THE GATE OF THE WEST
Nearly a week had passed 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 passing 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 Gass 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 ashore."
"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 Dick had not been paying much attention to the boys just then, but
was watching the smoke clouds ahead. Passing trains whistled loudly and
frequently. The shores 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 Dick?"
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 Gass 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 grass 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. Gass 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 Dick. "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 Dick's signals.
At last they lay alongside a little landing to which a houseboat was
moored, occupied by a riverman whom Uncle Dick 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 Dick, 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 shifts 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 ship."
"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 Dick. "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 ashore 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!"
"Yes, sir, very good sir!" returned Rob, gravely. And without a smile
the four stalked off up the stair, leaving Johnson to wonder what in the
world they meant.