Mrs. Ranger made no reply, but being silenced was not being convinced.
"Be patient/' said Jean, aside. "I'll manage it."
Several pairs of great brown-eyed oxen, with which the children had become familiar in their days of logging about the sawmill, were easily trained for the long journey; but others, untamed and terrified, as if pre-sensing the trials awaiting them through untracked deserts, submitted to the yoke c«ily under the cruelest compulsion. New wagons, stanchly built and covered with white canvas hoods, stretched tightly over hickory bows, were ranged on the lawn, under the naked, creaking branches of the big elm-tree. Provisions, resembling in quantity the supplies for a small army, were carted to the front veranda, awaiting shipment down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to St. Louis, to be reshipped up the Missouri to the final point of loading into wagons for crossing the Great American Desert, as the Great Plains were then known.
Visitors, including friends and relatives from far and near, came to the dismantled house in great relays, and the business of Squire Ranger's office as justice of the peace increased a dozen fold. All this commotion involved increasing labor for Mrs. Ranger, who faded visibly as she silently counted the intervening days before the hour of final separation from her sorrowing parents. If the Squire suffered at the thought of parting with anybody, he made no sign except to complain of a "pesky cold "that made his eyes water, which he attributed to the "beastly climate."
"The spirit of adventure that inspires my husband to emigrate does not permit him to foresee danger," was Mrs. Ranger's ever-ready reply to the numerous prophets of evil who came to condole, but got only their labor for their pains. "I will not try to interfere with his plans. I started out as a bride to walk the road of life beside him, and I mean to do as I agreed."
