"You'll find those fellows out in the Indian country," grimly remarked one of the settlers, as the party surveyed this evidence of an advancing civilization. There was a big steam saw-mill hard by the town, and the chief industry of Manhattan seemed to be the buying and selling of lumber and hardware, and the surveying of land. Mounted men, carrying the tools and instruments of the surveyor, galloped about. Few wheeled vehicles except the ox-carts of emigrants were to be seen anywhere, and the general aspect of the place was that of feverish activity. Along the banks of the two streams were camped parties of the latest comers, many of whom had brought their wives and children with them. Parties made up of men only seldom came as far west as this. They pitched their tents nearer the Missouri, where the fight for freedom raged most hotly. A few companies of men did reach the westernmost edge of the new settlements, and the Manhattan Company was one of these. The three boys from Illinois were absorbed with wonder as they strolled around the new town, taking in the novel sights, as they would if they had been in a great city, instead of a mushroom town that had arisen in a night. During their journey from Libertyville to Manhattan, the Dixon emigrants had lost sight of John Clark, of Woburn; he had hurried on ahead after his rough experience with the election guardians of Libertyville. The boys were wondering if he had reached Manhattan. "Hullo! There he is now, with all his family around him," said Charlie. "He's got here before us, and can tell all about the lay of the land to the west of us, I dare say." "I have about made up my mind to squat on Hunter's Creek," said Clark, when the boys had saluted him. "Pretty good land on Hunter's, so I am told; no neighbors, and the land has been surveyed off by the Government surveyors. Hunter's Creek? Well, that's about six miles above the fort. It makes into the Republican, and, so they tell me, there's plenty of wood along the creek, and a good lot of oak and hickory not far off. Timber is what we all want, you know." As for Bartlett, who had come out from New England with the Clarks, he was inclined to go to the lower side of the Republican Fork, taking to the Smoky Hill country. That was the destination of the Jenness party, who had passed the Dixon boys when they were camped after their upset in the creek, several days before. This would leave the Clarks--John and his wife and two children, and his brother Jotham, and Jotham's boy, Pelatiah--to make a settlement by themselves on Hunter's Creek.