THE IRON HORSE

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12316, 10 December 1925, Page 10

THE IRON HORSE

“TTMF.S” LATEST SERIAL

, A Romance of East • and West

The “Times” has secured the exclusive rights to the stirring romance, ‘The Iron K rse,” which has been novelised by Edwin Hill, from W 'iam F :i’» picture romance of that name.

CHAPTER IV. THE RIVER BOARD,

River travel, a tew days up the Mislissippi, then into the turbulent Misiouri, was a vivid delight to little Davy. The “little leller,” as Steviu’s men called niru—he was the only .•hild in the party of two hundred—,vas petted and pampered by every one ,rom the governor down to the muleskinners and the half-breed interpreters. He had the run of the boat, trom the captain’s cabin to the lower deck where ther rouseabouts worked, gambled and slept. To Davy they were all good‘friends, From them he learned something of the great, new country beyond the bend of the river. His manliness and bright, cheerful spirit had no little influence upon the men. With Davy around, they worked more willingly and softened their oaths, although Brandon occasionally winced at some of the language which fell unon the ears of his small son. Steamboating up the Missouri river in the spring of the year was a toilsome and dangerous business. Bank fuli in early spring flood, the great river drove - southward with savage force fighting the puny boat every fathom of the way, and launching an endless succession »f snags, inanimate monsters of destruction. Any one of tihese half-submerged trees, wrenched from forests a thousand miles distant, would have the bottom out of the craft ‘f the crew had not been incessantly vigilant. and lone pile poles they fended off the lnnging snags, working at night in the light of whale-oil flares, mysterious shadows struggling with invisible monsters. More than once Davy heard the cry, “Man overboard, and was carried to the rail in a surge of men to see the bobbing head and waving arms being swiftly dragged down-river by the racing current. At night he liked to sit just forward of the “texas” where the boat s omcers slept and to gaze upward at the tall smoke-stacks pouring flame into a starless night. To the boy s ears would come the hoarse, but-melodious chant of the quartermaster and leadsman calling the channel depth to the pilot, a kind of sorrowful strain which took his thoughts back to .Springfield and Miriam. ,Bnt not for long. It was all too thrilling, this wonderful river-road journey, for the melancholy of home sickness’to an abiding place in the swift thoughts of the bov. Davy was living for himself, a book of travel, more fascinating than anv he had ever read. The Oregon “laid-up at the old trading post of Bellevue, one pitchhlack night, and Davy accompanied his father and half the boat’s company to the tavern. It was kept by Colonel Sarpy, an early-comer in the country, and now the trader at Bellevue for the American Fur Comoany. He was undersized, dark or Complexion, quick tr., his movements, oolished in his manners. “Fire-eater,” said Bill Haddon in Brandon’s ear “Little ashe Oifiahas call him Fi- Chie *’a. j, Ko-Yah-He.’ in their Ungo StoincH on his dignity. There’s a fool who 11 e<> A a big S rouie-whacker. thirsty for liquor, had shoved through thecrowded bar, unceremoniously elbowing q-rov out of his way. Th® little Colonel followed the teamster to Hie bar and faced him, eyes blazing, me teamster 'looked down at the bantam grinned and spat lr. contempt Sarpy woke, every worll cracking like a you know who 1 » m > Peter A. Sarpy, sir! The old V ;° r s‘', o , n the sand bar, sir! .If you want lam vour man, sir! I can whip tne devil, "sir! Choose your weapons siiD Bowie knife, shotgun or revolver, I am vour man, sir!” ' With a lightning moiement he whipper out his long-barrelled -Oort s fortyfive. a-nd snuffed a candle down the bar, ten paces distant. The mule-whacker » jaw dropped and fear crept mto hu eves. Without another word, he edged away from the little man of wrath and slipped around the wall to the door through which he vanished into the night. A roar of laughter went tip. Colonel Sarpy calmly replaced his mstol and resumed walking up and down, with an occasional word to an acquaintance. ... j Almost every day the boat madj long stops at a woodvard where corded fuel was waiting, ready stacked; or paused at one of the courageous settlements which struggled for a foothold between river and forest. Davy had unforgettable glimpses of the doughty pioneers who were steadily crowding the frontier towards the Pacific, and frequently, along the uplands, he s*?* hands of Omahas following great herds of buffalo or slowly riding their ponies, grim silhouttes upon the horizon. Cap tain Terry told him tales of the old ■deamboating days when Indians were a deadly menace. There hed been steamboats on the Missouri since as far back as 1819, the captain said, and for many vea’rs afterwards the Indians fought desperately to close the river-road against the dreaded invasion of tne white men. „ . , , “You see, Dayv,” said Captain Terry “they were* smart enough to understand that their hunting grounds were in danger, and they did their best to drive the boats off the river. They M-ldom attacked in the daytime, but raids at night were common, especially when the craft of those days had to lio up along the banks for fear '4 inafis. or because the old-time pilots didn’t know enough about the channel •■bailees of this crazv river to navigate in the dark. The Indians would ride along the bank, whooping like fiends and shooting clouds of arrows, fire arrows. usually. Their name was to burn the boats. ’They killed a lot of good men that way and burned more than one boat.

“Then a fellow came along with an idea that scared ’em off. He knew that Indians are a superstitious lot, believing in all sorts of devils, so be digged up a special devil im ’em. He made a big serpent’s bead, like a giant kite, out of lath and oil paper, and lit up the contraption with whale-oil lamps. He set this snake-devil up in the lookout, and a man was posted up there to turn the wicks of the lamps up and down, so as to make the scary hoa:l =ort of glare and disappear, and disappear. It worked fine. It was too

much for the reds. It never failed to send them to the right-about with whoops of fear, Tlie result was that tho Indians let up a whole lot on the night attack business and steamboating got to be a good bit safer.” Some days, the whistle of the Oregon, the American Fur Company boat upon which . the Stevens expedition was travelling, would blast a salute to a company craft 6wiftly heading downriver with a cargo of furs from' far posts in the Missouri headwaters, and Davy would hear cheery shouts echoing from boat to boat as company men gave the good hail. He would *catch glimpses of the gay scarlets and saffrons of the shirts a'nd head handkerchiefs of the incoming trappers, eager for the joys of St. Louis after months of toil and danger along the forested stream of the north-west. ' Almost every day they passed keelboats heavily loaded, ruae, strongly built crafts, sixty to seventy feet long, tugged up-stream by a cordelle, a heavy rope three hundred feet or more in length, one epd of which was attached to a mast, and the other hauled bv two-score stalwart men, marching along shore. When the wind was right, the labour of dragging these heavy boats up-stream was eased by sails. Often Davy saw them using poles and long oars in their laborious struggle against the raging river. An occasional mackinaw, with four oarsmen, shot down-stream, piled high with pelts, and now and then lusty, brown-armed Frencli-Canadian halfbreeds flashed past the labouring steamboat with shrill cries. Davy had his first sight of the bull boats, the queer craft built from a frame or willow saplings covered with the hides of bull buffaloes.

These sights and sounds and the thrill of deer feeding in the bottomlands in the early morning never grew stale. One day Bill Haddon pointed out a great, lumbering, brown shape on the edge of the wooded Nebraska shore.

“Bar,” said Haddon, laconically, and Da'vy’s heart skipped a beat. “No use shootin’,” added the muledriver. “Too fer off, and the boat wouldn’t stop, nohow.” Brandon had formed his plans during the weeks of the slow up-river progress of the .old Oregon. He had earned his pay of a dollar a day and keep for himself and his boy, but he had had no easy task among the “Irish canaries,” the half-wild Missouri mules that had been so luridly described by Haddon. These vicious kicking brutes had broken the legs of two men, and had bitten . several others. Always restive, and sometimes driven frantic by the fierce storms of thunder and lightning, they had to be wa'tched day and night. But Big Dave bad escape)! with nothing worse than a bruise or two and had won the profane praise of the boss when the plunging, squealing herd was driven to panic. To the boss, Jelks, he confided his intention to leave the expedition at Council Bluffs and strike westward over the Oregon Trail to the Pacific.

“Hate to lose a good man, but I won’t stand, in yer way, Brandon,” said Jelks. “Reckon you’ve done yer share. But it’s risky Business fer a lone man and a boy to hit that trail. Injuns are gettin’ more ’n more restless. There’s one of Jim Bridger’s men, tall feller, named Spence, aboard here, and he’ll know purty much what the lay of the land is.” Brandon had heard a hundred tales of Bridger, the greatest scout and plainsman that the West ever knew. He was eager to meet any one known as “Jim Bridger’s man.” Of all the intrepid pathfinders Bridger loomed the greatest, his deeds and his fame over-topping the exploits of even such paladins as Kit Carson, Jim Baker, California Joe, Jim Beckwith, Poji Corn and Jack o’ Clubs. “Brandon, shake hands with Silent Spence,” said Jelks, next day. “Maybe Silent, here, kin tell ye somethin’ about the hostiles along the Platte, and beyant. Brandon’s bound fer the Oregon Trail, Silent, him and the boy —jest them.” Spence, six feet three, straight as an Indian, and fully as copper-brown; with black liair that swept his buckskin shoulders, eyes wide apart and of piercing black, a hawk’s nose and a good straight mouth, gave Big Dave a hand of steel, and a “Howdy,” and went on calmly smoking his pipe. He was wordless for several minutes, but Brandon waited patiently, understanding something of the nature of the man. When Spence spoke, he gave his words deliberately, retracing the trail of memory, as he went along. “When I left Jini nt Fort Bridger three months back, tlip Injuns were makin’ Big medicine—restless. Cheyennes were carryin’ th’ war-pipe to the Sioux agin’ the Pawnees and the Shoshoni. White Bull and a band of 30 Oglallas had jest bin wiped out by Crows and Shoshoni; and Crazy Horse was raisin’ th’ red ax. Bridger reckoned th’ great medicine arrer of the Cheyennes was mixed up in it, somehow. Seems like the Cheyennes had lost their big medicine, the magic arrer, durin’ a Pawnee raid. Then the Oglallas caught the Pawnees nappin’, lifted a lot of h’ar and carried the sacred arrer away with them. Next thing, Pawnees ambush Oglallas and take White Bull’s skelp, with about thirty more fer good measure. But they didn’t get the arrer. Seems like the Oglallas finally sold it back to the Cheyennes fer hundred ponies. It made a lot of had blood all ’round, When Injuns paint red agin’ each other, while men are apt to get ketclied in between ’less their medicine is powerful strong.” / “Maybe lhe trouble hasn’t started yet.” suggested Brandon. “H’ain’t lieerd definite,” said Spence, “hut I wouldn’t be' a mite s’prised if it liad. Still, that ain’t the worst of it. Winter before last was a black winter among the tribes. Cramps and small-pox. Very bad. Mato-Waviibi. Old Conquering Bear, told me the Injuns were blamin’ the whites for causin’ what he called ‘the-people-had-spotted-death-winter.’ A lot of braves went to their happy huntin’ grounds. Tniuns say their hone 3 must be covered.” This ne’ws troubled Brandon. Was it right, he asked himself, to take Daw into the hills if what such men as Brid-’er and Seance wore saying was likely to happen*

** ’Course, if ye’re bent on goin’ on,” said Spence, “I don’t know that I’d let Injun worries hold mo back. P’raps the worst danger is from a band of Cheyennes/who’re said to be led by a half-white renegade they call ‘TwoFingers.’ Jim and I hev heerd yarns aplenty about this feller, though we never cut his trail. Seems like his mother was a'Cheyenne squaw which gave him a big drag with the tribe. His father was a French fur trapper who settled in the Smoky Hills region, back in the ’thirties, and who got a grant of land from the Cheyennes. The head men of the Cheyennes don’t cotton much to this Two-Fingers party, but he’s big medicine with the young hotheads who’re alius ready fer the warpath. You want to kep yer eye peeled for him, Brandon. He’s a murderin’ devil, by all accounts.” “Thanks, Spence,” said Big Dave. “I’m not likely to forget a word of what you’ve told me. Where is Mr Brideer now?” “Jim? Oh, he’s some’r’s ’round Fort Laramine, or up the Horseshoe. I surmise Jim’s tryin’ to palaver with the S'ioux and keep ’em out o fa general mix-un., Jim stands ace-high with Red Cloud. “Hope I run across him.” said Brandon: “He’s a grand man.” “Jini kin take keer of himself, all right,” said Spence, with a dry smile. “Maybe I’ll run across ye, myself, before many weeks. I’m going up to Fort Union with Stevens’s supply gang, then I’m noin’ to strike straight west to the Hills.”

As the days passed, Brandon’s apprehensions, roused by his talk with Spence, gave way to his natural optimism and the hope .which fired him. Before the Oregon sighted Council Bluffs he had made up his mind that he could win through: that it was his duty to go on. At the Bluffs he said farewell to the expedition, and after outfitting, crossed the river and took the Oregon Trail, tjie longest road yet developed in the United States, the ancient path which had been beaten by tlie buffalo and the Indians. The sun-bleached hones’ 'of the great animal which was food and clothing like itself—to the Red Men, marked every mile of the trail. , . . Day after day; he and little Davy fared along the broad and easy trail to Gtand Island, where the Platte river dipped farthest south, and where the trail veered to the southern bank: to Fort . Kearnev, where it returned to the north fork, and on toward the fur-trading post at Laramine. Lonely days were brightened when they met east-bound waggon trains rolling in from the Oregon, or when travellers overtook and passed them. As. Brandon approached the gateway of his dreams be became a new man. Ambition drove him and high hope illuminated his' mind. As for little Davy ; the overland journey was a daily joy. He thrived in the new life. He had never been so hanpv. He learned the trick of new and manly things. Brandon taught him secrets or the trail. Ho learned how to cook, how to car© tor horses. He grew taller and stronger. Upon the Laramine they turned into the St. Vrain Trail to the Laramine Mountains, or the Black Hills, as some called them, the low savagely broken range around which the Uiecron Trail swung >n a wide detour of almost two hundred miles. Tt was in this labyrinth of gorges and peaks that tho surveyor felt his work muat begin the search for the pass which would make possible the railway, the great railway which would link, East and West. /To ho continued."}