The warrior's knife closed the scene as he fell, and was bathed in the heart's blood of the fearless woman, the wife of Joplin's nearest neighbor. The Indians fled without a single scalp.
After the funeral obsequies of the mother and child had been hastily performed, and they were consigned to the same unostentatious grave, the neighboring settlers assembled, and rendezvoused at Joplin's cabin. They elected him their captain. Here they continued during the autumn and winter, with various fortune in sharp skirmishes with their unrelenting and always vigilant enemy.
Early in the spring, they broke up their little settlement, and retired back to the more populous part of the country. Captain Joplin returned to the paternal mansion in the Piny Woods, to exhibit the beginning of the third generation, in the person of young Buckeye Joplin. After lingering awhile in his old haunts, and recounting the perils he had cheerfully met and overcome, he looked out again upon the land of promise, the western expanse, for another channel of enterprise.
The second expedition of our hero was undertaken by water. Having packed his family across to the Tennessee river, and exchanged his 'nag' for a canoe, or 'dug-out,' he embarked in his long and devious voyage to the Mississippi. Joplin occupied the stern as steersman, but his spouse was provided with a paddle, which she plied alternately with her knitting, as they glided onward to an unknown land. The voyage was barren of incident, and only varied by fishing and hunting for the subsistence of the family. They entered the Mississippi, and descended this river to the mouth of White river; and as this was backed up by the spring freshets, the voyagers turned their course up the stream, and crossed the connecting cut, or bayou, to the Arkansas river. They continued their voyage, until they found a landing-place of an inviting aspect, near Little Rock. Here the emigrants landed and pitched their half-face camp. After a year or two of hardship and privation, incident to the settlement of a new country, the Joplin family, somewhat increased in numbers, began to enjoy the fruits of industry. The improved condition of the captain's pecuniary affairs afforded him the means of indulging in his ardent propensity for attendance on all the gatherings, which he had never dismissed from his mind while his necessities restrained him. In the absence of her husband, the pains-taking woman kept the shuttle flying, or sung an accompaniment to the instrumental music of the spinning-wheel. From these gatherings Joplin sometimes returned with marks of personal rencounters; and time, and the soothing care of the even-tempered woman, were requisite to soften the exasperated backwoodsman, and to obliterate the signs of the feud on the distorted visage of her husband. On these occasions, the ferocity of his disposition predominated on the first day after the gathering; on the second, he was moody and thoughtful; and the third brought on repentance, and promises of reformation.