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CHAPTER ONE

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ONE bright June day in 1856 the driver of a covered wagon halted on the outskirts of Independence, Missouri. All spring he had traveled with wife and child to reach this frontier post. They were tired and needed a rest before undertaking the long overland journey westward. So he chose for camp a shady spot in a grove where a brook ran deep and still under grassy banks.

This sturdy, middle-aged teamster answered to the name of Jim Belmet. He hailed from Illinois and, like many of his kind, came of pioneer stock. The West called irresistibly.

There were other camps along the stream. Columns of blue smoke curled upward. The ring of ax on hard wood resounded through the grove. Covered wagons lumbered along the dusty road toward the post.

"Mary, what'll you need from town?" asked Jim, when he had finished the necessary labors around camp.

His wife was a robust, comely woman, just then active round the camp fire.

"Ham or bacon. Bread or flour. Coffee an' sugar," she replied.

"Hey, Clint!" he called to his son. "Want to go in town with me?"

"Naw," refused the boy, a blond stripling of twelve years. He had a freckled face, clear, steady, gray eyes, and an intent and quiet manner beyond his age. He was barefooted, and on the moment appeared to be trimming a long slender willow pole.

"You'd rather fish, hey?" inquired the father.

"Betcha I would," returned Clint.

Jim turned to his wife with a gleam of humor on his weatherbeaten face. "Wal, what you make of that lad? Here we've been travelin' for months an' at last we've got to Independence. Why, this here town will be like a circus! An' Clint would rather fish!"

"Reckon Clint takes after my father, who was a great hunter an' fisher," she said. "It's just as well, considerin' where we're goin'."

Clint thereupon was left to his own devices. Evidently he well knew what he was about, for he soon had his fishing rig ready. Next he spaded up the damp ground near the water, where he found worms for bait.

"Mom, you'd like some fish for supper?" he called.

"Reckon I would, sonny. But surely there's no fish in that ditch."

"Betcha. You'll see." Whereupon Clint glided under the shady trees along the banks of the still stream. He had not made a vain guess. Few indeed had been the campers who had not been of the same mind as his mother, for Clint found little indication that anyone had angled along this bank. From every hole he pulled out a fat golden sunfish or a wiggling catfish.

As he approached the next camp he espied a little girl sitting on the bank. She had pretty brown hair, rather curly. Her face was bent over her lap, which appeared to be full of clover. Clint was shy about girls. His first impulse was to go back the way he had come; however, the urge of fishing was stronger and he went on.

Now it chanced that the hole almost under the girl's bare feet was the best Clint had found. Here he caught the biggest sunfish. Then, one after another, he captured seven more. Thereafter bites began to slacken. Looking ahead, he saw where horses had been in the water, spoiling it for further fishing. He strung the sunfish on his forked willow stick.

"How do!" spoke up the little girl, shyly.

Clint gave her a civil reply. She appeared to be younger than he, which fact mitigated his embarrassment.

"I never saw anyone who could catch fish like you," she exclaimed, admiringly.

Clint did not realize it, but that was probably the only speech which could have detained him. More, it caused him to look at her. Her eyes were dark and bright, most disconcerting to look into. But something compelled him to.

"Me? Aw, I'm not so good," he replied, and suddenly conscious that he was awkwardly twisting his body, he sat down upon the grass. Strangely, too, he felt loath to leave.

"Oh, you must be!" she went on, round-eyed and earnest. "I heard my daddy say there wasn't any fish in this river."

"Well, there are, only it ain't a river...Do you like fish?"

"To eat? Yes, I do. I'm so sick of greasy fat bacon."

"All right. I'll clean a couple of these sunfish for you," offered Clint, and bounding down to the water he whipped out his knife, and made the very best job he could of dressing his largest two sunfish. These he impaled on a fork of willow and climbed back up the bank. She had leaned over on hands and knees to watch him, and her look stirred something unaccountable in him.

"There now. You tell your mother, or whoever's your cook, to salt 'em, an' fry quick without any flour or meal."

Clint did not catch her murmured thanks, and he was divided between a hope she would go and a fear that she might not stay. But she sat back and gazed at him in the friendliest way.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Clint Belmet."

She repeated it and giggled. "Funny name, but it's prettier 'n mine."

"What's yourn?"

"May Bell."

"Why, that's an orful pretty name!"

"It's so silly...Have you a brother or sister?"

"No. There's just me an' paw an' mom."

"Just like me...Isn't it dreadful?...My mother says I'm spoiled. Are you?"

"I reckon paw thinks so. Where you from?"

"Ohio. We lived on a farm."

"We did, too, back in Illinois. I didn't like it. But I sure like this travelin' west. Don't you?"

May mused over that seriously. "Sometimes I get homesick."

"Huh! What'd you do back home?"

"I went to school. Ever since I was five. I liked that...Did you go to school?"

"Four years. Paw says he'll betcha it's all I'll ever get. I'll be darned glad."

"Where's your paw takin' you?"

"West. He doesn't know where."

"My daddy says the same thing. Don't you think they're a—a little crazy?"

"Mom says paw is plumb out of his head."

"I—I wish we was travelin' west together," said May, boldly.

"It'd be—nice," replied Clint, confronted with the most amazing circumstance of his life.

Just at that moment Clint heard his mother calling, and as he arose, another call, evidently for May, came from the adjoining camp. She got up and gingerly lifted the fish on the willow branch. Clint wanted to say something, but he did not know what.

"I'll tell my daddy if—if you'll tell yours," May said, eagerly.

"Tell—what?" stammered Clint.

"That me an' you we want to travel west together. Ride on the front seat sometimes together. Won't it be lovely?...Will you tell your daddy?"

"Sure," gulped Clint, appalled at the strangeness of the truth this little girl had made him see. Then they separated, and she was not alone in looking back.

Clint found his father had returned from town, so excited about something that he scarcely noticed the fish Clint proudly exhibited. His mother listened seriously while she went: on preparing supper. Clint took his fish down to the brook and cleaned them, pondering over what might have happened. He guessed it had only to do with the further journey west. And returning to the camp fire, where he quietly helped his mother, Clint soon learned that they were to join one of the great freighting caravans for which Independence was famous on the frontier.

"Reckon it'll be safer in a big wagon-train than a little one," was the only comment Clint's mother made.

After supper Clint was both thrilled and mortified to espy the little girl, May, coming into camp with a tall man. It happened that Clint was helping his mother wash the cooking utensils; he did not, however, choose to desist just because of the company. May smiled brightly and nodded mysteriously while the man with her addressed Clint's father.

"My name's Bell—Sam Bell, from Ohio," he announced.

"Howdy! Mine's Jim Belmet. Hail from Illinois."

"This's my little girl, May. She met your boy today by the brook. An' I've come over to have a confab with you."

"Sure glad to meet you an' the little lady," responded Jim, warmly. "An' here's my wife an' my boy Clint."

After a few more exchanges Bell came out frankly with the object of his visit.

"Independence was about as far as my figgerin' went," he said. "Course I knew I was goin' farther west. But how an' when I didn't calculate much on. Now I'm here an' I've got to decide."

"Wal, I was just in your fix when I got here," replied Belmet. "It didn't take me long, though. I'm goin' to haul freight over the Santa Fé trail."

"Freight? You mean all kinds of supplies needed at the posts an' forts overland?"

"Sure. I'm goin' to haul for the Tillt Company. They have big warehouses here, where you can buy hosses, oxen, wagons, guns, tobacco, leather goods, all kinds of grub—in fact, everythin' from a paper of pins to a bag of candy. Tillt has stores an' agents all along the old trail from Independence to Santa Fé."

"Freighter, eh? What kind of a business is it?"

"Good pay. I aim to take wages while I look for a place to settle down on out West."

"Sensible idea, 'pears to me," returned Bell, thoughtfully. "How much capital does a man need?"

"Not much, considerin'. Tomorrow I'm buyin' one of them big freight wagons an' two teams. You can buy oxen cheaper."

"What'll you do with the outfit you came in?" asked Bell, pointing to the covered wagon.

"Wal, take it along, I reckon. Mary can drive, an' Clint here is no slouch with hosses."

"Belmet, I guess I'll do the same thing," returned Bell, with enthusiasm. "How many's goin'?"

"Seventy-five so far, Tillt's agent told me. The more the merrier—or safer, I should say. Injuns, you know, all the way across. Our caravan will be under Captain Couch. He's a guide an' scout. Reckon there'll be twice seventy-five wagons when we start...Bell, you don't want to start across the plains alone. Better throw in with us."

"Oh, daddy, please go with them!" implored little May.

"Well, daughter, if you feel that way, why don't you ask, yourself?" queried Bell, curiously and kindly.

"May we—we go with you?" shyly asked the child of Belmet.

"Why, bless my heart! We're only too glad. Clint, tell this young lady you'll be delighted."

But Clint was tongue-tied.

"It's settled, then," rejoined Bell, as if relieved. "Suppose you all come over to my camp an' meet my wife."

On the way across the grove Clint and May fell behind and gravitated toward each other. He felt her looking up at him.

"I like your daddy an' mamma. An' I hope you'll like mine," she said.

"Course I will—I do."

"I forgot...How old are you?"

"Goin' on thirteen."

"Oh, you're so much older. I'm only ten. But you don't mind, do you?"

"What—mind what?"

"Me bein' so young an'—an' little?"

"Aw, that's all right."

"An' you'll let me set on the front seat with you—sometimes—when you're drivin'?"

"Betcha I will."

"Oh, lovely!" She clapped her hands in glee. "We'll ride an' ride. I won't be lonesome no more. We'll look an' look way, way over the grass—so flat an' far. Won't we?"

"Reckon there won't be nothin' to do but look," replied Clint, with a superior air.

"But, oh, when the Injuns come! They will, won't they?"

"Paw laughs an' says no. But mom shakes her head...Yes, the Injuns will come."

"Oooooo!...But I'll not be afraid, ridin' with you," she said, and slipped a cool little hand in his.