Chapter 6

We made it! We managed to beat the ice, but it was close. We could see small chunks of ice floating passed us as we traveled down the Missouri River below the Sioux River. Capt. Johnson was pushing as hard as he could to get to St. Louis before other shippers had gotten there and depressed the price of furs.

Again, we made it, though we were not the first ones there. Capt. Johnson got a very good price for his furs, but the word was that this might be the last year for the high prices he was used to. Rumor had it that the bottom had fallen out of the European demand for furs, but the price had not fallen, yet. Nevertheless, the price was lower than Capt. Johnson had gotten the previous years. Maybe the fur trade was dying quickly, but Capt. Johnson refused to believe it. It was still only November of 1840, but people were already saying that the fur trade would be dead before the end of 1841. Well, we wouldn't worry about that for now.

Once the furs were sold, Capt. Johnson's normal practice was to make a freight run to New Orleans down the Mississippi. He offered us the same working relationship that we had on the Missouri. I talked it over with my wives, and we decided to go with him. It was still a long time until the wagon trains started organizing, so we had plenty of time.

I picked up some more raw materials to build some more rifles, and I also stocked up on those caps that were becoming so popular. I thought to experiment to see if it was worth the effort to convert my rifle design to use a cap. The change would be rather simple if I could work out a good way to load the cap without practically disassembling the rifle to get the cap into place. Everything I could come up with so far took so long to accomplish that I had completely killed the fast firing feature of the rifle.

I decided to build a new rifle so that I would not mess up the one I had with my experiments. I wasted a lot of metal with my various experiments, but I finally came up with a solution. I had been trying to load in the cap from the top of the breech, and that was a total disaster. I was complaining about my problems to Mary, so she said, "If you can't load from the top, maybe you should load from the bottom."

Dammit, why didn't I think of that? I guess that I was too close to the problem to see the obvious solution. Anyway, I finally worked out a way to load the cap into a recess in the falling block when it was open. The block projected far enough out of the bottom of the rifle ahead of the trigger so that it was easy enough to find the proper place to put the cap. A few other parts had to be modified, including the flint striker that I was now calling the firing pin.

Once I had taken some time to fine tune the concept, it worked like a charm. I could reload almost as fast as I could with the old design, and I could go longer between pauses to clear the fouling. If necessary, I could go as long as 50 shots before I had to piss on the mechanism to clean it. This was particularly popular with my wives when the time came to convert their rifles.

The first test of the new rifle was a resounding success. We had made our way down the Mississippi almost as far as Memphis when we were attacked by pirates. These pirates used two flatboats which they poled into our path as we threaded our way through a maze of sandbars. The captain was expecting an attack along here, so we were at our posts and ready for action as soon as the pirates showed up. Between the first mate and his men, my wives, and me, we had 12 Ostermier rifles ready to face the attackers, and mine was using caps instead of flints.

The pirates numbered 38 in total, split evenly between the two flatboats. I signaled to the first mate for his group to concentrate on the flatboat on our starboard and we would concentrate on the port side boat. We let them get within 100 yards and opened up. The pirates only had smooth-bore muskets and could not hope to have effective fire at more than 75 yards, thus we had a short interval of free fire without danger of returning shots.

Sarah and I concentrated on the men at the poles and at the steering sweep, while Mary and Helen shot at anyone else who struck their fancy. Sarah and I did not plan it, so both of us shot at the two men hanging on to the steering sweep. She fired a second or so before I did and hit the man in front. He had fallen out of the way by the time I fired, so I hit the steering man who was not yet shot. As the result of our fortuitous timing, that boat was without steering before they even got close enough to return our fire.

Meanwhile, my other wives had hit two other pirates, and there were now only 15 men on the boat. Sarah and I began shooting at the men with the poles as fast as we could reload and take aim, so we were dropping those people with almost every shot. The other two women were having nearly as much luck as we were, so that by the time the pirates had floated passed us, there were only two living men on that flatboat. That certainly was a quick and easy way to earn $170!

The mate and his men had been almost as successful as us, so only five pirates survived on their side of the Lovely Louise. Between us, we had eliminated 32 of 38 pirates in only about 12 minutes of work! At that rate, there would be a noticeable reduction in the number of pirates on the river in only a few trips by our boat.

I had found that, with a little practice, I had regained the speed that I lost when I initially shifted to caps from flint. Now, I had no compunction in converting all of our rifles and in switching to nothing but cap-ignition on all future rifles. Caps had now become easy enough to find, so that my original objection to them had vanished.

It took me 11 days to convert 11 rifles, so we were totally converted by the time we reached New Orleans. We had spent two days tied up at Vicksburg, but I had stayed on board working on the rifles. My wives and I feared for their safety if they had set foot on shore in Vicksburg, so I stayed on board to keep them company. This appeared to be a smart move, since one of our crewmen was killed in a mugging as he walked passed a dark alley.

I was assured by everyone that we would not need our rifles in New Orleans, so I agreed to having them locked up in the armory with the other rifles and muskets owned by the ship. We went on shore with the women unarmed, but I kept a bowie knife at my belt, just for insurance.

New Orleans was a great place to visit in the winter, but I would hate to live there in the summer time. The heat, humidity, and mosquitoes were enough to discourage my whole family from the thought of settling there. On top of that, we were disgusted by the overt signs of slavery everywhere we looked. At one point, we accidentally walked passed a slave auction in progress. We got out of there as fast as we could move.

It took Capt. Johnson 12 days to come up with a full load of freight and passengers for the run to St. Louis. My wives agreed with me that we were glad to leave New Orleans behind. We had spent Christmas and New Year on the river, and actually felt like we were returning home when we set off to St. Louis. No, home was not St. Louis, Lovely Louise was now our home.

We had another run in with pirates just north of Vicksburg. The fight was almost a duplicate of the one near Memphis on our way down river. We had more incentive in our fight this time, since there were passengers on board now, and there had been none in the previous fight. My family was now accepted as part of the regular crew, and we felt that we were, so we did not want to disgrace Lovely Louise by allowing her to be violated by pirates.

This time, only three pirates out of 34 escaped, so we were quite happy with our accomplishments. The crew had a celebration on the after deck in honor of the "marines" of the Lovely Louise and of the new rifles. We thoroughly enjoyed the occasion, and were looking forward to our next opportunity to attend such a delightful party.

I don't know what it was about the stretch of river between Vicksburg and Memphis, but we had to maintain a constant watch for pirates around the clock. Crew members patrolled the deck at night, and there was no malingering. They were well aware of what would happen to the Lovely Louise if we were boarded by pirates. As a further precaution, the mate had the guards walk their beat in pairs. Fortunately, we were favored by plenty of moonlight, so the guards were able to see what they were doing.