discomforts. Some times they had no water for drinking or cooking, except what they found in sloughs and swampy places by the track. Often even this poor supply was so mixed with Jead grass and weeds that it was necessary to strain it before using it. Then, again, in the long stretch which they were now traveling between Fort Kearney and Fort Laramie, fuel was scarce. Not a tree nor shrub was in Bight; buffalo chips were seldom to be fcund, and the only stuff from which a fire could be made was the dry 1 04 THE BO Y EMIGRANTS. gracis and grease-weed found in sterile spots among th bluffs above the road. They were having hard times. Along the valley of the Platte heavy rain-storms are frequent in the summer time ; and, more than once, all hands were obliged to get up in the night and stand by the tent, in a pelting rain, to keep it from blowing away. One night, indeed, after bracing the tent all around out side with extra lines, they were forced to stand on bun dles and boxes inside and hold up the ridge-pole, which bent in the force of the gale and threatened to snap in twain. And then the mosquitoes ! But here was a serious trouble. Bally was a surly animal, but he was a powerful fellow and the best traveler in the team. He had been lame these four days, and was getting worse instead of better. The boys had passed many cattle, turned out on account of their lameness by those who had gone before. They did not like to think of turning out old Bally to die by the roadside. Mat ters were not so serious as that. But Mont had said almost under his breath : " If we should have to leave Bally" Serious remedies were now to be tried. The tar- bucket was taken out from under the wagon, and a shoe made from one of provident Arty's boot-legs. With the assistance of Bush, Mcsser, and one or two neighbors at the camp, poor Bally was cast by suddenly pulling on ropes attached to one hind-foot and one fore-foot. The b:g beast fell over on his side with a thump that made Arty's heart jump. Then each person held that pfirt of the animal to which he had previously been assigned, Nance, whose father was now with them for a time, looked on with profound interest. The struggling animal subsided, after a while, into AMONG THE BUFFALOES. 1Q5 angry quiet hia eyes rolling wildly at Arty and Johnny, who sat on his head to keep him down. " Set onto him heavy, boys," said Bush. " 'S long's he can't lift you, he can't lift his head ; and 's long's he can't lift his head, he's got to lay still." But he did not lie still. When the shoe, full of soft lar, was fairly on, but not tied, Bally wiggled his tail very animatedly, cuffed Bush on the side of his head with the lame foot, which he suddenly jerked out of the hands of the operators, and, with one mighty effort, threw up his head, angrily brandishing his horns the while. Arthur and Johnny flew into the air, one to the right and one to the left, as Bally's head swung in either direction. Straggling to his feet, the worried beast shuffled off a few paces, his shoe half-sticking to his foot in slip-shod fashion ; then he stopped and regarded the whole party with profound disfavor. " Wai, I allow you are a nice creeter, you are ! " said Hi, with disgust. " Don't know yer best friends, you don't, when they're tryin' to cure ye up." " Why, he's as spry as a cat and as strong as an ox," cried Bush. " But them boys is spryer. See 'em go. Tore yer shirt, didn't it, Arty ? " " My belt saved me," said the boy, bravely, exhibiting a huge rent in his flannel shirt, and a long red streak on the white skin of his chest, where Bally's sharp horn had plunged under his belt and sharply along his u hide," as Hush called it. Johnny had turned a somersault, lighting on his shoulders, but without serious damage. " Well, we've got it all to do over again," -was Monl'# philosophic comment; and, under his leadership, Bally was once more thrown and held down until the shoe vvaa drmly fixed on his foot. He walked off w.th a limp 5* 106 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. evidently very much puzzled with his first experiment if wearing leather slices. MONT. "Looks like a bear in moccasins," said Hi, grimly t: Leastways, he looks as I allow a bear would look in moccasins, or w:th one of V,m onto him. "Next time AMONG THE BUFFALOES. 107 are sot on a steer's head, Arty, you git w here he can't h'ist you higher'n a kite when he tries to git up." " I sat where I was told, Hi ; but 1 didn't weigh enough. That's what was the matter." Their lame ox did not keep his shoe on more than a day or two at a time, and the boys soon had the disagree able task of replacing it quite often. It was a trouble some affair ; but they were now obliged to face the more troublesome question of supplying his place, in case it became necessary to leave him behind. Bally's mate was like him a large and powerful ox ; Tige and Molly, the leaders, were lighter. "With these three and their horse, Old Jim, they might go on ; but the prospect was gloomy. " Pity we can't hitch up some of these buffaloes that are running around loose," said Barnard, with a personal sense of the wastefulness of so many cattle going wild, while they needed only one draught animal. " Could we catch one of these critters and put him into the yoke, I wonder ? " " You catch one, and I will agree to yoke him," laughed Mont. It was not surprising that Barney grumbled at the waste of animal power, and that a wild notion that some of it ought to be made useful crossed his mind. The country was now covered with vast herds of buffaloes, moving to the north. One day, Mont and Arty ascended a steep bluff, to the right of the road, while the wagon train kept slowly on below them. As far as the eye could reach northward, the undulating country was literally black with the slow-moving herds. Here and there, on some conspicuous eminence, a solitary, shaggy old fellow stood relieved against the sky a sentinel over ths flowing streams of dark brown animals below. They moved in 108 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. battalions, in single files, by platoons, and in disorderly masses, stretching out in vast dark patches and covering the greon earth. Before them was grass and herbage ; behind them was a trampled, earthy paste. Occasionally, these migratory herds, coming to a stream, rushed in thirstily, each rank crowding hard upon another. When the foremost struck the water, galloping along with thundering tread, the fury of their charge sent the spray high in the air, like a fountain. In an instant, the crystal current was yellow and turbid, with the disturbed soil ; then a dense mass of black heads, with snorting muzzles, crowded the surface from bank to bank. " See ! see ! " cried Arthur. " How those big fellows run on ahead, lie down and roll, and then jump up and dash on again. Why, they're spryer than old Bally was the other day, when he pitched me sky high." " Yes, and if you watch, you will see that all the buf faloes on the side of that bluff drop in the same place, roll and skip on again, almost like a lot of cats." " Why do they do that, Mont ? " " Well, you know that most hairy animals like to roll ; I suppose it answers for a scratching-post. If you ever come to a tree in this part of the country, you will find it all worn smooth and tufted with loose hair, where the buffaloes have rubbed themselves against it." " But, somehow, these chaps all seem to drop in the same place and then canter on again. I should think each buffalo would want a clean spot." " Oh nc ! that place is worn to the soil now, and is a better one to rub the hide of the creature in than a grassy place would be. For years after this, if we were to come along here, we should find a big patch right there where the buf faloes are rolling as they trot along. The grass won't AMOX Q THE B UFFA L OE8. 1 09 grow there again for a great while. That is what the plains men call a buffalo-wallow though a * frailer,' I believe, is the correct plains expression." " I like you, JVlont," said Arty, looking frankly into Morse's eyes, " because you know everything." " Oil no, Arty, not everything. You arc a partial friend. I'm only a greenhorn. But look at that ! My ? But isn't that a sight ? " As he spoke, a vast crowd of animals, moving from the eastward, came surging up over a swale in the undulating surface. There seemed to be hundreds of thousands. The ground disappeared from sight, and in its place, as if it had swallowed it, was a flood of dark animal life. There was no longer any individuality; it was a sea. It didn't gallop ; it moved onward in one slow-flowing stream. There was no noise ; but a confused murmur, like the rote of the distant sea before a storm, floated on the air. There was no confusion ; in one mighty phalanx the count less creatures drifted on, up the hills and down the horizon. "Jingo!" exclaimed Arty. "I don't wonder Barney grumbles because there is so much cattle-power running to waste. Don't I wish we could hitch up four or five yoke of those old chaps! We'd go to California jus' ' fluking,' as Bush would say." " If I had my way about it, my boy, I'd have some ol that good, nice buffalo-beef that is running about loose here cut up and sent to poor folks in Boston." " Well, there are poor folks in other cities besides Boston, Monty, you know." " To be sure ; only 1 think of them first, because I know them. And wherever they are, some of those same poor folks don't get fresh meat very often. And here's million* HO THE BO T EMIGRANTS. and millions of pounds going to wasi.e. It seems to me that there's a screw loose somewhere that this should be so." Arthur regarded this wonderful cattle show with great soberness and with new interest. . u Why can't some rich man have these buffaloes killed, and the fresh meat sent to the poor people who starve in cities?" " Perhaps a more sensible plan would be to bring the poor out here." " Sure enough," responded the lad, "I never thought of that. But if next year's emigrants kill the buffaloes like they do now, there will be none left when the settlers come. Why, I counted twenty-seven dead ones on the cut-off, yesterday, when Johnny and I took that trail back of Ash Hollow." "And even the animals that are cut into are not used much for food," added Mont. " We have all the buffalo meat we want ; and while you were off, yesterday, I passed a place where some party had camped, and I saw where they had kindled a lire from an old, used-up wagon, and had heaped up two or three carcases of buffaloes to burn. Great waste of fuel and meat too, I call that. But I greased my boots by the marrow frying out of the bones." Mont and Arty descended the bluff, and reaching tho rolling plain behind it, moved to the north and west, keep ing the general course of the road, but leaving the bluff between it and them. " Ws have nothing but our pistols to shoot with," said Mont, "and I wouldn't shoot one if I could. Ixit we may as well see h<; w near we can get to them." They walked rapidly toward the moving mass of buffa loes. Here and there were grazing herds, but most of AMONG THE BUFFALOES. H) them seemed to be slowly traveling without BtoppiLf* tc eat. Mont advised that they should creep up a bushy ravine which led into a gap in the hills, and was blackened on its edges with buffaloes. Cautiously moving up this depression, they emerged at the farther end *d found themselves in a throng of animals, just out of gun-shot range. Some were standing still, others were moving away, but all regarded the strangers with mild curiosity. " Why, I thought I should be afraid," confessed Arthur. " No," whispered Mont. " As long as they are not en raged by a long chase, or driven into a corner, they are as harmless as so many cows." Passing out between the hills, the young fellows found themselves on a nearly level plain. Here, too, was a dense throng of buffaloes, stretching off to the undulating hori zon. As the two explorers walked on, a wide lane seemed to open in the mighty herds before them. Insensibly, and without any hurry, the creatures drifted away to the right and left, browsing or staring, but continually moving. Looking back, they saw that the buffaloes had closed up their ranks on the trail which they had just pursued ; while be fore, arid on either hand, was a wall of animals. " We are surrounded 1 " almost whispered Arthur, with some alarm. "Never mind, my boy. We can walk out, just as the. children of Israel did from the Ked Sea. Only we have waves of buffaloes, instead of water, to close behind and open before and be a wall on each side. See ! " And, as they kept on, the mass before them melted away in some mysterious way, always at the same distance from them. " See ! We move in a vacant space that tra^ eJs w ith m wherever we go, Arty." 1 ] 2 THE BO Y EMIGRANTS. " Yes," said the lad. " It seems just as if we were candle in the dark. The open ground arcund us is the light we shed ; the buffaloes are the darkness outside." " A good figure of speech, that, my laddie. I must remember it. But we are getting out of the wilderness." They had now come to a sharp rise of ground, broken oy a rocky ledge, which turned the herds more to the northward. Ascending this, they were out of the buffaloed foi the time, but beyond them were thousands more. Turning southward, they struck across the country for the road, quite well satisfied with their explorations. Between two long divides, or ridges, they came upon a single wagon, canvas-covered, in which were two small children. Two little boys were playing near, and four oxen were grazing by a spring. In reply to Mont's surprised question as to how they came off the road, and why they were here alone, they said that their father and uncle had come up after the buffaloes, and were out with their guns. Their mother was over on the bluff, a little rocky mass which rose like an island in the middle of the valley. She had gone to hunt for " sarvice-berries." They were left to mind the cattle and the children. "Pretty careless business, I should say," murmured Mont. ""Well, youngsters," he added, "keep by the wagon ; and if your cattle stray off, they may get carried away by the buffaloes. Mind that ! " Tli3y went on down the valley, looking behind them at the helpless little family alone in the wilderness. " A man ought to be whipped for leaving his young ones here in such a lonely place," said Mont. Suddenly, over the southern wall of the valley, like a thunder-cloud, rose a vast and fieeing herd of buffaloes AMONG THE BUFFALOES. They were not only running, they were rushing like a mighty flood. " A stampede ! a stampede ! " cried Mont ' y and flying back to the unconscious group of children, followed by A rtlmr, he said : "Run for your lives, youngsters ! Make for the bluff!" Seizing one of the little ones, and bidding Arthui take the other, he started the boys ahead for the island -bluff, which was some way down the valley. There was not a moment to lose. Behind them, like a rising tide, flowed the buffaloes in surges. A confused murmur filled the air ; the ground resounded with the hurried beat of count less hoofs, and the earth seemed to be disappearing in the advancing torrent. Close behind the flying fugitives, the angry, panic-stricken herd tumbled and tossed. Its labored breathing sighed like a breeze, and the warmth of its pul sations seemed to stifle the air. " To the left ! to the left ! " screamed Arthur, seeing the bewildered boys, w r ho fled like deer, making directly for the steepest part of the bluff. Thus warned, the lads bounded up the little island, grasping the underbrush as they climbed. Hard behind them came x\rty, pale, his features drawn and rigid, and bearing in his arms a little girl. Mont brought up the rear with a stout boy on his Bhoulder, and breathless with excitement and the laborious run. Up the steep side they scrambled, falling and recovering themselves, but up at last. Secure on the rock, they saw a heaving tide of wild creatures pour tumultuously over the edge of the ridge and fill the valley. It leaped from ledge to ledge, tumbled and broke, rallied again art! swept on, black and silent save for the rumbling thundtfl of countless hoofs and the panting breath of the innuruer 114 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. able multitude. On it rolled over every obstacle. TJie wagon disappeared in a twinkling, its white cover going down in the black tide like a sinking ship at sea. Past the island-like bluff, where a little group stood spell bound, the herd swept, the rushing tide separating at the rocky point, against which it beat and parted to the right and left. Looking down, they saw the stream flow by, on and up the valley. It was gone, and the green turf waa brown where it had been. The spring was choked, and the wagon was trampled flat. Fascinated by the sight, Mont and Arthur never took their eyes from it until it was over. Then returning to their young charges, they saw a tall, gaunt woman, with a horror-stricken face, gathering the whole group in her arms. It was the mother. " I don't know who you be, young men, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart," she said. " Yes, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and, Oh ! I thank God, too !" And she burst into tears. Arthur, at loss for anything else to say, remarked : " Your wagon is all smashed." " I don't care don't care," said the woman, hysterically rocking herself to and fro where she sat with, her children clasped to her bosom. " So's the young ones are safe, the rest may go to wrack." As she spoke, a couple of horsemen, carrying rifles, came madly galloping down the valley, far in the wake of the flying herd. They paused thunderstruck, at the frag ments of their wagon trampled in the torn soil. Then, seeing the group on the rock, they hastened on, dis mounted, and climbed the little eminence. " Great powers above, Jemiiny ! we stampeded the buffaloes!" said the elder of the pair of hunters. AMONG THE BUFFALOES. lift Art/ expected to hear her say that she was thankful so long as they were all alive. " Yes, and a nice mess you've made of it." This was all her comment. " Whar s the cattle, Zeph ? " asked the father of thia flock. " Gone off with the buffaloes, I reckon, dad," was tho response of his son Zephaniah, The man looked up and down the valley with a be wildered air. His wagon had been mashed and crushed into the ground. His cattle were swept out into space by the resistless flood, and were nowhere ir. eight. He found words at last : " Well, this is perf eckly rediclua " 1 1 ft THE BO Y EMIGRANTS. CHAPTER XL IN WHICH THE BOSTON BOYS LOSE AN OI O FKIEND AND TIHD A NEW FKIEND. E are from Cedar Rapids, Iowa," was the answer oi the buffalo-ruined emigrant, when Mont asked him about his company. " The way we came to be here was this : My brother Jake here and I wanted to hunt buffaloes, so we left the train back at Crab Creek, and just scouted on ahead to get a crack at the buffaloes. She wanted to come, and as she wouldn't leave the children, we all bun dled into the wagon and allowed to stay here a couple of days before the rest of the train came along." " How many teams are there in your train ? " asl ed Mont. " Twenty-five teams, ten horses, and a hundred suid seventy-five head of cattle." " Oh, well," said Mont, " you will get along all righ< ," " I ain't so sure of that, strannger. The train's gett ng short of grub already ; and if we are able to get to lit Lake without being on allowance, we'll be lucky." "Well, ole man," put in the wife, "you've lost yen- wagon and all yer fixin's. How'il ye get to go back to Oie road ? Here's these young ones to be taken bi r k eomehow." One of the men stayed to look for the missing ox^ii, which he never found ; and the other, assisted by Mon* and Arthur, made his way to the emigrant track with tL? LOSING AND GAINING FRIENDS. 1 J 7 children. They remained with our boys until night, when the ^ell-known Cedar Rapids train, to which the^ belonged, came up and received their unlucky comrades. The country at this point grew more broken and woody, a? id, for some reason, the emigrant trains became moro numerous. Feed for the cattle was not always to be had, because there were so many animals to be pastured on tlio short, bunchy buffalo grass of the region. Each separate party drove its oxen out among the hills when the camps were pitched ; but it was necessary to watch them at night, and for this purpose many companies combined, and so divided their burdens by standing "watch and watch" with each other. Mont was anxious about poor old Bally. His foot grew continually worse, and it seemed cruel to drive him in the team, but there was 110 help for it. They must get on some how, and Bally, lame though he was, could not be spared from the yoke. " If we only had money enough now," said Arty, " we could buy a steer from some of these droves. There are cattle enough and to spare." " But not money enough and to spare," responded Hi, gloomily. " If Bally don't get shut of his lameness, we shall have to leave him. And I don't see no way of goin' through with one yoke of oxen and a cow and one old hoss." This was the first time the subject had been openly dis cussed with such a despondent conclusion. But each one of the party had thought it over by himself. There waa silence in the camp. Every day they passed cattle and horses left by their owners because they were unfit to travel. Their dead bodies were common by the way. But these were usually animals from large trains, or from 1 1 TEE BO T EMIGRANTS the teams of parties too weak to get along alone, and had joined forces with others. What could they do? asktxl Arthur to himself. Then he said, almost in a whispoi ; "If we h^re to leave Bally, what shall we do next, Hi?'' Hi had no answer. But Mont said, decidedly : " I shall go on, if I have to walk or take passage it Bush's go-cari ? " " I just b'licve you'd do it, Mont," said Hi, with admi ration. " If the wust comes to the wust, we can lighten our load and hitch up Jim ahead of Tige and Bally's mate, and try that." " Lighten our load? " asked Tom. " How's that ? We've thrown out all the loose truck we could spare." " Tommy, my boy," said Hi, with great solemnity, " there's heaps of fellers, this very minute, a-goin' on to Californy and livin' only on half-rations, for the sake of gettin' through. I seen a man back at Buffalo Creek who allowed that he hadn't had a square meal since he left the Bluffs, except when he had buffalo-meat, and that is not to be got only now. Bumbye it'll be out of reach." "So you mean to chuck out the flour and bacon, do ye ? " said Tom, with great disgust. " That's about it, sonny." " Then I'll gc back with the first feller we meet bound for the States." The others agreed that they would stay by each other aid get through somehow. Even little Johnny was ap palled at the bare idea of turning back. There was nothing for him behind ; his world was all before him j his friends were all here with him. LOSING AND GAINING FRItiNDS. 110 .But no such necessity overtook them. They had looked forward with curiosity to Chimney Rock, a singular pillar of stone, standing like a round chimney en a cone-shaped mass of rock, on the south bani JOHNNY. of the Platte. This natural landmark, several hundreJ feet high, is seen long before it can be reached by the emigrants toiling along the wagon- track by the river. The boys hs.i sighted its tall spire from afar, and when 1 20 THE BO Y EMIGRANTS. they camped opposite it, one night, they felt as if they had really got into the heart of the continent. They had lo'jg ago heard of this wonderful rock, and its strange shape, apparently sculptured by some giant architect, towered before their eyes at last. " I reckon that there rock must have been pushed up by a volcano," said a tall stranger, joining the boys, as they were wondering at Chimney Rock, after having camped. " Perhaps the soft rock and soil which once lay around it have been cut away by the rains and winds," said Bar- / / * ney, diffidently. " You see the bluffs near by are still wasting away from the same cause." " Like enough, like enough. But what's the matter with that critter of your'n ? 'Pears like he was gone lame." Hi explained the difficulty, and told their visitor that they were traveling slowly for the purpose of making the trip as easy as possible for poor Bally. " What ! you don't drive that beast, do ye ? " " We have to. We have only two yoke of cattle, count ing him." " Well he'll never get well in the team. Take him out and let him crawl on by himself, and mebbe he'll mend. I've got one hundred and fifty or sixty head over there," and the stranger pointed to his camp on the other side of the road. There were three wagons ; two of them were immense square-topped affairs, with openings at the side, like a singe-coach door. The people lived in these wagons and slept in them at night, having several feather beds packed away in their depths. One team was made :ip wholly of bulls, of which there were four yoke. Just now, the cattle were at rest, and two hired men were herding them, while the wcmen, of wbom there were several, prepared supper LOSING AND GAINING FRIENDS. 121 " My name's Rose," the stranger said, when his offer of assistance had been gladly accepted. " They call us ' The Roses' along the road. I have my mother, father, and sister along with me ; then there's Scoofey and his wife and baby ; and Al and Aaron, they're workin' their pas sage through." tt What part of the country are you from ? " asked Hi. " Sangamon County, Illinoy," replied Rose. " I've heerd tell of you boys. 'The Boston Boys' they call you on the trail, don't they ? " " No, we are the Lee County boys," said Mont, smiling. " But," exclaimed Arthur, " we are called ' The Boston Boys' too ; I've often heard that name, lately. Mont here is from Boston, Captain Rose." " It don't make no difference how you are called, boys, and I allow we'll get along together for a spell. We're traveling the same road, and as long as we are, you're welcome to the use of one of my steers. I allow that you'll be willing to take hold and help us drive the herd now and then ? " The boys willingly consented to this arrangement, and poor Bally, next morning, was taken out of the yoke and allowed to go free in the drove of the Roses. But tlie relief came too late. Each day the ox traveled with more difficulty. Every morning, before starting, and every noon, when stopping for the usual rest, Bally waa thrown down and his f.ot re-shod and cleansed. It was of nc avail. Barney took him out of the herd and drove him alone, ahead of the rest. But it was agony for tho poor ijreature ; he could barely limp along. In a day or two the train, now quite a large one, reached Ancient Ruins Bluffs, a wonderful mass of rock, resem bling towers, walls, palaces, and domes, worn by time and 6 122 THE BO T EMIGRANTS. ennobling to decay. Here the road became rough and Btony, and the way by the side of the beaten track waa hard for the lame ox. Barney and Arthur clung affec tionately to Bally. He was an old friend, and, notwith standing his vicious manner of using his horns, they did not like to leave him. Reluctantly, they gave him up here. They must go on without him, after all. When they moved out of camp in the morning, Bally who had been lying down watching the preparations for the day's inarch, got on his feet with difficulty, as if ready to go on. " Never mind, old fellow," said Mont. " You needn't bother yourself. "We will leave you hear to feed by your self and get well, if you can." " Good-by, Bally," said Arthur, with a little pang, as they moved off. The creature stopped chewing his cud and looked after his comrades with a wild surprise in his big brown eyes. He stood on a little knoll, regarding the whole proceeding as if it were an entirely novel turn of affairs. " Good-by, Bally," again said Arty, this time with a queer, choking sensation in his throat. Hi actually snuffled in his big bandanna handkerchief. Tom, by way of changing the subject, walked by Tige's head, and, looking into the eyes of that intelligent animal, said : " Well ! if there ain't a tear on Tige's nose ! He's sorry to get shut of Bally, after all ! " " Oh, you talk too much," said Barney, testily. So they left Bally looking after them as they climbed the ridge and disappeared behind Ancient Ruins Bluffs. That very night, as if to supply the place of their lost friend, a new acquaintance came to their camp. It was a large mongrel dog, yellow as to color, compactly built, LOSING AND GAINING FRIENDS. 123 and with a fox-like head. Dogs were not common cii the plains. This waif had been running along the road alone for some days past. The boys had often seen him, and had supposed that he belonged to some train behind them. His feet were sore with travel, and he was evidently masterless. " Poor fellow!" said Mont, pityingly. "Give me the arnica out of the medicine-chest, and I will fix some buck- skin socks on his feet." The dog accepted these kind attentions, and, as soon aa he was let loose again, sat down and deliberately tore off his moccasins with his teeth. While he was licking his sore feet, Johnny, who had been out with Tom, gathering fuel on the bluffs, came in with a load on his back. He dropped his burden with an air of astonishment, and ex claimed : < Bill Bunce's dog !" " Sho ! " said Hi. What's his name ? " " Pete," replied the boy, who could hardly believe hia eyes. " Well, Pete," said Hi, " where's yer master ? 'Cordin' to all accounts he's a bad egg. Pity that there dog can't talk." But Pete had nothing to say. He shyly accepted Arthur's proffers of friendship, and from that moment became a regular member of the company. " We've got such a lot of grub, I s'pose, we must needs take in a yaller dog to divide with," privately grumbled Tom to his brother that night. " Reckon Arthur '11 want to pick up a jackass rabbit for a pet, next thing you know." " If you don't like it, sonny, you can go back, you know," replied Hi, who was cross and sleepy. Pete's position ic the camp was assured. L24 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. A few days after this, while near Fort Laramie, they luv<5 a chance to dispose of their new friend. Just as they were camping, a party of mounted Indians, of the Brule Sioux band, came galloping up to their tent. They were splendid fellows, dressed in the fullest and gayest costume of tho Indian dandy. Their hair was loosely knotted behind and stuck full of brilliantly dyed feathers, which hung down their backs. Their buckskin leggings, moccasins and hunting-frocks were covered with embroidery in colored quills, the handiwork of their squaws. Bright red blankets dangled down from their shoulders, and about their necks were hung strings of shells, beads, and bears' claws, with rude silver ornaments. Their faces were painted with red and yellow ochre, and one of them, the chief, wore a tor toise-shell plate over his decorated forehead, like the visor of a cap. These gorgeous visitors sat stately on their horses, and regarded our young emigrants with an air of lofty disdain. " How ! " said Mont, who had been taught good manners, if the Sioux had not. The chief grunted, " Ugh ! " in reply to this customary salutation. Then he happened to see Pete. " You sell him ? " pointing to the dog. "No, no," said Arthur, in a whisper. "Don't sell him Mont. lie wants to eat him, probably." " No sell him," promptly replied Mont. " Good dog We keep him." Thus rebuffed, the Indians unbent somewhat from then dignity, and the chief, carefully extracting from a bead worked pouch a bit of paper, handed it to Barn.ird with the remark, " You read urn." The paper proved to be a certificate from Indian Agent TJiomans that the bearer wag a peaceable Indian, " Big LOSING AND GAINING FRIENDS. 12* Partisan " by name, and that he and his band were not to be molested by white people whom they meet. These dusky visitors, thus introduced, dismounted and stalked through the camp, saying nothing, but looking at everything with stolid gravity. While the rest were trying to make come conversation with the Indians, Arty climbed into the wagon to get out some provisions. While opening a flour- sack, he saw the lid of the " feed-box," at the rear end of the wagon, in which were kept their small stores, cups and plates, raised from the outside by an unseen hand. Won dering at this, the boy softly worked his way towards the box, concealed by the raised cover. A crest of plumes now nodded above the lid, and a soft rattle showed that some one was fingering the contents of the box. Placing both hands on the cover, which sloped toward him, Arty gave a sudden push and brought it down with a tremendous clatter. A superb-looking Indian stood revealed, having barely snatched his hands away as the box-cover slammed down. "How ! " he said, not in the least abashed. Then, raising the lid again and curiously examining the hinges, as if ad miring their mechanism, he said : " Heap good ! White man know everything." " The white man knows too much to let you hook things out of his grub box," said Arty, angrily. The Indian smiled in the blandest manner, and joined his companions. The party stayed about the camp some time, as if waiting an invitation to sup with the white men. But entertainment for Indians was out of the question; there was not piovision enough to spare anyfoi visitors. When they went away, Arty said, grumblingly, as lifl went on with Iris preparations for supner 126 TRE EOT EMIGRANTS. "Now I suppose I can turn my back on the wagon without something being stolen." " Pooh ! Arty thinks he is the only one who keep? watch," sneered Tom. " If it hadn't been for me, that big dandy Indian would have carried off everything in the grub-box," returned the boy ; who was cross, tired, and generally out of sorts. He was making a buffalo stew for supper, and Barnard, coming up, looked into the camp-kettle. " What ! no potatoes ? " he said, with a tone of disgust. "No," replied Arthur, sharply. "No potatoes. We've only a precious few left. We've got to make the most of them." " I wouldn't give a cent for a stew without potatoes," remonstrated Barnard. " Nor I neither," joined in Tom, only too glad to see a little unpleasantness between the two brothers. " Well, you'll have to eat a good many things that you don't like, before we get through 'specially if I have to do the cooking. Barney Crogan thinks too much of what he eats, anyhow." This last shot Arty fired at his brother as Barney moved away without a word. On the plains, where men are by themselves, little things like this sometimes seem to be very important. Men have quarreled and fought like wild animals with each other over a dispute about flapjacks. Two old friends, on the emigrant trail, fought each other with knives because one had twitted the other with riding too often in the wagon. Arthur went on with his cooking, feeling very uncom fortable, as well as cross. They had had a weary day's drive, and all hands were fagged. " The worst of it is, I have to work around this plagney camp -stove, while the others can lop down and rest/ LOSING AND GAINING FRIENDS. 127 grumbled poor Arty to himself, as he became more and more heated. Running to the wagon for a spoon, after a while, Arty Btooped and looked into the tent, where the bundles of blankets had been tumbled on the ground and leit. Barney was lying on the heap, fast asleep, and with a tired, unhappy look on his handsome face. Arty paused and gazed, with a troubled feeling, at his brother lying then! so unconscious and still. Barney had been sick, and the night before he had started up in his sleep crying " Mother ! " much to Arty's alarm. The boy regarded his brother for an instant with pity, as his uneasy sleeping attitude recalled home and home comforts. Then he went silently to the wagon, took out six of their slender stock of potatoes, pared and sliced them, and put them into the stew now bubbling in the camp-kettle. Nobody but Hi noticed this ; and he only grinned, and said to himself, " Good boy 1 " Afterwards, when they had squatted about their rudo supper-table, Barnard uncovered the pan containing the stew, with an air of discontent. Glancing at Arty, with pleased surprise, he said : " Why, you put in potatoes, after all ! " Arthur's cheeks reddened, as he said, as if by way of apology : " Mont likes them, you know." Mont laughed ; and so did they all. After that, there was good humor in the camp. 128 THS BOY EMIGRANTS. CHAPTER XII. IN THE HEART OF THE CONTINENT. FORT Laramie was not a very interesting p.ace l;> the boys. It hardly repaid them for the trouble they had in crossing the river to get to it. But here they found a store kept by an army sutler, and Mont said that he shoulc. really enjoy buying something, by way of proving to him self that he was in a spot where something besides Indian manufactures were for sale. Arty looked longingly on some dry, powdery figs and ancient candy which were among the sutler's stock in trade ; but he compromised with himself, and bought five cents' worth of aged raisins, tvhich he generously divided with his comrades, Tom and Johnny. They all very much admired the nicely dressed officers, who wore as fine uniforms, and " put on as many airs " (as Bush said) as if they lived among white folks. Then there were houses real houses finished with siding and painted white, and with stone chimneys. Some of these were used on officers' quarters, and some were barracks for the soldiers. These they examined with curious in terest. They had seen no houses for several weeks. This was a little village in the wilderness. At the ci )ssiug of the South Platte, a few days after, the young emigrants found another trading post. It vvaa in a rude log hut on the bank of the stream ; and a very queer stock of goods was crow led into it. There w?-p IN THE HEART OF TEE CONTINENT. 129 pipes, mining tools, playing-cards, flonr, baccn, sugar, boota ard shoes, and even buttons, thread, and needles. But the prices I They were tremendous. Flour "was twenty-five f.ents a pound, pipes were a dollar each ; and a little glasa tumbler of jam, which Tom very much hankered after, was two dollars and a-half. Here, too, was a sort of newa exchange ; there were no newspapers, to be sure, except one well-worn paper from St. Louis, now more than two months old, carefully hung over a long string of buck skin, and not permitted to be handled by anybody. But the rough-bearded, uncouth men who lounged about the place picked np from the trader and half-breed assistant such points of information as had been left by those who had gone on ahead. They also left here messages for friends and acquaintances who were yet behind. On the walls of this store in the waste of the continent were stuck bits of paper containing rude directions for emigrants. These were written by men who had gone on ahead and had sent back some report of their experience. For instance, one scrap was . 35 miles from this post to Hoss Crik. Dont stop at Wilier spring? which it ifl no springs and feed mighty pore. Tlight under this was another b illetin, which read: Nigh 60 miles to Sweetwater powerful bad road till you get to Independence Rock- -blacksmith shop and tradin post the traders a thief. Some charitable person had rubbed "thief" from this notice, and had written in "good feller" instead; bat both titles stayed there. " You pays yer money and takes yer choice," said Bush, grimly, as he read this gazette. " But I'll bet the man was right." 6* 130 T BE BOY EMIGRANTS. Here, too, they learned that the ferryman at " Colum bus," or the Lonp Fork crossing, had been robbed. " When was that ? " asked Mont. " I allow it was about the middle of Jnne. Me and my pard, we crossed there June the ten, and it was some time after that," explained a short, thick-set fellow, whom the boys had met before somewhere. "Well, we passed there on the fifth of June," said Bar nard. " Did the thieves get away with much money ? " " Nigh onto five hundred dollars, I've heard tell ; but thar's no knowin' ; it mought have been five thousand That mean skunk took in heaps of coin at the ferry." "Does he suspect anybody?" " Couldn't say ; 'twas after I war thar. How's that, Dave ? " said he, addressing another lounger. " I came by there the day after the robbery," replied Dave. " Old Columbus was off on the trail of a couple of suspicions characters who had swam the fork with their horses, about four miles up stream. The boys at the ferry said the old man had a good description of the chaps whom they suspicioned. One of 'em had a hare-lip, and 'tother had a game leg." " A game leg ! " exclaimed Johnny. " That's Bill Bunce I " "And who is Bill Bunce, my little kid?" asked the stranger, turning to the boy. " Oh, he's a scaly feller that left this boy to shift for himself, away back on the river. But you aint noways certain that this thief was Bill Bunce, Johnny, you know," Baid Hi. The loanging emigrants were so much kindled by this bit of possible evidence in the Lonp Fork robbery, infor mation of which had slowly overtaken them here, that IN THE HEART OF THE CONTINENT. 131 they gathered around and expressed their opinions very freely about Bill Bunce. " He'll swing from the first tree he meets after some of us fellers finds him on the trail, now ye bet yer life," waa one comment. " Thar's nary tree between hero and Bridger big enough to hang a man on, 'cordin' to them things," said another, waving his pipe toward the rude bulletins on the cabin wall. " See, nothin' but ' No wood ' on 'em, from here to Salt Lake, so far as I kin see." The boys, after this, did find a rough road, and they were glad enough that they were within reach of help. Rose's drove of cattle was drawn upon often for fresh re cruits for the yoke. Here, too, they found the springs often poisoned with alkali. Some of the shallow pools were colored a dark brown with the alkali in the soil. Others were white about the edges with a dry powder which looked and tasted like saleratus. The cattle re fused to drink the stuff ; and now, along the track, they met a great many animals turned out to die, suffering from the effects of the alkali which they carelessly lapped up with their scanty feed. Here and there they met a few poor fellows limping along with all their possessions packed on their backs. These had lost their cattle, one by one, and had been obliged to abandon their wagons and baggage. Taking a sack of flour, a frying pan, a few pieces of " side meat," or bacon, some coffee, and a tin cup, these courageous fellows went forward, determined to get through, somehow. Usually they managed to sell some part of their outfit. The rest they left by the side of the wagon track. But, begging, borrowing, or buying from day to day, they trudged on with their faces turned west ward alwavs westward. 132 THE EOT EMIGRANTS. " Hello 1 what's that on that wagon ? Or Bust ' and a gaudy old wagon it is," said Hi, one day. The wagon was a two- wheeled affair, drawn by one yoke of oxen, and looking exactly like one-half of what might have been long vehicle. On the canvas was painted the words, " Or Bust," which had attracted Hi's attention. This strange-looking craft was creeping along in the shadow of Independence Rock, when overtaken by our party. Barnard, recognizing the good-natured young fellow who was driving, said : " What's happened to your wagon since we saw you at Council Bluffs 3 " The man laughed lightly, and replied : " "Well, you see, Jake and I, we couldn't agree with our pardners Jake's brother Joe and Bill Jenness so we divided." " How ? Divided everything ? " " Sartin, sartin. We couldn't go on without a wagon, you know. So we sawed the old thing in two. Thar was a ch'ice ; the fore part had the tongue, and we played a game of seven-up for the cli'ice. Joe and Bill held over us beat us by one p'int ; and they've gone on with their share of the waggin." " So your brother Joe has gone with the ' California ' part of your wagon ? " said Mont, addressing Jake Russell, one of a quarrelsome family. " That's about the size of it," surlily replied Jake. " It was ' Californy or Bust.' Joe and Bill have got the ' Cali forny' and we've got the 'Bust.' Howsoever, if you go round on the other side, you'll see we 've got ' Californy ' there, too. We've got the entire thing, but a feller has to go all around us to see it." "Couldn't you agree about the road?" asked Hi, witi come curiosity. IN THE HEART OF THE CONTINENT. 133 "No, it was beans." " Beans? " said Hi, opening his eyes. " Yes, beans," answered Jacob, growing angry. u \ don't give in to no ornery half-baked sucker, even if he ia my brother. An' when it comes to beans cooked in a ground oven, when wood is plenty, and you have time to dig yer oven and can spare yer camp-kettle long enough to bake 'em over night, I 'in thar. But beans is better and more economical- like stewed. Leastways, I think so. Joe, he don't think so. Bill Jenness well, he always was a pore shoat he don't think so. So we divided the plunder and are going through. Gee ! Lion ! whar be yer goin' to ? The most obstinatest steer I ever see. Good day ! " And the men who preferred their beans stewed drove on. Independence Rock was such a famous landmark that our boys could not pass it without climbing it. The rock is an immense ledge, rising nearly one hundred feet from the ground ; it is almost flat on top, and covers a space equal to an acre or two. All around it the country is undulating, but without any large rocks. Independence Rock looms up like a huge flat bowlder left there by mis take when the world was built. Resting their team, the party scrambled up the enormous mass. The top was worn by the flow of uncounted ages. Here and there were depressions in which little pools left by the /ate rains were standing ; and all around on the smooth places of the rock, were chiseled the names, or initials, of passing emigrants. Some of these were laboriously carved, some were painted with the soft tar which should have been saved to use on wagon wheels. On the perpendicular wall of the rock, facing the west, was a roughly cut inscription setting forth how " Joshua F. Gibbonson, a native of Nor 134 THE DOT EMIGRANTS. way, aged 24 yrs," was buried near. Another gave th name and age of a yznog woman, also sleeping close al ARTHUR. Arthur, walkii-g over the multitude of letters inscribed en the top of the rock, suddenly paused, and, looking down at his feet, exclaimed : " liill Buiice ! " IN THE HEART OF THE CONTINENT. 133 The rest, hurrying up, saw on the rugged surface this inscription : "W. BUNCE. " But his name is Bill. That 's a W," said Johnny; gazing at the mysterious letters with a sort of fascination, Mont and Barney laughed, and Arty said : " To be sure his name is Bill, but it was William before it was Bill, and so he spells it with a W." " I don't believe it's Bill Bunce, anyhow," said Hi. " He wouldn't be such a fool as to leave his name like that here, w r here he knows people are looking for him." Mont got down on his knees to inspect the letters, as if he thought they might give him some clue to the man who had carved them, and had then gone on, leaving this mute witness behind him. He shook his head, and said : " I don't know, Hi. Guilty men, somehow, always drop something by which they can be traced. If he stole old Columbus's money, it is just as likely as not he would be foolish enough to put this here. Anyhow, I guess this is Bill Bunco's autograph." Nothing positive came of the discussion ; but Johnny lingered over the letters, and murmured to himself : " If they could only tell, now ! " " But they are silent letters, Johnny," whispered Arty, who had stayed behind with his little mate. The boy laughed, without understanding why, and the youngsters left the inscription still staring up to the sky above the rook. Passing Devil's Gate, and camping on the western side of that famous gap a few days after, the boys felt that they were at last in the Rocky Mountains. The Gate is a huge chasm, its black rocky walls towering up on either side. Westward is a grassy plain, dotted with trees, and afford ing a ch arming camping-ground. Here the young erai 1 36 THE BO F EMIGRANTS. grants pitched their tent, in the midst of a mighty com pany. From a hundred camp-fires arose the odors cf many suppers, and, as the sun went down behind the purple peaks, the cheerful groups made a pretty picture, framed by the blue and gray ledges, covered with vines, which stretched around the amphitheatre. " That's a mighty knowin' dog of your'n," said a visitor lounging by the camp-stove and watching Arty cooking flap-jacks. "Yes," said Arty, "It's agreed that he is to have every flap-jack that I lose when I toss 'em up so ; " and he tossed his pan dexterously in the air, and brought his flap jack down again in it, brown side up. " Sometimes when the wind blows, I can't exactly cal culate the force of it, and away goes the flap-jack over on the ground. That's Pete's, and he goes for it before it lights. He can tell whether it will miss the pan or not." "And I'll match Arty at tossing flap-jacks with any grown man on the plains," said Hi, with a glow of honest pride. " You bet that dog don't get many, 'cept when the wind blows variable-like." Just then, Pete who was assiduously gnawing a bone, ran to Arty, crying with pain, and put his head on tho boy's knee. Arthur tenderly stroked the poor brute's jaw. and exclaimed : " Poor old Pete ! You see he has had a bad blow on the side of his head at some time. I think some of tho small bones are broken. When he gets his jaw into a cer tain position, it hurts him confoundedly, and he runs to me. I found out that I could relieve him by softly pressing the place so fashion. See 1 " A sudden light gleamed in the man's face, and he eaid: IN THE HEART OF THE CONTINENT. 137 " I know that dog. I saw him back en the Platlc with a couple of chaps scamps I should say. One had a game leg, and I saw him bang that very identical dog with tho butt of his gun, just because he scared up a big jack rabbit. Powerful cruel it was." " Aha ! " said Barney. " That's Bill Buuce again. Where was this, stranger ? " u Well, I disremember now. But I allow it was on the other side of Chimney Rock, say about the latter part of June." " That would give the thieves time to come up from Loup Fork," said Barney, who told their visitor the story of Bill Bunco and his companions. But the stranger declared that the only companion of the man with the dog was a fellow with a hare-lip. He added: "And I just believe that there dog got up and dusted out of that, he was treated so all-fired mean." Soon after this, the emigrants entered the great passage through the mountains South Pass. It was not easy to realize that they were actually going over the Rocky Mountains. The emigrant road gradually ascended the enormous ridge which forms the backbone of the conti nent so gradually that the ascent was hardly noticed. To the north and south were grand peaks, purple in the dis tance, silvery with streaks of snow, and piercing the clou Is. Nearer, the gray masses were broken into chasms, and were partly covered with a stunted growth of trees. As they pressed on, the road mounted higher and higher. l>sit the way was easy, broad, and pleasant to travel. The nights were cold so cold that the boys wer< thankful for the shelter of their tent ; and they cowered under all the nlankets and coverings they could collect. But the days were hot, and though the travelers might turn out in th j 38 TUB BO T EMIGRANTS. morning air, their teeth chattering with cold, they marohed along at noon perspiring in the sun. Snow crept down nearer and nearer to their track, froir. up among the steep slopes which hnng ahove the pass. While camping one day in this region, Captain Rose and some of our boys went up to the snow-banks and had a July game of snow-ball. They brought back flowers gathered at the edge of the melting snow ; and they re ported butterflies and mosquitoes fluttering over the banks, as if brought to life by the dazzling sun. These reports seemed like travelers' tales, difficult of belief, but they were all verified to the satisfaction of the unbelievers. One day, they reached a spring of which they had often heard. They approached it with a certain feeling of awe. It was on the dividing ridge of the continent. It was a boggy pool, rising out of a mass of rock and turf, trampled by many feet and spreading out into a consid erable space. Some wayfarer had set up a rude sign board, on which was inscribed the name " Pacific Spring." Stepping from rock to rock, the boys made their way to the fountain-head, and silently gazed on the source of a stream that divided itself between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Here the emigrant trail pitched abruptly down a rocky canon to the west. The water flowing from the spring and saturating the grassy soil, was parted by a low, sharp ledge of rock. From this, two little rivulets crept away, one to the east, one to the west. One gurgled down into the canon, was joined by numberless runnels from the Enow-peaks above, meandered away for many miles, sank into Green River, flowed south and west to the Colorado, entered the Gulf of California, and was lost in the Pacific. The other slipped silently down the long slope by whicb IN THE HEART OF THE CONTINENT. the boy emigrants had come, joined itself to other tiny streams, and so, finding the far-off Missouri, by the way of the Yellowstone, reached the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic. "Go, little stream," said Mont, "and tell the folks at home that we have left the old wjrld. Boys ', this ia a new world before us now." " We are on the down-hill grade," added Hi. " "We can scoot to Calif orny now. Westward it is, and we are agoin 1 with the stream." Barney turned and looked back. " We are on the wall. Shall we go down on the other side, Arty ? " But Arty said : " I should be glad if I could send a message back to the folks at Sugar Grove. It would be like a message out of the sea. As long as we can't do that, suppose we follow the other stream to the Pacific ? " " We cannot be sentimental over this spring, my boy," said Mont, laughing. "But, as Hi says, we are going with the current now. That's it! Westward is the word ! " " Come on, boys ! " shouted Captain Eose, from the down-hill road. " It's a rough drive yet to Sunset Canon." So the young fellows followed the stream, and tun.ed their faces again to the west. 1 40 THE SO T EM10RA NT& CHAPTER XIII. LAUGHTER AND TEAKS. " WAUGU ! how I hate hog-meat ? " exclaimed Laniard, looking in his plate of fried bacon, with an expression oi extreme disgust. " And no game since week before last," added Arthur dolefully. " When you can't get butter, you must make salt pork do, my old grandmother used to say," was Mont Morse's wise comment on this outbreak of discontent. " We en listed for the campaign with hog-meat, boys, and you won't back out now, will you ? " " But we did reckon on more game, you know," argued Barney; "and we have had precious little since we got out of the antelope country. " Tou disremember the dogs and frogs," said Hi, with a grimace. Both the Stevens boys laughed. When they were in the prairie-dog region, they had killed and eaten all the animals they could get at. But Hi had steadfast 1 --? refused to "eat dog," as he expressed it, ani his brother Torn had thought it necessary to follow his example. It was in vain that Mont had urged that " prairie-dogs " were not dogs at all, but a kind of marmot ; that they fed on roots and vegetables, and that their meat was as sweet and whole- gome as that of rabbits. " i^ou needn't tell me." was Hi's constant reply. " Thej LAUGHTER AND TEARS. 141 set up on eend and bark just like dogs. They live with rattlesnakes and owls, and they are not fit for a white man to eat. Fremont may eat dogs, but I won't, until I'm starving." His refusal to partake of this strange food, as he con sidered it, gave the others a larger share. The prairie- dogs, numerous though they were, were never plenty in the camp. They sat up cunningly on their haunches and barked at the hunters, very much in the squeaky fashion of toy-dogs ; but, when shot at, they tumbled into their holes and were seldom recovered, even though severely wounded. They posted themselves by the opening of their dens, each one a sentinel to warn of danger. When they fell over, their comrades below dragged them into the burrow, where the young hunters could hear them whining and crying, in a half -human fashion, over their wonnds. They were good to eat, but tender-hearted Arthur, much as he desired a change from their diet of " side-meat," never could take pleasure in killing the pretty little creatures. As for frogs, when the party occasionally reached a pond of melted snow-water, warmed by the summer sun and musical with frogs, Mont rolled up his trousers, and, armed with a thick stick, waded in and slew them, right and left. " But Boston folks consider them a great luxury," he remonstrated, when Hi and Tom expressed their profound disgust at such a proceeding. " Take off the hind-lege, ekin them and fry them what can you want better ? " " Hog-meat," replied Hi, sententiously. But it must be confessed that Hi looked on witn in terest while Mont and Barnard daintily nibbled at the THE BO T EMIGRANTS. delicate bones of the frogs' legs, nicely browned and hav ing all the appearance of fried chicken. " Stands to reason," muttered Hi, with his mouth watering, " that frogs is vermin, and vermin ain't fit to eat." They were drawing near Salt Lake City now, and even the small game which Hi and Tom despised was no longer to be had. Occasionally they shot a hare, one of the long-eared, long-legged kind known as the jackass-rabbit. Sage-hens, too, had been plentiful in some localities, and though the flesh of these was dark and bitter with the wild sage on which they fed, the addition of a brace of them to their daily fare was a great event. Now, how ever, they were reduced to their staple of smoked " hog- meat " once more. They had been lying by for a few days, hoping that they might find some game while they recruited their stock John Rose and Mont had scoured the country with their rifles, but they brought back nothing from their long tramps. Flour biscuit, fried salt meat, and coffee without milk, formed their regular bill of fare now. The cows in the drove had ceased to give milk, and the boys were re duced to the " short commons " which they had been taught to expect. Nevertheless, they were better provided than many emigrants whom they met on the way. A company of Ger mans, with whom they traveled, had nothing in their stores but smoked sausages, flour, and coffee. " No sugar ? " asked Arty, in amazement. " Nein," civilly replied the genial German. " No baking-powders ? no salt ? " " Nein. No kraut/' responded the traveler with glooir in his face. LAUGHTER AXD TEARS. Nevertheless, the light-hearted Germans had a merrj earip. And, when they marched on by day, they locked arras over each other's shoulders, and kept step to tho music of their own songs, singing as they went. " Queer chaps those singing Dutchmen," mused Hi, aa he watched them, day by day striding along and singing the marching songs of their native land. The boys heard jme of their favorite pieces so often that Mont caught the words and wrote them down. So one day, to the astonish ment of the rest of the party, Mont and Arty locked arms and marched down the trail, singing thus : Wohlauf in Gottes schone Welt ! Ade ! ade ! ade ! Die Luft ist blau, und griin das Feld Ade ! ade ! ade ! Die Berge gliih'n wie Edelstein; Ich wandre mit dexn Sonnenschein In'B weite Land hinein. Ade 1 ade ! Du traute Stadt am Bergeshang, Ade ! ade ! ade ! Du hoher Thurm, du Glockenklang, Ade ! ade ! ade ! Ihr Hiiuser alle, wohl bekannt, Ncch einuial wink' ich mit der Hand, Und nun seitab gewandt 1 Ade ! ade ! An meinem Wege flieszt c er Bach Ade ! ade ! ade ! Der ruft den letzten Grusz mir nach Ade ! ade ! ade ! Ash, Gott ! da wird so eigen mit, S3 milde weh'n die Liifte hier, Ala war's ein Grusz von dir Ade ! ade 1 H4 TEE BO 7 EMIGRANTS. Ein Grusz von dir. du schlankes Kind Ade ! ade ! ade ! Doch nun den Berg hinab geechwind Ade 1 ade ! ade ! Wer wandern will, der darf nicht steh'n, Der darf niemals zuriicke seh'n, Musz imnier weiter geh'n. Ade 1 ade ! "But that's Dutch!" exclaimed Hi. 'Give us lh English of it ! " " No ; it's German," said Arty, laughing at his success as a " Singing Dutchman." " What's the odds 3 " replied Hi. " It's as Dutch as Dutch kin be. I don't see no difference between Dutch and German." " Well," said Mont, " we will give you the English of it some day." And when, not long after, Mont read his translation of the verses by the night camp-fire, the whole party were loud in their praises of their marching-song. " It's a great thing to be a scholar," sighed Hi, with a glance of envy at the rude verses of the young " Boston feller." And he murmured, with a thrill of honest admira tion : " That thar feller kin set a wagon-tire witli any man on the plains. It do beat all how some folks is gifted!" They overtook the " Singing Dutchmen," one bright day Boon after this, and great was the delight of those sturdj trampers to see our boys marching by, sedately singing as thoy went Mont's free translation of their own song, some thing like this: Forward in God's beautiful world ! Farewell ! farewell ! farewell ! The sky is blue, and green the fields Farewell ! farewell ! f are** ell ! LA TIGHTER AND TEARS. 145 The mountains gleam like jewels bright ; I wander in the warm sunlight, Far into distant lands. Farewell ! farewell ! Dear village by the mountain-side, Farewell ! farewell ! farewell ! Thou lofty tower, ye chiming bells, Farewell ! farewell ! farewell ! Ye happy homes, well-known to me, Toward you once more I wave my hand, But turn away mine eyes I Farewell ! farewell I Beside my pathway flows the brook Farewell ! farewell ! farewell ! Which calls to me a last farewell Farewell ! farewell ! farewell I Ah, Heaven above, so sad am 1 1 The zephyrs float so softly by, As if they brought from thee a sigh FareweH ! farewell ! From thee a sigh, though fairest maid I Farewell ! farewell ! farewell ! But down the hill-side now I speed Farewell ! farewell ! farewell ! For he who wanders must not pause, Nor once behind him cast his glance, But forward, forward march. Farewell I farewell I "Ach! it is better as never vas," cried the hcncsl Germans. " Where get you so much, good song, mine friend t * " asked one of the party, his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. " We borrowed it from you," said Mont, modestly. " I hope you don't think us rude." 7 1 10 TEE BO Y EMIGRANTS. " Rudt ? It is a what you call a gompliment, and wo to you are much obliged," was the hearty reply. " He did it. all by himself," said Hi, proudly. '' U turned it into English from Dutch, and he sings it bo*h ways like a reg'lar medder-lark so he does." "Yaw/' answered the German emigrant, as if in doult whether he understood Hi's explanations. Barnard, not to be outdone, drilled Arthur and Tom in a marching-song of his own, and one day produced this novelty. " When we lived in Yermont," said Barney, " there was a military company in our village. There were not men enough to make two companies, the place was so small. So the same men appeared as an infantry com pany one month, and as an artillery company the next. They had a snare drum and a bass drum when they turned out as infantry ; but when they paraded as artillery, with one cannon, they had a spare man, so they used to carry two bass drums and the snare drum. This is the way the infantry band went." And Barney got up and marched around the camp-fire, Arty and Tom following with " Boomer lacker ! boomer lacker I Boom ! boom 1 boom I Boomer lacker ! boomer lacker ! Boom 1 boom 1 boom ! " Everybody laughed uproariously at the whimsical sight of the lads, who were half -undressed for the night, as they paraded around and about, chanting the odd melody of the village drum-corps. Then, with solemn step and slowj they changed their marching tune to the stat>: Jier music of the artillery band. LA UGHTER AHD TEARS. 141 " Ilere go the two bass drums and the tenor/ cried Arty. " Boom dum dardy I Boom dum dardy 1 How's your marm ? Boom dum dardy ! Boom dum dardy ! How's your marm ? Oh, she's boozy, boozy, boozy, boozy ! Boom dum dardy 1 Boom dum dardy I " &c., &c. " Ho ! ho 1 what nonsense ! " roared Hi. " But it's just like a couple of bass drums. I think I here 'em now " and, lying back on his pile of blankets, Hi laughed again, Mont and the rest joining in the chorus. The boys practised this marching song as they had the others, and their fellow-travelers were often thereafter edified with the rough music which the party made as they stepped out with alacrity, chanting " Boomer lacker ! boomer lacker ! Boom ! boom ! boom I " Or they assumed a more funeral gait as they walked, and BUlg " Boom dura dardy ! Boom dum dardy I HOW'B your marm ? " Their laughter was hushed when Nance, whose family bad come up with them lately, marched up to their tent one night with the solemn announcement of " The baby's dead ! " " What baby ? " they asked, with a startled air. "Just like stoopid men-folks, you air 1 " replied the girl. But she addei, with a softened tone : " Why, it's the Messer f olkses baby. Them that was upsot in Dry Creek and had a lovely boimit along." H8 THE EOT EMIGRANTS, u It was the sick baby that we tended down there just tin's side of Papeses, ye know, Arty," said Tom, with solemnity. Old Mrs. Eose, Captain John's mother, who sat near by, Baid : " I knowed she'd never raise that there child. It allns was a weakly thing. It's a marcy it's took away now " and the good old woman knocked the ashes out of her pipe, and sighed. " Death in the camp," thought Barney to himself, and he looked around and wondered how it would seem if death was in their camp as it was in their neighbor's. Ilia eyes rested lovingly on his brother's golden head, and he asked : " Can we be of any service, do you think, Nance ? '- " I reckon. The baby's to be buried at sun-up to-mor row; and dad said if one of you fellers would go down to the mouth of the cafion with him to-night, he'd help dig a little grave." And the girl turned away to hide her tears as she uttered the words so full of sadness to all ears. The boys eagerly volunteered to assist in everything that was to be done ; and by the edge of a dry ravine, under a lone tree, they hollowed a little cell before they slept. Next day, before the camps were broken up, all of the emigrants on the ground gathered about the wagon of the Messers, where a little white bundle was lying on a pile of yokes, covered smoothly with a blanket. On this white shape was laid a poor little knot of stunted cactus-flowers, 'he only blooming thing which the arid plains produced. Is ear by was the mother, crouched on the ground and moaning to herself, " Such a little thing ! such a little thing 1 " " It's powerful rough to have to oury the 1 aby out yer LAUGHTER AND TEARS. M9 in the wilderness-like," complained the fathtr. "I wish I hadn't a-corae." "Don't take on so, ole man," said his wife. "He's better on't he's better on't." The youngest boys raised the burden at a signal from Captain Hose. They bore it to the open grave, all the company following with uncovered heads. Then the little white bundle was lowered tenderly into the earth. The tearful mother picked up the yellow cactus-flowers, which had fallen to the ground, kissed them and cast them in. Then stout branches of sage-brush, were laid over the figure beneath, forming a shelter from the soil. A white-haired old man, the patriarch of one of the companies, lifted up his hands and prayed by the open grave. There was a stifled sigh here and there in the little assemblage when he spoke of " the loved ones left behind," and of others " who had gone on before." Then he said a few pleasant and cheery words to the mourning parents, who were leaving their only child here alone in the heart of the continent. " And yet," he said, " not here, but up yonder," and he pointed upward, where Nance, whose wondering eye in voluntarily followed the speaker's, saw a little bird cheeri ly winging its solitary way across the rosy sky. She plucked her mother's sleeve and whispered : " I'm so glad T picked them posies ! " The grave was filled up, the simple ceremony was over, and each party betook itself to preparing for another day's journey. " Poor little thing ! " said Mont. " Its journey is done early ; and it rests j ust as well here as anywhere." " I'm glad they buried it in the morning," added Ar thur. " It is not nearly so sad as it is in the evening, when 150 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. the shadows creep and creep, just as if they would neve? Btop creeping. Seems to me it's a good thing to bury children at sunrise. I don't know why, though." " Neither do I, Arty," said Hi ; " but a bnryin' is a solemn thing, for all that. I allow it's the solemnest thin*; agoin'. I was a-thinkin' just now, when we was takin' down the tent, of a hymn my sister Pamely Ann used to sing. By gum, now ! I've forgot the words, but they're powerful nice," added Hi, looking rather foolish. " Some thing about pitching your tent, anyhow." " Oh, yes ! I remember," said Arty, brightly ; " it ia this: " ' Here in the body pent, Absent from thee I roam, Yet nightly pitch my moving tent A day's march nearer home.' " " That's it ! that's it ! Good boy, Arty ! " said Hi, with shining eyes. " Now, d'yer know, I often have them thai' words a-buzzin' through my head when we set up the tent, nights, all along this yere trail ? " " So do I, Hi," answered Mont. " And so I do when we take it down next day, because, somehow, the place where we have spent even one night seems like home when we leave out of doors, as it were, and go on, knowing we shall never see it again." " Well, we're getting really sentimental, Mont," eaid Barnard, " and all along of that little funeral." " 1 allow that a funeral, big or little, is the solemnest thing out. Whoa haw ! Bally ! whar in thunder are yer O v v goin' ter 'I " And Hi drove on in the train that moved out of camp. Nance trudged akng in the dust behind the Missoun- ttn's wagon, holding on by one hand to the tail-Voard, bj LAUGHTER AND TEARS. 151 way of speechless sympathy. The poor mother sat looking out from the wagon-cover as the team moved slowly away. She saw the deserted camping-ground, where a few dying fires were smoldering in ashes. She even marked the lame and worn out steer that some emigrant had left be hind, and which now stood looking wistfully after the departing train. But most she noted the little mound, fresh with yellow earth, and decently fenced about with broken wagon-tires, by the lone tree. The morning sun gilded the small heap of soil and deluged all the plain with unsupportable brightness. She shaded her eyes with her hand and moaned : " Such a little thing ! such a little thing ! " Nance's brown hand closed tenderly on the woman's gown, and a few gracious tears dropped in the dust as she walked. 152 THE BO F EMIQUANT8. CHAPTER XIV. IN MOKMONDOM. THE way now grew more and more crowded. It scorned as if the teams sprang out of the earth, they were BO numei ous, and they collected on the trail so suddenly day by day. Desperate characters, too, became more frequent as the tide of emigration drew near the city of the Great Salt Lake. There was much talk about hostile Indians. The boys had heard this before, when passing through the Kooky Mountains. Once or twice, they knew of Indian attacks before or behind them ; and one day they had over taken a party of emigrants who had lost three of their party during one of these attacks. They saw, with their own eyes, the bullet-holes in the wagons of this company, and they had helped to bury the men left dead on the ground, after the firing was over and the cowardly Indians were gone. During that exciting and alarming time, they had mounted guard every night with the full belief that they might be fired upon before morning. The cattle were kept near the camp, and the wagons were placed close together, BO that, in case of an attack, they could be arranged in the form of a circle, like a fort. I : those days, while in a hostile country, they had plenty of company for mutual assistance, however, and they almost lost the pleasant little privacy of their own camp. They tr aveled with a crowd ; they camped with a crowd. Nance's father, Philo Dobbs, (IN MORMONDOM. 15? and her mother, and Nance herself, formed one small party ; and they were glad to keep along with the Roses and our boys, for the sake of better security from danger, ]S r ow there were rumors of the Goshoots being about, and as the Goshoots were a marauding tribe of Indians, though not so warlike as the Cheyennes, then very un friendly, the emigrants were uneasy. Between Fort Bridger and Salt Lake City was a very bad section of road. The country was sandy and dry. Here and there were springs of poisonous water, and the undulating sur face of the ground was dotted with clumps of grease- weed and sage-brush ; there was nothing for the animals to feed on, and no water fit to drink. To get through this desolate region, the emigrants traveled night and day or, rather, one day and one night. The moon was nearly at the full, and the night was pleasant and cool. As they drove on through the shadowy hollows and over the ghostly ridges, in the moonlight, ut terly in the wilderness, even the cattle seemed to think BUSH'S GO-rART. something unusual was going forward. Tige turned his head every now and then, and looked at Arthur, as much 7* J 54 THE BO T EMIGRANTS. as to say, " Queer doings these, my boy." And Pete, whc never barked except on great occasions, stalked along by the side of the team, growling with suppressed excitement. Everybody felt nervous and " scary," as Bush expressed it, but very little was said, and the company swept on, wagon after wagon, bands of cattle, men on foot and men on horseback, silently pressing on in the night, in the midst of a wild, strange country, with danger lurking near and an unknown and untrodden space before them. About midnight, when the men were beginning to feel drowsy, when the women had climbed into the wagons to sleep, and the cattle showed their fatigue by lagging, a sudden panic seized the whole line. Instantly, the loose cattle darted off in all directions, to the right and left of the road, scampering among the bushes, with their tails in the air. The teams followed them, jolting and bouncing the wagons over the hillocks and rough ground, and shak ing out the women and children, who fell out screaming and terrified. All along the line was confusion and dis may. The men yelled at their cattle, but in vain. The animals ran like mad buffaloes, and careered through the sage-brush pursued by their drivers, who could neither stop nor turn them. The ground was speedily strewn with camp-stuff, loose garments, and mining " traps." Here and there, a wagon was overturned, and the frantic oxen dragged it a little way and then stopped in sullen despair. Tige and Molly joined in the general stampede, and Arthur and Hi breath lessly pursued, Barnard having tumbled out of the rear end of the wagon, where ho had been taking a nap. As Arty caught up with the team, and ran around their heads to turn them back, he suddenly saw a dusky figure rise up from behind a wild-sage bush, within a few feet of him IN MTORMONDOM. 155 He felt his hair raising on his headland he instinctively reached behind him for his revolver. It was gone ! Just then the figure stumbled and fell, rose again, and eaid : " I just allow this yere is the ornerest, toughest piece ol ground I ever traveled." It was Messer, whose team had disappeared in the struggling mass which had now gathered at the foot of a rise of ground. Arty breathed freer, and, with Mont's help, he and Hi quieted their oxen, stopped them, and began to look about. The long procession, which had been moving along so quietly and steadily a few minutes before, was now broken and scattered in all directions. Some of the loose cattle had disappeared in the darkness, and not a few wagons lay overturned and half-wrecked among the bushes. People went wandering around seeking for their comrades or gathering up their goods and animals. But the panic was over. " It was only a stampede, after all, Arty," said Hi, cheerily, " Well, if that's a stampede, I allow I don't want any more of 'em," said Tom, with his teeth still chattering. " I own up that I was orf ul scared. Wha' wha's that 2 " he exclaimed, starting back as he spoke. " Nothin', nothin' ; ye're scart of yer own shadder," replied 111, who looked in the direction of Tom's fears, but with a little shake in his voice. It was only Johnny, who was hunting about in the brush for Arty's pistol. " Come out of that thar brush, you young one," remon strated Hi, with some asperity, as he began to straighten out the team before driving back to the road. " 'SposV 156 TEE BO T EMIGRANTS. yer'd be ketclied by the Goshoots, who'd hev yer share oJ the outfit, I'd like to know ? Haw there, you Tige ! " " D'yer 'spose there's Injuns about, Hi ? " said Tom. " Couldn't say couldn't say, Tom. Mont here allows that Injuns hev a way of stampedin' a train like that and then firing into the crowd and pickin' off the heft of 'cm." " Yes, 1 ' exclaimed Mont, " they say that the Indiana would sometimes scare cattle and make them stampede in that way, and then fall on the disordered train and de stroy the people and capture the property. But we have seen no Indians. They had a chance to attack tis just now, if they wanted to." " Well, then, why did the cattle all run like that ? " demanded Arthur. " They must have been scared by something." "I just allow it was shadders. The cattle were skittish and scary-like," said Hi. " And I must say I was sorter panicky myself, before the stampede began. Shadders creeping alongside of the road, shadders stealing along behind in the moonlight. Ouch ! what's that ? " Everybody started, and then everybody laughed. It was Pete who came bounding in from the sage -brush with Barney's cap, which he had picked up somewhere. Bar ney had not missed his cap he had been so taken by surprise when he was shaken out of the wagon. Arty picked up his pistol near where the stampede began, and. after recovering the other things scattered along the path of their erratic flight, they went back to the road. Many hands make light work ; the overturned wagons were righted, the cattle were gathered in, and the train moved on once more. As usual, however, the panic-stricken oxen did not easily recover their calmness. Once again IN MORHONDOM. 157 in the course of the night, terrified by the weird shadows, perhaps, they bolted from the track ; but they were soon brought back, and they plodded on until daybreak. In a short time after this great scare, the young erai grants passed into Echo Canon, then a famous resting- place for the gold-seekers. High walls of red, yellow, and cream-colored rock rose on either side. These walla were topped out with pinnacles, towers, and steeples. It was like a fairy scene. Below were charming groves, overshadowing a winding stream. Above were fantastic rocky shapes, resembling castles, donjon-keeps, cathedral spires, battlements, and massive walls. Trailing vines grew in the high crevices of the precipices and swung in the breeze. The canon was rich with grass and wild berries, and here the boys camped for several days, trying curious experiments in cooking the fruit which grew so abundantly about them. " Sass," as Hi called it, was the easiest to manage. They made a few pies, too ; but the pastry was made with bacon-fat and lard, and Barnard turned up his nose at it, with the remark that " it was hog-meat in another shape." They attempted a berry pudding, and Nance lent them a cloth to boil it in. Arty would not permit the cover of the camp kettle to be taken off, as that would " make the pudding heavy." Nance had said so. When the hungry company gathered about the kettle, at dinner-time, to see that famous pudding taken out, Arthur poked around in a thin purple broth with his stick, only to fish out an un pleasant-looking and limp cloth. The bag had been tied too tight. The pudding had burst, and was now a por- nclge of flour, water, and " sarvice-berries." " 1 allow the proof of that puddV ain't in the eatin' of it," solemnly remarked Eli. 158 THE SOY EMIGRANTS. But Nance consoled Arty by informing him that thii was an accident which happened to the very smartest folks, sometimes. " It ain't nigh so bad as scaldin' yer bread, Arty," said (lie girl, with a slight laugh. When they reached the mouth of Emigrant Can on, n few days later, one fine August morning, they gazed with admiration upon the city in the wilderness Great Salt Lake City. The canon opened to the west, high up among the mountains. Below the boys stretched the broad valley north and south. Above their heads rose snowy peaks ; beneath was a vast plain, belted with winding streams, and green and gold with grass, orchards, and grain- fields. In the midst of this lovely panorama shone the City of the Saints. It was like a fairy city. It seemed like a dream. Nearly three months had passed since they had seen a town, and here was a great, well-built and beautiful city. The houses were neutral-tinted or white washed, the roofs were red, and innumerable trees em bowered the whole. The plain, in the midst of which the city was set like a jewel, rolled far to the westward, where it was bounded by the shining waters of Great Salt Lake. Beyond this towered a range of purple mountains, their fiharp peaks laced with silvery snow. " This is a view from the Delectable Mountains ! " murmured Mont, as he sat down. " Putty as a picter," said honest Hi, leaning on hia \vhip-stock, and gazing at the wonderful panorama. " Bui it reminds me of the hymn " ' Where every prospect pleases, And only man is vile.' They do say them Mormons will steal like all posses t." IN MORMOND OM. 1 59 It was a difficult and a zig-zag road down the mountain- Bide. Many a wrecked emigrant-wagon lay by the side of the descent, now continually crowded with the trains of the gold-seekers. At one place, looking over a low natu ral parapet, they saw a wagon and four oxen, lying in a heap of ruins, just where they had fallen from the dLi^y height above. So, with much trembling and anxiety, they crept down by rocky slopes, beetling precipices, and foamy mountain-torrents, and reached the grassy plain at last. Here was comfort an easy road, plenty of feed and water for the cattle, and fruit and vegetables growing in the neat farms by which they passed. It was like paradise. Driving into the city, which was only a huge village, with orchards and grain-fields all about, they were directed to an open square where emigrants were allowed to camp. Fresh meat, vegetables, and new flour were to be had here, and in these unaccustomed luxuries the boys reveled with great delight. It seemed as if they were near their journey's end. The mishaps, discomforts, and perils through which they had passed, seemed far away now. Here were flower gardens, people living in houses, and here were families abiding, not camping out for a night. The tent of the emigrants, which had become their home, almost beloved as such, appeared frail and shadowy by the side of these substantial and comfortable houses, in which people actually lived. " We must get up and dust out of this. I'm homesick," was Hi's plaintive remark. " Lor! " said Nance, whose family was on the spot when they drove into town. " Lor ! the wimmen is orf ul ornery S:> old-fashioned, you can't think 1 Nothin' but sun-bun- nits and caliker gownds. I ain't seen a sunshade since I' 70 bin here. Ugh ! such a place. I want to git." 160 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. The boys thought that they never could " git," whet they woke up one fine morning, and found their cattle gone. They had been chained to the wheels of the wagon when they " turned in " to sleep the night before. Mont had waked in the night and heard Bally, who was a rest less creature, chafing with his chain. Now they were gone ! They looked in blank ai/iazement, wondering how the thieves could have taken them away without disturbing anybody. It was useless to look for tracks. The turf waa trodden by numerous hoofs, coming and going. " Where's that rascal Pete that he didn't bark? If there had been a chipmunk about the camp, he'd have wakened up everybody," stormed Barnard, with great anger. " Sure enough, where's Pete ? " asked Arthur. He was not to be seen. The boy whistled for his old friend, but had no response. Pete had disappeared. This was a great calamity, and, leaving the younger ones to get breakfast and watch the camp, Mont, Hi, and Barnard went out to look for the stolen cattle. They came back, late in the morning, one after another, without tidings. Everybody had told them that the Mormons would steal the tires off the wagon- wheels ; that it was more dangerous here than in the Indian country ; and then, there were dreadful rumors of emigrants " Gentiles," the Mormons called them disappearing suddenly and never being heard of again. If strangers made trouble about liuiiisf robbed, they were quietly " put out of the way," nobody knew how. The boys looked at the useless yokes, left piled on each other by the wagon, thought of their stolen cattle, and sat down to a very gloomy breakfast. Sympathizing friendi and acquaintances from neighboring zamps came in witk IN MORMONDOM. 161 offers of help, but they could not give up all hope ol finding their own again. Arty confessed to Kimself that he rather enjoyed the celebrity which the affair gave hia party, though he was not pleased when some rough stranger laughed at " the youngsters who had their cattle stolen from under their blankets while they slept." And next day, after they had spent one whole day in hunting for their stock, they heard that another party, on the west side of the city, had been robbed of a horse and three yoke of cattle. Mont went to a Mormon justice of the peace and stated his case. He was received with great grimness, and a constable was sent down to the camp. This official looked at the wagon, tent, and camp-stove, asked if they had any tea to sell, and went away. They never saw him again. On the third day, Mont, Hi, and Arthur were prowling about on the outskirts of the cit} r , where the settlement melted away into small farms. The boy had strayed away from his companions, and was attracted by a neat little cottage built of adobe, or sun-dried brick. The roof was of thatch, and in the trim door-yard bloomed marigolds, hollyhocks, larkspur, and other old-fashioned flowers. A cat purred in the sun, and a flock of white-haired children played on the low door-step. " This seems like home," murmured the po)r, dispirited nnd lonesome boy. A sad looking, sallow-faced woman, coming to the door faid : "Would you like to come in among the posies, my lad ? " "No, I thank you, ma'am," civilly replied Aitlmr. " Put I should like a sprig of that lavender, if you cac spare it." L 62 THE BO T EMIGRANTS. As the boy spoke, a short, sharp bark, strangely like Pete's, sounded from the house. He heard a man's voice, then a whine, and, as the woman gave him the spray oi lavender, a low-browed, dark-faced man put his head out of the window, and said : " What are you tolling these tramps about the place for \ Get out of here 1 " Two more sad-looking and sallow-faced women now ap peared in the door-way, and Arthur walked away, half- angry, but murmuring to himself : " That man's a Mormon ! Those are his wives ! " This discovery aroused the boy from his gloomy thoughts, and his curiosity was stirred to find out how a man with at least three wives could live. Loitering down a lane by the side of the cottage, he passed by a neat hedge which enclosed a paddock behind the house. He stooped in an aimless way and peered through an opening in the bottom of the hedge. The enclosure was about fifty feet long and twenty-five wide. The upper end was bounded by a paling which separated the Mormon's gar den from the paddock. The lower end opened, by a pair of bars, covered with cut boughs, on a common unenclosed space. In the middle of this cattle-yard, quietly chewing their cuds, were eight or ten cattle. Among them, to his amazement, Arthur recognized Tige, Molly, Star, and his mate. Scarcely believing his eyes, A.rtj looked once more, and then bounded away across the fields and over the ditches, to find Hi and Mont. They were sitting disconsolately by some wild raspberry bushes, making a pcor pretence of picking the fruit, when Arty rushed up, his eyes sparkling, his face all in a glow, and his breath coming and goir.g fast. IN MORMONDOlf 163 " What luck ? " exclaimed Mont, whose quick eye that something had happened. " Found 'em ! found 'em ! " pai.ted the boy. " The whole lot are together in that corral with the hedge around it! " " Gosh all Friday ! " said Hi. The three boys now walked rapidly back in the direc tion of the adobe house, which was about a mile off, but in plain sight. Arriving at the opening in the rear of the paddock, they reconnoitered through the brush which had been ingeniously twisted into the bars, so that the hedge, from the outside, seemed continuous. " There's Tige, and Molly, and all hands," whispered Hi, with glistening eyes. " AVe've two pistols among us. Let's march boldly in and drive them out," said Mont. Without a word, Hi tore out the screen of boughs, let down the bars, and strode in. Just then, the back-door of the house opened and the dark-faced man appeared. " Get out of that corral, or I'll shoot you ! " he cried, and he raised a fowling-piece to his shoulder as he spoke. " Don't be afeard, boys ; it ain't loaded ! " called one of the sad-looking women, who suddenly came around the corner of the house. The man muttered an oath, and pur sued her as she disappeared among the hollyhocks. The boys hastily separated their cattle from the rcst ? and drove them down the paddock. Just then, the man, who had run around the hedge, appeared at the opening and began to put up the bars. " Leave those cattle alone," said he, savagely. " They're our cattle, and we are goin' to take 'em," was Hi's dogged reply. The man went on putting up the bars. Then Monl 1 64 THE BOY EMIQ RA NTS. drew his pistol, and, pointing it directly at the fellow'* head, said : " Put down those bars, or I'll shoot you 1 Now then : One ! two ! three ! " The man turned and fled. Arty ran down, dropped the bars, and the cattle passed out. The opening was closed behind them, and the little party, triumphant, but not without fears, took their way back to town. They were received at the camp with great acclamations, Barnard having returned in the worst possi ble spirits. The neighboring emigrants gathered in to congratulate them on their good luck, as well as their pluck. "But suppose that chap takes it into his head to come down on us with legal documents, constables and things ! " said Barnard. Captain John Rose took up his favorite rifle, which was lying in the sun, and remarked: " If thar's Mormons enough in this yere city to capture the gang of Gentiles lyin' around loose in this yere square, let 'em come on. No better fun than that fur me ! " As a matter of precaution, however, it was thought best to get out of town as soon as possible. The few necessary purchases had been made. Letters were written home ; and, yoking up their recovered team, they hastily departed out of the city. The affair had been noised about, and several Mormons came around them as they drove away, threatening dread ful things. The dark-faced man did not appear. " If ho wants his property, let him come and take it," said Hi. Strange to say, he did not come. The emigrants were numerous, lawless, and angry. The boys drove out to the north and west, their road leading them by a cluster of boiling hot-springs, across the IJS MORMONDOM. 165 Weber, and so on to Box Elder. The first part of their way was through broad fields thick with grass and yellow with wild flowers. Across these they saw the City of the Saints, now no longer attractive, recede as they drove away. Something came bounding towards them across the grassy plain, now lost in the tall growth, and now spring ing into the streams which laced the plain. It seemed an animal, and yet it appeared like a man running on all fours with marvellous swiftness. It came from the direc tion of an adobe house on the edge of the city, in the midst of the fields. As it leaped nearer and nearer, it gave a joyful bark. " It's Pete ! it's Pete ! " cried Arthur, and his tears must needs flow. In another instant, Pete, with a ragged rope about his neck, was in Arty's arms, on Hi's back, on Bar nard's neck, and knocking little Johnny over in his par oxysm of delight. " Whar hev yer b'en, ole feller ? " asked Hi. " What a powerful shame it is that yer can't talk ! " " I just believe that the man who stole the cattle took Pete away," said Arthur. " I was sure I heard him in that house. He heard me outside talking with the woman, and he barked." " But how could he get Pete away without poisoning him ? " demanded Mont. "Drugged him," suggested Hi. " There's that knowing old Tige," said Arthur, play fully. " He looks around as if he could tell all about it." Bat he never did. THE BO Y EMIGRANTS. CHAPTER XV. A GREAT DISASTER. AFTES. Xenving Salt Lake Valley, the young emigrant! parsed into a wild, desolate, and barren region. Imme diately outside of the Mormon settlements, they found a most miserable country. The surface of the earth was red and dusty " red hot," Hi said. No grass grew ex cept in small dry bunches, and the pools of water were thick and brown with alkali, or they were boiling hot with hidden fires. Some of them rushed out of their fountains with a hurrying and hissing noise that reminded the boys of a steamboat. Others were bluish pools of water, with clean and pebbly bottoms, and just warm enough to be comfortable for a bath. Into these the weary and dusty travelers plunged themselves with great content. The waters seemed to be healing, they were so soft and pleasant to joints stiffened by long marches, and to skins made rough and sore by many days of travel on alkali plains. The air was still loaded with the alkali duet, like fine saleratus, which floated everywhere. But (he natural hot-baths, steel blue in their depths and gur- pliujr over stones covered with some kind of white mineral r3 O deposit, were luxurious beyond anything they had ever di earned of. Some of these hot springs were so near the cold ones, that the boys tried experiments of dipping their hand* A GREAT DISASTER. 1G7 into a pool of cold water while their feet dabbled in warm water, as they lay along the ground. Once they came to a huge round pool, nearly fifty feet across, black, still, and with neither outlet nor inlet. Yet it was not stagnant ; a slight current showed that there was some sort of rnovo- inent going on beneath the surface. " I allow this yer pool runs down inter tho bowels of the yeaith," said Philo Dobbs, pensively, as he stood on the brink and gazed into the mysterious depths. " Well, ain't the bowels of the earth deep enough to take down this hull pool at one s waller, if so be as it runs down so .fur ? " asked Bush, with some impatience. " Stands to reason it would be all drawed off to oncet, if the bottom was clean dropped out." " Anyway, there is no bottom," said Arty. " Lots of people have sounded it and found none." But Philo Dobbs was firm in his opinion that the poo led directly into the centre of the earth; and Nance, as ;t dutiful daughter, informed the boys that what her father did not know about such things was not worth knowing. They passed out from this region of wonders and tra versed an exceedingly dull and uninteresting tract of country, lying between Salt Lake Valley and the head waters of the Humboldt Kiver. About three weeks' march from the Mormon capital, late in August, they reached the Goose Creek Mountains. Here good pasturage was found by selecting spots along the creek, and here, too, the road became more easy for the cattle, many of which were weak and sick with th? tsfteets of alkali. Passing down through Thousand Spring Valley, the emigiants camped at the head of a rocky canon, one night, twj or three companies being together The ground was dotted with scrubby knots of wild oage, J 68 THE BO 7 EMIGRANTS, grease- weed, and cactus. The soil was red, gray, and pebbly ; but a small stream slipped through a gulley near by, and along its banks grew a scanty crop of grass, well browsed off by the innumerable cattle which had passed on the way to California. " This is awful lonesome," sighed Arty, as he wearily went through the usual and monotonous task of getting supper. " Doesn't pay, does it, Arty ? " said his brother, curiously watching the boy, with half-closed eyes, as he turned hia sizzling bacon in the frying-pan, and kept his fire going with handfuls of dry weeds, their only fuel. " No, Crogan, it does not pay. I'm getting clean beat out. And there's poor old Pete, licking his paws again. I can't keep shoes on that dog's feet, and he has worn tho skin off of them so that he can hardly walk. Heigho ! I wonder what mother would say to this mess ? " and Arty, with great disgust, stirred in the flour which was to thicken the bacon-fat and make "dope" to eat with bread, instead of butter. The thought of what his mother might say brought tears to the boy's eyes. This was Saturday night. Away off in the groves of the valley of the Rock his mother was draw ing the Ne\r England brown bread and beans from the brick oven. His father, perhaps, was sitting by the fading light in the door- way, looking westward and thinking of liis wandering boys. His brothers were out at the well- curb, dipping their heads into the water-trough with muck i ough play, and making ready for their welcome Sunday rest Here was a wilderness, a desert, scanty fare, and with the Land of Gold still a long way off. " Hullo ! there's a drop of salt water running down yc ur A GREAT DISASTER. 1G9 nose, A rty," cried Tom, " and if it drops into that dope, you'll" But Tom never finished nis sentence, for at that moment Mont, with righteous indignation, knocked him off the rol) of blankets on which he had been sitting. " Yer might let a feller know when you was a-comm' for him," said Tom, wrathf ully, as he scrambled cut of the way. " Sarved yer right, yer grinnin' chessie-cat," said Hi. " Yer'll never keep yer mouth shut. Now hustle that thar coffee-pot onto the table, and we'll sit by." " Tom, I beg yer pardon," spoke up Mont Morse. " I really didn't intend to knock you over, only just to give you a gentle poke by way o^ reminder." Tom sullenly ate his supper, without any comment on his brother's remark that he was an " ornery blatherskite, anyway." Somehow, the evening was more gloomy and cheerless than usual ; and, as it was now necessary to keep a sharp watch for thieves who were prowling about the trail, those who were to go out on the second watch went early to their blankets. The rest took their several stations about the edge of the camp. It was a little past midnight when the sleeping boys were awakened by a shot, and the voice of John Rose crying, " Stop that man ! " Barnard broke out of the tent with a wild rush, cocking his pistol as he ran through the low brush in which the camp was get. In the cloudy night he saw a light sorrel horse running close bj* the side of Old Jim, and coming towards him. As the horses passed swiftly across his vision, ho saw a man rise and fall, and rise and fall aga'n in llie 8ge-brush rise and fall and disappear in the darkness. 1 70 THE BO T EMIGRANTS. f in suing him was John Rose, his tall figure and bright red shirt showing him conspicuously in the gloom. Barney ran on, but the fugitive was gone, and Rose camo back, excitedly saying: "Dog on that chap ! I just believe I winged him. D:d you see him limp ? " Barney was not sure that he limped, but was burning tc know what it was all about. "I was sittin' behind that thar rock," said Rose, " a- won dering about them stars just peek in' out of the clouds, when I heern a cracklin' in the bush and if thar wa'n't a yaller hoss a strange hoss sidlin' up, queer-like, as if somebody was leadiu' him. I seen no man, no lariat onto the hoss, M'hen he gets up alongside of Old Jim. Then he stops short, and then I seen a man's legs on the off-side, and Justin range of the sorrel's. I slid down from behind the rock and crep' along on the ground like, holding my rifle steady, when, all at once, the chap jumps up on the m-rel and away lie kited pullin' Old Jim after him." " Yes ! yes ! and you fired then ? " " Fired ! Well, 1 just allow I did, and you should have seen that chap drop, But he got away, and we have got his hoss that's all." Sine enough, the sorrel horse was found to have a lariat, or halter, of twisted raw-hide about his neck, one end of which had been knotted into Jim's halter. There waf great excitement in the camp as the emigrants woke ana came out to see "what was up." Here was the evidence of horse thieves being about, and the men expressed them selves as being in favor of hanging the rascal if he could be caught. " Ouch ! " cried Barney suddenly, sitting down. " Bring a light, Johnny." A OREA1 DISASTER. tf\ Barney's bare feet were filled with the prickly spines of tlie ground cactus. " Strange I never folt them until just now, and I must have clipped it through that whole bed of cactus plants*" But he felt them now, and, what was more, he was lame for a week afterwards. Next morning, on examining the ground, the boys dis covered the tracks of the strange horse, where, coming up to the regular trail from the north, they crossed a damp patch of alkali earth, breaking in the crust which forma on top when the heat of the sun evaporates the alkali water. Nearer the camps, the tracks were lost in the con fused beating of the feet of many passing animals. But in the sage-brush, where Captain Rose had fired at the horse-thief, the foot-prints were plainly seen. In the loose sandy soil beyond were the tracks of a man, left in the dry surface ; and on the twigs of a low grease- wood bush they saw a few drops of blood. " Yes, yes, he was wounded. I was sure of that," cried Rose. " And here is where he limped," said Hi, dropping on his knees and examining the foot-prints in the light gray soil. " Come yere, Mont, and tell us what you think of these yere. See ! thar's a print set squar' down ; then here's one that's only light-like, just half made." Mont got down on his knees and followed the tracks along. The man had fled in great haste. Sometimes he had gone over the bushes, sometimes he had light jd in the midst of one. But, here and there, was a print, sometimes of the right foot, sometimes of the left; but one was always lightly made " half -made," as Hi said. " That man limped, sure enough," said Mont, finally, " But I guess ho didn't limp from a wound, though h 172 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. may have been wounded. I should say that he had i game leg." r A game leg ! " repeated Johnny and Arty together. BILL BUNCE. "I allow you're right, Monty, my boy," said Hi, who bad been stooping again over the mysterious foot- prints " That thar man had a game leg, for sure." A GREAT DISASTER. 173 "Which leg was Bill Bunce laine of, Johnny?" de manded Barnard. " The left leg," replied the lad. Arty looked up triumphantly from the ground and ex claimed : " So was this man that tried to steal Old Jim." " It was Bill Bunco ! It was Bill Bunce ! I'm sure it was," cried little Johnny, in great excitement. He looked at the foot-prints of the fugitive horse-thief, and fairly trembled with apprehension ; he could not have told why. " O ! sho ! " said Hi. " You mustn't think that every game-legged man you meet on the plains is Bill Bunce. Why, thar was that feller that picked up Barney's boots when they fell out of the wagon, down at Pilot Springs. lie wa'n't no Bill Bunce, and he was the game-leggedest man I ever seen." " If he had not been too game-legged to wear those boots, I am not so sure that Crogan would have seen them again," laughed Mont. " Well, boys, thar's nothin' more to be 1'arned of them foot-prints," said Hi. " We may as well get breakfast and be off." " But this is Sunday," said Barnard. " Yes," replied Hi, " Sunday and no feed, and nu water. Camp here all day and starve the critters ? lu>t much." " But we have never traveled Sundays," remonstrated Mont. " Oh yes, we did, Mont," interposed Arty. " Once befor^ at Stony Point, you know we had to when there was ini grass ; and we traveled from the Salt Lick to Deep Creek on Sunday, because we hai no water." 174 THE BOY EMIGRANTS. "Which is the Christianest, Mont, to let the cattle gc without feed, or travel Sunday ? " asked Hi. " I don't know. I give up that conundrum." " So do I," said Hi, with a grin. They went on, however. Leaving Thousand Spring Valley, and crossing several rocky ridges, they descended and entered a long, narrow canon, through which flowed a considerable stream. Precipitous walls of rock rose up on either side, leaving barely room for the narrow wagon-trail and the creek. The trail crossed and recrossed the stream many times, and the ford ing-places were not all safe or convenient. But the day was bright and pleasant, and high, high above their heads, above the beetling crags, the blue sky looked cool and tender. A long train passed down the cafion, the procession being strung out with numerous companies of emigrants. They had got half-way through the passage, which was several miles long, when, late in the afternoon, the sky grew overcast, and thick clouds gathered suddenly in the west. " An awkward place to get caught in a shower," mut tered Captain Wise. " Tliar's poor crossing at the best of times, and if this yere creek should rise, we 'd be cut off in the midst of the canon." " But there is no danger of that, John, is there ? " said Mont, who was striding along with the Captain. " Couldn't eay, Mont. These yere creeks do swell up dreffle sudd'n, sometimes." And he anxiously regar led the sky, from which a heavy shower now oegan to fall. The boys lightly laughed at the discomfort. They were used to it, and, wrapping their heavy coats about theii shoulders, they plodded on in the pouring rain. A HEAT DISASTER. 175 it was four o'clock in the afternoon, and tne showfj increased with such force that Hi, who was behind with the team, shouted to Captain Wise : " Say, hadn't we better lay by 2 Yere's a place whar we can turn in and let the others pass us." " The cattle's necks are gettin' chafed with their yokes," cried Tom, who particularly disliked getting wet. " We must drive on until we 're out of this yere canon," was the Captain's only reply. And they pressed on in the midst of a tempest of rain. The sky overhead was only a narrow patch between the frowning walls of the canon. It was as black as ink. They had now reached a sharp bend in the canon ; a huge elbow in the rocky precipice at the left of the track came down and made a deep recess just beyond it, where the trail turned in to the left. On their right was the creek, now foaming along in its stony bed, and on the opposite side was a sheer wall of rock rising into the low- hung clouds. As they struggled around the corner of the rock and entered a little elevated place, where the canon widened, the tall angle behind them shut out the trail down which they had j ust passed. Arthur, hearing a strange u birring noise in the air, looked back and up the canon. He saw an inky black mass, tremendous and tumbling over and over, drift helplessly over the wall of the canon, like a huge balloon. It struck the opposite wall, and in ail instant the solid ro:;k seemed to burst in cataracts of water. Suddenly, the air was filled with a portentous roar. The rain no longer fell in sheets, but in solid masses. The creek, black except where it was lashed into foam, ro?a like a mightj river and tore down the canon, hoarsery 176 THE BO I EMIGRANTS. howling an its waj. The sides of the naivow pass seemed to melt iutc dropping streams of water. The trail dis appeared, and along the foaming tide rushed wagons, horses, oxen, men, and the floating wrecks of trains which had been farther up the canon. The angry flood, checked by the sharp angle of rock around which the boys had just passed, roared in a solid wall over that part of the trail, then spread out and curled hissing, up to the little eminence on which the party, with scared faces, stood as if spell-bound. The loose cattle of the Rose drove were in the rear. They were swept off like insects. Then the flood, as if holding on by its claws at the rocky angle behind, backed up and backed up, un til, with one mighty effort, it swept the wagon-bodies off their beds, overturned the cattle in their yokes, and then slunk off down the canon, and slowly fell away. Captain Rose, climbing a wrecked wagon, in the midst of the still falling rain, looked about anxiously, gave a great sob, and said : " I'm a ruined man ; but, thank God, we're all here ! " The angry current yet fled down the canon, making the trail impassable. But the worst was over. They were all alive. Even Pete, to whom Arty had clung in the extremity of his terror, was safe and sound. All were drenched, and it was only by clinging to the half-floating wagons that they had been saved from drowning. But tho yoke cattle were here. So was poor old Jim, and a few of Rose's loose cattle, as well as his horses. " What was that ? " asked Tom, his teeth chattering with fear and cold. " A cloud-burst," said Mont, solemnly. " And it will be a wonderful thing if hundreds of pec pie in this canon are not drowned by it." A GREAT DISASTER. 1 ; 7 More than an hour passed before the creek had fallen enough to permit the emigrants to pass down the trail. But the canon was free of the flood in an astonishingly short time. Before dark, the little party, gathering up their wet goods and straightening out their teams, ven tured down the trail. The alders were crowded with fragments of wreck. Wagon- covers, clothing, and bits of small household stuff, were hanging from rocks and brush. The trail was washed out by the flood, and along it were strewn the bodies of drowned animals. For the most part, however, the wrecks had been swept clean out of the canon, and were now lying on the sandy plain beyond. Nobody ever knew how many lives were lost in that memorable cloud-burst. They were many. The boy emi grants passed out and camped on the fast-drying plain at the mouth of the canon, where they found Philo Dobbs, his wife, and Nance. They, with Messer, had laid by outside before the storm canie up, having been one day'a travel ahead of our boys. Rose had lost sixty head of cattle, a few of those first missing having been picked up afterwards. " "Where's yer yaller hoss ? " asked Hi of Barney. The sorrel horse was gone. " Light come, light go," said Hi, eententioualy. 8* 1 7 8 TEE BO Y EMIGRANTS. CHAPTEE XVI. IN THE DESEKT. IT was early in September when the young emigrants reached the head-waters of the Humboldt. Here the road led by the side of the stream, which flowed through a narrow valley. Outside of this valley the country was a tumultuous mass of rocks, mountains, and sand. No tree nor shrub relieved the prospect anywhere. It was an utterly desolate and trackless desert. Close by the stream, whose bluish-white waters were shaded by willows, there was a plenty of grass, and the water was at least fit to drink. So the party journeyed on blithely, forgetful of the dangers behind, and careless of the privations before or behind them. Occasionally the road left the river and crossed over a rough ridge of hills, for ten or twelve miles, and then, having made a straight line across a curve of the stream, struck it again farther down. But, after about two weeks of travel, with some days of rest, orders went out to cut grass for the long stretch of desert which was now to bo traversed. Knives of all sorts were brought out and sharpened, and the emigrants spent one afternoon in cut ting and binding up the lush, coarse grass which grew plentifully in the meadows. Not far from this point the Humboldt spreads out in a boggy lake, overgrown with reeds and bulrushes, and is lost in the desert. About the Iff THE! DESEttT. 179 edges of this strange swamp the whole surface of the earth is dry and parched. The spreading riv stupefied with fatigue and sleeplessness, stumbled abcut his camp-stove in a daze. Everybody but himself had dropped in the dust to sleep. lie was alone, although a IN THE DESERT. 185 thousand people vvere camped all about on tie sandy plain. There was no fuel but dry grease-weed, ai.d his hands were in the dough. " Get up and get something to burn, you Crogan," ho eiikl crossly, kicking his sleeping brother's shins as he lay under the wagon. " Yes, mother," drawled the young fellow in his dreams ; " I'm coming coming," and he was asleep again. Half-crying with vexation, Arty sat down on the wagon- tongue and shouted out, in the most general way : " If some of you fellows don't wake up and get some firing, you'll have no breakfast, so now 1 " Nobody stirred ; but Nance, gingerly picking her way over the pebbly ground, barefooted and dusty, came up and said : " I'll help ye, Arty. Take yer hands out o' that dough and get yer firewood, and I'll finish yer bread. Salt ? Bakin'-powder ? Now git." " Nancy, you're the best girl I ever knew," said Arty. " That's what she is," interposed Johnny, who was now Bitting up in the sand. " Did you call, Arty ? '' "Lie down again and nap it while you can," said Arty, his anger all gone. " You've a long tramp before you to-day, my little man." Only t^o hours were allowed for breakfast, and then !he weary inarch began again. One of Rose's men a tall, gangling young fellow, known in the camp aa " Shanghai " threw up his contract and determined tc " get out and walk." He declared that he had been " pu L , upon " long enough. He had not been provided with the cattle-whip which had boon promised him II 186 THE BO T EMIGRANTS. had been compelled to drive loose cattle in the fearful duet of the day before, while some more favored person was allowed to drive the steers. To crown all, he had had but one spoonful of " dope " at breakfast that day This was too much. He would go on alone. Van Orman, a stolid, black-bearded man, one of Rose'a teamsters, who had very profound views on the subject of earthquakes and volcanoes, and who never, under any circumstances, could get enough to eat, listened to poor Shanghai's tearful complaints, threw down his whip, and said : " Hang it ! Shanghai, I'll go with ye ! " And these two pilgrims, packing all their worldly effects in one small bundle, took their way over the arid hills towards the Golden Land. At noon, the long caravan, passing over a succession of rocky and dusty ridges, reached the last one, from which they gazed off into the Great Plain. It was like a vast sea. Far to the westward, a chain of sharp, needle-like peaks towered up to the sky. Northward, a range of hills, flaming in red and bine, looked as if they were masses of hot iron. South, the undulating level melted into the brassy sky. Across the dusky waste a long line of wagons traveled, far below the point on which the boy emigrants paused before they began their descent. Looking towards the red-hot hills, and over the plaiii; tremulous with heated air, Arthur saw, to his intense BUI prise, a crooked, shining line of blue. It glided out and in among clumps of willows, and rippled in the sunshine. It was a creek, a considerable stream, and, even from this distance, he could almost hear the gurgl ^f the blesred water. " Water! water ! " he ^ried. almost with tears. IN THE DESERT. 181 Everybody gazed Even the sullen cattle sniffed it with their noses, and poor Tige set up a disconsolate bellow as he looked. "Only a mirage, Arty," said Mont, with a tinge of despondency. " See it pass ? " And, as he spoke, the trees faded away, the blue waters sank into the earth, and only the parched rocks and hills remained. Then, moving down, the delusion seemed to envelop the caravans below. The wagons grew and grew until they appeared to be fifteen or twent) feet high. Then these spectral figures broke in two, and on each wagon was the shape of another, bottom up and ita wheels in the air. Then on this ghostly figure was another wagon, its wheels resting on the wheels of that below. This weird procession lasted a moment, shud dered, and melted away like a dream. Only the common place caravan plodded its weary way through the pow dery dust. At sunset, after a second distressing day's drive, the travelers reached the range of peaks which, like an island, divided the desert into two parts. Here was water, so hot that an egg might have been boiled in it. Tige, who was on the sick list, put his black muzzle into it, and, aston ished at the phenomenon, set off on a brisk run with his tail in the air. " Poor old chap ! He has not got all his wits about him } now that he is sick," said Mont, compassionately. Even when the water was cooled in pails, the cattle distrusted it, and hesitated to taste it. The boys stewed beans, baked biscuit, and made coffee, using a portion of the scanty stock of fuel brought a long way for this very purpose ; for here not even grease- weed, nor the tiuiesl 188 T1IE BOY EMIGRANTS. blade of grass, ever grew. The surface of the ground was utterly bare. A little withered grass, brought from the HmnboliH remained in the wagons, and was distributed among the cattle. Tige refused to eat it, and as the boys sat in the door of their tent, eating their desert fare, the docile ani mal came up, and, resting his nose on Arty's shoulder, Lx)ked, winking, into his tin plate of stewed beans. " Have some, Tige ? " said Arty. " Poor old Tige, he'a cff his grub." And the steer, cautiously sniffing at the plate, put out his tongue, tasted with apparent satisfaction, and licked up the whole. "Now, /call that extravagance!" said Tom, ladling ont another plateful of beans. " And / call it genewine humanity. That's what it is, Mister Smarty," rejoined Hi. "Whatever else we haven't got, I allow we've beans enough to get us through with." At sundown onward went the emigrants, as if pursued by some hidden enemy. Out into the desert swept the great train of wagons, cattle, men, and women out into the desert, with the tall and motionless peaks of purple towering above them into the evening sky, now flushed and rosy. How they tramped on and on, like a caravan of life, out into an unknown world, rich and poor, young and old together ! Leaving behind them their homes, and leaving by the way their dead, they swept past the islanded mountains, and so pressed on to the West. When the night came on, and the yellow moon flooded the vast level plain with liquid light, the sight was very strange. The air was cool, the ground white with a firm Band which scarcely yielded to the easily running wheels tn the weird lustre that cohered the plain, a lame steei-j /If THE DESERT. 181 fnrncd out to die, and standing away ofl from the trail loomed up like a giraffe. Looking buck, the long train seemed to rise up and melt away into the air ; and forward, the blue-black mountains that bounded the plain were tieeked with silver where the moonlight fell on quartz ledges and patches of belated snow. Occasionally a cry from the rear told that another " critter " had fallen, and some one must be detailed to bring it along, if possible. But the train rolled on until the camp-fires of Granite Creek shone on the desert. At two o'clock in the morning, inexpressibly weary, the emi grants reached a slightly raised plateau at the foot of another range of mountains. Without waiting to examine the ground, which was a rough plain bordering on a creek, the boys put up their tent, unyoked the cattle, who were too tired to stray, dropped into their blankets, and slept until long after the next day's sunrise. Many of the cattle brought here, after the drive across v O * the Great Plains, were left to die. The boys rested one day, and, when another night came on, they yoked their unwilling oxen, and were off again. It was sunset when they passed southward around the spur of mountains which lay across their path. And it was four o ? clock on the following morning when they paused and built another camp-fire in the midst of the last stretch of desert, on the western side of the range. Here was a level, floor-like plain, and the tents pitched with the flaps rolled up gave the scene an Oriental air. No Arabian coffee in the desert was evermore delicious than that which our weary young pilgrims drank. And no delicacies of a luxurious city could have been more welcome to these wandering sons than the well-browned biscuits which A'ty's deft hands drew fr>m their camp- oven. 190 TUB BOY EMIGRANTS. The last day's travel was the hardest of all. Catth dropped by the wayside. Strong men fainted with fatigue, or grew delirious with sleeplessness. In some of the companies there was real want, and strange rumora of a plot to rob the better provided ones floated back and forth among the trains, now moving once more in single file over the bleak and barren hills. No vegetation met the eye, no insect or bird cried in the joyless air; a fierce sun poured down its rays upon the struggling line. Here and there, a grave, newly made and rudely marked, showed where some poor pilgrim had fallen by the way. The very sky seemed to add to the utter desolation of the land. But, at sunset, the young emigrants, after fording a salt creek, climbed the rocky ridge which separated the desert from the fertile region known as the Smoke Creek country. The train toiled on and passed over the divide. Arthur and Mont paused and looked back. The setting sun bathed the plain below them in golden radiance. A flood of yellow sunshine gushed over the arid waste, and broke in masses among the violet shadows of the mountain range beyond. Eastward, the rocky pinnacles, glorified with purple, gold, and crimson, pierced a sky rosy and flecked with yellow. It was like a glimpse of fairy-land. Arty held his breath as he gazed, a^d forgot his fatigue for a moment. " It is as beautiful as a dream," said the boy. "And as cruel as death," added Mr nt ei I shall r.ever forget it, Mont." NorL' THE GOLDEN LAND. 19\ CHAPTER X VII. THE GOLDEN LAND, "PooR old Tige! We may as well take him oat of tba yoke." The pluchy little ox would have dragged on with his mate Molly until he dropped. But he was too sick to travel. The boys were now near Honey Lake Valley, where feed was good and water plenty. They had crossed the last considerable ridge, or divide, before reaching the Sierra; a few days more would bring them to their journey's end. The faithful beast had pulled steadily through the awful desert and over the volcanic region which lay between that region and the Honey Lake country. As Johnny and Arthur unfastened the yoke to let the invalid Tige go free, the creature looked around in wonder, as if to ask the reason of this unwonted proceeding. "Tige, my boy," said Arthur, "I am afraid you won't wear the yoke again." " Is he so bad as tha , Arty ? " asked Johnny, sympatheti cally, and almost with tears. "Well, you see, Johnny," interposed Barnard, " there ia very little chance for a critter that's alkalied ever to get well. That dose of melted fat we gave him yesterday didn't do him one bit of good. Hi says that he allowa that his milt is all eaten through with alkali. Whatevei the milt may be, I don't know ; do yor., Mont I " i y > THE BO Y EMIGRANTS. "Diaphragm, I gness," said Mont. 1 Dyer what?" asked Tom. "Dyer well, that's a gov/d one. 1 tell you it's the milt. Don't you know what the milt is?" ''Give it up," said Barney, shortly. "Hurrah, there's the Sierra ! " And as he spoke, their team, drawn now by one yoke, rounded the ragged summit of the ridge, and they beheld the Sierra Nevada. Below was a winding valley, dotted with isolated lofty pines, and bright with green grass. A blue stream ram bled about the vale and emptied into a muddy-looking lake at the south. This was Honey Lake, and the stream was Susan's River. Beyond, westward, was a vast Avail, bristling with trees and crowned with white peaks. It was the Snowy Range of Mountains. Beyond it was the promised land. The boys gazed w r ith delight on the emerald valley and the sparkling river ; but chiefly were they fascinated by the majestic mountains beyond these. They were not near enough to see the smaller features of the range. But their O ^ eyes at last beheld the boundary that shut them out of the Land of Gold. The pale green of the lower hills faded into a purple-blue, which marked where the heavy growth of pines began. Above this, and broken with many a densely shadowed gulch and ravine, rose the higher Sierra, bald and rocky in places, and shading off into a tender biiie where the tallest peaks, laced with snow, were sharp] y cut against the sky. Before the young emigrants were water, rest, and pasturage. But beyond were the mysterious fastnesses in which me7i, while they gazed, were unlocking the goldec secrets of the earth. Up there, in those vague blue THE GOI.LKN LAND. 193 shadows, where the mountain torrents have their birth, miners were rending the soil, breaking the rocks, and searching for hidden treasure. The boys pressed on. But two days passed before the emigrants, with their single yoke of cattle, and often delayed by swamps, and by getting on false trails, reached the base of the Sierra. It was now late in September, and the nights were cool. While on the high ridges west of the Great Desert, they had had a touch of cold weather. Ice had formed outside of the tent on more than one night ; and, inside, the boys had shivered under their blankets and buffalo skins, though the days were hot. But here was fuel in plenty. Here, too, at the foot of the mountains, they found a ranch, or farm, the tiller of which had steadily refused to be charmed away by tales of gold discoveries on the other side of the wall of mountains. He leaned on his rail fence and eyed the vast procession of emigrants with a cynical air. The boys almost envied him the possession of such a trim little farm ; for, though it was really rude and straggling, it looked like a home, a haven of rest, after their lung march in the desert and wilderness. They felt, for the first time, that they were ragged, uncouth, toil-stained, and vagabond ish in appear ance. Here was a man wearii.g a white shirt, or it was once white ; and a woman stood in the doorway, with knitting-work in her hands. It was a domestic picture, and in sharp contrast to emigrant life on the plains. "Oh, you're bound to the gold-diggin's, you be? "ho said, with an unpleasant leer. " Wai. now, I've heerd that men were makin' wages over there day wages jnst and flour at twenty dollars a hundred. But boys wal, now, this gets me! Boys? No wages yonder for you jest bet your life ! " 9 194 THE BOY E^ff GRANTS. "Don't you worry yourself, old man," retorted Hi, who always did the rude badinage of the party. ' We'll come back next week and buy out your shebang, boys or no boys, wages or no wages." " Got any vegetables to sell ? " asked Barney, civilly. "Vegetables! Stranger, look a-there!" said the raft- chero, pointing to a patch of ground well dug over. " D'ye Bee that there patch ? Wai, that there patch was full of corn and taters. Corn don't do well here ; too cold and short seasons. But this year them crazy critters that hev been pilin' over the mountains hev carried off every stalk and blade and ear. What they didn't beg, they stole ; and what wasn't growed, was carried off half-growed." " Stole your crop ? " " That's about the size of it. I'm from Michigan-, 1 am, and was brought up regular ; but I jest laid out in that corn-field, nights, with a double-barrel shot-gun, unte there wa'n't no corn for me to hide in. Stole ? Why, them pesky gold-hunters would hev carried the ground a\vay from under my feet, if they'd a-wauted it. Smart fellers, they be ! " " Why don't you go on and try your luck in the mines ?" asked Barnard, who, with Mont and Arty, had lingered behind, hoping that they might buy a few fresh vegetables. '' So far as I've heerd tell, there's no luck there. Here and there a chunk, but nothin' stiddy. The mines hev gi'n out ; they've been givin' out ever since they was struck, and now they've gi'n out clean." " And are you going to stay here and farm it 1 " asked Barney. "Young feller" and here the rough-faced rancherc put on a most sagacious air "ranchin' here is better than gold-diggin' over yender. Here I stay. That there's mj TEE GOLDEN LAND. 195 wife, Susan ; that's Susan's River yender, and this here'i Susanville, now hear me." " And you find farming profitable, although the emi grants steal your crop ?" " Wai, young feller," he said to Mont, " you're a sort of ci PI] -spoken chap ; seein' it's you, I'll sell you a few tateiy for a dollar a pound." The boys bought two pounds of potatoes and went on, alarmed at their first great extravagance. " Never mind," said Rose, when they told him of their purchase. "You'll have no more chance to buy potatoes after this. Reckon you might as well get yer fust and last taste of 'em now." Camping at night in the forests of the Sierra was like being in paradise. No more sand, no more sage-brush, no more brackish or hot water in the rivulets. Gigantic pines stretched far up into the star-lighted sky. Ice-cold streams danced over the mountain side. The cattle laid down to rest in nooks carpeted with lush grass. The boys built a tremendous fire in the midst of their camp, piling on the abundant fuel in very wantonness, as they remembered how lately they were obliged to economize handfuls of dry grass and weeds in their little camp-stove. This was luxury and comfort unspeakable ; and as they basked in the cheerful light and heat, Hi said : " I allow I'd just as soon stay here forever. The gold mines are a fool to this place.'" Barney poked the glowing fire, which was kindled against a mighty half-dead pine, and said : " Who votes this is a good place to stay in ? " There was a chorus of laughing " I's " about the fire, as the boys lounged in every comfortable attitude possible, At that, there was a horrible roar from the pine-tree by 1 96 THE BO Y EMIORAN1 '8. the fire, and from the midst of the curling flames suddenly appeared a huge creature, which bounded through the, blaze, scattered the brands, broke up the circle of loungers, who fled in all directions, knocked over little Johnny, and disappeared down the side of the mountain, with a savage growl. The boys stared at each other in blank amazement, and with some terror. " An elephant ! " " A tiger ! " " A catamount! " " A grizzly bear ! " " It was a bear 1 I felt his fur as he scrabbled over me ! " said Johnny with a scared face and his teeth chat tering. Just then, there was a shot down the mountain in the direction in which the monster had gone crashing through the underbrush. Then another, and another shot sounded. Everybody ran. They came up with two or three men fro>n a neighboring camp, running in the same direction. Reaching a little hollow in the wood, they found two em igrants examining a confused dark heap on the ground. " What is it? " cried the new-comers. " A b'ar," said one of the men, taking out his knife and making ready to skin the animal. " Heerd him crashin' through the brush and let him have it/'