Riders went out to the day guards with orders to round up the cattle.  Dark lines of the driven stock began to dribble in from the edge of the valley.  One by one the corralled vehicles broke park, swung front or rear, until the columns again held on the beaten road up the valley in answer to the command, “Roll out!  Roll out!” The Missourians, long aligned and ready, fell in far behind and pitched camp early.  There were two trains, not one.

Now, hour after hour and day by day, the toil of the trail through sand flats and dog towns, deadly in its monotony, held them all in apathy.  The lightheartedness of the start in early spring was gone.  By this time the spare spaces in the wagons were kept filled with meat, for always there were buffalo now.  Lines along the sides of the wagons held loads of rudely made jerky—­pieces of meat slightly salted and exposed to the clear dry air to finish curing.

But as the people fed full there began a curious sloughing off of the social compact, a change in personal attitude.  A dozen wagons, short of supplies or guided by faint hearts, had their fill of the Far West and sullenly started back east.  Three dozen broke train and pulled out independently for the West, ahead of Wingate, mule and horse transport again rebelling against being held back by the ox teams.  More and more community cleavages began to define.  The curse of flies by day, of mosquitoes by night added increasing miseries for the travelers.  The hot midday sun wore sore on them.  Restless high spirits, grief over personal losses, fear of the future, alike combined to lessen the solidarity of the great train; but still it inched along on its way to Oregon, putting behind mile after mile of the great valley of the Platte.

The grass now lay yellow in the blaze of the sun, the sandy dust was inches deep in the great road, cut by thousands of wheels.  Flotsam and jetsam, wreckage, showed more and more.  Skeletons of cattle, bodies not yet skeletons, aroused no more than a casual look.  Furniture lay cast aside, even broken wagons, their wheels fallen apart, showing intimate disaster.  The actual hardships of the great trek thrust themselves into evidence on every hand, at every hour.  Often was passed a little cross, half buried in the sand, or the tail gate of a wagon served as head board for some ragged epitaph of some ragged man.

It was decided to cross the South Fork at the upper ford, so called.  Here was pause again for the Wingate train.  The shallow and fickle stream, fed by the June rise in the mountains, now offered a score of channels, all treacherous.  A long line of oxen, now wading and now swimming, dragging a long rope to which a chain was rigged—­the latter to pull the wagon forward when the animals got footing on ahead—­made a constant sight for hours at a time.  One wagon after another was snaked through rapidly as possible.  Once bogged down in a fast channel, the fluent sand so rapidly filled in the spokes that the settling wagon was held as though in a giant vise.  It was new country, new work for them all; but they were Americans of the frontier.