as hell. Pull on through to
Bridger an' fix yer wagons afore they tumble apart. Leave the grass fer
them that follows, an' git on fur's you kin, every wagon. We ain't
likely to have no more trouble now. Pile up them braves in one heap fer
a warnin' to any other bunch o' reds that may come along to hide around
the wagon ford. New times has come on the Green."

"Can you travel, Jackson?" asked Hall of Ohio. "You've had a hard time."

"Who? Me? Why shouldn't I? Give me time to pick up some o' them bows
an' arrers an' I'm ready to start. I noticed a right fine horn bow one
o' them devils had--the Crows allus had good bows. That's the
yaller-an'-red brave that was itchin' so long to slap a arrer through my
ribs from behind. I'd like to keep his bow fer him, him not needin' it
now."

Before the brazen sun had fully risen on the second day these late
peaceful farmers of Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, were
plodding along once more beside their sore-footed oxen; passing out
unaided into a land which many leading men in the Government, North and
South, and quite aside from political affiliations, did not value at
five dollars for it all, though still a thousand miles of it lay ahead.

"Oh, then, Susannah!" roared Jed Wingate, trudging along beside Molly's
wagon in the sand. "Don't you cry fer me--I'm going through to Oregon,
with my banjo on my knee!"

Fair as a garden to the sun-seared eyes of the emigrants seemed the
mountain post, Fort Bridger, when its rude stockade separated itself
from the distortions of the desert mirage, whose citadels of silence,
painted temples fronted with colossal columns, giant sphinxes, vast
caryatids, lofty arches, fretwork facades, fantastically splendid
castles and palaces now resolved themselves into groups of squat pole
structures and a rude stock corral.

The site of the post itself could not better have been chosen. Here the
flattened and dividing waters of the Black's Fork, icy cold and fresh
from the Uintah Mountains to the southward, supported a substantial
growth of trees, green now and wonderfully refreshing to desert-weary
eyes.

"The families are coming!"

Bridger's clerk, Chardon, raised the new cry of the trading post.

"Broke an' hungry, I'll bet!" swore old Jim Bridger in his beard.

But he retired into his tepee and issued orders to his Shoshone squaw,
who was young and pretty. Her name, as he once had said, was Dang Yore
Eyes--and she was very proud of it. P