TIDINGS FROM THE FRONT.
Supper was over, a camp-fire built (for the emigrants did their
cooking by a small camp-stove, and sat by the light of a fire on the
ground), when out of the darkness came sounds of advancing teams.
Oscar was playing his violin, trying to pick out a tune for the better
singing of Whittier's song of the Kansas Emigrants. His father raised
his hand to command silence. "That's a Yankee teamster, I'll be
bound," he said, as the "Woh-hysh! Woh-haw!" of the coming party fell
on his ear. "No Missourian ever talks to his cattle like that."
As he spoke, a long, low emigrant wagon, or "prairie schooner," drawn
by three yoke of dun-colored oxen, toiled up the road. In the wagon
was a faded-looking woman with two small children clinging to her.
Odds and ends of household furniture showed themselves over her head
from within the wagon, and strapped on behind was a coop of fowls,
from which came a melancholy cackle, as if the hens and chickens were
weary of their long journey. A man dressed in butternut-colored
homespun drove the oxen, and a boy about ten years old trudged behind
the driver. In the darkness behind these tramped a small herd of cows
and oxen driven by two other men, and a lad about the age of Oscar
Bryant. The new arrivals paused in the road, surveyed our friends from
Illinois, stopped the herd of cattle, and then the man who was driving
the wagon said, with an unmistakable New England twang, "Friends?"
"Friends, most assuredly," said Mr. Bryant, with a smile. "I guess you
have been having hard luck, you appear to be so suspicious."
"Well, we have, and that's a fact. But we're main glad to be able to
camp among friends. Jotham, unyoke the cattle after you have driven
them into the timber a piece." He assisted the woman and children to
get down from the wagon, and one of the cattle-drivers coming up,
drove the team into the woods a short distance, and the tired oxen
were soon lying down among the underbrush.
"Well, yes, we _have_ had a pretty hard time getting here. We are the
last free-State men allowed over the ferry at Parkville. Where be you
from?"
"We are from Lee County, Illinois," replied Mr. Bryant. "We came in by
the way of Parkville, too, a day or two ago; but we stopped at
Quindaro. Did you come direct from Parkville?"
[Illustration: THE YANKEE EMIGRANT.]
"Yes," replied the man. "We came up the river in the first place, on
the steamboat 'Black Eagle,' and when we got to Leavenworth, a big
crowd of Borderers, seeing us and another lot of free-State men on the
boat, refused to let us land. We had to go down the river again. The
captain of the boat kicked up a great fuss about it, and wanted to put
us ashore on the other side of the river; but the Missouri men
wouldn't have it. They put a 'committee,' as they called the two men,
on board the steamboat, and they made the skipper take us down the
river."
"How far down did you go?" asked Bryant, his face reddening with
anger.
"Well, we told the committee that we came through Ioway, and that to
Ioway we must go; so they rather let up on us, and set us ashore just
opposite Wyandotte. I was mighty 'fraid they'd make us swear we
wouldn't go back into Kansas some other way; but they didn't, and so
we stivered along the road eastwards after they set us ashore, and
then we fetched a half-circle around and got into Parkville."
"I shouldn't wonder if you bought those clothes that you have got on
at Parkville," said Mr. Howell, with a smile.
"You guess about right," said the sad-colored stranger. "A very nice
sort of a man we met at the fork of the road, as you turn off to go to
Parkville from the river road, told me that my clothes were too
Yankee. I wore 'em all the way from Woburn, Massachusetts, where we
came from, and I hated to give 'em up. But discretion is better than
valor, I have heern tell; so I made the trade, and here I am."
"We had no difficulty getting across at Parkville," said Mr. Bryant,
"except that we did have to go over in the night in a sneaking fashion
that I did not like."
"Well," answered the stranger, "as a special favor, they let us
across, seeing that we had had such hard luck. That's a nice-looking
fiddle you've got there, sonny," he abruptly interjected, as he took
Oscar's violin from his unwilling hand. "I used to play the fiddle
once, myself," he added. Then, drawing the bow over the strings in a
light and artistic manner, he began to play "Bonnie Doon."
"Come, John," his wife said wearily, "it's time the children were
under cover. Let go the fiddle until we've had supper."
John reluctantly handed back the violin, and the newcomers were soon
in the midst of their preparations for the night's rest. Later on in
the evening, John Clark, as the head of the party introduced himself,
came over to the Dixon camp, and gave them all the news. Clark was one
of those who had been helped by the New England Emigrant Aid Society,
an organization with headquarters in the Eastern States, and with
agents in the West. He had been fitted out at Council Bluffs, Iowa,
but for some unexplained reason had wandered down as far south as
Kansas City, and there had boarded the "Black Eagle" with his family
and outfit. One of the two men with him was his brother; the other
was a neighbor who had cast in his lot with him. The tall lad was John
Clark's nephew.
In one way or another, Clark had managed to pick up much gossip about
the country and what was going on. At Tecumseh, where they would be
due in a day or two if they continued on this road, an election for
county officers was to be held soon, and the Missourians were bound to
get in there and carry the election. Clark thought they had better not
go straight forward into danger. They could turn off, and go west by
way of Topeka.
"Why, that would be worse than going to Tecumseh," interjected
Charlie, who had modestly kept out of the discussion. "Topeka is the
free-State capital, and they say that there is sure to be a big battle
there, sooner or later."
But Mr. Bryant resolved that he would go west by the way of Tecumseh,
no matter if fifty thousand Borderers were encamped there. He asked
the stranger if he had in view any definite point; to which Clark
replied that he had been thinking of going up the Little Blue; he had
heard that there was plenty of good vacant land there, and the land
office would open soon. He had intended, he said, to go to Manhattan,
and start from there; but since they had been so cowardly as to change
the name of the place, he had "rather soured on it."
"Manhattan?" exclaimed Charlie, eagerly. "Where is that place? We have
asked a good many people, but nobody can tell us."
"Good reason why; they've gone and changed the name. It used to be
Boston, but the settlers around there were largely from Missouri. The
company were Eastern men, and when they settled on the name of Boston,
it got around that they were all abolitionists; and so they changed it
to Manhattan. Why they didn't call it New York, and be done with it,
is more than I can tell. But it was Boston, and it is Manhattan; and
that's all I want to know about _that_ place."
Mr. Bryant was equally sure that he did not want to have anything to
do with a place that had changed its name through fear of anybody or
anything.
Next day there was a general changing of minds, however. It was
Sunday, and the emigrants, a God-fearing and reverent lot of people,
did not move out of camp. Others had come in during the night, for
this was a famous camping-place, well known throughout all the region.
Here were wood, water, and grass, the three requisites for campers, as
they had already found. The country was undulating, interlaced with
creeks; and groves of black-jack, oak, and cottonwood were here and
there broken by open glades that would be smiling fields some day, but
were now wild native grasses.
There was a preacher in the camp, a good man from New England, who
preached about the Pilgrim's Progress through the world, and the
trials he meets by the way. Oscar pulled his father's sleeve, and
asked why he did not ask the preacher to give out "The Kansas
Emigrant's Song" as a hymn. Mr. Bryant smiled, and whispered that it
was hardly likely that the lines would be considered just the thing
for a religious service. But after the preaching was over, and the
little company was breaking up, he told the preacher what Oscar had
said. The minister's eyes sparkled, and he replied, "What? Have you
that beautiful hymn? Let us have it now and here. Nothing could be
better for this day and this time."
Oscar, blushing with excitement and native modesty, was put up high on
the stump of a tree, and, violin in hand, "raised the tune." It was
grand old "Dundee." Almost everybody seemed to know the words of
Whittier's poem, and beneath the blue Kansas sky, amid the groves of
Kansas trees, the sturdy, hardy men and the few pale women joyfully,
almost tearfully, sang,--
We crossed the prairie, as of old
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!
We go to rear a wall of men
On freedom's Southern line,
And plant beside the cotton-tree
The rugged Northern pine!
We're flowing from our native hills
As our free rivers flow;
The blessing of our Mother-land
Is on us as we go.
We go to plant her common schools
On distant prairie swells,
And give the Sabbaths of the wild
The music of her bells.
Upbearing, like the Ark of old,
The Bible in our van,
We go to test the truth of God
Against the fraud of man.
No pause, nor rest, save where the streams
That feed the Kansas run,
Save where our pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the setting sun!
We'll tread the prairie as of old
Our fathers sailed the sea,
And make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!
"It was good to be there," said Alexander Howell, his hand resting
lovingly on Oscar's shoulder, as they went back to camp. But Oscar's
father said never a word. His face was turned to the westward, where
the sunlight was fading behind the hills of the far-off frontier of
the Promised Land.
[Illustration: OSCAR WAS PUT UP HIGH ON THE STUMP OF A TREE, AND, VIOLIN
IN HAND, "RAISED THE TUNE."]
The general opinion gathered that day was that they who wanted to
fight for freedom might better go to Lawrence, or to Topeka. Those who
were bent on finding homes for themselves and little ones should press
on further to the west, where there was land in plenty to be had for
the asking, or, rather, for the pre-empting. So, when Monday morning
came, wet, murky, and depressing, Bryant surrendered to the counsels
of his brother-in-law and the unspoken wish of the boys, and agreed to
go on to the newly-surveyed lands on the tributaries of the Kaw. They
had heard good reports of the region lying westward of Manhattan and
Fort Riley. The town that had changed its name was laid out at the
confluence of the Kaw and the Big Blue. Fort Riley was some eighteen
or twenty miles to the westward, near the junction of the streams that
form the Kaw, known as Smoky Hill Fork and the Republican Fork. On one
or the other of these forks, the valleys of which were said to be
fertile and beautiful beyond description, the emigrants would find a
home. So, braced and inspired by the consciousness of having a
definite and settled plan, the Dixon party set forth on Monday
morning, through the rain and mist, with faces to the westward.