man car
glides in smooth comfort, the old Santa Fe Trail lay like a narrow brown
ribbon on the green desolation of Nature's unconquered domain. Out
beyond the region of long-stemmed grasses, into the short-grass land, we
pressed across a pathless field-of-the-cloth-of-green, gemmed with
myriads of bright blossoms--broad acres on acres that the young years of
a coming century should change into great wheat-fields to help fill the
granaries of the world. How I reveled in it--that far-stretching plain
of flower-starred verdure! It was my world--mine, unending, only
softening out into lavender mists that rimmed it round in one unbroken
fold of velvety vapor.

At last we came to the Arkansas River--flat-banked, sand-bottomed,
wide, wandering, impossible thing--whose shallow waters followed
aimlessly the line of least resistance, back and forth across its bed.
Rivers had meant something to me. The big muddy Missouri for
Independence and Fort Leavenworth, that its steamers might bring the
soldiers, and my uncle's goods to their places. The little rivers that
ran into the big ones, to feed their currents for down-stream service.
The creeks, that boys might wade and swim and fish, else Beverly would
have lived unhappily all his days. But here was a river that could
neither fetch nor carry. Nobody lived near it, and it had no deep waters
like our beloved, ugly old Missouri. I loved the level prairies, but I
didn't like that river, somehow. I felt exposed on its blank, treeless
borders, as if I stood naked and defenseless, with no haven of cover
from the enemies of the savage plains.

The late afternoon was hot, the sky was dust-dimmed, the south wind
feverish and strength-sapping. At dawn we had sighted a peak against the
western horizon. We were approaching it now--a single low butte, its
front a sheer stone bluff facing southward toward the river, it lifted
its head high above the silent plains; and to the north it stretched in
a long gentle slope back to a lateral rim along the landscape. The trail
crept close about its base, as if it would cling lovingly to this one
shadow-making thing amid all the open, blaring, sun-bound miles
stretching out on either side of it.

As Beverly and I were riding in front of Mat's wagon, of which we had
elected ourselves the special guardians, Rex Krane came up alongside
Bill Banney's team in front of us. The young men were no such
hard-and-fast friends as Beverly and I. For some reason they