"Dot was a goot t'ing. How far you say to dose gold mines, already?"
"'Bout six hundred miles. What are you doing with all those sacks?"
"I t'ink I poot my gold in dem, an' bring it back home."
"That'll be quite a load, won't it?" smiled Harry. "You know gold weighs mighty heavy."
"I haf a goot team," replied the German, not at all worried. "I fill my sacks, an' poot dem in my wagon, an' I come home in time for winter, an' den I am rich. I will be one of de richest men in Illinois. Mebbe next year I do it over."
"A very fine plan," remarked Harry, gravely. And the German returned to his own fire, much satisfied.
"Jiminy! Is that the way?" blurted Terry, suddenly excited again. "We ought to've brought sacks."
"We've a sack of oats and a sack of flour, and I wouldn't trade 'em for his sacks of gold—yet," retorted Harry.
This night the flickering camp-fires of the other gold-seekers twinkled all along the road. Fiddles were tuned up, to play "Monkey Musk," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Yankee Doodle," and other tunes, and voices joined in. What with the playing and singing, the barking of dogs and the noises from cattle, sleep was difficult except for persons as tired as were the "boys from the Big Blue."
At Fort Riley, which was a new army post, with massive stone buildings, near the juncture of the Smoky Hill River from the west and the Republican River from the north, here forming the Kansas River, the number of outfits lessened. Some struck north, some took a short cut south for the Santa Fe Trail at the Arkansas River.