he three
men frantic to hurry on. But Jondo's patience equaled his courage, and
he always took the least risk. It was nearly midnight, and every noise
was intensified. If a mule but moved it set up a clatter of harness
chains that seemed to fill the valley.

At last a horseman, coming suddenly from somewhere, rode swiftly by each
shadow-hidden wagon, half pausing at the sound of the mules stamping in
their places, and then he hurried up the street.

"Three against the crowd. If we must fight, fight to kill," Jondo urged,
as the ready firearms were placed for action.

In a minute or two the crew broke out of the saloon and filled the
moonlit street, all talking and swearing in broken Spanish.

"Not come yet!"

"Pedro say they be here to-morrow night!" "We wait till to-morrow
night!"

And with many wild yells they fell back for a last debauch in the
drinking-den.

"I don't understand it," Jondo declared. "That fellow who rode by here
ought to have located every son of us, but if they want to wait till
to-morrow night it suits me."

An hour later, when the village was in a dead sleep, three wagons slowly
pulled up the long street and joined the waiting group at the top, and
the crossing over was complete.

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 Pull