“But, Will . . .” Never had Abbie so thoroughly felt that queer sensation of being swept along by the wind which she could not stop,—of Time, which she could not stay. “Will . . . my voice . . . Mrs. Whitman . . . Every one thinks I ought to do something with it. And my painting, Will . . . to go away out there . . .”

“Oh, we’ll find you good teachers out there. No, Abbie, I’ve been thinking it over a long time and it’s my chance. We’re going in the summer. I’ll be getting everything ready. The army money will buy the wagon and oxen and the land, . . . and I’ll make up my mind soon about it, . . . whether to buy near the river, or homestead farther out.”

So Will had said he was going West. The era of this freedom had not dawned. Abbie Deal’s man had said he was going to Nebraska, and Abbie had to go too. It was as simple as that, then.

They began preparations, with Abbie still protesting that Nebraska was too far away and too uncivilized.

“It’s been a state since March of last year,” Will gave equal arguments in its favor. “They’ve got the site all chosen for the new capital. It’s named Lincoln. Queer when you stop to think about it that an old friend of Father’s should ever get big enough to be president and have a town named after him,—ain’t it?”

But Abbie was not thinking of the recently martyred President. “Yes, but they say the place they’ve chosen is away out on the prairie with just two or three log houses.” She was not so willing to believe the best of the infant state as was Will.

He sought out all the good news he could find to cheer her. Once he brought an Omaha newspaper. “Talk about a new country, . . .” he was enthusiastic. “Everything’s as citified as can be in Omaha, . . . and we won’t be so far from there. The paper says it has fifteen thousand inhabitants, . . . a regular city. How’s this for you, eleven churches and five schools, and five banks. It says, ‘Dealers in gold dust, bullion, coin and exchange.’ And the Union Pacific’s got an overland mail route clear to Laramie, with two trains every day.”

“Yes, and you read on a little farther. You’re leaving out some things. I saw that paper myself, Will Deal.”

Will laughed. “Oh, five breweries and sixty saloons, . . . that ain’t so bad. And besides there’s a hoop factory.”

“Well, I don’t care about that. They might even go out of style some day, although Regina thinks they never will, I wouldn’t care if they did. Even if they do make you look stylish, they’re not comfortable.”

And all the time Abbie was getting together her little possessions, and Will was preparing the outfit. He had intended to make a new ox-yoke, had in fact already cut the maple, and some pliable hickory for the bows, when Mother Mackenzie gave him the sturdy yoke that she had used fourteen years before on the trip out from Illinois. He painted the names of his ox team, “Red” and “Baldy,” on it and in the center, “Nebraska, 1868.”