“No, indeed,” burst in the impetuous Sandy. “Why, just think of it! A house already built!” 78
“Little boys should be seen, not heard,” said his elder brother, reprovingly. “Suppose you and I wait to see what the old folks have to say before we chip in with any remarks.”
“Oh, I know what Uncle Charlie will say,” replied the lad, undismayed. “He’ll say that the Smoky Hill road is the road to take. Say, Uncle Charlie, you see that Mr. Younkins here is willing to live all alone on the bank of the Republican Fork, without any neighbors at all. He isn’t afraid of Indians.”
Mr. Bryant smiled, and said that he was not afraid of Indians, but he thought that there might come a time when it would be desirable for a community to stand together as one man. “Are you a free-State man?” he asked Younkins. This was a home-thrust. Younkins came from a slave State; he was probably a pro-slavery man.
“I’m neither a free-State man nor yet a pro-slavery man,” he said, slowly, and with great deliberation. “I’m just for Younkins all the time. Fact is,” he continued, “where I came from most of us are pore whites. I never owned but one darky, and I had him from my grandfather. Ben and me, we sorter quarrelled-like over that darky. Ben, he thought he oughter had him, and I knowed my grandfather left him to me. So I sold him off, and the neighbors didn’t seem to like it. I don’t justly know why they didn’t like it; but they didn’t. Then Ben, he allowed that I had 79 better light out. So I lit out, and here I am. No, I’m no free-State man, and then ag’in, I’m no man for slavery. I’m just for Younkins. Solomon Younkins is my name.”
Bryant was very clearly prejudiced in favor of the settler from the Republican Fork by this speech; and yet he thought it best to move on to the fort that day and take the matter into consideration.
So he said that if Younkins would accept the hospitality of their tent, the Dixon party would be glad to have him pass the night with them. Younkins had a horse on which he had ridden down from his place, and with which he had intended to reach home that night. But, for the sake of inducing the new arrivals to go up into his part of the country, he was willing to stay.
“I should think you would be afraid to leave your wife and baby all alone there in the wilderness,” said Sandy, regarding his new friend with evident admiration. “No neighbor nearer than Hunter’s Creek, did you say? How far off is that?”
“Well, a matter of six miles-like,” replied Younkins. “It isn’t often that I do leave them alone over night; but then I have to once in a while. My old woman, she doesn’t mind it. She was sort of skeary-like when she first came into the country; but she’s got used to it. We don’t want any neighbors. If you folks come up to settle, you’ll 80 be on the other side of the river,” he said, with unsmiling candor. “That’s near enough––three or four miles, anyway.”
Fort Riley is about ten miles from Manhattan, at the forks of the Kaw. It was a long drive for one afternoon; but the settlers from Illinois camped on the edge of the military reservation that night. When the boys, curious to see what the fort was like, looked over the premises next morning, they were somewhat disappointed to find that the post was merely a quadrangle of buildings constructed of rough-hammered stone. A few frame houses were scattered about. One of these was the sutler’s store, just on the edge of the reservation. But, for the most part, the post consisted of two- or three-story buildings arranged in the form of a hollow square. These were barracks, officers’ quarters, and depots for the storage of military supplies and army equipments.