T
HE next morning they found, to their satisfaction, that the river had sunk nearly a foot. The boat had risen considerably when the cargo had been removed the evening before, and the ropes overhead had been proportionately tightened, so that she now hung so high that the rents were well out of water, and they were able at once to set about the work of repair. There were tools on board, for during their prolonged trips it was often necessary to execute repairs of one kind or other. The flooring-boards were utilised for the repairs, and by evening the holes were closed effectually.
The next day the work was strengthened by additional ribs and stringers, a coat of pitch was put on outside and in, and Hiram pronounced the work complete. From time to time the ropes had been loosened as the river continued to fall, although less rapidly, and it was thought well not to put too great a strain upon them. The next morning the plug was again driven into the bottom of the boat, and they set to work to pump and bale her out, and then shifted the cargo back again from the raft. This was not a long job, and at night, after[128] a great washing-up of the cabins, to get rid of the mud that had been left there, they had the satisfaction of taking possession of their old quarters.
"Well, lad," Hiram said, when they lighted their pipes after supper, "I never thought we were coming so well out of that job. With plenty of rice and sugar, not to speak of rum, on board, I didn't expect we war going to starve, but I thought we might have been weeks and weeks—ay, months, may be—before any one came along, and the thought as came into my mind was as we should have to make a raft and pole along till we got out into the river again. However, here we are, with the boat not much the worse, and everything on board ready for a start in the morning; and it's thanks to you as we have done it, for I am free to say as I don't think as I should have hit on this plan as we have carried out. You are a good mate to work with, lad, and no mistake. I don't wish never to get a better. It's a pity ye don't mean to stick to it for good, for I can swar that you would make one of the best hands on the Mississippi, in time."
The journey down the river was continued next morning. At the first place they stopped at they heard reports of widespread damage, of great tracts submerged, and of danger to life; the river was still at full flood, although it had fallen two feet from its highest level, and the next ten days were spent in rescuing the unfortunate people from the tops of the houses, trees, and patches of rising ground on which they had taken refuge. Then, having done all they were able, and the river having now fallen nearly to its average level, they continued their voyage down to New Orleans.
Hiram, in his report of the voyage to his employer,[129] spoke in high terms of Frank's conduct, and ascribed to his quickness of invention their escape from what seemed likely to be an almost endless detention.
"But I am afraid he has made his last v'yage with me," he said; "he is talking of striking out across the plains to Californy. There was a good talk of gold thar before we started; and last night, after we came in, and went in for a drink and to hear the news, there didn't seem nothing else to talk about. The young chap was asking all sorts of questions, and I expect he's off; and I don't know as I blames him. He's the sort of fellow to get on. He has plenty of grit; he's strong and active now, and in a couple of years he will widen out and make a very big man. He's had a first-rate edication—he don't talk about it, but one would be blind not to see that—he will make his way wherever he goes, and I don't blame him for striking out from the river. He likes the river, too; but it ain't the place for making a fortin, unless you've got money at your back, as you have, boss. But I don't know if he had money, and could go into steamers and such-like, that he would stick to it.
"I don't know nowt of his history, but I think things must have gone hard with him somehow, and he came out here for excitement more than for making money. But there's nothing reckless about him; he don't drink, and he don't gamble, and it says a lot for a young fellow in New Orleans that he don't do one or the other. And he can fight, he can; there ain't no doubt about that. Why, I saw him give the biggest kind of a thrashing to the bully of a lumber camp, where we moored up alongside one night, as ever you seed. The chap was big enough to eat him, but he didn't have no kind of show. The young[130] un just hit him where he liked, and in five minutes that chap's face was a thing to see, and the lad never got so much as a scratch. I wouldn't have thought as a man could have used his hands like that if I hadn't been thar. I shall be right-down sorry to lose him."
"I knew well-nigh when I took him on that he was not likely to stay, Hiram; he said as much. He wanted to get to know something about the ways of the country before he decided upon anything. If all young fellows would do as he did, go to work for a few months, instead of loafing about spending their money, and getting into bad ways, and among bad fellows, it would be better for them; he has only drawn a few dollars for his expenses—when he was down the last time—since he came to work, so he has got a good sum due to him. I will have a talk with him myself. There are a good many parties starting from here and taking the Santa Fé route; but, taking them all in all, I don't think I should recommend him to hang on to one of them."
"No, I should guess they would be a pretty hard lot who would go out from here—gamblers, and horse-thieves, and runaway sailors, and Mexican fighters—neither good to travel with or good to work with; he had better go up and strike from St. Louis."
"He had better go higher still, Hiram; there's a northern route, and I hear a lot of the Western men are making across that. However, I will talk to him."
That afternoon Frank went into Mr. Willcox's little office.
"Hiram has been speaking in very high terms of you, and I find that I am indebted to you for the saving of the boat, with what cargo she had on board, which Hiram[131] said he had altogether given up as lost. You seem to have been in a position of very great danger, and to have had an extraordinarily narrow escape of your lives. However, I can understand that you are not content to settle down for life on the Mississippi, but I can tell you that with enterprise, judgment, and steadiness there is fortune to be made here still. I am not surprised that the gold-seeking mania has got hold of you."
"It is not so much, sir, the gold-seeking mania as the excitement attending it. I don't think I particularly care about making money, but I do want the excitement of such a life. I have come out for that, and not, as it is generally called, to make my fortune. The course of my life at home has been upset by circumstances into which I need not enter, and, at any rate for a time, I want action, and excitement. After that, perhaps, I may think of settling down, and what is called making my way."
"I can understand your feeling, lad, and will not try to persuade you to stop at this business. And now, what route are you thinking of taking across the continent?"
"I was thinking of joining a party going direct from here across to Santa Fé."
"I don't think that will be a good plan, lad. The caravans from here are composed, for the most part, of very hard characters, the sort of men who would shoot you for your horse if they took a fancy to it; I would by no means advise you to ally yourself with such men. I can, I think, put you in the way of a better plan than that. I find that a great number of caravans from the West are going by a northern route which crosses the Missouri at a point called Omaha. I have been thinking that this will become an important place, and have made up my mind to[132] freight four or five flats with flour, bacon, and other goods of all sorts, and a frame store, and to go up there and open a business. I shall want a handy man with me at first; I shall take up a storekeeper to leave there in charge, but at first he will want help. If you like to go up in charge of one of the scows, and to stay to help put up the store and set things running, I will give you a hundred dollars, and you can have your passage up for your horse, which I should advise you to buy here. You will get one that will carry you, though of course not much to look at, for about fifty dollars; I know several horse-dealers here, and will get one for you if you like. You had also better get a stout pony to carry your traps and provisions; that will cost about forty dollars. Then you must have a rifle and a Colt. These are absolutely necessary for such a journey, for I hear that the Indians are very troublesome on the plains. These, however, I myself shall have much pleasure in presenting you with, in testimony of the obligation I feel I owe you for saving my boat and goods. The hundred dollars that are due to you, and the hundred that you will further earn at Omaha, will be sufficient for your horses and outfit, which will leave this money which you placed in my hands untouched. You will find that very useful, for you will want to buy a tent and provisions and tools out there, and money to keep you till you hit upon gold. Well, what do you think of my offer?"
"I am extremely obliged to you, sir; nothing could suit me better. And I am indeed greatly obliged for your kind offer of a rifle and revolver; they will certainly be most necessary, by what one hears of the journey."
"You have some other clothes, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir; I have another suit in my portmanteau."[133]
"Very well, put them on, and come back here in an hour's time. It will be a week before my steamer starts, and you had better come and stop with me till then; it will keep you out of mischief, and I should be glad of your company."
At the appointed time Frank returned to the office, dressed in the suit of clothes he had brought with him. A light carriage with a pair of horses was standing at the door.
"Ah!" Mr. Willcox laughed, as he came out, "I fancy you look more like yourself now."
Frank took his place in the carriage, Mr. Willcox took the reins, the negro servant sprang up behind, and they were soon rattling through the streets of the town.
Mr. Willcox's house was situated two miles out of the city. It was a large building, with a verandah running round it, and standing in well-kept and handsome grounds; three or four negroes ran out as the carriage drove up.
"Sam, take this gentleman's portmanteau upstairs, and get a bath ready for him at once, and lay out a suit of white clothes for him.
"We always have a bath before dinner in this country," he said to Frank; "one wants to get rid of the dust of the day. Dinner will be ready in half an hour."
After enjoying a luxurious bath, and attiring himself in a suit of snowy-white gear, Frank descended to the dining-room.
Mr. Willcox was a widower, without children, and they therefore dined alone. As they were sitting over their wine after dinner in the verandah, Frank's host said, "I do not wish to be inquisitive, but if you don't mind[134] telling me, I should like to know why a young fellow like yourself should embark upon a life of adventure."
Frank had met with such kindness from his employer, that he frankly told him the whole history of the events which had driven him from England.
"It is a singular story," the trader said, "and I own that appearances were against you. Of course I don't know him, and may be misjudge him altogether, but the only person who appears to me to have had any interest whatever in getting you into disgrace, and causing you to leave the country, is your cousin."
"Fred Barkley," Frank exclaimed, in surprise; "I can assure you such an idea never entered my mind; he is not at all a bad fellow, though certainly he is not popular at School."
"I should prefer taking the general verdict of the School to yours," the trader said; "boys are seldom far out in their estimate of persons; they have more instinct than men, and a boy is seldom far wrong in his estimate of character.
"The fact that he is generally unpopular is, in my mind, a proof that there is something wrong about this cousin of yours. Then what you tell me, that he refused to lend you the money which would have got you out of your scrape, while he afterwards came forward with twenty pounds to enable you to get away, is another strong point. The advice which he gave you was distinctly bad; for you had much better have remained, and to the last have protested your innocence. Then there is another point. Did I gather from your words that you and he are the nearest relations to the wealthy uncle with whom you lived?"[135]
"Yes, that is so," Frank replied.
"Then, in case of your disgrace, it is by no means improbable that your uncle will leave him the whole of the money. Is that so?
"I have no doubt of it," Frank assented.
"Then you see he has a very strong interest in bringing you into discredit. Besides there were only, you say, five people who had any knowledge of this affair, and of your need for the money. None of the other four had the slightest possible interest in bringing you into disgrace; he had a very strong interest, and, take my word for it, your cousin is at the bottom of the whole affair."
"I cannot believe it," Frank said, rising from his chair and pacing up and down the verandah; "if I thought so I would return to England by the next ship and have it out with him."
"But you have no shadow of proof," Mr. Willcox said, "it is a matter of suspicion only. Even had the idea occurred to you at first, you would only have injured yourself by stating it, for it would have been regarded as a hideous aggravation of your crime to bring such a charge against your cousin unsupported by a shadow of proof. No; now you have taken your line you must go through with it, and trust to time to right you. It is a suspicion only, but you mark my words, if the mystery is ever solved it will be found that your cousin was at the bottom of it."
Frank spent a very pleasant week at the charming residence of Mr. Willcox. The latter entertained a good deal, and Frank met at his house several of the leading merchants of New Orleans, and acquired a good deal of knowledge of the state of the country. Most of them[136] were incredulous as to the stories of the abundance of gold in California. That gold had been discovered they did not deny; but they were of opinion that the find would be an isolated one, and that ruin would fall upon the crowds who were hastening either across the continent, or by ship via Panama, to the new Eldorado. Several of them tried to dissuade Frank from his intention of going thither, and more than one offered to place him in their counting-houses, or to procure him employment of other kind.
Frank, however, was firm, for he was going, not for the sake of making money, but of finding adventure and excitement. He went down every day to the wharf and superintended the loading of the scows, and at the end of ten days he resumed his boatman's clothes and took his place on one of the scows. Hiram accompanied him, with eight negroes, two for each flat. A tug took them in tow, and they started up the river. Mr. Willcox was to follow by a steamer next day, and would arrive at Omaha some time before them, and have time to choose and buy a lot of land for his store, and to have all in readiness for their arrival. Frank had purchased a strong, serviceable horse for his own riding, and a pony for his baggage, together with blankets and other necessaries for the journey. His mining outfit he decided to get at Sacramento, as, although the cost would be considerable, he did not wish to encumber himself with it on his journey across the plains. The rifle and revolver had been presented him by Mr. Willcox, and he determined to practise steadily with both on his voyage up the river, as his life might depend on his proficiency with his weapons.
The voyage up the Mississippi and Missouri was performed[137] without any notable adventure, although in the little-known waters of the upper river the tug ran several times aground. Those on board the flats had but little to do, their duties being confined to pumping out the water when there was any leakage; and the negroes had been taken up more for the purpose of unloading the cargo, carrying it to its destination, and putting up the store, than for any service they could render on the voyage. Frank, who had laid in a large store of ammunition for the purpose, amused himself by practising with his pistol at a bottle towed behind the scow, or with his rifle at floating objects in the stream, in feeding and taking care of his horses, and in listening to many yarns from Hiram.
"I can tell you, lad," the latter said one day, when, after passing St. Louis, they had entered the waters of the Missouri, "thar have been changes on this river since I was a youngster. I was raised at St. Louis, which was not much more than a frontier town in those days, and most of the work lay below; here and there there was a farm on the Missouri, but they got thinner as they got higher up, and long before we got to where we are going it was all Indian country. I used to go up sometimes with traders, but I never liked the job: first, I didn't like selling 'fire-water,' as they called it, to the Indians, for it made them mad, and brought on quarrels and wars; in the next place, it was a dangerous business. The Indians used to meet the traders at some place they had appointed beforehand, and there would be big feastings; sometimes the traders would come back with the boat loaded up with buffalo robes and skins, and Indian blankets, and such like; once or twice they didn't come back at all, and it was just a mercy that I didn't stay behind with them on one of the trips.[138]
"I went up with a trading party to a place somewhere near this Omaha; we had three boats, with six voyageurs in each. I was about five-and-twenty then, and was steersman of one of them. There were four traders; they were in my boat, and they played cards and drank all the way up. One of the boats was a flat—not a flat like this, but just a big flat-bottomed boat,—for they were going, as I understood, to get some good horses from the Indians and take them down to St. Louis. We had pretty hard work getting her along, and a weak crew would never have got her against the stream, though of course we chose a time when the river was low and there wasn't much stream on. Sometimes we rowed, sometimes we poled, keeping along the shallows and back waters; and, though the pay was good, I wasn't sorry when we got to the place appointed; not only because the work was hard, but because I didn't like the ways of them traders, with their gambling, and drinking, and quarrelling. However, they gave up drink the last day, and were sober enough when they landed.
"I don't know why, but I didn't think things were going to turn out well. I had heard the traders say as they didn't mean to come up that part of the country agin, and I knew their goods warn't of no account, and that they were going to trade off bad stuff on the Indians. The first two days things went on all right; every evening large lots of goods were brought down to the boats, but except when I went up with the others to the traders' tent to bring the things down I didn't go about much. It was a large camp, with two or three hundred braves, as they calls 'em. I told the men in my boat what I thought of it; but they didn't think much of[139] what I said, and traded a little on their own account, for it was part of the agreement that each man should be allowed to take up fifty dollars-worth of goods, and have room for what he could get for them. I traded mine away the first day for some buffalo robes, and so hadn't anything to take me away from the boat.
"The third day the trading was done; there was to be a grand feast that night, and the boats were to start the next morning. Most of the men went up to see the fun, but I persuaded two of my mates in my boat to stop quiet with me. Presently I heard a yell from the camp, which was about three hundred yards away. 'That's mischief,' says I. I had scarce spoken when there was a yelling fit to make your har stand on end, and I heard pistol-shots. 'Quick,' lads, says I, 'catch up a hatchet and stave a hole in the other boats, and push ours a little way out from the bank.' We warn't long in doing that, and then we stopped and listened.
"There was a sharp fight going on, that we could hear, and guessed how it must be going when they war twenty to one. Presently the shouting and firing ceased, and then against the sky-line—for they had lots of fires blazing in camp—we saw a crowd of Injuns come rushing down to the river. We shoved the boat off, and took to our oars; they shouted to us, and then fired at us, and shot their arrows, and swarmed down into the other two boats to come after us, and there was a fresh burst of yells when they found that they wouldn't swim. We didn't stop to talk, you may be sure, but rowed as hard as we could.
"The night was pretty dark, and though several bullets hit the boat, and a dozen of their arrows fell into it, only one of us had a scratch, and that wasn't serious. As soon[140] as we war fairly away, we set to work to roll up the buffalo robes and skins into big bales, and lay them along on each side of the boat, so as to form a protection for us from their bullets and arrows; for we guessed they would follow us down, and in many places the river was so shallow they could ride pretty well out to us. They did follow us, on horseback, for the next two days, and shot at us pretty hot at times. Once they rode so far out in the shallows that we dared not pass them; so we dropped anchor above, and took to our rifles, and gave them a pretty sharp lesson, for th............