Their
kits were of the compactest, not a useless article or an unnecessary
pound, unless you counted the box of flower seeds that belonged to Joe,
who had heard that California, though a dry country, could be coaxed
into productiveness along the rivers.
Dr. Gillespie and his daughter were punctual. David's silver watch,
large as the circle of a cup and possessed of a tick so loud it
interrupted conversation, registered five minutes before seven, when
the doctor and his daughter appeared at the head of their caravan. Two
handsome figures, well mounted and clad with taste as well as
suitability, they looked as gallantly unfitted for the road as armored
knights in a modern battlefield. Good looks, physical delicacy, and
becoming clothes had as yet no recognized place on the trail. The
Gillespies were boldly and blithely bringing them, and unlike most
innovators, romance came with them. Nobody had gone out of
Independence with so confident and debonair an air. Now advancing
through a spattering of leaf shadows and sunspots, they seemed to the
young men to be issuing from the first pages of a story, and the
watchers secretly hoped that they would go riding on into the heart of
it with the white arch of the prairie schooner and the pricked ears of
the six mules as a movable background.
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