"You tote me to Santy Fee, or be a dead mule. Take yo' choice right now!
Git up!"

For fifty days the one dependable, docile servant of the Clarendens was
the big dun mule, as gentle and kitten-like as a mule can be.

And so, in spite of opposing conditions and rabble protest and doleful
prophecy and the assurance of certain perils, we turned our faces
toward the unfriendly land of the sunset skies, the open West of my
childish day-dreams.

* * * * *

The prairies were splashed with showers and the warm black soil was
fecund with growths as our little company followed the windings of the
old trail in that wondrous springtime of my own life's spring. There
were eight of us: Clarenden, the merchant; Jondo, the big plainsman;
Bill Banney, whom love of adventure had lured from the blue grass of
Kentucky to the prairie-grass of the West; Rex Krane, the devil-may-care
invalid from Boston; and the quartet of us in the "baby cab," as Beverly
had christened the family wagon. Uncle Esmond had added three swift
ponies to our equipment, which Jondo and Bill found time to tame for
riding as we went along.

We met wagon-trains, scouts, and solitary trappers going east, but so
far as we knew our little company was the only westward-facing one on
all the big prairies.

"It's just like living in a fairy-story, isn't it, Gail?" Beverly said