Dawn was breaking as our four wagons, followed by the ponies, crept away
in the misty light. As we trailed off into the unknown land, I looked
back at the bluff below which nestled the last houses we were to see for
seven hundred miles. And there, outlined against the horizon, a Mexican
stood watching us. I had seen the same man one day riding up from the
ravine southwest of Fort Leavenworth. I had seen him dashing toward the
river the next day. I had watched him sitting across the street from the
Clarenden store in Independence.

I wondered if it might have been this man who had hung about our camp
the evening before, and if it might have been this same man who rode
between us and the saloon mob, leading the crowd after him and losing us
on the side of the bluff. And as we had eluded the Council Grove danger,
I wondered what would come next, and if he would be in it.




V

WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST


"So I draw the world together, link by link."
--KIPLING.


Day after day we pushed into the unknown wilderness. No wagon-trains
passed ours moving eastward. No moccasined track in the dust of the
trail gave hint of any human presence near. Where to-day the Pullman car