“Yes, but keep that fiddle in the shade, Jed, or the sun certainly will pop it open.”

Jed’s mother, her apron full of broken bits of sagebrush, turned to see that her admonishment was heeded before she began her midday coffee fire.  As for Jed himself, with a wide grin he crouched down at the side of the wagon and leaned against a wheel as he struck up a lively air, roaring joyously to his accompaniment: 

  Git out o’ the way, old Dan Tucker,
  You’re too late to git yore supper!

Unmindful of the sullen apathy of men and women, the wailing of children stifling under the wagon tops, the moans of the sick and wounded in their ghastly discomfort, Jed sang with his cracked lips as he swung from one jig to the next, the voice of the violin reaching all the wagons of the shortened train.

“Choose yore pardners!” rang his voice in the joyous jesting of youth.  And—­marvel and miracle—­then and there, those lean brown folk did take up the jest, and laughingly gathered on the sun-seared sands.  They formed sets and danced—­danced a dance of the indomitable, at high noon, the heat blinding, the sand hot under feet not all of which were shod.  Molly Wingate, herself fifty and full-bodied, cast down her firewood, caught up her skirt with either hand and made good an old-time jig to the tune of the violin and the roaring accompaniment of many voices and of patted hands.  She paused at length, dropping her calico from between her fingers, and hastened to a certain wagon side as she wiped her face with her apron.

“Didn’t you hear it, Molly?” she demanded, parting the curtain and looking in.

“Yes, I did.  I wanted—­I almost wanted to join.  Mother, I almost wanted to hope again.  Am I to live?  Where are we now?”

“By a right pretty river, child, and eena’most to Oregon.  Come, kiss your mother, Molly.  Let’s try.”

Whereupon, having issued her orders and set everyone to work at something after her practical fashion, the first lady of the train went frizzling her shaved buffalo meat with milk in the frying pan; grumbling that milk now was almost at the vanishing point, and that now they wouldn’t see another buffalo; but always getting forward with her meal.  This she at last amiably announced.

“Well, come an’ git it, people, or I’ll throw it to the dogs.”

Flat on the sand, on blankets or odds and ends of hide, the emigrants sat and ate, with the thermometer—­had they had one—­perhaps a hundred and ten in the sun.  The men were silent for the most part, with now and then a word about the ford, which they thought it would be wise to make at once, before the river perchance might rise, and while it still would not swim the cattle.

“We can’t wait for anyone, not even the Crows,” said Wingate, rising and ending the mealtime talk.  “Let’s get across.”

Methodically they began the blocking up of the wagon bodies to the measurement established by a wet pole.