Fort Riley was fifteen miles west. Progress was slow, on the crowded road, and at six o'clock the "Pike's Peak Limited" was glad to draw aside out of the dust and camp for the night near to a wagon labeled "Litening Express." The owner was a heavy, round-faced German, with a family of buxom wife, and of six girls ranging from big to little. He had a chicken coop, a large cook stove set up for the evening meal, a feather mattress, and an enormous bale of gunny-sacks that formed a seat for him while he watched the supper-getting. Harry and Terry called easy greeting, and pretty soon he strolled over. "Iss dat a wild boof'lo?" he queried. "He was wild once, but he's tame now." "You are de boys who made dot man loose his whiskey, mebbe." "I guess we are," laughed Harry. It was astonishing, the speed with which news traveled among the overlanders. "Dot was a goot t'ing. How far you say to dose gold mines, already?" "'Bout six hundred miles. What are you doing with all those sacks?" "I t'ink I poot my gold in dem, an' bring it back home." "That'll be quite a load, won't it?" smiled Harry. "You know gold weighs mighty heavy." "I haf a goot team," replied the German, not at all worried. "I fill my sacks, an' poot dem in my wagon, an' I come home in time for winter, an' den I am rich. I will be one of de richest men in Illinois. Mebbe next year I do it over." "A very fine plan," remarked Harry, gravely. And the German returned to his own fire, much satisfied. "Jiminy! Is that the way?" blurted Terry, suddenly excited again. "We ought to've brought sacks." "We've a sack of oats and a sack of flour, and I wouldn't trade 'em for his sacks of gold--yet," retorted Harry. This night the flickering camp-fires of the other gold-seekers twinkled all along the road. Fiddles were tuned up, to play "Monkey Musk," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Yankee Doodle," and other tunes, and voices joined in. What with the playing and singing, the barking of dogs and the noises from cattle, sleep was difficult except for persons as tired as were the "boys from the Big Blue." At Fort Riley, which was a new army post, with massive stone buildings, near the juncture of the Smoky Hill River from the west and the Republican River from the north, here forming the Kansas River, the number of outfits lessened. Some struck north, some took a short cut south for the Santa Fe Trail at the Arkansas River. At Junction City, beyond, the last of the white settlements, the route of the remaining "Pike's Peak Pilgrims" again split. The main portion of the travelers seemed to favor the new trail straight westward, up along the Smoky Hill River, and on they toiled, to "get rich in a hurry." It was the common report that the Smoky Hill River could be followed clear to the mountains, but this, as Harry and Terry afterward heard, proved untrue.