Page:From the West to the West.djvu/62

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pocket knife, and a box of pens. I Ve selected you as scribe because you won the prize in that competitive contest over the doings of Bismarck/ "But that was a different proposition, daddie." " It's all in the same line, Jean. You have a record to preserve now. You must keep your credit good. Look to your laurels, and don't forget!"

And Jean, partly from innate ambition, but chiefly because she was under orders from which she knew there could be no appeal, kept, through all the tedious journey, a diary, from which the chronicler of these pages proposes to cull such fragments as may fit into the narrative, without strict regard to chronology, though with due regard to facts.


 * ' We made camp last night in the discomfort of a driving snowstorm," wrote the scribe under date of April 2. "But in spite of our sorrow over our departure from home and loved ones, the most of us were jolly, and we made the best we could of the situation. Tonight, after a day's disagreeable wheeling through mud that freezes at night and thaws by day, making travel nasty, sticky, and tedious, we stopped for camp near an isolated farmhouse, where the goodwife is disheartened and sick, and the children are ragged, dirty, and frightened.

"The storm has abated, and the sky is clear. Our teamsfers are kneeling on the ground around our messboxes, which are used for tables at mealtime, and stored in the ends of the wagons wheaii we are moving ahead."

"There, I can't think of another word to write." She closed the book with a bang.

For many minutes after gathering around the tables, all were too busy with the supper to make any attempt at conversation.

Beans and bacon, coflfee and crackers, and great heaps of stewed fruits, were reinforced by mountains of steam