When we reached
the road we found that everywhere we stepped we went over our
shoe-tops in the soft dust. We beard a deep, strange creaking
noise, mixed with what sounded like reports of a pistol, around
the bend in the trail. Soon we could make out what seemed to be a
long herd of cattle winding towards us, with what might have been
a circus tent swaying about behind them.
"What's coming?" we asked of a boy who was going by.
"Old Henderson," he replied.
"What's he got?"
"Just his outfit."
"But what are all the cattle?"
"His team."
"Not one team?"
"Yes; eleven yoke."
"Twenty-two oxen in one team?"
"Yes; and four wagons."
The head yoke of oxen was now opposite to us, swaying about
from side to side and swirling their tails in the air, but still
pressing forward at the rate of perhaps a mile and a half or two
miles an hour. Far back along the procession we could dimly see a
man walking in the dust beside the last yoke, swinging a long
whip which cracked in the air like a rifle. Behind rolled and
swayed the four great canvas-topped wagons, tied behind one
another.
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