VIIITHE GOLD FEVER
Even while Davy had been herding a change had occurred in this Salt Creek Valley. The number of settlers seemed almost to have doubled, and cabins and houses and ploughed fields were everywhere. Amidst them ran the Leavenworth end of the great Overland Trail. Until after the first snows the emigrants and settlers toiled along it, down the hill into the valley and up the hill out of the valley; and all winter the bull trains plodded back and forth. Weather rarely stopped the Russell, Majors & Waddell outfits.
Mr. DeVinne was the teacher in the school. It was the best school yet, according to the Cody girls, because there were more pupils, and Mr. DeVinne seemed to know how to teach. Of course the school was not graded; it consisted of only one room, where the boys and girls sat on long benches, with other benches for desks. The scholars ranged from little Eliza Cody, who was six, up to big boys of twenty. The pupils had come from all over—from Missouri, Illinois, Vermont, Carolina, Mississippi, and the other States east and south. Davy, who had been herdingfor Russell, Majors & Waddell, and had proved his pluck, felt as big as any of them.
Steve Gobel, who tried to be a kind of boss (when Billy Cody wasn’t there), started in to tease Davy, who was little and red-headed. Davy stood the teasing as long as he could; but when Steve grabbed his hair and pulled, saying: “Here, Red! Lemme warm my fingers,” Davy flared up. He would have fought Steve then and there, but another boy sprang between them.
“You’d better let him alone, Steve Gobel, or Billy Cody’ll give you another licking.”
“Yes, he will!” cried Helen Cody and all the girls. “He’s coming back pretty soon now.”
“Aw, he never licked me. He ain’t big enough,” snarled Steve.
“Well, he’s man enough, whether he’s big enough or not,” retorted the boys. And——
“He did, too, lick you. And he’ll do it again as soon as he gets home,” called the Cody girls, loyally.
Steve growled, but he strolled off and after that he let Davy pretty much alone. Davy learned that Steve had bullied Billy Cody, too—until in a fight Billy had been made mad enough to hurt him. Billy was the school’s hero, for he was out on the plains doing a man’s work and helping to support his mother and sisters. Everybody liked Billy if they knew him, or they wanted to see him if they didn’t know him.
The cold, snowy winter of Kansas and a new West set in. The days and nights were below zero, blizzardsof wind and snow swept through plains and valleys; and in the frontier cabins the settlers schemed hard to keep warm. His chores at the Shields cabin and his trips to school and back kept Davy busy; but he must make the best of his school term, for when winter quit school would quit too. Once in a while he stopped in at the Cody home; Mrs. Cody was putting up a large house as a hotel and eating place for the overland travellers, particularly the teamsters of the wagon trains. The girls named it “The Valley Grove House.”
Then, in February, who should appear at school but Billy himself.
“Hurrah! There’s Billy Cody!”
“Hello, Red!”
“Hello, Billy.”
“When did you get back, Billy?” asked everybody.
“Yesterday.”
“Where’ve you been this time?”
“Out to Laramie and Fort Walbach at Cheyenne Pass. Been trapping on the Chugwater, south of Laramie, too.”
“How’d you come back? With a bull train?”
“Nope. A couple of fellows and I started with our own pack outfit, but the Injuns jumped us on the Little Blue, and we ran into snow, and we mighty nigh never got through.”
“What you going to do now, Billy?”
“Going to school a while, I reckon.”
And so he did. He also told Davy his adventures.He had been assistant wagon master with Buck Bomer from Leavenworth northwest to Fort Laramie, and from Laramie south sixty miles to new Fort Walbach. After that he had gone trapping, but hadn’t caught much. In December he had started home mule-back with two other “men.” The Indians had chased them in central Kansas, and they had tried to sleep in a cave until they found that it was strewn with skeletons; and a snowstorm had buffeted them, but at last they had reached Leavenworth.
This seemed considerable for a boy of fourteen to have done. Billy brought home his wages, as usual, for his mother, and now he settled down to school again. Davy was very glad to have him back.
Once in a while he and Billy rode into Leavenworth on errands. As the winter wore away rumors of the Pike’s Peak region and the Cherry Creek gold diggings in it grew more and more numerous. A few travellers from that western border of Kansas (for Kansas Territory extended clear to the Rocky Mountains) arrived in Leavenworth and declared that things out in the Pike’s Peak region were booming. Two towns, Auraria and Denver, had been founded on Cherry Creek; and from the sands gold was being washed out. It was claimed that the mines would equal those of California—and they were much nearer to the States.
Soon after Billy had come home he and Davy metMr. Baxter on the street in Leavenworth. Mr. Baxter looked fine, and shook hands heartily with them.
“What are you doing for yourselves?” he asked.
“Going to school. What are you doing?”
“Oh, visiting ’round, waiting for the trail to open.”
“The green grass will sure look good,” quoth Billy, wisely. “What are you going to do, Reverend? Bull whack?”
“No. I think I’ll strike out for the new Cherry Creek diggings.”
“Thought you didn’t count much on those stories,” reminded Davy.
“I didn’t, but I do now. Just got back from Omaha. Boys, I saw six quills full of gold there from the Pike’s Peak country. Everybody up at Omaha is wild about it. They’re all going. The newspapers from my home town in Massachusetts are full of gold stories. The whole East is excited. By spring you’ll see the biggest crowd starting on the Overland Trail since the days of Forty-nine and the California boom. Leavenworth won’t be big enough to hold the people outfitting here.”
“Hurrah for Cherry Creek, then!” cried Billy. “Reckon we’ll have to go, Davy!”
“I’ll go,” agreed Davy eagerly.
“We’ll all go,” said Mr. Baxter. “Everybody’ll go.”
A lean, sallow, unshaven man in jeans and flannel shirt and boots and a huge muffler around his neck anda round fur cap on his head had been standing near. He nodded.
“Right you are, pards,” he put in. “That’s the place.”
“How do you know?” queried Billy, quickly.
“I’ve been thar, an’ now I’ve come back to tell my friends. Why, boys, out thar all you’ve got to do is to pull up the grass by the roots an’ shake out the gold. Pike’s Peak is solid gold, ’most. A feller can make a flat-bottom boat an’ set knives in the hull an’ slide down, scraping up the gold in slivers.”
“Did you ever see that done?” demanded Mr. Baxter.
“Not exac’ly, stranger. But I’m goin’ to do it.”
That sounded like a tall story—although of course itmightbe true. Billy and Mr. Baxter put small stock in the tale; but it filled Davy’s mind with delightful visions. He dreamed of taking a plough up Pike’s Peak and ploughing golden furrows clear to the bottom.
Suddenly Salt Creek Valley and all the frontier along the Missouri River from St. Louis up to Omaha was excited. The Leavenworth papers printed wonderful stories of the new gold fields, where miners were washing out the precious metal. The Georgia party of miners, some of whom were Cherokee Indians, which had outfitted at Leavenworth last fall and had gone out by the southwest Santa Fe Trail to the mountains and thence north to Cherry Creek, had “struck itrich,” and had sent back the quills of gold to prove it. Already emigrants from the East were arriving in Leavenworth, wild to push on as soon as the spring opened. Between themselves Billy and Dave determined to join the crowd. It was all they could do to wait.
One day early in March Davy was making a brief call at the Cody house, when Billy excitedly pointed from the front porch.
“There’s the first one!” he cried. “There’s the first prairie schooner bound for the diggings! Let’s go down and meet it!”
Away he rushed; Davy followed, and so did the girls. Mrs. Cody stood shading her eyes, watching. Across the valley crept a white-topped wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen. Beside the wagon was trudging a man, and behind followed another man pushing a two-wheeled cart. When Billy and Dave met the outfit they saw that two women were in the big wagon; one held a baby; on the other side of the wagon were sturdily trudging a boy and girl. A big shaggy dog barked at Turk, and Turk growled back.
The wagon was a farm wagon covered with the cotton hood and stuffed with household goods. On the sides the hood bore, in scrawly black paint: “PIKE’S PEAK OR BUST.”
“Hello!” hailed Billy. “Where you bound?”
“To the new diggin’s, stranger,” responded the driver of the oxen. “See our sign?”
“Do you live hyar’bouts?” asked the man who was pushing the hand-cart—which also was loaded with household stuff and camp stuff. The ox-team paused; the man pushing the hand-cart wiped his forehead with a red handkerchief.
“Yes; we live up yonder near the top of the hill.”
“How long do you reckon it’ll take us to get to Cherry Creek?” pursued the ox-team driver.
“Two months if you keep going,” said Billy.
“’Twon’t take as long as that, stranger,” replied the man. “We can travel right smart.”
“They do say you can dig out the gold with a shovel,” quavered the woman. “We hear tell you can dig out a pound a day. Were you ever there?”
“No,” answered Billy. “But we’re going. Aren’t you a little early?”
“Wall, we reckoned we’d start ’arly, an’ make our pile ’fore the other folks got thar,” explained the driver. “Thar’s a tarnel lot o’ people gathered behind us, an’ those that come later won’t find ’nough grass for their critters. Gee-up, Buck! Spot! Get along with you.”
Creaking, the wagon resumed its way. The man with the hand-cart pushed in the wake. The mud was ankle deep, and Dave felt sorry for the whole outfit.
“Better stop on the hill and rest,” bade Billy. “Guess we can give you some coffee.”
“Nope, thank ye, stranger,” said the driver.“We’re goin’ on through.” And he swung his whip, urging his oxen.
Billy and Dave and the girls raced ahead; and when the wagon and the hand-cart, with the oxen and men alike panting, toiled up hill near the Cody house Mrs. Cody rushed out with a pail of hot coffee. But the emigrants scarcely halted to drink it. Even the women were anxious to proceed, as if already they saw the gold.
“Poor things,” sighed Mrs. Cody, while the girls waved goodby to the two children. “They’ll have a hard time.”
But Billy and Dave watched until the “Pike’s Peak or Bust” sign was only a blur, and the wagon a crawling dot.
“Shucks!” said Billy. “If it wasn’t for mother and school I’d join ’em. But I wouldn’t go by the regular Overland Trail. When we go we’ll take the Smoky Hill trail, Dave; up the Kansas River, to Fort Riley, and on out by the Smoky Hill branch or the Republican. That’s shorter.”
This “Pike’s Peak or Bust” outfit was only the first of a long series of gold-field “pilgrims” (as they were called), all enthusiastic. And soon Leavenworth City was a sight! As Mr. Baxter had predicted, the city was scarcely large enough to hold the new-comers. Two and three steamboats a day arrived, loaded to the gunwales, at the levee, bringing up from St. Louis andKansas City Eastern and Southern people, their teams and goods.
The streets were thronged with the strangers, young and old, in all kinds of costumes and of all professions—farmers, lawyers, ministers, doctors, merchants, teachers—buying supplies and exchanging opinions. The lodging houses and hotels and spare rooms were overflowing, and around the city and in the vacant lots were hundreds of tents, where were camped overland parties of men and whole families.
A constant procession of “pilgrims” wended slow way through the Salt Creek Valley, past the Cody home and the Shields home, and northwestward to the main Salt Lake Overland Trail which led up the Platte River; at the South Platte they might branch for the “diggin’s” by a cut-off. Many of the wagon hoods bore that queer legend “Pike’s Peak or Bust!” Some men trundled wheel-barrows, loaded, and a few were trying to carry packs through on their backs.
But the greatest procession went out over the new route from Leavenworth southwest to the Kansas River; thence on to Fort Riley at the forks, and either northwest up the Republican branch or west up the Smoky Hill River branch. Still other people travelled by the Santa Fe Trail—the southernmost trail of all—up the Arkansas River to the mountains, and then north along the base of the mountains past Pike’s Peak itself to Cherry Creek and Denver.
Mr. Russell, of Russell, Majors & Waddell, andMr. John S. Jones put in a stage line to Denver by the Smoky Hill route. It was called the “Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak Express Company,” Jones & Russell, Proprietors. Two stages, travelling together for protection against the Indians, each drawn by four fine Kentucky mules and carrying six passengers, left Leavenworth every morning for Denver, and covered the 700 rolling miles in ten days. Soon the return stages would be arriving, and everybody was expecting great news. It was calculated that already 25,000 people had started for the diggings. The trails were said to be white with the wagons and the camps.
The streets and the levee of Leavenworth were so full of fascinating sights that Davy took every moment he could spare from chores and school to go in with Billy and look and listen. The best place was in front of the Planters’ House Hotel, across the street from the office of Russell, Majors & Waddell. Here the stages started, and here people gathered to bid one another goodby. The conversation was most interesting, as people on the ground called up to passengers in the stages.
“Send us back a sack of gold, John.”
“Hold tight to your scalps, boys.”
“Let us know how things are. Be sure and write.”
“Kill a buffalo for me, Frank. I want a good big hide, remember.”
“Leave a message for me on the top of Pike’s Peak.”
“Look out for the ‘Rapahoes.’”
“Goodby, goodby, old fellow.”
“Don’t forget to give Robinson that package from his wife.”
“Most of these people don’t know where they’re going or why,” remarked a man near Davy, to another man. “There’ll be much suffering from this mad rush.”
He was a tall, slender, erect man of about thirty-five, with long bronzed, florid face, sandy complexion and crisp, sandy beard.
“That’s Lieutenant William T. Sherman, formerly of the Army. He’s practising law here now with Judge Ewing,” said another man, aside, to a companion. In a few more years he would be the famous “General Sherman.”
Billy Cody, too, was of the opinion that the green-horns on the trail would meet with trouble; and in Davy’s opinion Billy ought to know. Already reports were to the effect that the route up the Smoky Hill and the Republican were short of grass and exposed to the Indians, and that the emigrants were being compelled to throw away much of their baggage.
However, this did not stop anybody from starting. Davy and Billy had the gold fever bad. Even Mr. Shields had decided to take his wife and baby and leave the ranch for the diggings, where he counted on making more money in a week than he could make here in a year. So Davy only waited on Billy, to start, himself.
“Shucks!” exclaimed Billy, in May. “I’ve got to quit, Dave, and go on the trail again. Mother said last night ‘All right.’ She’ll let me go. She needs the money and I’ll send her back a lot. Come on. We’ll raise a gang and start.”
“When, Billy?”
“Right away, as soon as we get the men and the outfit. This green grass makes me restless. Got any money left, Dave? We have to buy a wagon and team.”
Yes, Davy had almost all his herding wages on deposit with Mr. Majors. He was proud to say so, and to be able to pay his own way.