CHAPTER THREE

Rush to the Missouri

There was supposed to be an hour’s layover at Julesburg.  The stage was so late coming in that morning after the twister, however, that the division headquarters would be treated like any other home station.  Grab a bite of breakfast and make it quick, since the new driver was already fretting over being behind schedule.  Adam considered himself lucky to get breakfast at all, though.  The connecting stage to Denver had awaited their arrival, but its driver wanted to leave immediately.  No breakfast at all for those heading there.

Adam wished that he might be among them.  To be so close to his Uncle John and Cousin Will without seeing them was frustrating.  A side trip to Denver, however, would require an extra day, just in travel time, even if they didn’t visit at all, and Adam didn’t have a day to spare.  It was already the first of September, and he had only nine days to reach New Haven.  He could scarcely remember Will, anyway, but his memories of Will’s pa were fresher, since Uncle John had visited them in St. Joseph and twice on the Ponderosa.

Wanting to catch more than a glimpse of Julesburg, Adam ate hurriedly and left the long, single-story station of rough-hewn cedar logs.  On lighting down from the stage, he’d been surprised by the size of the town, a dozen buildings or more.  In addition to the station and a stable of similar construction, Julesburg boasted a telegraph office, blacksmith shop, store, warehouse and billiard saloon.  Curiosity drew him toward the latter, where he treated himself to a drink to ward off the morning chill and watched a game with fascination, trying to predict where the balls would land from the angle of their bounce off the padded sides.  He kept close to the door, looking out every minute or so, to make sure the stage wouldn’t leave him.  When he saw the driver exit the station, he pushed through the batwing doors of the saloon and made a dash for the stage.

The road passed through heavy sand for the next several miles; in fact, for a brief stretch, the passengers had to get out and walk to spare the mules the extra weight.  Then the path ran along the Platte River, its banks glistening white with alkali salt.  Dinner was taken at Diamond Springs, but Adam was convinced the mosquitoes were eating better than any of the passengers.  The sultry heat kept everyone from wanting to lower the curtains, even though there wasn’t much to see.  Adam took advantage of the afternoon to give more diligent attention to his textbook again.  He’d been neglecting that the last few days, for it had been harder to concentrate with the steep ups and downs of the mountainous country.  The road was more level now and reading easier on his eyes.

At the relay station near O’Fallon’s Bluffs, the passengers took a brief look around a store stocking everything from needles to champagne.  Since Adam needed neither nor much in between, he was more interested in the signboard giving distances to points ahead.  A hundred and twenty miles to Ft. Kearney, but more importantly, still four hundred before he reached St. Joseph.  Would he make it on time or would Indians, weather or just plain bad luck delay him?  This remote station, he was told, was the best place between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains for an Indian attack, but the area seemed peaceful today.  The closer they got to “civilization,” the less likely that threat would be, but weather and bad luck could strike anywhere.  Though he couldn’t entirely escape the niggling concern, Adam shrugged it off.  So far, his luck had been good, and if it changed, he’d deal with it as best he could.  But, please, don’t let it change, his heart pleaded, for Pa’s sake, if not for mine.  Don’t let all he’s sacrificed be a waste.

As the stage left behind the alkali flats, the roadside started to green up and look more like the prairie Adam remembered when first starting west.  The grass was ornamented by pink and blue lupine, milkweed with its small white blossoms and the pretty blue flowers of wild flax.  He spotted useful greens, too, although from the stage he couldn’t discern the distinctive shape of their leaves well enough to identify them.  He remembered, though, especially the lamb’s quarter and chamomile that had given such refreshment to their bleak diet of salt pork and cornbread.  Dwarf cedars edged the banks of the Platte and long River Island in the distance.

Riding in to the home station at Fremont Springs, Adam noticed a deer drinking from the spring at the end of slough, but it fled from the commotion of an incoming stage.  He stepped down from the coach and smiled at a few chickens skittering around the yard.  Could it be possible that there would be fried chicken on the supper table?  Not surprisingly, there wasn’t.  Should have known better, Adam chided himself.  Didn’t see enough to make a flock.  Probably not enough to share with travelers, but looks like the lady of the house is working toward that, at least.  Maybe by the time I come home again.  Unless, of course, I fail that exam and end up back here within a month.  He gave himself an outright scolding, albeit a silent one, for that negative thought.  Failure wasn’t an option; therefore, he wouldn’t fail.

The man running the station must have trapped some pigeons, for that was what graced the supper table.  Floured and fried in a pan with onions, they were quite tasty and a welcome change from bacon and biscuits.  Lamb’s quarter provided the greens he’d been yearning for since seeing them crop up alongside the trail, and freshly baked wheat bread, crusty outside but light and fluffy within, rounded out the meal.  Adam could have dallied in delight over such a meal.  The driver was ready to leave before he was, though, and the driver’s word was law.  Adam dutifully climbed aboard and settled himself in for the night.

* * * * *

            When Adam woke and looked out the window to his right the next morning, he saw a line of cone-shaped buttes of red, sandy clay.  Partially detached from the rock wall behind them, their smooth faces sloped toward the Platte River opposite at a forty-five-degree angle.  Soon he came to a decrepit excuse for a station, with worse to offer by way of breakfast.  Squeezing into the single-room log hut, he managed to choke down a plate full of near-rancid bacon and greasy pancakes that tasted as if the flour had been mixed with dirt.  The taste was improved slightly by the thick molasses in which he drowned his stack of three.

The one thing Cottonwood Springs did have going for it was the water.  Being advised that it was the only good source along the route ahead, he hurried over to the clear stream flowing through a grove of tall cottonwood trees and filled his canteen with cool, clean water.

The countryside past the home station continued to be carpeted with a rainbow of flowers, purple aster mixing with flowers of red, blue, white and yellow.  Some of the land was too swampy for flowers to grow and, unfortunately, the roadside was also strewn with the sun-bleached skulls and bones of wantonly killed buffalo.  Sometime that morning he spotted a few of the great, shaggy beasts in the distance and smiled at the memories they evoked.

Against all hope, buffalo appeared on the table at the noon stop at Plum Creek.  The driver groused that this was the worst time of year for buffalo.  “Tough enough to break a tooth and stringy enough to stick between what’s left.”

Grateful as he was for the diversity, Adam had to admit that this steak didn’t taste the way he remembered.  Whether this was really inferior or whether memory had simply made the original impossible to live up to, he couldn’t have said.  As the passengers again boarded the stage, the driver leaned in to whisper, “Better food at the next stop, folks.”  Everyone looked grateful for that, although Adam thought that even tough, stringy buffalo was an improvement over breakfast.

They passed through Ft. Kearney, but since it was only a swing stop, Adam saw little of it.  Another hour and a half brought them to the home station run by a man named Hooks, which a couple of the passengers called Dogtown and another Valley City.  Adam thought the latter the most appropriate, for it was as pleasing to the ear as the setting was to the eye.  Situated on the river, its banks partially fringed with willows and young cottonwoods and in sight of the river islands, where elk and deer roamed, Valley City was a lovely spot.  And the food was good, too, the main course being blue catfish from the river.  Full to satisfaction, Adam found it easy to fall asleep as the stagecoach traveled between a narrow line of cottonwood, red willow and cedar on the north and rolling hills of red clay and sand to the south.

* * * * *

            The driver opened the stage door and assisted the female passengers from the coach.  “Count your blessings, ladies, that Thirty-Two-Mile Creek is a breakfast stop for us.  If we got here any later, we might have to fight off them pesky blue coats from Ft. Kearney.”

Adam shook his head at what he figured to be a bad joke.  No one would ride all the way from Ft. Kearney for a meal, especially not to a one-story log cabin with nothing to set it apart from all the others along the route.  As soon as he tasted the breakfast, however, he was ready to take the driver’s tale in complete faith.  A thick slice of ham adorned each plate of fried eggs, as did a mound of potatoes fried with onion.  Biscuits were served with bottom gravy, rich and brown from the drippings of the pan in which the ham had cooked.  Pie baked from preserved peaches, juicy and sliced thick, provided a worthy finale to the fine meal.

“Raise some good cooks in Vermont, don’t they, son?” the driver commented when Adam paid his compliments to the lady serving the meal.  “And she sets an even better table at dinner.  That’s why them soldiers from Kearney flock around when they get a day off.”

“So, will we have another fine cook from Vermont at the next home station?” Adam asked with a smile at his hostess.

The driver laughed.  “Not quite as good, son, ‘cause it don’t get better than this, but it ain’t bad.  You won’t starve in Little Blue country.”

When they left, the road began a gradual slope downward over the broken tableland between the Platte River and the Little Blue.  The land here was barren, except for grass sprouting up after the recent rain, but the same moist ground that gave new life to the grass also attracted a host of mosquitoes to make the journey miserable.  Finally, a beautiful little stream, fifty yards wide, came into sight.  Oak, cottonwood and willows, their leaves already beginning to change from green to orange and yellow, lined the banks of the Little Blue, while plovers, jays, bluebirds and red-winged blackbirds flitted and twittered along the shore.

The home station, Liberty Farm, sat on the north bank of the river, and dinner consisted of a feast of products from the Little Blue.  The meal began with a soup of soft-shelled turtle, followed by a platter of crispy, fried catfish, along with fried potatoes and green beans, preserved from the summer harvest, but still tasting garden-fresh.  The driver obviously hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said the eating was good in Little Blue country.

Following the Little Blue, the road ran southeast from Liberty Farm.  The valley was hemmed in on both sides by low, rolling bluffs, which broke off near the river.  This late in the year the landscape was barren, except near the river, where wild sunflowers, some as high as six feet, dipped their thirsty heads.  On the slight breeze a strong odor of wild onions wafted toward the coach, pungent, but not unpleasant.

Supper at Big Sandy didn’t compare with the previous two meals of the day, in either quantity or quality.  Mutton, sliced off a carcass hanging from the ceiling and fried in bacon fat, and lamb’s quarter, wilted in the same grease, was served with bread and coffee to make a moderately filling meal.  As he climbed back aboard the stage, Adam had to laugh at his sudden realization that food had become as great a concern for him as it normally was for his younger brother Hoss.  Well, he excused, there’s not much else to think about between one station and the next, and a fellow can’t conjugate Latin verbs all day long!  Meals marked the passage of time; they were something to look forward to, whether they were good or bad, and each one brought him closer to his journey’s end.

* * * * *

            Hollenberg’s, where the stage stopped for breakfast Wednesday morning, had the look of a place that might provide another good meal.  The home station was housed in a substantial two-story building, and nearby, stalks in a fenced cornfield were still bearing ears.  Adam entered in expectation and took a seat at the table next to the off-going driver.  The new man was just coming down from upstairs, where stage employees slept during layovers.  The former driver introduced all the passengers to the new man, but then conversation ceased as everyone dug into their ham and eggs.

A platter of hot roasting ears was brought out, and Adam quickly snared one.  “How much further to St. Joseph?” he inquired as he slathered it with creamy butter.

“One hundred twenty-three miles, we have been told,” Gerat Hollenberg replied in a thick German accent that reminded Adam of Frederick Zuebner.  “That where you are headed or beyond?”

“Beyond,” Adam said.  “All the way to Connecticut—the East Coast,” he amended quickly, concerned that the immigrant might not know the names of all the states.  Connecticut, after all, was one of the smaller ones.

“Train connection in St. Joseph,” the station keeper advised.

“Yes, I know,” Adam assured him.  “Nice place you have here, Mr. Hollenberg.”

Hollenberg smiled broadly, with evident pride.  “We build to stay, not like stations you saw west of here, eh?  Six solid rooms downstairs—post office, tavern, home for my family.  Only one room upstairs, but big to hold many men.”

Adam chuckled.  “You don’t get more than one driver at a time, do you?”

With a roaring laugh Hollenberg slapped his leg.  “No, sonny, but takes more than driver to run a stage.  That room is only full when Pony riders stay here, too, though.”

“Can’t wait for that telegraph to join up and put them out of business,” the new stage driver quipped.  “Sleep better without the smell of horse sweat in the next bed, and considerin’ what we get elsewhere along the line, we ain’t about to complain about spacious accommodations.”  He scrubbed at his chin.  “Fact is, I’m so reluctant to leave ‘em that I might be persuaded to stay on and let Pete here take my run.”  He grinned at the driver going off duty.

“Now, why might that be?” Pete jibed back.  “Could it be ‘cause you’re just plain lazy or is Miss Sophie promisin’ apple strudel for dinner?”

Sophie Hollenberg, as plump and rosy-cheeked as the Cartwright’s old friend Ludmilla Zuebner, blushed.  “I promise it,” she admitted.

“Then there ain’t no temptin’ me to leave,” Pete cackled.  “You’ll just have to do your own drivin’, Sam.”

“Well, you’re certainly tempting me to stay over,” voiced a male passenger rubbing his aching neck.  “Gettin’ all-fired tired of that stage, anyway.”  He elbowed Adam.  “How about you, son?  You been ridin’ it longer than me.  Not sure what strudel is, but if these drivers are fightin’ over it, must be worth a taste.”

“I know what it is.  In fact, it’s a favorite of mine, so I am tempted,” Adam admitted.  “Miss Sophie, if your strudel is as fine as what a German lady I know back home makes, it would be well worth a day’s layover, but I can’t spare the time this trip.”

“You come back soon, then,” Miss Sophie urged with a matronly smile.  “Stay with us and I make for you.  Is promise.”

Adam smiled and nodded.  Of course, he hoped it would be four years before he passed this way again.  No telling if the Hollenbergs would still be running the station then, and Miss Sophie would be unlikely to remember a promise to a stranger that long.  If he ended up back here sooner, though, at least he’d have something sweet to ease his disappointment.  As he boarded the stage again, Adam scoffed at the notion.  No piece of pastry would comfort him if he failed.  He couldn’t fail!

The stage passed through Marysville, a town that hadn’t even existed when he, Pa and Inger had started west.  Odd that I never thought how different it would be back here, Adam thought.  Virginia City had changed every time I came back from Sacramento and I took that in stride.  Seemed right for a new town to grow, I guess.  These places, especially the prairie, have been locked in my memory, forever changeless, but they’re growing, too.  Wonder if I’ll even recognize St. Joe!

A rope ferry was in place at Marysville, but since the Big Blue River was only about two feet deep this late in the year, the stage forded it, instead.  The soil, though sandy, gave a solid track for the wheels, but the banks were steep.  The two female passengers looked nervous, and Adam was sure his own face showed concern, too.  He was getting close to his goal now and didn’t want one of those luckless accidents that often happened at fording places to keep him from getting to St. Joe tomorrow on schedule.  Holding his breath, Adam leaned out the window and watched the wheels roll down the precipitous bank, splash through the water and come out safely on the other side of the river.  He exhaled in relief and pulled his head back in.

Diligent perusal of his Latin text consumed the morning until Adam closed it with a look of satisfaction.  He’d been over the contents from cover to cover during the long, monotonous days aboard the stage.  He’d just rest his eyes tomorrow and start fresh with his Greek text when he took the train out of St. Joe.  He gazed out the window, so no one aboard would see his sheepish smile as he admitted that he was more likely to spend that trip across the state chattering away with Jamie.  To think that by tomorrow he’d at long last be able to talk face-to-face with his old friend, instead of just by letter.

About half an hour later the stage stopped at a cluster of frame houses on the near side of the well-wooded Vermillion River.  The stationmaster here was a young Alsatian, George Guittard, who lived with his mother, sister and son in a large and clean two-story house surrounded by neat fences.  Though the lady said she didn’t often spare a chicken for travelers, a fine roasted one graced the table this noon.  It came with savory stuffing and all the fixings, superb hot rolls and fresh, hot coffee to drink with the best apple pie Adam had tasted since the last one Hop Sing had baked.  The only deterrent to this meal was having only thirty minutes to enjoy it.

After the meal the stage forded the Vermillion, choosing a path between granite boulders.  Adam really held his breath at this one, for the Vermillion was where he’d first learned that rivers could be dangerous.  One of the wagons in the Larrimore train had overturned in mid-stream and cost them most of a day’s progress, but the stage had no problem crossing over the red sandstone bottom.

Adam settled back and closed his eyes.  He napped most of the afternoon, only waking when the stagecoach stopped at Ash Point for a change of team.  Even the relay stations were looking more prosperous as he headed east.  This one boasted several homes, a general store, a post office and a small hotel nearby, more than most home stations offered further west.  He fell asleep again as soon as the coach started rocking on its thoroughbraces and didn’t rouse until it arrived at Seneca, another small, but burgeoning town.  Only a few buildings with false fronts, but a lawyer’s shingle hung outside one of them.  It took a town of some size, in Adam’s experience, to require the services of a lawyer, but he had a feeling this one would go hungry if he depended on that practice to earn his living.

The Smith Hotel, a white, two-story frame structure, looked prosperous, however, and served as home station for the stage line.  The passengers piled inside, some to stay the night and others, like Adam, simply to share a meal in a kitchen so clean they could have eaten off the floor.  Just the way Hop Sing and Marie kept our kitchen at home, Adam recalled.  Inger, too.  Mrs. Smith, the wife of the New Hampshire stationmaster, was a good cook, as well.  She couldn’t rival Hop Sing or Marie, of course, for when those two had joined forces, simple meals became gourmet feasts.  Mrs. Smith cooked more as Inger had: bountiful helpings of basic foods, well prepared and served hot.

Only two passengers went on that night, so Adam had a bench to himself and took advantage of it.  He had a hard time falling asleep, though, partly because he’d slept so much that afternoon and partly from sheer excitement.  Tomorrow would bring him to St. Joseph, Missouri, and the beginning of another phase of his journey.  Halfway there, with the hardest part over.

* * * * *

            Adam woke with a feeling of exhilaration.  Today.  Today he would reach St. Joseph.  Today he would be with his first teacher once again—and Jamie.  And tomorrow they would both start for New Haven.  Today was a momentous day, and Adam was more than ready to meet it.

He sat up and looked out the window, surprised to see how frequently a house came into view, where only empty prairie reigned less than a dozen years before.  Now, a farmhouse appeared practically every mile along the well traveled road.

About an hour after he awoke, the stage pulled up before the Kennekuk Hotel in the Kansas town of the same name.  Only a dozen houses here, including a store and blacksmith shop and, in a particularly prominent building, the Kickapoo Indian Agency.  “Kickapoos got a reservation near here; we passed it comin’ in,” the driver said when he saw Adam looking at the building, “but that’s where the agent—Major Royal Baldwin hisself—lives.”  He grinned, showing a wide gap between his two front teeth.  “Reckon he wants to stay close to the best coffee this side of the Missouri.”

“That good, huh?” Adam chuckled as he fell into step beside the driver.

“See for yourself,” the man advised.

More than willing, Adam followed him into the hotel.  Last home station.  Last time he’d be at the mercy of the stage line for eateries.  He hoped the meal would be a good one, but it didn’t really matter.  It was the last.

The coffee smelled good, and his first sip from the steaming cup, creamy with fresh milk, verified that it was.  Breakfast was just bacon, eggs and biscuits again, but they were well prepared and served hot.  “Where you gents bound?” asked the station keeper as he ladled gravy over the two split biscuits in his plate.  “Not far, I hope.”

“I’m stopping at Elwood,” Adam’s companion of the previous night announced.

“That’s good,” the station keeper said.  “Best to stay this side of the river, the way the Rebs are runnin’ riot over to St. Joe.”

A shiver ran up Adam’s spine.  “I’m going on to St. Joe,” he said.

“Oh, you mustn’t,” said Mrs. Perry, the station keeper’s wife.  “Too big a risk.”

The other passenger eyed Adam suspiciously.  “Unless you’re secesh.  They’re runnin’ the place now, I hear.”

“No,” Adam said quickly.  “I’m just—well—keeping out of it.”

His companion snorted.  “Easier said than done, boy.”

“Hush now,” Mrs. Perry chided, pouring a second cup of coffee for the man.  “He is a boy, and he should stay out of it, for just that reason.”

“If he can,” Mr. Perry put in solemnly.  “Son, I’d advise you to hold off that trip to St. Joe ‘til things settle down a mite.  Union forces pulled out week or so ago, thinking they’d be more needed elsewhere, and with them gone the Rebs walked right in and took over.  St. Joe’s a hot spot now, and that’s a pure fact.  Stay over here with us if you got no kin or friend in Elwood.”

“I can’t,” Adam explained.  “I’m just passing through, anyway, on the way to New Haven, Connecticut.”

“Connecticut!” Mrs. Perry cried, hand reaching up to cover her gaping mouth.  She looked at her husband.  “Oh, Tom, you’d best tell him.”

“Go find that copy of the Elwood Free Press,” Tom Perry ordered.  “Boy needs to see for himself what he’s up against.”  As his wife bustled out of the room, he turned to Adam.  “Son, I’m sorry, but if you’re aimin’ to take the train out of St. Joe, you’re in trouble.”

Coffee sloshed from Adam’s cup onto the tablecloth as he set it on the saucer, but he didn’t even notice.  “I have to take the train,” he said urgently.  “I’ve got a deadline to meet, and that’s the only way—”

“Then you ain’t gonna make it,” Perry said bluntly.  “The rail line’s out of service.  Bushwhackers burned a bridge east of St. Joseph two days ago.  More than a dozen people died when the train went into the river.”  His wife hurried in and handed him the newspaper.  Perry passed it across to Adam.  “See for yourself, son.”

Adam grabbed the paper, his eyes flying down the columns reporting the disaster.  The words described a scene of horror.  At 11:15 on the moonless night of September 3^rd, the westbound train from Hannibal, Missouri, had approached the bridge over the Little Platte River.  Everything had looked normal in the light from the locomotive’s white calcium headlamp, but looks had been deceiving.  Unaware that the timbers supporting the bridge had been partially burned through to set a deadly trap, the conductor ran his train onto the bridge; halfway across the timbers crumpled beneath its weight.   The locomotive flipped upside down, plunging into the river thirty feet below, and the freight cars fell onto its upturned wheels; the baggage car followed, then the mail car and two passenger cars carrying a hundred men, women and children.  Seats ripped out of the floor and hurtled to the front, along with the people who had moments before been sleeping in them; sparks ignited the wooden cars.  Some were able to climb out and worked feverishly to put out the fire; others, trapped beneath a pile of debris, screamed inside a personal hell.  Most, though injured, were rescued, but the article estimated that seventeen to twenty people had perished that night.  Many who survived would be maimed for life.

Aghast, Adam set the paper down.  He was appalled at the loss of life, of course, but though he rebuked himself for the selfishness of the thought, only one question rose to his mind.  “The line’s out of service, you said?  Not running at all?”

Tom Perry scratched his head.  “Well, might be, t’other side of the bridge.  Yeah, might be . . . if you could get there.  Might be hard.”

Hard, I can handle, Adam assured himself.  Just so it’s not impossible.  “How far from St. Joe is that bridge?”

Perry shrugged.  “Not sure.  East of there, that’s all I know.  They took the injured to hotels in St. Joe, so maybe not too far, but I don’t know Missouri geography well enough to be of more help.  Sorry, son.”

Mrs. Perry placed a matronly hand on Adam’s arm.  “Please stay over with us.  We’ll give you a good rate.  To go on without knowing you can get where you’re headed is foolhardy, my boy.”

Adam smiled, weakly, at her.  “You’re very kind, ma’am, and I appreciate your concern, but even if I can’t get through, I’d have to go.  My best friend in all the world lives in St. Joseph.  If things there are as difficult for Union sympathizers as you all say, I must see for myself that he’s all right.”  He picked up his fork again, but suddenly the food on his plate looked as nauseating as cold mush.  He stood abruptly.  “Excuse me; I think I need some air.”

Mr. and Mrs. Perry exchanged a glance.  Shaking his head, Perry returned to his own breakfast.

“Kids,” the other passenger grunted.  “Never seen one yet what would listen to good sense.”

Adam lurched outside, frantically grabbing a porch post for support.  This couldn’t be happening, not after everything he’d endured to get here.  It just couldn’t be happening!  There had to be a way across that river; there just had to be!  He’d walk every step, ford it on foot if he had to.  Anything to get there.  He leaned his head against the post in defeated realization.  Yes, he could walk; he could walk every step to New Haven if he had to, but he’d never make it in time for the entrance exam.   That train had to be running, and he had to catch it.  Let either of those fail and he was doomed.  Where was that blasted Little Platte River, anyway?  We must have crossed it when we first came to St. Joe.  Why can’t I remember?  Adam laughed harshly.  Because you were six, you idiot.  How could you hope to store in your head every river you crossed by the time you were six?

His stomach started to cramp, as if attacked by dysentery.  He stumbled away from the station, another worry hounding his steps.  Was Jamie trapped in St. Joe now, too, trapped there because he’d waited for his friend?  Bad enough to miss his own chance, but if he’d ruined Jamie’s, too, Adam didn’t think he would ever forgive himself.

The driver and other passenger finally emerged from the hotel.  Heart racing, Adam ran for the stage and jumped aboard.  Go fast, he implored.  Burn the road like a Pony Express rider.  Get me to Elwood and over the river.  Get me to the Edwards.  Then I’ll know.

~ ~ Notes ~ ~

The Platte River Bridge was burned by Confederates on September 3, 1861.  Details were obtained from the New York Times of September 7, 1861 and from The Half Not Told: The Civil War in a Frontier Town by Preston Filbert, which describes the effect of the Civil War on St. Joseph, Missouri.