The Great Encampment

As the great trains blended before the final emparkment men and women
who had never met before shook hands, talked excitedly, embraced, even
wept, such was their joy in meeting their own kind. Soon the vast valley
at the foot of the Grand Island of the Platte--ninety miles in length it
then was--became one vast bivouac whose parallel had not been seen in
all the world.

Even so, the Missouri column held back, an hour or two later on the
trail. Banion, silent and morose, still rode ahead, but all the flavor
of his adventure out to Oregon had left him--indeed, the very savor of
life itself. He looked at his arms, empty; touched his lips, where once
her kiss had been, so infinitely and ineradicably sweet. Why should he
go on to Oregon now?

As they came down through the gap in the Coasts, looking out over the
Grand Island and the great encampment, Jackson pulled up his horse.

"Look! Someone comin' out!"

Banion sat his horse awaiting the arrival of the rider, who soon cut
down the intervening distance until he could well be noted. A tall,
spare man he was, middle-aged, of long lank hair and gray stubbled
beard, and eyes overhung by bushy brows. He rode an Indian pad saddle,
without stirrups, and was clad in the old costume of the hunter of the
Far West--fringed shirt and leggings of buckskin. Moccasins made his
foot-covering, though he wore a low, wide hat. As he came on at speed,
guiding his wiry mount with a braided rope looped around the lower jaw,
he easily might have been mistaken for a savage himself had he not come
alone and from such company as that ahead. He jerked up his horse close
at hand and sat looking at the newcomers, with no salutation beyond a
short "How!"