e was riding home he could look out for miles and
miles, clear to the horizon, and know he was the King of it all. Just
think what it was to feel like that! And far away he could see the
smoke of his village and know that they were waiting for the return of
the chief."

"Chief!" with even greater emphasis, "that poor dirty creature a
_chief_!"

The muse relinquished her hold. The young man explained, not with
impatience, but as one mortified by a betrayal into foolish enthusiasm:

"I didn't mean that _he_ was a chief. I was just imagining."

"Oh," with the falling inflexion of comprehension. "You often imagine,
don't you? Let's ride on to where the road goes down into that hollow."

They rode on in silence, both slightly chagrined, for if David found it
trying to have his fine flights checked, Susan was annoyed when she
said things that made him wear a look of forbearing patience. She may
not have had much imagination, but she had a very observing eye, and
could have startled not only David, but her father by the shrewdness
with which she read faces.

The road sloped to a hollow where the mottled trunks of cotton woods
stood in a group round the dimpling face of a spring. With
well-moistened roots the grass grew long and rich. Here was the place
for the night's camp. They would wait till the train came up. And
even as they rested on this comfortable thought they saw between the
leaves the canvas top of a wagon.

The meeting of trains was one of the excitements of life on the
Emigrant Trail. Sometimes they were acquaintances made in the wet days
at Independence, sometimes strangers who had come by way of St. Joseph.
Then the encountering parties eyed one another with candid curiosity
and from each came the greeting of the plains, "Be you for Oregon or
California?"

The present party was for Oregon from Missouri, six weeks on the road.
They were a family, traveling alone, having dropped out of the company
with which they had started. The man, a gaunt and grizzled creature,
with long hair and ragged beard, was unyoking his oxen, while the woman
bent over the fire which crackled beneath her hands. She was as lean
as he, shapeless, saffron-skinned and wrinkled, but evidently younger
than she looked. The brood of tow-headed children round her ran from a
girl of fourteen to a baby, just toddling, a fat, solemn-eyed cherub,
almost naked, with a golden fluff of hair.

At sight of him Susan drew up, the