"Moses who! Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself--you ought to
be ashamed of such criminal ignorance. Why, Moses, the great guide,
soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel! Jack, from this spot
where we stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful desert three hundred
miles in extent--and across that desert that wonderful man brought
the children of Israel!--guiding them with unfailing sagacity for
forty years over the sandy desolation and among the obstructing
rocks and hills, and landed them at last, safe and sound, within
sight of this very spot; and where we now stand they entered the
Promised Land with anthems of rejoicing! It was a wonderful,
wonderful thing to do, Jack! Think of it!"

"Forty years? Only three hundred miles? Humph! Ben Holliday would
have fetched them through in thirty-six hours!"

The boy meant no harm. He did not know that he had said anything that
was wrong or irreverent. And so no one scolded him or felt offended with
him--and nobody could but some ungenerous spirit incapable of excusing
the heedless blunders of a boy.

At noon on the fifth day out, we arrived at the "Crossing of the South
Platte," alias "Julesburg," alias "Overland City," four hundred and
seventy miles from St. Joseph--the strangest, quaintest, funniest
frontier town that our untraveled eyes had ever stared at and been
astonished with.




CHAPTER VII.