more coffee and a little more system, and
then a good deal more of both.

"Now's a fine time for this train to shake into place," he added. "You,
Price, take your men and go down the lines. Tell your kinfolk and
families and friends and neighbors to make bands and hang together. Let
'em draw cuts for place if they like, but stick where they go. We can't
tell how the grass will be on ahead, and we may have to break the train
into sections on the Platte; but we'll break it ourselves, and not see
it fall apart or fight apart. So?"

He wheeled and went away at a trot. All he had given them was the one
thing they lacked.

The Wingate wagons came in groups and halted at the river bank, where
the work of rafting and wagon boating went methodically forward. Scores
of individual craft, tipsy and risky, two or three logs lashed together,
angled across and landed far below. Horsemen swam across with lines and
larger rafts were steadied fore and aft with ropes snubbed around tree
trunks on either bank. Once started, the resourceful pioneer found a
dozen ways to skin his cat, as one man phrased it, and presently the
falling waters permitted swimming and fording the stock. It all seemed
ridiculously simple and ridiculously cheerful.

Toward evening a great jangling of bells and shouting of young captains
announced the coming of a great band of the stampeded livestock--cattle,
mules and horses mixed. Afar came the voice of Jed Wingate singing, "Oh,
then Susannah," and urging Susannah to have no concern.

But Banion, aloof and morose, made his bed that night apart even from
his own train. He had not seen Wingate--did not see him till the next
day, noon, when he rode up and saluted the former leader, who sat on his
own wagon seat and not in saddle.

"My people are all across, Mr. Wingate," he said, and the last of your
wagons will be over by dark and straightened out. I'm parked a mile
ahead."

"You are parked? I thought you were elected--by my late friends--to lead
this whole train."

He spoke bitterly and with a certain contempt that made Banion color.

"No. We can travel apart, though close. Do you want to go ahead, or
shall I?"

"As you like. The country's free."

"It's not free for some things, Mr. Wingate," rejoined the younger man
hotly. "You can lead or not, as you like; but I'll not train up with a
man who thinks of me as you do. After this think what you like, but
don't speak any more."

"What do you mean by th