HIS FATHER’S DEATH--DRIFTING WESTWARD--ADVENTURES ON THE MISSOURI.
Death came to the Creede family when young Creede was but eight years
old. A few years later the youth found a step-father in the family, and
they were never very good friends. The boy’s home-life was not what he
thought it should be, and he bade his mother good-by and started forth
to face the world. In that thinly settled country, the young man found
it very difficult to secure work of any kind, and more than once he
was forced to fancy himself the “merry monarch of the hay-mow,” or a
shepherd guarding his father’s flocks, as he lay down to sleep in the
cornfield and covered with the stars. The men, for the most part, he
said, were gruff and harsh, but the women everywhere were his friends,
and many a season of fasting was shortened by reason of a gentle
woman’s sympathy and kindness of heart. The brave boy battled with
life’s storms alone; and when but eighteen years old he set his face to
the West.
Omaha was the one bright star in the western horizon toward which the
eyes of restless humanity were turned, and on the breast of the tide
of immigration our young man reached the uncouth capital of Nebraska.
Perhaps he had not read these unkind remarks by the poet Saxe:
“Hast ever been to Omaha, where rolls the dark Missouri down,
And forty horses scarce can draw an empty wagon through the town?
If not, then list to what I say: You’ll find it just as I have found it,
And if it lie upon your way, take my advice, and you’ll go round it.”
Omaha was then the great outfitting point for the country to the
westward,
Where everything was open wide,
And men drank absinthe on the side.
In the language of Field, “money flowed like liquor,” and a man who
was willing to work could find plenty to do; but the rush and bustle
of the busy, frontier town was not in keeping with the taste of our
hero, and he began to pine for the broad fields and the open prairie.
At first it was all new and strangely interesting to him; and often,
after his day’s work was done, he would wander about the town, looking
on at the gaming tables and viewing the festivities in the concert
halls; and when weary of the sights and scenes, he would go forth into
the stilly night and walk the broad, smooth streets till the moon went
down. At last he resolved to leave its busy throng, and joining a party
of wood-choppers, he went away up the river where the willows grew tall
and slim. He was busy on the banks of the sullen stream; he felt the
breath of Spring and the sunshine, and while the wild birds sang in
the willows, he wielded the ax and was happy.
[Illustration]
The wood was easily worked and commanded a good price at Omaha, and
the young chopper soon found that he was quite prosperous; was his own
master, and he whistled and chopped while the she-deer fondled her fawn
and the pheasant fluttered near him, friendly and unafraid. Once a week
the wood was loaded on a “mackinaw” and floated down to the city, where
barges were always waiting, and where sharp competition often sent
prices way above the expectation of the settlers.
One day, while making one of these innocent and profitable trips down
the river, young Creede nearly lost his life. For some reason, they
were trying to make a landing above the city, and Creede was in the bow
of the boat, pulling a long sweep oar fixed there on a wooden pin.
While exercising all his strength to turn the boat shoreward in the
stiff current, the pin broke, he was thrown headlong into the water
and the boat drifted above him. As often as he rose to the surface,
his head would strike the bottom of the boat and he would be forced
down again. It seemed to him, he said, that the boat was a mile long
and moving with snail-like speed. He was finally rescued more dead
than alive, so full of muddy water that they had to roll him over a
water-keg a long time before he could be bailed out and brought back to
life.
When he reached Omaha and received his share of the cash from the
sale of the wood, he abandoned that line of labor, and with the
restlessness of spirit and love for adventure which has characterized
his whole life, again started westward.
[Illustration]
The sturdy bull, with stately tread,
Submissive, silent, bows his head
And feels the yoke. The creaking wain
Rolls leisurely across the plain:
Across the trackless, treeless land,
An undulating sea of sand,
Where mocking, sapless rivers run;
With swollen tongue and bloodshot eye,
Still on to where the shadows lie,
And onward toward the setting sun.
With weeping eyes he looks away
To where his free-born brothers play
Upon the plain, so wild and wide;
He turns his head from side to side,
He feels the bull-whip’s cruel stroke;
Again he leans against the yoke.
At last his weary walk is done.
He pauses at the river’s brink
And drinks the while his drivers drink.
Almost beside the setting sun.