d been. The foolish risk of losing so valuable a piece of property as
Daniel Boone ought to be in the slave-market taxed his powers of
understanding, profanity, and abuse.

"Cussin' solid, an' in streaks," Aunty Boone chuckled, softly, as she
listened to him unmoved.

Equally unmoved was Esmond Clarenden. But his genial smile and
diplomatic power of keeping still did not prevent him from being as set
as the everlasting hills in his own purpose.

"This here critter is all I'll sell you," the trader declared at last,
pulling a big white-eyed dun animal out of the group. "An' nobody's
goin' to drive her easy."

"I'll take it," Uncle Esmond said, promptly, and the vicious-looking
beast was brought to where Aunty Boone stood beside the wagon-tongue.

It was a clear case of hate at first sight, for the mule began to plunge
and squeal the instant it saw her. The woman hesitated not a minute, but
lifting her big ham-like foot, she gave it one broadside kick that it
must have mistaken for a thunderbolt, and in that low purr of hers, that
might frighten a jungle tiger, she laid down the law of the journey.

"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