We did not discuss the matter
of her going with me--I think we both took that for granted. She stood
on a little knoll while I was making ready to start, gazing westward,
and when the sound of cracking whips and the shouts of teamsters told of
the approach of movers from the East, even though we were some distance
off the trail, she crept into the wagon so as to be out of sight. She
had eaten little, and seemed weak and spent; and when we started, I
arranged the bed in the wagon for her to lie upon, just as I had done
for Doctor Bliven's woman, and she seemed to hide rather than anything
else as she crept into it. So on we went, the wagon jolting roughly at
times, and at times running smoothly enough as we reached dry roads worn
smooth by travel.
Sometimes as I looked back, I could see her face with the eyes fixed
upon me questioningly; and then she would ask me if I could see any one
coming toward us on the road ahead.
"Nobody," I would say; or, "A covered wagon going the wrong way," or
whatever I saw. "Don't be afraid," I would add; "stand on your rights.
This is a free country. You've got the right to go east or west with any
one you choose, and nobody can say anything against it. And you've got a
friend now, you know."
"Is anybody in sight?" she asked again, after a long silence.
I looked far ahead from the top of a swell in the prairie and then back.
I told her that there was no one ahead so far as I could see except
teams that we could not overtake, and nobody back of us but outfits even
slower than mine.
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