"It's the Liberty wagons from down river," said the campmaster at
length. "Missouri movers and settlers from lower Illinois. It's time. We
can't lie here much longer waiting for Missouri or Illinois, either. The
grass is up."

"Well, we'd have to wait for Molly to end her spring term, teaching in
Clay School, in Liberty," rejoined his wife, "else why'd we send her
there to graduate? Twelve dollars a month, cash money, ain't to be
sneezed at."

"No; nor is two thousand miles of trail between here and Oregon, before
snow, to be sneezed at, either. If Molly ain't with those wagons I'll
send Jed over for her to-day. If I'm going to be captain I can't hold
the people here on the river any longer, with May already begun."

"She'll be here to-day," asserted his wife. "She said she would.
Besides, I think that's her riding a little one side the road now. Not
that I know who all is with her. One young man--two. Well"--with
maternal pride--"Molly ain't never lacked for beaus!

"But look at the wagons come!" she added. "All the country's going West
this spring, it certainly seems like."

It was the spring gathering of the west-bound wagon-trains, stretching
from old Independence to Westport Landing, the spot where that very year
the new name of Kansas City was heard among the emigrants as the place
of the jump-off. It was now an hour by sun, as these Western people
would have said, and the low-lying valley mists had not yet fully risen,
so that the atmosphere for a great picture did not lack.