Part 23 (1/2)

There was no other way to find Jim than to offer a reward. I did this, and feel sure I paid twenty dollars to one of the parties to the theft.

The fellow was brazen enough, also, to demand pay for keeping him. That was the time when I got up and talked pointedly.

But I had my faithful dog back, and I kept him more closely by me while I was making the rest of my tour. Six years later it chanced that I lost Jim. While we were waiting at a station, I let him out of the car for a few minutes. The train started unexpectedly and Jim was left behind. A good reward was offered for him, but n.o.body ever came to collect it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Welcomed by President Roosevelt at the Capitol.]

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE END OF THE LONG TRAIL

I WAS glad enough to get out of the crowds of New York. It had given me some rich experiences, but that big city is no place for ox teams. It was good to get away from the jam and the hurry out on to the country roads.

On the way to Philadelphia, between Newark and Elizabeth City, New Jersey, at a point known as Lyon's Farm, the old Meeker homestead stood, built in the year 1676. Here the Meeker Tribe, as we call ourselves, came out to greet me, nearly forty strong.

On the way through Maryland we saw a good many oxen, some of them driven on the road. The funny part of it was to have the owners try to trade their scrawny teams for Dave and Dandy, offering money to boot, or two yoke for one. They had never before seen such large oxen as Dave and Dandy, and for that matter I never had myself. Dandy was of unusual size, and Dave was probably the largest trained ox in the United States then; he was sixteen hands high and eight feet in girth.

I reached Was.h.i.+ngton, the capital, just twenty-two months to the day from the time I left home in Was.h.i.+ngton, the state. As soon as arrangements could be made I went to see President Roosevelt. Senator Piles and Representative Cushman, of the Was.h.i.+ngton Congressional delegation, introduced me to the President in the cabinet room.

Mr. Roosevelt manifested a lively interest in the work of marking the trail. He did not need to be told that the trail was a battlefield, or that the Oregon pioneers who moved out and occupied the Oregon Country while it was yet in dispute between Great Britain and the United States were heroes. When I suggested that they were ”the winners of the Farther West,” he fairly s.n.a.t.c.hed these words from my lips. He went even further than I had dreamed of or hoped for, in invoking Government aid to carry on the work. Addressing Senator Piles, the President said with emphasis: ”I am in favor of this work to mark this trail. If you will bring before Congress a measure to accomplish it, I am with you and will give my support to do it thoroughly.”

Mr. Roosevelt thought the suggestion of a memorial highway should first come from the states through which the trail runs. However, it would be possible to get Congressional aid to mark the trail. In any event, he felt it ought to be done speedily.

Unexpectedly the President asked, ”Where is your team? I want to see it.”

Upon being told that it was nearby, without ceremony, and without his hat, he was soon alongside, asking questions faster than they could be answered, not idle questions, but such as showed his intense desire to get real information, bottom facts.

President Roosevelt was a man who loved the pioneers and who understood the true West. His warm welcome remains in my heart as one of the richest rewards of the many that have come as compensation for my struggle to carry out my dream.

On the eighth of January, 1908, I left Was.h.i.+ngton, s.h.i.+pping my outfit over the Allegheny Mountains to McKeesport, Pennsylvania. From McKeesport I drove to Pittsburgh, and there put the team into winter quarters to remain until the fifth of March. Thence I s.h.i.+pped by boat on the Ohio River to Cincinnati, stopping in that city but one day, and from there I s.h.i.+pped by rail to St. Louis, Missouri.

My object now was to retrace the original trail from its beginnings to where it joined the Oregon Trail, over which I had traveled. This trail properly ran by water from St. Louis to Independence, thence westward along the Platte to Fort Laramie.

At Pittsburgh and adjacent cities I was received cordially and encouraged to believe that the movement to make a great national highway had taken a deep hold in the minds of the people.

I was not so much encouraged in St. Louis. The city officers were unwilling to do anything to further the movement, but before I left the city, the Automobile Club and the Daughters of the American Revolution did take formal action indorsing the work. St. Louis had really been the head and center of the movement that finally established the original Oregon Trail. It was from here that Lewis and Clark started on the famous expedition of 1804-05 that opened up the Northwest. Here was where Wyeth, Bonneville, and others of the early travelers on the trail had outfitted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Brown Bros._

The homeward trip took us through the great industrial cities of the Middle states, among them Pittsburgh.]

The drive from St. Louis to Jefferson City, the capital of the State of Missouri, was tedious and without result other than that of reaching the point where actual driving began in early days. Governor Folk signified his approval of the work, and I was given a cordial hearing by the citizens.