can build a houseboat on the Rio Grande."

"If we are as slow at building the boat as we are in getting this story
out of you, we won't get started toward the Gulf of Mexico until cold
weather next fall."

"We bought two pine planks sixteen feet long," Fremont went on, with a
smile at the impatience of the boys, "a foot wide, and two inches
thick. We sloped the end so the boat would be scow-shaped, and bought
matched flooring for the bottom. We put tar into all the seams, joints
and grooves to keep the water out. Then we bought half-inch boards and
built a cabin at the back end. That never leaked, either. The boat
was sixteen feet long and six feet wide, and the bulliest craft that
ever went anywhere. When we got to Cairo we sold it for $6, and that
helped some."

"Tell us about your eatings. We'll have to cook when we get down to
the Rio Grande. Where did you get your cook stove?"

"We nailed a piece of sheet-iron on the prowboard," laughed Fremont,
"and put the bottom section of an old-fashioned coal stove on that. The
hole where the magazine used to fit in made a place for the frying pan,
and the open doors in front, where the ashpan used to be, took in the
wood we collected along the river. Cook! We could cook anything
there."

"What about the sleepings?" was asked.

"That was easy. We bought an old bedtick and stuffed it with corn
husks, then a pair of back-number bed-springs, which we put on the
floor of the cabin. Sleep! We used to tie up nights and sleep from
nine o'clock until sunrise.

"With the money we had left we bought bacon, eggs, corn-meal, flour,
butter and coffee. There wasn't much of it, because we had little
money left, but we thought we might get fish on the way down. We never
got one. They wouldn't bite. Still, we had all we needed to eat, and
found our checks at Cairo. It took us eight days to float to the
Mississippi. We were told at Nashville that we would spill out on the
rapids, that river pirates would rob us, and that the big boats would
run us down or tip us over, but we never had any trouble at all. We'll
know better than to listen to such talk when we set afloat on the Rio
Grande this spring."

"It was better than walking," said Frank.

"Frank was frisky as a young colt all the way down," Fremont added.
"There are little trading places all along the river banks, kept mostly
by farmers. When you want to buy anything you ring a bell left in view
for that