HE horses are ill mated, the wagon decrepit. Baling wire sustains the harness and the patched canvas of the wagon top hints of long service.
"How far to Millican's?" says the driver.
He is a young man; at least, his eyes are young. His "woman" is with him and their three kiddies, the tiniest asleep in her mother's lap, with the dust caked about her wet baby chin. The man wears overalls, the woman calico that was gaudy once before the sun bleached it colorless, and the children nameless garments of uncertain ancestry. The wife seems very tired—as weary as the weary horses. Behind them is piled their household: bedding, a tin stove, chairs, a cream separator, a baby's go-cart, kitchen utensils, a plow and barbed wire, some carpet; beneath the wagon body swings a pail and lantern, and water barrel and axe are lashed at one side.
We direct them to Millican's.
"Homesteading?" we inquire.
"Not exactly. That is, we're just lookin'."
There are hundreds like these all over the West, "just lookin'," with their tired wives, their babies, their poverty, and their vague hopefulness. They chase rainbows from Bisbee to Prince Rupert. Some of them settle, some of them succeed. But most of them are discontented wherever Fortune places them, and forever move forward toward some new-rumored El Dorado just over the hill.
There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.
That, of course, is rather picturesque, and, taken all in all, your average wanderer of the wagon road merits little heroics. His aspirations are apt to be earthy, and too often he seeks nothing loftier than a soft snap. In the final analysis some of our western gypsies desire nothing more ardently than a rest.