but to the ground swept twenty sombreros as out over the prairies, out
where no human ear could hear, rolled a cheer, and repeated, and again;
tribute of Fort Yankton to those who went. At the rear of the column one
rider alone did not respond, apparently did not hear. Implacable as
Landor himself, he looked straight before him, awaited the silence that
would bring with it renewed activity.

And it came. With a single motion as before, every hat returned to its
place, was drawn low over its owner's eyes. From his position by the
gate Landor advanced, took the lead. Behind him, impassive again as
figures in a spectacle, the others fell in line. At first a mere walk,
the pace gradually quickened, became a canter, a trot. By this time the
confines of the tiny frontier town were passed. Before them on the one
hand, bordering on the river, stretched a range of low hills, dun-brown
from its coat of sun-dried grass. On the other, greener by contrast,
glittering now in the level rays of the early morning sun on myriad
dew-drops, and seemingly endless, unrolled the open prairie. Straight
into this Landor led the way, and as he did so the cavalcade for the
first time broke into a gallop; not the fierce, short-lived pace of
civilisation, but the long-strided, full-lunged lope of the frontier,
which accurately and as tirelessly as a clock measures time, counts off
the passing miles. Hitherto a preliminary, at last the play was on.

Sixty-odd miles as migrates the sandhill crane, separated the
settlements of Yankton and Sioux Falls. Trackless as a desert was the
prairie, minus even the buffalo trails of a quarter century before; yet
with the sun only as guide, they forged ahead, straight as a line drawn
taut from point to point. Nothing stopped their advance, nothing made
them turn aside. Seemingly destitute of animal life, the country fairly
teemed at their approach. Grouse, typical of the prairie as the