eyes on
the day we swung into the plains, and yet we wouldn't have turned
back--no, not for worlds!"

Aunt Deborah paused now and then for the eager questions which her
interested listeners asked. Yes, she told them, the wagons were great,
white-covered prairie schooners--real houses on wheels. Yes, the oxen
were powerfully slow, but good, kind beasts. No, they were not all. There
were mules in the train and a few horses. Most of those were ridden by
scouts--men who received their food and bed for giving protection against
the Indians. Yes, there were small children and tiny babies--whole
families seeking new homes in this great land. Two babies were born on the
journey. One lived to reach Montana and to grow into a strong, stout man;
the other, a little girl, died on the way, and was buried somewhere in
Nebraska.

"Yes, there were many hard things like that," she said, "but we expected
sadness and trouble and sorrow when we started out. We were not the first
who had crossed the plains. There were pleasures, too. Nights when we
stopped to camp there was a whole village of us. The men placed the wagons
in a great circle, and within the circle was our fire and supper. We
forgot to be lonely when the stars came out and looked down upon us--the
only human things for miles around. We told stories and visited one
another's wagons, and were thankful to be together. Friends were made
then--real friends that always stuck!"

"Indians?" she asked in response to Jack's interested questions. "Oh, yes,
we found plenty of those to our sorrow! The first real hostile ones we met
in Nebraska, six weeks after we started. Two days before they came I'd
somehow felt as though we were having too smooth sailing for pioneers. One
morning four of our men took horses and rode out searching for water. We
never saw three of them again. At noon the only one left came riding up,
half-dead from exhaustion and from wounds which the Indians had given him.
He gave the alarm and soon we were ready for them, our wagons in a circle,
and every man armed. Some women, too." Aunt Deborah's head rose proudly.
"I shot my first shot that day, and I killed an Indian. Robert was proud
of me that night!"

So the journey went on, she told them. The long, hot days of mid-summer on
the plains shortened into the cooler ones of September and October. All
were wearying, of course, but few actually dangerous. The attacks from
Indians were rare. They seemed to have learn