“No; I suppose you could not,” said Cora, meditatively; and then she was sorry that she had said anything that might imply a reproach to the good-humored uncle she had left behind.

“Still, I said nothing about a dissolution of partnership until Fabian complained that I, or my policy, was a dead weight around his neck, dragging him down from the most magnificent flights to mere sordid drudgery.  Then I proposed that we should dissolve partnership.  And he said he was sorry.  And I believe he was; but also glad, inconsistent as that seems.  For he was sorry I could not come into his policy, and stay in the firm; but since I could not so agree with him, he was relieved when I proposed to withdraw from it.  We disagreed, my dear Cora, but we did not fall out; we parted good friends and brothers with tears in our eyes.  Poor little Violet cried a good deal.  But you know she has such a tender heart, poor child!—­Look at that herd of deer, Cora, standing on the top of that swell of the land to the right, and actually gazing at the trail without a motion or a panic.  I hope nobody will shoot at them!” exclaimed Mr. Clarence, suddenly breaking off in his discourse to point to the denizens of the thicket and the prairie, until upon some sudden impulse the whole herd turned and bounded away.

So they fared on through that glorious autumn day—­over the vast, rolling, solitary prairie—­now rising to a smooth, gradual elevation that revealed the circle of the whole horizon where it met the sky; now descending into a wide, shallow hollow, where the rising ground around inclosed them as in an amphitheater; but everywhere along the trail, the prairie grass, dried and burnished by the autumn’s suns and winds, burned like gold on the hills and bronze in the hollows, giving a singularly beautiful effect in light and shade of mingling metallic hues.

At noon the captain ordered a halt, and all the teams were drawn up in a line; and all the men got out to feed and water the horses and mules, and to prepare their own dinner.

They were now beside a clear, deep, narrow stream, a tributary of the Kansas River, running through a picturesque valley, carpeted with long grass, and bordered with low, well-wooded hills on either side.  The burnished gold and bronze of the long dried grass on the river’s brim, dotted here and there with a late scarlet prairie flower, the brilliant crimson and purple of the autumn foliage that clothed the trees, the bright blue of the sky and the soft white of the few downy clouds floating overhead, and all reflected and duplicated in the river below, made a beauty and glory of color that must have delighted the soul of an artist, and pleased the eye of even the most careless observer.

Mike O’Reilly, the captain’s orderly, was busy spreading a table cloth on the grass, at the foot of a hill on the right, and old John, Mr. Clarence’s man, was emulating Mike by spreading a four-yard square of white damask at a short distance behind him.