These facts Banion did not hesitate to make plain to all his men; but, descendants of pioneers, with blood of the wilderness in their veins, and each tempted by adventure as much as by gain, they laughed long and loud at the thought of danger from all the Indians of the Rockies.  Had they not beaten the Sioux?  Could they not in turn humble the pride of any other tribe?  Had not their fathers worked with rifle lashed to the plow beam?  Indians?  Let them come!

Founding his own future on this resolute spirit of his men, Banion next looked to the order of his own personal affairs.  He found prices so high at Fort Laramie, and the stock of all manner of goods so low, that he felt it needless to carry his own trading wagons all the way to Oregon, when a profit of 400 per cent lay ready not a third of the way across and less the further risk and cost.  He accordingly cut down his own stocks to one wagon, and sold off wagons and oxen as well, until he found himself possessed of considerably more funds than when he had started out.

He really cared little for these matters.  What need had he for a fortune or a future now?  He was poorer than any jeans-clad ox driver with a sunbonnet on the seat beside him and tow-headed children on the flour and bacon sacks, with small belongings beyond the plow lashed at the tail gate, the ax leaning in the front corner of the box and the rifle swinging in its loops at the wagon bows.  They were all beginning life again.  He was done with it.

The entire caravan now had passed in turn the Prairies and the Plains.  In the vestibule of the mountains they had arrived in the most splendid out-of-doors country the world has ever offered.  The climate was superb, the scenery was a constant succession of changing beauties new to the eyes of all.  Game was at hand in such lavish abundance as none of them had dreamed possible.  The buffalo ranged always within touch, great bands of elk now appeared, antelope always were in sight.  The streams abounded in noble game fish, and the lesser life of the open was threaded across continually by the presence of the great predatory animals—­the grizzly, the gray wolf, even an occasional mountain lion.  The guarding of the cattle herds now required continual exertion, and if any weak or crippled draft animal fell out its bones were clean within the hour.  The feeling of the wilderness now was distinct enough for the most adventurous.  They fed fat, and daily grew more like savages in look and practice.

Wingate’s wagons kept well apace with the average schedule of a dozen miles a day, at times spurting to fifteen or twenty miles, and made the leap over the heights of land between the North Platte and the Sweetwater, which latter stream, often winding among defiles as well as pleasant meadows, was to lead them to the summit of the Rockies at the South Pass, beyond which they set foot on the soil of Oregon, reaching thence to the Pacific.  Before them now lay the entry mark of the Sweetwater Valley, that strange oblong upthrust of rock, rising high above the surrounding plain, known for two thousand miles as Independence Rock.