The teamsters strode sturdily, cracking their whips, shouting to their teams and to one another, and occasionally singing. One and all wore neither coat nor vest, but heavy flannel shirt of red or blue, and a silk or cotton handkerchief about the neck. Their shirts were tucked into coarse trousers, and the trousers into high, stout cowhide boots. On their heads were the regular broad-brimmed, flat-crowned felt hats that plains travellers liked best. About the waists of the most of the men were strapped one or two big Colt’s revolvers, and through the belt was thrust a butcher-knife. They all had a gun somewhere, either belted on or else as a yager or a rifle stowed handily in the wagon. And every teamster carried, trailing or coiled, his long-lashed whip. The train was, as Charley remarked roundly to Dave, “a crack outfit.” “We’ve got some of the top-notcher teams and whackers of the whole Russell, Majors & Waddell concern,” he said. “There’s not a better bull-whip slinger or a better six yoke of bulls on the trail than right here with this lead wagon. Of course, I suppose we’ve some crooked sticks, like every train has; but they’ve got to behave themselves while I’m boss.” The train was bound for Denver by the regular Overland Trail up the Platte River, through central Nebraska. The Government road from Leavenworth, to strike the main trail, was that travelled road which crossed the Salt Creek Valley; Davy seized the chance to dart aside for a moment and say “how-de-do” to Mother Cody and the girls. He gave them what word he could of Billy, but they gave him none, for they had not had time to hear from Billy since he had reached the diggings. The bull train toiled on over the hill and out of the valley. Now it was fairly launched upon its day-by-day journey of 700 miles. It did not travel alone. The trail before and behind was alive with other outfits, chiefly emigrants, likewise bound for the “Peak,” and Charley asserted that when the main trail was entered, at Fort Kearney, where the travel from Omaha and St. Joe and Nebraska City joined with the travel from Leavenworth, there’d scarcely be room to camp! “How long will we be on the road, do you think?” asked Dave. “Leavenworth to Denver? About fifty days if we have reasonable luck. The trail’s so crowded and dusty and fodder’s so scarce I don’t reckon we’ll average more than twelve miles a day. We’re hauling seventy hundred pounds in some of those wagons. But I have averaged fifteen miles a day; and travelling empty a smart bull train headed for home can make twenty.” It now was past midsummer; it would be fall when the train reached the mountains, and winter before it got home again. XV FREIGHTING ACROSS THE PLAINS “Do you know,” drawled Charley Martin, lazily, after supper this evening, “there’s a heap of money wrapped up in one of these bull outfits?”