He stopped. The doctor's eye held him with a warning gleam.
"I don't know what's the matter with that boy," he said afterwards in the evening conference. "I can't get at him."
"Sun mad," Daddy John insisted.
Courant gave a grunt that conveyed disdain of a question of such small import.
David couldn't account for it at all.
Susan said nothing.
At Green River the Oregon Trail broke from the parent road and slanted off to the northwest. Here the Oregon companies mended their wagons and braced their yokes for the long pull across the broken teeth of mountains to Fort Hall, and from there onward to the new country of great rivers and virgin forests. A large train was starting as the doctor's wagons came down the slope. There was some talk, and a little bartering between the two companies, but time was precious, and the head of the Oregon caravan had begun to roll out when the California party were raising their tents on the river bank.
It was a sere and sterile prospect. Drab hills rolled in lazy waves toward the river where they reared themselves into bolder forms, a line of ramparts guarding the precious thread of water. The sleek, greenish current ate at the roots of lofty bluffs, striped by bands of umber and orange, and topped with out-croppings of rock as though a vanished race had crowned them with now crumbling fortresses. At their feet, sucking life from the stream, a fringe of alder and willows decked the sallow landscape with a trimming of green.
Here the doctor's party camped for the night, rising in the morning to find a new defection in their ranks. Leff had gone. Nailed to the mess chest was a slip of paper on which he had traced a few words announcing his happiness to be rid of them, his general dislike of one and all, and his intention to catch up the departed train and go to the Oregon country. This was just what they wanted, the desired had been accomplished without their intervention. But when they discovered that, beside his own saddle horse, he had taken David's, their gladness suffered a check. It was a bad situation, for it left the young man with but one horse, the faithful Ben. There was nothing for it but to abandon the wagon, and give David the doctor's extra mount for a pack animal. With silent pangs the student saw his books thrown on the banks of the river while his keg of whisky, sugar and coffee were stored among the Gillespies' effects. Then they started, a much diminished train—one wagon, a girl, and three mounted men.