Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/20

 With epochal changes shaping about him Lander's thoughts remained those of youth in spring-time. The most important thing in the world for him to think about was little Susette Parker, only child of gruff "Hurry-Up" Parker, a valuable cog in the A. F. C.'s St. Louis machinery. The girl had been Lander's inspiration and undoing. She had filled him with ambitions and had robbed him of the power to leave the town and join a mountain expedition and prove his worth. Instead of carving out the future her love must demand, he remained slave to the present and continued packing goods for men who were to live the life. When the opposition came back from the mountains and the A. F. C. headquarters were blue with profanely expressed rage, Lander secretly rejoiced at their good fortune and felt the thrill of youth, lusting for the unusual. Even the pack-mules, skinned from withers to tail from carrying two hundred pounds for two thousand miles, urged him to follow their back trail. Whenever an express came down from Fort Union—best built west of the Mississippi with the possible exception of Bent's on the Arkansas—and told of Indian troubles, especially of the