the four corners, to hold it together, and swim across with it; and in
a moment more, all our earthly possessions were floating on the turbid
waters of the Big Blue. We sat on the bank, anxiously watching the
result, until we saw the raft safe landed in a little cove far down on
the opposite bank. The empty wagons were easily passed across; and then
each man mounting a horse, we rode through the stream, the stray animals
following of their own accord.



CHAPTER VI

THE PLATTE AND THE DESERT


We were now arrived at the close of our solitary journeyings along the
St. Joseph's trail. On the evening of the 23d of May we encamped near
its junction with the old legitimate trail of the Oregon emigrants. We
had ridden long that afternoon, trying in vain to find wood and water,
until at length we saw the sunset sky reflected from a pool encircled by
bushes and a rock or two. The water lay in the bottom of a hollow, the
smooth prairie gracefully rising in oceanlike swells on every side.
We pitched our tents by it; not however before the keen eye of Henry
Chatillon had discerned some unusual object upon the faintly-defined
outline of the distant swell. But in the moist, hazy atmosphere of the
evening, nothing could be clearly distinguished. As we lay around the
fire after supper, a low and distant sound, strange enough amid the
loneliness of the prairie, reached our ears--peals of laughter, and the
faint voices of men and women. For eight days we had not encountered a
human being, and this singular warning of their vicinity had an effect