Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/139

Rh to Oregon, and if he could join such a party he would bid good-bye to steamboating for awhile. My fate had found me. I was taken by surprise. The mate being asked how others going to Oregon would help him on that trip, replied, "There are men with families and means who need help, and will furnish board to single men for their work."

I did not sleep much that night; but was up and searching the business places as they opened for my outfit for the trip. Got me a nice new rifle. By my father, who was a self-made gunsmith, I had been given a fine double-barreled fowling piece. I also laid in a supply of ammunition, purchasing five pounds of powder, twenty-five pounds of lead, one dozen boxes of percussion caps, five pounds of shot, and one gross of fishhooks, and lines to match; also, I bought two pocketknives, two sheath knives, a hatchet to answer for a tomahawk, and an axe. This left me hardly enough money to pay my passage to Weston, Missouri. But wages and return of my passage money was due me from the steamboat. To that I returned and asked a settlement. My wages to Saint Louis from Wheeling amounted to the same I had paid for my deck passage from Pittsburg to Dubuque. I got my wages, but the clerk would not alter the books as to passage money received. I did not haggle, but hurried to a Missouri-river steamer, and was aboard before noon.

There I met men, with guns and beaver traps, who could talk of nothing but Oregon. I passed some of my time helping the deckhands, and was urged to ship with them but declined. I also listened, as we steamed along, to the fascinating descriptions of life in Texas by a young man from that then rising republic; but he said "No, stranger; don't you go to Texas. They have slaves there, and you could not hold your tongue on that subject, and that is dangerous there.' Manly fellow. We parted