mad animal. Fellows was left shipwrecked far away from their steamboat.

"
Matthias grinned his skepticism. "Funny how the fellow couldn't have let ge of the
rope." Charlie Brigge spat
over the railing: "Never spile a good story... and besides rope wa’n’t so plentiful
they wanted to give any
away." "Any hostility alang here now from Indians ?" Matthias had carried the
question in his mind for some
time. "Naw. Only a few years ago they was barricadin” decks and state - roams--
keepin' up day and night
vigilance. Mostly now any hostilities is above the Niebrara from the Sioux tribes
an farther west. Pawnees is
friendly." By duck the boat tied up for the night. - - navigation through the
treacherou sand - bars was tos
precarious. If Matthias chased at the last hours, he had only to remember that the
overland travelers were
making camp tea. He and Charlie Briggs sat cut an the deck talking until the
mosquitoes drove them in, when
they joined the other passengers in the too-eroxided parlar-like cabin, - - for the
most part a motley crowd of
fussy old ladies with poodle-dags, anxious mothers with sleeping children,
plantero, giddy young girl, whale
families moving to the new country, many unattached men.
Immigration to the territories of Kancas and Nebraska was heavy. There was some
attempt at music that
evening in the stuffy cabin -- a group of young fellons volunteering the tear-
jerking "Thau Hast Learned to
Love Another" and "Meet Me By Meenlight Alone" and the rendition of "Marching
Through Georgia" with an
aftermath of sullen remarks and a miniature reproduction of the late war on an
after- deck. Matthias' eyes
swept the clusters of young girls coldly in spite of the evident admiration for his
stabvart figure some of them
plainly showed. Not one was little, dainty, fair-haired and blue-eyed. How could a
man care for any other type?
In the days that followed, the boat proceeded very slowly an its up- river jewrney.
gliding along smoothly
enough over the turkid water. On the seventh day it put in at Weston for repairs.
Matthias chafed over the
delay until Charlie Briggs hinted breadly: "Ye'd think the’ was some REASON why ye
GOT to git there."
Matthias, hanever, was non-committal. He would never wear his heart on his sleeve,
particularly to one he
had known no longer than young Briggs. But unlike as the two young men were, there
were qualities which
drew them together on the whale trips - - a comman lave of adventure and progress,
sincerity of purpose, and
same unnamed characteristic which each felt in the other,--a sort of gallant
attitude toward humanity. It was
the morning of the ninth day out before they could proceed. The weather turned cold
and disagrecable. There
was no more promenading on the wind - swept deck by the giggling girls. There were
various rumbles of
dissatisfaction from the passengers, too, for eatables were getting low and fare
was very poor
They were in Kansas now. One side of the river bank was sheer steep bluffs, the
other vast stretches of
prairie, dotted with patches of timber. It all leaked very wild. On the eleventh
day they decked at St. Joe. A
child died and was taken ashore by a hysterical family. A doctor was called
hurriedly from the passengers to
attend a woman in childbirth in one of the stuffy state -raams. A young bride came
aboard on her way to
California, happy and blithesame, thinking that all California was a paradise. Life
is a loam, wearing gay
colors indiscriminately with those of somber hue. And now the long jewrney was
nearing its end. They would
get to Brownville on the twelfth day, -- the seat of the United States land office
in which Daniel Freeman only a
little over three years before had obtained the first homestead in the whole
territory just after the midnight
hour of the day in which the law went into effect. -- the place from which the
first territorial telegram had been
sent six years before. From there to Nebraska City was but a short journey. Charlie
Briggs in his loquacious
way was recounting much of this to Matthias now, recalling some of the anecdotes
concerning slaves that
had been brought through this section by way of the underground railroad. The two
young men were sitting
an deck an the Nebraska side looking shareward, Charlie Briggs pointing out some
dictant upstream spet.
"Along nigh about a dozen miles aver there is the way John Brown krung slaves
many's the time from
Missouri by way of Falls City. Little Omaha, Camp Creek and Nebraska City to Tahar,
Jawa Can pint out the
barn to ye in Falls City they hid in whenever..."
His high-pitched voice broke off. There had been a grinding noise, a quivering of
the boats frame. With a
sickening shiver, as a huge animal might shake in the steely mouth of a bear trap,
the Missouri Queen
stopped. "Sufferin' snakes!" Charlie Briggs jumped up. "We're on a sand - bar."
When the Missouri Queen settled grumblingly into the treacherou sand which had
shifted since the
steamer's last trip, Matthias was a picture of surprise and irritation "How long
will it be?" he wanted to know at
once. Charlie Briggs who had known the river since his childhood days shrugged lean
muscular shoulders.
"Can't tell. She may be settin' pretty." And settin' pretty she was.
Now came the work of the two huge spars which like the legs of some gigantic insect
swung into position as
though the white bug of a steamer intended to walk over the water and be at once on
its way. But the bug
stupidly lay thrashing impotent legs and could not move. With every available means
the crew and some of
the passengers, including Matthias and Charlie Brigge, attempted to get her off.
Men in small boats put out to