The Emigrant Trail | Page 3

its loneliness, its
questioning silences, its solemn sweep of prairie and roll of slow,
majestic rivers, held spiritual communion with those of its young men

who had eyes to see and ears to hear.
The trees grew thinner and he saw the sky pure as amber beneath the
storm pall. The light from it twinkled over wet twigs and glazed the
water in the crumplings of new leaves. Across the glow the last
raindrops fell in slanting dashes. David's spirits rose. The weather was
clearing and they could start--start on the trail, the long trail, the
Emigrant Trail, two thousand miles to California!
He was close to the camp. Through the branches he saw the filmy,
diffused blueness of smoke and smelled the sharp odor of burning
wood. He quickened his pace and was about to give forth a cheerful
hail when he heard a sound that made him stop, listen with fixed eye,
and then advance cautiously, sending a questing glance through the
screen of leaves. The sound was a woman's voice detached in clear
sweetness from the deeper tones of men.
There was no especial novelty in this. Their camp was just off the road
and the emigrant women were wont to pause there and pass the time of
day. Most of them were the lean and leathern-skinned mates of the
frontiersmen, shapeless and haggard as if toil had drawn from their
bodies all the softness of feminine beauty, as malaria had sucked from
their skins freshness and color. But there were young, pretty ones, too,
who often strolled by, looking sideways from the shelter of jealous
sunbonnets.
This voice was not like theirs. It had a quality David had only heard a
few times in his life--cultivation. Experience would have characterized
it as "a lady voice." David, with none, thought it an angel's. Very shy,
very curious, he came out from the trees ready at once and forever to
worship anyone who could set their words to such dulcet cadences.
The clearing, green as an emerald and shining with rain, showed the
hood of the wagon and the new, clean tent, white as sails on a summer
sea, against the trees' young bloom. In the middle the fire burned and
beside it stood Leff, a skillet in his hand. He was a curly-headed,
powerful country lad, twenty-four years old, who, two months before,
had come from an Illinois farm to join the expedition. The frontier was

to him a place of varied diversion, Independence a stimulating center.
So diffident that the bashful David seemed by contrast a man of
cultured ease, he was now blushing till the back of his neck was red.
On the other side of the fire a lady and gentleman stood arm in arm
under an umbrella. The two faces, bent upon Leff with grave attention,
were alike, not in feature, but in the subtly similar play of expression
that speaks the blood tie. A father and daughter, David thought. Against
the rough background of the camp, with its litter at their feet, they had
an air of being applied upon an alien surface, of not belonging to the
picture, but standing out from it in sharp and incongruous contrast.
The gentleman was thin and tall, fifty or thereabouts, very pale,
especially to one accustomed to the tanned skins of the farm and the
country town. His face held so frank a kindliness, especially the eyes
which looked tired and a little sad, that David felt its expression like a
friendly greeting or a strong handclasp.
The lady did not have this, perhaps because she was a great deal
younger. She was yet in the bud, far from the tempering touch of
experience, still in the state of looking forward and anticipating things.
She was dark, of medium height, and inclined to be plump. Many
delightful curves went to her making, and her waist tapered elegantly,
as was the fashion of the time. Thinking it over afterwards, the young
man decided that she did not belong in the picture with a prairie
schooner and camp kettles, because she looked so like an illustration in
a book of beauty. And David knew something of these matters, for had
he not been twice to St. Louis and there seen the glories of the earth
and the kingdoms thereof?
But life in camp outside Independence had evidently blunted his
perceptions. The small waist, a round, bare throat rising from a narrow
band of lace, and a flat, yellow straw hat were the young woman's only
points of resemblance to the beauty-book heroines. She was not in the
least beautiful, only fresh and healthy, the flat straw hat shading a
girlish face, smooth and firmly modeled as a ripe fruit. Her skin was a
glossy brown, softened with a