“Fulano and Pumps are in better condition than when we started,” said I, while we were staking them out for a long feed. “The mustangs have had all the drudgery; these aristocrats must be set to do their share soon.”
“They are in prime racing order. If we had had them in training for three months for a steeple-chase, or a flight, or a Sabine adventure, or a rescue, they could not be in better trim than this moment. I suppose their time to do their duty must be at hand, they seem so ardent for it.”
We left our little caballada nibbling daintily at the sweetest spires of self-cured hay, and walked back to the fort.
We stood there chatting with the garrison. Presently Brent’s quick eye caught some white spots far away on the slope of the prairie, like sails on the edge of a dreamy, sunny sea.
“Look!” said he, “there comes a Salt Lake emigration train.”
“Yes,” said a Mormon of the garrison, “that’s Elder Sizzum’s train. Their forerunner came in this morning to choose the camping-spot. There they be! two hundred ox-teams, a thousand Saints, bound for the Promised Land.”
He walked off to announce the arrival, whistling, “Jordan is a hard road to travel.”
I knew of Sizzum as the most seductive orator and foreign propagandist of Mormonism. He had been in England some time, very successful at the good work. The caravans we had already met were of his proselytes. He himself was coming on with the last train, the one now in view, and steering for Fort Bridger.
As we stood watching, the lengthening file of white-hooded wagons crept slowly into sight. They came forward diagonally to our line of view, travelling apart at regular intervals, like the vessels of a well-ordered convoy. Now the whole fleet dipped into a long hollow, and presently the leader rose slowly up over the ridge, and then slid over the slope, like a sail winging down the broad back of a surge. So they made their way along over the rolling sweep of the distance.
“Beautiful!” said Brent. “See how the white canvas goldens in this rich October haze. Such scenes are the poetry of prairie life.”