While Lloyd had been busy learning his bold new lessons from St. Ives and Miss Viola, Hephaestus and Rapture had been engrossed in Micah’s map and in planning the next stage of their journey to Texas. Their decision was to take a boat up the Missouri River to Independence, the southernmost of the supply towns on the route to the Pacific Coast. From there it looked like a long, strange trip across Kansas and what was then the Indian Territory-and would later become the state of Oklahoma-to reach what they hoped they would find in Texas: a new home.
Unfortunately, the riverboats for the Missouri journey were crowded-always crowded now-with such a miscellany of humanity that could scarcely be believed. One would have thought that America was coming apart at the seams, or mutating to form some crazed new creature.
Once again, money was tight. What provisions they’d been able to salvage from their earlier adventures were running low. “Life is a casting off,” Hephaestus reminded his family (which prompted a jab in the ribs from Rapture). Young Lloyd took this opportunity to introduce the money he had made with St. Ives, pretending that he had found it along one of the bustling streets. His parents were too overjoyed to ask any questions.
Hephaestus reckoned that with this windfall they were able to afford passage on the Spirit of Independence, newly overhauled and freshly painted. But they had to wait for three days. Ever worried about conserving money and knowing that they now had a stateroom to look forward to, the family sought temporary shelter in the loft of a mice-infested stable behind a glue renderer’s.