His face, small and wedge-shaped, was full of ruddy color,
the cheeks above the ragged hair smooth and red as apples. Though his
mouth was deficient in teeth, his neck, rising bare from the band of
his shirt, corrugated with the starting sinews of old age, he had a
shrewd vivacity of glance, an alertness of poise, that suggested an
unimpaired spiritual vitality. He seemed at home behind the mules, and
here, for the first time, David felt was some one who did not look
outside the picture. In fact, he had an air of tranquil acceptance of
the occasion, of adjustment without effort, that made him fit into the
frame better than anyone else of the party.

It was a glorious morning, and as they fared forward through the
checkered shade their spirits ran high. The sun, curious and
determined, pried and slid through every crack in the leafage, turned
the flaked lichen to gold, lay in clotted light on the pools around the
fern roots. They were delicate spring woods, streaked with the white
dashes of the dogwood, and hung with the tassels of the maple. The
foliage was still unfolding, patterned with fresh creases, the prey of
a continuous, frail unrest. Little streams chuckled through the
underbrush, and from the fusion of woodland whisperings bird notes
detached themselves, soft flutings and liquid runs, that gave another
expression to the morning's blithe mood.

Between the woods there were stretches of open country, velvet smooth,
with the trees slipped down to where the rivers ran. The grass was as
green as sprouting grain, and a sweet smell of wet earth and seedling
growths came from it. Cloud shadows trailed across it, blue blotches
moving languidly. It was the young earth in its blushing promise,
fragrant, rain-washed, budding, with the sound of running water in the
grass and bird voices dropping from the sky.

With their lighter wagons they passed the ox trains plowing stolidly
through the mud, barefoot children running at the wheel, and women
knitting on the front seat. The driver's whip lash curled in the air,
and his nasal "Gee haw" swung the yoked beasts slowly to one side.
Then came detachments of Santa Fe traders, dark men in striped serapes
with silver trimmings round their high-peaked hats. Behind them
stretched the long line of wagons, the ponderous freighters of the
Santa Fe Trail, rolling into Independence from the Spanish towns that
lay beyond the burning deserts of the Cimarron. They filed by in