The Lure of the Mississippi

There came through the night loud crashing and rumbling sounds, and a confusion of men's voices from the steep road leading down from Fort Ridgely to the boat-landing on the Minnesota River.

All afternoon, big William Ferguson and his ten-year-old brother, Timothy, had watched the six-mule teams of the United States Army trot down the steep narrow road with guns, caissons and army supplies, for Colonel Pemberton had been ordered to leave the Sioux frontier in Minnesota and rush his battery and men to Washington as fast as possible. Fort Sumter had been fired on. President Lincoln had called for 75,000 volunteers, and from north and west, the scattered detachments and batteries of the regular army were rushed to Washington. The long-threatened Civil War had begun.

But in those days, Minnesota was a long way from the Atlantic coast, for the railroads had only just touched the Mississippi River. The soldiers at Fort Ridgely had to travel five hundred miles by steamboat to La Crosse, and in order to make all possible haste, they continued by torchlight the loading of guns, caissons, ammunition, horses, and stores.

It was the liveliest day little Tim Ferguson and his big brother, Bill, had ever seen. Bill had at last gone to sleep, wrapped in his blanket, with his head resting on a coil of rope, but the active Tim had never tired of watching the soldiers loading the big guns, and the carpenters and engineers repairing the boat for the fast and dangerous downriver trip on the flooded, winding Minnesota.

When the crash of timbers and the shouts of men rang through the night, he shook his sleeping brother, calling:

"Get up, Bill, get up! A mule team has rolled down the bluffs; I told you they would. Come along, Bill!"

Tim had guessed right. Among the trees lay the wagon and mules, while boxes of shells and hard-tack were scattered through the brush. Had it not been for the trees and brush, men, mules and wagon would have rolled straight into the swollen river.

"He's sure a goner," remarked one of the men, as he cut the traces of Old Harmony, the biggest mule of the battery. The neck of the mule was caught between two trees and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth full length. However, no sooner was he released, than he got up, shook himself, scrambled up the bluff and did not stop until he reached the corral, where he uttered one of those bugle-calls which had earned him the name of Old Harmony. But soldiers are accustomed to accidents of this kind, and within half an hour, Old Harmony's Six were once more hitched to the big army-wagon. Both drivers and mules were a little more careful to keep the road and, by the light of glaring and smoking torches and blazing bonfires, the loading of the boat was rapidly finished.

When reveille sounded at daybreak, the men marched into the mess-hall at Fort Ridgely for their last breakfast in Minnesota.

There had been little sleep at the post during the night. Had a painter like Catlin been present, he could have left us some fine dramatic canvases.

Opposite the side of the fort which faced the open prairie away from the river, some six or seven hundred Sioux Indians were encamped. Only the squaws and the little children rolled up in their blankets in the tepees that night. Some of the men sat smoking around their camp-fires, but most of them sat on the river bank watching the boatmen and the soldiers working in the red glare of the torches and bonfires. They had heard that the white people were having a war amongst themselves. Now they knew that the story was true. The soldiers were going away on the steamer, and with the soldiers were going most of the big guns, against whose terrible thunder, balls, and canister no Indian braves have ever been able to keep up their courage.

"If the soldiers go away and take the big guns, we can get back the land along our river. We have been cheated out of it, and the Whites have never paid us for it," a middle-aged warrior remarked.

"We can do more," added a fierce-looking young man, known as the Boaster; "we can drive all the Whites out of Minnesota. But we shall keep their horses and their squaws and we shall make big feasts of their oxen. The Winnebagoes will help us. We shall make peace with the Chippewas and they will help us.

"We shall have our villages again at Kaposia and at Wabasha, on the Great River, and the Whites will have to stay on the other side of the Great River. This is our country and Manitou will send back the buffalo and the elk, and the deer will become numerous again. We shall have plenty of meat and skins as in the days of our fathers before the Whites had poisoned the land with their plows, for the black soil which the plows turn up is bad medicine for buffalo and elk and deer."

When the shadows of the trees began to be reflected on the grayish current, the last morning blast of the Fanny Harris echoed over the flooded valley. The three howitzers left at the fort fired a salute, the few remaining men cheered their departing comrades and the soldiers on board replied with a ringing hurrah for Abe Lincoln and Fort Ridgely. Then the pilot rang a bell, the hawsers were drawn on board, the big stern-wheel churned the water to a white foam, the heavily-laden steamer backed into the current, turned around slowly, and headed down stream for Fort Snelling near St. Paul.

On board, besides the soldiers, were Bill and Tim Ferguson, Sam Baker, a trapper, and Black Buffalo, an Indian scout.

The Ferguson brothers were Southern boys from Vicksburg, who had come North with a man they called Cousin Hicks, and with whom they lived in a squatter's cabin a few miles below Fort Ridgely. Hicks, about whose business in the Indian country there were many conflicting rumors afloat, had been away for a week visiting the Indians on the upper Minnesota, and in his absence Baker and Black Buffalo had invited the Ferguson boys to go with them to Fort Snelling and St. Paul.

The trip of the Fanny Harris from Fort Ridgely to La Crosse was never forgotten by any one on board. The Fanny Harris being a stern-wheeler, was naturally difficult to steer in a strong current. The Minnesota is one of the most twisted and crooked rivers in the West. In April, 1861, the water was so high that the placid, winding river had grown a mile wide, flooding its valley from bluff to bluff, and in many places the water flowed with a rushing current, crossing the river bed at all angles and making innumerable short cuts across fields, marshes, and woods.

"Back her up," the pilot's bell would sound as he tried to round one of the countless points or bends. But it was impossible to back the heavy boat against the current. The engineers could not even stop her. The best they could do was to check her speed and let her drift flanking around the wooded points, where trees and boughs raked her whole length, tearing down stanchions, guards, and gingerbread work with a deafening crash.

At other times, she would plunge straight into the timber, bending the smaller willows and other brush like so many reeds and tearing good-sized trees by the roots out of the soft mud, but before she could be again gotten into clear water, a big cottonwood bough had torn away another joint of her chimneys and smashed another part of her pilot-house.

But all this time, Colonel Lantry, who had been in supreme command ever since the boat had left Fort Snelling, stood on deck with the captain, or at the wheel with the pilots.

"Keep her going, keep her going! Keep your wheel turning!" were the only orders he gave to captain or pilot as he dodged trees and falling timbers.

"We must get to Washington, before the Rebels get there!"

"We'll never get there," vowed an old artilleryman who had been through the Mexican war with this same battery. "This is worse than a battle. We'll never get there. We'll be swimming around with the muskrats and roosting on the drift-wood and haystacks with them.

"I'd rather be in a battle where I can use my piece, than sail through the timber in this blooming tub on this beastly twisted river!"

Toward evening the steamer again crashed into the timber and a willow tree, springing back as the side of the boat had passed it, tore away several planks or buckets from the wheel.

"Boys, it's for the rat-houses now," called out the old gunner as the boat stopped with a crash.

But Colonel Lantry coolly repeated his usual: "Keep her going, Captain; keep her going! The Government will build you a new boat!" However, with a broken wheel she could not keep going.

"Take the anchor over to the other shore," Captain Faucette ordered three men. "Then pass the line around the capstan and we'll pull her back into open water. Well tie up here for the night and repair the wheel."

Repairing the wheel was hard and dangerous work. With one hand the men worked at screwing down and unscrewing bolts and nuts, with the other hand they hung on to dripping, slippery planks and beams.

"Careful men, careful," Captain Faucette cautioned them. "Any man that goes overboard into this icy current is lost."

By the light of lanterns and torches, the men worked with a will. One bucket was just being lifted into place, when there was a scramble and a plunge-"Man overboard!" The cry arose and at once there was a confusion of hurrying feet and calling voices.

Tim, the Indian, and the trapper were just eating supper, while Bill had been watching and helping the men. Bill ripped off his coat. "Hold up the torches!" he called, and sprang after the man, who was just disappearing behind the wheel. The icy flood almost choked him, but he struck out after the man. By the glare of the torches he caught a glimpse of him bobbing up and being carried toward a mass of driftwood. He seized the back of the man's shirt, pulled him to the driftwood, and tried to climb up, but it would not support his weight. He hooked his left arm around an overhanging willow, and with his right hand he raised the man's head above the current.

"Bring a boat, quick!" he called. "I can't hold on long. I'm all numb!"

In a few minutes, Mattson, the unfortunate carpenter, and Bill were safe on board and Colonel Lantry took charge of them.

With his right hand he raised the man's head above the current.

"Here," he said to two soldiers, "turn this man over on his face and bring him to. You know how."

Then to the men: "On with your work, men. We must reach Fort Snelling to-morrow night."

Bill had slipped away to his corner on the coil of ropes. His teeth chattered and his hands felt so numb that he could hardly wriggle out of his wet and sticky garments.

When he was once more in dry clothes, he hurried to the mess-room and asked the cook for the hottest tea he had.

The cook did not have to be told.

"I'd give you something better," he said, "if I had it, but the hot milk is all gone. The captain is in a deuce of a hurry, so we went right by Mankato and St. Peter without stopping."

After two cups of hot tea, sweetened with plenty of brown sugar, Bill's teeth stopped rattling, but set themselves with a will into the meal of ham, potatoes, and bread placed before the hungry boy, who had not yet had his supper.

While Bill was eating, Colonel Lantry came around.

"Where did you learn it, boy?" he asked. "It was a neat piece of work."

"Oh, I learned it at Vicksburg," Bill replied. "We boys used to swim across the river, but there the water is warm."

"At Vicksburg," the officer repeated. "You are not going to Vicksburg! You are too young to enlist. You had better stay in Minnesota. There's likely to be hell at Vicksburg before this war is over."

The words of the Colonel had aroused a train of thoughts in the boy.

Was there really going to be war at Vicksburg? The boys had heard talk of war, but not until they had watched the loading of the guns and the embarking of the soldiers and had heard the pressing orders of the keen, straight army officer to "keep her going," to "push her through," had this war talk meant anything to them.

Tim was almost too young to understand such things, but to Bill the war had suddenly become a fearful reality. Fortunately, these big guns were not going to Vicksburg; they were going to Washington, which was a long, long way from Vicksburg.

From the talk of the men and from newspapers which had occasionally fallen into Bill's hands, the boys had learned that during the previous winter their own State, Mississippi, had left the Union, and that Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana, had likewise followed the lead of South Carolina, which had seceded a few days before Christmas.

By this time almost everybody on the boat was asleep, except the carpenters and engineers, who were still working to put the steamer into first-class running shape.

But Bill's mind turned from the great problem and puzzle of national events to more personal problems, which in a vague manner he had often tried to solve.

Why had his mother never told him anything about his grandfather in Tennessee, except that he was a very good man, who lived on a large plantation, and had many slaves? Why had he and Tim never visited their grandfather? Many boys of Vicksburg spent months at a time on the plantations of their grandfathers.

What kind of a man was their cousin, Hicks, really?

Both Bill and Tim liked Trapper Barker very much and even Black Buffalo, although he was an Indian, and spoke only a broken English, they liked, but they had begun to feel that there was something mysterious about Cousin Hicks. He didn't try to make a farm. He had bought no farm horses nor oxen like the other settlers. He had only planted a little corn and a few potatoes and beans and he let the boys do the work in the small field, while with a light team and wagon he visited around amongst the Indians and Whites. Why didn't he stay at home and work like the German and Irish and Yankee settlers?

Had he only gone to Minnesota so that Tim might grow big and strong in the northern climate? Tim had often been sick at Vicksburg, but now he was as strong and active as any small boy of his age; however, Cousin Hicks seemed to take little interest in Tim's health.

At last the troubled boy fell asleep and all his puzzles were forgotten until the clear call of the bugler: "We can't get them up-we can't get them up in the morning!" echoed over the flooded valley. It seemed to Bill that he had slept only a five minutes, although it was now full daylight. The ruddy sheen of the rising sun was reflected in a broad streak of red from the swirling, rushing and gliding waters, while masses of black smoke were curling from the chimneys of the boat.

The Fanny Harris had filled up with coal before she left St. Paul, because the wood-yards were flooded and much of the cord-wood piled up for sale at the different landing places had drifted down stream.

The second day's travel was much like the first, but contrary to the expectation of the artillerymen, the boat did reach the Fort Snelling landing in the evening, having made more than three hundred miles in two days.

Her appearance, however, was more like that of a wreck than of a safe ship. Had there been any turn-bridges in those days, they would not have had to open for her. Only six feet were left of her tallest smokestack, while the other projected only a yard above the deck.

But Colonel Lantry would not stop for repairs.

"How are her hull and engine?" he asked.

"All sound, sir," replied Captain Faucette.

"Then we shall cast off at daylight," he ordered. "You can patch her up at La Crosse."

At La Crosse the soldiers, guns, and horses were transferred to railroad cars. Col. John E. Pemberton accompanied his men to Washington, where he resigned and entered the service of the Confederate States.

The four civilian travelers left the Fanny Harris at Fort Snelling, and stayed a few days at Snelling and St. Paul, till Barker and Black Buffalo had finished their trading.

At these two places, the excitement was as great as it had been at Fort Ridgely. Fort Snelling had been made the recruiting station for the State, and from all over the State men were responding to the call of President Lincoln. Hundreds of men were encamped in tents and rapidly constructed shacks, because the old stone barracks could not hold them all. Captain Acker's company was already complete and before the end of the month the First Minnesota Regiment was mustered in.

At the frontier town of St. Paul, the excitement was as great as at Fort Snelling. Everybody talked war, while at the river front two dozen boats were hastily loading and unloading. Mixed with the excited white people were a number of silent, stolid-looking Indians, both Chippewa and Sioux. They were found in the stores, on the streets and at the boat landing.

The town seemed full of soldiers from all parts of the State. Some of the men of the Fanny Harris had deserted the boat at Fort Snelling, because they were afraid if they waited they might not be able to get in on the 75,000 President Lincoln had called for.

On the first up-river boat, the two lads and their friends started back for Fort Ridgely. They were all in a sad mood. Bill could not help thinking of the words of the officer, in regard to Vicksburg, while Barker and Black Buffalo were turning over in their minds the looks and the talk of the Sioux, who in the red glare of torches and bonfires, had been watching the loading of cannons and other preparations for the departure of the soldiers.

Black Buffalo especially seemed in a sullen mood.

"Who is the white boys' cousin?" he asked Barker, when the two were sitting alone on the rear deck after dinner, while the boys were watching immense flocks of geese, ducks, and cormorants that were now going north over the flooded valley.

"He pretends to be their friend," replied the trapper, "but I am, like yourself, much puzzled by his actions and behavior. He does nothing for the boys. He talks of finding a good squatter's homestead for them, but even Bill is much too young to hold a piece of land till it is surveyed and opened for settlement."

"He is not their friend," Black Buffalo uttered gruffly. "I see him often talking with bad Indians and bad white men. I do not like him; he is a bad man. He sells rum to the Indians, when he thinks no eyes see him, and he talks against the good work of the missionaries.

"We should keep our eyes on him. He means to do some harm to the boys."

"What harm could he do to them?" Barker asked, trying to conceal his own fears and the anxiety he had often felt about the relation of the two boys to their supposed cousin.

"We must watch him," he said to Black Buffalo; "there is something strange about him. He can talk well, but his eye is unsteady."

"Yes," replied the Indian, "his words do not tell you what is in his heart."

In the middle of the afternoon, the engine broke down and the boat tied up near the present town of Belle Plaine, about fifty miles above St. Paul.

While the engineers were repairing the machinery, the two boys and their friends went out in two small boats to hunt ducks and geese on the flooded marshes.

They landed on a small island of high land and the men chose a convenient blind behind some bushes. The boys had no guns and had just gone along to watch the fun and to bring in the ducks which the hunters would drop, but they found some unexpected and exciting hunting for themselves.

"See the rabbit, see the rabbit!" Tim cried. "He is sitting on a stump with water all around him."

The boys were surprised to find that the rabbit did not try to get away as they approached.

"He's dead," said Tim.

"No, he isn't," laughed Bill, "I see his nose move; he is breathing."

Some brush had drifted against the stump and the rabbit had eaten it as far as he had been able to reach.

When the boys lifted the rabbit into the boat, they had another surprise, for nestled under his fur they discovered a black meadow mouse that had also sought refuge on the stump when the water had risen.

"Take him off," Tim begged, "he'll freeze to death on the stump," and Bill took him off and placed him under the rabbit, who was quietly squatting under the seat as if he belonged there.

When the boys returned to the brush-and-grass-covered island, they discovered four more rabbits, who, however, were more lively than the one on the stump. They ran about in a most puzzling zigzag fashion and one even tried to swim across a channel to another piece of dry land. But the boys caught them all and put them in the boat, from which they did not try to escape.

While they were chasing the rabbits the boys made another discovery. The island was alive with black meadow-mice; there were hundreds of them. Every tuft of dead grass, every bush, every pile of dead leaves was crowded with them.

"Oh, Tim," teased Bill, "let's row back to the boat and get some pie for all your pets."

But Tim had caught the twinkle in his brother's eye. "Ah, you can't fool me," he came back. "Don't you think I know that these wild mice have plenty of grass and brush to eat till the water goes down?"

It did not take the boys long to decide what to do with the rabbits.

"If we could only keep them," was Tim's wish. "We would have as much fun with them as we had with our rabbits at Vicksburg."

"No use; we can't keep them," Bill argued. "We would have to stay at home every day or let them out, and if we let them out, they will eat up our garden and Cousin Hicks will kill them. There are too many rabbits at our shack now."

So the boys rowed their catch of game ashore. When the boat touched land, the stupid rabbits became lively at once. They hopped out of the boat and, true to their instinct for hiding, disappeared at once; some into a hole and others under a pile of brush.

On their way back the boys, quite excited about this new way of hunting, peeped into a hollow log.

"There's an animal in it!" exclaimed Tim.

"Look out!" Bill warned him, "maybe it's a skunk. If you catch a skunk, you can't go back on the boat."

"It's no skunk," replied Tim. "It's a gray animal. It's a coon. Let's catch him."

Bill poked the animal with a stick and before he had time to warn his younger brother to look out for the coon's teeth and claws, Tim had grabbed the creature by the neck, dropped him in the boat and thrown his coat over the snarling animal.

"Look at him," Tim cried. "Doesn't he look funny, peeping out from under my coat?"

"My, but he is thin! I bet he is cold and starved. Let us take him to the hunters and give him something to eat."

"Mr. Barker, what does a coon eat!" Tim shouted as they approached the men. "We've caught one."

"Anything, except wood," the trapper told them. "Give him a piece of duck-meat. We have ducks enough for the whole boat."

When Tim offered the raccoon a piece of duck-meat, he took it, soused it in the water in the boat, devoured it greedily and began whining for more. He ate several other pieces in the same way.

"Why does he wash his meat?" the boys asked.

"It's just his queer way," the trapper told them. "You give him a piece of fresh pie, and he'll souse it in a mudhole before he eats it.

"A coon's a queer fellow. My German neighbors call him 'washbear,' on account of his peculiar habits. I had a tame coon once, but he died from eating a pan of boot-grease."

"Why didn't you watch him?" asked Tim.

"You can't watch a coon," the trapper laughed, "he's always in some mischief. I'd rather watch ten boys than one coon."

On the four days it took the boat to reach Fort Ridgely the boys had plenty of time to ask the trapper about the war.

"It won't last long, that's what I think," the trapper told them. "When the Confederates see that Abe Lincoln has 75,000 soldiers, they will quit."

"Will they fight at Vicksburg?" asked Bill.

"No, you needn't worry, boys. They'll soon fix it all up at Washington and the soldiers will come home."

"The officer said it would be hell at Vicksburg," Tim remarked, "and it would be a big, long war."

"That's what some of the army officers think," the trapper admitted, "but most other people don't think so."

Black Buffalo was as much puzzled by the war between the white people as the boys.

"Do the people from this country want to go south," he asked, "just as the Chippewas from the North want to come into our Sioux country?"

"No, that isn't it," the trapper explained. "The white people of the South want to keep their black slaves, and they wish to have a country and a president of their own. They don't like Abe Lincoln."

When on the evening of the fourth day, the steamer whistled for the Fort Ridgely landing, the boys were glad to get off the boat, but felt very uneasy about the reception Cousin Hicks would give them.

"I wish we could go back to Vicksburg," Tim whispered to his brother. "I am homesick."

"Come on, boys," Mr. Barker called in his pleasant, manly voice. "I'll stay at your shack to-night, and if your cousin is at home, I'll have a visit and a talk with him. Don't forget your coon, Tim; I guess you will have to carry him if you want to take him home."

Cousin Hicks was at home and greeted the boys with apparent heartiness. To Barker he was friendly, but did not invite him to stay over night.

"You need not go to any trouble," the trapper told him. "We have had our supper on the boat, and I will just spread my blanket on the floor for the night. You know a seasoned trapper can sleep anywhere."

"Yes, do make yourself at home," Hicks said now. "I am glad you took the boys with you to St. Paul. It is a bit lonesome for them here, and I have to be away a good deal."

Next morning Hicks walked along the prairie road with Barker, and the trapper knew that Hicks had something to say to him.

When they were no longer within sight of the shack, Hicks began:

"It would suit me just as well, Barker, if you wouldn't take those lads away from my place. I'm their guardian and I reckon I can look after them."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Mr. Hicks. I always thought the boys ought to have a guardian. But I want to tell you that, in my opinion, you have done blessed little guarding."

"Just the same," Hicks replied, his Southern accent becoming more pronounced, "it would suit me just as well if you and yours wouldn't meddle in my business."

"Now look here, Hicks," the trapper turned on him with his gray eyes flashing, "this isn't a matter of business at all. You claim to be the friend or guardian of these two boys, and you not only neglect them, but you expose them to great danger."

"Where's the danger, and what...?" Hicks started, his anger plainly rising.

"Hicks," the trapper cut him short, "don't pretend to me that you don't know. You know as well as I do that a storm is brewing here and that the Indians may break into murder and war almost any day. It would not have surprised me if they had broken out before the Fanny Harris had reached La Crosse."

"All the same," retorted Hicks, trying to straighten his lank and stooped body, "you and yours will let those boys alone in the future."

Barker felt this was a threat. "Good," he replied. "If that's your trump card, I'll play mine. Hicks, if any harm comes to those lads, I'll hunt you down and make you pay for it. Remember that! Your duty is to take those lads home to Vicksburg and you can come back with a load of rum, if you want to. We're through. Good morning."

The two men stood facing each other a moment. A whirling gust blew off the old gray hat of Hicks, and he hurriedly caught it and put it on again. Then, without a word, he turned and with a slouching gait started to go back.

Something about Hicks had startled Barker. For a moment he stood thinking. Had he not seen this man years ago? Then he leaned against an old gnarly bur-oak. Hicks turned as if he would come back, but when he saw the trapper watching him, he changed his mind.

"No, Hicks," the trapper thought, "your game won't work on me. You can't plug me in the back and bury me in the brush in the ravine."

But where had he met this man before? He lit his pipe and thought. Now it flashed upon him. Ten years ago, when he had been trapping and hunting wild turkeys in the valley of the Wabash, in Indiana, he had met a man he had never forgotten. The man was under arrest for murder and the sheriff stopped over night with him in Barker's cabin. The next day he broke away and had never been heard from. He had black hair then, dark eyes, and a small red scar stood out sharply on his white forehead.

"That man was Hicks!" the trapper exclaimed. "I never forgot that scar."

"Why has he brought those boys into the Indian Country?" Barker asked himself. "How could any parents trust their boys to a man of his kind?" But Hicks could be very pleasant, and he was a good talker. He had made many friends among both Whites and Indians. He seemed to have some money and was a liberal spender. Nevertheless, after turning over in his mind all he knew about Hicks, Barker could not make up his mind why Hicks and the boys were here and why Hicks so absolutely neglected the boys he had evidently promised to look after.

A week later Barker met the boys at a slough, where both he and the lads sometimes went for a mess of wild ducks and the trapper decided to see what he could find out about Cousin Hicks. The boys being asked, told freely what they knew.

Cousin Hicks was some distant relative of their mother. He had lived at Vicksburg about a year and had often visited at their home and had sat many hours chatting with their father in his little store. The boys had gone north with him, so they could squat on some good land, and because Tim was often sick at Vicksburg. As soon as their parents could sell their store, they would also come north, because they had heard and read about the boom in Minnesota lands and what big crops of wheat it would raise. The boys liked it in Minnesota, only Tim got homesick at times. Cousin Hicks was not mean to them, only he didn't work and didn't stay at home, but he never worked much in Vicksburg, either.

There had been some trouble and a lawsuit between their two grandfathers in Tennessee and the boys had never been to see them.

That was all the boys knew. It did not help Barker much, but he felt more sure than ever that Hicks was playing some crooked game and he decided to watch things, no matter what might be the outcome.

When fall came, the boys had eaten all the corn in their garden and in order to have something to live on during the winter, they went to a large slough to gather wild rice in the way they had learned of the Indians.

As the winter passed, bad news came for the lads from the South. Their father wrote that the war was getting worse and that on account of it he could not hope to sell his store, but that the boys might as well stay in Minnesota.

The war had indeed, by this time, assumed immense proportions, both in the East and in the West near the Mississippi River. In the West, Grant had captured the important points of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson and had fought the terrible two days' battle of Shiloh. After this battle, most Northerners became convinced that the Confederacy would not suddenly collapse after one or two battles.

By the first of July, 1862, the land forces, under Grant and two fleets of gunboats, the lower under Admiral Farragut, and the upper under Commodore Henry Davis, had obtained control of the Mississippi River, except for a stretch of river between Vicksburg and Port Hudson, a distance of two hundred miles.

By far the most important and strongest point on the river still held by the Confederates was Vicksburg. It is located on the east side of the river on high land with wooded hills about two hundred feet high directly to the east of the city. The cities of St. Louis, Cairo, Memphis, and New Orleans were all held by the Union forces. It was of great importance for the Union forces to capture Vicksburg, because the capture of this city would give them complete control of the great river and would cut the Confederacy in two, cutting off their supply of grain and meat from Arkansas and Texas. If Vicksburg could be taken, the Confederacy would be blockaded on the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and on the Mississippi.

The task of taking this important city fell to General Grant, and it proved a most difficult undertaking. The heavy batteries of guns placed in all favorable positions could not be silenced by the Federal gunboats. The city was also defended by a garrison of several thousand men, and on July 15th, the iron-clad Confederate ram, Arkansas, coming out of the Yazoo River, just above Vicksburg, ran through and practically defeated the whole fleet of Commodore Davis. For several days this one Confederate gunboat held both Admiral Farragut's fleet and the fleet of Commodore Davis at bay until both withdrew, one up, the other down, the river.

The fight of the Arkansas under its fearless Captain I. N. Brown, is one of the most heroic chapters in naval warfare.

Why the Federals allowed this formidable ram six weeks to be completed and armed at Yazoo City, within fifty miles of their own upper fleet, has thus far remained a mystery. On the fifteenth of August, Bill and Tim Ferguson, after an interval of several months, received the following letter from their father at Vicksburg:

"My dear boys:

"You have probably read or heard about the fighting that has been going on here. Your mother and I live in a cave now and we are getting used to the screeching and bursting of shells, which the Federal gunboats throw into the city. But now our one little iron-clad Arkansas has driven off both the upper and lower Federal fleet. Think of that! and last night your mother and I slept at home once more.

"You boys would like to see the Arkansas. She looks like a scow with an iron house boat built on it. The house-boat part has slanting sides in every direction. Captain Brown, her commander, built her at Yazoo City; Brown had thousands of railroad rails bent into shape and with these he completely covered her sides and where he could not use rails, he used boiler-plate. If we only had a few more Browns and Arkansases, we would soon chase the whole Yankee fleet into the canebrakes.

"Most people here are still very hopeful that no serious attempt will be made by Grant and the Northern fleet to take Vicksburg, but I fear they are mistaken.

"Our fleet was so hopelessly smashed at Memphis that we have only a few vessels left, while the Federals seem to have no end of gunboats and transports. It may be that the Gibraltar of the Great River can not be taken, but I feel sure that Grant and Sherman and Admiral Porter now commanding the Federal fleet above Vicksburg, are going to try it. When that time comes, Vicksburg will be a bad place to live in.

"Mother would like to send you some turkeys and chickens, but as that is impossible, she hopes that you may really enjoy the wild ducks and geese that you have written about.

"We are very glad that you are far away from this fearful and sad war and we wish you to stay north till peace has come again."

The writer did not know that at the very time he wrote these words, two thousand Sioux were encamped on the Minnesota River, within a few hours' ride of his boys, and were ready at almost any moment to rush into a war much more cruel than that being waged on the Great River, where only armed men fought against armed men.