For us was it not tantalizing to know how quickly, compared with our slow progress, that coach would reach "The End?" Somewhere, probably ere we reached the mountains, we would meet that coach returning. The Jehu who drove it would come to recognize our Company as he passed us by. The guard of soldiers would know us, and he and they would pass, repass the train before us, and also the one that followed. Yes, we followed the original trail of the Pioneers but, of course, there had been changes. The Pony Express was a thing of the past, and soon the stage-coach would be. But this latter change was not yet. There were rumors, too, surveyors had been seen near the Missouri's banks. Anon, and the iron-steed would course the plains; it would find a path through the mighty hills. But this, too, was not yet. O, we were in a wilderness, true! No need for us to see the wreck of the mail-coach, the burned station, or the dead Pony Express, arrow-slain, the pouches gone, the letters that would be so long waited for, scattered to the many winds. No need of this, for us to know the dangers we had passed, or to make us rejoice that we had arrived in safety thus far. Who would blame us for our times of merriment? Who shall wonder at the time of rejoicing that followed on our arrival at Pacific Creek? Of whether our biggest jubilation was at Chimney Rock, or whether it was there, our first camping place on the Western Slope, I fail to be sure. But this I know, whether it were at the one or at the other, the facts about it are the same. Blankets were stretched between two wagons, a sheet was hung, there was a shadow pantomime, declamations were given, songs were sung. O, it was indeed a time of gaiety! When the evening meal was over and the call of the sweet-toned clarinet assembled all in the open corral, then what times! Men and women, the young, and the old ones, too, danced the hours away. Who would have thought there had been such a hard day's journey? Forgotten were the fatigues that had been; and those that were to come. It was such hours as these that atoned for those that had been wearisome, for those that were sad. That clarinet--what an important part it held! It voiced the general feeling of the train. Be the company sad or merry, like a voice it spoke. Merrily, on the banks of the Missouri it sounded at the moment of starting, mournfully it spoke as each one who fell by the wayside was laid to his rest. [Music] I seem to hear it once more as when it awoke us, too, for the last start near the Journey's end. Its remembered strains bring back the scent of prairie flowers and the mountain sage.