succeeded in bringing their wagons clear through. Most of the emigrants had left all but the barest necessities at the Methodist mission in The Dalles to come down the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver in hurriedly-made skiffs, Indian canoes, or bateaux furnished by the Hudson Bay Company. At least they had a yoke of oxen, though they were so jaded they would not be fit for work until the grass grew strong in the spring.
There was nothing to do but carry on as best she might, a day at a time, and here chance offered her a few idle moments and there was healing quiet to be enjoyed to the utmost. She fairly luxuriated in the moment, slipping off the slatted cotton sunbonnet, so that the little breeze found the curly tendrils of hair that escaped in spite of vigilance from her smoothly-parted-in-the-middle-and-tightly-coiled-at-the-nape-of-the-neck brown hair.
Her brown linsey-woolsey dress with its tight-fitting many-gored waist and long full skirt was much the worse for wear, frayed to ragged fringe at the hem and very much soiled. She was painfully conscious that she was not neat and clean, and that neither were the contents of the wagon in which two thousand miles of hard, slow travel had been accomplished.
Although she was alone, she suddenly stooped so that her long skirt covered her shoes, shaking her head sadly. Those shoes were a sorry sight. Once they had been strong cowhide, securely laced, but now, what was left of the soles was tied to the uppers with strips of buckskin. Large holes revealed frayed
