to Leavenworth, and they say then we've got to come back with Ezra
Lane and the teams."

The boy on the ground raised himself by rolling over and catching hold
of a sapling. He panted a moment, and "I'll bet y' I don't." The other
boy went away with a weak "Me neither," thrown over his shoulder.

During that long afternoon, and all the next day and the next, the
boys ran from wagon to wagon, climbing over end gates, wriggling among
the men, running with the horses through the shady woods, paddling in
the fords, and only refusing to move when the men got out of the
wagons and walked up the long clay hills that rise above the Kaw
River. At night they camped by the prairie streams, and the men sang
and wondered what they were doing at home, and Philemon Ward took John
Barclay out into the silence of the woods and made him say his
prayers. And Ward would look toward the west and say, "Well,
Johnnie,--there's home," and once they stood in an open place in the
timber, and Ward gazed at a bright star sinking in the west, and said,
"I guess that's about over Sycamore Ridge." They went on, and the boy,
looking back to see why the man had stopped, caught him throwing a
kiss at the star. And they could not know, as they walked back
together through the woods abashed, that two women sitting before a
cabin door under a sycamore tree were looking at an eastern star, and
one threw kisses at it unashamed while the other wept. And on other
nights, many other nights, the two, Miss Lucy and Mrs. Barclay, sat
looking at their star while the terror in their hearts made their lips
mute. God makes men brave who stand where bullets fly, yet always they
can run away. But God seems to give no alternative to women at home
who have to wait and dread.