We set out in silence, as became our high purpose. In a little over an hour we had penetrated the desert as far as Brown's ice-house, and there we decided to camp for the night. We had encountered no antelopes, buffaloes, nor other animals, except a herd of cows belonging to Mr. Haskell. They were being driven home by a small boy.
In a little grove of trees back of the ice-house we sat down and made our supper of bananas and soda-biscuit. The ice-pond provided water to wash down the meal. We faced the west, and received full in our eyes the rays of the sun, now rapidly approaching the earth.
For a time we beheld the spectacle of the sunset, though our minds were not upon it. We conversed upon the possibilities of adventure in the Far West, upon the circus which we were leaving behind, and, most of all, of the excitement probably now rife in our homes. Ed Mason, it appeared, had left a note behind him to inform his family of our departure, of the utter folly of any attempt at pursuit, and of the fact that our first stopping-place would be Omaha.
Why he fixed upon Omaha, except that it is remote from our home on the Atlantic coast, I am unable to explain.
By this time, we agreed, our families had begun to wish that they had treated us better in the matter of that side-show.
Some low hills rose upon the western horizon, and the sun disappeared behind them not long after we had finished supper. It cast a golden outline on a strange procession of dark gray clouds which now came out of the north and moved slowly across the place lately occupied by the ball of fire. They followed one after the other like uncouth animals—the dromedary with his hump was there, the elephant, and other figures, longer and lower, like serpents and lizards.
We watched them without speaking.
A faint breeze moved the branches of the apple tree over our heads. It was perceptibly darker now, and not easy to make out the details of the fields and meadows. Two men passed along the dusty road on the other side of the stone wall. They did not notice us, but we heard them discussing a dog after they had vanished from sight. The sky in the east and north turned rosy, and its colors were reflected in the pond. A man with a lantern moved about Mr. Brown's barnyard for a while, then disappeared indoors, and presently a light shone from one of the windows of the house.