The trains of wagons were unbroken, one behind the
other, straight to the sunset. A cloud of dust moved with them, showed
their coming far away as they wheeled downward at Grand Island, hid
their departure as they doubled up for the fording of the Platte. All
the faces were set westward, all the eyes were strained to that distant
goal where the rivers flowed over golden beds and the flakes lay yellow
in the prospector's pan.
The Indians watched them, cold at the heart, for the people in the
Great Father's Country were numerous as the sands of the sea, terrible
as an army with banners.
CHAPTER II
The days were very hot. Brilliant, dewless mornings, blinding middays,
afternoons held breathless in the remorseless torrent of light. The
caravan crawled along the river's edge at a footspace, the early
shadows shooting far ahead of it, then dwindling to a blot beneath each
moving body, then slanting out behind. There was speech in the morning
which died as the day advanced, all thought sinking into torpor in the
monotonous glare. In the late afternoon the sun, slipping down the
sky, peered through each wagon's puckered canvas opening smiting the
drivers into lethargy.
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