“Why, all right, all right, son!  We’re all maybe talkin’ in the air, but I more’n half understand ye.  One thing, ye ain’t never really intendin’ to give up Molly Wingate!  Ye’re a fool not to marry her now, but ye’re reckonin’ to marry her sometime—­when the moon turns green, huh?  When she’s old an’ shriveled up, then ye’ll marry her, huh?”

Banion only looked at him, silent.

“Well, I’d like to go on to Californy with ye, son, ef I didn’t know I’d make more here, an’ easier, out’n the crazy fools that’ll be pilin’ in here next year.  So good luck to ye.”

“Kit had more o’ that stuff,” he suddenly added.  “He give me some more when I told him I’d lost that fust piece he give me.  I’ll give ye a piece fer sample, son.  I’ve kep’ hit close.”

He begun fumbling in the tobacco pouch which he found under the head of his blanket bed.  He looked up blankly, slightly altering the name of his youngest squaw.

“Well, damn her hide!” said he fervently.  “Ye kain’t keep nothin’ from ‘em!  An’ they kain’t keep nothin’ when they git hit.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

A MATTER OF FRIENDSHIP

Once more the train, now permanently divided into two, faced the desert, all the men and many women now afoot, the kine low-headed, stepping gingerly in their new rawhide shoes.  Gray, grim work, toiling over the dust and sand.  But at the head wagon, taking over an empire foot by foot, flew the great flag.  Half fanatics?  That may be.  Fanatics, so called, also had prayed and sung and taught their children, all the way across to the Great Salt Lake.  They, too, carried books.  And within one hour after their halt near the Salt Lake they began to plow, began to build, began to work, began to grow and make a country.

The men at the trading post saw the Missouri wagons pull out ahead.  Two hours later the Wingate train followed, as the lot had determined.  Woodhull remained with his friends in the Wingate group, regarded now with an increasing indifference, but biding his time.

Bridger held back his old friend Jackson even after the last train pulled out.  It was mid afternoon when the start was made.

“Don’t go just yet, Bill,” said he.  “Ride on an’ overtake ’em.  Nothin’ but rattlers an’ jack rabbits now fer a while.  The Shoshones won’t hurt ‘em none.  I’m powerful lonesome, somehow.  Let’s you an’ me have one more drink.”

“That sounds reas’nble,” said Jackson.  “Shore that sounds reas’nble to me.”

They drank of a keg which the master of the post had hidden in his lodge, back of his blankets; drank again of high wines diluted but uncolored—­the “likker” of the fur trade.

They drank from tin cups, until Bridger began to chant, a deepening sense of his old melancholy on him.

“Good-by!” he said again and again, waving his hand in general vagueness to the mountains.