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“‘Indians, Virginia! Come and see! They have to take us across the river!’ Out he rushed and I after him, with every story Grandma ever told us dancing through my brain. Now there was going to be an adventure! But there wasn’t. We had reached the Caw River, where there were Indians to ferry us across. They were real and red and terrifying, but I never flinched. If they brought out tomahawks in midstream, I would be as brave as a pioneer’s daughter should be. But would you believe me, those Indians were as tame as pet canaries, and just shot us across the river without glancing at us, and held out their big hands with a grunt, for the coins! That was one of the greatest disappointments of my life.”

All went well with the travelers during those first weeks of the trip, and no one enjoyed it more than Grandma Keyes after she got over being homesick. But when they reached the Big Blue river, it was so swollen that they had to lie by and wait for it to go down, or make rafts to cross it on. As soon as they stopped traveling Grandma began to fail, and on the 29th of May, with scarcely any pain, she died. Virginia’s diary says: “It was hard to comfort mother until I persuaded her that to die out in that lovely country, and with most of your family around you, was far better than living longer at home. Besides, she might have died in Springfield. So mother cheered up a little, while all the party helped us in making the sad preparations. A coffin was made from a cotton-wood tree, and a young man from home found a gray stone slab and cut Grandma’s name, birthplace, and age on it. A minister of the party made a simple address, and with the sunlight filtering through the trees we buried her under an oak-tree and covered the grave with wild flowers. Then we had to go on our way and leave dear Grandma in the vast wilderness, which was so hard for mother that for many days I did not take my rides on Billy, but just stayed with her. But the landscape was so comfortingly beautiful that at last she cheered up and began to feel that Grandma was not left alone in the forest, but was with God. Strange to say, that grave in the woods has never been disturbed; around it grew up the city of Manhattan, Kansas, and there it is in the city cemetery of to-day.”

The river did not go down, as the men had hoped, so they began to cut down trees and split them into twenty-five-foot logs which were hollowed out and joined together by cross timbers, these were firmly lashed to stakes driven into the bank, and ropes were tied to each end to pull the rafts back and forth across the river. It was no easy matter to get the heavy wagons down the steep bank to the rafts, and they had to be held back by the ropes and let down slowly so the wheels would run into the hollowed logs. The women and children stayed in the wagons, and talked and laughed gaily, that they might not show the fear they felt as they balanced above the swollen river. But it was crossed safely and then on the oxen jogged over a rough road until the great Valley of the Platte was reached, where the road was good and the country beautiful beyond expression. Virginia says: “Our party was now so large that there was a line of forty wagons winding its way like a serpent through the valley. There was no danger of any kind, and each day was happier than the one before. How I enjoyed galloping over the plains on Billy!” she exclaims, adding, “At night we young folks would sit around the camp-fire, chatting merrily, and often a song would be heard, or some clever dancer would give us a barn-door jig on the hind gate of a wagon!”