wagon. Mose smoked his pipe out and rolled himself
in his blanket near the smoldering camp fire.

Pratt was feeble and very long faced and repentant at breakfast. His
appetite was gone. Mrs. Pratt said nothing, but pressed him to eat.
"Come, Paw, a gill or two o' cawfee will do ye good," she said. "Cawfee
is a great heatoner," she said to Mose. "When I'm so misorified of a
moarnin' I can't eat a mossel o' bacon or pork, I kin take a gill o'
cawfee an' it shore helps me much."

Pratt looked around sheepishly. "I do reckon I made a plum ejot of
myself last night."

"As ush'll," snapped Jennie. "You wanted to go slicin' every man in
sight up, just fer to show you could swing a bowie knife when you was on
airth the first time."

"Now that's the quare thing, Mose; a peacebbler man than me don't live;
Jinnie says I couldn't lick a hearty bedbug, but when I git red liquor
into my insides I'm a terror to near neighbours, so they say. I can't
well remember just what do take place 'long towards the fo'th drink."

"Durn lucky you can't. You'd never hole up your head again. A plummer
fool you never see," said Jennie, determined to drive his shame home to
him.

Pratt sighed, understood perfectly the meaning of all this vituperation.
"Well, Mam, we'll try again. I think I'm doin' pretty good when I go two
munce, don't you?"

"It's more'n that, Paw," said Mrs. Pratt, eager to encourage him at the
right moment. "It's sixty-four days. You gained four days on it this
time."

Pratt straightened up and smiled. "That so, Mam? Wal, that shorely is a
big gain."

He took Mose aside after breakfast and solemnly said:

"Wimern-folk is a heap better'n men-folks. Now, me or you couldn't stand
in wimern-folks what they put up with in men-folks. 'Pears like they air
finer built, someway." After a pause he said with great earnestness:
"Don't you drink red liquor, Mose; it shore makes a man no account."

"Don't you worry, Cap. I'm not drinkin' liquor of any color."

CHAPTER VIII

THE UPWARD TRAIL

Once across the Missouri the trail began to mount. "Here is the true
buffalo country," thought Mose, as they came to the treeless hills of
the Great Muddy Water. On these smooth buttes Indian sentinels had
stood, morning and evening, through a thousand years, to signal the
movement of the wild herds, and from other distant hills columns of
smoke by day, or the flare of signal fires at night, had warned the
chieftains of the approac