Читать книгу Spring Came on Forever - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 8

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Matthias Meier was standing on the dock at St. Louis, surveying the scene before him with both impatience and satisfaction.

A wilderness of steamboats confronted his vision. Some were just leaving dock, the hoarse coughing of their exhaust-pipes making discordant notes. Others were coming in, the screeching of their whistles adding to the already deafening din. Small boats slipped in and out and between the larger freighters like busy waterbugs, twisting and turning with insect abandon. The air was charged with the electric-like energy of movement.

As he surveyed the vessel Missouri Queen, in which he was to make the rest of his trip up the Big Muddy, he had the complacent feeling of already having accomplished his objective.

He had arrived in St. Louis without mishap and the overland travelers would be moving much more slowly than he,--of that he was sure. The stolid oxen and heavy-footed horses pulling their clumsy prairie-schooners would do scarcely more than sixteen miles per day. There would be the long halts to make camp. Added to that would be the perverseness of the cattle the settlers were driving, their stubborn stops and futile meanderings off the trail. The rains, too, were delaying the caravan, no doubt. Black Illinois and Iowa mud would be an obstacle with which to reckon. Even at this date he would wager anything they had not gone one-third of the way across Iowa.

Rains would not delay the steamboat, he thought exultingly. She would slip up the Big Muddy and land him in Nebraska City before the colonists had arrived. To see Amalia face to face,--to confront her father,--nothing could then keep her from him. He thought rather shamefacedly of his agony there in the woods when all the time the remedy of it was possible.

He surveyed the vessel now with a boyish sense of proprietorship. Never having been on a Missouri River steamer before he eagerly took in the details of this one that was to house him for his long journey.

She was an attractive-looking craft, one deck above the other, the pilot-house and texas still above those. The whiteness of her newly applied coat of paint made her look very aristocratic riding there majestically on the slow rise and dip of the river, a little like the birthday cakes his aunt had made,--the main deck one layer, the boiler deck another, then the texas, containing the suite of rooms for the vessel's officer, topped by the pilot-house high over the river so that the height of the pilot might stress the clarity of his vision in seeing down into the sandy channels. High above all these towered the two lofty smokestacks carrying their sparks away from the roof and giving a strong draft to the furnace,--the candles on the cake, he thought, and grinned to himself at his whimsy.

Two cannon faced bankward in both directions, probably used now only for the purpose of firing salutes, but carrying withal that gesture of authority for any loitering miscreants.

She was about two hundred feet long and perhaps thirty-five wide, he decided. The bottom looked flat. His curiosity keen, he asked a Negro crew-hand near how much water she drew and was told with much grotesque flapping of large hands that she was "drawin' thirty inches now, boss," but would be down to fifty when the five hundred tons of cargo were all aboard.

That cargo was now being loaded,--great hogsheads of molasses, household goods, horses, wagons, mules, bales of hay and oats for the stock aboard, these latter supplies to be replenished in St. Joseph.

The vessel was propelled by a steam wheel,--two engines on the respective sides connecting directly with the wheel shaft. The last word in river craft, she had steam capstans in the forecastle and two huge spars for that possible occasion when she would have to be pushed over the tricky shifting sands of the river.

"Dis old ribber . . ." the deck-hand contributed, "she done be onreli'ble as a gal."

It set Matthias' mind to working again, momentarily drawn away by the reference to woman and her caprices. Where was Amalia now? Where the ox-train creeping over the plains? What if it were farther along than his judgment had told him? He grew anxious at the thought.

"There must be no delay," he said. "It's necessary that I get to Nebraska City as soon as possible."

At which the dark boy gave a white, flashing smile and threw out those expressive brown flappers. "Yas sah! Ah'll tell old Missie Ribber about dat."

And then they were leaving,--with the hoarse sound of whistles, bells, chugging of wheels, Negroes' songs, laughter, sobbing, farewells. It gave Matthias a momentary pang in remembering his recent parting from the good uncle and aunt whose disappointment at his going had been so keen, the latter of whom had given him a needle-book, admonitions, a New Testament, mittens, advice and packages of quinine, calomel and catnip.

Leaning on the railing now, Matthias' blood beat warm within him. This was the real part of the journey. On to a new country,--a new start in life! On to Nebraska City in the raw new territory to be there when the Lutheran settlers came in! His enthusiasm over the future knew no bounds. Some of it was an impassioned emotion over the fact that he would still have Amalia, some the natural reactions after his grief and disappointment, some his forward-looking plans for a new business in a new country, and some of it was merely Hope of Youth.

The gang-plank was up now. They were really under way. Crowds thronged the rails. Almost all were calling out their last farewells. It seemed that Matthias was the only one without friends left behind. No, there was one other,--a sun-burned, leathery-looking sort of young fellow apparently about his own age. They were not far apart, and through some interchange of thought, perhaps, just now their eyes met in a quick appraising look. So friendly did each seem to find the other's expression that almost simultaneously they drew together at the rail.

"First trip?" the young chap asked Matthias.

"Yes. Yours?"

"Nope. First one was ten years ago when I was nine. Mother was a widder woman. Took us up the Muddy to find a home. Landed at Plattsmouth. Just three or four houses there then,--Mother knowed one of the families. Had to sleep on the floor with several other newcomers. Toward mornin' door opened and three old Injun bucks come in and stepped around all over us lookin' down in our faces. Had the hardest time gettin' Ma to stay and settle. She was all for leggin' it back to the steamer still tied up to the post and vamoosin' in favor of returnin' to civilization." And the young fellow laughed long and hilariously.

They told each other their names and destinations.

"Charlie Briggs."

"Matthias Meier."

"Plattsmouth in the main, but stoppin' in Nebraska City, claimin' my team I left there and pushin' on to Plattsmouth 'cross the prairie."

"Nebraska City is where I'm stopping for a time."

There was other information Matthias gleaned from his new-found friend that first afternoon of their acquaintance. Charlie Briggs had learned surveying. He had a homestead not far from Plattsmouth but mostly his younger brothers looked after it while he was off on all sorts of surveying, freighting and scouting missions.

"Volunteered a year ago last October to help put down the Sioux Injuns. Saw the Plum Creek massacre in Phelps County,--got home the very day last April year, the life o' the best president of these here United States got snuffed out."

Both were silent for a few moments,--that wordless reverence of all Union men for the fallen leader.

But not for long could Charlie Briggs remain silent.

He knew--and talked of--the great Platte Valley, had been up the Elkhorn, taken one trip to the Republican Valley. The Platte, he said, was flat and by nature treeless. It had shallow, muddy water, swarms of mosquitoes and greenhead flies, prairie-dog towns and rattlesnakes,--the country of the Elkhorn was rich and fine with quite a bit of natural timber along the creeks and rivers. He explained the trails, north and south of the Platte River,--the one on the south with its converging trails like the tines of a fork starting from Independence, Missouri, St. Joseph, Leavenworth, and Nebraska City.

He had all the information of the new country at his tongue's end,--the difference of the soil in the Platte, the Elkhorn, the Republican, and the Loup Valleys. He knew where the native trees thrived--the cottonwood, and the oak, the elm and the ash. He knew the Indian tribes, their locale and their habits,--told Matthias about the old Pawnees that had once lived in the Valley of the Republican, the Kitkehahki tribe, and the chief who at the instigation of the young Lieutenant Pike had ordered down the Spanish flag flying in front of the lodge and raised the Stars and Stripes; related the story of the attack on the Arikara Indians by the soldiers from Fort Atkinson who were joined by the Sioux enemies of the Arikaras, how they overpowered them and feasted on the Indians' roasted corn while the peace treaty was being negotiated.

He had at his tongue's end the history of much of the territory since the days of Coronado and his Spanish horsemen who had once set out to discover the mythical land of Quivira with its silver and precious stones and its king who slept under a great tree with golden bells on its branches, and found instead a vast plain with wild grass and Indians and queer cows with humped backs.

He enjoyed the telling of these tales and not in all the afternoon did he cease from imparting them. "Follow the prairie-dogs and Mormons and you'll find good land," was one of his sage pieces of wisdom.

It rather fascinated Matthias, the young man's ready knowledge of the territory since an earlier day,--and his own more recent adventures.

"Killed buffaloes? Lord, by the dozens. Pick on your animal, shoot, skin the carcass, let it freeze, chop off a hunk with your ax, throw it in a Dutch oven and a couple hours later get busy."

With no recess for his monologue, he went on:

"Buffalo used to be swimmin' along here where we are most any time. They tell a yarn about a greenhorn seein' 'em once for the first time when he was off in a yawl with a passel o' old timers. This fellow could handle a rope right smart, so they got him to set in the bow with a lasso and the first one they should wound could be roped. Some of the crew fired and wounded one but the greenie threw the rope over the head of one that wasn't hit. The crew shouted and backed oars to get old man Buffalo in deeper waters, but his feet touched bottom and he went up the bank with the boat tied to him and would have took it on a cruise all over the prairie if the stem of it hadn't been wrenched off and carried away by the mad animal. Fellows was left shipwrecked far away from their steamboat."

Matthias grinned his skepticism. "Funny how the fellow couldn't have let go of the rope."

Charlie Briggs spat over the railing: "Never spile a good story . . . and besides rope wa'n't so plentiful they wanted to give any away."

"Any hostility along here now from Indians?" Matthias had carried the question in his mind for some time.

"Naw. Only a few years ago they was barricadin' decks and state-rooms,--keepin' up day and night vigilance. Mostly now any hostilities is above the Niobrara from the Sioux tribes on farther west. Pawnees is friendly."

By dusk the boat tied up for the night,--navigation through the treacherous sand-bars was too precarious. If Matthias chafed at the lost hours, he had only to remember that the overland travelers were making camp too.

He and Charlie Briggs sat out on the deck talking until the mosquitoes drove them in, when they joined the other passengers in the too-crowded parlor-like cabin,--for the most part a motley crowd of fussy old ladies with poodle-dogs, anxious mothers with sleeping children, planters, giddy young girls, whole families moving to the new country, many unattached men. Immigration to the territories of Kansas and Nebraska was heavy.

There was some attempt at music that evening in the stuffy cabin,--a group of young fellows volunteering the tear-jerking "Thou Hast Learned to Love Another" and "Meet Me By Moonlight Alone" and the rendition of "Marching Through Georgia" with an aftermath of sullen remarks and a miniature reproduction of the late war on an after-deck.

Matthias' eyes swept the clusters of young girls coldly in spite of the evident admiration for his stalwart figure some of them plainly showed. Not one was little, dainty, fair-haired and blue-eyed. How could a man care for any other type?

In the days that followed, the boat proceeded very slowly on its up-river journey, gliding along smoothly enough over the turbid water. On the seventh day it put in at Weston for repairs. Matthias chafed over the delay until Charlie Briggs hinted broadly: "Ye'd think the' was some reason why ye got to git there."

Matthias, however, was non-committal. He would never wear his heart on his sleeve, particularly to one he had known no longer than young Briggs. But unlike as the two young men were, there were qualities which drew them together on the whole trip,--a common love of adventure and progress, sincerity of purpose, and some unnamed characteristic which each felt in the other,--a sort of gallant attitude toward humanity.

It was the morning of the ninth day out before they could proceed. The weather turned cold and disagreeable. There was no more promenading on the wind-swept deck by the giggling girls. There were various rumbles of dissatisfaction from the passengers, too, for eatables were getting low and fare was very poor.

They were in Kansas now. One side of the river bank was sheer steep bluffs, the other vast stretches of prairie, dotted with patches of timber. It all looked very wild.

On the eleventh day they docked at St. Joe. A child died and was taken ashore by a hysterical family. A doctor was called hurriedly from the passengers to attend a woman in childbirth in one of the stuffy state-rooms. A young bride came aboard on her way to California, happy and blithesome, thinking that all California was a paradise. Life is a loom, weaving gay colors indiscriminately with those of somber hue.

And now the long journey was nearing its end. They would get to Brownville on the twelfth day,--the seat of the United States land office in which Daniel Freeman only a little over three years before had obtained the first homestead in the whole territory just after the midnight hour of the day in which the law went into effect,--the place from which the first territorial telegram had been sent six years before. From there to Nebraska City was but a short journey.

Charlie Briggs in his loquacious way was recounting much of this to Matthias now, recalling some of the anecdotes concerning slaves that had been brought through this section by way of the underground railroad.

The two young men were sitting on deck on the Nebraska side looking shoreward, Charlie Briggs pointing out some distant upstream spot.

"Along nigh about a dozen miles over there is the way John Brown brung slaves many's the time from Missouri by way of Falls City, Little Omaha, Camp Creek and Nebraska City to Tabor, Iowa. Can pint out the barn to ye in Falls City they hid in whenever . . ." His high-pitched voice broke off.

There had been a grinding noise, a quivering of the boat's frame. With a sickening shiver, as a huge animal might shake in the steely mouth of a bear trap, the Missouri Queen stopped.

"Sufferin' snakes!" Charlie Briggs jumped up. "We're on a sand-bar."