The Boy Settlers Part 18

As they were making ready for bed that night, the pleasant-faced young man from Baltimore, who had been playing whist with his mother and sister, and the "military man," as the boys had privately named one of the party, came to their door with his flute. The two musicians were fast friends at once. Flute and violin made delicious harmony, in the midst of which Sandy, who had slipped into his bunk, drifted off into the land of dreams with confused notions of a giant band somewhere up in the sky playing "Oh, Susannah!" "Love's Last Greeting," and "How Can I Leave Thee?" with occasional suggestions of the "Song of the Kansas Emigrants."

Another morning came on, cold, damp, and raw. The sky was overcast and there were signs of rain. "There's been rain to the nor'rard," said Captain Bulger, meditatively. Now Captain Bulger was the skipper of the "New Lucy," and when he said those oracular words, they were reported about the steamboat, to the great comfort of all on board.

Still the five boats stuck on the shoals; their crews were still hard at work at all the devices that could be thought of for their liberation. The "War Eagle"--for they had found out the name of the musical steamer far down stream--enlivened the tedious day with her occasional strains of martial and popular music, if the steam-organ could be called musical.

In the afternoon, Oscar and the amiable young man from Baltimore shut themselves in their stateroom and played the flute and violin. The lovely lady who had made Sandy's acquaintance early in the voyage asked him if he could make one at a game of whist. Sandy replied that he could play "a very little." The thought of playing cards here on a steamboat, in public, as he said to himself, was rather frightful. He was not sure if his mother would like to have him do that. He looked uneasily around to see what Charlie would say about it. But Charlie was nowhere in sight. He was wandering around, like an uneasy ghost, watching for signs of the rising of the river, now confidently predicted by the knowing ones among the pa.s.sengers.

"My boys all play whist," said the lady, kindly; "but if you do not like to play, I will not urge you. We lack one of making up a party."

Sandy had been told that he was an uncommonly good player for one so young. He liked the game; there would be no stakes, of course. With his ready habit of making up his mind, he brightly said, "I'll play if you like, but you must know that I am only a youngster and not a first-rate player." So they sat down, the lovely lady from Baltimore being Sandy's partner, and the military gentleman and the young daughter of the lady from Baltimore being their opponents. Sandy had great good luck. The very best cards fell to him continually, and he thought he had never played so well. He caught occasional strains of music from room Number 56, and he was glad that Oscar was enjoying himself. From time to time the lovely lady who was his partner smiled approvingly at him, and once in a while, while the cards were being dealt, she said, "How divinely those dear boys are playing!"

The afternoon sped on delightfully, and Sandy's spirits rose. He thought it would be fine if the "New Lucy" should stay stuck on a sand-bar for days and days, and he should have such a good game of whist, with the lovely lady from Baltimore for a partner. But the military gentleman grew tired. His luck was very poor, and when the servants began to rattle dishes on the supper-table, he suggested that it would be just as well perhaps if they did not play too much now; they would enjoy the game better later on. They agreed to stop with the next game.

When they had first taken their places at the card-table, the military gentleman had asked Sandy if he had any cards, and when he replied that he had none, the military gentleman, with a very lordly air, sent one of the cabin waiters to the bar for a pack of cards. Now that they were through with the game, Sandy supposed that the military gentleman would put the cards into his pocket and pay for them. Instead of that he said, "Now, my little man, we will saw off to see who shall pay for the cards."

"Saw off?" asked Sandy, faintly, with a dim notion of what was meant.

"Yes, my lad," said the military gentleman. "We will play one hand of Old Sledge to see who shall pay for the cards and keep them."

With a sinking heart, but with a brave face, Sandy took up the cards dealt to him and began to play. It was soon over. Sandy won one point in the hand; the military gentleman had the other three.

"Take care of your cards, my son," said the military gentleman; "we may want them again. They charge the extravagant price of six bits for them on this boat, and these will last us to St. Louis."

Six bits! Seventy-five cents! And poor Sandy had only twenty-five cents in his pocket. That silver quarter represented the entire capital of the Boy Settlers from Kansas. Looking up, he saw Charlie regarding him with reproachful eyes from a corner of the saloon. With great carefulness, he gathered up his cards and rose, revolving in his mind the awful problem of paying for seventy-five cents' worth of cards with twenty-five cents.

"Well, you've got yourself into a nice sc.r.a.pe," tragically whispered Charlie, in his ear, as soon as the two boys were out of earshot of the others. "What are you going to do now? You can spar your way down to St. Louis, but you can't spar your way with that barkeeper for a pack of cards."

"Let me alone, Charlie," said Sandy, testily. "You haven't got to pay for these cards. I'll manage it somehow. Don't you worry yourself the least bit."

"Serves you right for gambling. What would mother say if she knew it?

If you hadn't been so ready to show off your whist-playing before these strangers, you wouldn't have got into such a box."

"I didn't gamble," replied Sandy, hotly. "It isn't gambling to play a hand to see who shall pay for the cards. All men do that. I have seen daddy roll a game of tenpins to see who should pay for the alley."

"I don't care for that. It is gambling to play for the leastest thing as a stake. Nice fellow you are, sitting down to play a hand of seven-up for the price of a pack of cards! Six bits at that!"

"A nice brotherly brother you are to nag me about those confounded cards, instead of helping a fellow out when he is down on his luck."

Charlie, a little conscience-stricken, held his peace, while Sandy broke away from him, and rushed out into the chilly air of the after-deck. There was no sympathy in the dark and murky river, none in the forlorn sh.o.r.e, where rows of straggling cottonwoods leaned over and swept their muddy arms in the muddy water. Looking around for a ray of hope, a bright idea struck him. He could but try one chance.

The bar of the "New Lucy" was a very respectable-looking affair, as bars go. It opened into the saloon cabin of the steamer on its inner side, but in the rear was a small window where the deck pa.s.sengers sneaked up, from time to time, and bought whatever they wanted, and then quietly slipped away again, unseen by the more "high-toned"

pa.s.sengers in the cabin. Summoning all his courage and a.s.surance, the boy stepped briskly to this outside opening, and, leaning his arms jauntily on the window-ledge, said, "See here, cap, I owe you for a pack of cards."

"Yep," replied the barkeeper, holding a bottle between his eye and the light, and measuring its contents.

This was not encouraging. Sandy, with a little effort, went on: "You see we fellows, three of us, are sparring our way down to St. Louis.

We have got trusted for our pa.s.sage. We've friends in St. Louis, and when we get there we shall be in funds. Our luggage is in p.a.w.n for our pa.s.sage money. When we come down to get our luggage, I will pay you the six bits I owe you for the cards. Is that all right?"

"Yep," said the barkeeper, and he set the bottle down. As the lad went away from the window, with a great load lifted from his heart, the barkeeper put his head out of the opening, looked after him, smiled, and said, "That boy'll do."

When Sandy joined his brother, who was wistfully watching for him, he said, a little less boastfully than might have been expected of him, "That's all right, Charlie. The barkeeper says he will trust me until we get to St. Louis and come aboard to get the luggage. He's a good fellow, even if he did say 'yep' instead of 'yes' when I asked him."

In reply to Charlie's eager questions, Sandy related all that had happened, and Charlie, with secret admiration for his small brother's knack of "cheeking it through," as he expressed it, forbore any further remarks.

"I do believe the water is really rising!" exclaimed the irrepressible youngster, who, now that his latest trouble was fairly over, was already thinking of something else. "Look at that log. When I came out here just after breakfast, this morning, it was high and dry on that shoal. Now one end of it is afloat. See it bob up and down?"

Full of the good news, the lads went hurriedly forward to find Oscar, who, with his friend from Baltimore, was regarding the darkening scene from the other part of the boat.

"She's moving!" excitedly cried Oscar, pointing his finger at the "War Eagle"; and, as he spoke, that steamer slid slowly off the sand-bar, and with her steam-organ playing triumphantly "Oh, aren't you glad you're out of the Wilderness!" a well-known air in those days, she steamed steadily down stream. From all the other boats, still stranded though they were, loud cheers greeted the first to be released from the long embargo. Presently another, the "Thomas H. Benton," slid off, and churning the water with her wheels like a mad thing, took her way down the river. All these boats were flat-bottomed and, as the saying was, "could go anywhere if the ground was a little damp." A rise of a very few inches of water was sufficient to float any one of them. And, in the course of a half-hour, the "New Lucy," to the great joy of her pa.s.sengers, with one more hoist on her forward spars, was once more in motion, and she too went gayly steaming down the river, her less fortunate companions who were still aground cheering her as she glided along the tortuous channel.

"Well, that was worth waiting some day or two to see," said Oscar, drawing a long breath. "Just listen to that snorting calliope, playing 'Home, Sweet Home' as they go prancing down the Big Muddy. I shall never forget her playing that 'Out of the Wilderness' as she tore out of those shoals. It's a pretty good tune, after all, and the steam-organ is not so bad now that you hear it at a distance."

CHAPTER XX.

STRANDED NEAR HOME.

It was after dark, on a Sat.u.r.day evening, when the "New Lucy" landed her pa.s.sengers at the levee, St. Louis. They should have been in the city several hours earlier, and they had expected to arrive by daylight. The lads marvelled much at the sight of the muddy waters of the Missouri running into the pure currents of the Mississippi, twenty miles above St. Louis, the two streams joining but not mingling, the yellow streak of the Big Muddy remaining separate and distinct from the flow of the Mississippi for a long distance below the joining of the two. They had also found new enjoyment in the sight of the great, many-storied steamboats with which the view was now diversified as they drew nearer the beautiful city which had so long been the object of their hopes and longings. They could not help thinking, as they looked at the crowded levee, solid buildings, and slender church spires, that all this was a strange contrast to the lonely prairie and wide, trackless s.p.a.ces of their old home on the banks of the distant Kansas stream. The Republican Fork seemed to them like a far-off dream, it was so very distant to them now.

"Where are you young fellows going to stop in St. Louis?" asked the pleasant-faced young man from Baltimore.

The lads had scarcely thought of that, and here was the city, the strange city in which they knew n.o.body, in full sight. They exchanged looks of dismay, Sandy's face wearing an odd look of amus.e.m.e.nt and apprehension mixed. Charlie timidly asked what hotels were the best.

The young man from Baltimore named two or three which he said were "first-cla.s.s," and Charlie thought to himself that they must avoid those. They had no money to pay for their lodging, no baggage as security for their payment.

As soon as they could get away by themselves, they held a council to determine what was to be done. They had the business address of their uncle, Oscar Bryant, of the firm of Bryant, Wilder & Co., wholesale dealers in agricultural implements, Front Street. But they knew enough about city life to know that it would be hopeless to look for him in his store at night. It would be nearly nine o'clock before they could reach any hotel. What was to be done? Charlie was certain that no hotel clerk would be willing to give them board and lodging, penniless wanderers as they were, with nothing but one small valise to answer as luggage for the party. They could have no money until they found their uncle.

Before they could make up their minds what to do, or which way to turn, the boat had made her landing and was blowing off steam at the levee. The crowds of pa.s.sengers, glad to escape from the narrow limits of the steamer, were hurrying ash.o.r.e. The three homeless and houseless lads were carried resistlessly along with the crowd. Charlie regretted that they had not asked if they could stay on the boat until Sunday morning. But Sandy and Oscar both scouted such a confession of their poverty. "Besides," said Sandy, "it is not likely that they would keep any pa.s.sengers on board here at the levee."

"Ride up? Free 'bus to the Planters'!" cried one of the runners on the levee, and before the other two lads could collect their thoughts, the energetic Sandy had drawn them into the omnibus, and they were on their way to an uptown hotel. When the driver had asked where their baggage was, Sandy, who was ready to take command of things, had airily answered that they would have it sent up from the steamer.

There were other pa.s.sengers in the 'bus, and Charlie, anxious and distressed, had no chance to remonstrate; they were soon rattling and grinding over the pavements of St. Louis. The novelty of the ride and the glitter of the brightly lighted shops in which crowds of people were doing their Sat.u.r.day-night buying, diverted their attention for a time. Then the omnibus backed up before a handsome hotel, and numerous colored men came hurrying down the steps of the grand entrance to wait upon the new arrivals. With much ceremony and obsequiousness, the three young travellers were ushered into the office, where they wrote their names in a big book, and were escorted to a large and elegant room, in which were ample, even luxurious, sleeping accommodations for the trio.

The colored porter a.s.siduously brushed off the clothing of the lads.

"Baggage?" the clerk at the desk had asked when they registered.

"Baggage, sah?" the waiter asked again, as he dusted briskly the jackets of the three guests. Neither Charlie nor Oscar had the heart to make reply to this very natural question. It was Sandy who said: "We will not have our baggage up from the steamer to-night. We are going right on up north."

But when Sandy tipped the expectant waiter with the long-treasured silver quarter of a dollar, Charlie fairly groaned, and sinking into a chair as the door closed, said, "Our last quarter! Great Scott, Sandy!

are you crazy?"

Sandy, seeing that there was no help for it, put on a bold front, and insisted that they must keep up appearances to the last. He would hunt up Uncle Oscar's place of abode in the city directory after supper, and bright and early Sunday morning he would go and see him. They would be all right then. What use was that confounded old quarter, anyhow? They might as well stand well with the waiter. He might be useful to them. Twenty-five cents would not pay their hotel bill; it would not buy anything they needed in St. Louis. The darky might as well have it.

"And this is one of the swellest and most expensive hotels in the city," cried Charlie, eyeing the costly furniture and fittings of the room in which they were lodged. "I just think that we are travelling under false pretences, putting up at an expensive house like this without a cent in our pockets. Not one cent! What will you do, you cheeky boy, if they ask us for our board in advance? I have heard that they always do that with travellers who have no baggage."

"Well, I don't know what we will do," said Sandy, doggedly. "Suppose we wait until they ask us. There'll be time enough to decide when we are dunned for our bill. I suppose the honestest thing would be to own right up and tell the whole truth. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of people have to do that sort of thing when they get into a tight place."

"But I'm really afraid, Sandy, that they won't believe us," said the practical Oscar. "The world is full of swindlers as well as of honest fellows. They might put us out as adventurers."

"We are not adventurers!" cried Sandy, indignantly. "We are gentlemen when we are at home, able to pay our debts. We are overtaken by an accident," he added, chuckling to himself. "Distressed gentlemen, don't you see?"