"Bring Me His Ears"

by Clarence Edward Mulford

Tom laughed. "I can sleep well any place, captain. If I could have scooped out a hollow for my hips I wouldn't feel quite so stiff."

"Let me know as soon as Miss Cooper appears and I'll have some breakfast sent up to her. If you'd like a bite now, come with me."

"Thank you; you are very considerate. I'll call Uncle Joe and bring him with me."

"You will, hey?" said a voice from the texas. "Uncle Joe is ready right now, barring the aches of his old bones; and I've just been interrupted by Patience. She says she can chew chunks out of the cups, she's so hungry. What's that? You didn't? All right; all right; I'm backing up again! Have it your own way; you will, anyhow, in the end."

"You stay right where you are, Miss Cooper," called the captain. "I'll send up breakfast enough for six, and if you keep an eye on this pair perhaps you can get a bit of it. And let me tell you that it's lucky that you're real hungry, for the fare on this boat is even worse than it was on the Belle. I'll go right down and look to it."

Breakfast over, the three went out to explore the boat, Patience taking interest in its human cargo, especially its original passengers, and she had a good chance to observe them during the absence of the rescued passengers of the Belle, to whom had been given the courtesy of the first use of the dining-room.

Almost all of the original list on this boat were connected in some way with the fur trade, the exceptions being a few travelers bound for the upper Missouri, and two noncommissioned officers going out to Fort Leavenworth, who had missed the Belle at St Louis, missed her again at St. Charles, and had been taken aboard by Captain Graves, who would have to stop at the Fort for inspection.

The others covered all the human phases of the fur business and included one bourgeois, or factor; two partisans, or heads of expeditions; several clerks, numerous hunters and trappers, both free and under contract to the company; half a dozen "pork-eaters," who were green hands engaged for long periods of service by the company and bound to it almost as tightly and securely as though they were slaves. Some of them found this to be true, when they tried to desert, later on. They were called "pork-eaters" because the term now meant about the same as the word "tenderfeet," and its use came from the habit of the company to import green hands from Canada under contracts which not only made them slaves for five years, but almost always left them in the company's debt at the expiration of their term of service. On the way from Canada they had been fed on a simple and monotonous diet, its chief article being pork; and gradually the expression came to be used among the more experienced voyageurs to express the abstract idea of greenness. There were camp-keepers, voyageurs, a crew of keelboatmen going up to the "navy yard" above Fort Union and two skilled boat-builders bound for the same place; artisans, and several Indians returning either to one of the posts or to their own country. They made a picturesque assemblage, and their language, being Indian, English, and French, or rather, combinations of all three, was not less so than their appearance. Over them all the bully of the boat, who had reached his semi-official position through elimination by consent and by combat, exercised a more or less orderly supervision as to their bickerings and general behavior, and relieved the boat's officers of much responsibility.

The boat stopped a few minutes at Liberty Landing and then went on, rounding the nearly circular bend, and as the last turn was made and the steamboat headed westward again there was a pause in the flurry which had been going on among the rescued passengers ever since Liberty Landing had been left. Independence Landing was now close at hand and the eager crowd marked time until the bank should be reached.

Soon the boat headed in toward what was left of the once fine landing, its slowly growing ruin being responsible for the rising importance of the little hamlet of Westport not far above, and for the later and pretentious Kansas City which was to arise on the bluff behind the little frontier village. Independence was losing its importance as a starting point for the overland traffic in the same way that she had gained it. First it had been Franklin, then Fort Osage, then Blue Mills, and then Independence; but now, despite its commanding position on one of the highest bluffs along the river and its prestige from being the county seat, the latter was slowly settling in the background and giving way to Westport; but it was not to give up at once, nor entirely, for the newer terminals had to share their prominence with it, and until the end of the overland traffic Independence played its part.