''Bring Me His Ears'' by Clarence E. Mulford (story reading txt) 📖

panicky bugs when a log is rolled over, darting this way and that amid the careless bustle of the traffic, as eager to reach a place of safety as are chickens affrighted by the shadow of a drifting hawk. The crowd was cosmopolitan enough to suit the most exacting critic. Freighters, merchants, hunters, trappers, and Indians returning to the upper trading posts or to their own country; gamblers; a frock-coated minister who suspiciously regarded every box and barrel and bale that he saw rolled up the freight gangplank, and who was a person of great interest to many pairs of eyes on and off the boat; a priest; a voluble, chattering group of coureurs des bois; a small crowd of soldiers going up to Fort Leavenworth; emigrants, boatmen, and travelers made up the hurrying procession or stood at the rails and watched the confusion on the levee.

Tom joined the animated stream, swinging in behind an elderly gentleman who escorted a young lady of unflurried demeanor through the maelstrom of wagons, carts, mules, horses, passengers, and heavily laden negroes. Caught in a jam and forced to make a quick decision and to follow it instantly, the young lady dropped her glove in picking up her skirts and a nervous horse was about to stamp it into the dirt and dust when Tom leaped forward. Grasping the bridle with one hand, he bent swiftly and reached for the glove with the other. As he was about to grasp it, a man dressed in nondescript clothes left his Mexican companion and bent forward on the other side of the horse, his lean, brown fingers eagerly outstretched.

Tom's surprise at this unexpected interference acted galvanically and his hand, turning up from the glove, grasped the thrusting fingers of the other in a grip which not only was powerful but doubly effective by its unexpectedness. He swiftly straightened the wrist and forearm of his rival into perfect alignment with the rest of the arm and then, with a sudden dropping of his own elbow, he turned the other's arm throwing all his strength and weight into the motion. The result was ludicrous. The rival, bent forward, his other hand on the ground, had to give way in a hurry or have his arm dislocated. His right foot arose swiftly into the air and described a short arc as his whole body followed it; and quicker than it takes to tell it he was bridged much the same as a wrestler, his arched back to the ground. Tom grinned sardonically and with a swift jerk yanked his adversary off his balance, and as the other sprawled grotesquely in the dust, the victor of the little tilt picked up the glove, leaped nimbly aside and looked eagerly around for its owner. He no sooner stood erect than he saw her with a handkerchief stuffed in her mouth and, bowing stiffly and with sober face he gravely presented the glove to her. She had waited, despite all her escort could do, somewhat breathlessly watching the rescue and the short, quick comedy incidental to it; and now, with reddened cheeks and mischievous eyes, she took the glove and murmured her thanks. The elderly gentleman, grinning from ear to ear, raised his high beaver, thanked the plainsman, and then hurried his charge onto the boat, fearful of the time lost.

Tom stood in his tracks staring after them, hypnotized by the beauty of the face and the timbre of the voice of the woman whose eyes had challenged him as she had turned away.

The profane remarks of the wagon driver, the more picturesque remarks of other drivers, and the vociferous, white-toothed delight of the negroes did not soothe Ephriam Schoolcraft's outraged dignity nor help to cool his anger, and he arose from his dust bath seeking whom he might devour. He did not have to seek far, for a negro's shouted warning reached Tom in time to spin him around to await his adversary. The plainsman was cool, imperturbable, and smiling slightly with amusement.

Schoolcraft leaped for him and was sent spinning against a pile of freight. As he recovered his balance his hand streaked for his belt, but stopped in the air as he gazed down the barrel of the new Colt snuggling against the hip of the younger man. It must have looked especially vicious to a man accustomed to a single-shot pistol, or a double-barreled Derringer, at best.

"That was no killing matter," said Tom quietly. "Don't make it so, and don't make us both miss that packet, and get locked up in a St. Louis jail. I'll get out again quicker than you, but that hardly matters. If you're going aboard, go ahead; I'm in no great hurry." Out of the corner of his eye he was watching the Mexican, but found nothing threatening.

Schoolcraft glared at him, allowed a hypocritical smile to mask his feelings, bowed politely, and walked down the levee, the Mexican following him, and Tom bringing up the rear. They were quickly separated by the bustle on the boat, each giving his immediate attention to the preparations necessary for his comfort during the voyage.

A second blast of the whistle was followed by the groaning of the great derrick as it lifted the landing stage and swung it aboard; lines were hauled in and the passengers along the rails waved their adieus and called last minute messages to those they were leaving behind. It would be many years before some of them saw their friends again, and for a few the reunion would not be on this earth. A bell rang aft and the great stern paddle slapped and thrashed noisily as it bit and tore at the yellow water beneath it. Showers of sparks, incandescent as they left the towering stacks, fell in gray flakes on the decks and the river, the bluish smoke of the wood fires trailing straighter and straighter astern as the packet rounded into the boiling current and pushed upstream at a constantly increasing speed, leaving behind her the western metropolis on the left-hand bank and a straggling hamlet on the other.

Here the Mississippi is a mighty river, approaching half a mile in width between its limestone banks; deep, swift, its current boiling up the muddy contribution of the great Missouri, as if eager to expose the infamy of its pollution to the world. But whatever it lost in purity by the addition of the muddy water, pouring in eighteen miles above the city, it gained in greatness. Other large rivers have been tamed and rendered nearly harmless, but these two have baffled man's labors and ingenuity, and finally the contributing stream has been given up as incorrigible.

The confusion of the passengers attending to their baggage, places at table and their sleeping quarters grew constantly less as mile followed mile, and by the time the Belle swung in a great, westward curve to leave the Father of Waters for the more turbid and treacherous bosom of the Big Muddy, many were eagerly looking for the line marking the joining of the two great streams. It was plain to the eye, for the jutting brown flood of the Missouri, dotted with great masses of drift, was treated with proper suspicion by the clearer flood of the nobler stream, and curved far out into the latter without losing the identity of its outer edge for some distance below.

CHAPTER III

ARMIJO'S STRONG ARM

Piloting on the Mississippi was tricky enough, with the shifting bars and the deadly, submerged logs, stumps, and trees; but the Missouri was in a class by itself; indeed, at various stages of high water it seemed hardly to know its own channels or, in some places, even its own bed. It threw up an island today to remove it next week or ten years later, and cut a new channel to close up an old one whenever the mood suited. Gnawing off soft clay promontories or cutting in behind them was a favorite pastime; and the sand and clay of its banks and the vast expanses of its bottoms coaxed it into capricious excursions afield. More than one innocent and unsuspecting settler, locating what he considered to be a reasonable distance from its shores on some rich bottom, found his particular portion of the earth's surface under the river or on its further bank when he returned from a precipitate and entirely willing flight.

There were two tricks used on the river to get out of sandbar difficulties that deserve mention. During certain stages of the river it for some reason would cross over from one side of its bed to the other, and between the old and the new deep channels would be a space of considerable distance crossed by the water where there was no channel, but only a number of shallow washes, none of which perhaps would be deep enough to let a steamboat through. The deepest would be selected, and if only two or three more inches of water were needed, the boat would be run up as far as it could go, the crew would fix the two great spars with their shoes against the bottom, slanting downstream, set the steam capstans drawing on their ropes, and then reverse the paddle wheel. The turning of the great wheel would force water under the hull while the spars pushed backward and, raising a platform of water around her and taking it with her, she would slide over the shallow place and go on about her business.

In case of a bar where there were no submerged banks to hold a platform of water, and only a few more inches needed, the spars would be used as before, but the paddle wheel would remain idle. The backward thrust of the spars would force the boat ahead, while their lifting motion would raise it a little. This being repeated again and again would eventually "walk" the boat across and into deeper water on the other side. It was a slow and laborious operation and sometimes took a day or two, but it was preferable to lying tied to the bank and waiting for a rise, often a matter of a week or more.

All this was an old story to Tom, who now was on his fifth trip up the river, for he was an observant young man and one who easily became acquainted with persons he wished to know. These included the officers and pilots, who took to the upstanding young plainsman at first sight and gave painstaking answers to his many but sensible questions. In consequence his knowledge of the river was wide and deep, although not founded on practical experience.

Long before the packet turned into the Missouri he had his affairs attended to and was leaning against the rail enjoying the shifting panorama. But the scenery did not take all of his attention, for he was keeping a watch for a certain Mexican trader and for the young lady of the glove; and after the boat had rounded into the Big Muddy, he caught sight of the more interesting of the two as she walked forward on the port side in the company of her escort. Waiting a few moments to see if they would discover him, he soon gave it up and went in search of the purser, who seemed to know about everyone of note in St. Louis.

"Hello, Tom," called that officer, having recovered his breath after the rush. "Yo're goin' back purty quick, ain't you?"

"Reckon not. One night an' one day in th' city was enough. But this cussed packet is near as lonesome. I don't know a passenger on board."

"I can fix that," laughed the purser. "I know about three-quarters of 'em, an' can guess at th' rest. I counted seven professional gamblers comin' up th' plank.