The most complacent member of the company was Jethro Mix. Shagbark and Alden had taken pains to tell of his exploit, and if the fellow had been capable of blushing, he would have turned crimson, but that being beyond his power, he affected to make light of it all. “Pshaw! dat ain’t nuffin,” he said when the wife of Abner Fleming complimented him; “I ’spects to do de same thing a good many more times afore we gits across de plains; de fac’ is, I’m on to dem Injins and dey’ll find it out; when dey wokes up Jethro Mix dey wokes up de wrong passenger and dere’s gwine to be trouble in de land.” “I never heard of firing at a spot where an enemy is not supposed to be,” ventured Richard Marvin, another member of the company, and somewhat of a wag. “Who ’sposed he warn’t dere?” demanded Jethro. “I knowed he was dere ’cause he wasn’t dere――so I aimed at de spot where he wasn’t ’cause I knowed he was dere. Doan’ you see?” “I’m glad to have so clear an explanation,” gravely replied the gentleman; “but it seems to me there must have been a good deal of guesswork, for there was no way by which you could know of a certainty which way――the right or the left――he had moved.” “No guesswork ’bout it,” loftily remarked Jethro. “Could you see him as he lay in the grass?” “Ob course not.” “You certainly couldn’t _hear_ him.” “Ob course I couldn’t; who said I could?” “Then how could you know where he really was?” “I’m ’sprised at your discomfuseness, Mr. Marvin; de way I knowed whar he was, was dat I knowed it; I _felt_ he had flopped ober to de left, so I knowed jes’ de p’int to aim at; dat’s de skience ob de hull bus’ness.” “I haven’t anything more to say, Jethro; you’re a wonder; I see Shagbark is getting ready to move on again and needs us.” CHAPTER IX OLD ACQUAINTANCES The next look we take of the train under the guidance of Shagbark, the veteran of the plains, is several weeks after the incidents just described. The route which they in common with thousands of emigrants, including the Pony Express riders, followed, led due west up the Kearny valley to Julesburg, a distance of two hundred miles. Here it crossed the South Platte, trended northwest to old Fort Laramie, passed thence over the foothills at the foot of the Rockies to South Pass, and by way of Fort Bridger to Salt Lake. You must bear several facts in mind. Colorado at the time of which I am writing had not yet been formed into a Territory, nor had Wyoming. The oldest white settlement in the latter section was Fort Laramie――since abandoned――which was made a trading post in 1834, rebuilt by the American Fur Company two years later, and sold to the United States and garrisoned as a fort in 1849.