Captain Bayley's Heir:

d had been proportionately tightened, so that she now hung so high that the rents were well out of water, and they were able at once to set about the work of repair. There were tools on board, fo

ll, although less rapidly, and it was thought well not to put too great a strain upon them. The next morning the plug was again driven into the bottom of the boat, and they set to work to pump and bale her out, and then shifted th

came along, and the thought as came into my mind was as we should have to make a raft and pole along till we got out into the river again. However, here we are, with the boat not much the worse, and everything on board ready for a start in the morning; and it's thanks to you as we have done it, for I am free

still at full flood, although it had fallen two feet from its highest level, and the next ten days were spent in rescuing the unfortunate people from the tops of the houses, trees, and patches

rms of Frank's conduct, and ascribed to his quickness of invention t

king all sorts of questions, and I expect he's off; and I don't know as I blames him. He's the sort of fellow to get on. He has plenty of grit; he's strong and active now, and in a couple of years he will widen out and make a very big man. He's had a first-rate edication-he don't talk about it, but one would be blind not to se

he don't do one or the other. And he can fight, he can; there ain't no doubt about that. Why, I saw him give the biggest kind of a thrashing to the bully of a lumber camp, where we moored up alongside one night, as ever you seed. The chap was big enough to eat him, but he didn't have no

r a few months, instead of loafing about spending their money, and getting into bad ways, and among bad fellows, it would be better for them; he has only drawn a few dollars for his expenses-when he was down the last time-since he came to work,

blers, and horse-thieves, and runaway sailors, and Mexican fighters-neither good t

rthern route, and I hear a lot of the Western men a

k went into Mr. Wil

lost. You seem to have been in a position of very great danger, and to have had an extraordinarily narrow escape of your lives. However, I can understand that you are not content to settle down for

such a life. I have come out for that, and not, as it is generally called, to make my fortune. The course of my life at home has been upset by circumstances into wh

o persuade you to stop at this business. And now, what

a party going direct from

a business. I shall want a handy man with me at first; I shall take up a storekeeper to leave there in charge, but at first he will want help. If you like to go up in charge of one of the scows, and to stay to help put up the store and set things running, I will give you a hundred dollars, and you can have your passage up for your horse, which I should advise you to buy here. You will get one that will carry you, though of course not much to look at, for about fifty dollars; I know several horse-dealers here, and will get one for you if you like. You had also better get a stout pony to carry your traps and provisions; that will cost about forty dollars. Then you must hav

am indeed greatly obliged for your kind offer of a rifle and revolver;

e other cloth

e another suit i

eek before my steamer starts, and you had better come and stop with me till t

ed in the suit of clothes he had brought with him. A ligh

s he came out, "I fancy you

the reins, the negro servant sprang up behind, and th

building, with a verandah running round it, and standing in well-kept and

airs, and get a bath ready for him at once,

," he said to Frank; "one wants to get rid of the du

iring himself in a suit of snowy-white g

wine after dinner in the verandah, Frank's host said, "I do not wish to be inquisitive, but if you don't mi

yer, that he frankly told him the whole history

n't know him, and may be misjudge him altogether, but the only person who appears to me to have had any

you such an idea never entered my mind; he is not at all a

r said; "boys are seldom far out in their estimate of persons; they have more

t you out of your scrape, while he afterwards came forward with twenty pounds to enable you to get away, is another strong point. The advice which he gave you was distinctly bad; for you had much better

is so," Fra

no means improbable that your uncle will l

ubt of it," F

any knowledge of this affair, and of your need for the money. None of the other four had the slightest possible interest in brin

pacing up and down the verandah; "if I thought so I would r

it would have been regarded as a hideous aggravation of your crime to bring such a charge against your cousin unsupported by a shadow of proof. No; now you have taken your line you must

of them were incredulous as to the stories of the abundance of gold in California. That gold had been discovered they did not deny; but they were of opinion that the find would be an isolated one, and that ruin would fall upon the crowds who were hastening

and they started up the river. Mr. Willcox was to follow by a steamer next day, and would arrive at Omaha some time before them, and have time to choose and buy a lot of land for his store, and to have all in readiness for their arrival. Frank had purchased a strong, serviceable horse for his own riding, and a pony for his baggage, together with blankets and other necessaries for th

ing out the water when there was any leakage; and the negroes had been taken up more for the purpose of unloading the cargo, carrying it to its destination, and putting up the store, than for any service they could render on the voyage. Frank, who had laid in

y got thinner as they got higher up, and long before we got to where we are going it was all Indian country. I used to go up sometimes with traders, but I never liked the job: first, I didn't like selling 'fire-water,' as they called it, to the Indians, for it made them mad, and brought on quarrels and wars; in the next place, it was a dangerous business. The

ottomed boat,-for they were going, as I understood, to get some good horses from the Indians and take them down to St. Louis. We had pretty hard work getting her along, and a weak crew would never have got her against the stream, though of course we chose a time when the river was low and there wasn't much stream on. Sometimes we rowed, sometimes we

ry evening large lots of goods were brought down to the boats, but except when I went up with the others to the traders' tent to bring the things down I didn't go about much. It was a large camp, with two or three hundred braves, as they calls 'em. I told the men in my boat what I thought of it; but they didn't think mu

top quiet with me. Presently I heard a yell from the camp, which was about three hundred yards away. 'That's mischief,' says I. I had scarce spoken when there was a yelling fit to make your har stand on end, and

ots of fires blazing in camp-we saw a crowd of Injuns come rushing down to the river. We shoved the boat off, and took to our oars; they shouted to us, and then fired at us, and shot their arrows, and sw

rm a protection for us from their bullets and arrows; for we guessed they would follow us down, and in many places the river was so shallow they could ride pretty well out to us. They did follow us, on horseback, for the next two days, and shot at us pretty hot at times. Once they rode so far out in the shallows that we d

he other boats and set out after us, though we hoped they mightn't think of it, for these horse Indians don't know nothing of river work. They gave it up at last, and we got safely down to St. Louis. What the trouble was about

ne to punish the

thar ways, thar was no great danger. The Indians knew if they killed traders that others wouldn't come among them, and they wanted goods-guns and powder most of all, but other things too, such as blankets, and cloth as they calls cotton, and hatchets, bea

u, but because anything that made bad blood did harm to the trade all over. However, it gave me a bad scare, and it was a good many years before I came up the Upper Missouri again. There's some men as seems to me to be downright fond of fighting; but I don't feel like that, anyway. If I get into a hard corner, and have go

say anything about them before. I did not

lots of them, and a pretty lively

ort of pira

lower river; you may say as this region then was like what Kansas is now. Chaps who had made it too hot for them in the east came out here, and just had to wrestle round for a living. New Orleans is pretty bad now, but it

ar wasn't much to take thar, you know, onless it war fever, and they had enough of that in thar own swamps. They would wait, may be, for a day or two, till a boat came in, and as soon as it had made fast they would cover the men with thar rifles, and just empty it of all it had got-powder, blankets, groceries, and dry goods, and what not-and make o

ss nor the others. A sight more nor half of 'em war blacks; and good reason why, for the fevers carried off the whites as joined them before they had been thar long. They was a powerful bad lot, and those who fell into thar hands hadn't much chance of thar lives. The runaway slaves war down on a white man, and he had no marcy to expect a

Even in the open river no one was safe from 'em, for they got so bold they would go out, four or five boat-loads, and attack in broad daylight; things got so bad that no one dared go up or down, unless it was ten or twelve boats together for protection. It war the steamers as broke 'em up; th

u never atta

generally had four white men on board then, and plenty of arms. Yes, we had some skirmish

as it,

made up our minds at last that we would push on and take our chance. We had eight negroes, all strong active fellows, armed with cutlasses and old ship muskets, and we four whites had rifles and pistols. We allowed we could make a good fight of it, so we agreed

n they saw two rifle-barrels peeping out from the sacks on each side, and saw we war ready for a tussle. But one day-it wasn't very far from the pint where we mended up that boat the other day-we war later than usual; the stream war stronger than we reckoned on, we had run aground two or three times on the m

you lose them we are done for; there's no danger, it's only one man.' So on we went again, for, luckily, no one was hit. 'That's a signal,' Bill, says I to one of my mates; 'I reckon we shall have trouble afore we are out of this.' On we went, flying between the bushes,

on each side.' We went on slowly now; we knew they war ahead of us, and that hurrying wouldn't do no good, and that we had got to fight anyhow. It might have been five minutes when thar was a flash from the bushes on either side-which we could scarce see in the darkness,-and fully a dozen muskets poured a volley into us, buckshot and ball, as we found on lookin

ad been told what to do, and, to do 'em justice, they did it well. Thar was a yell from the boats as we fired, for I reckon every shot told; but the way they had got brought 'em on, and their bows struck us just at the same momen

time we war lying behind the bags, ramming down fresh charges for the bare life. We gave 'em eight more shots before they could cast off the poles and come at us again. This time they came along more on the broadside, and five or six of 'em sprang on board; but we war re

and made for the bank. Directly it was over they began to fire agin from the shore, and we jumped back into shelter agin in our own boat and manned the four oars agin. We fastened the painter of the boat on to our stern, and towed her behind us, and in another half an hour were out in the stream. It was a toughish fight, I can tell you, while it lasted; two of the blacks and one of my mates had been hit by thar musket-balls, and the rest of us war

e. They brought dogs with them, and hunted through the woods and swamps till they came to the patch of higher ground whar the pirates had got thar huts. Thar were about twenty of 'em, mostly negroes, and they fought hard, for thar was no escape, the boat having drift

it so well, Hiram. I suppose that

d desperate characters of all sorts, who have got to live somehow. Thar are still boats sometimes missing up the river, which may have been snagged and gone down with all hands, and which may be have comed to thar end some other way. Anyhow, no one thinks much about pirates now, and the river's quite as safe as the street

s for a spree, and one doesn't look to have these rivers which, one and the other, are tens of thousands of miles long, just kept as free from hard characters as a street in Boston. It's as good as we can look for at presen

ccurrence, and then the bands of wild horsemen swept down to the Missouri, carrying fire and destruction in their course. In front of every settlement lay a scow or two, used partly for the transportation of the crops, but valuable also as an ark of refuge in case of attack. The shores were low, and shallows and banks abounde

tug was alongside, and

ing about that. I have got a capital location on the main street; I bought it off a fool who came up in the steamboat with me, and had made up his mind to sell out and cross the plains. I had an offer for it yesterday at five times the price I gave for it; but, bless you, I wouldn't have taken twenty times. This is going to be a big place. I am glad you have come for another reason. I am putting up at one of the shanties they call an hotel, but one might as well try to live

together, so that by the time the last of the goods were brought up the store was ready to receive them. It was a building some sixty feet long by twenty wide, and was divided into two by a partition: the one end, twenty feet in length, was the saleroom; in the other, forty feet long, the bulk of the heavy goods, flour, rice, bacon, hogsheads of sugar, and chests of tea, were stored. There was, in addition, a lean-to, nine feet square, at one end, which was to serve as the habitation of the storekeeper. The assortment of goods was very large. In addition to the stock of provisions, which filled the st

o with you. I shall be gladder than I can tell you to hear as you're making your way, and I shall be anxious like till I hear as you have got safely over this journey, for they do say as th

. They were already doing a very large business, and Mr. Willcox had sent down orders, both to St. Louis and

iny settlement of a dozen houses, but was

part, a floating one, scores of waggons and vehicles of all sorts arriving every day, while as many departed. This was the last point of civilisation, and h

d clubbed together and purchased a waggon, and started, leaving their wives and families behind them. In others they were composed of whole families, who had sold off farms or businesses in the east in the assurance of