gling teams pulling heavy
loads.

When the fur company boat drew near enough for those on shore to see its
unusual human cargo, both as to numbers and kinds, conjecture ran high.
This hardy traveler of the whole navigable river was no common packet,
stopping almost any place to pick up any person who waved a hat, but a
supercilious thoroughbred which forged doggedly into the vast wilderness
of the upper river. Even her curving swing in toward the bank was made
with a swagger and hinted at contempt for any landing under a thousand
miles from her starting point.

Shouts rang across the water and were followed by great excitement on
the bank. Because of the poor condition of the landing she worked her
way inshore with unusual care and when the great gangplank finally
bridged the gap her captain nodded with relief. In a few moments, her
extra passengers ashore, she backed out into the hurrying stream and
with a final blast of her whistle, pushed on up the river.

Friends met friends, strangers advised strangers, and the accident to
the _Belle_ was discussed with great gusto. Impatiently pushing out of
the vociferous crowd, Joe Cooper and his two companions swiftly found a
Dearborn carriage which awaited them and, leaving their baggage to
follow in the wagon of a friend, started along the deeply rutted,
prairie road for the town; Schoolcraft, his partner, and his Mexican
friend sloping along behind them on saddle horses through the lane of
mud. The trip across the bottoms and up the great bluff was wearisome
and tiring. They no sooner lurched out of one rut than they dropped into
another, with the mud and water often to the axles, and they continually
were forced to climb out of the depressed road and risk upsettings on
the steep, muddy banks to pass great wagons hopelessly mired,
notwithstanding their teams of from six to a dozen mules or oxen.
Mud-covered drivers shouted and swore from their narrow seats, or waded
about their wagons up to the middle in the cold ooze. If there was
anything worse than a prairie road in the spring, these wagoners had yet
to learn of it.

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEW SIX-GUN

Independence was alive all over, humming with business, its muddy
streets filled with all kinds of vehicles drawn by various kinds and
numbers of animals. Here a three-yoke ox team pulled stolidly, there a
four-mule team balked on a turn, and around them skittish or dispirited
horses carried riders or drew high-s