“Yes, but they won’t; do you suppose they are going to let us see them
cooking and washing dishes? Not if they know themselves. Then they
would have to play the agreeable once in a while, and that is what
they are not going to do on a trip of this kind. I do not expect to see
them, they would rather stay where they are another week than join our
party.”
“I believe you are right, Neelie, for he did not say good-bye as if he
expected to see me very soon.”
When it was time to stop for lunch, we found a very nice place and
waited for the wagons. While at lunch we saw an emigrant wagon, drawn
by three yoke of oxen, coming up the road, and were somewhat surprised
to see it turn from the road and come toward our camp. It proved to be
Mr. John Milburn, of Etna, and his sister Augusta. They have traveled
in one day and a half the distance we have been two and a half days
coming.
Miss Milburn is a very intelligent, well-educated young lady, some two
or three years my senior. We are not very well acquainted with her, but
have met her frequently, and have known of her several years. She is
an active member of the Presbyterian Church at Etna. She has her little
nephew, Ernest Talbot, with her. He is seven years old, her sister’s
dying gift, a very bright child and considerably spoiled, but dear to
his auntie’s heart as her own life. They have started to Montana to
get rich in the gold mines. Mr. Milburn leaves a wife and two small
children with his widowed mother, to watch, and wait, and pray for his
success and safe return home.
We crossed the dividing line--though we did not see it--between
Missouri and Iowa soon after noon, and it is very probable some of
us will never tread Missouri soil again. As we were coming through
Stilesville, a small town this side the line, there were several
loafers in front of a saloon who acted very rudely, to say the least.
We distinctly heard such remarks as the following, “Whew, what pretty
girls, and how well they ride--Missourians I’ll bet.”
“Say, boys, let’s try our luck; maybe we can each hook a pony to-night?”
Mr. Milburn’s team is so tired out with such fast driving that we have
stopped earlier than usual, and I have had more time to write. We are
only two or three miles from Stilesville. The weather is perfect; we
will sleep in the wagons to-night. Mr. Kerfoot thinks it necessary to
guard the camp. I believe it an unnecessary precaution, for if those
loafers at Stilesville had meant mischief they would not have expressed
themselves so freely. However, Ezra and Frank Kerfoot (Mr. Kerfoot’s
nephews), Sim Buford, and Brother Hillhouse, will take turns standing
guard, each one for two hours.
* * * * *
Thursday, May 4.
Oh, how we did sleep last night, dreamless and sound. Our first night
in the wagons was undisturbed and sweet. We were up with the birds
making ready for an early start. Mother prepares breakfast, while I
roll up the beds and cover closely to protect them from the dust; one
of the boys milks the cows, while I assist mother, and when breakfast
of hot biscuit, ham and eggs, apple-sauce, coffee, and breakfast-food
(which I should have mentioned first), is over, I strain the milk
into an old-fashioned churn that is big at the bottom and little at
the top, cover closely and fix it in the front of the freight wagon,
where it will be churned by the motion of the wagon, and we have a pat
of the sweetest, most delicious butter when we stop in the evening
that any one ever tasted. Mother washes the dishes, we prepare lunch
for our noon meal, I stow it in the grub-box under the seat in the
spring-wagon, the boys take the pipe off the little sheet-iron stove,
empty the fire out and leave it to cool, while I am putting things
away in the places where they belong. It is wonderful how soon we have
learned to live in a wagon, and we seem to have an abundance of room.
When horses are harnessed, oxen yoked--and everything ready to start,
we girls proceed to saddle our ponies; some of the boys usually come
and offer assistance, which is politely declined, as we are going to
wait upon ourselves on this trip.
The wagons start, leaving us to follow at our leisure. We don our
riding-habits, made of dark-brown denim, that completely cover, and
protect us from mud and dust, tie on our sun-bonnets, mount our ponies
unassisted, and soon overtake and pass the wagons.
We started this morning at seven o’clock. It is delightful riding
horseback in the early morning.