fight?"

"Will two roosters that has been breasted?"

CHAPTER XXIV

THE ROAD WEST

Came now once more the notes of the bugle in signal for the assembly.
Word passed down the scattered Wingate lines, "Catch up! Catch up!"

Riders went out to the day guards with orders to round up the cattle.
Dark lines of the driven stock began to dribble in from the edge of the
valley. One by one the corralled vehicles broke park, swung front or
rear, until the columns again held on the beaten road up the valley in
answer to the command, "Roll out! Roll out!" The Missourians, long
aligned and ready, fell in far behind and pitched camp early. There were
two trains, not one.

Now, hour after hour and day by day, the toil of the trail through sand
flats and dog towns, deadly in its monotony, held them all in apathy.
The lightheartedness of the start in early spring was gone. By this time
the spare spaces in the wagons were kept filled with meat, for always
there were buffalo now. Lines along the sides of the wagons held loads
of rudely made jerky--pieces of meat slightly salted and exposed to the
clear dry air to finish curing.

But as the people fed full there began a curious sloughing off of the
social compact, a change in personal attitude. A dozen wagons, short of
supplies or guided by faint hearts, had their fill of the Far West and
sullenly started back east. Three dozen broke train and pulled out
independently for the West, ahead of Wingate, mule and horse transport
again rebelling against being held back by the ox teams. More and more
community cleavages began to define. The curse of flies by day, of
mosquitoes by night added increasing miseries for the travelers. The hot
midday sun wore sore on them. Restless high spirits, grief over personal
losses, fear of the future, alike combined to lessen the solidarity of
the great train; but still it inched along on its way to Oregon, putting
behind mile after mile of the great valley of the Platte.

The grass now lay yellow in the blaze of the sun, the sandy dust was
inches deep in the great road, cut by thousands of wheels. Flotsam and
jetsam, wreckage, showed more and more. Skeletons of cattle, bodies not
yet skeletons, aroused no more than a casual look. Furniture lay cast
aside, even broken wagons, their wheels fallen apart, showing intimate
disaster. The actual hardships of the great trek thrust themselves into
evidence on every hand, at every hour. Often was passed