[pg 297]
CHAPTER XXXVI -TWO LOVE LETTERS
"The families are coming--again the families!" It was again the cry of the passing fur post, looking eastward at the caravan of the west-bound plows; much the same here at old Fort Hall, on the Snake River, as it was at Laramie on the North Platte, or Bridger on the waters tributary to the Green.
The company clerks who looked out over the sandy plain saw miles away a dust cloud which meant but one thing. In time they saw the Wingate train come on, slowly, steadily, and deploy for encampment a mile away. The dusty wagons, their double covers stained, mildewed, torn, were scattered where each found the grass good. Then they saw scores of the emigrants, women as well as men, hastening into the post.
It was now past midsummer, around the middle of the month of August, and the Wingate wagons had covered some twelve hundred and eighty miles since the start at mid-May of the last spring--more than three months of continuous travel; a trek before which the passage over the Appalachians, two generations earlier, wholly pales.
[pg 298]
What did they need, here at Fort Hall, on the Snake, third and last settlement of the two thousand miles of toil and danger and exhaustion? They needed everything. But one question first was asked by these travel-sick home-loving people: What was the news?