Barbara hesitated a moment and Joe waited. The past days had wrought a change in his daughter, making her all the more difficult to understand. At times she seemed to have a new maturity, as though she were already a woman, and at others she was a trembling child. But she had never expressed anything except enthusiastic interest in the forthcoming trip. She began to work the bellows steadily, neither too fast nor too slow, and the smell of the hot charcoal in the forge was a good thing. With a pair of iron tongs, Joe held the mule shoe he was fashioning in the glowing charcoal until the shoe partook of the fire's color. Still gripping it with the tongs, a blacksmith's maul in his right hand, Joe shaped the shoe on the anvil. Some people didn't care how they shoed their mules; they simply nailed shoes on and let the hoofs grow out to fit them. Joe had never believed in such slipshod methods. He gave painstaking consideration to the temper and weight of the shoe, and the conformation of the hoof it was to fit. Correctly shod draft animals did not go lame easily and they worked harder because they were comfortable. Joe trusted no one else to shoe his mules for him. He looked critically at the shoe, then reheated it and gave it a slightly wider curve. The mule's hoofs were nearly alike. But they were not exactly alike and each shoe must be designed accordingly. Finally satisfied, Joe plunged the shoe in a pail of tepid water and approached the mule. The mare mule, at shoeing time, literally went wild. She became so terrified that she had to be dragged to the forge and roped and hog-tied after she was there to keep her from injuring the blacksmith. But the horse had a streak of vanity that took peculiar directions. He was proud to wear new shoes, and after they were nailed on he spent hours walking about to test them. Usually a full day passed before he no longer gave his new-shod hoofs any attention. When Joe approached, the mule lifted his rear hoof voluntarily and held it. He did it gracefully, taking all his weight on his other three legs and never at any time endangering Joe. Joe tried the shoe, and when he saw that it was a perfect fit he nailed it on. The mule swung his head to look approvingly at his hoof. Joe rose and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Everything except the mule shoeing was done. The wagon had a new box, and all the parts that had seemed even slightly weak or worn had been replaced. They knew exactly what they were going to take along, and among other things they were going to take six of Emma's best hens plus a rooster, and there was a place for everything. New, double-thick canvas covered the wagon, and Joe had even arranged a canvas drop curtain so that, if it were necessary to camp inside, the male and female members of his family could have their own compartments. Joe had ninety-eight dollars in cash, and an uneasy feeling that it would not be nearly enough. But he did not know how to get any more.