The party counted on being able to supplement their supplies with trout, bass and pickerel from countless untouched streams. They might, too, come into wooded country, if the fire had left any to northward, and here they knew game would be plentiful.
One thing seemed positive in that new world: starvation could not threaten.
Cloudy and dull the morning was--yet well-suited to the needs of the Folk--when the expedition left Settlement Cliffs. The convoy, each man provided with eye-guards and his hands and face well painted with protecting pigment, waited impatiently in the palisade, while Allan said farewell to Beta and the little chap.
For a long moment he strained them both to his breast, then, the woman's kiss still hot upon his lips, ran quickly up the path and joined his picked troop of scouts.
"Forward, men!" cried he, taking the lead with Zangamon.
Some minutes later Beatrice saw them defiling over the long, shaking bridge.
Through her tears she watched them, waving her hand to Allan--even making the baby shake its little hand as well--and throwing kisses to him, who returned them gaily.
On the far bank the party halted a minute to shout a few last words to the assembled colonists that lined the parapet of the terrace.
Then they turned, and, striking northwest, plunged boldly into the burned and blackened waste.
Long after the marching column had disappeared over the crest of the second hill Beatrice still watched. Up on the cliff-top, with the powerful telescope at her eye, she followed the faint, drifting line of dust and ash that marked the line of march.
Only when this, too, had disappeared, merged in the somber gray of the horizon, did she sadly and very slowly descend the path once more, back to the loneliness of a home where now no husband's presence greeted her.
Though she tried to smile--tried to believe all would yet be well, old Gesafam, glancing up from her labors at the cooking-hearth, saw tears were shining in her beautiful gray eyes.
Barbarian though the ancient beldame was, she knew, she understood that after all, now as for all time, in every venture and in every task, the woman's portion was the harder one.