“Here is all my ‘funny business’ wasted,” cried Sandy. “No Indian came to read my comic letter, after all. I suppose the mice and crickets must 204 have found some amusement in it; I saw any number of them scampering away when I opened the door; but I guess they are the only living things that have been here since we went away.”
“Isn’t it queer that we should be gone like this for nearly two days,” said Oscar, “leaving everything behind us, and come back and know that nobody has been any nearer to the place than we have, all the time? I can’t get used to it.”
“My little philosopher,” said his Uncle Charlie, “we are living in the wilderness; and if you were to live here always, you would feel, by and by, that every newcomer was an interloper; you would resent the intrusion of any more settlers here, interfering with our freedom and turning out their cattle to graze on the ranges that seem to be so like our own, now. That’s what happens to frontier settlers, everywhere.”
“Why, yes,” said Sandy, “I s’pose we should all be like that man over on the Big Blue that Mr. Fuller tells about, who moved away when a newcomer took up a claim ten miles and a half from him, because, as he thought, the people were getting too thick. For my part, I am willing to have this part of Kansas crowded to within, say, a mile and a half of us, and no more. Hey, Charlie?”
“Home, Sweet Home.”
But the prospect of that side of the Republican Fork being over-full with settlers did not seem very imminent about that time. From parts of Kansas nearer to the Missouri River than they were, they heard of a slackening in the stream of migration. The prospect of a cold winter had cooled the ardor of the politicians who had determined, earlier in the season, to hold the Territory against all comers. Something like a truce had been tacitly agreed on, and there was a cessation of hostilities for the present. The troops had been marched back from Lawrence to the post, and no more elections were coming on for the present in any part of the Territory. Mr. Bryant, who was the only ardent politician of the company, thought that it would be a good plan to go back to Illinois for the winter. They could come out again in the spring and bring the rest of the two families with them. The land would not run away while they were gone.
It was with much reluctance that the boys accepted this plan of their elders. They were especially sorry that it was thought best that the two men should stay behind and wind up affairs, while the three lads would go down to the river with Younkins, and thence home by steamer from Leavenworth down the Missouri to St. Louis. But, after a few days of debate, this was thought to be the best thing that could be done. It was on a dull, dark November day that the boys, wading for the last time the cold stream of the Fork, crossed over to Younkins’s early in the morning, while the sky was red with the dawning, carrying their light baggage with them. They had ferried their trunks across the day before, using the oxcart 206 for the purpose and loading all into Younkins’s team, ready for the homeward journey.