In September, 1861, he attended the State meeting in Prairie City.  On Thursday the meeting was held in an empty store-room, for the poles had not yet been cut to raise the tent.  After some preliminary business father made a short speech, telling them that he must soon quit preaching for them.  He told them how necessary it was that churches should be planted at once in this new State, and how he had tried in vain to arouse the brethren at the East to their responsibility in the matter, but that he was at last obliged to give up and go to work, like an honest man, and pay his debts.  He told them how he had loved the work, and how willingly he had toiled and suffered hardships, and begged them to hold out faithfully and do what they could; and when his debts were paid, he would return again to the work.  When he closed his hearers were nearly all in tears.

Many went long distances to that meeting, the brethren and sisters from Emporia going in a covered wagon, and camping out on the road.

Father continued to preach, however, much of the time that winter.  That part of his farm that was improved was rented for five years, and he had no money to improve the rest.  The renter proved an indifferent farmer, and the rent scarcely sufficed to pay the taxes and winter the cattle.  So father entered the only paying business, that of freighting, as he relates in Chap XXXI.  Perhaps some may think from reading that chapter that he only took one trip, but he crossed the plains five times.  He first went in the spring of 1862, in Bro.  Butcher’s train, taking George, who was only ten years old, along to drive one of his teams, because he could not afford to hire a driver.  It was a hard, monotonous life, driving all day and camping at night through all weather; but the hardest part of it was that men and boys all had to take their turn standing guard over their cattle at night.  After Bro.  Butcher was taken sick on that first trip, father acted as his boss, and on all his later trips he went as wagon-boss of some large train owned by Atchison freighters, also taking along two teams of his own.

The wagon-bosses were frequently rough, overbearing men, who not only went armed, but who often treated their drivers tyrannically.  They not only cowed the boys with abusive language, but with frequent threats of whipping, or shooting, which they sometimes fulfilled.

Father never carried arms about his person in any of his trips across the plains.  But there was something in his quiet, determined manner that enabled him to rule even the most headstrong of the wild young fellows who usually drove the freighting teams.  He was once traveling along, for a short time, in company with a train much larger than his own, whose wagon-boss was a big, burly, swaggering fellow, who was drunk much of the time.  Each train was driving along behind it such oxen as were unfit for work, and some of the other cattle became accidentally mixed