Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/145

Rh He slept in strange places and ate stranger food, he suffered pangs of hunger and of homesickness, but he never thought of going back. His violin went everywhere with him, and in more than one of the little towns along the big river, people began to demand the boy fiddler who could make such gay music for their merrymakings.

When at last the snow melted, the wild geese flew northward, and the wilderness trail was open again, he had no difficulty in finding an emigrant party to which to attach himself. Abner Blythe was a lean, hard Yankee, but he had lived for years in the Middle West and had made journeys out into the prairie, although he had never gone the whole of the way to the mountains and the coast. He knew how to drive cattle with the long black-snake whip, whose snapping lash alone can voice the master's orders and which can flick the ear or flank of a wandering steer at the outermost limit of reach. His frail, eager-eyed little wife was to go with them, their boy of five, and a company of helpers who were to drive the wagons of supplies and to serve for protection against Indians.

The road was crowded at first, and the prairie grass grew green and high, full of wild strawberries, pink wild roses, and meadow larks. But as they journeyed slowly westward, as spring passed into summer, the green turned to brown under the burning sun, the low bluffs and tree-bordered water-courses were left behind, and they came to the wide,