, could be coaxed
into productiveness along the rivers.

Dr. Gillespie and his daughter were punctual. David's silver watch,
large as the circle of a cup and possessed of a tick so loud it
interrupted conversation, registered five minutes before seven, when
the doctor and his daughter appeared at the head of their caravan. Two
handsome figures, well mounted and clad with taste as well as
suitability, they looked as gallantly unfitted for the road as armored
knights in a modern battlefield. Good looks, physical delicacy, and
becoming clothes had as yet no recognized place on the trail. The
Gillespies were boldly and blithely bringing them, and unlike most
innovators, romance came with them. Nobody had gone out of
Independence with so confident and debonair an air. Now advancing
through a spattering of leaf shadows and sunspots, they seemed to the
young men to be issuing from the first pages of a story, and the
watchers secretly hoped that they would go riding on into the heart of
it with the white arch of the prairie schooner and the pricked ears of
the six mules as a movable background.

There was no umbrella this morning to obscure Miss Gillespie's vivid
tints, and in the same flat, straw hat, with her cheeks framed in
little black curls, she looked a freshly wholesome young girl, who
might be dangerous to the peace of mind of men even less lonely and
susceptible than the two who bid her a flushed and bashful good
morning. She had the appearance, however, of being entirely oblivious
to any embarrassment they might show. There was not a suggestion of
coquetry in her manner as she returned their greetings. Instead, it
was marked by a businesslike gravity. Her eyes touched their faces
with the slightest welcoming light and then left them to rove, sharply
inspecting, over their wagon and animals. When she had scrutinized
these, she turned in her saddle, and said abruptly to the driver of the
six mules:

"Daddy John, do you see--horses?"

The person thus addressed nodded and said in a thin, old voice,

"I do, and if they want them they're welcome to them."

He was a small, shriveled man, who might have been anywhere from sixty
to seventy-five. A battered felt hat, gray-green with wind and sun,
was pulled well down to his ears, pressing against his forehead and
neck thin locks of gray hair. A grizzle of beard edged his chin, a
poor and scanty growth that showed the withered skin through its
sparseness.