“Nope. A couple of fellows and I started with our own pack outfit, but the Injuns jumped us on the Little Blue, and we ran into snow, and we mighty nigh never got through.” “What you going to do now, Billy?” “Going to school a while, I reckon.” And so he did. He also told Davy his adventures. He had been assistant wagon master with Buck Bomer from Leavenworth northwest to Fort Laramie, and from Laramie south sixty miles to new Fort Walbach. After that he had gone trapping, but hadn’t caught much. In December he had started home mule-back with two other “men.” The Indians had chased them in central Kansas, and they had tried to sleep in a cave until they found that it was strewn with skeletons; and a snowstorm had buffeted them, but at last they had reached Leavenworth. This seemed considerable for a boy of fourteen to have done. Billy brought home his wages, as usual, for his mother, and now he settled down to school again. Davy was very glad to have him back. Once in a while he and Billy rode into Leavenworth on errands. As the winter wore away rumors of the Pike’s Peak region and the Cherry Creek gold diggings in it grew more and more numerous. A few travellers from that western border of Kansas (for Kansas Territory extended clear to the Rocky Mountains) arrived in Leavenworth and declared that things out in the Pike’s Peak region were booming. Two towns, Auraria and Denver, had been founded on Cherry Creek; and from the sands gold was being washed out. It was claimed that the mines would equal those of California――and they were much nearer to the States. Soon after Billy had come home he and Davy met Mr. Baxter on the street in Leavenworth. Mr. Baxter looked fine, and shook hands heartily with them. “What are you doing for yourselves?” he asked. “Going to school. What are you doing?” “Oh, visiting ’round, waiting for the trail to open.” “The green grass will sure look good,” quoth Billy, wisely. “What are you going to do, Reverend? Bull whack?” “No. I think I’ll strike out for the new Cherry Creek diggings.” “Thought you didn’t count much on those stories,” reminded Davy. “I didn’t, but I do now. Just got back from Omaha. Boys, I saw six quills full of gold there from the Pike’s Peak country. Everybody up at Omaha is wild about it. They’re all going. The newspapers from my home town in Massachusetts are full of gold stories. The whole East is excited. By spring you’ll see the biggest crowd starting on the Overland Trail since the days of Forty-nine and the California boom. Leavenworth won’t be big enough to hold the people outfitting here.” “Hurrah for Cherry Creek, then!” cried Billy. “Reckon we’ll have to go, Davy!” “I’ll go,” agreed Davy eagerly. “We’ll all go,” said Mr. Baxter. “Everybody’ll go.” A lean, sallow, unshaven man in jeans and flannel shirt and boots and a huge muffler around his neck and a round fur cap on his head had been standing near. He nodded. “Right you are, pards,” he put in. “That’s the place.”