These, with the picks and spades, and the bedding, and the cooking and eating utensils made quite a problem. No wonder that Jenny groaned when the saddle was cinched upon her.
However, with her pack bulging on either side and atop, the tools projecting and the cooking utensils jingling, she accepted her fate, and stepping in cautious, top-heavy fashion submitted to being headed out of town into the trail for the Platte River crossing.
Terry, the shot-gun upon his shoulder, and Harry, shouldering a pick and spade that had not fitted anywhere, followed close after. So did Shep, who carried nothing but his shaggy coat. On the whole, no one could deny that this was a real prospecting outfit.
"Forty miles, they say, to those Gregory diggin's," remarked Harry. "Wonder if they mean forty or four hundred? You see that flat-top mountain—the first mountain in the northwest? How far do you think it is?"
"Five miles," asserted Terry.
"Well, it's eighteen miles! They call it Table Mountain. That's where we go in. So when a fellow's looking five miles, in this country, he's looking eighteen, and that makes forty miles about one hundred and fifty."
The trail was becoming crowded as other outfits converged from the right and left for the Platte crossing. It was a procession much like the procession on the Pike's Peak trails—oxen, horses, mules, cows, dogs, wagons; and men, women and children either afoot or riding. But there were more men with packs on their backs and more animals packed like Jenny.
The long-legged Jenny, her pack swaying and jingling, could be urged past the slower travelers—and well that was, for ere the Platte was reached, the wagons in the procession had stopped. They formed a waiting line several hundred yards in length. Forging to the front, Terry and Harry might see the occasion. The Platte evidently was to be crossed by means of a flat-boat ferry, running back and forth on a cable. So the wagons need must bide their turn.
Harry went forward to investigate. He came back with a rueful face.
"Two dollars and a half for a wagon outfit; a dollar and a half for our outfit," he reported. "The ferry's run by a couple of Indian traders named McGaa and Smith. Wonder if we can't ford."