"The boys have been having a lesson in natural history, Charlie," said Mr. Howell to his brother-in-law, as they returned with him to camp, loaded with firewood; Sandy, boy-like, dragging the dead blow-snake after him. CHAPTER V. TIDINGS FROM THE FRONT. Supper was over, a camp-fire built (for the emigrants did their cooking by a small camp-stove, and sat by the light of a fire on the ground), when out of the darkness came sounds of advancing teams. Oscar was playing his violin, trying to pick out a tune for the better singing of Whittier's song of the Kansas Emigrants. His father raised his hand to command silence. "That's a Yankee teamster, I'll be bound," he said, as the "Woh-hysh! Woh-haw!" of the coming party fell on his ear. "No Missourian ever talks to his cattle like that." As he spoke, a long, low emigrant wagon, or "prairie schooner," drawn by three yoke of dun-colored oxen, toiled up the road. In the wagon was a faded-looking woman with two small children clinging to her. Odds and ends of household furniture showed themselves over her head from within the wagon, and strapped on behind was a coop of fowls, from which came a melancholy cackle, as if the hens and chickens were weary of their long journey. A man dressed in butternut-colored homespun drove the oxen, and a boy about ten years old trudged behind the driver. In the darkness behind these tramped a small herd of cows and oxen driven by two other men, and a lad about the age of Oscar Bryant. The new arrivals paused in the road, surveyed our friends from Illinois, stopped the herd of cattle, and then the man who was driving the wagon said, with an unmistakable New England twang, "Friends?" "Friends, most assuredly," said Mr. Bryant, with a smile. "I guess you have been having hard luck, you appear to be so suspicious." "Well, we have, and that's a fact. But we're main glad to be able to camp among friends. Jotham, unyoke the cattle after you have driven them into the timber a piece." He assisted the woman and children to get down from the wagon, and one of the cattle-drivers coming up, drove the team into the woods a short distance, and the tired oxen were soon lying down among the underbrush. "Well, yes, we _have_ had a pretty hard time getting here. We are the last free-State men allowed over the ferry at Parkville. Where be you from?" "We are from Lee County, Illinois," replied Mr. Bryant. "We came in by the way of Parkville, too, a day or two ago; but we stopped at Quindaro. Did you come direct from Parkville?" [Illustration: THE YANKEE EMIGRANT.]