Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 9).djvu/187

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THREE GENERATIONS OF RIVERMEN
181

and forth. You can always be traveling, yet always at home. Your livelihood is gained sometimes one way, sometimes another—who questions? A man builds such a home, puts his family aboard; or, if he has no family, gets a cook if he chooses. . . Then he drifts lazily during the summer, fishing, trapping, stealing and making his way to warmer climes as winter approaches. Far down at New Orleans or elsewhere, spring finds him and he sells out to return, or tows back with some fleet of barges, to begin again. Or a trader will load up at Pittsburg or Cincinnati with dry-goods, trinkets, queensware, everything, and make his way trading with the farmers or trappers, until at the end of the journey he has a rich store of bartered goods to sell ere his northward return. They are a careless, happy-go-lucky tribe of migrants—caring little for the morrow. 'Do you see this little chap?' said a big rough-bearded fellow to me one day, as he squeezed between his knees a fat, freckled, chuggy, grinning little cub. 'Well, he's five year old, born on the river, and he likes it better'n any other place. Don't you, hey,