There came through the night loud crashing and rumbling sounds, and a confusion of men’s voices from the steep road leading down from Fort Ridgely to the boat-landing on the Minnesota River.
All afternoon, big William Ferguson and his ten-year-old brother, Timothy, had watched the six-mule teams of the United States Army trot down the steep narrow road with guns, caissons and army supplies, for Colonel Pemberton had been ordered to leave the Sioux frontier in Minnesota and rush his battery and men to Washington as fast as possible. Fort Sumter had been fired on. President Lincoln had called for 75,000 volunteers, and from north and west, the scattered detachments and batteries of the regular army were rushed to Washington. The long-threatened Civil War had begun.
But in those days, Minnesota was a long way from the Atlantic coast, for the railroads had only just touched the Mississippi River. The soldiers at Fort Ridgely had to travel five hundred miles by steamboat to La Crosse, and in order to make all possible haste, they continued by torchlight the loading of guns, caissons, ammunition, horses, and stores.
It was the liveliest day little Tim Ferguson and his big brother, Bill, had ever seen. Bill had at last gone to sleep, wrapped in his blanket, with his head resting on a coil of rope, but the active Tim had never tired of watching the soldiers loading the big guns, and the carpenters and engineers repairing the boat for the fast and dangerous downriver trip on the flooded, winding Minnesota.
When the crash of timbers and the shouts of men rang through the night, he shook his sleeping brother, calling:
“Get up, Bill, get up! A mule team has rolled down the bluffs; I told you they would. Come along, Bill!”
Tim had guessed right. Among the trees lay the wagon and mules, while boxes of shells and hard-tack were scattered through the brush. Had it not been for the trees and brush, men, mules and wagon would have rolled straight into the swollen river.
“He’s sure a goner,” remarked one of the men, as he cut the traces of Old Harmony, the biggest mule of the battery. The neck of the mule was caught between two trees and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth full length. However, no sooner was he released, than he got up, shook himself, scrambled up the bluff and did not stop until he reached the corral, where he uttered one of those bugle-calls which had earned him the name of Old Harmony. But soldiers are accustomed to accidents of this kind, and within half an hour, Old Harmony’s Six were once more hitched to the big army-wagon. Both drivers and mules were a little more careful to keep the road and, by the light of glaring and smoking torches and blazing bonfires, the loading of the boat was rapidly finished.
When reveille sounded at daybreak, the men marched into the mess-hall at Fort Ridgely for their last breakfast in Minnesota.
There had been little sleep at the post during the night. Had a painter like Catlin been present, he could have left us some fine dramatic canvases.
Opposite the side of the fort which faced the open prairie away from the river, some six or seven hundred Sioux Indians were encamped. Only the squaws and the little children rolled up in their blankets in the tepees that night. Some of the men sat smoking around their camp-fires, but most of them sat on the river bank watching the boatmen and the soldiers working in the red glare of the torches and bonfires. They had heard that the white people were having a war amongst themselves. Now they knew that the story was true. The soldiers were going away on the steamer, and with the soldiers were going most of the big guns, against whose terrible thunder, balls, and canister no Indian braves have ever been able to keep up their courage.
“If the soldiers go away and take the big guns, we can get back the land along our river. We have been cheated out of it, and the Whites have never paid us for it,” a middle-aged warrior remarked.
“We can do more,” added a fierce-looking young man, known as the Boaster; “we can drive all the Whites out of Minnesota. But we shall keep their horses and their squaws and we shall make big feasts of their oxen. The Winnebagoes will help us. We shall make peace with the Chippewas and they will help us.
“We shall have our villages again at Kaposia and at Wabasha, on the Great River, and the Whites will have to stay on the other side of the Great River. This is our country and Manitou will send back the buffalo and the elk, and the deer will become numerous again. We shall have plenty of meat and skins as in the days of our fathers before the Whites had poisoned the land with their plows, for the black soil which the plows turn up is bad medicine for buffalo and elk and deer.”
When the shadows of the trees began to be reflected on the grayish current, the last morning blast of the Fanny Harris echoed over the flooded valley. The three howitzers left at the fort fired a salute, the few remaining men cheered their departing comrades and the soldiers on board replied with a ringing hurrah for Abe Lincoln and Fort Ridgely. Then the pilot rang a bell, the hawsers were drawn on board, the big stern-wheel churned the water to a white foam, the heavily-laden steamer backed into the current, turned around slowly, and headed down stream for Fort Snelling near St. Paul.
On board, besides the soldiers, were Bill and Tim Ferguson, Sam Baker, a trapper, and Black Buffalo, an Indian scout.
The Ferguson brothers were Southern boys from Vicksburg, who had come North with a man they called Cousin Hicks, and with whom they lived in a squatter’s cabin a few miles below Fort Ridgely. Hicks, about whose business in the Indian country there were many conflicting rumors afloat, had been away for a week visiting the Indians on the upper Minnesota, and in his absence Baker and Black Buffalo had invited the Ferguson boys to go with them to Fort Snelling and St. Paul.
The trip of the Fanny Harris from Fort Ridgely to La Crosse was never forgotten by any one on board. The Fanny Harris being a stern-wheeler, was naturally difficult to steer in a strong current. The Minnesota is one of the most twisted and crooked rivers in the West. In April, 1861, the water was so high that the placid, winding river had grown a mile wide, flooding its valley from bluff to bluff, and in many places the water flowed with a rushing current, crossing the river bed at all angles and making innumerable short cuts across fields, marshes, and woods.
“Back her up,” the pilot’s bell would sound as he tried to round one of the countless points or bends. But it was impossible to back the heavy boat against the current. The engineers could not even stop her. The best they could do was to check her speed and let her drift flanking around the wooded points, where trees and boughs raked her whole length, tearing down stanchions, guards, and gingerbread work with a deafening crash.
At other times, she would plunge straight into the timber, bending the smaller willows and other brush like so many reeds and tearing good-sized trees by the roots out of the soft mud, but before she could be again gotten into clear water, a big cottonwood bough had torn away another joint of her chimneys and smashed another part of her pilot-house.
But all this time, Colonel Lantry, who had been in supreme command ever since the boat had left Fort Snelling, stood on deck with the captain, or at the wheel with the pilots.
“Keep her going, keep her going! Keep your wheel turning!” were the only orders he gave to captain or pilot as he dodged trees and falling timbers.
“We must get to Washington, before the Rebels get there!”
“We’ll never get there,” vowed an old artilleryman who had been through the Mexican war with this same battery. “This is worse than a battle. We’ll never get there. We’ll be swimming around with the muskrats and roosting on the drift-wood and haystacks with them.
“I’d rather be in a battle where I can use my piece, than sail through the timber in this blooming tub on this beastly twisted river!”
Toward evening the steamer again crashed into the timber and a willow tree, springing back as the side of the boat had passed it, tore away several planks or buckets from the wheel.
“Boys, it’s for the rat-houses now,” called out the old gunner as the boat stopped with a crash.
But Colonel Lantry coolly repeated his usual: “Keep her going, Captain; keep her going! The Government will build you a new boat!” However, with a broken wheel she could not keep going.
“Take the anchor over to the other shore,” Captain Faucette ordered three men. “Then pass the line around the capstan and we’ll pull her back into open water. Well tie up here for the night and repair the wheel.”
Repairing the wheel was hard and dangerous work. With one hand the men worked at screwing down and unscrewing bolts and nuts, with the other hand they hung on to dripping, slippery planks and beams.
“Careful men, careful,” Captain Faucette cautioned them. “Any man that goes overboard into this icy current is lost.”
By the light of lanterns and torches, the men worked with a will. One bucket was just being lifted into place, when there was a scramble and a plunge—“Man overboard!” The cry arose and at once there was a confusion of hurrying feet and calling voices.
Tim, the Indian, and the trapper were just eating supper, while Bill had been watching and helping the men. Bill ripped off his coat. “Hold up the torches!” he called, and sprang after the man, who was just disappearing behind the wheel. The icy flood almost choked him, but he struck out after the man. By the glare of the torches he caught a glimpse of him bobbing up and being carried toward a mass of driftwood. He seized the back of the man’s shirt, pulled him to the driftwood, and tried to climb up, but it would not support his weight. He hooked his left arm around an overhanging willow, and with his right hand he raised the man’s head above the current.
“Bring a boat, quick!” he called. “I can’t hold on long. I’m all numb!”
In a few minutes, Mattson, the unfortunate carpenter, and Bill were safe on board and Colonel Lantry took charge of them.
With his right hand he raised the man’s head above the current.
With his right hand he raised the man’s head above the current.
“Here,” he said to two soldiers, “turn this man over on his face and bring him to. You know how.”
Then to the men: “On with your work, men. We must reach Fort Snelling to-morrow night.”
Bill had slipped away to his corner on the coil of ropes. His teeth chattered and his hands felt so numb that he could hardly wriggle out of his wet and sticky garments.
When he was once more in dry clothes, he hurried to the mess-room and asked the cook for the hottest tea he had.
The cook did not have to be told.
“I’d give you something better,” he said, “if I had it, but the hot milk is all gone. The captain is in a deuce of a hurry, so we went right by Mankato and St. Peter without stopping.”
After two cups of hot tea, sweetened with plenty of brown sugar, Bill’s teeth stopped rattling, but set themselves with a will into the meal of ham, potatoes, and bread placed before the hungry boy, who had not yet had his supper.
While Bill was eating, Colonel Lantry came around.
“Where did you learn it, boy?” he asked. “It was a neat piece of work.”
“Oh, I learned it at Vicksburg,” Bill replied. “We boys used to swim across the river, but there the water is warm.”
“At Vicksburg,” the officer repeated. “You are not going to Vicksburg! You are too young to enlist. You had better stay in Minnesota. There’s likely to be hell at Vicksburg before this war is over.”