The Young Alaskans on the Missouri Part 6

CHAPTER VII

THE GATE OF THE WEST

Nearly a week had pa.s.sed since the last recorded camp of the crew of the _Adventurer_--spent in steady progress across the great and beautiful state of Missouri and its rich bottom lands, its many towns, its farms and timber lands and prairies. Many an exclamation at the wild beauty of some pa.s.sing scene had been theirs in the constant succession of changing river landscapes.

Their own adventures they had had, too, with snags and sweepers and the dreaded "rolling sands" over which the current boiled and hissed ominously; but the handlers of the boat were well used to bad water on their earlier trips together, in the upper wildernesses of the continent, so they made light of these matters.

"I don't believe that Patrick Ga.s.s put down all the bears they got,"

said Jesse. "Clark says they got a lot, sometimes two a day, and they 'jurked' the meat, the same as vension. Gee! I wish I'd been along!"

Rob smiled. "I expect the hunters had a hard time enough. They had to work through heavy weeds and vines in these bottoms, and if they got back in very far they had to guess where the boat would be. And even Lewis complains of ticks and mosquitoes and heavy going ash.o.r.e."

"I believe things poisoned Clark worse than they did Lewis, he was so fair skinned," said John. "One of his regular entries all along was, 'Mosquitrs (or musketos or muskeeters) very troublesome.'"

"Poor Clark!" smiled Rob. "What with rubbing 'musquitr' bites and spelling in his daily report, he must have had a hard time. He had another regular entry, too, as you said, Jesse, that about the 'jentle brease.' I don't know how many ways he spelled it, but he seems to have had no confidence at all in his own spelling. Look here: on June 1st he has a 'jentle brease,' and on June 20th a 'jentle breese'; but not content when he got it right, he calls it a 'gentle Breeze' the next time, then drops back to 'gentle breeze' on July 21st. He repeats that on August 12th, the next raising it to 'gentle Breeze'; and then it's a 'gentle breeze,' a 'jentle Breeze,' 'gentle breeze,' and 'gentle Brease'--till he gets perfectly irresponsible, up the river!"

"What a funny man!" snickered Jesse, once more.

"He didn't do it to be funny," said Rob. "Once I asked a kid cow puncher to make a horse pitch some more for me, so I could make a photo of it; and he said, 'Why, I didn't make him pitch--he just done that hisself.'

Well, I guess that's how to account for Clark's spelling--he 'just done that hisself.'"

Uncle d.i.c.k had not been paying much attention to the boys just then, but was watching the smoke clouds ahead. Pa.s.sing trains whistled loudly and frequently. The sh.o.r.es became more populated.

"Two miles more and we'll round to full view of Kansas City, young men,"

said he. "We've crossed the whole and entire state of Missouri, three hundred and ninety miles--from one great city to another great one.

"St. Louis--Kansas City! Each in her day has been the Gate to the West.

In 1847, Independence, over to the left, was going back, and even the new boat landing of Westport was within the year to be called Kansas City. Then she was the Gate indeed, and so she has remained through various later sorts of transportation.

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

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

"Oh, can't we go over the Oregon Trail, too--next year, Uncle d.i.c.k?"

broke in John.

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

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

"But think of the giant trees in here, those days--sycamores, cottonwoods, as well as oaks and ash and hickories and elms and mulberries and maples. And the gra.s.s tall as a man's waist, and 'leavel,' as they called it. Is it any wonder that Will Clark got worked up over some of the views he saw from high points on the river bends?

Those, my boys, were the happy days--oh, I confess, Jesse, many a time I've wished I'd been there my own self!"

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

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

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

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

"Sure we can!" said Jesse, stoutly.

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

"And now, if we're done with the arithmetic----"

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

"Oh! And you want to know, if a boy of your size could catch fifteen head of fish in eight days, how many could we all catch in thirty days?

That's getting out of my depth, Jesse! I don't know, but I hope that the gasoline and the catfish both hold out, for they are our main staffs of life just now."

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

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

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

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

"A week or so," replied Uncle d.i.c.k, carelessly, and not showing his pride in the performance of the party. "You see, we've got double engines and we travel under forced draught, with the stokers stripped to the waist and doing eight s.h.i.+fts a day."

"Like enough, like enough!" laughed Johnson, not crediting their run.

"Well, what kin I do fer ye here?"

"Get our tanks filled. Unpack our boat and store the stuff on your boat so it can't be stolen. Overrun our engines and oil her up. Clean out the bilge and make her a sweet s.h.i.+p."

"When?"

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

"That's all right," replied Johnson. "I'll not fail ye, and I'll not let anything git losted, neither."

"I know that," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "By the way, Johnson, which is the best outfitting store in Westport?"

"As which, sir?"

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

Old Johnson scratched his head. "Go on, Colonel, you're always havin'

yer joke. I'm sure I don't know what ye mean by Indypendence, or Westport. But if you want to get uptown, the street cars is four blocks yan. Er maybe ye'd like a taxi?"

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