These were the pleasant places. Where
the rocks crowded close about the stream the road left it and sought
the plain again, splinding away into the arid desolation. The wheels
ground over myriads of crickets that caked in the loose soil. There
was nothing to break the eye-sweep but the cones of rusted buttes, the
nearer ones showing every crease and shadow thread, the farther
floating detached in the faint, opal shimmer of the mirage.
One afternoon, in a deep-grassed meadow they came upon an encamped
train outflung on the stream bank in wearied disarray. It was from
Ohio, bound for California, and Glen and Bella decided to join it.
This was what the doctor's party had been hoping for, as the slow pace
of the McMurdo oxen held them back. Bella was well and the doctor
could conscientiously leave her. It was time to part.
Early in the morning the two trains rolled out under a heavy drizzle.
Rain fell within the wagons even as it did without, Susan weeping among
the sacks behind Daddy John and Bella with her children whimpering
against her sides, stopping in her knitting to wipe away her tears with
the long strip of stocking leg.
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