re fine. She believed they were as good as
those she planted in Portland, when first she went through
there--cuttings she had carried with her seed wheat in the bureau
drawer, all the way across from the Saganon. Yes, Jesse Wingate and his
wife had done well. Molly, their daughter, was still living with them
and still unmarried, she believed.

There were many things which Mrs. Caleb Price believed; also many things
she did not mention.

She said nothing, for she knew nothing, of a little scene between these
two as they sat on their little sawn-board porch before their door one
evening, looking out over the beautiful and varied landscape that lay
spread before them. Their wheat was in the green now. Their hogs reveled
in their little clover field. "We've done well, Jesse," at length said
portly Molly Wingate. "Look at our place! A mile square, for nothing!
We've done well, Jesse, I'll admit it."

"For what?" answered Jesse Wingate. "What's it for? What has it come to?
What's it all about?"

He did not have any reply. When he turned he saw his wife wiping tears
from her hard, lined face.

"It's Molly," said she.

CHAPTER XLII

KIT CARSON RIDES

Following the recession of the snow, men began to push westward up the
Platte in the great 'spring gold rush of 1849. In the forefront of
these, outpacing them in his tireless fashion, now passed westward the
greatest traveler of his day, the hunter and scout, Kit Carson. The new
post of Fort Kearny on the Platte; the old one, Fort Laramie in the
foothills of the Rockies--he touched them soon as the grass was green;
and as the sun warmed the bunch grass slopes of the North Platte and the
Sweetwater, so that his horses could paw out a living, he crowded on
westward. He was a month ahead of the date for the wagon trains at Fort
Bridger.

"How, Chardon!" said he as he drove in his two light packs, riding alone
as was his usual way, evading Indian eyes as he of all men best knew
how.

"How, Kit! You're early. Why?" The trader's chief clerk turned to send a
boy for Vasquez, Bridger's partner. "Light, Kit, and eat."

"Where's Bridger?" demanded Carson. "I've come out of my country to see
him. I have government mail--for Oregon."

"For Oregon? _Mon Dieu_! But Jeem"--he spread out his hands--"Jeem he's
dead, we'll think. We do not known. Now we know the gold news. Maybe-so
we know why Jeem he's gone!"

"Gone? When?"

"Las' H'august-Settemb. H'all of an' at once