The True Account by Howard Frank Mosher Page A

After a while they went away. But the following morning the trio appeared again, this time on our side of the river.
    My uncle was now determined to force an audience with our admirers and put an end to this puss-and-mouse game. Accordingly, we stopped on the edge of the ever-present cottonwoods along the river, where he instructed me to paint his face black and white, which I must say gave him a very fearsome aspect. But though we remained there for above two hours, the Indians never came forward and after that we saw them no more.
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    Two days later we nooned it at the mouth of the Kansas River. As we ate our meat, we noticed many large white feathers drifting down the current. At first my uncle was greatly alarmed, supposing that some young Icarus of Louisiana, attempting flight with wings fashioned from feathers and wax, had flown too near the sun, which had melted the wax and precipitated him to his death somewhere up the river. I assured him that this could not be the case, since the river was choked with feathers, far too many to have come from one flying boy. Instantly he got out his “Chart of the Interior of North America” and boldly crossed out the word “Kansas,” substituting
Fluvius Pennae,
or “River of Feathers.” But where was all this plumage coming from? Determined to solve the puzzle, my uncle said that we would adventure up along the tributary for a certain distance and see what we could discover.
    We had not gone far before we came to a large island covered with what I first mistook for snow. How this could possibly be I had no idea—my uncle feared it was a mirage thrown up by some giant or wizard to confuse us. But as we came closer we saw that the island, about half a mile long and a third wide, was covered with pelicans. The birds—so numerous that many had been crowded off into the water—were molting, and the white feathers choking the river were theirs.
    More interesting still, just off the lower tip of the island, in a very primitive-appearing dugout canoe on a sandbar buried deep in feathers, sat a tiny, angry-looking man wearing nothing but a nightshirt. “Heyday, what have we here, Ti?” cried my uncle. Then, to the stranger, “Private True Teague Kinneson, at your service, sir.”
    â€œIt’s you, is it?” the nightshirted man called out in a querulous voice. “Throw me a rope and tow me off this accursed bar, and for God’s sake be quick about it. I’ve been befeathered here for three days and two nights. The River Missouri, you said. Go west by the River Missouri, John Ledyard, if you wish to cross the continent. Well, gentlemen, thank you for the excellent advice. The River Missouri, I must inform you, is half a mile wide and an inch deep and too thick to drink and too thin to plow and I’ve gone so far wrong that I don’t know if I’ll ever go right again. What in the deuce held you up? Do you have any rum?”
    â€œJehovah forbid, no, John Ledyard,” my uncle replied. “Rum has gotten me into trouble enough before now. We have no strong spirits, but something else that’s far better for you. I mean, of course, hemp. Here”—throwing him a rope, which the angry little voyageur affixed to a spike in the bow of the canoe—“we’ll pull you ashore.”
    â€œUncle,” I whispered. “Who does he think we are? And who is he?”
    â€œI don’t know who he thinks
we
are, Ti, but I know I’ve heard his name,” my uncle said. “I just can’t recollect where.”
    I had no notion what to make of this bad-tempered mannikin. Once we got him safely to shore and boiled up some tea and offered him half a pipeful of hemp, he asked in the same vexed voice if we would like to hear his story. We said yes, very much; so, crossing his legs like a tailor and puffing away like a miniature chimney, John Ledyard announced that he was a Connecticut man, born