"I can"t. My mother needs me."
"All right. Sorry. We need a cook. Duke! What are you stopping for?
Gwan! Hump along, Jenny!" And to creak of top and jangle of fry-pan and tin plates and cups, and water bucket clashing with tar pot, the Pike"s Peak Limited pressed on.
"We"ll see you later, though," promised George, gazing after wistfully.
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye, George."
All down the valley people called and waved good-bye, for the word that the "Richards boys" were going to Pike"s Peak had traveled ahead. And many a joke was leveled at Duke and Jenny and the two-wheeled cart bearing its Pike"s Peak sign. But who cared? Everybody seemed bent upon following as soon as possible; and as Harry remarked: "We"re doing instead of talking!"
Manhattan town was a day and a half, at walking gait.
"No ranch house for us tonight," quoth Harry. "We"ll start right in making our own camp. And we"ll have to start in with a system, too.
First we"ll noon, for an hour, to rest the animals--not to mention ourselves. My feet are about one hundred and ten degrees hot, already.
And we"ll make camp every evening at six o"clock. If we don"t travel by system we"ll wear out. There"s nothing like regularity."
So they nooned beside a creek; had lunch and let Duke and Jenny drink and graze. That evening, promptly, they camped, near water. Harry had elected to do the cooking and dish-washing, Terry was to forage for fuel and tend to the animals.
Jenny was staked out for fear that she would take the notion to amble back to the ranch. Duke, who appeared to think much more of her than she did of him, could be depended upon to stay wherever she stayed. Harry boiled coffee, and fried bacon, and there was the batch of bread that Mother Richards had baked for the first stages of the journey.
When everything had been tidied up and the camp was ship-shape, in the dusk they "bedded down," each to his coverings. Whew, but it felt good to shed those hot boots! They also removed their trousers, and used them and their coats for pillows.
Harry sighed with luxury.
"First camp--twelve miles from home," he said.
"Wonder how many camps we"ll make before we get there," proposed Terry.
"Some forty, I reckon," murmured Harry. "Six hundred miles at an average of fifteen miles a day--and there you are. But we have to make only one camp at a time."
"h.e.l.lo!" cried a voice, through the dusk.
Shep growled, where he was curled, but instantly flopped his tail, and with a quick look in the direction of the voice, Harry called, gladly:
"h.e.l.lo yourself. Come in."
"h.e.l.lo, Sol," welcomed Terry.
They sat up in their blankets. A horseman approached along the back trail, and halted. He was a lean, well-built man, with long hair and full beard, and sat erect upon a small but active horse. He wore a peaked, silver-bound sombrero or Mexican hat, a black velvet Mexican jacket half revealed under a gaily striped blanket over his shoulders, tight black velvet trousers slashed with a white strip, and on his heels jingling spurs. The saddle was enormous, and the bridle jingly and silver-mounted. But he was no Mexican; he was Sol Judy, the American horse-trader, who had been in California and on the plains, and was counted as almost the very first friend made by Terry and his mother when they had started in to "ranch it," a year ago, while waiting for Mr. Richards to come home. And a very good friend Sol Judy had remained.
"How"s the Pike"s Peak Limited by this time?" he queried, with a smile, as he sat looking down. "On the way to the elephant, are you, and as snug as a bug in a rug?"
""Light, "light," bade Harry. "Have a cup of coffee, Sol. Wait till I put on my pants."
"No, no; thank you," declined Sol. "I"ve eaten and I"m going on through." It seemed as though Sol was always bound somewhere else. "I pa.s.sed the ranch and stopped off a minute, and they told me you"d gone.
So I knew I"d probably catch you. I"m on my way, myself."
"To the mines, Sol?"
"Yes, sir-ee. Just got back; been in Leavenworth a short spell, and am headed west again, for more of the elephant."
"What elephant?"
Sol laughed.
"The big show. "Seeing the elephant," they call it, now, when they set out for the Pike"s Peak diggin"s--because there are folks who don"t believe there is any such critter."
"Did you see him, Sol?"
"Well, you know we"ve seen a goose-quill or two containing a few freckles from his hide."
"What trail"s the best?" queried Harry.
"I went out by the Santy Fee Trail and came back by the Platte government trail. But those are too long for you. I hear tell a lot of people are going to try the trail straight west, up the Smoky Hill. If I were you, though, I wouldn"t tackle that. The water peters out. You"d do better to cut northwest from Riley or Junction City, over the divide between the Solomon and the Republican, and strike the Republican. Jones and Russell, the Leavenworth freighters, are going to put on a line of stages by that route, and they know what they"re about. They"ve surveyed a route already, and I shouldn"t wonder if you"d find some of their stakes. Anyway, the stages"ll overtake you, and then you"ll have their tracks and stations. On the divide you"ll keep to the high ground and head the creeks and save a lot of trouble. Always travel high; that"s my notion. The fellows that try to follow the brush river-bottoms are the ones who get stuck. You may have to make one or two dry marches, but you can keep your water cask full."
"What"s doing out at the mines, Sol?"
"Doing? There were about two hundred people there when I left. They"d had a nice mild winter; only one cold snap at Christmas. They"re all collected at Cherry Creek; they"ve started two towns opposite each other, near where the creek joins the Platte. The one on the west side the creek they"ve called Auraria; the one on the east side was St.
Charles for a time, but now it"s named Denver, after Governor Denver of Kansas Territory. Auraria"s the bigger, to date. What it"ll be in a month or two, can"t tell. That"s where they"re all living, anyhow: in Auraria and Denver. S"pose you"ve read in the papers that last fall they held a meeting and set off the Pike"s Peak country as "Arapahoe County"
of Kansas, elected a delegate to the Kansas legislature, and another to go to Washington and get the government to let "em be organized as a new separate Territory. He hasn"t done much, though. Congress won"t listen to him. It"s all too sudden. Proof of the elephant hadn"t reached there yet."
"Are they digging lots of gold, Sol?" asked Terry, eagerly.
"You could put all the gold I saw in two hands," declared Sol. "It"s mostly color, and flake gold washed from the creeks. They haven"t got down to real mining, and some of the people who counted on an easy time at getting rich quick are plumb disgusted. What"s been done since I left I can"t say. But the gold"s in the mountains, and it"ll take work to dig it out."
"How far are the mountains from the towns? How far"s Pike"s Peak, Sol?"
demanded Terry.
"The real mountains are about forty miles, I judge; and that Pike"s Peak we"re all hearing of is near a hundred. "Cherry Creek" diggin"s is a heap better name for the place than "Pike"s Peak." Pike"s Peak is away down south and there aren"t any mines there, yet. Well, how"s your outfit behaving? Does the mule pull with the buffalo?"
"First-rate," answered Harry. "They"re used to each other."
"That"s good. Usually a mule"s got no love for a buffalo. You want to watch out when you get into the buffalo country or you"ll have trouble, sure, with one or the other of your critters. And I"d advise you to peg along as fast as you can and keep ahead of the crowd or there won"t be a piece of fuel left as large as a match, to cook with."
"Jiminy! That sounds like a rush," exclaimed Harry. "Then what the papers say is true--about twenty-five thousand people."
"Twenty-five thousand!" laughed Sol. "I"ve been at Leavenworth, and Kansas City too, and every steamer from the south is loaded to the stacks. You can"t see the steamers for the people! Those two cities are regular camps--streets jammed, merchants selling tons of supplies, wagons and critters hardly to be bought for love or money, and the country around white with wagons and tents of folks making ready--waiting for a start. Same way up at Council Bluffs, where the crossing is from Iowa into Nebraska to strike the Platte River Trail. In a month the Platte Trail will be so thick you can walk clear from the Missouri to the mountains on the tops of the prairie schooners. So you do well to peg along early. The rush is begun." Sol reined up his horse, preparing to leave. "Good luck to you, boys. I"ll see you at the mines."
"We"ve got one waiting for us, maybe, you know, Sol," reminded Terry.
"And--"
"All right," answered Harry. "We"ll see you in the land of the elephant, anyway. So long."
And Sol galloped south, into the darkness.