r's airy way inter Santa Fe that we don't know, I'm danged
if _he_ knows it! Let him spy on us, now that we know he's doin' it.
Thankee, Jim."

By the time they had reached Jim's little fire a figure was wriggling
down the gully, and at an opportune time arose to hands and knees and
scurried to the shelter of Franklin's wagons, a smile on its face. Now
it was certain that Tom Boyd was going through to Santa Fe, and all
would be well. He chuckled as he recalled what he had said about the
Mexican troops not meeting the caravan until Point of Rocks was reached;
they would meet the train at any point his messenger told them to.

At Cow Creek another quiet night was followed by another delayed start
and shortly after noon the vanguard raised a shout of elation, which
sent every mounted man racing ahead; and the sight repaid them for their
haste.

Under their eyes lay the Arkansas River, dotted with green islands, its
channel four or five hundred yards wide, and so shallow that at normal
stage it was formidable at many points. While its low, barren banks,
only occasionally tinted with the green of cottonwoods, were desolate in
appearance, they had a beauty peculiar and striking. As far as the eye
could see spread the sand-hills and hillocks, like waves of some pale
sea, here white and there yellow, accordingly as to how the light was
reflected from them. Its appearance had been abrupt, the prairie floor
rising slightly to the crumbling edge, below which and at some distance
flowed the river, here forming the international boundary between Texas
and the United States. While territorially Texas lay across the river,
according to Texan claims, actually, so far as supervision was
concerned, it was Mexico, for the Texan arm was yet too short to
dominate it and the ordinary traveler let it keep its original name.

While its northern bank was almost destitute of timber, the southern one
showed scattered clumps of cottonwood, protected from the devastating
prairie fires from the North not only by the river itself, but also by
the barren stretch of sand, over which the fires died from starvation.
To the right of the caravan lay the grassy, green rolls of the prairie,
to an imaginative eye resembling the long swells of some great sea; on
the left a ribbon of pale tints, from gleaming whites to light golds
which varied with the depths of the water and the height and position of
the sun. Massive sand dunes, glittering in the sunlight