The Lure Of The Mississippi Part 20

After supper Tatanka and Bill arranged the packs under the canoe while Barker and Tim washed the dishes, for the trapper insisted that it is just as easy to keep clean in camp as to live with a lot of dirt.

The place of their camp was a few miles below the town of Winona. They had, however, not landed there for several reasons. They felt that they had no time to lose if they would reach Vicksburg before the end of summer, and before Grant could take the Confederate stronghold of the Mississippi. They had no recent letters from Vicksburg, and on their trip they could of course receive none. Barker and the lads had written to the boys' parents that they might expect them in Vicksburg sometime in June or July. "That is," the letter closed, "if at that time, we can get in."

"If Grant has made up his mind to take Vicksburg," the trapper had told the boys, "I reckon he'll stick around and fight till he gets it. No matter how big and how many the swamps are that protect it. If he cannot get at the city from the north, he will get at it from the south. If he cannot keep a base of supplies in his rear, he'll do without a base and will make his army live on the country, till he can establish a base."

Another important reason for their not stopping at many towns was that they felt that Hicks was certainly trying to discover their whereabouts.

"The bad man is surely looking for us," Tatanka declared. "He has hired scouts to let him know when we pa.s.s. We must not stop at the towns."

On the following evening they pa.s.sed the Iowa State line and they were now traveling between the States of Wisconsin and Iowa.

The scenery all along had been wonderfully grand. It showed the same high wooded bluffs and steep bare rocks they had so much admired at their camp on Inspiration Point.

This grand striking scenery continues some hundred miles into Iowa.

A large region in southern Minnesota, southern Wisconsin, and northern Iowa has never been glaciated and is known as the driftless area. In this region the great river and its tributaries have cut deep valleys through layers of limestone, dolomite, and sandstone. The sides of the valleys have never been rounded off by creeping glaciers, and the cliffs of dolomite stand up straight and bold like the well-known Maiden Rock and Sugar Loaf near Winona.

This stretch of the Mississippi from St. Paul and Minneapolis to Dubuque, some four hundred miles long, is the greatest scenic river highway in the world. Every American should travel over it before he goes to see the rivers of Europe, most of which are insignificant streams compared with the Mississippi. The whole navigable distance on the Rhine is no greater than the great scenic course of the Mississippi, and this course is less than one-fifth of the whole navigable length of our great American river. He who has not traveled on the Mississippi has not seen America.

Even several great tributaries of the Mississippi, like the Missouri and the Ohio and the Red River, are larger than any river in Europe.

The boys soon learned to find good camping-places, and vied with each other in selecting the best ones.

As far as they could, they camped a few miles above the larger river towns. The supplies they needed they bought of farmers or in small towns, two men generally going after the supplies and the other two staying at the camp. Many interesting incidents occurred to them all, but it would make our story too long to tell of them.

The river now became alive with all kinds of steamboats, some carrying pa.s.sengers and merchandise, others guns, ammunition, and soldiers, and it often taxed Bill's skill to avoid danger from the swell of the big boats.

Spring was advancing apace. When they reached the northern boundary of Missouri, about the first of May, it was summer. The trees were green, birds were in full song, and the woods were full of flowers.

Spring advances up the river at the rate of something like fifteen miles a day. About the first of March poplars and hazel hang out their pollen-laden catkins at St. Louis; while at the Twin Cities, the first spring flowers appear about a month later, but as the party was rapidly traveling southward, the season to them advanced three or four days in twenty-four hours.

At the well-known river port of Hannibal, Missouri, they placed their canoe and baggage on a steamer and took pa.s.sage for Cairo at the mouth of the Ohio. At the great busy port of St. Louis they kept quiet on the boat. The next evening they landed at Cairo.

Below Cairo, the mighty stream grows to its full grandeur. It has received its two greatest tributaries, the Missouri and the Ohio, besides such streams as the Wisconsin, the Des Moines, the Iowa, and the Illinois, all of them fine rivers for the canoeist, the fisherman, and the sight-seer.

Cairo was the most northerly point, where the great struggle for the possession of the Mississippi began between North and South.

The four travelers had now reached the scene of the Civil War on the Mississippi.

CHAPTER XVIII-IN THE SUNKEN LANDS

It was a mellow summer evening about the first of June, when the party arrived at the small town of Hickman in Kentucky.

Ever since they had left the upper river, their birch-bark canoe had been an object of curiosity to all who had seen it, because the white-birch or canoe-birch does not grow on the lower river.

At Hickman, the four travelers went into a store to replenish their supplies. In front of the store, sitting on a cracker-box, a man greeted Barker with, "h.e.l.lo, Sam! Where on earth do you come from? Haven't seen you since you were trapping c.o.o.ns and hunting wild turkeys on the Wabash."

"And what brings you into this little river burg, d.i.c.k Banks?" the trapper asked, equally surprised.

"Oh, I just drifted down the Wabash and the Ohio to this old river. You know I always wanted to see the Mississippi, when we were boys. Well, I'm working on a steamboat between New Madrid and St. Louis."

After a while Banks took Barker aside.

"Say, Sam," he spoke in a low voice, "it seems sort of strange, but I reckon there was a fellow here looking for you just this morning. He asked whether we ones had seen a white man with an Indian and two boys traveling down river?

"Hadn't the faintest idea you could be the man he referred to. You hadn't any beard and gray hair when I saw you last, but sure as I'm d.i.c.k Banks, his story fits your party exactly. Fellow seemed to be mighty set on finding you. Told us you had kidnapped his two nephews and stolen two horses of him 'way up in Minnesota. Said he was going to swear out a warrant and have you arrested."

"That dirty pup," exclaimed Barker, with his eyes flashing. "My Indian and I saved those lads from being murdered by the Sioux. The lads rode away on our own horses and we didn't even take a blanket of the dirty bootlegger. The old squint-eyed scoundrel deserted the lads. Dern his soul! I always believed he wanted them to get killed. He doesn't want them to get back home for some reason. My Indian and I are going to take them home to Vicksburg. I knew Hicks in Indiana. He always was a blackguard."

d.i.c.k Banks puffed vigorously at his corncob pipe.

"Sam," he replied, "I'll tell you something. You used to be some sc.r.a.pper back in Indiana. I figure you could handle that friend of yours all right, but you might as well go back with me to St. Louis. You can't get into Vicksburg."

"And why can't I get in?"

"You haven't seen as much of the war as I have seen. I have been clear down to Haynes Bluff a little way above Vicksburg. Grant and his men have got the place bottled up. You can't get in. Gunboats, big ones, little ones, the whole river is full of them. Guards and soldiers everywhere. Don't try it, Sam. They might think you were a spy and hang you. Those army courts aren't as good-natured as our old Indiana juries."

"No, d.i.c.k," the trapper argued. "I can't go back with you. I'm going to take those boys home. I'll either fight Hicks or give him the slip.

We're going to Vicksburg. May be I can get a pa.s.s through the lines."

"All right then, Sam; I've said my say. Get a pa.s.s? Why, man, Abe Lincoln himself couldn't get a pa.s.s! You're as set on having your way as you were as a kid.

"Now don't hurry that Vicksburg campaign of yours. Better paddle about in the swamps and bayous for a few weeks. They say in about a month the town will have to surrender. You can't get a pa.s.s into Vicksburg.

They've been shut up two weeks now."

That evening the four travelers had a good supper on board of d.i.c.k Bank's boat and d.i.c.k also fixed beds for them on board the steamer, and at daylight before the town was awake, they paddled their light craft into a small winding channel which led into one of the most mysterious lakes of North America, Reelfoot Lake, a lake made by the great earthquake of 1811, generally known as the earthquake of New Madrid.

Tatanka was especially happy to be on this small winding stream.

"It is like the winding Minnesota River," he said, "and it is beautiful like the small rivers that join the Mississippi above Lake Pepin. For a long time they follow their own winding trail in the bottom woods, as if they were afraid to go near the great Mississippi in which all big and little rivers lose themselves."

"The trees are different here," Bill remarked. "We never saw any cypress on the Minnesota."

They spent nearly all day on this winding channel, and it was not until an hour before sunset that they came in sight of the strange waters and scene of Reelfoot Lake.

"I will not go there," said Tatanka, when, at last, the Lake of the Sunken Lands spread out before them. "It is a spook lake, a lake of bad spirits. We must not camp on it. My brother, you told me that a bad spirit shook the earth and trampled down the farms to make the lake.

"Look, the water is very black and very many dead trees grow out of it."

"Tatanka," exclaimed Barker, "you are forgetting what the missionaries have taught you. Haven't they told you many times that there are no spook lakes, no bad medicine lakes? Those dead trees didn't grow dead.

They died, when the water rose around them. There are no bad spirits in the earth. The earth just shook and sank. You have been a scout for the white soldiers, and you have to forget your Dakotah superst.i.tions."

Tatanka was silent a while, and stopped paddling.