d from top
to toe. Well, I never did see such a looking scarecrow!"

"It's lucky you haven't any looking-glass here, young Impudence. If
you could see your mother's boy now, you wouldn't know him. Talk about
looks! Take a look at the youngster, mates," said Uncle Charlie,
bursting into a laugh. A general roar followed the look, for Sandy's
appearance was indescribable. In his wild rush through the waters of
the creek, he had covered himself from head to foot, and the mud from
the wagon had painted his face a brilliant brown; for there is more or
less of red oxide of iron in the mud of Kansas creeks.

It was a doleful party that pitched its tent that night on the banks
of Soldier Creek and attempted to dry clothes and provisions by
the feeble heat of a little sheet-iron stove. Only Sandy, the
irrepressible and unconquerable Sandy, preserved his good temper
through the trying experience. "It is a part of the play," he said,
"and anybody who thinks that crossing the prairie, 'as of old the
pilgrims crossed the sea,' is a Sunday-school picnic, might better
try it with the Dixon emigrants; that's all."

But, after a very moist and disagreeable night, the sky cleared in the
morning. Oscar was out early, looking at the sky; and when he shouted
"Westward ho!" with a stentorian voice, everybody came tumbling out to
see what was the matter. A long line of white-topped wagons with four
yoke of oxen to each, eleven teams all told, was stringing its way
along the muddy road in which the red sun was reflected in pools of
red liquid mud. The wagons were overflowing with small children; coops
of fowls swung from behind, and a general air of thriftiness seemed to
be characteristic of the company.

"Which way are you bound?" asked Oscar, cheerily.

"Up the Smoky Hill Fork," replied one of the ox-drivers. "Solomon's
Fork, perhaps, but somewhere in that region, anyway."

One of the company lingered behind to see what manner of people these
were who were so comfortably camped out in a wall-tent. When he had
satisfied his curiosity, he explained that his companions had come
from northern Ohio, and were bound to lay out a town of their own in
the Smoky Hill region. Oscar, who listened while his father drew this
information from the stranger, recalled the fact that the Smoky Hill
and the Republican Forks were the branches of the Kaw. Solomon's Fork,
he now learned, was one of the tributaries of the Smoky Hill, nearer
to the Republican F