The Lure Of The Mississippi Part 9

"We have already lost five hours," he remarked. "Start her off, she is well built, a little wind won't hurt her. I am in a hurry with that war freight."

Lake Pepin is only a widened Mississippi. On account of long bars of silt and sand which the Chippewa River has thrown across the Mississippi, the river has backed up till it fills the whole valley, two miles wide, and twenty miles long. On this long, deep body of water, the wind and waves attain a terrific sweep, and many a boat, safe enough on the river, has met disaster on Lake Pepin.

While the _Red Hawk_ was lying at Lake City, a strong wind had been blowing from the south toward great ma.s.ses of clouds that were rising in the north. When she headed down the lake the wind died down, but half an hour later it broke with a gale from the north, carrying before it whirling clouds and sheets of swishing rain that hid from view the high bluffs on either side.

Almost at once, as if by the magic of a demon, the lake was in an uproar with a smashing sea of foaming, toppling white-capped waves, which together with the raging wind, threatened to throw the _Red Hawk_ out of her course into the trough of the waves.

The pilot strained every nerve and muscle to keep her headed toward the foot of the lake. He signalled to the engineer for full steam ahead, because a boat at high speed is more easily steered than one at low speed.

For a while, all went well. Then a sharp snap was heard at the engine.

The wheel stopped turning at once, and the boat swung helpless into the trough of the sea, while big splashing waves began to break over the low sides of the vessel and into the hold.

"The Wakon, the bad spirit, will swallow the ship," Tatanka murmured.

"We must all try to swim ash.o.r.e."

One of the piston-rods had broken and one engine alone could not turn the big stem-wheel, but Captain Allen did not mean to give up his boat without a fight. In five minutes the carpenters were at work spiking together two long wide planks. A heavy rope, twice as long as the planks, was tied to each end of the planks. To the middle of this rope the ship's hawser was fastened, and the sea anchor was ready.

"Heave her over," commanded the captain, and within a few minutes the boat swung around with her bow to the wind.

It was high time. For the waves had put out the fires, and the pumps had stopped working.

A little longer and she would have filled and sunk in thirty feet of water. As it was, she drifted fast before the wind, and in a little more than half an hour she crashed against the rocks on the Wisconsin sh.o.r.e, where storm and waves broke her to pieces.

CHAPTER VIII-AFTER THE WRECK

Although the _Red Hawk_ and her cargo were a complete loss, all on board reached land safely. With the wreckage of the boat, the men built a fire to dry themselves and from a box of bread and bacon which the waves threw ash.o.r.e, they made a frugal supper. The four travelers for the South had saved their guns and blankets and all spent the night near a big fire as best they could.

The next day, Tatanka built a tepee, using blankets and canvas instead of the deerskins and buffalo skins he had learned to use when he was a boy. The company was indeed much in need of some kind of shelter because little Tim was not at all himself. He tried bravely not to "lie down,"

as he said, but his head ached, his face was flushed and at times he had a high fever.

"I fear the boy will be sick," said Tatanka. "I will fix him a tea."

Tim had the dislike of most small boys for medicine, but he drank down a large cupful of hot tea made by steeping some green plants in hot water.

Then Tatanka covered him up with several blankets to produce sweating.

"It is good medicine," the Indian remarked. "It is the way our women cure their children, and the missionaries also say it is good medicine."

After a few days, the four travelers moved to a permanent camp a little way below the foot of Lake Pepin and about a mile below Reed's Landing.

At this place were several stores, and the landing owed its existence to the fact that early in spring goods were delivered here and hauled by wagon to the head of the lake, where they were loaded on other steamers for shipment to St. Paul. For the ice sometimes remains in Lake Pepin two weeks longer than in any other part of the upper river.

Barker and Black Buffalo had intended to take the next boat to St.

Louis, but Little Tim grew so sick that it was impossible to move him, and the men decided that they would have to take care of the sick boy as well as they could.

"He has the long fever," declared Tatanka, "and he will be sick a long time. May be till the Mississippi freezes over."

Tim did have a long sickness. He had no pain, he had no appet.i.te, and his small body often burnt with a high fever.

If a doctor could have been consulted, he would have said that Tim had a fairly mild case of typhoid fever, but there was no doctor within fifty miles of Reed's Landing. Barker and Tatanka had both seen cases like Tim's and felt that in time the little fellow would get well again.

"We shall stay here till the Great River freezes over," said Tatanka, after a week had pa.s.sed. "A sick boy cannot travel."

Tatanka built another tepee, which he and Bill occupied, while the trapper slept in the first tepee with the sick boy. The two men bought a boat of the trader and finished a canoe the trader had begun. They also built of logs and rough boards a shack for winter use, doing the work whenever they had plenty of time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The two men bought a boat of the trader.]

"A tepee," Tatanka said, "is a good house in summer and fall, but in winter it is too cold for white people, who are not used to it."

Both the trapper and Black Buffalo did all they could to make the sick boy comfortable. They gathered wild cherries and gave him the juice to drink; they made soup of prairie chicken, grouse, and wild duck.

"You must drink the good soup," said Barker, "for when the lake freezes up you and Bill must go skating and you must be big and strong when we get home to Vicksburg."

It was not difficult for the trapper and the Indian to secure enough food, for both of them knew how to gather the wild foods of woods, river, and marsh.

It was not getting to be the time when the great waves of bird life roll southward, and as the Mississippi and its grand winding bottoms are one of the great highways of the winged millions, there was an endless procession of flocks coming and going.

When little Tim had a good day and the weather was mild, the trapper carried the sick boy to a spot where he could see the shining river and the wooded bluffs, gorgeous in autumn colors, for no river in the world surpa.s.ses the upper Mississippi in the almost inconceivable profusion of autumn flowers and in the gorgeous effects of mixed and blended green, gold, orange, reds, and crimson, all painted on a canvas far too vast for any human artist and almost too grand for human eye to drink in.

And above all this beauty on earth, spread the blue sky, with fleecy white clouds floating eastward.

"Uncle Barker," the boy would ask, "what are the birds almost touching the clouds?"

"I can hear their call," the old trapper answered, glad that Tim was beginning to take an interest in things, "I think they are martins, the kind that nested in the hollow trees at Fort Ridgely and in the big house the soldiers had built for them."

Near the tepees stood an immense hollow elm. Around this tree a small flock of swifts gyrated in wide, noisy circles every evening.

"What are they doing!" asked Bill. "Where are they going?"

Tatanka smiled. "The Indian boys know," he answered. "If your eyes are sharp, you can tell."

Then Bill watched. Every time the swarm sailed, noisily chirping, over the big tree, some of the birds suddenly turned their wings against the air, and dropped into the dark hollow like so many stones. After half an hour the last bird had dropped to its sleeping-perch and Bill thumped the tree with his ax; he laid his ear to the tree and heard a great humming as of a hundred swarms of bees, and a few of the birds came out and fluttered about.

"Don't disturb them, Bill," the trapper urged. "They have been on the wing all day and we should let them rest. Some people say they have no feet, but they have, only they are very small and the swifts use them merely for clinging to walls of hollow trees at night. It is a queer way of sleeping, but the best they can do, for they never sleep in any other way."

Nowadays not many swifts sleep in hollow trees, for most of these natural homes of the bears, racc.o.o.ns, and swifts are gone, but the light-winged swifts have found other sleeping-places; they roost by thousands in chimneys of court-houses, churches, and schools. And before white men light their fires, when the days begin to grow cold, the swifts have a.s.sembled in great flocks on the Gulf of Mexico, whence they go to spend the winter in Central and South America.

Bill took great delight in bringing his sick brother a handful of the most beautiful flowers of the bottom forest, the scarlet lobelia, or cardinal flower. Tim was not alone in enjoying these dazzling red flowers. A flock of humming-birds soon found them and came to them several times every day. Within reach of the boys' hands, the little bird gems hung motionless on invisible wings. 'At times they perched, and preened their delicate plumage for ten minutes at a time. Tim laughed for the first time, when two of the midgets of the air had a fight. They squeaked like mice, as they threatened angrily to spear each other with their long sharp bills.

"They are funny little things," Tim said, as he turned over and went to sleep.

"The boy will get well," remarked Tatanka. "When a sick person laughs, he gets well again."

One warm day rather late in September, the trapper proposed a new kind of hunting to Bill. "Let us go on a bee hunt," he said; "Tatanka will stay with Tim."

Bill had never heard of a bee hunt, and wanted to know what Mr. Barker wanted to do with the bees.