Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/140

 two years later, and sold to the United States and garrisoned as a fort in 1849.

In speaking of the great overland trail, which was used for a score of years after the discovery of gold in California, one is apt to think of it as of comparatively slight width. Yet, although it narrowed to a few miles in some places, there were others where the ground traversed was fifty or a hundred miles across. Thus it happened that trains which were following parallel routes were often out of sight of one another for days, and perhaps weeks. The breadth of the famous South Pass, the gateway of the Rocky Mountains, is so great that parties of emigrants frequently did not know for a long time that they were really traveling through it.

Although there were many incidents worth telling, we must skip them and come to the time when our friends were plodding some distance beyond the straggling town of Cheyenne, which was to attain importance during the building of the transcontinental railway eight or nine years later. They were heading for Fort Laramie, on the western slope of the spur known as the Laramie Mountains. Far ahead the crests could be seen, tinted with