“Well, if he ain’t a plainsman yit he will be, and I’m one right now, Sam Woodhull.”  Jackson stood squarely in front of his superior.  “I say he’s talkin’ sense to a man that ain’t got no sense.  I was with Doniphan too.  We found ways, huh?”

His straight gaze outfronted the other, who turned and rode back.  But that very night eight men, covertly instigated or encouraged by Woodhull, their leader, came to the headquarters fire with a joint complaint.  They demanded places at the head of the column, else would mutiny and go on ahead together.  They said good mule teams ought not to take the dust of ox wagons.

“What do you say, men?” asked the train captain of his aids helplessly.  “I’m in favor of letting them go front.”

The others nodded silently, looking at one another significantly.  Already cliques and factions were beginning.

Woodhull, however, had too much at stake to risk any open friction with the captain of the train.  His own seat at the officers’ fire was dear to him, for it brought him close to the Wingate wagons, and in sight—­if nothing else—­of Molly Wingate.  That young lady did not speak to him all day, but drew close the tilt of her own wagon early after the evening meal and denied herself to all.

As for Banion, he was miles back, in camp with his own wagons, which Woodhull had abandoned, and on duty that night with the cattle guard—­a herdsman and not a leader of men now.  He himself was moody enough when he tied his cape behind his saddle and rode his black horse out into the shadows.  He had no knowledge of the fact that the old mountain man, Jackson, wrapped in his blanket, that night instituted a solitary watch all his own.

The hundreds of camp fires of the scattered train, stretched out over five miles of grove and glade at the end of the first undisciplined day, lowered, glowed and faded.  They were one day out to Oregon, and weary withal.  Soon the individual encampments were silent save for the champ or cough of tethered animals, or the whining howl of coyotes, prowling in.  At the Missouri encampment, last of the train, and that heading the great cattle drove, the hardy frontier settlers, as was their wont, soon followed the sun to rest.

The night wore on, incredibly slow to the novice watch for the first time now drafted under the prairie law.  The sky was faint pink and the shadows lighter when suddenly the dark was streaked by a flash of fire and the silence broken by the crack of a border rifle.  Then again and again came the heavier bark of a dragoon revolver, of the sort just then becoming known along the Western marches.

The camp went into confusion.  Will Banion, just riding in to take his own belated turn in his blankets, almost ran over the tall form of Bill Jackson, rifle in hand.

“What was it, man?” demanded Banion.  “You shooting at a mule?”

“No, a man,” whispered the other.  “He ran this way.  Reckon I must have missed.  It’s hard to draw down inter a hindsight in the dark, an’ I jest chanced hit with the pistol.  He was runnin’ hard.”