CHAPTER II
ABOARD THE _MISSOURI BELLE_
Tom wended his way to the levee and as he passed the last line ofbuildings and faced the great slope leading to the water's edge his eyeskindled. Two graceful stern-wheel packets were moving on the river, thesmaller close to the nearer bank on her way home from the treacherousMissouri; the larger, curving well over toward the Illinois shore, washeading downstream for New Orleans. Their graceful lines, open bow deckswith the great derricks supporting the huge landing stages, and thethick, powerful masts on each edge of the lower deck toward the bow,each holding up the great spar so necessary for Mississippi rivernavigation; the tall stacks with the initials of the boat against alattice work between; the regular spacing of windows and doors in thecabins, and the clean white of their hulls and superstructure, renderedmore vivid by contrast with the tawny flood on all sides of them, made astriking and picturesque sight. Each had a curving tail of boiling brownwater behind, and a bone in its teeth. These river boats were modeled ontrim and beautiful lines and were far from being crude, frontiermakeshifts.
Several Mackinaw boats moved anglingly across the current from the othershore, and a keelboat glided down the river for New Orleans, or to turnup the Ohio for Pittsburg, helped in the current by a dirty, squaresail. The little twin-hulled ferry was just coming in from the Illinoisshore, its catamaran construction giving it a safety which a casualobservation would have withheld. The passengers clung to its rails as itpitched and bobbed in the rolling wake of the south-bound packet, a wakedreaded by all small craft unfortunate enough to pass the slappingpaddle at too close a distance, for the following billows were high,sharp, and close together.
On the great levee wagons and carts rattled and rumbled; drivers shoutedand swore as they picked their impatient and erratic way through thetraffic; lazy negroes, momentarily spurred into energetic activity,moved all kinds of merchandise between the boats and the great piles onthe sloping river bank, two long lines of them passing each other on thebridging gangplanks reaching far ashore. Opposed to this scene of laborand turmoil was a canoe well offshore, whose two occupants, driftingwith the current, lazily fished for the great channel catfish which thenegro population loved so much.
On a packet, which we will call the _Missouri Belle_, a whistle blewsharply and as the sound died away several groups of passengers hurriedacross the levee, scurrying about like panicky bugs when a log is rolledover, 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 theshadow of a drifting hawk. The crowd was cosmopolitan enough to suit themost exacting critic. Freighters, merchants, hunters, trappers, andIndians returning to the upper trading posts or to their own country;gamblers; a frock-coated minister who suspiciously regarded every boxand barrel and bale that he saw rolled up the freight gangplank, and whowas a person of great interest to many pairs of eyes on and off theboat; a priest; a voluble, chattering group of _coureurs des bois_; asmall crowd of soldiers going up to Fort Leavenworth; emigrants,boatmen, and travelers made up the hurrying procession or stood at therails and watched the confusion on the levee.
Tom joined the animated stream, swinging in behind an elderly gentlemanwho escorted a young lady of unflurried demeanor through the maelstromof wagons, carts, mules, horses, passengers, and heavily laden negroes.Caught in a jam and forced to make a quick decision and to follow itinstantly, the young lady dropped her glove in picking up her skirts anda nervous horse was about to stamp it into the dirt and dust when Tomleaped forward. Grasping the bridle with one hand, he bent swiftly andreached for the glove with the other. As he was about to grasp it, a mandressed in nondescript clothes left his Mexican companion and bentforward on the other side of the horse, his lean, brown fingers eagerlyoutstretched.
Tom's surprise at this unexpected interference acted galvanically andhis hand, turning up from the glove, grasped the thrusting fingers ofthe other in a grip which not only was powerful but doubly effective byits unexpectedness. He swiftly straightened the wrist and forearm of hisrival into perfect alignment with the rest of the arm and then, with asudden dropping of his own elbow, he turned the other's arm throwing allhis strength and weight into the motion. The result was ludicrous. Therival, bent forward, his other hand on the ground, had to give way in ahurry or have his arm dislocated. His right foot arose swiftly into theair and described a short arc as his whole body followed it; andquicker than it takes to tell it he was bridged much the same as awrestler, his arched back to the ground. Tom grinned sardonically andwith a swift jerk yanked his adversary off his balance, and as the othersprawled grotesquely in the dust, the victor of the little tilt pickedup the glove, leaped nimbly aside and looked eagerly around for itsowner. He no sooner stood erect than he saw her with a handkerchiefstuffed in her mouth and, bowing stiffly and with sober face he gravelypresented the glove to her. She had waited, despite all her escort coulddo, somewhat breathlessly watching the rescue and the short, quickcomedy incidental to it; and now, with reddened cheeks and mischievouseyes, 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 ofthe face and the timbre of the voice of the woman whose eyes hadchallenged him as she had turned away.
The profane remarks of the wagon driver, the more picturesque remarks ofother drivers, and the vociferous, white-toothed delight of the negroesdid not soothe Ephriam Schoolcraft's outraged dignity nor help to coolhis 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 Tomin time to spin him around to await his adversary. The plainsman wascool, imperturbable, and smiling slightly with amusement.
Schoolcraft leaped for him and was sent spinning against a pile offreight. As he recovered his balance his hand streaked for his belt, butstopped in the air as he gazed down the barrel of the new Colt snugglingagainst the hip of the younger man. It must have looked especiallyvicious to a man accustomed to a single-shot pistol, or adouble-barreled Derringer, at best.
"That was no killing matter," said Tom quietly. "Don't make it so, anddon't make us both miss that packet, and get locked up in a St. Louisjail. I'll get out again quicker than you, but that hardly matters. Ifyou're going aboard, go ahead; I'm in no great hurry." Out of the cornerof his eye he was watching the Mexican, but found nothing threatening.
Schoolcraft glared at him, allowed a hypocritical smile to mask hisfeelings, bowed politely, and walked down the levee, the Mexicanfollowing him, and Tom bringing up the rear. They were quickly separatedby the bustle on the boat, each giving his immediate attention to thepreparations necessary for his comfort during the voyage.
A second blast of the whistle was followed by the groaning of the greatderrick as it lifted the landing stage and swung it aboard; lines werehauled in and the passengers along the rails waved their adieus andcalled last minute messages to those they were leaving behind. It wouldbe many years before some of them saw their friends again, and for a fewthe reunion would not be on this earth. A bell rang aft and the greatstern paddle slapped and thrashed noisily as it bit and tore at theyellow water beneath it. Showers of sparks, incandescent as they leftthe towering stacks, fell in gray flakes on the decks and the river, thebluish smoke of the wood fires trailing straighter and straighter asternas the packet rounded into the boiling current and pushed upstream at aconstantly increasing speed, leaving behind her the western metropolison the left-hand bank and a straggling hamlet on the other.
Here the Mississippi is a mighty river, approaching half a mile in widthbetween its limestone banks; deep, swift, its current boiling up themuddy contribution of the great Missouri, as if eager to expose theinfamy of its pollution to the world. But whatever it lost in purity bythe addition of the muddy water, pouring in eighteen miles above thecity, it gained in greatne
ss. Other large rivers have been tamed andrendered nearly harmless, but these two have baffled man's labors andingenuity, and finally the contributing stream has been given up asincorrigible.
The confusion of the passengers attending to their baggage, places attable and their sleeping quarters grew constantly less as mile followedmile, and by the time the _Belle_ swung in a great, westward curve toleave the Father of Waters for the more turbid and treacherous bosom ofthe Big Muddy, many were eagerly looking for the line marking thejoining of the two great streams. It was plain to the eye, for thejutting brown flood of the Missouri, dotted with great masses of drift,was treated with proper suspicion by the clearer flood of the noblerstream, and curved far out into the latter without losing the identityof its outer edge for some distance below.