Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/304

 made Alden the more anxious to cross. Instead of waiting till the morrow, he felt he must do so at once.

Then he asked himself whether he could not construct a raft to bear him. He even searched up and down the bank but a few minutes showed him the impossibility of his plan. About the only wood he found were willows and a species of elder, none of which was thicker than his wrist. The squat pines scattered here and there required an axe to cut them down, and he had only his hunting knife. Perforce he abandoned the scheme.

It was at this moment that he fancied he dimly detected tracks in the mud on the edge of the stream. He had come so far from the carcass of the pony that he felt little fear of the Indians. He struck another of his matches and scrutinized the ground.

To his astonishment, he saw the prints of broad tired wagons, and the tracks of oxen and horses. They extended as far up and down stream as he could see. The inference was plain: in wandering from the course of Bucephalus, he had found his way to a portion of the main path followed by the emigrants