Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/63

, and the cavalcade resumed its plodding tramp westward.

Then for days the weather was perfect. The sun shone from the clear blue heavens, unflecked except here and there by a rift of snowy cloud. The air was bright and clear, with just enough crispness to make walking or riding pleasant. The country was level or rolling. The eye, wandering over every point of the compass, caught no misty mountain range or peak, and the work of the patient oxen was play compared to what it would be when they should have entered the rougher regions farther toward the setting sun.

The course most of the time was in sight of the Platte River, which, swollen by the melting snows near the headwaters and the recent rains, was a broad, majestic stream. Yet there were times during the summer drought, when one could pick his way across dry shod. More than once, as the company went into camp, they saw the twinkling fires of another party who had also halted for the night. Once these starlike points glimmered to the south, once to the northwest and twice to the north, on the other side of the Platte. When it is stated that more than 40,000 persons