Produced by Roger Frank.
THE LURE OF THE MISSISSIPPI
BY
D. LANGE
AUTHOR OF "ON THE TRAIL OF THE SIOUX," "THE SILVER ISLAND
OF THE CHIPPEWA," "LOST IN THE FUR COUNTRY,"
"IN THE GREAT WILD NORTH," AND "THE
LURE OF THE BLACK HILLS"
ILLUSTRATED BY W. L. HOWES
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Published, October, 1917
COPYRIGHT 1917, BY D. Lange
THE LURE OF THE MISSISSIPPI
Norwood Press
BERWICK & SMITH CO.
NORWOOD, MASS.
U. S. A.
[Illustration: "Come out, you white men, and fight!"]
FOREWORD
The story told here has for its scenic background the Mississippi River
and its fine northern tributary, the Minnesota, the "Sky-tinted Water"
of the Sioux Indians.
The story opens in the spring of 1861. The Civil War has begun. Lincoln
has called for 75,000 volunteers, while to regiments and batteries of
the small regular army orders have been issued to hurry to Washington as
fast as possible.
Colonel John C. Pemberton embarks his battery on the _Fanny Harris_, at
Fort Ridgely on the Minnesota River. Hundreds of sullen Indians watch
the troops leave, and visions of regaining their rich hunting grounds in
the Minnesota valley arise in the minds of the starving savages, who
have been brooding for several years over real and fancied wrongs.
Within a year of the departure of the soldiers, a furious Indian war
sweeps over the young State of Minnesota, while on the Mississippi from
Cairo to New Orleans Federal and Confederate fleets and armies battle
for the control of the Great River. On this historical background move
the characters of the story: Barker, the old trapper; Tatanka, the Sioux
scout; Tim and Bill Ferguson, two Southern boys; and their doubtful
friend, Cousin Hicks.
At Vicksburg, in the summer of 1863, we meet again the former Colonel
John C. Pemberton, now a general in the Confederate army, stubbornly
defending the besieged city against the Federal army under General
Grant.
D. Lange.
St. Paul, Minnesota,
June, 1917.
Contents
CHAPTER I--ON BOARD THE _FANNY HARRIS_
CHAPTER II--IN GREAT ANXIETY
CHAPTER III--PLAIN TALK AND UGLY RUMORS
CHAPTER IV--THE BREAKING OF THE STORM
CHAPTER V--THROUGH A DESERTED LAND
CHAPTER VI--DANGEROUS TRAVELING
CHAPTER VII--ON THE GREAT RIVER
CHAPTER VIII--AFTER THE WRECK
CHAPTER IX--HUNTING BEES AND DRIVING FISH
CHAPTER X--CATCHING A MONSTER
CHAPTER XI--AFTER WILD GEESE
CHAPTER XII--IN A WINTER CAMP
CHAPTER XIII--FISHING THROUGH THE ICE
CHAPTER XIV--SIGNS OF SPRING
CHAPTER XV--AT INSPIRATION POINT
CHAPTER XVI--SMELLING THE STORM
CHAPTER XVII--SOUTHWARD AT LAST
CHAPTER XVIII--IN THE SUNKEN LANDS
CHAPTER XIX--PAST ISLAND NUMBER TEN
CHAPTER XX--ON TO VICKSBURG
CHAPTER XXI--WHEREIN OLD ENEMIES MEET
CHAPTER XXII--THE OLD TRAPPER'S SECRET
CHAPTER XXIII--THE LAST DAYS OF VICKSBURG
Illustrations
"Come out, you white men, and fight!"
With his right hand he raised the man's head above the current.
"Walking is good, on you can ride on a log, the water is fine."
The two men bought a boat of the trader.
"It is a forest of ghost trees," Tatanka murmured.
"Take him out of our lines to that open field."
CHAPTER I--ON BOARD THE _FANNY HARRIS_
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.
[Illustration: 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."