miles a day, and that in the mountains, where the
fodder was scarce and the trail hard, would fall to a slower pace. The
doctor's party, the cow long since sacrificed to the exigencies of
speed, had been making from twenty-five to thirty. Even with a drop
from this in the barer regions ahead of them they could look forward to
reaching California a month or six weeks before the New York Company.

There was nothing to be gained by staying with them, and, so far, the
small two-wagon caravan had moved with a speed and absence of accident,
which gave its members confidence in their luck and generalship. It
was agreed that they should leave the big train the next morning and
move on as rapidly as they could, stopping at Fort Laramie to repair
the wagons which the heat had warped, shoe the horses, and lay in the
supplies they needed.

Susan heard it with regret. The comfort of dropping back into the
feminine atmosphere, where obvious things did not need explanation, and
all sorts of important communications were made by mental telepathy,
was hard to relinquish. She would once again have to adjust herself to
the dull male perceptions which saw and heard nothing that was not
visible and audible. She would have to shut herself in with her own
problems, getting no support or sympathy unless she asked for it, and
then, before its sources could be tapped, she would have to explain why
she wanted it and demonstrate that she was a deserving object.

And it was hard to break the budding friendship with Lucy and Bella,
for friendships were not long making on the Emigrant Trail. One day's
companionship in the creaking prairie schooner had made the three women
more intimate than a year of city visiting would have done. They made
promises of meeting again in California. Neither party knew its exact
point of destination--somewhere on that strip of prismatic color, not
too crowded and not too wild but that wanderers of the same blood and
birth might always find each other.

In the evening the two girls sat in Susan's tent enjoying a last
exchange of low-toned talk. The rain had stopped. The thick, bluish
wool of clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon was here and
there rent apart, showing strips of lemon-colored sky. The ground was
soaked, the footprints round the wagons filled with water, the ruts
brimming with it. There was a glow of low fires round the camp, for
the mosquitoes were bad and the brown smudge of smolde