"Did he?" she queried with the raised brows of innocent surprise. "Why
didn't he say so?"
"Too bashful!"
"He couldn't expect me to take them unless he offered them."
"I should think you'd have guessed it."
She laughed at this, dropping her sewing and looking at the old man
with eyes almost shut.
"Oh, Daddy John," she gurgled. "How clever you are!"
An hour later they began the crossing. The ford of the Vermilion was
one of the most difficult between the Kaw and the Platte Valley. After
threading the swift, brown current, the trail zigzagged up a clay bank,
channeled into deep ruts by the spring's fleet of prairie schooners.
It would be a hard pull to get the doctor's wagon up and David rode
over with Bess and Ben to double up with the mules. It was late
afternoon and the bottom lay below the sunshine steeped in a still
transparent light, where every tint had its own pure value. The air
was growing cool after a noon of blistering heat and from an unseen
backwater frogs had already begun a hoarse, tentative chanting.
The big wagon had already crossed when David on Bess, with Ben at the
end of a trail rope, started into the stream.
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