Charley laughed.
“Oh, in that case, and if he wants to go, I suppose I’ll have to let him, and take Jim and Hi on in his place. They two ought to be able to fill his job. If you say so, Dave, I’ll give you your discharge right away, and a voucher for your pay to date, and you can see how you like the army for a change.”
“Go ahead, Red,” bade Billy. “You’ll learn a heap, and I’ll be out that way myself soon. First thing you know you’ll see me coming through driving stage or riding that pony express. Whoop-la!”
And of this Davy did not have the slightest doubt.
Captain Brown declined an invitation to stay for dinner with the mess. He was in a hurry. So the exchange of Davy from bull whacking to Government service was quickly made. Before he was an hour older he had shaken hands with everybody within reach and was trundling northward in the black covered ambulance beside Captain Brown. He knew that in another hour or two Billy himself would be travelling east, back to Salt Creek Valley and Leavenworth; and that early in the morning the bull train, with Charley and Joel and Kentuck and Hi and Jim and all, would be travelling west for the end of the trail at Denver.
This was just like the busy West in those days; friends were constantly mingling and parting, each on active business—to meet again a little later and report what they had been doing in the progress of the big country.
“You’re too young to follow bull whacking, my boy,” declared the captain. “It’s a rough life and a hard one. To earn your own way and know how to hold up your end and take care of yourself is all very well; but you’d better mix in with it the education of books and cultured people as much as you can while you go along. Then you’ll grow up an all-round man instead of a one-sided man. Laramie’s a long way from the States; but we’ve got a small post school and a few books, and it’s the home of a lot of cultured men and women. You’ll learn things there that you’ll never learn roughing it on the trail.”
And Davy looked forward to life at old Fort Laramie, the famous army post and freight and emigrant station on the Overland Trail to Salt Lake, Oregon and California.
The fording of the Platte was made in quick time to foil the quicksands. The North Platte was now scarce eighteen miles across the narrow tongue of land separating the two rivers above their juncture. It was struck at Ash Hollow. Ash Hollow had a grocery store for emigrant trade. The sign read “BUTTE, REGGS, FLOWER and MELE.”
Captain Brown halted here long enough to buy a few crackers and some sardines.