Arriving at St. Louis, he had had to disembark and continue his trip by bateau. The freight destined for Fort Leavenworth and for Independence had been loaded aboard the flat-bottomed river boats, and the slow pull upstream begun. Steven had learned, on the afternoon after his conversation with his father, that at midnight that night one of the Astor Company’s steamers would start up the Mississippi, laden with provisions. He determined at once to take it. There remained but a few hours before it left and his preparations had been hurried and stealthy, of necessity. He had thrust into two bags all the clothes that they would contain and into the other such of his personal treasures as it seemed to him he might need: books, a brace of rather ancient pistols, a hunting-knife, a set of chessmen and a board. And so here he was, for once eager to leap ashore, and the next thing to find Colonel Ceran St. Vrain and the caravan he expected to join. Independence! the spot from which the westward-moving train was to set out. How was he to reach the place? He hung around the landing, watching the bales of goods unloaded from one bateau after another, looking for some one who might be going his way. A trapper in buckskins and beaded moccasins yelled profanely and ardently as the oarsmen battled against the current and struggled for a safe landing. Not far away stood his mules, waiting for their loads. “Independence?” nodded the half-breed. “You ride over with me, Pierre Lafitte. Sure, you ride my white mule, Céleste.” Buy a horse at Independence. No time to stop now or they would miss the caravan, if they had not already done so. Pierre had but a small amount of cargo, and soon they were trotting through the streets of the new settlement, a little place of frame houses at the juncture of the Missouri River with the Kansas, later to be known as Kansas City. It was only about eight miles to Independence, and as the trapper pushed straight ahead they would reach it in an hour or so. “Why do you think we might miss the caravan?” asked Steven, his heart sinking at the thought. “I thought it would not leave till May or June.” It would be a fearful disappointment, a disaster, to fail to connect with the caravan, he felt. It might be six months before another would be leaving for Santa Fe, and he would have the opportunity to cross the plains to that mysterious country of New Spain. He felt for the stiffly folded packet which he carried always beneath his vest, the missive given him by President Pedraza. The sense of importance and responsibility which it gave him was at times almost too weighty. What was this mission of national import which he had engaged himself to perform? This thought was running through his head now. “One caravan have already leave,” said Pierre in reply to Steven’s question. “The Indian are very bad this year. Ute, Pawnee, Cree, Comanche, no like the way white men shoot back.”