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“Ma wants me to go to school some more,” he admitted. “So I suppose I’ll have to this winter. I went some last winter, and we had a teacher in the house, too. A little schooling won’t hurt a fellow.”

“No, I suppose it won’t,” answered Davy, gravely. “I’ve had to go to school. But I’d rather do this.”

“So would I,” confessed Billy. “I like it and I need the money—and I need the schooling, too. Reckon I can do both.”

As for Davy himself, the wagon train seemed to consider him, also, somewhat of a personage, because he had shown his “smartness” when the buffalo bull had attacked him. Of course, he had only slid out of his big flannel shirt, and fooled the buffalo with it; but that had been the right thing done in the right place at the right time, and this counted.

Nothing especial happened as the long train toiled on. The trail was fine, worn smooth by many years of travel over it. This was the old Oregon Trail, and California, from the Missouri River, over the plains and the mountains, clear to the Pacific coast of the West. Beaver trappers and Indian traders had opened it, thirty years ago, and it had been used ever since, by trappers and traders, and by soldiers and emigrants, and its name was known the world around.