THE LURE OF THE MISSISSIPPI

BY

D. LANGE

ILLUSTRATED BY W. L. HOWES

Published, October, 1917

FOREWORD

The story told here has for its scenic background the Mississippi River and its fine northern tributary, the Minnesota, the “Sky-tinted Water” of the Sioux Indians.

The story opens in the spring of 1861. The Civil War has begun. Lincoln has called for 75,000 volunteers, while to regiments and batteries of the small regular army orders have been issued to hurry to Washington as fast as possible.

Colonel John C. Pemberton embarks his battery on the Fanny Harris, at Fort Ridgely on the Minnesota River. Hundreds of sullen Indians watch the troops leave, and visions of regaining their rich hunting grounds in the Minnesota valley arise in the minds of the starving savages, who have been brooding for several years over real and fancied wrongs.

Within a year of the departure of the soldiers, a furious Indian war sweeps over the young State of Minnesota, while on the Mississippi from Cairo to New Orleans Federal and Confederate fleets and armies battle for the control of the Great River. On this historical background move the characters of the story: Barker, the old trapper; Tatanka, the Sioux scout; Tim and Bill Ferguson, two Southern boys; and their doubtful friend, Cousin Hicks.

At Vicksburg, in the summer of 1863, we meet again the former Colonel John C. Pemberton, now a general in the Confederate army, stubbornly defending the besieged city against the Federal army under General Grant.

CHAPTER I—ON BOARD THE FANNY HARRIS

There came through the night loud crashing and rumbling sounds, and a confusion of men’s voices from the steep road leading down from Fort Ridgely to the boat-landing on the Minnesota River.

All afternoon, big William Ferguson and his ten-year-old brother, Timothy, had watched the six-mule teams of the United States Army trot down the steep narrow road with guns, caissons and army supplies, for Colonel Pemberton had been ordered to leave the Sioux frontier in Minnesota and rush his battery and men to Washington as fast as possible. Fort Sumter had been fired on. President Lincoln had called for 75,000 volunteers, and from north and west, the scattered detachments and batteries of the regular army were rushed to Washington. The long-threatened Civil War had begun.

But in those days, Minnesota was a long way from the Atlantic coast, for the railroads had only just touched the Mississippi River. The soldiers at Fort Ridgely had to travel five hundred miles by steamboat to La Crosse, and in order to make all possible haste, they continued by torchlight the loading of guns, caissons, ammunition, horses, and stores.

It was the liveliest day little Tim Ferguson and his big brother, Bill, had ever seen. Bill had at last gone to sleep, wrapped in his blanket, with his head resting on a coil of rope, but the active Tim had never tired of watching the soldiers loading the big guns, and the carpenters and engineers repairing the boat for the fast and dangerous downriver trip on the flooded, winding Minnesota.

When the crash of timbers and the shouts of men rang through the night, he shook his sleeping brother, calling:

“Get up, Bill, get up! A mule team has rolled down the bluffs; I told you they would. Come along, Bill!”

Tim had guessed right. Among the trees lay the wagon and mules, while boxes of shells and hard-tack were scattered through the brush. Had it not been for the trees and brush, men, mules and wagon would have rolled straight into the swollen river.

“He’s sure a goner,” remarked one of the men, as he cut the traces of Old Harmony, the biggest mule of the battery. The neck of the mule was caught between two trees and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth full length. However, no sooner was he released, than he got up, shook himself, scrambled up the bluff and did not stop until he reached the corral, where he uttered one of those bugle-calls which had earned him the name of Old Harmony. But soldiers are accustomed to accidents of this kind, and within half an hour, Old Harmony’s Six were once more hitched to the big army-wagon. Both drivers and mules were a little more careful to keep the road and, by the light of glaring and smoking torches and blazing bonfires, the loading of the boat was rapidly finished.

When reveille sounded at daybreak, the men marched into the mess-hall at Fort Ridgely for their last breakfast in Minnesota.

There had been little sleep at the post during the night. Had a painter like Catlin been present, he could have left us some fine dramatic canvases.

Opposite the side of the fort which faced the open prairie away from the river, some six or seven hundred Sioux Indians were encamped. Only the squaws and the little children rolled up in their blankets in the tepees that night. Some of the men sat smoking around their camp-fires, but most of them sat on the river bank watching the boatmen and the soldiers working in the red glare of the torches and bonfires. They had heard that the white people were having a war amongst themselves. Now they knew that the story was true. The soldiers were going away on the steamer, and with the soldiers were going most of the big guns, against whose terrible thunder, balls, and canister no Indian braves have ever been able to keep up their courage.

“If the soldiers go away and take the big guns, we can get back the land along our river. We have been cheated out of it, and the Whites have never paid us for it,” a middle-aged warrior remarked.

“We can do more,” added a fierce-looking young man, known as the Boaster; “we can drive all the Whites out of Minnesota. But we shall keep their horses and their squaws and we shall make big feasts of their oxen. The Winnebagoes will help us. We shall make peace with the Chippewas and they will help us.

“We shall have our villages again at Kaposia and at Wabasha, on the Great River, and the Whites will have to stay on the other side of the Great River. This is our country and Manitou will send back the buffalo and the elk, and the deer will become numerous again. We shall have plenty of meat and skins as in the days of our fathers before the Whites had poisoned the land with their plows, for the black soil which the plows turn up is bad medicine for buffalo and elk and deer.”

When the shadows of the trees began to be reflected on the grayish current, the last morning blast of the Fanny Harris echoed over the flooded valley. The three howitzers left at the fort fired a salute, the few remaining men cheered their departing comrades and the soldiers on board replied with a ringing hurrah for Abe Lincoln and Fort Ridgely. Then the pilot rang a bell, the hawsers were drawn on board, the big stern-wheel churned the water to a white foam, the heavily-laden steamer backed into the current, turned around slowly, and headed down stream for Fort Snelling near St. Paul.

On board, besides the soldiers, were Bill and Tim Ferguson, Sam Baker, a trapper, and Black Buffalo, an Indian scout.

The Ferguson brothers were Southern boys from Vicksburg, who had come North with a man they called Cousin Hicks, and with whom they lived in a squatter’s cabin a few miles below Fort Ridgely. Hicks, about whose business in the Indian country there were many conflicting rumors afloat, had been away for a week visiting the Indians on the upper Minnesota, and in his absence Baker and Black Buffalo had invited the Ferguson boys to go with them to Fort Snelling and St. Paul.

The trip of the Fanny Harris from Fort Ridgely to La Crosse was never forgotten by any one on board. The Fanny Harris being a stern-wheeler, was naturally difficult to steer in a strong current. The Minnesota is one of the most twisted and crooked rivers in the West. In April, 1861, the water was so high that the placid, winding river had grown a mile wide, flooding its valley from bluff to bluff, and in many places the water flowed with a rushing current, crossing the river bed at all angles and making innumerable short cuts across fields, marshes, and woods.

“Back her up,” the pilot’s bell would sound as he tried to round one of the countless points or bends. But it was impossible to back the heavy boat against the current. The engineers could not even stop her. The best they could do was to check her speed and let her drift flanking around the wooded points, where trees and boughs raked her whole length, tearing down stanchions, guards, and gingerbread work with a deafening crash.

At other times, she would plunge straight into the timber, bending the smaller willows and other brush like so many reeds and tearing good-sized trees by the roots out of the soft mud, but before she could be again gotten into clear water, a big cottonwood bough had torn away another joint of her chimneys and smashed another part of her pilot-house.

But all this time, Colonel Lantry, who had been in supreme command ever since the boat had left Fort Snelling, stood on deck with the captain, or at the wheel with the pilots.

“Keep her going, keep her going! Keep your wheel turning!” were the only orders he gave to captain or pilot as he dodged trees and falling timbers.

“We must get to Washington, before the Rebels get there!”

“We’ll never get there,” vowed an old artilleryman who had been through the Mexican war with this same battery. “This is worse than a battle. We’ll never get there. We’ll be swimming around with the muskrats and roosting on the drift-wood and haystacks with them.

“I’d rather be in a battle where I can use my piece, than sail through the timber in this blooming tub on this beastly twisted river!”

Toward evening the steamer again crashed into the timber and a willow tree, springing back as the side of the boat had passed it, tore away several planks or buckets from the wheel.

“Boys, it’s for the rat-houses now,” called out the old gunner as the boat stopped with a crash.

But Colonel Lantry coolly repeated his usual: “Keep her going, Captain; keep her going! The Government will build you a new boat!” However, with a broken wheel she could not keep going.

“Take the anchor over to the other shore,” Captain Faucette ordered three men. “Then pass the line around the capstan and we’ll pull her back into open water. Well tie up here for the night and repair the wheel.”

Repairing the wheel was hard and dangerous work. With one hand the men worked at screwing down and unscrewing bolts and nuts, with the other hand they hung on to dripping, slippery planks and beams.

“Careful men, careful,” Captain Faucette cautioned them. “Any man that goes overboard into this icy current is lost.”

By the light of lanterns and torches, the men worked with a will. One bucket was just being lifted into place, when there was a scramble and a plunge—“Man overboard!” The cry arose and at once there was a confusion of hurrying feet and calling voices.

Tim, the Indian, and the trapper were just eating supper, while Bill had been watching and helping the men. Bill ripped off his coat. “Hold up the torches!” he called, and sprang after the man, who was just disappearing behind the wheel. The icy flood almost choked him, but he struck out after the man. By the glare of the torches he caught a glimpse of him bobbing up and being carried toward a mass of driftwood. He seized the back of the man’s shirt, pulled him to the driftwood, and tried to climb up, but it would not support his weight. He hooked his left arm around an overhanging willow, and with his right hand he raised the man’s head above the current.

“Bring a boat, quick!” he called. “I can’t hold on long. I’m all numb!”

In a few minutes, Mattson, the unfortunate carpenter, and Bill were safe on board and Colonel Lantry took charge of them.

“Here,” he said to two soldiers, “turn this man over on his face and bring him to. You know how.”

Then to the men: “On with your work, men. We must reach Fort Snelling to-morrow night.”

Bill had slipped away to his corner on the coil of ropes. His teeth chattered and his hands felt so numb that he could hardly wriggle out of his wet and sticky garments.

When he was once more in dry clothes, he hurried to the mess-room and asked the cook for the hottest tea he had.

The cook did not have to be told.

“I’d give you something better,” he said, “if I had it, but the hot milk is all gone. The captain is in a deuce of a hurry, so we went right by Mankato and St. Peter without stopping.”

After two cups of hot tea, sweetened with plenty of brown sugar, Bill’s teeth stopped rattling, but set themselves with a will into the meal of ham, potatoes, and bread placed before the hungry boy, who had not yet had his supper.

While Bill was eating, Colonel Lantry came around.

“Where did you learn it, boy?” he asked. “It was a neat piece of work.”

“Oh, I learned it at Vicksburg,” Bill replied. “We boys used to swim across the river, but there the water is warm.”

“At Vicksburg,” the officer repeated. “You are not going to Vicksburg! You are too young to enlist. You had better stay in Minnesota. There’s likely to be hell at Vicksburg before this war is over.”

CHAPTER II—IN GREAT ANXIETY

The words of the Colonel had aroused a train of thoughts in the boy.

Was there really going to be war at Vicksburg? The boys had heard talk of war, but not until they had watched the loading of the guns and the embarking of the soldiers and had heard the pressing orders of the keen, straight army officer to “keep her going,” to “push her through,” had this war talk meant anything to them.

Tim was almost too young to understand such things, but to Bill the war had suddenly become a fearful reality. Fortunately, these big guns were not going to Vicksburg; they were going to Washington, which was a long, long way from Vicksburg.

From the talk of the men and from newspapers which had occasionally fallen into Bill’s hands, the boys had learned that during the previous winter their own State, Mississippi, had left the Union, and that Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana, had likewise followed the lead of South Carolina, which had seceded a few days before Christmas.

By this time almost everybody on the boat was asleep, except the carpenters and engineers, who were still working to put the steamer into first-class running shape.

But Bill’s mind turned from the great problem and puzzle of national events to more personal problems, which in a vague manner he had often tried to solve.

Why had his mother never told him anything about his grandfather in Tennessee, except that he was a very good man, who lived on a large plantation, and had many slaves? Why had he and Tim never visited their grandfather? Many boys of Vicksburg spent months at a time on the plantations of their grandfathers.

What kind of a man was their cousin, Hicks, really?

Both Bill and Tim liked Trapper Barker very much and even Black Buffalo, although he was an Indian, and spoke only a broken English, they liked, but they had begun to feel that there was something mysterious about Cousin Hicks. He didn’t try to make a farm. He had bought no farm horses nor oxen like the other settlers. He had only planted a little corn and a few potatoes and beans and he let the boys do the work in the small field, while with a light team and wagon he visited around amongst the Indians and Whites. Why didn’t he stay at home and work like the German and Irish and Yankee settlers?

Had he only gone to Minnesota so that Tim might grow big and strong in the northern climate? Tim had often been sick at Vicksburg, but now he was as strong and active as any small boy of his age; however, Cousin Hicks seemed to take little interest in Tim’s health.

At last the troubled boy fell asleep and all his puzzles were forgotten until the clear call of the bugler: “We can’t get them up—we can’t get them up in the morning!” echoed over the flooded valley. It seemed to Bill that he had slept only a five minutes, although it was now full daylight. The ruddy sheen of the rising sun was reflected in a broad streak of red from the swirling, rushing and gliding waters, while masses of black smoke were curling from the chimneys of the boat.

The Fanny Harris had filled up with coal before she left St. Paul, because the wood-yards were flooded and much of the cord-wood piled up for sale at the different landing places had drifted down stream.

The second day’s travel was much like the first, but contrary to the expectation of the artillerymen, the boat did reach the Fort Snelling landing in the evening, having made more than three hundred miles in two days.

Her appearance, however, was more like that of a wreck than of a safe ship. Had there been any turn-bridges in those days, they would not have had to open for her. Only six feet were left of her tallest smokestack, while the other projected only a yard above the deck.

But Colonel Lantry would not stop for repairs.

“How are her hull and engine?” he asked.

“All sound, sir,” replied Captain Faucette.

“Then we shall cast off at daylight,” he ordered. “You can patch her up at La Crosse.”

At La Crosse the soldiers, guns, and horses were transferred to railroad cars. Col. John E. Pemberton accompanied his men to Washington, where he resigned and entered the service of the Confederate States.

The four civilian travelers left the Fanny Harris at Fort Snelling, and stayed a few days at Snelling and St. Paul, till Barker and Black Buffalo had finished their trading.

At these two places, the excitement was as great as it had been at Fort Ridgely. Fort Snelling had been made the recruiting station for the State, and from all over the State men were responding to the call of President Lincoln. Hundreds of men were encamped in tents and rapidly constructed shacks, because the old stone barracks could not hold them all. Captain Acker’s company was already complete and before the end of the month the First Minnesota Regiment was mustered in.

At the frontier town of St. Paul, the excitement was as great as at Fort Snelling. Everybody talked war, while at the river front two dozen boats were hastily loading and unloading. Mixed with the excited white people were a number of silent, stolid-looking Indians, both Chippewa and Sioux. They were found in the stores, on the streets and at the boat landing.

The town seemed full of soldiers from all parts of the State. Some of the men of the Fanny Harris had deserted the boat at Fort Snelling, because they were afraid if they waited they might not be able to get in on the 75,000 President Lincoln had called for.

On the first up-river boat, the two lads and their friends started back for Fort Ridgely. They were all in a sad mood. Bill could not help thinking of the words of the officer, in regard to Vicksburg, while Barker and Black Buffalo were turning over in their minds the looks and the talk of the Sioux, who in the red glare of torches and bonfires, had been watching the loading of cannons and other preparations for the departure of the soldiers.

Black Buffalo especially seemed in a sullen mood.

“Who is the white boys’ cousin?” he asked Barker, when the two were sitting alone on the rear deck after dinner, while the boys were watching immense flocks of geese, ducks, and cormorants that were now going north over the flooded valley.

“He pretends to be their friend,” replied the trapper, “but I am, like yourself, much puzzled by his actions and behavior. He does nothing for the boys. He talks of finding a good squatter’s homestead for them, but even Bill is much too young to hold a piece of land till it is surveyed and opened for settlement.”

“He is not their friend,” Black Buffalo uttered gruffly. “I see him often talking with bad Indians and bad white men. I do not like him; he is a bad man. He sells rum to the Indians, when he thinks no eyes see him, and he talks against the good work of the missionaries.