The old man who sat by the gate at Fort Laramie, twisting a curl around his finger, saw the plain clearing now, as the great train swung out and up the river trail.  He perhaps knew that Jim Bridger, with his own freight wagons, going light and fast with mules, was on west, ahead of the main caravan.  But he did not know the news Jim Bridger carried, the same news that Carson was carrying east.  The three old mountain men, for a few hours meeting after years, now were passing far apart, never to meet again.  Their chance encountering meant much to hundreds of men and women then on the road to Oregon; to untold thousands yet to come.

As for one Samuel Woodhull, late column captain, it was to be admitted that for some time he had been conscious of certain buffetings of fate.  But as all thoroughbred animals are thin-skinned, so are all the short-bred pachydermatous, whereby they endure and mayhap arrive at the manger well as the next.  True, even Woodhull’s vanity and self-content had everything asked of them in view of his late series of mishaps; but by now he had somewhat chirked up under rest and good food, and was once more the dandy and hail fellow.  He felt assured that very presently bygones would be bygones.  Moreover—­so he reasoned—­if he, Sam Woodhull, won the spoils, what matter who had won any sort of victory?  He knew, as all these others knew and as all the world knows, that a beautiful woman is above all things spolia opima of war.  Well, in ten days he was to marry Molly Wingate, the most beautiful woman of the train and the belle of more than one community.  Could he not afford to laugh best, in spite of all events, even if some of them had not been to his own liking?

But the girl’s open indifference was least of all to his liking.  It enraged his vain, choleric nature to its inner core.  Already he planned dominance; but willing to wait and to endure for ten days, meantime he employed innocence, reticence, dignity, attentiveness, so that he seemed a suitor misunderstood, misrepresented, unjustly used—­to whose patient soul none the less presently must arrive justice and exoneration, after which all would be happier even than a marriage bell.  After the wedding bells he, Samuel Woodhull, would show who was master.

Possessed once more of horse, arms and personal equipment, and having told his own story of persecution to good effect throughout the train, Woodhull had been allowed to resume a nominal command over a part of the Wingate wagons.  The real control lay in the triumvirate who once had usurped power, and who might do so again.

Wingate himself really had not much more than nominal control of the general company, although he continued to give what Caleb Price called the easy orders.  His wagons, now largely changed to ox transport, still traveled at the head of the train, Molly continuing to drive her own light wagon and Jed remaining on the cow column.

The advance hardly had left Fort Laramie hidden by the rolling ridges before Woodhull rode up to Molly’s wagon and made excuse to pass his horse to a boy while he himself climbed up on the seat with his fiancee.