"No, Joshua. My heart is filled with fears, but thee has sacrificed too much to turn back now. We can only go on, and pray that Almighty God will protect us."
"My brave, noble wife," he whispered, and kissed her.
That night when they made their camp the two wagons were drawn close together and the cow and horses instead of being picketed out were placed beside them. No camp-fire was built that night, and the supper was prepared over as small a fire as possible, a piece of sacking placed over the top of the stove-pipe to absorb and keep down the smoke. Before they retired their father gave each of the three older boys a gun and ammunition.
"We have reached the real West now, lads," he told them, "and must be prepared for some of the adventures you have been looking forward to for so long. I have no idea that you will have occasion to use those guns to-night, but like good pioneers you must keep them ready and in order for whatever might happen."
A thrill passed through the hearts of Joe and Lige as they listened to his words. Not even then did they appreciate the menace they portended.
That night Joshua Peniman did not sleep in the wagon as he had been accustomed to do, but with Spotty beside him and a loaded musket at hand lay down beside the wagons wrapped in his blanket.
There was little sleep for the elders of the party. The children, who had been allowed to hear nothing of the horrors of the massacre, slept tranquilly, but Joshua Peniman patrolled his camp all night, while his wife lay among her little ones in the wagon with her heart like an ice-cold stone within her breast.
They were now traveling through an almost uninhabited part of western Iowa, where settlers were far apart and shade and water grew scarcer and farther apart every day.
The weather had grown intensely hot, and the poor animals, forced to travel all day through the heat of the sun without sufficient water, suffered greatly.
The cow especially seemed to feel the strain, and after one intensely hot day, during which the pioneers had all suffered, she gave but a small portion of milk, and lay down when they made camp refusing to graze.