As the train advanced bands of antelope began to appear.  The striped prairie gophers gave place to the villages of countless barking prairie dogs, curious to the eyes of the newcomers.  At night the howling and snarling of gray wolves now made regular additions to the coyote chorus and the voices of the owls and whippoorwills.  Little by little, day by day, civilization was passing, the need for organization daily became more urgent.  Yet the original caravan had split practically into three divisions within a hundred and fifty miles from the jump-off, although the bulk of the train hung to Wingate’s company and began to shake down, at least into a sort of tolerance.

Granted good weather, as other travelers had written, it was indeed impossible to evade the sense of exhilaration in the bold, free life.  At evening encampment the scene was one worthy of any artist of all the world.  The oblong of the wagon park, the white tents, the many fires, made a spectacle of marvelous charm and power.  Perhaps within sight, at one time, under guard for the evening feed on the fresh young grass, there would be two thousand head of cattle.  In the wagon village men, women and children would be engaged as though at home.  There was little idleness in the train, and indeed there was much gravity and devoutness in the personnel.  At one fireside the young men might be roaring “Old Grimes is dead, that good old man,” or “Oh, then, Susannah”; but quite as likely close at hand some family group would be heard in sacred hymns.  A strange envisagement it all made, in a strange environment, a new atmosphere, here on the threshold of the wilderness.[1]

[Footnote 1:  To get the local descriptions, the color, atmosphere, “feel” of a day and a country so long gone by, any writer of to-day must go to writers of another day.  The Author would acknowledge free use of the works of Palmer, Bryant, Kelly and others who give us journals of the great transcontinental trail.]

CHAPTER XII

THE DEAD MEN’S TALE

The wilderness, close at hand, soon was to make itself felt.  Wingate’s outriders moved out before noon of one day, intending to locate camp at the ford of the Big Vermilion.  Four miles in advance they unexpectedly met the scout of the Missouri column, Bill Jackson, who had passed the Wingate train by a cut-off of his own on a solitary ride ahead for sake of information.  He was at a gallop now, and what he said sent them all back at full speed to the head of the Wingate column.

Jackson riding ahead, came up with his hand raised for a halt.

“My God, Cap’n, stop the train!” he called.  “Hit won’t do for the womern and children to see what’s on ahead yan!”

“What’s up—­where?” demanded Wingate.

“On three mile, on the water where they camped night afore last.  Thar they air ten men, an’ the rest’s gone.  Woodhull’s wagons, but he ain’t thar.  Wagons burned, mules standing with arrers in them, rest all dead but a few.  Hit’s the Pawnees!”