Three or four yoke of oxen strained and pulled weakly at each wagon, and beside them, in the deep sand, walked men with ox-goads, who prodded the unwilling beasts along.

On a curve I counted the wagons ahead and behind.

I knew that there were forty of them, including our own; for often I had counted them before.

And as I counted them now, as a child will to while away tedium, they were all there, forty of them, all canvas-topped, big and massive, crudely fashioned, pitching and lurching, grinding and jarring over sand and sage- brush and rock.
To right and left of us, scattered along the train, rode a dozen or fifteen men and youths on horses.

Across their pommels were long-barrelled rifles.