The Covered Wagon

THE COVERED WAGON is one of the classic sagas of the American West, set in the days of the settlement of the far frontier in the Northwest. Gatherings of families join together in the spring west of the Mississippi to form long wagon trains heading across the Great Plains and over the Continental Divide to Oregon and a new life. They are beset by the hardships of nature, fear, starvation, and hostile Indians, and they suffer much, but their eventual success is one of the triumphs of our national history.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - "Look at 'em come, Jesse More and more Must be forty or fifty families." Molly Wingate, middle-aged, portly, dark browed and strong, stood at the door of the rude tent which for the time made her home. She was pointing down the road which lay like an ecru ribbon thrown down across the prairie grass, bordered beyond by the timber-grown bluffs of the Missouri. Jesse Wingate allowed his team of harness-marked horses to continue their eager drinking at the watering hole of the little stream near which the camp was pitched until, their thirst quenched, they began burying their muzzles and blowing into the water in sensuous enjoyment. He stood, a strong and tall man of perhaps forty-five years, of keen blue eye and short, close-matted, tawny beard. His garb was the loose dress of the outlying settler of the Western lands three-quarters of a century ago. A farmer he must have been back home.