The Covered Wagon Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE RENDEZVOUS AS to the start of the great wagon train, little time, indeed, remained. For days, in some instances for weeks, the units of the train had lain here on the border, and the men were growing restless. Some had come a thousand miles and now were keen to start out for more than two thousand miles additional. The grass was up. The men from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas fretted on the leash. All along the crooked river front, on both sides from Independence to the river landing at Westport, the great spring caravan lay encamped, or housed in town. Now, on the last days of the rendezvous, a sort of hysteria seized the multitude. The sound of rifle fire was like that of a battle?every man was sighting-in his rifle. Singing and shouting went on everywhere. Someone fresh from the Mexican War had brought a drum, another a bugle. Without instructions, these began to sound their summons and continued all day long, at such times as the performers could spare from drink. The Indians of the friendly tribes?Otos, Kaws, Osages?come in to trade, looked on in wonder at therevelings of the whites. The straggling street of each' of the near-by river towns was full of massed wagons. The treble line of white tops, end to end, lay like a vast serpent, curving, ahead to the West. Rivalry for the head of the column began. The sounds of the bugle set a thousand uncoordinated wheels spasmodically in motion. Organization, system were as yet unknown in this rude and dominant democracy. Need was therefore for this final meeting in the interest of law, order and authority. Already some wagons had broken camp and moved on out into the main traveled road, which lay plain enough on westward, among the groves and glades of the valley of the Kaw. Eac...Read More