Westward ho!

The following two or three days were wet and uncomfortable. Rain fell in torrents at times, and when it did not rain the ground was steamy, and the emigrants had a hard time to find spots dry enough on which to make up their beds at night. This was no holiday journey, and the boys, too proud to murmur, exchanged significant nods and winks when they found themselves overtaken by the discomforts of camping and travelling in the storm. For the most part, they kept in camp during the heaviest of the rain. They found that the yokes of the oxen chafed the poor animals’ necks when wet.

And then the mud! Nobody had ever seen such mud, they thought, not even on the black and greasy fat lands of an Illinois prairie. Sometimes the wagon sunk in the road, cut up by innumerable wheels, so that the hubs of their wheels were almost even with the surface, and it was with the greatest difficulty that their four yoke of oxen dragged the wagon from its oozy bed. At times, too, they were obliged to unhitch their team and help out of a mud-hole some other less fortunate brother wayfarer, whose team was not so powerful as their own.

One unlucky day, fording a narrow creek with steep banks, they had safely got across, when they encountered a slippery incline up which the oxen could not climb; it was “as slippery as a glare of ice,” Charlie said, and the struggling cattle sank nearly to their knees in their frantic efforts to reach the top of the bank. The wagon had been “blocked up,” that is to say, the wagon-box raised in its frame or bed above the axles, with blocks driven underneath, to lift it above the level of the stream. As the vehicle was dragged out of the creek, the leading yoke of cattle struggling up the bank and then slipping back again, the whole team of oxen suddenly became panic-stricken, as it were, and rushed back to the creek in wild confusion. The wagon twisted upon itself, and cramped together, creaked, groaned, toppled, and fell over in a heap, its contents being shot out before and behind into the mud and water.

“Great Scott!” yelled Sandy. “Let me stop those cattle!” Whereupon the boy dashed through the water, and, running around the hinder end of the wagon, he attempted to head off the cattle. But the animals, having gone as far as they could without breaking their chains or the wagon-tongue, which fortunately held, stood sullenly by the side of the wreck they had made, panting with their exertions.

“Here is a mess!” said his father; but, without more words, he unhitched the oxen and drove them up the bank. The rest of the party hastily picked up the articles that were drifting about, or were lodged in the mud of the creek. It was a sorry sight, and the boys forgot, in the excitement of the moment, the discomforts and annoyances of their previous experiences. This was a real misfortune.

But while Oscar and Sandy were excitedly discussing what was next to be done, Mr. Howell took charge of things; the wagon was righted, and a party of emigrants, camped in a grove of cottonwoods just above the ford, came down with ready offers of help. Eight yoke of cattle instead of four were now hitched to the wagon, and, to use the expressive language of the West, the outfit was “snaked” out of the hole in double-quick time.

“Ho, ho, ho! Uncle Charlie,” laughed Sandy, “you look as if you had been dragged through a slough. You are just painted with mud from top to toe. Well, I never did see such a looking scarecrow!”

“It’s lucky you haven’t any looking-glass here, young Impudence. If you could see your mother’s boy now, you wouldn’t know him. Talk about looks! Take a look at the youngster, mates,” said Uncle Charlie, bursting into a laugh. A general roar followed the look, for Sandy’s appearance was indescribable. In his wild rush through the waters of the creek, he had covered himself from head to foot, and the mud from the wagon had painted his face a brilliant brown; for there is more or less of red oxide of iron in the mud of Kansas creeks.

It was a doleful party that pitched its tent that night on the banks of Soldier Creek and attempted to dry clothes and provisions by the feeble heat of a little sheet-iron stove. Only Sandy, the irrepressible and unconquerable Sandy, preserved his good temper through the trying experience. “It is a part of the play,” he said, “and anybody who thinks that crossing the prairie, ’as of old the pilgrims crossed the sea,’ is a Sunday-school picnic, might better try it with the Dixon emigrants; that’s all.”

But, after a very moist and disagreeable night, the sky cleared in the morning. Oscar was out early, looking at the sky; and when he shouted “Westward ho!” with a stentorian voice, everybody came tumbling out to see what was the matter. A long line of white-topped wagons with four yoke of oxen to each, eleven teams all told, was stringing its way along the muddy road in which the red sun was reflected in pools of red liquid mud. The wagons were overflowing with small children; coops of fowls swung from behind, and a general air of thriftiness seemed to be characteristic of the company.

“Which way are you bound?” asked Oscar, cheerily.

“Up the Smoky Hill Fork,” replied one of the ox-drivers. “Solomon’s Fork, perhaps, but somewhere in that region, anyway.”

One of the company lingered behind to see what manner of people these were who were so comfortably camped out in a wall-tent. When he had satisfied his curiosity, he explained that his companions had come from northern Ohio, and were bound to lay out a town of their own in the Smoky Hill region. Oscar, who listened while his father drew this information from the stranger, recalled the fact that the Smoky Hill and the Republican Forks were the branches of the Kaw. Solomon’s Fork, he now learned, was one of the tributaries of the Smoky Hill, nearer to the Republican Fork than to the main stream. So he said to his father, when the Ohio man had passed on: “If they settle on Solomon’s Fork, won’t they be neighbors of ours, daddy?”

Mr. Bryant took out a little map of the Territory that he had in his knapsack, and, after some study, made up his mind that the newcomers would not be “neighbors enough to hurt,” if they came no nearer the Republican than Solomon’s Fork. About thirty-five miles west and south of Fort Riley, which is at the junction of the Smoky Hill and the Republican, Solomon’s Fork branches off to the northwest. Settlers anywhere along that line would not be nearer the other fork than eighteen or twenty miles at the nearest. Charlie and Sandy agreed with Oscar that it was quite as near as desirable neighbors should be. The lads were already learning something of the spirit of the West. They had heard of the man who had moved westward when another settler drove his stakes twenty miles from his claim, because the country was “gettin’ too crowded.”

That day, passing through the ragged log village of Tecumseh, they got their first letters from home. When they left Illinois, they had not known just where they would strike, in the Territory, but they had resolved that they would not go further west than Tecumseh; and here they were, with their eyes still fixed toward the west. No matter; just now, news from home was to be devoured before anybody could talk of the possible Kansas home that yet loomed before them in the dim distance. How good it was to learn all about the dear ones left at home; to find that Bose was keeping guard around the house as if he knew that he was the protector of the two mothers left to themselves in one home; to hear that the brindle calf had grown very large, and that a circus was coming to town the very next day after the letter was written!

“That circus has come and gone without our seeing it,” said Sandy, solemnly.

“Sandy is as good as a circus, any day,” said his uncle, fondly. “The greatest show in the country would have been willing to hire you for a sight, fixed out as you were last night, after we had that upset in the creek.” The boys agreed that it was lucky for all hands that the only looking-glass in camp was the little bit of one hidden away in Uncle Charlie’s shaving-case.

The next day, to their great discomfiture, they blundered upon a county election. Trudging into Libertyville, one of the new mushroom towns springing up along the military road that leads from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Riley, they found a great crowd of people gathered around a log-house in which the polls were open. Country officers were to be chosen, and the pro-slavery men, as the Borderers were now called in this part of the country, had rallied in great numbers to carry the election for their men. All was confusion and tumult. Rough-looking men, well armed and generally loud voiced, with slouched hats and long beards, were galloping about, shouting and making all the noise possible, for no purpose that could be discovered. “Hooray for Cap’n Pate!” was the only intelligible cry that the newcomers could hear; but who Captain Pate was, and why he should be hurrahed for, nobody seemed to know. He was not a candidate for anything.

“Hullo! there’s our Woburn friend, John Clark,” said Mr. Howell. Sure enough, there he was with a vote in his hand going up to the cabin where the polls were open. A lane was formed through the crowd of men who lounged about the cabin, so that a man going up to the door to vote was obliged to run the gauntlet, as it were, of one hundred men, or more, before he reached the door, the lower half of which was boarded up and the upper half left open for the election officers to take and deposit the ballots.

“I don’t believe that man has any right to vote here,” said Charlie, with an expression of disgust on his face. “Why, he came into the Territory with us, only the other day, and he said he was going up on the Big Blue to settle, and here he is trying to vote!”

“Well,” said Uncle Charlie, “I allow he has just as good a right to vote as any of these men who are running the election. I saw some of these very men come riding in from Missouri, when we were one day out of Quindaro.” As he spoke, John Clark had reached the voting-place, pursued by many rough epithets flung after him.

He paused before the half-barricaded door and presented his ballot. “Let’s see yer ticket!” shouted one of the men who stood guard, one either side of the cabin-door. He snatched it from Clark’s hand, looked at it, and simply said, “H’ist!” The man on the other side of the would-be voter grinned; then both men seized the Woburn man by his arms and waist, and, before he could realize what was happening, he was flung up to the edge of the roof that projected over the low door. Two other men sitting there grabbed the newcomer by the shoulders and passed him up the roof to two others, who, straddling the ridge-pole, were waiting for him. Then the unfortunate Clark disappeared over the top of the cabin, sliding down out of sight on the farther side. The mob set up a wild cheer, and some of them shouted, “We don’t want any Yankee votes in this yer ’lection!”

“Shameful! Shameful!” burst forth from Mr. Bryant. “I have heard of such things before now, but I must say I never thought I should see it.” He turned angrily to his brother-in-law as Mr. Howell joined the boys in their laugh.

“How can you laugh at such a shameful sight, Aleck Howell? I’m sure it’s something to cry over, rather than to laugh at a spectacle like that! A free American citizen hustled away from the polls in that disgraceful fashion!”

“But, Charlie,” said Uncle Aleck, “you’ll admit that it was funny to see the Woburn man hoisted over that cabin. Besides, I don’t believe he has any right to vote here; do you?”

“He would have been allowed to vote fast enough if he had had the sort of ballot that those fellows want to go into the box. They looked at his ballot, and as soon as they saw what it was, they threw him over the cabin.”

Just then, John Clark came back from the ravine into which he had slid from the roof of the log-house, looking very much crestfallen. He explained that he had met some pro-slavery men on the road that morning, and they had told him he could vote, if he chose, and they had furnished him with the necessary ballot.

“They took in my clothes at a glance,” said Clark, “and they seemed to suppose that a man with butternut homespun was true-blue; so they didn’t ask any questions. I got a free-State ballot from another man and was a-goin’ to plump it in; but they were too smart for me, and over I went. No, don’t you worry; I ain’t a-goin’ up there to try it ag’in,” he said, angrily, to an insolent horseman, who, riding up, told him not to venture near the polls again if he “did not want to be kicked out like a dog.”

“Come on, neighbor; let’s be goin’,” he said to Uncle Aleck. “I’ve had enough voting for to-day. Let’s light out of this town.” Then the men, taking up their ox-goads, drove out of town. They had had their first sight of the struggle for freedom.