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The led buckskin moved fretfully and tugged on the lead rope, rousing the man from his abstraction. Distant strings of prairie schooners and ox-bows faded from his mind's eye and he way once more conscious of the red steer with the Three Bar brand that had stirred up the train of reflections. He turned for another glimpse of the distant sign as he headed the paint-horse along the road.
He lays one end of the yoke's beam on the ground, lifts the other end with his right hand, and, waving one of the ox-bows in his left, cries to the nigh ox, "Come under!" The "nigh" slowly obeys, bending its head low to accommodate the boy's stature, and permitting itself to be fastened by the ox-bow to the yoke.
A fire so bright and cheerful blazed on an enormous hearth in a sort of upper kitchen, as to render candles or torches unnecessary. Around it were seated six or seven hardy and athletic young men, some drawing coarse tools carefully through the curvatures of ox-bows, others scraping down the helves of axes, or perhaps fashioning sticks of birch into homely but convenient brooms.
These crippled ones were soon made sound in the puddle pen, a sod corral flooded with sufficient water to puddle the yellow clay into a six-inch layer of stiff, healing mud, then thrown out on the open range to fatten and grow strong. But transitions were swift and sweeping. Steel rails were crowding close behind the prairie schooners and the ox-bows.
"We have breakfast-caps." It was my turn to look bewildered. What had I to do with breakfast-caps? What connection was there between my question and his answer? What field was there for any further inquiry? "Have you ox-bows?" imagine a farmer to ask. "We have rainbows," says the shopman. "Have you cameo-pins?" inquires the elegant Mrs. Jenkins. "We have linchpins."
"We have breakfast-caps." It was my turn to look bewildered. What had I to do with breakfast-caps? What connection was there between my question and his answer? What field was there for any further inquiry? "Have you ox-bows?" imagine a farmer to ask. "We have rainbows," says the shopman. "Have you cameo-pins?" inquires the elegant Mrs. Jenkins. "We have linchpins."
It was so high that it had overflowed and stood among the trees on the lower levels. Only the higher stretches were dry. On the sheer banks where we landed we had to push the canoes for yards or rods through the branches of the submerged trees, hacking and hewing. There were occasional bays and ox-bows from which the current had shifted. In these the coarse marsh grass grew tall.
We have had stately, eroded hills, and broad, fertile bottoms, hemming us in all day, and marvelous ox-bows in the erratic stream.
Wagons were mended and loaded with provisions and tools, oxen shod, ox-bows renewed, guns put in order, bullets moulded, and the thousand details perfected of a migration so hazardous. They were busy, noisy, excited, happy days. At last, in the middle of April, the signs were seen to be right.
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