The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [18]
He walked for five days and four nights up mountains and down without finding a settlement, and finally was stopped by a large river too wide to swim across. This, he guessed, must be the Arkansas. He followed it downstream for just half a day, and came to a good-sized town. This, he learned, was called Spadra (it no longer exists today, or is practically a ghost town, south of Clarksville). Along the riverfront were shops, and one of these was a fur trader’s. The fur trader was happy to buy Jacob Ingledew’s pelts, and complimented him on the quality of them. The beaver skins fetched two dollars apiece, while the mink and otter skins brought a dollar each, and the coonskins two bits. Jacob received a total of almost a hundred dollars. He’d never had that much money in his life. But Spadra was full of establishments designed to part a man from his money: saloons, whorehouses, gambling parlors. Jacob resisted these as best he could, although his best was not good enough: he lost half his hundred dollars before getting out.
Still, he had more than enough to pay off the clock peddler and buy a cow. The latter became his next immediate objective. Looking around, he saw a large building with a sign out front: Spadra Stock Exchange. He went inside. There were a lot of men standing around tables, holding slips of paper and talking rapidly all at once. Jacob didn’t see any cows, or any other stock. A man came up to him and asked if he could be of any help. Jacob told him he was in the market for cows. “Good,” the man said, “swine are up, beef are down. How many?” Just one, Jacob said. The man looked at him, then said, “Wait here,” and went off to confer with a group of other men standing around one of the tables. The other men cast glances at Jacob, and Jacob began to get the impression that they might be laughing at him. But at length, his man returned, and said, “All right. One cow it is. What do you bid?” Jacob said he didn’t have ary idea how much to bid. How much was usual? “Six and three-eights might do it,” the man said. “Can I go to seven?” Sure, Jacob told him, and the man went away again. He returned shortly, beaming. “Got it at six and five-eights,” he declared. Jacob paid him six dollars and sixty-three cents, plus ten percent brokerage fee and commission, and the man started to walk away, but Jacob said Hey! Where is my cow? “In Kansas City,” the man said. Jacob didn’t want to show his ignorance of geography by asking how to get there, so he left the stock exchange, and stopped the first man he met on the street and asked, Which way is Kansas City? The man pointed, toward the northwest.
Jacob left Spadra, and walked for the rest of the day northwest, but he didn’t come to Kansas City. He met another man and asked again, Which way is Kansas City? and the man pointed northwest. He walked on for two more days without finding any city, and met an old man and asked once more, Which way is Kansas City? and when the old man pointed northwest Jacob asked him how far it was. “What difference do it make?” the old man said. “You’re a-gorn there anyhow, aint ye?” So Jacob walked on.
After several more days, he finally came out of the mountains down into a valley where there was a city, or a large-sized town. There were some loafers sitting in front of the courthouse, and he asked them if this was Kansas City. “Shore thang,” one of them replied, so Jacob said he had bought a cow and wanted to find the stockyards. The loafers offered to accompany him