The landing was a busy place. Piles of cordwood and freight, the latter in boxes, barrels, and crates, flanked the landing on three sides; several kinds of new wagons in various stages of assembling were scenes of great activity. Most of these were from Pittsburg and had come all the way by water. A few were of the size first used on the great trail, with a capacity of about a ton and a half; but most were much larger and could carry nearly twice as much as the others. Great bales of Osnaburg sheets, or wagon covers, were in a pile by themselves, glistening white in their newness. It appeared that the cargo of the John Auld had not yet been transported up the bluff to the village on the summit.
The landing became very much alive as the fur company's boat swung in toward it, the workers who hourly expected the Missouri Belle crowding to the water's edge to welcome the rounding boat, whose whistle early had apprised them that she was stopping. Free negroes romped and sang, awaiting their hurried tasks under exacting masters, the bosses of the gangs; but this time there was to be no work for them. Vehicles of all kinds, drawn by oxen, mules, and horses, made a solid phalanx around the freight piles, among them the wagons of Aull and Company, general outfitters for all kinds of overland journeys. The narrow, winding road from the water front up to and onto the great bluff well back from the river was sticky with mud and lined with struggling teams pulling heavy loads.
When the fur company boat drew near enough for those on shore to see its unusual human cargo, both as to numbers and kinds, conjecture ran high. This hardy traveler of the whole navigable river was no common packet, stopping almost any place to pick up any person who waved a hat, but a supercilious thoroughbred which forged doggedly into the vast wilderness of the upper river. Even her curving swing in toward the bank was made with a swagger and hinted at contempt for any landing under a thousand miles from her starting point.
Shouts rang across the water and were followed by great excitement on the bank. Because of the poor condition of the landing she worked her way inshore with unusual care and when the great gangplank finally bridged the gap her captain nodded with relief. In a few moments, her extra passengers ashore, she backed out into the hurrying stream and with a final blast of her whistle, pushed on up the river.
Friends met friends, strangers advised strangers, and the accident to the Belle was discussed with great gusto. Impatiently pushing out of the vociferous crowd, Joe Cooper and his two companions swiftly found a Dearborn carriage which awaited them and, leaving their baggage to follow in the wagon of a friend, started along the deeply rutted, prairie road for the town; Schoolcraft, his partner, and his Mexican friend sloping along behind them on saddle horses through the lane of mud. The trip across the bottoms and up the great bluff was wearisome and tiring. They no sooner lurched out of one rut than they dropped into another, with the mud and water often to the axles, and they continually were forced to climb out of the depressed road and risk upsettings on the steep, muddy banks to pass great wagons hopelessly mired, notwithstanding their teams of from six to a dozen mules or oxen. Mud-covered drivers shouted and swore from their narrow seats, or waded about their wagons up to the middle in the cold ooze. If there was anything worse than a prairie road in the spring, these wagoners had yet to learn of it.
CHAPTER VIII
Independence was alive all over, humming with business, its muddy streets filled with all kinds of vehicles drawn by various kinds and numbers of animals. Here a three-yoke ox team pulled stolidly, there a four-mule team balked on a turn, and around them skittish or dispirited horses carried riders or drew high-seated carriages. The motley crowd on foot picked its way as best it could. Indians in savage garb passed Indians in civilization's clothes, or mixtures of both; gamblers rubbed elbows with emigrants and made overtures to buckskin-covered trappers and hunters just in from the prairies and mountains, many of whom were going up to Westport, their main rendezvous. Traders came into and went from Aull and Company's big store, wherein was everything the frontier needed. Behind it were corrals filled with draft animals and sheds full of carts and wagons.
Boisterous traders and trappers, in all stages of drunkenness, who thought nothing of spending their season's profits in a single week if the mood struck them, were still coming in from the western foothills, valleys, and mountains, their loud conversations replete with rough phrases and such names as the South Park, Bent's Fort, The Pueblo, Fort Laramie, Bayou Salade, Brown's Hole, and others. Many of them so much resembled Indians as to leave a careless observer in doubt. Some were driving mules almost buried under their two packs, each pack weighing about one hundred pounds and containing eighty-odd beaver skins, sixty-odd otter pelts or the equivalent number in other skins. Usually they arrived in small parties, but here and there was a solitary trapper. The skins would be sold to the outfitting merchants and would establish a credit on which the trapper could draw until time to outfit and go off on the fall hunt. Had he sold them to some far, outlying post he would have received considerably less for them and have paid from two hundred to six hundred per cent more for the articles he bought. As long as there was nothing for him to do in his line until fall set in, he might just as well spend some of the time on the long march to the frontier, risking the loss of his goods, animals, and perhaps his life in order to get better prices and enjoy a change of scene.