José — page 52: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JOSE. 45 suddenly raised his head as if determined to shake off his impressions with an effort. “Well, we are going to meet the redskins. At all events we shall have something to tell when we return. So forward, and may good luck attend us!” In three days the loading of the wagons was finished; the first team was finally started amid a volley of abuse, the cracking of whips and general confusion; the stubborn resistance of the untamed mules against a systematic effort to pull their load was at last overcome, and slowly the great train began to move forward as stately an outfit as had ever been seen in the West; thirty-two canvas- covered wagons drawn by eight or ten mules each, according to the load; a large drove of relay mules with their leader, a black stallion led by a driver, bringing up the rear; and six riding horses at the side of the train; thirty-two teamsters and twenty mule-drivers, each man armed with a rifle, pistol, and hunting knife. When all had been made ready, and the train passed in review before the two young men, Bau- mann could not repress the thought that the Indians would find it a tempting morsel, though he doubted not that their reception would be a warm one. It was a delightful afternoon. Some distance beyond Independence the signs of cultivation began gradually to disappear, and now the great plains stretched out before them into illimitable space, broken only at intervals by groves of trees; the cloudless sky extending in deep azure over the mighty waste and seeming to flow one into the other at the farthermost boundary of the horizon. Nothing marked the trail but the distinc- tion in the color of the grass, and now that the Eomichooks (E(o)