Surely enough, the Banion plan of crossing, after all, was carried out, and although the river dropped a foot meantime, the attempt to ford en masse was abandoned.  Little by little the wagon parks gathered on the north bank, each family assorting its own goods and joining in the general sauve qui peut.

Nothing was seen of the Missouri column, but rumor said they were ferrying slowly, with one boat and their doubled wagon boxes, over which they had nailed hides.  Woodhull was keen to get on north ahead of this body.  He had personal reasons for that.  None too well pleased at the smiles with which his explanations of his bruised face were received, he made a sudden resolution to take a band of his own immediate neighbors and adherents and get on ahead of the Missourians.  He based his decision, as he announced it, on the necessity of a scouting party to locate grass and water.

Most of the men who joined him were single men, of the more restless sort.  There were no family wagons with them.  They declared their intention of traveling fast and light until they got among the buffalo.  This party left in advance of the main caravan, which had not yet completed the crossing of the Kaw.

“Roll out!  Ro-o-o-ll out!” came the mournful command at last, once more down the line.

It fell on the ears of some who were unwilling to obey.  The caravan was disintegrating at the start.  The gloom cast by the long delay at the ford had now resolved itself in certain instances into fear amounting half to panic.  Some companies of neighbors said the entire train should wait for the military escort; others declared they would not go further west, but would turn back and settle here, where the soil was so good.  Still others said they all should lie here, with good grass and water, until further word came from the Platte Valley train and until they had more fully decided what to do.  In spite of all the officers could do, the general advance was strung out over two or three miles.  The rapid loss in order, these premature divisions of the train, augured ill enough.

The natural discomforts of the trail now also began to have their effect.  A plague of green-headed flies and flying ants assailed them by day, and at night the mosquitoes made an affliction well-nigh insufferable.  The women and children could not sleep, the horses groaned all night under the clouds of tormentors which gathered on them.  Early as it was, the sun at times blazed with intolerable fervor, or again the heat broke in savage storms of thunder, hail and rain.  All the elements, all the circumstances seemed in league to warn them back before it was too late, for indeed they were not yet more than on the threshold of the Plains.

The spring rains left the ground soft in places, so that in creek valleys stretches of corduroy sometimes had to be laid down.  The high waters made even the lesser fords difficult and dangerous, and all knew that between them and the Platte ran several strong and capricious rivers, making in general to the southeast and necessarily transected by the great road to Oregon.