“Why, hello!” greeted Hank of Dave. “Bully for you. Get up here on the seat. I’ll take you through in style.”
“I engaged that seat,” objected the school-teacher.
“Not much,” retorted Hank. “It’ll make you seasick. I can have what I want in this seat; and the boy rides there. I can depend on him if I need a hand, and that’s very important, mister.”
“You know him, do you?”
“You’re right I know him. We’ve worked together before, haven’t we, Dave?”
Davy blushed, somewhat embarrassed by Hank’s hearty manner; but Hank had ordered, and Hank was boss, and Dave climbed to the seat beside him.
With crack of whip and cheer from the crowd gathered to watch, at a gallop out surged the four mules for the nigh seven hundred miles to the Missouri River and the States. Davy thoroughly enjoyed that trip. Hank sent his mules forward at a rattling pace; for, as he explained, he changed teams at every station, eighteen or twenty miles apart. Night and day the stage travelled, making its one hundred miles each twenty-four hours, halting only to change teams and for meals.
And night and day the Pike’s Peak pilgrims were in sight. The westward travel was even more pronounced than earlier in the year, when the Hee-Haws had joined in it. There were new signs, too, on the wagons. “Bound for the Land of Gold.” “Family Express; Milk for Sale!” “Mind Your Own Business.” “We Are Off for the Peak. Are You?” “Hooray for the Diggin’s!” These and other announcements Davy read on the prairie schooners as the hurrying stage passed.
“Horace Greeley, the New York editor, wrote back east that the Pike’s Peak country is O. K.,” said Hank to Davy. “That’s what’s set the tide flowin’ in earnest. People were waitin’ to get his opinion. He inspected the diggin’s, and he says the gold is thar—although most people would do better to take up land in Kansas and go to farmin’. If you call this trail a busy one you ought to see the Salt Lake Overland Trail up the Platte. I hear three hundred wagons a day pass Fort Kearney. This booms the freightin’ business. The old man (Hank meant Mr. Majors) and his pards are puttin’ on every team they can lay hands to for haulin’ goods an’ provisions. Why, this hyar stage line is usin’ a thousand mules and fifty coaches. You’re thinkin’ of bull whackin’, are you?”
“Mr. Majors offered me a job,” answered Davy.