r his bronze of tan, suddenly shy.

"I did," said he. "The fact is, I met her earlier this spring at Clay
Seminary, where she taught. She told me you-all were moving West this
spring--said this was her last day. She asked if she might ride out
with our wagons to the rendezvous. Well--"

"That's a fine horse you got there," interrupted young Jed Wingate.
"Spanish?"

"Yes, sir."

"Wild?"

"Oh, no, not now; only of rather good spirit. Ride him if you like.
Gallop back, if you'd like to try him, and tell my people to come on and
park in here. I'd like a word or so with Mr. Wingate."

With a certain difficulty, yet insistent, Jed swung into the deep
saddle, sitting the restive, rearing horse well enough withal, and soon
was off at a fast pace down the trail. They saw him pull up at the head
of the caravan and motion, wide armed, to the riders, the train not
halting at all.

He joined the two equestrian figures on ahead, the girl and the young
man whom his mother had named as Sam Woodhull. They could see him
shaking hands, then doing a curvet or so to show off his newly borrowed
mount.

"He takes well to riding, your son," said the newcomer approvingly.

"He's been crazy to get West," assented the father. "Wants to get among
the buffalo."

"We all do," said Will Banion. "None left in Kentucky this generation
back; none now in Missouri. The Plains!" His eye gleamed.

"That's Sam Woodhull along," resumed Molly Wingate. "He was with
Doniphan."

"Yes."

Banion spoke so shortly that the good dame, owner of a sought-for
daughter, looked at him keenly.

"He lived at Liberty, too. I've known Molly to write of him."

"Yes?" suddenly and with vigor. "She knows him then?"

"Why, yes."

"So do I," said Banion simply. "He was in our regiment--captain and
adjutant, paymaster and quartermaster-chief, too, sometimes. The Army
Regulations never meant much with Doniphan's column. We did as we
liked--and did the best we could, even with paymasters and
quartermasters!"

He colored suddenly, and checked, sensitive to a possible charge of
jealousy before this keen-eyed mother of a girl whose beauty had been
the talk of the settlement now for more than a year.

The rumors of the charm of Molly Wingate--Little Molly, as her father
always called her to distinguish her from her mother--now soon were to
have actual and undeniable verification to the eye of any skeptic who
mayhap had doubted mere rumors of a woman's beauty. Th