City in the raw new territory to be there when the Lutheran settlers came in!

His
enthusiasm over the future
knew na bounds. Same af it was an impassioned emotion over the fact that he would
still have Amalia, some the natural reactions after his grief and disappointment,
some his farslard - looking plans for a new business in a new country, and some of
it was merely Hope of Youth. The gang-plank was up now. They were really under way.
Cranids thronged the rails. Almost all were calling out their last farewells. It
seemed that Matthias was the only one without friends left behind. No, there was
one ether, --a sun-burned, leathery-looking sort of young fellow apparently about
his own age. They were not far apart, and through some interchange of thought,
perhape, just now their eyes met in a quick appraising looks Se friendly did cach
seem to find the other's expression that almost simultaneously they drew together
at the rail. "First trip?" the young chap acked Matthias. "Yes. Yours?" "Nope.
First one was ten years ago when I was nine. Mother was a widder woman. Took us up
the Muddy to find a home. Landed at Plattsmouth. Just three or four homes there
then, - - Mother knowled one of the families. Had to sleep on the floor with
several other newcomers. Toward mornin' door opened and three old Injun bucks came
in and stepped around all over us lockin' down in our faces. Had the hardest time
gettin' Ma to stay and settle. She was all for leggin' it back to the steamer still
tied up to the past and Jameezin' in favor of returnin' te civilization." And the
young fellow laughed lang and hilariouly. They told each other their names and
destinations. "Charlie Briggs." "Matthias Meier." "Plattsmouth in the main, but
steppin' in Nebraska City, claimin' my team I left there and pushin' on to
Plattsmouth' cross the prairie." "Nebraska City is where I'm stopping for a time."
There was other information Matthias gleaned from his new-found friend that first
afternoon of their acquaintance. Charlie Briggs had learned surveying. He had a
homestead not far fram Plattomouth but mostly his younger brothers looked after it
while he was off en all sorts of surveying freighting and scouting missions.
"Volunteered a year ago last October to help put down the Sioux Injunc. Saw the
Plum Creek massacre in Phelps County: -- got home the very day last April year, the
life o' the best president of these here United States get snuffed cut." Both were
silent for a few moments - - that wordless reverence of all Unian men for the
fallen leader. But not for lang could Charlie Briggs remain silent. He knew-- and
talked of -- the great Platte Valley, had been up the Elkhorn, taken one trip to
the Republican Valley. The Platte, he said, was flat and
by nature treeless. It had shallow,
muddy water, swarms of mosquitoes and greenhead flies, prairie-dag towns and
rattlesnakes, -- the country of the Elkhorn was rich and fine with quite a bit of
natural timber alang the creeks and rivers. He explained the trails, north and
south of the Platte River, - - the one on the south with its converging trails like
the times of a fork starting from Independence, Missouri, St. Joseph, Leavenworth,
and Nebraska City. He had all the information of the new country at his tongue's
end, -- the difference of the soil in the Platte, the Elkhorn, the Republican, and
the Loup Valleys. He knew where the native trees thrived -- the cattonwood, and the
oaks the elm and the ash. He knew the Indian tribes, their locale and their habits,
--told Matthias about the old Paxinees that had once lived in the Valley of the
Republican, the Kitkehahki trike, and the chief who at the instigation of the young
Lieutenant Pike had ordered daxin the Spanish flag flying in front of the lodge and
raised the Stars and Stripes; related the story of the attack an the Arikara
Indians by the soldiers fram Fort Atkinson who were joined by the Sioux enemies of
the Arikaras, how they overpowered them and feasted on the Indians' roasted carn
while the peace treaty was being negatiated. He had at his tangue's end the history
of much of the territory since the days of Caranada and his Spanish horsemen who
had once set out to discover the mythical land of Quivira with its silver and
precious stones and its king wha slept under a great tree with golden bells on its
branches, and found instead a vast plain with wild grass and Indians and queer cons
with humped backs. He enjoyed the telling of these tales and not in all the
afternoon did he cease from imparting them. "Follow the prairie - dogs and Mormans
and you'll find good land," was one of his sage pieces of wisdom. It rather
fascinated Matthias, the young man's ready knowledge of the territory since an
earlier days -- and his own more recent adventures. "Killed buffaloes? Lard, by the
dozens. Pick on your animal, sheet, skin the carcass, let it freeze, chop off a
hunk with your ax, throw it in a Dutch oven and a couple hours later get busy."
With no recess for his manalogue, he went an: "Buffalo wed to be swimmin' along
here where we are most any time. They tell a yarn about a greenhorn seein'em once
for the first time when he was off in a yawl with a passel o old timers. This
fellow could handle a rope right smart, so they get him to set in the box with a
lassa and the first one they should wound could be raped. Some of the crew fired
and wounded one but the greenie threw the rope over the head of one that wasn't
hit. The crew shouted and backed cars to get old man Buffalo
in deeper Waters, but his feet touched bottom and he went up the bank with the boat
tied to him and would
have took it on a cruise all over the prairie if the stem of it hadn't been
wrenched off and carried away by the