"Where's Rollin?"
"In your mother's wagon. We have rigged him up a swinging bed, and Mrs. Benson will see that he wants for nothing. You are to ride here, in the big wagon, with
me.
it
You have no room for me in here. You and I, and Mary and Jean, and Marjorie and Bobbie, and Sadie and the baby and Sally, and the three little O'Dowds, and Susannah and George Washington can't all ride and sleep in this narrow space. We'd offend the open-air ordinances of heaven."
"It is all arranged, my dear; don't worry. Our overflow has gone to another wagon. We'll have plenty of
room."
"But Mr. Bums?"
"Your good mother has taken entire charge of hhn. She is behaving as beautifully in this crisis as you are, my dear."
XV CHOLERA RAGES
HOLERA is epidemic everywhere along the road," wrote Jean in her diary on the 8th of June. "Our company is not yet attacked, but our dear mother is seriously alarmed. She counts all the graves we pass during the day, and sums them up at night for us to think about. Some days there is a formidable aggregate."
The fame of Mrs. McAlpin's skill as a physician and surgeon, and of Captain Ranger's marvellous medicinechest, grew rapidly in the front and rear of the Ranger train as the epidemic spread.
"It is lamentable to note the lack of forethought in
many people," Captain Ranger would say, as he dealt out
