cup that one's nose too.
"Both dead, Pa," whispers Collin.
“Good,” Hansel whispers. "Son, we'll need some light. I'll start a small fire. You sneak around quiet like and find their horses. Make sure this trash came alone."
"Yah Pa," Collin answers softly. His dark bent over shape slips noisily on bare feet through dark shadows to disappear like a ghost. Years of hunting in the woods to supplement the family larder allows Collin to take a twisting and turning course through trees without making a sound to warn of his coming.
A few minutes of snapping branches from the woodpile under their quilts and a sharp knife’s dull flash in Hansel’s hand shaving wood slivers into a small pile prepares for a fire. After the knife returns to its sheath, sparks from a flint and small piece of steel fly into a little pinch of gunpowder, and suddenly a small blaze flares. As Hansel feeds larger twigs into his small fire, the sound of walking horses made him turn and look.
"Only two horses, no other tracks. They came alone."
"Good! Folks remember horses. Strip all the gear off them. Turn them loose and get our mules."
By the time the fire is a small blaze pushing a small ring of yellow light outward into the darkness a rig made a thump sound on the ground and the first horse walks away to graze. In moments another set of gear is on the ground in the clearing’s light ring and the second horse walks away. Collin walks out into the small clearing, takes off hobbles, and leads their mules up to the campfire. Hansel kneels to go through the pockets of the both dead men and collect their last possessions in his red handkerchief. He finds three silver dollars and sixty-three cents, two partial twists of tobacco, and two old rusty Barlow knives. Each man had a Stoddard-Darling 6-shot, .30-caliber, pepperbox pistol. Hansel places the pistols back on the ground near the hands of the dead to let anyone that finds the bodies know that both men had been armed, and that each had fired twice before dying.
"Put the saddle blankets and saddles on the mules," Hansel orders as he picks out the best bridle for Cain. He hands the other to Collin who nods his head and tosses down his old one. It takes a minute or two to adjust bridle straps, and then Collin swings the saddle blanket and saddle over Cain’s back. Collin pulls Cain’s cinch tight, and Hansel holds Cain and Abel while Collin does the same thing again to Able. Carefully, they each adjusted stirrups to fit their longer legs. When they are ready, twin poke sacks hang from Collin’s saddle horn and the pads rest inside new saddlebag pouches. Hansel kicks dirt over the fire, rolls up the damp quilts with two new holes in them, and ties them behind saddles. Hansel mounts and rides carefully through the trees to the road and turns west with Collin following. A mile down the road Hansel tosses the extra old bridles in a small washout and two miles further Cain and Able splashes across a small shallow creek. Collin turns Abel along the bank, spots a deeper hole, and tosses in both pads.
Three miles further on, they pull off the road behind a brush thicket, tie their mules to hackberry saplings, wrap up in damp blankets, and try to sleep. When the sun slips over the eastern tree line they are moving again chewing on jerky. This time the damp quilts are inside a canvas roll behind each saddle and several times that morning both comment that riding today is much easier with saddles. A little after ten by the sun on their necks and shadows reaching out in front of them they let their mules walk through the five un-painted buildings of Lamar and on to the crossroads. A half mile outside of town both riders turn north.
A week and three days later, the Dymonds ride through the wide muddy main street of Westport, Missouri, filled with rider and wagon confusion in a late spring rush. Not even mud from a slight day-long drizzle after two day of scattered showers slows Westport, the jumping off place for wagons going west. Five wagon trains are in different stages of preparing to leave at first light tomorrow. Hansel stops at two stores, their signs call themselves “Outfitters”, comparing prices and all are high, more than three times the Dennis price. The only thing that seemed less so, only double, is signs on the many saloon fronts advertising beer for a dime. In Dennis the price of beer is a nickel. At the third Outfitter-store sitting out front on a boardwalk bench Hansel spots an old timer with a long flowing white beard smoking a black crusty nearly burnt-out pipe.
Hansel dismounts and sits down beside the old timer. "Friend, tell me about this place, this business. My boy and me are going west."
"Howdy! Ross Weyer here."
"Mister Weyer, our names are Hansel and Collin Dymond from Wright County."
"Folks call me Ross, Hansel."
"Ross, you know about how this here all works. Is it best for the boy and me to go with a wagon train or go it alone?"
"Depends, Hansel, on how long you want to take getting out there. It is getting late in the season already and some of these folks will have to rush to beat the snow in the mountains. Your mules look strong. They can make two or three times the distance these wagons will in a day. A wagon train will be lucky to make fifteen miles on a good long day. They will have days that they don’t make ten. Your mules can travel twenty or thirty miles in a day if you push right along and on some full moon nights ten or twenty more. Five trains leaving at dawn, seven left yesterday, and more every day before that for a good six weeks. All headed west. My advice to you, Hansel, would be buy you a map of the California trail, buy that new book everyone’s talking about The Prairie Traveler by Captain Marcy telling all about going west, buy a full tote sack of jerky, a handful of rivets, six extra mule shoes, rasp, nails, and hammer, and start riding."
"Thanks friend Ross," Hansel tells the old timer as he stands to shake his hand. "We're going to buy that map, book, things, and a sack of jerky and head out. Sorry we can't stay and have a beer with you, Ross. So drink a couple on Hansel and Collin Dymond will you," Hansel tells the old man as he places a quarter in the old bony brown-age-spotted hand.
The old man smiles his toothless smile at him, nods his thanks, and slips the coin into his old faded blue shirt pocket.
In the fourth Outfitter-store, after checking for the cheapest price, Hansel bought a full burlap sack of jerky, an empty burlap sack, The Prairie Traveler, an empty burlap sack, a box of rivets, six number four mule shoes, a box of horseshoe nails, a rasp, hammer, and a map of the California Trail. As Hansel pays over his thirteen dollars and eighty-one cents for less than four dollars of goods in Dennis, the clerk has the gall to smile and tells him, “We’re the cheapest place in town.”
Outside of town, they adjust their jerky into twin half-burlap sack loads. Anything extra in their poke they toss away beside the trail, fill saddlebag pouches, and start out for the gold country following the Missouri River northward. At first the pace is Hansel’s git thar quick pace of a walk and then trot, walk, trot, walk, and trot again. At that quick pace, the Dymonds ride through the last of the first day. Hansel had double half-sacks of jerky tied to his saddle horn and Collin had both leather poke-sacks of their possibles tied to his. Throughout the rest of the first day neither speak, but stare at a large collections of wagons and herds of horses, mules, and cattle out grazing. Five wagon trains getting ready for tomorrow’s jumping off.
At their first noon, a brief break, they water Cain and Able and let them graze for what Hansel gauges to be an hour while they chew on jerky. Hansel finally speaks repeating what the old man had said, and Collin who hears it knows his father says it for reassurance. "We can move so much faster and farther in a day than those wagons."
On Hansel’s walk and trot pace all afternoon miles slip behind them. Late in the afternoon they start to see and then catch up and pass a wagon train that left Westport yesterday. That night they camped south a mile off the trail between to wagon trains. During Collin’s watch after midnight a cloud sails in front of the moon and in the darkness a rustling noise in the grass in front and to his left. Collin
