As we stood on a corner near the levee awaiting Bill's return we heard the long, hoarse whistle of a steamboat, and saw one approaching from down the river, though still some distance away. A little later Bill came hurrying out of the hotel and gladdened our hearts by telling us that our offer had been accepted. His men were to take the approaching steamer to Saint Joe, and he must hurry back to Brown's stable and help get their fine hunting-horses aboard the boat.
I counted him out the two hundred dollars, which he stuffed in his pocket without recounting. We had bought for two hundred dollars an outfit worth at least five hundred dollars.
We soon had the six fine horses on board the boat. Bill went up to the cabin to turn over the money we had paid him. Soon the steamer's big bell clanged, and just as the deck-hands were about to pull in the gangplank, Bill came running out and turned and waved good-by to his employers, who stood on the hurricane-deck.
In the autumn of 1861 there was no railroad in Kansas, and the nearest point to reach the cars going east from Leavenworth would have been Weston, six or eight miles above, on the Missouri side of the river. The railroad from Saint Joseph east was patrolled by Union soldiers, to protect the bridges and keep it open for travel.
CHAPTER IV
BACK TO THE BUFFALO RANGE
As we started back up-town Bill exclaimed gleefully:
"Well, boys, what do you think? When I offered them fellows the money you paid me for the outfit they would not take a dollar of it, but told me to keep it for an advance payment—a sort of retaining fee—for my services next season. They're coming out again next spring with a bigger party and made me promise to meet them here and go with them."
After Bill left us Tom said: "Bill never did know the value of money. He could just as well as not have had the whole outfit that he sold us or, if he didn't want to keep it, could have sold it for twice what we paid him for it. But he's a free-hearted, generous fellow and never thought of it. He's brave as a lion; never was known to do a mean or cowardly trick; a dead shot. I am afraid, though, that he will die with his boots on, and die young, too."