Buffalo Bill and the Overland Trail / Being the story of how boy and man worked hard and played hard to blaze the white trail, by wagon train, stage coach and pony express, across the great plains and the mountains beyond, that the American republic might expand and flourish

by Edwin L. Sabin

“The chances are we’ll be looking for water instead,” declared Jim. “The country’s going dry on us.”

The trail had swerved in to the Smoky Hill Fork again; and the Smoky Hill Fork itself seemed about to quit. It contained only a mere trickle of water.

“You can follow the stage route on west to the Big Sandy,” informed a squad of returning Pike’s Peakers, “or you can cut over to the northward and find water there. It’s more than twenty-five miles to where the stage route strikes the Big Sandy, and there isn’t any water even then. But we hear tell there’s water on the short cut to the north, where you strike the Big Sandy higher up.”

Hi nodded thoughtfully.

“All right,” he said. “How’s the country north?”

“There’s nothing to brag on anywhere you go in this whole region, stranger. We’re bound back to the States. We’ve had enough. But if you try the short cut north watch out for the Injuns, ’Rapahoes and Cheyennes both.”

Hi nodded again.

“We will.”

Davy noted Left-over’s mouth open and his eyes begin to pop. Presently Left-over could hold in no longer.