ns were loosed. Cattle guards appeared and drove the work animals
apart to graze. Women clambered down from wagon seats. Sober-faced
children gathered their little arms full of wood for the belated
breakfast fires; boys came down for water at the stream.

The west-bound paused at the Missouri, as once they had paused at the
Don.

A voice arose, of some young man back among the wagons busy at his work,
paraphrasing an ante-bellum air:

_Oh, then, Susannah,
Don't you cry fer me!
I'm goin' out to Oregon,
With my banjo on my knee!_

CHAPTER II

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

More than two thousand men, women and children waited on the Missouri
for the green fully to tinge the grasses of the prairies farther west.
The waning town of Independence had quadrupled its population in thirty
days. Boats discharged their customary western cargo at the newer
landing on the river, not far above that town; but it all was not
enough. Men of upper Missouri and lower Iowa had driven in herds of
oxen, horses, mules; but there were not enough of these. Rumors came
that a hundred wagons would take the Platte this year via the Council
Bluffs, higher up the Missouri; others would join on from St. Jo and
Leavenworth.

March had come, when the wild turkey gobbled and strutted resplendent in
the forest lands. April had passed, and the wild fowl had gone north.
May, and the upland plovers now were nesting all across the prairies.
But daily had more wagons come, and neighbors had waited for neighbors,
tardy at the great rendezvous. The encampment, scattered up and down the
river front, had become more and more congested. Men began to know one
another, families became acquainted, the gradual sifting and shifting in
social values began. Knots and groups began to talk of some sort of
accepted government for the common good.

They now were at the edge of the law. Organized society did not exist
this side of the provisional government of Oregon, devised as a _modus
vivendi_ during the joint occupancy of that vast region with Great
Britain--an arrangement terminated not longer than two years before.
There must be some sort of law and leadership between the Missouri and
the Columbia. Amid much bickering of petty politics, Jesse Wingate had
some four days ago been chosen for the thankless task of train captain.
Though that office had small authority and less means of enforcing its
commands, none the less the train leader must be a man o