Half an hour later the tug was alongside, and Mr. Willcox was on board.
"I am glad to see you up," he said, as the flats were moored to the bank, and Frank stepped ashore and joined him. "The time has gone slowly here; for though I stayed four days at St. Louis, I have been here nearly a week. There is lots to do, and I am greatly pleased that I went in for it. I wish you could have made up your mind to settle here; you would have made a precious deal better thing of it than you ever will do by digging for gold. However, I know it's no use talking about that. I have got a capital location on the main street; I bought it off a fool who came up in the steamboat with me, and had made up his mind to sell out and cross the plains. I had an offer for it yesterday at five times the price I gave for it; but, bless you, I wouldn't have taken twenty times. This is going to be a big place. I am glad you have come for another reason. I am putting up at one of the shanties they call an hotel, but one might as well try to live in the Tower of Babel. There is an uproar day and night; every inch of the floor is taken up for sleeping on, and I have been nearly driven out of my mind. Now I can live on board the tug till she goes down with the empty flats. I am glad I brought up those eight negroes, for there would be the greatest difficulty in hiring hands here; every one seems to have gone stark mad, and to consider every hour's delay in pushing west as so much loss of a chance of making a fortune."
For the next fortnight the labour was incessant. Hiram, Frank, and the eight negroes toiled in landing the stores and the framework of the house, and in transporting them to the lot which Mr. Willcox had purchased. Even the engineers of the tug were induced by the high payment Mr. Willcox offered to aid in the work. Several stretchers, or hand-barrows, had been brought up with them, and on these such bales and boxes as were too heavy for one man to carry were transported. The framework of the house was first carried to the site, and four of the negroes who were good carpenters at once began to put it together, so that by the time the last of the goods were brought up the store was ready to receive them. It was a building some sixty feet long by twenty wide, and was divided into two by a partition: the one end, twenty feet in length, was the saleroom; in the other, forty feet long, the bulk of the heavy goods, flour, rice, bacon, hogsheads of sugar, and chests of tea, were stored. There was, in addition, a lean-to, nine feet square, at one end, which was to serve as the habitation of the storekeeper. The assortment of goods was very large. In addition to the stock of provisions, which filled the storeroom nearly up to the roof, were a great quantity of clothing fitted for the rough work of the plains, a large assortment of rifles and pistols, kegs of ammunition, casks of axle-grease, ironwork for waggons, and all the miscellaneous stores, down to needles and thread, which would be likely to be required by the emigrants. As soon as the stores were all safely on shore and housed, the tug started down the river again with the flats; Hiram and six of the negroes accompanied them, two of the latter being retained as assistants to the storekeeper. Between Hiram and Frank there was a very cordial adieu.