[Frontispiece: He gathered her in his arms, and bending low carried herback into the darkened cavern. ]

THE EMIGRANT TRAIL

BY

GERALDINE BONNER

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY

DUFFIELD & COMPANY

Published, April, 1910

CONTENTS

PART I

THE PRAIRIE

PART II

THE RIVER

PART III

THE MOUNTAINS

PART IV

THE DESERT

PART V

THE PROMISED LAND

THE EMIGRANT TRAIL

PART I

The Prairie

CHAPTER I

It had rained steadily for three days, the straight, relentless rain ofearly May on the Missouri frontier. The emigrants, whose hooded wagonshad been rolling into Independence for the past month and whose tentsgleamed through the spring foliage, lounged about in one another'scamps cursing the weather and swapping bits of useful information. 

The year was 1848 and the great California emigration was still twelvemonths distant. The flakes of gold had already been found in the raceof Sutter's mill, and the thin scattering of men, which made thepopulation of California, had left their plows in the furrow and theirships in the cove and gone to the yellow rivers that drain the Sierra'smighty flanks. But the rest of the world knew nothing of this yet. They were not to hear till November when a ship brought the news to NewYork, and from city and town, from village and cottage, a march of menwould turn their faces to the setting sun and start for the land ofgold. 

Those now bound for California knew it only as the recently acquiredstrip of territory that lay along the continent's Western rim, a placeof perpetual sunshine, where everybody had a chance and there was nomalaria. That was what they told each other as they lay under thewagons or sat on saddles in the wet tents. The story of old Roubadoux, the French fur trader from St. Joseph, circulated cheeringly from mouthto mouth--a man in Monterey had had chills and people came from milesaround to see him shake, so novel was the spectacle. That was thecountry for the men and women of the Mississippi Valley, who shook halfthe year and spent the other half getting over it. 

The call of the West was a siren song in the ears of these waitingcompanies. The blood of pioneers urged them forward. Theirforefathers had moved from the old countries across the seas, from theelm-shaded towns of New England, from the unkempt villages thatadvanced into the virgin lands by the Great Lakes, from the peace andplenty of the splendid South. Year by year they had pushed thefrontier westward, pricked onward by a ceaseless unrest, "the old landhunger" that never was appeased. The forests rang to the stroke oftheir ax, the slow, untroubled rivers of the wilderness parted to theplowing wheels of their unwieldy wagons, their voices went before theminto places where Nature had kept unbroken her vast and ponderingsilence. The distant country by the Pacific was still to explore andthey yoked their oxen, and with a woman and a child on the seat startedout again, responsive to the cry of "Westward, Ho!"

As many were bound for Oregon as for California. Marcus Whitman andthe missionaries had brought alluring stories of that great domain onceheld so cheaply the country almost lost it. It was said to be of awonderful fertility and league-long stretches of idle land awaited thesettler. The roads ran together more than half the way, parting atGreen River, where the Oregon trail turned to Fort Hall and theCalifornia dipped southward and wound, a white and spindling thread, across what men then called "The Great American Desert. " Two days'journey from Independence this road branched from the Santa Fé Trailand bent northward across the prairie. A signboard on a stake pointedthe way and bore the legend, "Road to Oregon. " It was the startingpoint of one of the historic highways of the world. The Indians calledit "The Great Medicine Way of the Pale-face. "

Checked in the act of what they called "jumping off" the emigrants woreaway the days in telling stories of the rival countries, and inseparating from old companies and joining new ones. It was animportant matter, this of traveling partnerships. A trip of twothousand miles on unknown roads beset with dangers was not to belightly undertaken. Small parties, frightened on the edge of theenterprise, joined themselves to stronger ones. The mountain men andtrappers delighted to augment the tremors of the fearful, and round thecamp fires listening groups hung on the words of long-haired men cladin dirty buckskins, whose moccasined feet had trod the trails of thefur trader and his red brother. 

This year was one of special peril for, to the accustomed dangers fromheat, hunger, and Indians, was added a new one--the Mormons. They werestill moving westward in their emigration from Nauvoo to the new Zionbeside the Great Salt Lake. It was a time and a place to hear theblack side of Mormonism. A Missourian hated a Latter Day Saint as aPuritan hated a Papist. Hawn's mill was fresh in the minds of thefrontiersmen, and the murder of Joseph Smith was accounted a righteousact. The emigrant had many warnings to lay to heart--against Indiansurprises in the mountains, against mosquitoes on the plains, againstquicksands in the Platte, against stampedes among the cattle, againstalkaline springs and the desert's parching heats. And quite asimportant as any of these was that against the Latter Day Saint withthe Book of Mormon in his saddlebag and his long-barreled rifle acrossthe pommel. 

So they waited, full of ill words and impatience, while the rain fell. Independence, the focusing point of the frontier life, housingunexpected hundreds, dripped from all its gables and swam in mud. Andin the camps that spread through the fresh, wet woods and the oozyuplands, still other hundreds cowered under soaked tent walls and indamp wagon boxes, listening to the rush of the continuous showers. 

CHAPTER II

On the afternoon of the fourth day the clouds lifted. A band of yellowlight broke out along the horizon, and at the crossings of the town andin the rutted country roads men and women stood staring at it with itslight and their own hope brightening their faces. 

David Crystal, as he walked through the woods, saw it behind a veiningof black branches. Though a camper and impatient to be off like therest, he did not feel the elation that shone on their watching faces. His was held in a somber abstraction. Just behind him, in an openingunder the straight, white blossoming of dogwood trees, was a new-madegrave. The raw earth about it showed the prints of his feet, for hehad been standing by it thinking of the man who lay beneath. 

Four days before his friend, Joe Linley, had died of cholera. Three ofthem--Joe, himself, and George Leffingwell, Joe's cousin--had been incamp less than a week when it had happened. Until then their life hadbeen like a picnic there in the clearing by the roadside, with thethrill of the great journey stirring in their blood. And then Joe hadbeen smitten with such suddenness, such awful suddenness! He had beentalking to them when David had seen a suspension of something, astoppage of a vital inner spring, and with it a whiteness had passedacross his face like a running tide. The awe of that moment, the hushwhen it seemed to David the liberated spirit had paused beside him inits outward flight, was with him now as he walked through the rustlingfreshness of the wood. 

The rain had begun to lessen, its downfall thinning into a soft patteramong the leaves. The young man took off his hat and let the damp airplay over his hair. It was thick hair, black and straight, alreadylonger than city fashions dictated, and a first stubble of black beardwas hiding the lines of a chin perhaps a trifle too sensitive andpointed. Romantic good looks and an almost poetic refinement were thecharacteristics of the face, an unusual type for the frontier. Withthoughtful gray eyes set deep under a jut of brows and a nose as finelycut as a woman's, it was of a type that, in more sophisticatedlocalities, men would have said had risen to meet the Byronic ideal ofwhich the world was just then enamored. But there was nothing Byronicor self-conscious about David Crystal. He had been born and bred inwhat was then the Far West, and that he should read poetry and regardlife as an undertaking that a man must face with all honor andresoluteness was not so surprising for the time and place. The West, with its loneliness, its questioning silences, its solemn sweep ofprairie and roll of slow, majestic rivers, held spiritual communionwith those of its young men who had eyes to see and ears to hear. 

The trees grew thinner and he saw the sky pure as amber beneath thestorm pall. The light from it twinkled over wet twigs and glazed thewater in the crumplings of new leaves. Across the glow the lastraindrops fell in slanting dashes. David's spirits rose. The weatherwas clearing and they could start--start on the trail, the long trail, the Emigrant Trail, two thousand miles to California!

He was close to the camp. Through the branches he saw the filmy, diffused blueness of smoke and smelled the sharp odor of burning wood. He quickened his pace and was about to give forth a cheerful hail whenhe heard a sound that made him stop, listen with fixed eye, and thenadvance cautiously, sending a questing glance through the screen ofleaves. The sound was a woman's voice detached in clear sweetness fromthe deeper tones of men. 

There was no especial novelty in this. Their camp was just off theroad and the emigrant women were wont to pause there and pass the timeof day. Most of them were the lean and leathern-skinned mates of thefrontiersmen, shapeless and haggard as if toil had drawn from theirbodies all the softness of feminine beauty, as malaria had sucked fromtheir skins freshness and color. But there were young, pretty ones, too, who often strolled by, looking sideways from the shelter ofjealous sunbonnets. 

This voice was not like theirs. It had a quality David had only hearda few times in his life--cultivation. Experience would havecharacterized it as "a lady voice. " David, with none, thought it anangel's. Very shy, very curious, he came out from the trees ready atonce and forever to worship anyone who could set their words to suchdulcet cadences. 

The clearing, green as an emerald and shining with rain, showed thehood of the wagon and the new, clean tent, white as sails on a summersea, against the trees' young bloom. In the middle the fire burned andbeside it stood Leff, a skillet in his hand. He was a curly-headed, powerful country lad, twenty-four years old, who, two months before, had come from an Illinois farm to join the expedition. The frontierwas to him a place of varied diversion, Independence a stimulatingcenter. So diffident that the bashful David seemed by contrast a manof cultured ease, he was now blushing till the back of his neck was red. 

On the other side of the fire a lady and gentleman stood arm in armunder an umbrella. The two faces, bent upon Leff with grave attention, were alike, not in feature, but in the subtly similar play ofexpression that speaks the blood tie. A father and daughter, Davidthought. Against the rough background of the camp, with its litter attheir feet, they had an air of being applied upon an alien surface, ofnot belonging to the picture, but standing out from it in sharp andincongruous contrast. 

The gentleman was thin and tall, fifty or thereabouts, very pale, especially to one accustomed to the tanned skins of the farm and thecountry town. His face held so frank a kindliness, especially the eyeswhich looked tired and a little sad, that David felt its expressionlike a friendly greeting or a strong handclasp. 

The lady did not have this, perhaps because she was a great dealyounger. She was yet in the bud, far from the tempering touch ofexperience, still in the state of looking forward and anticipatingthings. She was dark, of medium height, and inclined to be plump. Many delightful curves went to her making, and her waist taperedelegantly, as was the fashion of the time. Thinking it overafterwards, the young man decided that she did not belong in thepicture with a prairie schooner and camp kettles, because she looked solike an illustration in a book of beauty. And David knew something ofthese matters, for had he not been twice to St. Louis and there seenthe glories of the earth and the kingdoms thereof?

But life in camp outside Independence had evidently blunted hisperceptions. The small waist, a round, bare throat rising from anarrow band of lace, and a flat, yellow straw hat were the youngwoman's only points of resemblance to the beauty-book heroines. Shewas not in the least beautiful, only fresh and healthy, the flat strawhat shading a girlish face, smooth and firmly modeled as a ripe fruit. Her skin was a glossy brown, softened with a peach's bloom, warmingthrough deepening shades of rose to lips that were so deeply colored noone noticed how firmly they could come together, how their curving, crimson edges could shut tight, straighten out, and become a line offorceful suggestions, of doggedness, maybe--who knows?--perhaps ofobstinacy. It was her physical exuberance, her downy glow, that madeDavid think her good looking; her serene, brunette richness, with itshigh lights of coral and scarlet, that made her radiate an aura ofwarmth, startling in that woodland clearing, as the luster of a fireflyin a garden's glooming dusk. 

She stopped speaking as he emerged from the trees, and Leff'sstammering answer held her in a riveted stare of attention. Then shelooked up and saw David. 

"Oh, " she said, and transferred the stare to him. "Is this he?"

Leff was obviously relieved:

"Oh, David, I ain't known what to say to this lady and her father. They think some of joining us. They've been waiting for quite a spellto see you. They're goin' to California, too. "

The gentleman lifted his hat. Now that he smiled his face was evenkindlier, and he, too, had a pleasant, mellowed utterance that linkedhim with the world of superior quality of which David had had those twoglimpses. 

"I am Dr. Gillespie, " he said, "and this is my daughter Susan. "

David bowed awkwardly, a bow that was supposed to include father anddaughter. He did not know whether this was a regular introduction, andeven if it had been he would not have known what to do. The youngwoman made no attempt to return the salutation, not that she was rude, but she had the air of regarding it as a frivolous interruption toweighty matters. She fixed David with eyes, small, black, and brightas a squirrel's, so devoid of any recognition that he was a member ofthe rival sex--or, in fact, of the human family--that hisself-consciousness sunk down abashed as if before reproof. 

"My father and I are going to California and the train we were goingwith has gone on. We've come from Rochester, New York, and everywherewe've been delayed and kept back. Even that boat up from St. Louis wasfive days behind time. It's been nothing but disappointments anddelays since we left home. And when we got here the people we weregoing with--a big train from Northern New York--had gone on and leftus. "

She said all this rapidly, poured it out as if she were so full of theinjury and annoyance of it, that she had to ease her indignation byletting it run over into the first pair of sympathetic ears. David'swere a very good pair. Any woman with a tale of trouble would havefound him a champion. How much more a fresh-faced young creature witha melodious voice and anxious eyes. 

"A good many trains have gone on, " he said. And then, by way ofconsolation for her manner demanded, that, "But they'll be stalled atthe fords with this rain. They'll have to wait till the rivers fall. All the men who know say that. "

"So we've heard, " said the father, "but we hoped that we'd catch themup. Our outfit is very light, only one wagon, and our driver is athoroughly capable and experienced man. What we want are somecompanions with whom we can travel till we overhaul the others. I'dstart alone, but with my daughter----"

She cut in at once, giving his arm a little, irritated shake:

"Of course you couldn't do that. " Then to the young men: "My father'sbeen sick for quite a long time, all last winter. It's for his healthwe're going to California, and, of course, he couldn't start withoutsome other men in the party. Indians might attack us, and at the hotelthey said the Mormons were scattered all along the road and thoughtnothing of shooting a Gentile. "

Her father gave the fingers crooked on his arm a little squeeze withhis elbow. It was evident the pair were very good friends. 

"You'll make these young men think I'm a helpless invalid, who'll liein the wagon all day. They won't want us to go with them. "

This made her again uneasy and let loose another flow of authoritativewords. 

"No, my father isn't really an invalid. He doesn't have to lie in thewagon. He's going to ride most of the time. He and I expect to rideall the way, and the old man who goes with us will drive the mules. What's been really bad for my father was living in that dreadful hotelat Independence with everything damp and uncomfortable. We want to getoff just as soon as we can, and this gentleman, " indicating Leff, "saysyou want to go, too. "

"We'll start to-morrow morning, if it's clear. "

"Now, father, " giving the arm she held a renewed clutch and sharpershake, "there's our chance. We must go with them. "

The father's smile would have shown something of deprecation, or evenapology, if it had not been all pride and tenderness. 

"These young men will be very kind if they permit us to join them, " waswhat his lips said. His eyes added: "This is a spoiled child, but evenso, there is no other like her in the world. "

The young men sprang at the suggestion. The spring was internal, ofthe spirit, for they were too overwhelmed by the imminent presence ofbeauty to show a spark of spontaneity on the outside. They mutteredtheir agreement, kicked the ground, and avoided the eyes of MissGillespie. 

"The people at the hotel, " the doctor went on, "advised us to join oneof the ox trains. But it seemed such a slow mode of progress. Theydon't make much more than fifteen to twenty miles a day. "

"And then, " said the girl, "there might be people we didn't like in thetrain and we'd be with them all the time. "

It is not probable that she intended to suggest to her listeners thatshe could stand them as traveling companions. Whether she did or notthey scented the compliment, looked stupid, and hung their heads, silent in the intoxication of this first subtle whiff of incense. EvenLeff, uncouth and unlettered, extracted all that was possible from thewords, and felt a delicate elation at the thought that so fine acreature could endure his society. 

"We expect to go a great deal faster than the long trains, " shecontinued. "We have no oxen, only six mules and two extra horses and acow. "

Her father laughed outright. 

"Don't let my daughter frighten you. We've really got a very smallamount of baggage. Our little caravan has been made up on the adviceof Dr. Marcus Whitman, an old friend of mine. Five years ago when hewas in Washington he gave me a list of what was needed for the journeyacross the plains. I suppose he's the best authority on that subject. We all know how successfully the Oregon emigration was carried through. "

David was glad to show he knew something of that. A boy friend of hishad gone to Oregon with this, the first large body of emigrants thathad ventured on the great enterprise. Whitman was to him a nationalhero, his ride in the dead of winter from the far Northwest toWashington, as patriotically inspiring as Paul Revere's. 

There was more talk, standing round the fire, while the agreements forthe start were being made. No one thought the arrangement hasty, forit was a place and time of quick decisions. Men starting on theemigrant trail were not for wasting time on preliminaries. Friendshipssprang up like the grass and were mown down like it. Standing on theedge of the unknown was not the propitious moment for caution andhesitation. Only the bold dared it and the bold took each otherwithout question, reading what was on the surface, not bothering aboutwhat might be hidden. 

It was agreed, the weather being fair, that they would start at seventhe next morning, Dr. Gillespie's party joining David's at the camp. With their mules and horses they should make good time and within amonth overhaul the train that had left the Gillespies behind. 

As the doctor and his daughter walked away the shyness of the young menreturned upon them in a heavy backwash. They were so whelmed by itthat they did not even speak to one another. But both glanced withcautious stealth at the receding backs, the doctor in front, hisdaughter walking daintily on the edge of grass by the roadside, holdingher skirts away from the wet weeds. 

When she was out of sight Leff said with an embarrassed laugh:

"Well, we got some one to go along with us now. "

David did not laugh. He pondered frowningly. He was the elder by twoyears and he felt his responsibilities. 

"They'll do all right. With two more men we'll make a strong enoughtrain. "

Leff was cook that night, and he set the coffee on and began cuttingthe bacon. Occupied in this congenial work, the joints of his tonguewere loosened, and as the skillet gave forth grease and odors, he gaveforth bits of information gleaned from the earlier part of theinterview:

"I guess they got a first rate outfit. The old gentleman said they'dbeen getting it together since last autumn. They must be pretty wellfixed. "

David nodded. Being "well fixed" or being poor did not count on theedge of the prairie. They were frivolous outside matters that hadweight in cities. Leff went on, "He's consumpted. That's why he's going. He says he expects to becured before he gets to California. "

A sudden zephyr irritated the tree tops, which bent away from its touchand scattered moisture on the fire and the frying pan. There was asputter and sizzle and Leff muttered profanely before he took up thedropped thread:

"The man that drives the mules, he's a hired man that the oldgentleman's had for twenty years. He was out on the frontier once andknows all about it, and there ain't nothing he can't drive"--turning ofthe bacon here, Leff absorbed beyond explanatory speech--"They got fourhorses, two to ride and two extra ones, and a cow. I don't see howthey're goin' to keep up the pace with the cow along. The oldgentleman says they can do twenty to twenty-five miles a day when theroad's good. But I don't seem to see how the cow can keep up such alick. "

"A hired man, a cow, and an outfit that it took all winter to gettogether, " said David thoughtfully. "It sounds more like a pleasuretrip than going across the plains. "

He sat as if uneasily debating the possible drawbacks of so elaboratean escort, but he was really ruminating upon the princess, who movedupon the wilderness with such pomp and circumstance. 

As they set out their tin cups and plates they continued to discuss thedoctor, his caravan, his mules, his servant, and his cow, in fact, everything but his daughter. It was noticeable that no mention of herwas made till supper was over and the night fell. Then their commentson her were brief. Leff seemed afraid of her even a mile away in thedamp hotel at Independence, seemed to fear that she might in some wayknow he'd had her name upon his tongue, and would come to-morrow withangry, accusing looks like an offended goddess. David did not want totalk about her, he did not quite know why. Before the thought oftraveling a month in her society his mind fell back reeling, baffled bythe sudden entrance of such a dazzling intruder. A month beside thisglowing figure, a month under the impersonal interrogation of thosecool, demanding eyes! It was as if the President or General ZacharyTaylor had suddenly joined them. 

But of course she figured larger in their thoughts than any other partor all the combined parts of Dr. Gillespie's outfit. In theirimaginations--the hungry imaginations of lonely young men--sherepresented all the grace, beauty, and mystery of the Eternal Feminine. They did not reason about her, they only felt, and what theyfelt--unconsciously to themselves--was that she had introduced thelast, wildest, and most disturbing thrill into the adventure of thegreat journey. 

CHAPTER III

The next day broke still and clear. The dawn was yet a pale promise inthe East when from Independence, out through the dripping woods andclearings, rose the tumult of breaking camps. The rattle of the yokechains and the raucous cry of "Catch up! Catch up!" sounded under thetrees and out and away over valley and upland as the lumbering wagons, freighted deep for the long trail, swung into the road. 

David's camp was astir long before the sun was up. The great hour hadcome. They were going! They sung and shouted as they harnessed Bessand Ben, a pair of sturdy roans bought from an emigrant discouragedbefore the start, while the saddle horses nosed about the tree rootsfor a last cropping of the sweet, thick grass. Inside the wagon theprovisions were packed in sacks and the rifles hung on hooks on thecanvas walls. At the back, on a supporting step, the mess chest wasstrapped. It was a businesslike wagon. Its contents included only onedeviation from the practical and necessary--three books of David's. Joe had laughed at him about them. What did a man want with Byron'spoems and Milton and Bacon's "Essays" crossing the plains? Neither Joenor Leff could understand such devotion to the printed page. Theirkits were of the compactest, not a useless article or an unnecessarypound, unless you counted the box of flower seeds that belonged to Joe, who had heard that California, though a dry country, could be coaxedinto productiveness along the rivers. 

Dr. Gillespie and his daughter were punctual. David's silver watch, large as the circle of a cup and possessed of a tick so loud itinterrupted conversation, registered five minutes before seven, whenthe doctor and his daughter appeared at the head of their caravan. Twohandsome figures, well mounted and clad with taste as well assuitability, they looked as gallantly unfitted for the road as armoredknights in a modern battlefield. Good looks, physical delicacy, andbecoming clothes had as yet no recognized place on the trail. TheGillespies were boldly and blithely bringing them, and unlike mostinnovators, romance came with them. Nobody had gone out ofIndependence with so confident and debonair an air. Now advancingthrough a spattering of leaf shadows and sunspots, they seemed to theyoung men to be issuing from the first pages of a story, and thewatchers secretly hoped that they would go riding on into the heart ofit with the white arch of the prairie schooner and the pricked ears ofthe six mules as a movable background. 

There was no umbrella this morning to obscure Miss Gillespie's vividtints, and in the same flat, straw hat, with her cheeks framed inlittle black curls, she looked a freshly wholesome young girl, whomight be dangerous to the peace of mind of men even less lonely andsusceptible than the two who bid her a flushed and bashful goodmorning. She had the appearance, however, of being entirely obliviousto any embarrassment they might show. There was not a suggestion ofcoquetry in her manner as she returned their greetings. Instead, itwas marked by a businesslike gravity. Her eyes touched their faceswith the slightest welcoming light and then left them to rove, sharplyinspecting, over their wagon and animals. When she had scrutinizedthese, she turned in her saddle, and said abruptly to the driver of thesix mules:

"Daddy John, do you see--horses?"

The person thus addressed nodded and said in a thin, old voice, "I do, and if they want them they're welcome to them. "

He was a small, shriveled man, who might have been anywhere from sixtyto seventy-five. A battered felt hat, gray-green with wind and sun, was pulled well down to his ears, pressing against his forehead andneck thin locks of gray hair. A grizzle of beard edged his chin, apoor and scanty growth that showed the withered skin through itssparseness. His face, small and wedge-shaped, was full of ruddy color, the cheeks above the ragged hair smooth and red as apples. Though hismouth was deficient in teeth, his neck, rising bare from the band ofhis shirt, corrugated with the starting sinews of old age, he had ashrewd vivacity of glance, an alertness of poise, that suggested anunimpaired spiritual vitality. He seemed at home behind the mules, andhere, for the first time, David felt was some one who did not lookoutside the picture. In fact, he had an air of tranquil acceptance ofthe occasion, of adjustment without effort, that made him fit into theframe better than anyone else of the party. 

It was a glorious morning, and as they fared forward through thecheckered shade their spirits ran high. The sun, curious anddetermined, pried and slid through every crack in the leafage, turnedthe flaked lichen to gold, lay in clotted light on the pools around thefern roots. They were delicate spring woods, streaked with the whitedashes of the dogwood, and hung with the tassels of the maple. Thefoliage was still unfolding, patterned with fresh creases, the prey ofa continuous, frail unrest. Little streams chuckled through theunderbrush, and from the fusion of woodland whisperings bird notesdetached themselves, soft flutings and liquid runs, that gave anotherexpression to the morning's blithe mood. 

Between the woods there were stretches of open country, velvet smooth, with the trees slipped down to where the rivers ran. The grass was asgreen as sprouting grain, and a sweet smell of wet earth and seedlinggrowths came from it. Cloud shadows trailed across it, blue blotchesmoving languidly. It was the young earth in its blushing promise, fragrant, rain-washed, budding, with the sound of running water in thegrass and bird voices dropping from the sky. 

With their lighter wagons they passed the ox trains plowing stolidlythrough the mud, barefoot children running at the wheel, and womenknitting on the front seat. The driver's whip lash curled in the air, and his nasal "Gee haw" swung the yoked beasts slowly to one side. Then came detachments of Santa Fé traders, dark men in striped serapeswith silver trimmings round their high-peaked hats. Behind themstretched the long line of wagons, the ponderous freighters of theSanta Fé Trail, rolling into Independence from the Spanish towns thatlay beyond the burning deserts of the Cimarron. They filed by in slowprocession, a vision of faded colors and swarthy faces, jingle of spurand mule bell mingling with salutations in sonorous Spanish. 

As the day grew warmer, the doctor complained of the heat and went backto the wagon. David and the young girl rode on together through thegreen thickness of the wood. They had talked a little while the doctorwas there, and now, left to themselves, they suddenly began to talk agood deal. In fact, Miss Gillespie revealed herself as a somewhatgarrulous and quite friendly person. David felt his awed admirationsettling into a much more comfortable feeling, still wholly admiringbut relieved of the cramping consciousness that he had entertained anangel unawares. She was so natural and girlish that he began tocherish hopes of addressing her as "Miss Susan, " even let vaultingambition carry him to the point where he could think of some daycalling himself her friend. 

She was communicative, and he was still too dazzled by her to realizethat she was not above asking questions. In the course of a half hourshe knew all about him, and he, without the courage to be thusflatteringly curious, knew the main points of her own history. Herfather had been a practicing physician in Rochester for the pastfifteen years. Before that he had lived in New York, where she hadbeen born twenty years ago. Her mother had been a Canadian, a Frenchwoman from the Province of Quebec, whom her father had met there onesummer when he had gone to fish in Lake St. John. Her mother had beenvery beautiful--David nodded at that, he had already decided it--andhad always spoken English with an accent. She, the daughter, when shewas little, spoke French before she did English; in fact, did not Mr. Crystal notice there was still something a little queer about her _r_'s?

Mr. Crystal had noticed it, noticed it to the extent of thinking itvery pretty. The young lady dismissed the compliment as one who doesnot hear, and went on with her narrative:

"After my mother's death my father left New York. He couldn't bear tolive there any more. He'd been so happy. So he moved away, though hehad a fine practice. "

The listener gave forth a murmur of sympathetic understanding. Devotion to a beautiful woman was matter of immediate appeal to him. His respect for the doctor rose in proportion, especially when thedevotion was weighed in the balance against a fine practice. Lookingat the girl's profile with prim black curls against the cheek, he sawthe French-Canadian mother, and said not gallantly, but rather timidly:

"And you're like your mother, I suppose? You're dark like a Frenchwoman. "

She answered this with a brusque denial. Extracting compliments fromthe talk of a shy young Westerner was evidently not her strong point. 

"Oh, no! not at all. My mother was pale and tall, with very largeblack eyes. I am short and dark and my eyes are only just big enoughto see out of. She was delicate and I am very strong. My father saysI've never been sick since I got my first teeth. "

She looked at him and laughed, and he realized it was the first time hehad seen her do it. It brightened her face delightfully, making theeyes she had spoken of so disparagingly narrow into dancing slits. When she laughed men who had not lost the nicety of their standards bya sojourn on the frontier would have called her a pretty girl. 

"My mother was of the French _noblesse_, " she said, a dark eye upon himto see how he would take this dignified piece of information. "She wasa descendant of the Baron de Poutrincourt, who founded Port Royal. "

David was as impressed as anyone could have desired. He did not knowwhat the French _noblesse_ was, but by its sound he judged it to besome high and honorable estate. He was equally ignorant of theidentity of the Baron de Poutrincourt, but the name alone wasimpressive, especially as Miss Gillespie pronounced it. 

"That's fine, isn't it?" he said, as being the only comment he couldthink of which at once showed admiration and concealed ignorance. 

The young woman seemed to find it adequate and went on with her familyhistory. Five years ago in Washington her father had seen his oldfriend, Marcus Whitman, and since then had been restless with thelonging to move West. His health demanded the change. His labors as aphysician had exhausted him. His daughter spoke feelingly of theimpossibility of restraining his charitable zeal. He attended the poorfor nothing. He rose at any hour and went forth in any weather inresponse to the call of suffering. 

"That's what he says a doctor's duties are, " she said. "It isn't aprofession to make money with, it's a profession for helping people andcuring them. You yourself don't count, it's only what you do thatdoes. Why, my father had a very large practice, but he made only justenough to keep us. "

Of all she had said this seemed to the listener the best worth hearing. The doctor now mounted to the top of the highest pedestal David'sadmiration could supply. Here was one of the compensations with whichlife keeps the balances even. Joe had died and left him friendless, and while the ache was still sharp, this stranger and his daughter hadcome to soothe his pain, perhaps, in the course of time, to conjure itquite away. 

Early in the preceding winter the doctor had been forced to decide onthe step he had been long contemplating. An attack of congestion ofthe lungs developed consumption in his weakened constitution. A warmclimate and an open-air life were prescribed. And how better combinethem than by emigrating to California?

"And so, " said the doctor's daughter, "father made up his mind to goand sold out his practice. People thought he was crazy to start onsuch a trip when he was sick, but he knows more than they do. Besides, it's not going to be such hard work for him. Daddy John, the old manwho drives the mules, knows all about this Western country. He washere a long time ago when Indiana and Illinois were wild and full ofIndians. He got wounded out here fighting and thought he was going todie, and came back to New York. My father found him there, poor andlonely and sick, and took care of him and cured him. He's been with usever since, more than twenty years, and he manages everything and takescare of everything. He and father'll tell you I rule them, but that'sjust teasing. It's really Daddy John who rules. "

The mules were just behind them, and she looked back at the old man andcalled in her clear voice:

"I'm talking about you, Daddy John. I'm telling all about yourwickedness. "

Daddy John's answer came back, slow and amused:

"Wait till I get the young feller alone and I'll do some talking. "

Laughing, she settled herself in her saddle and dropped her voice forDavid's ear:

"I think Daddy John was quite pleased we missed the New York train. Itwas a big company, and he couldn't have managed everything the way hecan now. But we'll soon catch it up and then"--she lifted her eyebrowsand smiled with charming malice at the thought of Daddy John's comingsubjugation. "We ought to overtake it in three or four weeks they saidin Independence. "

Her companion made no answer. The cheerful conversation had suddenlytaken a depressing turn. Under the spell of Miss Gillespie's loquacityand black eyes he had quite forgotten that he was only a temporaryescort, to be superseded by an entire ox train, of which even now theywere in pursuit. David was a dreamer, and while the young womantalked, he had seen them both in diminishing perspective, passingsociably across the plains, over the mountains, into the desert, towhere California edged with a prismatic gleam the verge of the world. They were to go riding, and talking on, their acquaintance ripeninggradually and delightfully, while the enormous panorama of thecontinent unrolled behind them. And it might end in three or fourweeks! The Emigrant Trail looked overwhelmingly long when he couldonly see himself and Leff riding over it, and California lost its colorand grew as gray as a line of sea fog. 

That evening's camp was pitched in a clearing near the road. The woodspressed about them, whispering and curious, thrown out and then blottedas the fires leaped or died. It was the first night's bivouac, andmuch noise and bustle went to its accomplishment. The young mencovertly watched the Gillespie Camp. How would this ornamental partycope with such unfamiliar labors? With its combination of a feminineelement which must be helpless by virtue of a rare and dainty finenessand a masculine element which could hardly be otherwise because of illhealth, it would seem that all the work must devolve upon the old man. 

Nothing, however, was further from the fact. The Gillespies rose tothe occasion with the same dauntless buoyancy that they had shown inever attempting the undertaking, and then blithely defying publicopinion with a servant and a cow. The sense of their unfitness whichhad made the young men uneasy now gave way to secret wonder as thedoctor pitched the tent like a backwoodsman, and his daughter showed askilled acquaintance with campers' biscuit making. 

She did it so well, so without hurry and with knowledge, that it wasworth while watching her, if David's own cooking could have spared him. He did find time once to offer her assistance and that she refused, politely but curtly. With sleeves rolled to the elbow, her hat off, showing a roll of hair on the crown of her head separated by a neatparting from the curls that hung against her cheeks, she was absorbedin the business in hand. Evidently she was one of those persons towhom the matter of the moment is the only matter. When her biscuitswere done, puffy and brown, she volunteered a preoccupied explanation:

"I've been learning to do this all winter, and I'm going to do itright. "

And even then it was less an excuse for her abruptness than theannouncement of a compact with herself, steadfast, almost grim. 

After supper they sat by the fire, silent with fatigue, the scent ofthe men's tobacco on the air, the girl, with her hands clasping herknees, looking into the flames. In the shadows behind the old servantmoved about. They could hear him crooning to the mules, and then catcha glimpse of his gnomelike figure bearing blankets from the wagon tothe tent. There came a point where his labors seemed ended, but hisactivity had merely changed its direction. He came forward and said tothe girl, "Missy, your bed's ready. You'd better be going. "

She gave a groan and a movement of protest under which was the hopelessacquiescence of the conquered:

"Not yet, Daddy John. I'm so comfortable sitting here. "

"There's two thousand miles before you. Mustn't get tired this early. Come now, get up. "

His manner held less of urgence than of quiet command. He was notdictatorial, but he was determined. The girl looked at him, sighed, rose to her knees, and then made a last appeal to her father:

"Father, _do_ take my part. Daddy John's too interfering for words!"

But her father would only laugh at her discomfiture. 

"All right, " she said as she bent down to kiss him. "It'll be yourturn in just about five minutes. "

It was an accurate prophecy. The tent flaps had hardly closed on herwhen Daddy John attacked his employer. 

"Goin' now?" he said, sternly. 

The doctor knew his fate, and like his daughter offered a spiritlessand intimidated resistance. 

"Just let me finish this pipe, " he pleaded. 

Daddy John was inexorable:

"It's no way to get cured settin' round the fire puffin' on a pipe. "

"Ten minutes longer?"

"We'll roll out to-morrer at seven. "

"Daddy John, go to bed!"

"I got to see you both tucked in for the night before I do. Can'ttrust either of you. "

The doctor, beaten, knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose withresignation. 

"This is the family skeleton, " he said to the young men who watched theperformance with curiosity. "We're ground under the heel of DaddyJohn. "

Then he thrust his hand through the old servant's arm and they walkedtoward the wagon, their heads together, laughing like a pair of boys. 

A few minutes later the camp had sunk to silence. The doctor wasstowed away in the wagon and Miss Gillespie had drawn the tent flapsround the mystery of her retirement. David and Leff, too tired topitch theirs, were dropping to sleep by the fire, when the girl'svoice, low, but penetrating, roused them. 

"Daddy John, " it hissed in the tone children employ in their games ofhide-and-seek, "Daddy John, are you awake?"

The old man, who had been stretched before the fire, rose to a sittingposture, wakeful and alert. 

"Yes, Missy, what's the matter? Can't you sleep?"

"It's not that, but it's so hard to fix anything. There's no light. "

Here it became evident to the watchers that Miss Gillespie's head wasthrust out through the tent opening, the canvas held together below herchin. Against the pale background, it was like the vision of adecapitated head hung on a white wall. 

"What is it you want to fix?" queried the old man. 

"My hair, " she hissed back. "I want to put it up in papers, and Ican't see. "

Then the secret of Daddy John's power was revealed. He who had soremorselessly driven her to bed now showed no surprise ordisapprobation at her frivolity. It was as if her wish to beautifyherself received his recognition as an accepted vagary of human nature. 

"Just wait a minute, " he said, scrambling out of his blanket, "and I'llget you a light. "

The young men could not but look on all agape with curiosity to seewhat the resourceful old man intended getting. Could the elaboratelycomplete Gillespie outfit include candles? Daddy John soon ended theiruncertainty. He drew from the fire a thick brand, brilliantly aflame, and carried it to the tent. Miss Gillespie's immovable head eyed itwith some uneasiness. 

"I've nothing to put it in, " she objected, "and I can't hold it whileI'm doing up my hair. "

"I will, " said the old man. "Get in the tent now and get your papersready. "

The head withdrew, its retirement to be immediately followed by hervoice slightly muffled by the intervening canvas:

"Now I'm ready. "

Daddy John cautiously parted the opening, inserted the torch, and stoodoutside, the canvas flaps carefully closed round his hand. With theintrusion of the flaming brand the tent suddenly became a rosytransparency. The young' girl's figure moved in the midst of the glow, a shape of nebulous darkness, its outlines lost in the mist ofenfolding draperies. 

Leff, softly lifting himself on his elbows, gazed fascinated upon thisdiscreet vision. Then looking at David he saw that he had turned overand was lying with his face on his arms. Leff leaned from the blanketsand kicked him, a gentle but meaning kick on the leg. 

To his surprise David lifted a wakeful face, the brow furrowed with anangry frown. 

"Can't you go to sleep, " he muttered crossly. "Let that girl curl herhair, and go to sleep like a man. "

He dropped his face once more on his arms. Leff felt unjustly snubbed, but that did not prevent him from watching the faintly defined aura ofshadow which he knew to be the dark young woman he was too shy to lookat when he met her face to face. He continued watching till the branddied down to a spark and Daddy John withdrew it and went back to hisfire. 

CHAPTER IV

In their division of labor David and Leff had decided that one was todrive the wagon in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Thismorning it was David's turn, and as he "rolled out" at the head of thecolumn he wondered if Leff would now ride beside Miss Gillespie andlend attentive ear to her family chronicles. But Leff was evidentlynot for dallying by the side of beauty. He galloped off alone, vanishing through the thin mists that hung like a fairy's draperiesamong the trees. The Gillespies rode at the end of the train. Even ifhe could not see them David felt their nearness, and it added to thecontentment that always came upon him from a fair prospect lying undera smiling sky. At harmony with the moment and the larger life outsideit, he leaned back against the canvas hood and let a dreamy gaze roamover the serene and opulent landscape. 

Nature had always soothed and uplifted him, been like an opiate toanger or pain. As a boy his troubles had lost their sting in theconsoling largeness of the open, under the shade of trees, within sightof the bowing wheat fields with the wind making patterns on the seededgrain. Now his thoughts, drifting aimless as thistle fluff, went backto those childish days of country freedom, when he had spent hisvacations at his uncle's farm. He used to go with his widowed mother, a forlorn, soured woman who rarely smiled. He remembered his irritatedwonder as she sat complaining in the ox cart, while he sent his eagerglance ahead over the sprouting acres to where the log farmhouse--thehaven of fulfilled dreams--stretched in its squat ugliness. He couldfeel again the inward lift, the flying out of his spirit in a rush ofwelcoming ecstasy, as he saw the woods hanging misty on the horizon andthe clay bluffs, below which the slow, quiet river uncoiled its yellowlength. 

The days at the farm had been the happiest of his life--wonderful daysof fishing and swimming, of sitting in gnarled tree boughs so still thenesting birds lost their fear and came back to their eggs. For hourshe had lain in patches of shade watching the cloud shadows on thefields, and the great up-pilings when storms were coming, risingblack-bosomed against the blue. There had been some dark moments tothrow out these brighter ones--when chickens were killed and he hadtried to stand by and look swaggeringly unconcerned as a boy should, while he sickened internally and shut his lips over pleadings formercy. And there was an awful day when pigs were slaughtered, and noone knew that he stole away to the elder thickets by the river, burrowed deep into them, and stopped his ears against the shrill, agonized cries. He knew such weakness was shameful and hid it with achild's subtlety. At supper he told skillful lies to account for hispale cheeks and lost appetite. 

His uncle, a kindly generous man, without children of his own, had beenfond of him and sympathized with his wish for an education. It was hewho had made it possible for the boy to go to a good school atSpringfield and afterwards to study law. How hard he had worked inthose school years, and what realms of wonder had been opened to himthrough books, the first books he had known, reverently handled, passionately read, that led him into unknown worlds, pointed the way toideals that could be realized! With the law books he was not in sogood an accord. But it was his chosen profession, and he approached itwith zeal and high enthusiasm, a young apostle who would sell hisservices only for the right. 

Now he smiled, looking back at his disillusion. The young apostle wasjostled out of sight in the bustle of the growing town. There was noroom in it for idealists who were diffident and sensitive and stood onthe outside of its self-absorbed activity bewildered by the noises oflife. The stream of events was very different from the pages of books. David saw men and women struggling toward strange goals, fighting forsoiled and sordid prizes, and felt as he had done on the farm when thepigs were killed. And as he had fled from that ugly scene to thesolacing quiet of Nature, he turned from the tumult of the little townto the West, upon whose edge he stood. 

It called him like a voice in the night. The spell of its borderlesssolitudes, its vast horizons, its benign silences, grew stronger as hefelt himself powerless and baffled among the fighting energies of men. He dreamed of a life there, moving in unobstructed harmony. A mancould begin in a fresh, clean world, and be what he wanted, be a youngapostle in his own way. His boy friend who had gone to Oregon firedhis imagination with stories of Marcus Whitman and his brothermissionaries. David did not want to be a missionary, but he wanted, with a young man's solemn seriousness, to make his life of profit tomankind, to do the great thing without self-interest. So he hadyearned and chafed while he read law and waited for clients and been asa man should to his mother, until in the summer of 1847 both his motherand his uncle had died, the latter leaving him a little fortune of fourthousand dollars. Then the Emigrant Trail lay straight before him, stretching to California. 

The reins lay loose on the backs of Bess and Ben and the driver's gazewas fixed on the line of trees that marked the course of an unseenriver. The dream was realized, he was on the trail. He lifted hiseyes to the sky where massed clouds slowly sailed and birds flew, shaking notes of song down upon him. Joe was dead, but the world wasstill beautiful, with the sun on the leaves and the wind on the grass, with the kindliness of honest men and the gracious presence of women. 

Dr. Gillespie was the first dweller in that unknown world east of theAlleghenies whom David had met. For this reason alone it would be aprivilege to travel with him. How great the privilege was, the youngman did not know till he rode by the doctor's side that afternoon andthey talked together on the burning questions of the day; or the doctortalked and David hungrily listened to the voice of education andexperience. 

The war with Mexico was one of the first subjects. The doctor regardedit as a discreditable performance, unworthy a great and generousnation. The Mormon question followed, and on this he had much curiousinformation. Living in the interior of New York State, he had heardJoseph Smith's history from its beginning, when he posed as "a moneydigger" and a seer who could read the future through "a peek stone. "The recent polygamous teachings of the prophet were a matter to mentionwith lowered voice. Miss Gillespie, riding on the other side, was notsupposed to hear, and certainly appeared to take no interest in Mexico, or Texas, or Joseph Smith and his unholy doctrines. 

She made no attempt to enter into the conversation, and it seemed toDavid, who now and then stole a shy look at her to see if she wasimpressed by his intelligent comments, that she did not listen. Onceor twice, when the talk was at its acutest point of interest, shestruck her horse and left them, dashing on ahead at a gallop. Atanother time she dropped behind, and his ear, trained in her direction, heard her voice in alternation with Daddy John's. When she joined themafter this withdrawal she was bright eyed and excited. 

"Father, " she called as she came up at a sharp trot, "Daddy John saysthe prairie's not far beyond. He says we'll see it soon--the prairiethat I've been thinking of all winter!"

Her enthusiasm leaped to David and he forgot the Mexican boundaries andthe polygamous Mormons, and felt like a discoverer on the prow of aship whose keel cuts unknown seas. For the prairie was still a word ofwonder. It called up visions of huge unpeopled spaces, of the flare offar flung sunsets, of the plain blackening with the buffalo, of thesmoke wreath rising from the painted tepee, and the Indian, bronzed andsplendid, beneath his feathered crest. 

"It's there, " she cried, pointing with her whip. "I can't wait. I'mgoing on. "

David longed to go with her, but the doctor was deep in the extensionof slavery and of all the subjects this burned deepest. The prairiewas interesting but not when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise wason the carpet. Watching the girl's receding shape, David listenedrespectfully and heard of the dangers and difficulties that were sureto follow on the acquisition of the great strip of Mexican territory. 

All afternoon they had been passing through woods, the remnant of thatmighty forest which had once stretched from the Missouri to theAlleghenies. Now its compact growth had become scattered and the sky, flaming toward sunset, shone between the tree trunks. The roadascended a slight hill and at the top of this Miss Gillespie appearedand beckoned to them. As they drew near she turned and made a sweepinggesture toward the prospect. The open prairie lay before them. 

No one spoke. In mute wonderment they gazed at a country that was likea map unrolled at their feet. Still as a vision it stretched to wheresky and earth fused in a golden haze. No sound or motion broke itsdreaming quiet, vast, brooding, self-absorbed, a land of abundance andaccomplishment, its serenity flowing to the faint horizon blur. Linesof trees, showing like veins, followed the wandering of streams, orgathered in clusters to suck the moisture of springs. Nearby a poolgleamed, a skin of gold linked by the thread of a rivulet to otherpools. They shone, a line of glistening disks, imbedded in the green. Space that seemed to stretch to the edges of the world, the verdure ofEden, the silence of the unpolluted, unconquered earth were here. 

So must it have looked when the beaked Viking ships nosed along thefretted shores of Rhode Island, when Columbus took the sea in hishigh-pooped caravals, when the Pilgrims saw the rocks and naked boughsof the New England coast. So it had been for centuries, roamed by wildmen who had perished from its face and left no trace, their habitationas a shadow in the sun, their work as dew upon the grass, their livesas the lives of the mayfly against its immemorial antiquity. 

The young man felt his spirit mount in a rush of exaltation like aprayer. Some fine and exquisite thing in himself leaped out in wildresponse. The vision and the dream were for a moment his. And in thatmoment life, all possible, all perfect, stretched before him, to end ina triumphant glory like the sunset. 

The doctor took off his hat. 

"The heavens declare the glory of God. All the earth doth magnify hisname, " he said in a low voice. 

CHAPTER V

A broken line of moving dots, the little company trailed a slow wayacross this ocean of green. Nothing on its face was more insignificantthan they. The birds in the trees and the bees in the flowers had amore important place in its economy. One afternoon David riding in therear crested a ridge and saw them a mile in advance, the roadstretching before and behind them in a curving thread. The tops of thewagons were like the backs of creeping insects, the mounted figures, specks of life that raised a slight tarnish of dust on the goldenclearness. He wondered at their lack of consequence, unregardedparticles of matter toiling across the face of the world. 

This was what they suggested viewed largely from the distance. Closeat hand--one of them--and it was a very different matter. They enjoyedit. If they were losing their significance as man in the aggregate, the tamer, and master, they were gaining a new importance as distinctand separate units. Convention no longer pressed on them. What lawthere was they carried with them, bore it before them into thewilderness like the Ark of the Covenant. But nobody wanted to beunlawful. There was no temptation to be so. Envy, hatred and maliceand all uncharitableness had been left behind in the cities. They werea very cheerful company, suffering a little from fatigue, and with nowand then a faint brush of bad temper to put leaven into the dough. 

There was a Biblical simplicity in their life. They had gone back tothe era when man was a nomad, at night pitching his tent by the waterhole, and sleeping on skins beside the fire. When the sun rose overthe rim of the prairie the camp was astir. When the stars came out inthe deep blue night they sat by the cone of embers, not saying much, for in the open, spoken words lose their force and the human creaturebecomes a silent animal. 

Each day's march was a slow, dogged, progression, broken by fierce workat the fords. The dawn was the beautiful time when the dew was caughtin frosted webs on the grass. The wings of the morning were theirs asthey rode over the long green swells where the dog roses grew and theleaves of the sage palpitated to silver like a woman's body quiveringto the brushing of a beloved hand. Sometimes they walked, dipped intohollows where the wattled huts of the Indians edged a creek, noted thepassage of earlier trains in the cropped grass at the spring mouth andthe circles of dead fires. 

In the afternoons it grew hot. The train, deliberate and determined asa tortoise, moved through a shimmer of light. The drone of insectvoices rose in a sleepy chorus and the men drowsed in the wagons. Eventhe buoyant life of the young girl seemed to feel the stupefying weightof the prairie's deep repose. She rode at a foot pace, her hat hangingby its strings to the pommel, her hair pushed back from her beadedforehead, not bothering about her curls now. 

Then came the wild blaze of the sunset and the pitching of the camp, and after supper the rest by the fire with pipe smoke in the air, andoverhead the blossoming of the stars. 

They were wonderful stars, troops and troops of them, dust of myriad, unnumbered worlds, and the white lights of great, bold planets staringat ours. David wondered what it looked like from up there. Was it aslarge, or were we just a tiny, twinkling point too? From city streetsthe stars had always chilled him by their awful suggestion of worldsbeyond worlds circling through gulfs of space. But here in theprimordial solitudes, under the solemn cope of the sky, the thoughtlost its terror. He seemed in harmony with the universe, part of it aswas each speck of star dust. Without question or understanding he feltsecure, convinced of his oneness with the great design, cradled in itsinfinite care. 

One evening while thus dreaming he caught Susan's eye full of curiousinterest like a watching child's. 

"What are you thinking of?" she asked. 

"The stars, " he answered. "They used to frighten me. "

She looked from him to the firmament as if to read a reason for hisfear:

"Frighten you? Why?"

"There were so many of them, thousands and millions, wandering about upthere. It was so awful to think of them, how they'd been swinginground forever and would keep on forever. And maybe there were peopleon some of them, and what it all was for. "

She continued to look up and then said indifferently:

"It doesn't seem to me to matter much. "

"It used to make me feel that nothing was any use. As if I was just agrain of dust. "

Her eyes came slowly down and rested on him in a musing gaze. 

"A grain of dust. I never felt that way. I shouldn't think you'd likeit, but I don't see why you were afraid. "

David felt uncomfortable. She was so exceedingly practical and directthat he had an unpleasant feeling she would set him down as a coward, who went about under the fear that a meteor might fall on him andstrike him dead. He tried to explain:

"Not afraid actually, just sort of frozen by the idea of it all. It'sso--immense, so--so crushing and terrible. "

Her gaze continued, a questioning quality entering it. This gained inforce by a slight tilting of her head to one side. David began to fearher next question. It might show that she regarded him not only as acoward but also as a fool. 

"Perhaps you don't understand, " he hazarded timidly. 

"I don't think I do, " she answered, then dropped her eyes and addedafter a moment of pondering, "I can't remember ever being really afraidof anything. "

Had it been daylight she would have noticed that the young man colored. He thought guiltily of certain haunting fears of his childhood, ghostsin the attic, a banshee of which he had once heard a fearsome story, acow that had chased him on the farm. She unconsciously assisted himfrom this slough of shame by saying suddenly:

"Oh, yes, I can. I remember now. I'm afraid of mad dogs. "

It was not very comforting for, after all, everybody was afraid of maddogs. 

"And there was a reason for that, " she went on. "I was frightened by amad dog when I was a little girl eight years old. I was going out tospend some of my allowance. I got twenty cents a month and I had itall in pennies. And suddenly there was a great commotion in thestreet, everybody running and screaming and rushing into doorways. Ididn't know what was the matter but I was startled and dropped mypennies. And just as I stooped to pick them up I saw the dog comingtoward me, tearing, with its tongue hanging out. And, would youbelieve it, I gathered up all those pennies before I ran and just hadtime to scramble over a fence. "

It was impossible not to laugh, especially with her laughter leading, her eyes narrowed to cracks through which light and humor sparkled athim. 

He was beginning to know Miss Gillespie--"Miss Susan" he calledher--very well. It was just like his dream, riding beside her everyday, and growing more friendly, the spell of her youth, and her darkbloom, and her attentive eyes--for she was an admirable listener if heranswers sometimes lacked point--drawing from him secret thoughts andhopes and aspirations he had never dared to tell before. If she didnot understand him she did not laugh at him, which was enough for Davidwith the sleepy whisperings of the prairie around him, and new, strangematter stirring in his heart and making him bold. 

There was only one thing about her that was disappointing. He did notadmit it to himself but it kept falling on their interviews with adepressive effect. To the call of beauty she remained unmoved. If hedrew up his horse to gaze on the wonders of the sunset the waiting madeher impatient. He had noticed that heat and mosquitoes would distracther attention from the hazy distances drowsing in the clear yellow ofnoon. The sky could flush and deepen in majestic splendors, but if shewas busy over the fire and her skillets she never raised her head tolook. And so it was with poetry. She did not know and did not careanything about the fine frenzies of the masters. Byron?--wrinkling upher forehead--yes, she thought she'd read something in school. Shelley?--"The Ode to the West Wind?" No, she'd never read that. Whatwas an ode anyway? Once he recited the "Lines to an Indian Air, " hisvoice trembling a little, for the words were almost sacred. 

She pondered for a space and then said:

"What are champak odors?"

David didn't know. He had never thought of inquiring. 

"Isn't that odd, " she murmured. "That would have been the first thingI would have wanted to know. Champak? I suppose it's some kind of aflower--something like a magnolia. It has a sound like a magnolia. "

A lively imagination was evidently not one of Miss Gillespie'spossessions. 

Late one afternoon, riding some distance in front of the train, she andDavid had seen an Indian loping by on his pony. It was not an unusualsight. Many Indians had visited their camp and at the crossing of theKaw they had come upon an entire village in transit to the summerhunting grounds. But there was something in this lone figure, movingsolitary through the evening glow, that put him in accord with thelandscape's solemn beauty, retouched him with his lost magnificence. In buckskins black with filth, his blanket a tattered rag, an ancientrifle across his saddle, the undying picturesqueness of the red man washis. 

"Look, " said David, his imagination fired. "Look at that Indian. "

The savage saw them and turned a face of melancholy dignity upon them, giving forth a deep "How, How. "

"He's a very dirty Indian, " said Susan, sweeping him with a glance ofdisfavor. 

David did not hear her. He looked back to watch the lonely figure asit rode away over the swells. It seemed to him to be riding into thepast, the lordly past, when the red man owned the land and the fruitsthereof. 

"Look at him as he rides away, " he said. "Can't you seem to see himcoming home from a battle with his face streaked with vermilion and hiswar bonnet on? He'd be solemn and grand with the wet scalps drippingat his belt. When they saw him coming his squaws would come out infront of the lodges and begin to sing the war chant. "

"Squaws!" in a tone of disgust. "That's as bad as the Mormons. "

The muse had possession of David and a regard for monogamy was notsufficient to stay his noble rage. 

"And think how he felt! All this was his, the pale face hadn't come. He'd fought his enemies for it and driven them back. In the cool ofthe evening when he was riding home he could look out for miles andmiles, clear to the horizon, and know he was the King of it all. Justthink what it was to feel like that! And far away he could see thesmoke of his village and know that they were waiting for the return ofthe chief. "

"Chief!" with even greater emphasis, "that poor dirty creature a_chief_!"

The muse relinquished her hold. The young man explained, not withimpatience, but as one mortified by a betrayal into foolish enthusiasm:

"I didn't mean that _he_ was a chief. I was just imagining. "

"Oh, " with the falling inflexion of comprehension. "You often imagine, don't you? Let's ride on to where the road goes down into that hollow. "

They rode on in silence, both slightly chagrined, for if David found ittrying to have his fine flights checked, Susan was annoyed when shesaid things that made him wear a look of forbearing patience. She maynot have had much imagination, but she had a very observing eye, andcould have startled not only David, but her father by the shrewdnesswith which she read faces. 

The road sloped to a hollow where the mottled trunks of cotton woodsstood in a group round the dimpling face of a spring. Withwell-moistened roots the grass grew long and rich. Here was the placefor the night's camp. They would wait till the train came up. Andeven as they rested on this comfortable thought they saw between theleaves the canvas top of a wagon. 

The meeting of trains was one of the excitements of life on theEmigrant Trail. Sometimes they were acquaintances made in the wet daysat Independence, sometimes strangers who had come by way of St. Joseph. Then the encountering parties eyed one another with candid curiosityand from each came the greeting of the plains, "Be you for Oregon orCalifornia?"

The present party was for Oregon from Missouri, six weeks on the road. They were a family, traveling alone, having dropped out of the companywith which they had started. The man, a gaunt and grizzled creature, with long hair and ragged beard, was unyoking his oxen, while the womanbent over the fire which crackled beneath her hands. She was as leanas he, shapeless, saffron-skinned and wrinkled, but evidently youngerthan she looked. The brood of tow-headed children round her ran from agirl of fourteen to a baby, just toddling, a fat, solemn-eyed cherub, almost naked, with a golden fluff of hair. 

At sight of him Susan drew up, the unthinking serenity of her facesuddenly concentrated into a hunger of admiration, a look which changedher, focused her careless happiness into a pointed delight. 

"Look at the baby, " she said quickly, "a lovely fat baby with curls, "then slid off her horse and went toward them. 

The woman drew back staring. The children ran to her, frightened asyoung rabbits, and hid behind her skirts. Only the baby, grave andunalarmed, stood his ground and Susan snatched him up. Then the mothersmiled, gratified and reassured. She had no upper front teeth, and thewide toothless grin gave her a look of old age that had in it a curioussuggestion of debasement. 

David stood by his horse, making no move to come forward. The partyrepelled him. They were not only uncouth and uncomely, but they weredirty. Dirt on an Indian was, so to speak, dirt in its place--butunwashed women and children--! His gorge rose at it. And Susan, always dainty as a pink, seemed entirely indifferent to it. Thechildren, with unkempt hair and legs caked in mud, crowded about her, and as she held the baby against her chest, her glance dwelt on thewoman's face, with no more consciousness of its ugliness than when shelooked over the prairie there was consciousness of Nature's supremeperfection. 

On the way back to camp he asked her about it. Why, if she objected tothe Indian's dirt, had she been oblivious to that of the women and thechildren? He put it judicially, with impersonal clearness as became alawyer. She looked puzzled, then laughed, her fresh, unusual laugh:

"I'm sure I don't know. I don't know why I do everything or why I likethis thing and don't like that. I don't always have a reason, or if Ido I don't stop to think what it is. I just do things because I wantto and feel them because I can't help it. I like children and so Iwanted to talk to them and hear about them from their mother. "

"But would your liking for them make you blind to such a thing as dirt?"

"I don't know. Maybe it would. When you're interested in anything oranybody small things don't matter. "

"Small things! Those children were a sight!"

"Yes, poor little brats! No one had washed the baby for weeks. Thewoman said she was too tired to bother and it wouldn't bathe in thecreeks with the other children, so they let it go. If we kept nearthem I could wash it for her. I could borrow it and wash it everymorning. But there's no use thinking about it as we'll pass themto-morrow. Wasn't it a darling with little golden rings of hair andeyes like pieces of blue glass?"

She sighed, relinquishing the thought of the baby's morning bath withpensive regret. David could not understand it, but decided as Susanfelt that way it must be the right way for a woman to feel. He wasfalling in love, but he was certainly not falling in love--as studentsof a later date have put it--with "a projection of his own personality. "

CHAPTER VI

They had passed the Kaw River and were now bearing on toward theVermilion. Beyond that would be the Big and then the Little Blue andsoon after the Platte where "The Great Medicine way of the Pale Face"bent straight to the westward. The country continued the same and overits suave undulations the long trail wound, sinking to the hollows, threading clumps of cotton-wood and alder, lying white along the spineof bolder ridges. 

Each day they grew more accustomed to their gypsy life. The prairiehad begun to absorb them, cut them off from the influences of the oldsetting, break them to its will. They were going back over thefootsteps of the race, returning to aboriginal conditions, with theirbacks to the social life of communities and their faces to the wild. Independence seemed a long way behind, California so remote that it waslike thinking of Heaven when one was on earth, well fed and wellfaring. Their immediate surroundings began to make their world, theysubsided into the encompassing immensity, unconsciously eliminatingthoughts, words, habits, that did not harmonize with its uncomplicateddesign. 

On Sundays they halted and "lay off" all day. This was Dr. Gillespie'swish. He had told the young men at the start and they had agreed. Itwould be a good thing to have a day off for washing and general"redding up. " But the doctor had other intentions. In his own words, he "kept the Sabbath, " and each Sunday morning read the service of theEpiscopal Church. Early in their acquaintance David had discoveredthat his new friend was religious; "a God-fearing man" was the term thedoctor had used to describe himself. David, who had only seen thehysterical, fanaticism of frontier revivals now for the first timeencountered the sincere, unquestioning piety of a spiritual nature. The doctor's God was an all-pervading presence, who went before him aspillar of fire or cloud. Once speaking to the young man of thesecurity of his belief in the Divine protection, he had quoted a linewhich recurred to David over and over--in the freshness of the morning, in the hot hush of midday, and in the night when the stars were out:"Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. "

Overcome by shyness the young men had stayed away from the firstSunday's service. David had gone hunting, feeling that to sit near byand not attend would offer a slight to the doctor. No such scruplesrestrained Leff, who squatted on his heels at the edge of the creek, washing his linen and listening over his shoulder. By the secondSunday they had mastered their bashfulness and both came shufflingtheir hats in awkward hands and sitting side by side on a log. Leff, who had never been to church in his life, was inclined to treat theoccasion as one for furtive amusement, at intervals casting a sidelonglook at his companion, which, on encouragement, would have developedinto a wink. David had no desire to exchange glances of derisivecomment. He was profoundly moved. The sonorous words, the solemnappeal for strength under temptation, the pleading for mercy with thatstern, avenging presence who had said, "I, the Lord thy God am ajealous God, " awed him, touched the same chord that Nature touched andcaused an exaltation less exquisite but more inspiring. 

The light fell flickering through the leaves of the cotton-woods on thedoctor's gray head. He looked up from his book, for he knew the wordsby heart, and his quiet eyes dwelt on the distance swimming in morninglight. His friend, the old servant, stood behind him, a picturesquefigure in fringed buckskin shirt and moccasined feet. He held hisbattered hat in his hand, and his head with its spare locks of grizzledhair was reverently bowed. He neither spoke nor moved. It was Susan'svoice who repeated the creed and breathed out a low "We beseech thee tohear us, Good Lord. "

The tents and the wagons were behind her and back of them the longgreen splendors of the prairie. Flecks of sun danced over her figure, shot back and forth from her skirt to her hair as whiffs of wind caughtthe upper branches of the cotton woods. She had been sitting on themess chest, but when the reading of the Litany began she slipped to herknees, and with head inclined answered the responses, her hands lightlyclasped resting against her breast. 

David, who had been looking at her, dropped his eyes as from a sight noman should see. To admire her at this moment, shut away in thesanctuary of holy thoughts, was a sacrilege. Men and their passionsshould stand outside in that sacred hour when a woman is at prayer. Leff had no such high fancies. He only knew the sight of Susan madehim dumb and drove away all the wits he had. Now she looked so aloof, so far removed from all accustomed things, that the sense of herremoteness added gloom to his embarrassment. He twisted a blade ofgrass in his freckled hands and wished that the service would soon end. 

The cotton-wood leaves made a light, dry pattering as if rain dropswere falling. From the picketed animals, looping their trail ropesover the grass, came a sound of low, continuous cropping. The hum ofinsects swelled and sank, full of sudden life, then drowsily dying awayas though the spurt of energy had faded in the hour's discouraginglanguor. The doctor's voice detached itself from this pastoral chorusintoning the laws that God gave Moses when he was conducting astiff-necked and rebellious people through a wilderness:

"Thou shalt do no murder. 

"Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

"Thou shalt not steal. "

And to each command Susan's was the only voice that answered, fallingsweet and delicately clear on the silence:

"Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law. "

Susan praying for power to resist such scarlet sins! It was fantasticand David wished he dared join his voice to hers and not let her kneelthere alone as if hers was the only soul that needed strengthening. Susan, the young, the innocent-eyed, the pure. 

He had come again the next Sunday--Leff went hunting that morning--andfelt that some day, not so far distant, he would dare to kneel too andrespond. He thought of it when alone, another port that his dreamswere taking him to--his voice and Susan's, the bass and the treble, strength and sweetness, symbol of the male and the female, united inone harmonious strain that would stream upward to the throne of the Godwho, watching over them, neither slumbered nor slept. 

It was on the afternoon of this Sunday, that David started out to walkto an Indian village, of which a passing emigrant had told him, lyingin a hollow a mile to the westward. He left the camp sunk in thesomnolence of its seventh-day rest, Susan not to be seen anywhere, Leffasleep under the wagon, the doctor writing his diary in the shade ofthe cotton-woods, and Daddy John lying on the grass among the whitenessof the week's wash. The hour was hot and breathless, the middledistance quivering through a heat haze, and the remoter reaches of theprairie an opalescent blur. 

The Indian village was deserted and he wandered through its scatteredlodges of saplings wattled with the peeled bark of willows. TheIndians had not long departed. The ash of their fires was still warm, tufts of buffalo hair and bright scraps of calico were caught on thebushes, yet it already had an air of desolation, the bleakness of thehuman habitation when the dweller has crossed the threshold and gone. 

Shadows were filling the hollow like a thin cold wine rising on theedges of a cup, when he left it and gained the upper levels. Doubtfulof his course he stood for a moment looking about, conscious of acurious change in the prospect, a deepening of its colors, a stillnessno longer dreamy, but heavy with suspense. The sky was sapphire clear, but on the western horizon a rampart of cloud edged up, gray andominous, against the blue. As he looked it mounted, unrolled andexpanded, swelling into forms of monstrous aggression. A faint air, fresh and damp, passed across the grass, and the clouds swept, likesmoke from a world on fire, over the sun. 

With the sudden darkening, dread fell on the face of the land. It camefirst in a hush, like a holding of the breath, attentive, listening, expectant. Then this broke and a quiver, the goose-flesh thrill offear, stirred across the long ridges. The small, close growing leafagecowered, a frightened trembling seized the trees. David saw the sweepof the landscape growing black under the blackness above. He began torun, the sky sinking lower like a lid shutting down on the earth. Hethought that it was hard to get it on right, for in front of him a lineof blue still shone over which the lid had not yet been pressed down. The ground was pale with the whitened terror of upturned leaves, thehigh branches of the cotton-woods whipping back and forth in wildagitation. He felt the first large drops, far apart, falling with areluctant splash, and he ran, a tiny figure in the tragic andtremendous scene. 

When he reached the camp the rush of the rain had begun. Through anetwork of boughs he caught the red eye of the fire and beyond had avision of stampeding mules with the men in pursuit. Then crashingthrough the bushes he saw why the fire still burned--Susan was holdingan umbrella over it, the rain spitting in the hot ash, a pan ofbiscuits balanced in the middle. Behind her the tent, one sideconcave, the other bellying out from restraining pegs, leaped andjerked at its moorings. A rumble of thunder rolled across the sky andthe rain came at them in a slanting wall. 

"We're going to have biscuits for supper if the skies fall, " Susanshouted at him, and he had a glimpse of her face, touched withfirelight, laughing under the roof of the umbrella. 

A furious burst of wind cut off his answer, the blue glare of lightningsuddenly drenched them, and the crackling of thunder tore a path acrossthe sky. The umbrella was wrenched from Susan and her wail as thebiscuits fell pierced the tumult with the thin, futile note of humandole. He had no time to help her, for the tent with an exultant wrenchtore itself free on one side, a canvas wing boisterously leaping, whilethe water dived in at the blankets. As he sped to its rescue he had animpression of the umbrella, handle up, filling with water like a largeblack bowl and Susan groveling in the ashes for her biscuits. 

"The tent's going, " he cried back; "all your things will be soaked. Never mind the supper, come and help me. " And it seemed in this momentof tumult, that Susan ceased to be a woman to be cared for andprotected and became his equal, fighting with him against the forces ofthe primitive world. The traditions of her helplessness were strippedfrom her, and he called her to his aid as the cave man called his womanwhen the storm fell on their bivouac. 

They seized on the leaping canvas, he feeling in the water for the tentpegs, she snatching at the ropes. He tried to direct her, shoutingorders, which were beaten down in the stuttering explosion of thethunder. Once a furious gust sent her against him. The wind wrappedher damp skirts round him and he felt her body soft and pliable. Thegrasp of her hands was tight on his arms and close to his ear he heardher laughing. For a second the quick pulse of the lightning showed herto him, her hair glued to her cheeks, her wet bodice like a thin webmolding her shoulders, and as the darkness shut her out he again heardher laughter broken by panting breaths. 

"Isn't it glorious, " she cried, struggling away from him. "That nearlytook me off my feet. My skirts are all twined round you. "

They got the tent down, writhing and leaping like a live thing franticto escape. Conquered, a soaked mass on the ground, he pulled thebedding from beneath it and she grasped the blankets in her arms andran for the wagon. She went against the rain, leaning forward on it, her skirts torn back and whipped up by the wind into curling eddies. Her head, the hair pressed flat to it, was sleek and wet as a seal's, and as she ran she turned and looked at him over her shoulder, a wild, radiant look that he never forgot. 

They sat in the wagon and watched the storm. Soaked and tired theycurled up by the rear opening while the rain threshed against thecanvas and driblets of water came running down the sides. The noisemade talking difficult and they drew close together exclaiming as thelivid lightning saturated the scene, and holding their breaths when thethunder broke and split its furious way over their heads. They watchedit, conscious each in the other of an increased comfortingfriendliness, a gracious reassurance where Nature's transports made manseem so small. 

CHAPTER VII

The Vermilion was swollen. With a bluff on one side and a wide bottomon the other it ran a prosperous, busy stream, brown and ripple-ridged. The trail lay like a line of tape along the high land, then down theslope, and across the bottom to the river. Here it seemed to slipunder the current and come up on the other side where it climbed asteep bank, and thence went on, thin and pale, rising and dropping tothe ridges till the tape became a thread. 

They had been waiting a day for the water to fall. Camped in thebottom under a scattering of trees with the animals grazing on thejuicy river grass and the song of the stream in their ears, it had beena welcome break in the monotony of the march. There was always achoice of occupation in these breathing spells. On the first afternooneverybody had sat on the grass at the tent doors mending. To-day themen had revolted and wandered off but Susan continued industriouslyintent over patches and darns. She sat on a log, her spools andscissors beside her, billows of homespun and calico about her feet. 

As she sewed she sung in a low undervoice, not looking up. Beyond herin the shade Daddy John mended a piece of harness. Daddy John was nota garrulous person and when she paused in her sewing to speak to him, he answered with a monosyllable. It was one of the old man'sself-appointed duties to watch over her when the others were absent. If he did not talk much to his "Missy" he kept a vigilant eye upon her, and to-day he squatted in the shade beside her because the doctor andDavid had gone after antelope and Leff was off somewhere on anexcursion of his own. 

Susan, sewing, her face grave above her work, was not as pretty asSusan smiling. She drew her eyebrows, thick and black, low over hereyes with her habitual concentration in the occupation of the moment, and her lips, pressed together, pouted, but not the disarming baby poutwhich, when she was angry, made one forget the sullenness of her brows. Her looks however, were of that fortunate kind which lose nothing fromthe open air and large backgrounds. Dress added but little to suchattractions as she had. Fineness and elegance were not hers, but herhealthy, ripe brownness fitted into this sylvan setting where the citybeauty would have soon become a pale and draggled thing. 

The robust blood of her French Canadian forebears was quickening to thecall of the trail. Was it the spirit of her adventurous ancestors thatmade her feel a kinship with the wild, an indifference to itsprivations, a joy in its rude liberty? She was thinner, but strongerand more vigorous than when the train had started. She talked less andyet her whole being seemed more vibrantly alive, her glance to havegained the gleaming quietness of those whose eyes scan vague horizons. She who had been heavy on her feet now stepped with a lightnoiselessness, and her body showed its full woman's outlinesstraightened and lengthened to the litheness of a boy. Her fathernoticed that the Gallic strain in her seemed to be crowding out theother. In Rochester, under city roofs, she had been at least half his. On the trail, with the arch of the sky above and the illimitable eartharound her, she was throwing back to her mother's people. 

Susan herself had no interest in these atavistic developments. She wasa healthy, uncomplicated, young animal, and she was enjoying herself asshe had never done before. Behind her the life of Rochester stretchedin a tranquil perspective of dull and colorless routine. Nothing hadever happened. From her seventh year her father and Daddy John hadbrought her up, made her the pet and plaything of their lonely lives, rejoiced in her, wondered at her, delighted in the imperious ways shehad learned from their spoiling. There had been teachers to educateher, but it was an open secret that they had not taught her much. Susan did not take kindly to books. No one had ever been able to teachher how to cipher and learning the piano had been a fruitless effortabandoned in her fifteenth year. It is only just to her to say thatshe had her little talents. She was an excellent housekeeper, and shecould cook certain dishes better, the doctor said, than the chefs insome of the fine restaurants in New York City. 

But what were the sober pleasures of housekeeping and cooking besidethe rough, deep-living exhilaration of gypsy life on the plains! Shelooked back pityingly at those days of stagnant peace, compared theentertainment to be extracted from embroidering a petticoat frill tothe exultant joy of a ride in the morning over the green swells. Whowould sip tea in the close curtained primness of the parlor when theycould crouch by the camp fire and eat a corn cake baked on the ashes ordrink brown coffee from a tin cup? And her buffalo robe on the ground, the blanket tucked round her shoulder, the rustling of furtive animallife in the grass outside the tent wall--was there any comparisonbetween its comfort and that of her narrow white bed at home, betweenthe clean sheets of which she had snuggled so luxuriously?

There were other matters of charm and interest in the wilderness, matters that Susan did not speak about--hardly admitted to herself, forshe was a modest maid. She had never yet had a lover; no man had everkissed her or held her hand longer than a cool, impersonal respectdictated. In Rochester no one had turned to look at the doctor'sdaughter as she walked by, for, in truth, there were many girls muchprettier and more piquant than Susan Gillespie. But, nevertheless, shehad had her dreams about the lover that some day was to come and carryher off under a wreath of orange blossoms and a white veil. She didnot aspire to a struggling hoard of suitors, but she thought it wouldbe only fair and entirely within the realm of the possible if she hadtwo; most girls had two. 

Now she felt the secret elation that follows on the dream realized. She did not tell herself that David and Leff were in love with her. She would have regarded all speculations on such a sacred subject aslow and unmaidenly. But the consciousness of it permeated her beingwith a gratified sense of her worth as a woman. It made her feel hervalue. Like all girls of her primitive kind she estimated herself notby her own measure, but by the measure of a man's love for her. Nowthat men admired her she felt that she was taking her place as a unitof importance. Her sense of achievement in this advent of the desiringmale was not alone pleased vanity, it went back through the ages to thetime when woman won her food and clothing, her right to exist, throughthe power of her sex, when she whose attraction was strongest had thebest corner by the fire, the choicest titbit from the hunt, and thestrongest man to fight off rivals and keep her for himself. 

Her perceptions, never before exercised on these subjects, weresingularly keen. Neither of the young men had spoken a word of love toher, yet she intuitively knew that they were both under her spell. Theyoung girl so stupid at her books, who could never learn arithmetic andfound history a bore, had a deeper intelligence in the reading of thehuman heart than anyone of the party. More than the doctor who was aman of education, more than David who thought so much and loved toread, more than Leff who, if his brain was not sharp, might be supposedto have accumulated some slight store of experience, more than DaddyJohn who was old and had the hoar of worldly knowledge upon him. Compared to her they were as novices to a nun who has made an excursioninto the world and taken a bite from the apple Eve threw away. 

She had no especial liking for Leff. It amused her to torment him, tolook at him with an artless, inquiring stare when he was overwhelmed byconfusion and did not know what to say. When she felt that he hadendured sufficiently she would become merciful, drop her eyes, and endwhat was to her an encounter that added a new zest to her sense ofgrowing power. 

With David it was different. Here, too, she felt her mastery, but theslave was of another fiber. He acknowledged her rule, but he wasneither clumsy nor dumb before her. She respected his intelligence andfelt a secret jealousy of it, as of a part of him which must always bebeyond her influence. His devotion was a very dear and gracious thingand she was proud that he should care for her. Love had not awakenedin her, but sometimes when she was with him, her admiration softened toa warm, invading gentleness, a sense of weakness glad of itself, happyto acknowledge his greater strength. Had David's intuitions been astrue as hers he would have known when these moments came and spoken thewords. But on such matters he had no intuitions, was a mere, unenlightened male trying to win a woman by standing at a distance andkneeling in timid worship. 

Now sitting, sewing on the log, Susan heard a step on the gravel, andwithout looking up gave it a moment's attention and knew it was Leff's. She began to sing softly, with an air of abstraction. The steps drewnear her, she noted that they lagged as they approached, finallystopped. She gave her work a last, lingering glance and raised hereyes slowly as if politeness warred with disinclination, Leff wasstanding before her, scowling at her as at an object of especialenmity. He carried a small tin pail full of wild strawberries. Shesaw it at once, but forebore looking at it, keeping her eyes on hisface, up which the red color ran. 

"Oh, Leff, " she said with careless amiability, "so you've got back. "

Leff grunted an agreeing monosyllable and moved the strawberries to aposition where they intruded into the conversation like a punctuationmark in the middle of a sentence. Her glance dropped to the pail, andshe looked at it saying nothing, amused to thus tease him and covertlynote his hopeless and impotent writhings. 

He thrust the pail almost against her knee and she was forced to say:

"What fine strawberries, a whole pail full. Can I have one?"

He nodded and she made a careful choice, giving the pail a little shaketo stir its contents. Leff glared at the top of her head where herhair was twisted into a rough knot. 

"Thank you, " she said. "I've found a beauty. You must have been allafternoon getting so many, " and she put the strawberry in her mouth andpicked up her sewing as though that ended the matter. 

Leff stood shifting from foot to foot, hoping that she might extend ahelping hand. 

"The river's falling, " he said at length. "It's gone down two feet. We can cross this evening. "

"Then I must hurry and finish my mending. "

She evidently was not going to extend so much as the tip of a finger. In his bashful misery his mind worked suddenly and unexpectedly. 

"I've got to go and get the horses, " he said, and, setting the pail onthe log beside her, turned and ran. 

But Susan was prepared for this move. It was what she expected. 

"Oh, Leff, " she called, lazily. "Come back, you've forgotten yourstrawberries. "

And he had to come back, furious and helpless, he had to come back. Hehad not courage for a word, did not dare even to meet her gaze liftedmildly to his. He snatched up the pail and lurched off and Susanreturned to her sewing, smiling to herself. 

"He wanted you to take the berries, " said Daddy John, who had beenwatching. 

"Did he?" she queried with the raised brows of innocent surprise. "Whydidn't he say so?"

"Too bashful!"

"He couldn't expect me to take them unless he offered them. "

"I should think you'd have guessed it. "

She laughed at this, dropping her sewing and looking at the old manwith eyes almost shut. 

"Oh, Daddy John, " she gurgled. "How clever you are!"

An hour later they began the crossing. The ford of the Vermilion wasone of the most difficult between the Kaw and the Platte Valley. Afterthreading the swift, brown current, the trail zigzagged up a clay bank, channeled into deep ruts by the spring's fleet of prairie schooners. It would be a hard pull to get the doctor's wagon up and David rodeover with Bess and Ben to double up with the mules. It was lateafternoon and the bottom lay below the sunshine steeped in a stilltransparent light, where every tint had its own pure value. The airwas growing cool after a noon of blistering heat and from an unseenbackwater frogs had already begun a hoarse, tentative chanting. 

The big wagon had already crossed when David on Bess, with Ben at theend of a trail rope, started into the stream. Susan watched him go, his tall, high-shouldered figure astride the mare's broad back, one armflung outward with the rope dipping to the current. As the water roseround his feet, he gave a wild, jubilant shout and went forward, plowing deeper with every step, his cries swelling over the river's lowsong. 

Susan, left on the near bank to wait till the wagons were drawn up, lifted herself into the crotch of a cottonwood tree. The pastoralsimplicity of the scene, the men and animals moving through thesilver-threaded water with the wagons waiting and after the work thecamp to be pitched, exhilarated her with a conviction of true living, of existence flowing naturally as the stream. And for the moment Davidseemed the great figure in hers. With a thrill at her heart shewatched him receding through the open wash of air and water, shoutingin the jubilance of his manhood. The mischievous pleasure of hercoquetries was forgotten, and in a rush of glad confidence she felt awoman's pride in him. This was the way she should see the man who wasto win her, not in stuffy rooms, not dressed in stiff, ungainlyclothes, not saying unmeaning things to fill the time. This tale oflaborious days bounded by the fires of sunrise and sunset, thisstruggle with the primal forces of storm and flood, this passage acrossa panorama unrolling in ever wilder majesty, was the setting for herlove idyl. The joy of her mounting spirit broke out in an answeringcry that flew across the river to David like the call of an animal toits mate. 

She watched them yoking on Bess and Ben and men and animals bracingtheir energies for the start. David drove the horses, walking besidethem, the reins held loose in hands that made upward, urging gesturesas the team breasted the ascent. It was a savage pull. The valiantlittle mules bent their necks, the horses straining, iron muscled, hoofs grinding down to the solid clay. The first charge carried themhalf way up, then there was a moment of slackened effort, a relaxing, recuperative breath, and the wagon came to a standstill. Leff ran forthe back, shouting a warning. The branch he thrust under the wheel wasground to splinters and the animals grew rigid in their effort toresist the backward drag. 

Leff gripped the wheel, cursing, his hands knotted round the spokes, his back taut and muscle-ridged under the thin shirt. The crackedvoice of Daddy John came from beyond the canvas hood and David's urgentcries filled the air. The mules, necks outstretched, almost squattingin the agony of their endeavor, held their ground, but could do nomore. Bess and Ben began to plunge in a welter of slapping harness asthe wheels ground slowly downward. 

Susan watched, her neck craned, her eyes staring. Her sentimentalthoughts had vanished. She was one with the struggling men and beasts, lending her vigor to theirs. Her eyes were on David, waiting to seehim dominate them like a general carrying his troops to victory. Shecould see him, arms outstretched, haranguing his horses as if they werehuman beings, but not using the whip. A burst of astonishing profanitycame from Leff and she heard him cry:

"Lay it on to 'em, David. What's the matter with you? Beat 'em likehell. "

The mule drivers used a long-lashed whip which could raise a welt onthe thickest hide. David flung the lash afar and brought it down onBen's back. The horse leaped as if he had been burned, jerking aheadof his mate, and rearing in a madness of unaccustomed pain. With apassionate gesture David threw the whip down. 

Susan saw that it was not accidental. She gave a sound of angryastonishment and stood up in the crotch of the tree. 

"David!" she screamed, but he did not hear, and then louder: "DaddyJohn, quick, the whip, he's dropped it. "

The old man came running round the back of the wagon, quick and eageras a gnome. He snatched up the whip and let the lash curl outward witha hissing rush. It flashed like the flickering dart of a snake'stongue, struck, and the horses sprang forward. It curled again, hungsuspended for the fraction of a moment, then licked along the sweatingflanks, and horses and mules, bowed in a supreme effort, wrenched thewagon upward. Susan slid from her perch, feeling a sudden apathy, notonly as from a tension snapped, but as the result of a backwash ofdisillusion. David was no longer the proud conqueror, the driver ofman and brute. The tide of pride had ebbed. 

Later, when the camp was pitched and she was building the fire, he cameto offer her some wood which was scarce on this side of the river. Heknelt to help her, and, his face close to hers, she said in a low voice:

"Why did you throw the whip down?"

He reddened consciously and looked quickly at her, a look that wasapprehensive as if ready to meet an accusation. 

"I saw you do it, " she said, expecting a denial. 

"Yes, I did it, " he answered. "I wasn't going to say I didn't. "

"Why did you?" she repeated. 

"I can't beat a dumb brute when it's doing its best, " he said, lookingaway from her, shy and ashamed. 

"But the wagon would have gone down to the bottom of the hill. It wasgoing. "

"What would that have mattered? We could have taken some of the thingsout and carried them up afterwards. When a horse does his best foryou, what's the sense of beating the life out of him when the load'stoo heavy. I can't do that. "

"Was that why you threw it down?"

He nodded. 

"You'd rather have carried the things up?"

"Yes. "

She laid the sticks one on the other without replying and he said witha touch of pleading in his tone:

"You understand that, don't you?"

She answered quickly:

"Oh, of course, perfectly. "

But nevertheless she did not quite. Daddy John's action was the oneshe really did understand, and she even understood why Leff swore soviolently. 

CHAPTER VIII

It was Sunday again and they lay encamped near the Little Blue. Thecountry was changing, the trees growing thin and scattered and sandyareas were cropping up through the trail. At night they unfolded themaps and holding them to the firelight measured the distance to thevalley of the Platte. Once there the first stage of the journey wouldbe over. When they started from Independence the Platte had shone tothe eyes of their imaginations as a threadlike streak almost as faraway as California. Now they would soon be there. At sunset theystood on eminences and pointed in its direction, let their mentalvision conjure up Grand Island and sweep forward to thebuffalo-darkened plains and the river sunk in its league-wide bottom, even peered still further and saw Fort Laramie, a faint, white dotagainst the cloudy peaks of mountains. 

The afternoon was hot and the camp drowsed. Susan moving away from itwas the one point of animation in the encircling quietude. She was notin spirit with its lethargy, stepping rapidly in a stirring of lightskirts, her hat held by one string, fanning back and forth from herhanging hand. Her goal was a spring hidden in a small arroyo that madea twisted crease in the land's level face. It was a little dell inwhich the beauty they were leaving had taken a last stand, decked theground with a pied growth of flowers, spread a checkered roof of boughsagainst the sun. From a shelf on one side the spring bubbled, clear asglass, its waters caught and held quivering in a natural basin of rock. 

As she slipped over the margin, the scents imprisoned in the sheltereddepths rose to meet her, a sweet, cool tide of fragrance into which shesank. After the glaring heat above it was like stepping into aperfumed bath. She lay by the spring, her hands clasped behind herhead, looking up at the trees. The segments of sky between the boughswere as blue as a turquoise and in this thick intense color the littleleaves seemed as if inlaid. Then a breeze came and the bits ofinlaying shook loose and trembled into silvery confusion. Smallsecretive noises came from them as if minute confidences were passingfrom bough to bough, and through their murmurous undertone the drip ofthe spring fell with a thin, musical tinkle. 

Nature was dreaming and Susan dreamed with it. But her dreaming had acertain definiteness, a distinct thought sustained its diffusedcontent. She was not self-consciously thinking of her lovers, notcongratulating herself on their acquirement, but the consciousness thatshe had achieved them lay graciously round her heart, gave the softsatisfaction to her musings that comes to one who has accomplished aduty. With all modesty she felt the gratification of the being whoapproaches his Destiny. She had advanced a step in her journey as awoman. 

A hail from the bank above broke upon her reverie, but when she saw itwas David, she sat up smiling. That he should find out her hidingplace without word or sign from her was an action right and fitting. It was a move in the prehistoric game of flight and pursuit, in whichthey had engaged without comprehension and with the intense earnestnessof children at their play. David dropped down beside her, a spray ofwild roses in his hand, and began at once to chide her for thusstealing away. Did she not remember they were in the country of thePawnees, the greatest thieves on the plains? It was not safe to strayalone from the camp. 

Susan smiled:

"The Pawnees steal horses, but I never heard anyone say they stolegirls. "

"They steal anything they can get, " said the simple young man. 

"Oh, David, "--now she was laughing--"so they might steal me if theycouldn't get a horse, or a blanket, or a side of bacon! Next time I gowandering I'll take the bacon with me and then I'll be perfectly safe. "

"Your father wouldn't like it. I've heard him tell you not to go offthis way alone. "

"Well, who could I take? I don't like to ask father to go out into thesun and Daddy John was asleep, and Leff--I didn't see Leff anywhere. "

"I was there, " he said, dropping his eyes. 

"You were under the wagon reading Byron. I wouldn't for the world takeyou away from Byron. "

She looked at him with a candid smile, her eyes above it dancing withdelighted relish in her teasing. 

"I would have come in a minute, " he said low, sweeping the surface ofthe spring with the spray of roses. Susan's look dwelt on him, gentlythoughtful in its expression in case he should look up and catch it. 

"Leave Byron, " she said, "leave the Isles of Greece where that lady, whose name I've forgotten, 'loved and sung, ' and walk in the sun withme just because I wanted to see this spring! Oh, David, I would neverask it of you. "

"You know I would have loved to do it. "

"You would have been polite enough to do it. You're always polite. "

"I would have done it because I wanted to, " said the victim with thenote of exasperation in his voice. 

She stretched her hand forward and very gently took the branch of rosesfrom him. 

"Don't tell stories, " she said in the cajoling voice used to children. "This is Sunday. "

"I never tell stories, " he answered, goaded to open irritation, "onSunday or any other day. You know I would have liked to come with youand Byron could have--have----"

"What?" the branch upright in her hand. 

"Gone to the devil!"

"David!" in horror, "I never thought _you'd_ talk that way. "

She gave the branch a shake and a shower of drops fell on him. 

"There, that's to cool your anger. For I see you're angry though Ihaven't got the least idea what it's about. "

He made no answer, wounded by her lack of understanding. She moved therose spray against her face, inhaling its fragrance, and watching himthrough the leaves. After a moment she said with a questioninginflection:

"You were angry?"

He gave her a quick glance, met her eyes, shining between the dullerluster of the leaves, and suddenly dumb before their innocentprovocation, turned his head away. The sense of his disturbancetrembled on the air and Susan's smile died. She dropped the branch, trailing it lightly across the water, and wondering at the confusionthat had so abruptly upset her self-confident gayety. Held ininexplicable embarrassment she could think of nothing to say. It washe who broke the silence with a change of subject:

"In a few days more we'll be at the Platte. When we started thatseemed as if it was half the journey, didn't it?"

"We'll get there just about a month from the time we left Independence. Before we started I thought a month out of doors this way would be likea year. But it really hasn't seemed long at all. I suppose it'sbecause I've enjoyed it so. "

This again stirred him. Was there any hope that his presence mighthave been the cause of some small fraction of that enjoyment? He putout a timid feeler:

"I wonder why you enjoyed it. Perhaps Leff and I amused you a little. "

It was certainly a humble enough remark, but it caused a slightstiffening and withdrawal in the young girl. She instinctively feltthe pleading for commendation and resented it. It was as if a slave, upon whose neck her foot rested, were to squirm round and recommendhimself to her tolerance. David, trying to extort from her flatteringadmissions, roused a determination to keep the slave with his face inthe dust. 

"I just like being out of doors, " she said carelessly. "And it's allthe more odd as I was always wanting to hurry on and catch up the largetrain. "

This was a grinding in of the heel. The large train into which theGillespies were to be absorbed and an end brought to their independentjourneying, had at first loomed gloomily before David's vision. But oflate it had faded from the conversation and his mind. The present wasso good it must continue, and he had come to accept that first brightdream of his in which he and Susan were to go riding side by sideacross the continent as a permanent reality. His timidity was sweptaway in a rush of stronger feeling and he sat erect, looking sharply ather:

"I thought you'd given up the idea of joining with that train?"

Susan raised the eyebrows of mild surprise:

"Why did you think that?"

"You've not spoken of it for days. "

"That doesn't prove anything. There are lots of important things Idon't speak of. "

"You ought to have spoken of that. "

The virile note of authority was faint in his words, the first timeSusan had ever heard it. Her foot was in a fair way to be withdrawnfrom the slave's neck. The color in her cheeks deepened and it was shewho now dropped her eyes. 

"We had arranged to join the train long before we left Rochester, " sheanswered. "Everybody said it was dangerous to travel in a small party. Dr. Whitman told my father that. "

"There's been nothing dangerous so far. "

"No, it's later when we get into the country of the Sioux and theBlack-feet. They often attack small parties. It's a great risk thatpeople oughtn't to run. They told us that in Independence, too. "

He made no answer and she eyed him with stealthy curiosity. He waslooking on the ground, his depression apparent. At this evidence ofher ability to bring joy or sorrow to her slave she relented. 

"You'll join it, too, won't you?" she said gently. 

"I don't know. The big trains move so slowly. "

"Oh, you must. It would be dreadfully dreary to separate our partiesafter we'd traveled so long together. "

"Maybe I will. I haven't thought about it. "

"But you _must_ think about it. There's no knowing now when we maycome upon them--almost any day. You don't want to go on and leave usbehind, do you?"

He again made no answer and she stole another quick look at him. Thismastery of a fellow creature was by far the most engrossing pastimelife had offered her. There was something about him, a suggestion ofdepths hidden and shut away from her that filled her with theventuresome curiosity of Fatima opening the cupboards in Bluebeard'scastle. 

"We'd feel so lonely if you went on and left us behind with a lot ofstrange people, " she said, with increasing softness. "We'd miss youso. "

The young man turned quickly on her, leaned nearer, and said huskily:

"Would you?"

The movement brought his face close to hers, and she shrank backsharply, her hand ready to hold him at a distance. Her laughingexpression changed into one of offended dignity, almost aversion. Atthe same time his agitation, which had paled his cheeks and burstthrough his shy reserve, filled her with repulsion. For the moment shedisliked him. If he had tried to put his hand upon her she would havestruck him in quick rage at his presumption. He had not the slightestintention of doing so, but the sudden rush of feeling that her wordshad evoked, made him oblivious to the startled withdrawal of her manner. 

"Answer me, " he said. "Would you miss me? Am I anything to you?"

She leaped to her feet, laughing not quite naturally, for her heart wasbeating hard and she had suddenly shrunk within herself, her spiritalert and angrily defensive in its maiden stronghold. 

"Miss you, " she said in a matter-of-fact tone that laid sentiment deadat a blow, "of course I'd miss you, " then backed away from him, brushing off her skirt. 

He rose and stood watching her with a lover's hang-dog look. Sheglanced at him, read his face and once more felt secure in herascendency. Her debonair self-assurance came back with a lowering ofher pulse and a remounting to her old position of condescendingcommand. But a parting lesson would not be amiss and she turned fromhim, saying with a carefully tempered indifference:

"And Leff, too. I'd miss Leff dreadfully. Come, it's time to go. "

Before he could answer she was climbing the bank, not looking back, moving confidently as one who had no need of his aid. He followed herslowly, sore and angry, his eyes on her figure which flitted in advanceclean-cut against the pale, enormous sky. 

He had just caught up with her when from a hollow near the roadsideLeff came into view. He had been after antelope and carried his rifleand a hunting knife in his belt. During the chase he had come upon adeserted Pawnee settlement in a depression of the prairie. Susan wasinstantly interested and wanted to see it and David stood by, listeningin sulky silence while Leff pointed out the way. The sun was sinkingand they faced it, the young man's indicating finger moving back andforth across the vagaries of the route. The prairie was cut by longundulations, naked of verdure, save a spot in the foreground where, beside a round greenish pool, a single tree lifted thinly clad boughs. Something of bleakness had crept into the prospect, its gay greennesswas giving place to an austere pallor of tint, a dry economy ofvegetation. The summits of the swells were bare, the streams shrunk insandy channels. It was like a face from which youth is withdrawing. 

The Indian encampment lay in a hollow, the small wattled huts gatheredon both sides of a runlet that oozed from the slope and slipped betweena line of stepping stones. The hollow was deep for the level country, the grassed sides sweeping abruptly to the higher reaches above. Theywalked through it, examining the neatly made huts and speculating onthe length of time the Indians had left. David remembered that the daybefore, the trail had been crossed by the tracks of a village intransit, long lines graven in the dust by the dragging poles of the_travaux_. He felt uneasy. The Indians might not be far and theythemselves were at least a mile from the camp, and but one of themarmed. The others laughed and Susan brought the blood into his face byasking him if he was afraid. 

He turned from her, frankly angry and then stood rigid with fixedglance. On the summit of the opposite slope, black against the yellowwest, were a group of mounted figures. They were massed together in asolid darkness, but the outlines of the heads were clear, heads acrosswhich bristled an upright crest of hair like the comb of a rooster. 

For a long, silent moment the two parties remained immovable, eyingeach other across the hollow. Then David edged closer to the girl. Hefelt his heart thumping, but his first throttling grip of fear loosenedas his mind realized their helplessness. Leff was the only one witharms. They must get in front of Susan and tell her to run and the campwas a mile off! He felt for her hand and heard her whisper:

"Indians--there are six of them. "

As she spoke the opposite group broke and figures detached themselves. Three, hunched in shapeless sack-forms, were squaws. They made nomovement, resting immobile as statues, the sunset shining between thelegs of their ponies. The men spoke together, their heads turning fromthe trio below to one another. David gripped the hand he held andleaned forward to ask Leff for his knife. 

"Don't be frightened, " he said to Susan. "It's all right. "

"I'm not frightened, " she answered quietly. 

"Your knife, " he said to Leff and then stopped, staring. Leff veryslowly, step pressing stealthily behind step, was creeping backward upthe slope. His face was chalk white, his eyes fixed on the Indians. In his hand he held his rifle ready, and the long knife gleamed in hisbelt. For a moment David had no voice wherewith to arrest him, butSusan had. 

"Where are you going?" she said loudly. 

It stopped him like a blow. His terrified eyes shifted to her face. 

"I wasn't going, " he faltered. 

"Come back, " she said. "You have the rifle and the knife. "

He wavered, his loosened lips shaking. 

"Back here to us, " she commanded, "and give David the rifle. "

He crept downward to them, his glance always on the Indians. They hadbegun to move forward, leaving the squaws on the ridge. Their approachwas prowlingly sinister, the ponies stepping gingerly down the slope, the snapping of twigs beneath their hoofs clear in the waiting silence. As they dipped below the blazing sunset the rider's figures developedin detail, their bodies bare and bronzed in the subdued light. Eachface, held high on a craning neck, was daubed with vermilion, the highcrest of hair bristling across the shaven crowns. Grimly impassivethey came nearer, not speaking nor moving their eyes from the threewhites. One of them, a young man, naked save for a breech clout andmoccasins, was in the lead. As he approached David saw that hiseyelids were painted scarlet and that a spot of silver on his breastwas a medal hanging from a leathern thong. 

At the bottom of the slope they reined up, standing in a group, withlifted heads staring. The trio opposite stared as fixedly. BehindSusan's back Leff had passed David the rifle. He held it in one hand, Susan by the other. He was conscious of her rigidity and also of herfearlessness. The hand he held was firm. Once, breathing a phrase ofencouragement, he met her eyes, steady and unafraid. All his own fearhad passed. The sense of danger was thrillingly acute, but he felt itonly in its relation to her. Dropping her hand he stepped a paceforward and said loudly:

"How!"

The Indian with the medal answered him, a deep, gutteral note. 

"Pawnee?" David asked. 

The same man replied with a word that none of them understood. 

"My camp is just here, " said David, with a backward jerk of his head. "There are many men there. "

There was no response to this and he stepped back and said to Susan:

"Go slowly up the hill backward and keep your eyes on them. Don't lookafraid. "

She immediately began to retreat with slow, short steps. Leff, gaspingwith fear, moved with her, his speed accelerating with each moment. David a few paces in advance followed them. The Indians watched in atranced intentness of observation. At the top of the slope the threesquaws sat as motionless as carven images. The silence was profound. 

Into it, dropping through it like a plummet through space, came thereport of a rifle. It was distant but clear, and as if the bullet hadstruck a taut string and severed it, it cut the tension sharp and lifeflowed back. A movement, like a resumed quiver of vitality, stirredthe bronze stillness of the squaws. The Indians spoke together--a lowmurmur. David thought he saw indecision in their colloquy, thendecision. 

"They're going, " he heard Susan say a little hoarse. 

"Oh, God, they're going!" Leff gasped, as one reprieved of the deathsentence. 

Suddenly they wheeled, and a rush of wild figures, galloped up theslope. The group of squaws broke and fled with them. The light struckthe bare backs, and sent splinters from the gun barrels and the noiseof breaking bushes was loud under the ponies' feet. 

Once again on the road David and Susan stood looking at one another. Each was pale and short of breath, and it was difficult for the younggirl to force her stiffened lips into a smile. The sunset struck withfierce brilliancy across the endless plain, and against it, the Indiansbending low, fled in a streak of broken color. In the other directionLeff's running figure sped toward the camp. From the distance a rifleshot again sundered the quiet. After silence had reclosed over therift a puff of smoke rose in the air. They knew now it was Daddy John, fearing they had lost the way, showing them the location of the camp. 

Spontaneously, without words, they joined hands and started to wherethe trail of smoke still hung, dissolving to a thread. The fleeingfigure of Leff brought no comments to their lips. They did not thinkabout him, his cowardice was as unimportant to them in their mutualengrossment as his body was to the indifferent self-sufficiency of thelandscape. They knew he was hastening that he might be first in thecamp to tell his own story and set himself right with the others beforethey came. They did not care. They did not even laugh at it. Theywould do that later when they had returned to the plane where life hadregained its familiar aspect. 

Silently, hand in hand, they walked between the low bushes and acrossthe whitened patches of sandy soil. When the smoke was gone the poolwith the lone tree guided them, the surface now covered with a glaze ofgold. A deep content lay upon them. The shared peril had torn away aveil that hung between them and through which they had been dodging tocatch glimpses of one another. Susan's pride in her ascendency wasgone. She walked docilely beside the man who, in the great moment, hadnot failed. She was subdued, not by the recent peril, but by the factthat the slave had shown himself the master. David's chance had come, but the moment was too completely beautiful, the sudden sense ofunderstanding too lovely for him to break it with words. He wanted tosavor it, to take joy of its delicate sweetness. It was hisvoluptuousness to delight in it, not brush its bloom away with alover's avowal. He was the idealist, moving in an unexpectedlyrealized dream, too exquisite for words to intrude upon. So theywalked onward, looking across the long land, hand clasped in hand. 

END OF PART I

PART II

The River

CHAPTER I

The Emigrant Trail struck the Platte at Grand Island. From the bluffsthat walled in the river valley the pioneers could look down on thegreat waterway, a wide, thin current, hardly more than a glisteningveil, stretched over the sandy bottom. Sometimes the veil was split byislands, its transparent tissue passing between them in sparklingstrands as if it were sewn with silver threads. These separatedstreams slipped along so quietly, so without noise or hurry, theyseemed to share in the large unconcern of the landscape. It was astill, unpeopled, spacious landscape, where there was no work and notime and the morning and the evening made the day. 

Many years ago the Frenchmen had given the river its name, Platte, because of its lack of depths. There were places where a man couldwalk across it and not be wet above the middle; and, to make up forthis, there were quicksands stirring beneath it where the same manwould sink in above his waist, above his shoulders, above his head. The islands that broke its languid currents were close grown with smalltrees, riding low in the water like little ships freighted deep withgreenery. Toward evening, looking to the West, with the dazzle of thesun on the water, they were a fairy fleet drifting on the silver tideof dreams. 

The wide, slow stream ran in the middle of a wide, flat valley. Thencame a line of broken hills, yellowish and sandy, cleft apart by sharpindentations, and dry, winding arroyos, down which the buffalo trooped, thirsty, to the river. When the sun sloped westward, shadows lay clearin the hollows, violet and amethyst and sapphire blue, transparentwashes of color as pure as the rays of the prism. The hills rolledback in a turbulence of cone and bluff and then subsided, fell away asif all disturbance must cease before the infinite, subduing calm of TheGreat Plains. 

Magic words, invoking the romance of the unconquered West, of theearth's virgin spaces, of the buffalo and the Indian. In their idlesilence, treeless, waterless, clothed as with a dry pale hair with thefeathered yellow grasses, they looked as if the monstrous creatures ofdead epochs might still haunt them, might still sun their horny sidesamong the sand hills, and wallow in the shallows of the river. It wasa bit of the early world, as yet beyond the limit of the young nation'senergies, the earth as man knew it when his eye was focused for farhorizons, when his soul did not shrink before vast solitudes. 

Against this sweeping background the Indian loomed, ruler of a kingdomwhose borders faded into the sky. He stood, a blanketed figure, watching the flight of birds across the blue; he rode, a paintedsavage, where the cloud shadows blotted the plain, and the smoke of hislodge rose over the curve of the earth. Here tribe had fought withtribe, old scores had been wiped out till the grass was damp withblood, wars of extermination had raged. Here the migrating villagesmade a moving streak of color like a bright patch on a map where therewere no boundaries, no mountains, and but one gleaming thread of water. In the quietness of evening the pointed tops of the tepees showed darkagainst the sky, the blur of smoke tarnishing the glow in the West. When the darkness came the stars shone on this spot of life in thewilderness, circled with the howling of wolves. 

The buffalo, driven from the East by the white man's advance and fromthe West by the red man's pursuit, had congregated in these pasturelands. The herds numbered thousands upon thousands, diminishing in thedistance to black dots on the fawn-colored face of the prairie. Twicea day they went to the river to drink. Solemnly, in Indian file, theypassed down the trails among the sand hills, worn into gutters by theircontinuous hoofs. From the wall of the bluffs they emerged into thebottom, line after line, moving slowly to the water. Then to the riveredge the valley was black with them, a mass of huge, primordial forms, from which came bellowings and a faint, sharp smell of musk. 

The valley was the highway to the West--the far West, the West of thegreat fur companies. It led from the Missouri, whose turbid currentwas the boundary between the frontier and the wild, to the second greatbarrier, the mountains which blocked the entrance to the unknowndistance, where the lakes were salt and there were deserts rimed withalkali. It stretched a straight, plain path, from the river behind itto the peaked white summits in front. 

Along it had come a march of men, first a scattered few, then a brokenline, then a phalanx--the winners of the West. 

They were bold men, hard men, men who held life lightly and knew nofear. In the van were the trappers and fur traders with their beavertraps and their long-barreled rifles. They went far up into themountains where the rivers rose snow-chilled and the beavers builttheir dams. There were mountain men in fringed and beaded buckskins, long haired, gaunt and weather scarred; men whose pasts were unknownand unasked, who trapped and hunted and lived in the lodges with theirsquaws. There were black-eyed Canadian voyageurs in otter-skin capsand coats made of blankets, hardy as Indian ponies, gay and light ofheart, who poled the keel boats up the rivers to the chanting of oldFrench songs. There were swarthy half-breeds, still of tongue, stolidand eagle-featured, wearing their blankets as the Indians did, noiseless in their moccasins as the lynx creeping on its prey. 

And then came the emigrants, the first white-covered wagons, the firstwhite women, looking out from the shade of their sunbonnets. The squawwives wondered at their pale faces and bright hair. They came atintervals, a few wagons crawling down the valley and then the long, bare road with the buffaloes crossing it to the river and theoccasional red spark of a trapper's camp fire. In '43 came the firstgreat emigration, when 1, 000 people went to Oregon. The Indians, awedand uneasy, watched the white line of wagon tops. "Were there so manypale faces as this in the Great Father's country?" one of the chiefsasked. 

Four years later the Mormons emigrated. It was like the moving of anation, an exodus of angry fanatics, sullen, determined men burningwith rage at the murder of their prophet, cursing his enemies andquoting his texts. The faces of women and children peered from thewagons, the dust of moving flocks and herds rose like a column at theend of the caravan. Their camps at night were like the camps of thepatriarchs, many women to work for each man, thousands of cattlegrazing in the grass. From the hills above the Indians watched the redcircle of their fires and in the gray dawn saw the tents struck and thetrains "roll out. " There were more people from the Great Father'scountry, more people each year, till the great year, '49, when the cryof gold went forth across the land like a trumpet call. 

Then the faces on the Emigrant Trail were as the faces on the populousstreets of cities. The trains of wagons were unbroken, one behind theother, straight to the sunset. A cloud of dust moved with them, showedtheir coming far away as they wheeled downward at Grand Island, hidtheir departure as they doubled up for the fording of the Platte. Allthe faces were set westward, all the eyes were strained to that distantgoal where the rivers flowed over golden beds and the flakes lay yellowin the prospector's pan. 

The Indians watched them, cold at the heart, for the people in theGreat Father's Country were numerous as the sands of the sea, terribleas an army with banners. 

CHAPTER II

The days were very hot. Brilliant, dewless mornings, blinding middays, afternoons held breathless in the remorseless torrent of light. Thecaravan crawled along the river's edge at a footspace, the earlyshadows shooting far ahead of it, then dwindling to a blot beneath eachmoving body, then slanting out behind. There was speech in the morningwhich died as the day advanced, all thought sinking into torpor in themonotonous glare. In the late afternoon the sun, slipping down thesky, peered through each wagon's puckered canvas opening smiting thedrivers into lethargy. Propped against the roof supports, hats drawnlow over their brows they slept, the riders pacing on ahead stooped andsilent on their sweating horses. There was no sound but the creakingof the wheels, and the low whisperings of the river into which, now andthen, an undermined length of sand dropped with a splash. 

But in the evening life returned. When the dusk stole out of the hillrifts and the river flowed thick gold from bank to bank, when thebluffs grew black against the sunset fires, the little party shook offits apathy and animation revived. Coolness came with the twilight, sharpening into coldness as the West burned from scarlet and gold to aclear rose. The fire, a mound of buffalo chips into which glowingtunnels wormed, was good. Overcoats and blankets were shaken out andthe fragrance of tobacco was on the air. The recrudescence of ideasand the need to interchange them came on the wanderers. Hemmed in byNature's immensity, unconsciously oppressed by it, they felt the wantof each other, of speech, of sympathy, and crouched about the firetelling anecdotes of their life "back home, " that sounded trivial butdrew them closer in the bond of a nostalgic wistfulness. 

One night they heard a drum beat. It came out of the distance faintbut distinct, throbbing across the darkness like a frightened heartterrified by its own loneliness. The hand of man was impelling it, anunseen hand, only telling of its presence by the thin tattoo it sentthrough the silence. Words died and they sat rigid in the sudden alarmthat comes upon men in the wilderness. The doctor clutched hisdaughter's arm, Daddy John reached for his rifle. Then, abruptly as ithad come, it stopped and they broke into suggestions--emigrants on theroad beyond them, an Indian war drum on the opposite bank. 

But they were startled, their apprehensions roused. They sat uneasy, and half an hour later the pad of horses' hoofs and approaching voicesmade each man grip his gun and leap to his feet. They sent a hailthrough the darkness and an answering voice came back:

"It's all right. Friends. "

The figures that advanced into the firelight were those of four menwith a shadowy train of pack mules extending behind them. In fringedand greasy buckskins, with long hair and swarthy faces, their feetnoiseless in moccasins, they were so much of the wild, that it neededthe words, "Trappers from Laramie, " to reassure the doctor and makeLeff put down his rifle. 

The leader, a lean giant, bearded to the cheek bones and with lanklocks of hair falling from a coon-skin cap, gave his introductionbriefly. They were a party of trappers en route from Fort Laramie toSt. Louis with the winter's catch of skins. In skirted, leatherhunting shirt and leggings, knife and pistols in the belt and powderhorn, bullet mold, screw and awl hanging from a strap across his chest, he was the typical "mountain man. " While he made his greetings, withas easy an assurance as though he had dropped in upon a party offriends, his companions picketed the animals which moved on theoutskirts of the light in a spectral band of drooping forms. 

The three other men, were an ancient trapper with a white froth of hairframing a face, brown and wrinkled as a nut, a Mexican, Indian-dark, who crouched in his serape, rolled a cigarette and then fell asleep, and a French Canadian voyageur in a coat made of blanketing and with ascarlet handkerchief tied smooth over his head. He had a round ruddyface, and when he smiled, which he did all the time, his teeth gleamedsquare and white from the curly blackness of his beard. He got out hispans and buffalo meat, and was dropping pieces of hardtack into thespitting tallow when Susan addressed him in his own tongue, the patoisof the province of Quebec. He gave a joyous child's laugh and arattling fire of French followed, and then he must pick out for her thedaintiest morsel and gallantly present it on a tin plate, wiped cleanon the grass. 

They ate first and then smoked and over the pipes engaged in thebartering which was part of the plainsman's business. The strangerswere short of tobacco and the doctor's party wanted buffalo skins. Fresh meat and bacon changed hands. David threw in a measure of cornmeal and the old man--they called him Joe--bid for it with a hindquarter of antelope. Then, business over, they talked of themselves, their work, the season's catch, and the life far away across themountains where the beaver streams are. 

They had come from the distant Northwest, threaded with ice-cold riversand where lakes, sunk between rocky bulwarks, mirrored the whitenedpeaks. There the three Tetons raised their giant heads and the hollowswere spread with a grassy carpet that ran up the slopes like astretched green cloth. There had once been the trapper's paradisewhere the annual "rendezvous" was held and the men of the mountainsgathered from creek and river and spent a year's earnings in a wildweek. But the streams were almost empty now and the great days over. There was a market but no furs. Old Joe could tell what it had oncebeen like, old Joe who years ago had been one of General Ashley's men. 

The old man took his pipe out of his mouth and shook his head. 

"The times is dead, " he said, with the regret of great days gone, softened by age which softens all things. "There ain't anything in itnow. When Ashley and the Sublettes and Campbell ran the big companiesit was a fine trade. The rivers was swarmin' with beaver and if theIndians 'ud let us alone every man of us 'ud come down to rendezvouswith each mule carrying two hundred pound of skins. Them was thetimes. "

The quick, laughing patter of the voyageur's French broke in on hisvoice, but old Joe, casting a dim eye back over the splendid past, wastoo preoccupied to mind. 

"I've knowed the time when the Powder River country and the rivers thatran into Jackson's Hole was as thick with beaver as the buffalo rangeis now with buffalo. We'd follow up a new stream and where the groundwas marshy we'd know the beaver was there, for they'd throw dams acrosstill the water'd soak each side, squeezin' through the willow roots. Then we'd cut a tree and scoop out a canoe, and when the shadders beganto stretch go nosin' along the bank, keen and cold and the sun settin'red and not a sound but the dip of the paddle. We'd set thetraps--seven to a man--and at sun-up out again in the canoe, clear andstill in the gray of the morning, and find a beaver in every trap. "

"Nothin' but buffalo now to count on, " said the other man. "And what'sin that?"

David said timidly, as became so extravagant a suggestion, that amountain man he had met in Independence told him he thought the buffalowould be eventually exterminated. The trappers looked at one another, and exchanged satiric smiles. Even the Canadian stopped in his chatterwith Susan to exclaim in amaze: "Sacré Tonnerre!"

Old Joe gave a lazy cast of his eye at David. 

"Why, boy, " he said, "if they'd been killin' them varmints since BunkerHill they couldn't do no more with 'em than you could with your littlepopgun out here on the plains. The Indians has druv 'em from the Westand the white man's druv 'em from the East and it don't make nodifference. I knowed Captain Bonneville and he's told me how he stoodon the top of Scotts Bluffs and seen the country black with'em--millions of 'em. That's twenty-five years ago and he ain't seenno more than I have on these plains not two seasons back. Out as faras your eye could reach, crawlin' with buffalo, till you couldn't seecow nor bull, but just a black mass of 'em, solid to the horizon. "

David felt abashed and the doctor came to his rescue with a questionabout Captain Bonneville and Joe forgot his scorn of foolish young menin reminiscences of that hardy pathfinder. 

The old trapper seemed to have known everyone of note in the history ofthe plains and the fur trade, or if he didn't know them he said he didwhich was just as good. Lying on a buffalo skin, the firelight gildingthe bony ridges of his face, a stub of black pipe gripped between hisbroken teeth, he told stories of the men who had found civilization toocramped and taken to the wilderness. Some had lived and died there, others come back, old and broken, to rest in a corner of the towns theyhad known as frontier settlements. Here they could look out to theWest they loved, strain their dim eyes over the prairie, where thefarmer's plow was tracing its furrow, to the Medicine Way of The PaleFace that led across the plains and up the long bright river and overthe mountains to the place of the trapper's rendezvous. 

He had known Jim Beckwourth, the mulatto who was chief of the Crows, fought their battles and lived in their villages with a Crow wife. Joedescribed him as "a powerful liar, " but a man without fear. Under hisleadership the Crows had become a great nation and the frontiersmenlaid it to his door that no Crow had ever attacked a white man exceptin self-defense. Some said he was still living in California. Joeremembered him well--a tall man, strong and fleet-footed as an Indian, with mighty muscles and a skin like bronze. He always wore round hisneck a charm of a perforated bullet set between two glass beads hangingfrom a thread of sinew. 

He had known Rose, another white chief of the Crows, an educated manwho kept his past secret and of whom it was said that the lonely placesand the Indian trails were safer for him than the populous ways oftowns. The old man had been one of the garrison in Fort Union when theterrible Alexander Harvey had killed Isidore, the Mexican, and standingin the courtyard cried to the assembled men: "I, Alexander Harvey, havekilled the Spaniard. If there are any of his friends who want to takeit up let them come on"; and not a man in the fort dared to go. He hadbeen with Jim Bridger, when, on a wager, he went down Bear River in askin boat and came out on the waters of the Great Salt Lake. 

Susan, who had stopped her talk with the voyageur to listen to thisminstrel of the plains, now said:

"Aren't you lonely in those quiet places where there's no one else?"

The old man nodded, a gravely assenting eye on hers:

"Powerful lonely, sometimes. There ain't a mountain man that ain'tfelt it, some of 'em often, others of 'em once and so scairt that timethey won't take the risk again. It comes down suddint, like adarkness--then everything round that was so good and fine, the sound ofthe pines and the bubble of the spring and the wind blowing over thegrass, seems like they'd set you crazy. You'd give a year's peltriesfor the sound of a man's voice. Just like when some one's dead thatyou set a heap on and you feel you'd give most everything you got tosee 'em again for a minute. There ain't nothin' you wouldn't promiseif by doin' it you could hear a feller hail you--just one shout--as hecomes ridin' up the trail. "

"That was how Jim Cockrell felt when he prayed for the dog, " said thetall man. 

"Did he get the dog?"

He nodded. 

"That's what he said anyway. He was took with just such a lonesomespell once when he was trapping in the Mandans country. He was a piouscritter, great on prayer and communing with the Lord. And hefelt--I've heard him tell about it--just as if he'd go wild if hedidn't get something for company. What he wanted was a dog and youmight just as well want an angel out there with nothin' but the Indianvillages breakin' the dazzle of the snow and you as far away from themas you could get. But that didn't stop Jim. He just got down andprayed, and then he waited and prayed some more and 'ud look around forthe dog, as certain he'd come as that the sun 'ud set. Bimeby he fellasleep and when he woke there was the dog, a little brown varmint, curled up beside him on the blanket. Jim used to say an angel broughtit. I'm not contradictin', but----"

"Wal, " said old Joe, "he most certainly come back into the fort with adog. I was there and seen him. "

Leff snickered, even the doctor's voice showed the incredulous notewhen he asked:

"Where could it have come from?"

The tall man shrugged. 

"Don't ask me. All I know is that Jim Cockrell swore to it and I'veheard him tell it drunk and sober and always the same way. He held outfor the angel. I'm not saying anything against that, but whatever itwas it must have had a pretty powerful pull to get a dog out to atrapper in the dead o' winter. "

They wondered over the story, offering explanations, and as they talkedthe fire died low and the moon, a hemisphere clean-halved as thoughsliced by a sword, rose serene from a cloud bank. Its coming silencedthem and for a space they watched the headlands of the solemn landscapeblackening against the sky, and the river breaking into silverydisquiet. Separating the current, which girdled it with a sparklingbelt, was the dark blue of an island, thick plumed with trees, a blackand mysterious oblong. Old Joe pointed to it with his pipe. 

"Brady's Island, " he said. "Ask Hy to tell you about that. He knewBrady. "

The tall man looked thoughtfully at the crested shape. 

"That's it, " he said. "That's where Brady was murdered. "

And then he told the story:

"It was quite a while back in the 30's, and the free trappers andmountain men brought their pelts down in bull boats and mackinaws toSt. Louis. There were a bunch of men workin' down the river and whenthey got to Brady's Island, that's out there in the stream, the waterwas so shallow the boats wouldn't float, so they camped on the island. Brady was one of 'em, a cross-tempered man, and he and another feller'dbeen pick-in' at each other day by day since leavin' the mountains. They'd got so they couldn't get on at all. Men do that sometimes onthe trail, get to hate the sight and sound of each other. You can'ttell why. 

"One day the others went after buffalo and left Brady and the man thathated him alone on the island. When the hunters come home at nightBrady was dead by the camp fire, shot through the head and lyin' stiffin his blood. The other one had a slick story to tell how Bradycleanin' his gun, discharged it by accident and the bullet struck upand killed him. They didn't believe it, but it weren't their business. So they buried Brady there on the island and the next day each manshouldered his pack and struck out to foot it to the Missouri. 

"It was somethin' of a walk and the ones that couldn't keep up thestride fell behind. They was all strung out along the river bank andsome of 'em turned off for ways they thought was shorter, and firstthing you know the party was scattered, and the man that hated Bradywas left alone, lopin' along on a side trail that slanted across theprairie to the country of the Loup Fork Pawnees. 

"That was the last they saw of him and it was a long time--newstraveled slow on the plains in them days--before anybody heard of himfor he never come to St. Louis to tell. Some weeks later a party oftrappers passin' near the Pawnee villages on the Loup Fork was hailedby some Indians and told they had a paleface sick in the chief's tent. The trappers went there and in the tent found a white man, clearheaded, but dyin' fast. 

"It was the man that killed Brady. Lyin' there on the buffalo skin, hetold them all about it--how he done it and the lie he fixed up. Deathwas comin', and the way he'd hated so he couldn't keep his hand frommurder was all one now. He wanted to get it off his mind and sortersquare himself. When he'd struck out alone he went on for a spell, killin' enough game and always hopin' for the sight of the river. Thenone day he caught his gun in a willow tree and it went off, sending thecharge into his thigh and breaking the bone. He was stunned for awhile and then tried to move on, tried to crawl. He crawled for sixdays and at the end of the sixth found a place with water and knowedhe'd come to the end of his rope. He tore a strip off his blanket andtied it to the barrel of his rifle and stuck it end up. The Pawneesfound him there and treated him kind, as them Indians will dosometimes. They took him to their village and cared for him, but itwas too late. He wanted to see a white man and tell and then diepeaceful, and that's what he done. While the trappers was with him hedied and they buried him there decent outside the village. "

The speaker's voice ceased and in the silence the others turned to lookat the black shape of the island riding the gleaming waters like afuneral barge. In its dark isolation, cut off from the land by thequiet current, it seemed a fitting theater for the grim tragedy. Theygazed at it, chilled into dumbness, thinking of the murderer moving tofreedom under the protection of his lie, then overtaken, and in hisanguish, alone in the silence, meeting the question of his conscience. 

Once more the words came back to David: "Behold, He that keepeth Israelshall neither slumber nor sleep. "

Susan pressed against her father, awed and cold, and from old Joe, stretched in his blanket, came a deep and peaceful snore. 

CHAPTER III

Susan was riding alone on the top of the bluffs. The evening before, three men returning from the Oregon country to the States, hadbivouacked with them and told them that the New York Company was aday's march ahead, so she had gone to the highlands to reconnoiter. 

Just here the bluffs swept inward toward the river, contracting thebottom to a valley only a few miles in width. Through it the road lay, a well-worn path crossed as with black stripes by the buffalo runs. Susan's glance, questing ahead for the New York train, ran to thedistance where the crystal glaze of the stream shrunk to a silverthread imbedded in green velvet. There was a final point where greenand silver converged in a blinding dazzle, and over this the sun hung, emerging from a nebulous glare to a slowly defining sphere. 

Turning to the left her gaze lost itself in the endlessness of theplains. It was like looking over the sea, especially at the horizonwhere the land was drawn in a straight, purplish line. She couldalmost see sails there, small sails dark against a sky that was soremote its color had faded to an aerial pallor. As the journey hadadvanced the influence of these spacious areas had crept upon her. Inthe beginning there had been times when they woke in her an unexplainedsadness. Now that was gone and she loved to ride onward, the one itemof life in the silence, held in a new correspondence with the solemnimmensity. It affected her as prayer does the devotee. Under itsinspiration she wondered at old worries and felt herself impervious tonew ones. 

With eyes on the purple horizon her thoughts went back to her home inRochester with the green shutters and the brasses on the door. How faraway it seemed! Incidents in its peaceful routine were like theresurgences of memory from a previous incarnation. There was notenderness in her thoughts of the past, no sentiment clung to herrecollections of what was now a dead phase of her life. She wasslightly impatient of its contented smallness, of her satisfaction withsuch things as her sewing, her cake making, her childish conferenceswith girl friends on the vine-grown porch. They seemed strangelytrivial and unmeaning compared to the exhilarating present. She wasliving now, feeling the force of a rising growth, her horizon wideningto suit that which her eyes sought, the dependence of her shelteredgirlhood gone from her as the great adventure called upon untouchedenergies and untried forces. It was like looking back on another girl, or like a woman looking back on a child. 

She had often spoken to David of these past days, and saw that herdescriptions charmed him. He had asked her questions about it and beensurprised that she did not miss the old existence more. To him it hadseemed ideal, and he told her that that was the way he should like tolive and some day would, with just such a servant as Daddy John, and afew real friends, and a library of good books. His enthusiasm made herdimly realize the gulf between them--the gulf between the idealist andthe materialist--that neither had yet recognized and that only she, ofthe two, instinctively felt. The roughness of the journey irked David. The toil of the days wore on his nerves. She could see that it painedhim to urge the tired animals forward, to lash them up the stream banksand drive them past the springs. And only half understanding hischaracter--fine where she was obtuse, sensitive where she wasinvulnerable, she felt the continued withdrawal from him, theinstinctive shrinking from the man who was not her mate. 

She had silently acquiesced in the idea, entertained by all the train, that she would marry him. The doctor had intimated to her that hewished it and from her childhood her only real religion had been toplease her father. Yet half a dozen times she had stopped the proposalon the lover's lips. And not from coquetry either. Loth and reluctantshe clung to her independence. A rival might have warmed her to a morecoming-on mood, but there was no rival. When by silence or railleryshe had shut off the avowal she was relieved and yet half despised himfor permitting her to take the lead. Why had he not forced her tolisten? Why had he not seized her and even if she struggled, held herand made her hear him? She knew little of men, nothing of love, butshe felt, without putting her thoughts even to herself, that to a manwho showed her he was master she would have listened and surrendered. 

Riding back to the camp she felt a trifle remorseful about herbehavior. Some day she would marry him--she had got far enough toadmit that--and perhaps it was unkind of her not to let the matter besettled. And at that she gave a petulant wriggle of her shouldersunder her cotton blouse. Wasn't that his business? Wasn't he the oneto end it, not wait on her pleasure? Were all men so easily governed, she wondered. 

Looking ahead across the grassed bottom land, she saw that the trainhad halted and the camp was pitched. She could see David's tallstooping figure, moving with long strides between the tents and thewagons. She laid a wager with herself that he would do certain thingsand brought her horse to a walk that she might come upon himnoiselessly and watch. Of course he did them, built up her fire andkindled it, arranged her skillets beside it and had a fresh pail ofwater standing close by. It only remained for him to turn as he heardthe sound of her horse's hoofs and run to help her dismount. This, forsome reason, he did not do and she was forced to attract his attentionby saying in a loud voice:

"There was nothing to be seen. Not a sign of a wagon from here to thehorizon. "

He looked up from his cooking and said: "Oh, you're back, Susan, " andreturned to the pan of buffalo tallow. 

This was a strange remissness in the slave and she was piqued. Contrary to precedent it was her father who helped her off. She slidinto his arms laughing, trying to kiss him as she slipped down, thenstanding with her hands on his shoulders told him of her ride. She wasvery pretty just then, her hair loose on her sunburned brow, her faceall love and smiles. But David bent over his fire, did not raise hiseyes to the charming tableau, that had its own delightfulness to thetwo participants, and that one of the participants intended should showhim how sweet Susan Gillespie could be when she wanted. 

All of which trivial matter combined to the making of momentous matter, momentous in the future for Susan and David. Shaken in her confidencein the subjugation of her slave, Susan agreed to his suggestion to rideto the bluffs after supper and see the plains under the full moon. Sosalutary had been his momentary neglect of her that she went in achastened spirit, a tamed and gentle maiden. They had orders not topass out of sight of the twin fires whose light followed them like thebeams of two, watchful, unwinking eyes. 

They rode across the bottom to where the bluffs rose, a broken bulwark. That afternoon Susan had found a ravine up which they could pass. Sheknew it by a dwarfed tree, a landmark in the naked country. Themoonlight lay white on the barrier indented with gulfs of darkness, from each of which ran the narrow path of the buffalo. The line ofhills, silver-washed and black-caverned, was like a rampart thrownacross the entrance to the land of mystery, and they like the pygmy menof fairyland come to gain an entry. It was David who thought of this. It reminded him of Jack and the Beanstalk, where Jack, reaching the topof the vine, found himself in a strange country. Susan did notremember much about Jack. She was engrossed in recognizing the ravine, scanning the darkling hollows for the dwarf tree. 

It was a steep, winding cut, the tree, halfway up its length, spreadingskeleton arms against a sky clear as a blue diamond. They turned intoit and began a scrambling ascent, the horses' hoofs slipping into thegutter that the buffaloes had trodden out. It was black dark in thedepths with the moonlight slanting white on the walls. 

"We're going now to find the giants, " David called over his shoulder. "Doesn't this seem as if it ought to lead us up right in front ofBlunderbore's Castle?"

"The buffalo runs are like trenches, " she answered. "If you don't lookout your horse may fall. "

They tied their horses to the tree and climbed on foot to the levelsabove. On the earth's floor, unbroken by tree or elevation, there wasnot a shadow. It lay silver frosted in the foreground, darkening as itreceded. In the arch above no cloud filmed the clearness, the moon, huge and mottled, dominating the sky. The silence was penetrating; nota breath or sound disturbed it. It was the night of the primitiveworld, which stirred the savage to a sense of the infinite and madehim, from shell or clay or stone, carve out a God. 

Without speaking they walked forward to a jutting point and looked downon the river. The current sparkled like a dancer's veil spread on thegrass. They could not hear its murmur or see the shifting disturbanceof its shallows, only received the larger impression of the flat, gleaming tide split by the black shapes of islands. David pointed tothe two sparks of the camp fires. 

"See, they're looking after us as if they were alive and knew theymustn't lose sight of us. "

"They look quite red in the moonlight, " she answered, interested. 

"As if they belonged to man and a drop of human blood had colored them. "

"What a queer idea. Let's walk on along the bluffs. "

They turned and moved away from the lights, slipping down into thedarkness of the channeled ravines and emerging onto the luminoushighlands. The solemnity of the night, its brooding aloofness in whichthey held so small a part, chilled the girl's high self-reliance. Among her fellows, in a setting of light and action, she was all proudindependence. Deprived of them she suffered a diminution of confidenceand became if not clinging, at least a feminine creature who might someday be won. Feeling small and lonely she insensibly drew closer to theman beside her, at that moment the only connecting link between her andthe living world with which her liens were so close. 

The lover felt the change in her, knew that the barrier she had sopersistently raised was down. They were no longer mistress and slave, but man and maid. The consciousness of it gave him a new boldness. The desperate daring of the suitor carried him beyond his familiartremors, his dread of defeat. He thrust his hand inside her arm, timidly, it is true, ready to snatch it back at the first rebuff. Butthere was none, so he kept it there and they walked on. Their talk wasfragmentary, murmured sentences that they forgot to finish, phrasestrailing off into silence as if they had not clear enough wits to fitwords together, or as if words were not necessary when at last theirspirits communed. Responding to the instigation of the romantic hourthe young girl felt an almost sleepy content. The arm on which sheleaned spoke of strength, it symbolized a protection she would haverepudiated in the practical, sustaining sunshine, but that now was verysweet. 

David walked in a vision. Was it Susan, this soft and docile being, close against his side, her head moving slowly as her eyes ranged overthe magical prospect? He was afraid to speak for fear the spell wouldbreak. He did not know which way his feet bore him, but blindly wenton, looking down at the profile almost against his shoulder, at thehand under which his had slid, small and white in the transforminglight. His silence was not like hers, the expression of a temporary, lulled tranquility. He had passed the stage when he could delay torejoice in lovely moments. He was no longer the man fearful of thehazards of his fate, but a vessel of sense ready to overflow at theslightest touch. 

It came when a ravine opened at their feet and she drew herself fromhim to gather up her skirts for the descent. Then the tension brokewith a tremulous "Susan, wait!" She knew what was coming and bracedherself to meet it. The mystical hour, the silver-bathed wonder of thenight, a girl's frightened curiosity, combined to win her to alistening mood. She felt on the eve of a painful but necessary ordeal, and clasped her hands together to bear it creditably. Through theperturbation of her mind the question flashed--Did all women feel thisway? and then the comment, How much they had to endure that they nevertold!

It was the first time any man had made the great demand of her. Shehad read of it in novels and other girls had told her. From this datashe had gathered that it was a happy if disturbing experience. Shefelt only the disturbance. Seldom in her life had she experienced sodistracting a sense of discomfort. When David was half way through shewould have given anything to have stopped him, or to have run away. But she was determined now to stand it, to go through with it and beengaged as other girls were and as her father wished her to be. Besides there was nowhere to run to and she could not have stopped himif she had tried. He was launched, the hour had come, the, to him, supreme and awful hour, and all the smothered passion and hope andyearning of the past month burst out. 

Once she looked at him and immediately looked away, alarmed and abashedby his appearance. Even in the faint light she could see his pallor, the drops on his brow, the drawn desperation of his face. She hadnever in her life seen anyone so moved and she began to share hisagitation and wish that anything might happen to bring the interview toan end. 

"Do you care? Do you care?" he urged, trying to look into her face. She held it down, not so much from modesty as from an aversion toseeing him so beyond himself, and stammered:

"Of course I care. I always have. Quite a great deal. You know it. "

"I never knew, " he cried. "I never was sure. Sometimes I thought soand the next day you were all different. Say you do. Oh, Susan, sayyou do. "

He was as close to her as he could get without touching her, which, thequestion now fairly put, he carefully avoided doing. Taller than shehe loomed over her, bending for her answer, quivering and sweating inhis anxiety. 

The young girl was completely subdued by him. She was frightened, notof the man, but of the sudden revelation of forces which she did not inthe least comprehend and which made him another person. Though shevaguely understood that she still dominated him, she saw that herdominion came from something much more subtle than verbal command andimperious bearing. All confusion and bewildered meekness, she melted, partly because she had meant to, partly because his vehemenceoverpowered her, and partly because she wanted to end the most tryingscene she had ever been through. 

"Will you say yes? Oh, you must say yes, " she heard him imploring, andshe emitted the monosyllable on a caught breath and then held her headeven lower and felt an aggrieved amazement that it was all so differentfrom what she had thought it would be. 

He gave an exclamation, a sound almost of pain, and drew away from her. She glanced up at him, her eyes full of scared curiosity, not knowingwhat extraordinary thing was going to happen next. He had dropped hisface into his hands, and stood thus for a moment without moving. Shepeered at him uneasily, like a child at some one suffering from anunknown complaint and giving evidence of the suffering in strange ways. He let his hands fall, closed his eyes for a second, then opened themand came toward her with his face beatified. Delicately, almostreverently, he bent down and touched her cheek with his lips. 

The lover's first kiss! This, too, Susan had heard about, and fromwhat she had heard she had imagined that it was a wonderful experiencecausing unprecedented joy. She was nearly as agitated as he, butthrough her agitation, she realized with keen disappointment that shehad felt nothing in the least resembling joy. An inward shrinking asthe bearded lips came in contact with her skin was all she wasconscious of. There was no rapture, no up-gush of anything lovely orunusual. In fact, it left her with the feeling that it was a duty dulydischarged and accepted--this that she had heard was one of life'scrises, that you looked back on from the heights of old age and toldyour grandchildren about. 

They were silent for a moment, the man so filled and charged withfeeling that he had no breath to speak, no words, if he had had breath, to express the passion that was in him. Inexperienced as she, hethought it sweet and beautiful that she should stand away from him withaverted face. He gazed at her tenderly, wonderingly, won, but still athing too sacred for his touch. 

Susan, not knowing what to do and feeling blankly that somethingmomentous had happened and that she had not risen to it, continued tolook on the ground. She wished he would say something simple andnatural and break the intolerable silence. Finally, she felt that shecould endure it no longer, and putting her hand to her forehead, pushedback her hair and heaved a deep sigh. He instantly moved to her allbrooding, possessive inquiry. She became alarmed lest he meant to kissher again and edged away from him, exclaiming hastily:

"Shall we go back? We've been a long time away. "

Without speech he slid his hand into the crook of her arm and theybegan to retrace their steps. She could feel his heart beating and thewarm, sinewy grasp of his fingers clasped about hers. The plain was asilver floor for their feet, in the starless sky the great orb soared. The girl's embarrassment left her and she felt herself peacefullysettling into a contented acquiescence. She looked up at him, a tallshape, black between her and the moon. Her glance called his and hegazed down into her eyes, a faint smile on his lips. His arm wasstrong, the way was strangely beautiful, and in the white light and thestillness, romance walked with them. 

There was no talk between them till they reached the horses. In thedarkness of the cleft, hidden from the searching radiance, he drew herto him, pressing her head with a trembling hand against his heart. Sheendured it patiently but was glad when he let her go and she was in thesaddle, a place where she felt more at home than in a man's arms withher face crushed against his shirt, turning to avoid its rough textureand uncomfortably conscious of the hardness of his lean breast. Shedecided not to speak to him again, for she was afraid he might breakforth into those protestations of love that so embarrassed her. 

At the camp Daddy John was up, sitting by the fire, waiting for them. Of this, too, she was glad. Good-bys between lovers, even if only tobe separated by a night, were apt to contain more of that distressfultalk. She called a quick "Good night" to him, and then dove into hertent and sat down on the blankets. The firelight shone a nebulousblotch through the canvas and she stared at it, trying to concentrateher thoughts and realize that the great event had happened. 

"I'm engaged, " she kept saying to herself, and waited for the rapture, which, even if belated, ought surely to come. But it did not. Thewords obstinately refused to convey any meaning, brought nothing to herbut a mortifying sensation of being inadequate to a crisis. She heardDavid's voice exchanging a low good night with the old man, and shehearkened anxiously, still hopeful of the thrill. But again there wasnone, and she could only gaze at the blurred blot of light and whisper"I'm engaged to be married, " and wonder what was the matter with herthat she should feel just the same as she did before. 

CHAPTER IV

The dawn was gray when Susan woke the next morning. It was cold andshe cowered under her blankets, watching the walls of the tent growlight, and the splinter between the flaps turn from white to yellow. She came to consciousness quickly, waking to an unaccustomed depression. 

At first it had no central point of cause, but was reasonless andall-permeating like the depression that comes from an unlocatedphysical ill. Her body lay limp under the blankets as her mind laylimp under the unfamiliar cloud. Then the memory of last night tookform, her gloom suddenly concentrated on a reason, and she sunk beneathit, staring fixedly at the crack of growing light. When she heard thecamp stirring and sat up, her heart felt so heavy that she pressed onit with her finger tips as if half expecting they might encounter astrange, new hardness through the soft envelope of her body. 

She did not know that this lowering of her crest, hitherto held so highand carried so proudly, was the first move of her surrender. Herliberty was over, she was almost in the snare. The strong feminineprinciple in her impelled her like an inexorable fate toward marriageand the man. The children that were to be, urged her toward theircreator. And the unconquered maidenhood that was still hers, recoiledwith trembling reluctance from its demanded death. Love had not yetcome to lead her into a new and wonderful world. She only felt thesense of strangeness and fear, of leaving the familiar ways to enternew ones that led through shadows to the unknown. 

When she rode out beside her father in the red splendors of themorning, a new gravity marked her. Already the first suggestion of thewoman--like the first breath of the season's change--was on her face. The humility of the great abdication was in her eyes. 

David left them together and rode away to the bluffs. She followed hisfigure with a clouded glance as she told her father her news. Herdepression lessened when he turned upon her with a radiant face. 

"If you had searched the world over you couldn't have found a man toplease me better. Seeing David this way, day by day, I've come to knowhim through and through and he's true, straight down to the core. "

"Of course he is, " she answered, tilting her chin with the oldsauciness that this morning looked a little forlorn. "I wouldn't haveliked him if he hadn't been. "

"Oh, Missy, you're such a wise little woman. "

She glanced at him quickly, recognizing the tone, and to-day, with hernew heavy heart, dreading it. 

"Now, father, don't laugh at me. This is all very serious. "

"Serious! It's the most serious thing that ever happened in the world, in our world. And if I was smiling--I'll lay a wager I wasn'tlaughing--it was because I'm so happy. You don't know what this meansto me. I've wanted it so much that I've been afraid it wasn't comingoff. And then I thought it must, for it's my girl's happiness andDavid's and back of theirs mine. "

"Well, then, if you're happy, I'm happy. "

This time his smile was not bantering, only loving and tender. He didnot dream that her spirit might not be as glad as his looking from theheight of middle-age to a secured future. He had been a man of asingle love, ignorant save of that one woman, and she so worshiped andwondered at that there had been no time to understand her. Insulatedin the circle of his own experience he did not guess that to anunawakened girl the engagement morn might be dark with clouds. 

"Love and youth, " he said dreamily, "oh, Susan, it's so beautiful!It's Eden come again when God walked in the garden. And it's so short. _Eheu Fugaces_! You've just begun to realize how wonderful it is, justsaid to yourself 'This is life--this is what I was born for, ' when it'sover. And then you begin to understand, to look back, and see that itwas not what you were born for. It was only the beginning that was togive you strength for the rest--the prairie all trees and flowers, withthe sunlight and the breeze on the grass. "

"It sounds like this journey, like the Emigrant Trail. "

"That's what I was thinking. The beautiful start gives you courage forthe mountains. The memory of it carries you over the rough places, gives you life in your heart when you come to the desert where it's allparched and bare. And you and your companion go on, fighting againstthe hardships, bound closer and closer by the struggle. You learn togive up, to think of the other one, and then you say, '_This_ is what Iwas born for, ' and you know you're getting near the truth. To havesome one to go through the fight for, to do the hard work for--that'sthe reality after the vision and the dream. "

The doctor, thinking of the vanished years of his married life, and hisdaughter, of the unknown ones coming, were not looking at the subjectfrom the same points of view. 

"I don't think you make it sound very pleasant, " she said, fromreturning waves of melancholy. "It's nothing but hardships and danger. "

"California's at the end of it, dearie, and they say that's the mostbeautiful country in the world. "

"It will be a strange country, " she said wistfully, not thinking aloneof California. 

"Not for long. "

"Do you think we'll ever feel at home in it?"

The question came in a faint voice. Why did California, once the goalof her dreams, now seem an alien land in which she always would be astranger?

"We're bringing our home with us--carrying some of it on our backs likesnails and the rest in our hearts like all pioneers. Soon it willcease being strange, when there are children in it. Where there's acamp fire and a blanket and a child, that's home, Missy. "

He leaned toward her and laid his hand on hers as it rested on thepommel. 

"You'll be so happy in it, " he said softly. 

A sudden surge of feeling, more poignant than anything she had yetfelt, sent a pricking of tears to her eyes. She turned her face away, longing in sudden misery for some one to whom she could speak plainly, some one who once had felt as she did now. For the first time shewished that there was another woman in the train. Her instinct toldher that men could not understand. Unable to bear her father's gladassurance she said a hasty word about going back and telling Daddy Johnand wheeled her horse toward the prairie schooner behind them. 

Daddy John welcomed her by pushing up against the roof prop and givingher two thirds of the driver's seat. With her hands clipped betweenher knees she eyed him sideways. 

"What do you think's going to happen?" she said, trying to compose herspirits by teasing him. 

"It's going to rain, " he answered. 

This was not helpful or suggestive of future sympathy, but at any rate, it was not emotional. 

"Now, Daddy John, don't be silly. Would I get off my horse and climbup beside you to ask you about the weather?"

"I don't know what you'd do, Missy, you've got that wild out here onthe plains--just like a little buffalo calf. "

He glimpsed obliquely at her, his old face full of whimsicaltenderness. She smiled bravely and he saw above the smile, her eyes, untouched by it. He instantly became grave. 

"Well, what's goin' to happen?" he asked soberly. 

"I'm going to be married. "

He raised his eyebrows and gave a whistle. 

"That is somethin'! And which is it?"

"What a question! David, of course. Who else could it be?"

"Well, he's the best, " he spoke slowly, with considering phlegm. "He'sa first-rate boy as far as he goes. "

"I don't think that's a very nice way to speak of him. Can't you saysomething better?"

The old man looked over the mules' backs for a moment of inwardcogitation. He was not surprised at the news but he was surprised atsomething in his Missy's manner, a lack of the joyfulness, that he, too, had thought an attribute of all intending brides. 

"He's a good boy, " he said thoughtfully. "No one can say he ain't. But some way or other, I'd rather have had a bigger man for you, Missy. "

"Bigger!" she exclaimed indignantly. "He's nearly six feet. And girlsdon't pick out their husbands because of their height. "

"I ain't meant it that way. Bigger in what's in him--can get hold o'more, got a bigger reach. "

"I don't know what you mean. If you're trying to say he's not got abig mind you're all wrong. He knows more than anybody I ever metexcept father. He's read hundreds and hundreds of books. "

"That's it--too many books. Books is good enough but they ain't theright sort 'er meat for a feller that's got to hit out for himself in anew country. They're all right in the city where you got the butcherand the police and a kerosene lamp to read 'em by. David 'ud be a fineboy in the town just as his books is suitable in the town. But thisain't the town. And the men that are the right kind out here ain'tparticularly set on books. I'd 'a' chose a harder feller for you, Missy, that could have stood up to anything and didn't have no softfeelings to hamper him. "

"Rubbish, " she snapped. "Why don't you encourage me?"

Her tone drew his eyes, sharp as a squirrel's and charged with quickconcern. Her face was partly turned away. The curve of her cheek wasdevoid of its usual dusky color, her fingers played on her under lip asif it were a little flute. 

"What do you want to be encouraged for?" he said low, as if afraid ofbeing overheard. 

She did not move her head, but looked at the bluffs. 

"I don't know, " she answered, then hearing her--voice hoarse clearedher throat. "It's all--so--so--sort of new. I--I--feel--I don't knowjust how--I think it's homesick. "

Her voice broke in a bursting sob. Her control gone, her pride fellwith it. Wheeling on the seat she cast upon him a look of despairingappeal. 

"Oh, Daddy John, " was all she could gasp, and then bent her head sothat her hat might hide the shame of her tears. 

He looked at her for a nonplused moment, at her brown arms bent overher shaken bosom, at the shield of her broken hat. He was thoroughlydiscomfited for he had not the least idea what was the matter. Then heshifted the reins to his left hand and edging near her laid his righton her knee. 

"Don't you want to marry him?" he said gently. 

"It isn't that, it's something else. "

"What else? You can say anything you like to me. Ain't I carried youwhen you were a baby?"

"I don't know what it is. " Her voice came cut by sobbing breaths. "Idon't understand. It's like being terribly lonesome. "

The old frontiersman had no remedy ready for this complaint. He, too, did not understand. 

"Don't you marry him if you don't like him, " he said. "If you want totell him so and you're afraid, I'll do it for you. "

"I do like him. It's not that. "

"Well, then, what's making you cry?"

"Something else, something way down deep that makes everything seem sofar away and strange. "

He leaned forward and spat over the wheel, then subsided against theroof prop. 

"Are you well?" he said, his imagination exhausted. 

"Yes, very. "

Daddy John looked at the backs of the mules. The off leader was acapricious female by name Julia who required more management andcoaxing than the other five put together, and whom he loved beyond themall. In his bewildered anxiety the thought passed through his mindthat all creatures of the feminine gender, animal or human, weregoverned by laws inscrutable to the male, who might never aspire tocomprehension and could only strive to please and placate. 

A footfall struck on his ear and, thrusting his head beyond the canvashood, he saw Leff loafing up from the rear. 

"Saw her come in here, " thought the old man, drawing his head in, "andwants to hang round and snoop. "

Since the Indian episode he despised Leff. His contempt was unveiled, for the country lout who had shown himself a coward had dared to raisehis eyes to the one star in Daddy John's firmament. He would not havehidden his dislike if he could. Leff was of the outer world to whichhe relegated all men who showed fear or lied. 

He turned to Susan:

"Go back in the wagon and lie down. Here comes Leff and I don't wanthim to see you. "

The young girl thought no better of Leff than he did. The thought ofbeing viewed in her abandonment by the despised youth made her scrambleinto the back of the wagon where she lay concealed on a pile of sacks. In the forward opening where the canvas was drawn in a circle round asegment of sky, Daddy John's figure fitted like a picture in a circularframe. As a step paused at the wheel she saw him lean forward andheard his rough tones. 

"Yes, she's here, asleep in the back of the wagon. "

Then Leff's voice, surprised:

"Asleep? Why, it ain't an hour since we started. "

"Well, can't she go to sleep in the morning if she wants? Don't you goto sleep every Sunday under the wagon?"

"Yes, but that's afternoon. "

"Mebbe, but everybody's not as slow as you at getting at what theywant. "

This appeared to put Susan's retirement in a light that gave rise topondering. There was a pause, then came the young man's heavyfootsteps slouching back to his wagon. Daddy John settled down on theseat. 

"I'm almighty glad it weren't him, Missy, " he said, over his shoulder. "I'd 'a' known then why you cried. "

CHAPTER V

Late the same day Leff, who had been riding on the bluffs, came down toreport a large train a few miles ahead of them. It was undoubtedly thelong-looked-for New York Company. 

The news was as a tonic to their slackened energies. A cheeringexcitement ran through the train. There was stir and loud talking. Its contagion lifted Susan's spirits and with her father she rode on inadvance, straining her eyes against the glare of the glittering river. Men and women, who daily crowded by them unnoted on city streets, nowloomed in the perspective as objective points of avid interest. Noparty Susan had ever been to called forth such hopeful anticipation. To see her fellows, to talk with women over trivial things, to demandand give out the human sympathies she wanted and that had lainwithering within herself, drew her from the gloom under which she hadlain weeping in the back of Daddy John's wagon. 

They were nearing the Forks of the Platte where the air was drylytransparent and sound carried far. While yet the encamped train was acongeries of broken white dots on the river's edge, they could hear thebark of a dog and then singing, a thin thread of melody sent aloft by awoman's voice. 

It was like a handclasp across space. Drawing nearer the sounds of menand life reached forward to meet them--laughter, the neighing ofhorses, the high, broken cry of a child. They felt as if they werereturning to a home they had left and that sometimes, in the stillnessof the night or when vision lost itself in the vague distances, theystill longed for. 

The train had shaped itself into its night form, the circular coil inwhich it slept, like a thick, pale serpent resting after the day'slabors. The white arched prairie schooners were drawn up in a ring, the defensive bulwark of the plains. The wheels, linked together bythe yoke chains, formed a barrier against Indian attacks. Outside thisinterlocked rampart was a girdle of fires, that gleamed through thetwilight like a chain of jewels flung round the night's bivouac. Itshone bright on the darkness of the grass, a cordon of flame that somekindly magician had drawn about the resting place of the tired camp. 

With the night pressing on its edges it was a tiny nucleus of lifedropped down between the immemorial plains and the ancient river. Homewas here in the pitched tents, a hearthstone in the flame lapping onthe singed grass, humanity in the loud welcome that rose to meet thenewcomers. The doctor had known but one member of the Company, itsorganizer, a farmer from the Mohawk Valley. But the men, droppingtheir ox yokes and water pails, crowded forward, laughing deep-mouthedgreetings from the bush of their beards, and extending hands as hard asthe road they had traveled. 

The women were cooking. Like goddesses of the waste places they stoodaround the fires, a line of half-defined shapes. Films of smoke blewacross them, obscured and revealed them, and round about them savoryodors rose. Fat spit in the pans, coffee bubbled in blackened pots, and strips of buffalo meat impaled on sticks sent a dribble of flame tothe heat. The light was strong on their faces, lifted in greeting, lips smiling, eyes full of friendly curiosity. But they did not movefrom their posts for they were women and the men and the children werewaiting to be fed. 

Most of them were middle-aged, or the trail had made them lookmiddle-aged. A few were very old. Susan saw a face carved withseventy years of wrinkles mumbling in the framing folds of a shawl. Nearby, sitting on the dropped tongue of a wagon, a girl of perhapssixteen, sat ruminant, nursing a baby. Children were everywhere, helping, fighting, rolling on the grass. Babies lay on spread blanketswith older babies sitting by to watch. It was the woman's hour. Theday's march was over, but the intimate domestic toil was at its height. The home makers were concentrated upon their share of theactivities--cooking food, making the shelter habitable, putting theiryoung to bed. 

Separated from Susan by a pile of scarlet embers stood a young girl, alarge spoon in her hand. The light shot upward along the front of herbody, painting with an even red glow her breast, her chin, the underside of her nose and finally transforming into a coppery cloud thebright confusion of her hair. She smiled across the fire and said:

"I'm glad you've come. We've been watching for you ever since westruck the Platte. There aren't any girls in the train. I and mysister are the youngest except Mrs. Peebles over there, " with a nod inthe direction of the girl on the wagon tongue, "and she's married. "

The woman beside her, who had been too busy over the bacon pan to raiseher head, now straightened herself, presenting to Susan's eye a facemore buxom and mature but so like that of the speaker that it wasevident they were sisters. A band of gold gleamed on her weddingfinger and her short skirt and loose calico jacket made no attempt tohide the fact that another baby was soon to be added to the alreadywell-supplied train. She smiled a placid greeting and her eye, lazilysweeping Susan, showed a healthy curiosity tempered by theself-engrossed indifference of the married woman to whom the outsider, even in the heart of the wilderness, is forever the outsider. 

"Lucy'll be real glad to have a friend, " she said. "She's lonesome. Turn the bacon, Lucy, it makes my back ache to bend"; and as the sisterbowed over the frying pan, "move, children, you're in the way. "

This was directed to two children who lay on the grass by the fire, with blinking eyes, already half asleep. As they did not immediatelyobey she assisted them with a large foot, clad in a man's shoe. Themovement though peremptory was not rough. It had something of thequality of the mother tiger's admonishing pats to her cubs, a certaingentleness showing through force. The foot propelled the children intoa murmurous drowsy heap. One of them, a little girl with a shock ofwhite hair and a bunch of faded flowers wilting in her tight babygrasp, looked at her mother with eyes glazed with sleep, a deep look asthough her soul was gazing back from the mysteries of unconsciousness. 

"Now lie there till you get your supper, " said the mother, having bygradual pressure pried them out of the way. "And you, " to Susan, "better bring your things over and camp here and use our fire. We'venearly finished with it. "

In the desolation of the morning Susan had wished for a member of herown sex, not to confide in but to feel that there was some one near, who, if she did know, could understand. Now here were two. Theirfresh, simple faces on which an artless interest was so naïvelydisplayed, their pleasant voices, not cultured as hers was but women'svoices for all that, gave her spirits a lift. Her depression quitedropped away, the awful lonely feeling, all the more whelming becausenobody could understand it, departed from her. She ran back to thecamp singing and for the first time that day looked at David, whosepresence she had shunned, with her old, brilliant smile. 

An hour later and the big camp rested, relaxed in the fading twilightthat lay a yellow thread of separation between the day's high colorsand the dewless darkness of the night. It was like a scene from themigrations of the ancient peoples when man wandered with a woman, atent, and a herd. The barrier of the wagons, with its girdle of firesparks, incased a grassy oval green as a lawn. Here they sat in littlegroups, collecting in tent openings as they were wont to collect onsummer nights at front gates and piazza steps. The crooning of womenputting babies to sleep fell in with the babblings of the river. Themen smoked in silence. Nature had taught them something of her largereticence in their day-long companionship. Some few lounged across thegrass to have speech of the pilot, a grizzled mountain man, who hadbeen one of the Sublette's trappers, and had wise words to say of theday's travel and the promise of the weather. But most of them lay onthe grass by the tents where they could see the stars through theirpipe smoke and hear the talk of their wives and the breathing of thechildren curled in the blankets. 

A youth brought an accordion from his stores and, sitting cross-leggedon the ground, began to play. He played "Annie Laurie, " and a woman'svoice, her head a black outline against the west, sang the words. Thenthere was a clamor of applause, sounding thin and futile in theevening's suave quietness, and the player began a Scotch reel in theproduction of which the accordion uttered asthmatic gasps as thoughunable to keep up with its own proud pace. The tune was sufficientlygood to inspire a couple of dancers. The young girl called Lucy rosewith a partner--her brother-in-law some one told Susan--and facing oneanother, hand on hip, heads high, they began to foot it lightly overthe blackening grass. 

Seen thus Lucy was handsome, a tall, long-limbed sapling of a girl, with a flaming crest of copper-colored hair and movements as lithe andsupple as a cat's. She danced buoyantly, without losing breath, advancing and retreating with mincing steps, her face grave as thoughthe performance had its own dignity and was not to be taken lightly. Her partner, a tanned and long-haired man, took his part in a livelierspirit, laughing at her, bending his body grotesquely and growing redwith his caperings. Meanwhile from the tent door the wife looked onand Susan heard her say to the doctor with whom she had been conferring:

"And when will it be my turn to dance the reel again? There wasn't agirl in the town could dance it with me. "

Her voice was weighted with the wistfulness of the woman whose endlesspatience battles with her unwillingness to be laid by. 

Susan saw David's fingers feeling in the grass for her hand. She gaveit, felt the hard stress of his grip, and conquered her desire to drawthe hand away. All her coquetry was gone. She was cold and subdued. The passionate hunger of his gaze made her feel uncomfortable. Sheendured it for a space and then said with an edge of irritation on hervoice:

"What are you staring at me for? Is there something on my face?"

He breathed in a roughened voice:

"No, I love you. "

Her discomfort increased. Tumult and coldness make uncongenialneighbors. The man, all passion, and the woman, who has no answeringspark, grope toward each other through devious and unillumined ways. 

He whispered again:

"I love you so. You don't understand. "

She did not and looked at him inquiringly, hoping to learn somethingfrom his face. His eyes, meeting hers, were full of tears. Itsurprised her so that she stared speechlessly at him, her head thrownback, her lips parted. 

He looked down, ashamed of his emotion, murmuring:

"You don't understand. It's so sacred. Some day you will. "

She did not speak to him again, but she let him hold her hand becauseshe thought she ought to and because she was sorry. 

CHAPTER VI

The next morning the rain was pouring. The train rolled out withoutpicturesque circumstance, the men cursing, the oxen, with great headsswinging under the yokes, plodding doggedly through lakes fretted withthe downpour. Breakfast was a farce; nobody's fire would burn and thewomen were wet through before they had the coffee pots out. One or twoprovident parties had stoves fitted up in their wagons with a joint ofpipe coming out through holes in the canvas. From these, wafts ofsmoke issued with jaunty assurance, to be beaten down by the rain, which swept them fiercely out of the landscape. 

There was no perspective, the distance invisible, nearer outlinesblurred. The world was a uniform tint, walls of gray marching in aslant across a foreground embroidered with pools. Water ran, ordripped, or stood everywhere. The river, its surface roughened by thespit of angry drops, ran swollen among its islands, plumed shapes seenmistily through the veil. The road emerged in oases of mud from long, inundated spaces. Down the gullies in the hills, following the beatenbuffalo tracks, streams percolated through the grass of the bottom, feeling their way to the river. 

Notwithstanding the weather a goodly company of mounted men rode at thehead of the train. They were wet to the skin and quite indifferent toit. They had already come to regard the vagaries of the weather asmatters of no import. Mosquitoes and Indians were all they feared. Onsuch nights many of them slept in the open under a tarpaulin, and whenthe water grew deep about them scooped out a drainage canal with a handthat sleep made heavy. 

When the disorder of the camping ground was still in sight, Susan, withthe desire of social intercourse strong upon her, climbed into thewagon of her new friends. They were practical, thrifty people, andwere as comfortable as they could be under a roof of soaked canvas in aheavily weighted prairie schooner that every now and then bumped to thebottom of a chuck hole. The married sister sat on a pile of sacksdisposed in a form that made a comfortable seat. A blanket was spreadbehind her, and thus enthroned she knitted at a stocking of gray yarn. Seen in the daylight she was young, fresh-skinned, and not uncomely. Placidity seemed to be the dominating note of her personality. Itfound physical expression in the bland parting of her hair, drawn backfrom her smooth brow, her large plump hands with their deliberatemovements and dimples where more turbulent souls had knuckles, and herquiet eyes, which turned upon anyone who addressed her a longruminating look before she answered. She had an air of almost oracularprofundity but she was merely in the quiescent state of the woman whosefaculties and strength are concentrated upon the coming child. Hersister called her Bella and the people in the train addressed her asMrs. McMurdo. 

Lucy was beside her also knitting a stocking, and the husband, GlenMcMurdo, sat in the front driving, his legs in the rain, his upper halfleaning back under the shelter of the roof. He looked sleepy, gave agrunt of greeting to Susan, and then lapsed against the saddle proppedbehind him, his hat pulled low on his forehead hiding his eyes. Inthis position, without moving or evincing any sign of life, he now andthen appeared to be roused to the obligations of his position andshouted a drowsy "Gee Haw, " at the oxen. 

He did not interfere with the women and they broke into the talk oftheir sex, how they cooked, which of their clothes had worn best, whatwas the right way of jerking buffalo meat. And then on to personalmatters: where they came from, what they were at home, whither theywere bound. The two sisters were Scotch girls, had come from Scotlandtwenty years ago when Lucy was a baby. Their home was Cooperstownwhere Glen was a carpenter. He had heard wonderful stories ofCalifornia, how there were no carpenters there and people were flockingin, so he'd decided to emigrate. 

"And once he'd got his mind set on it, he had to start, " said his wife. "Couldn't wait for anything but must be off then and there. That's theway men are. "

"It's a hard trip for you, " said Susan, wondering at Mrs. McMurdo'sserenity. 

"Well, I suppose it is, " said Bella, as if she did not really think itwas, but was too lazy to disagree. "I hope I'll last till we get toFort Bridger. "

"What's at Fort Bridger?"

"It's a big place with lots of trains coming and going and there'llprobably be a doctor among them. And they say it's a good place forthe animals--plenty of grass--so it'll be all right if I'm laid up forlong. But I have my children very easily. "

It seemed to the doctor's daughter a desperate outlook and she eyed, with a combination of pity and awe, the untroubled Bella reclining onthe throne of sacks. The wagon gave a creaking lurch and Bella nearlylost count of her stitches which made her frown as she was turning theheel. The lurch woke her husband who pushed back his hat, shouted "GeeHaw" at the oxen, and then said to his wife:

"You got to cut my hair, Bella. These long tags hanging down round myears worry me. "

"Yes, dear, as soon as the weather's fine. I'll borrow a bowl fromMrs. Peeble's mother so that it'll be cut evenly all the way round. "

Here there was an interruption, a breathless, baby voice at the wheel, and Glen leaned down and dragged up his son Bob, wet, wriggling, andmuddy. The little fellow, four years old, had on a homespun shirt anddrawers, both dripping. His hair was a wet mop, hanging in rat tailsto his eyes. Under its thatch his face, pink and smiling, was as freshas a dew-washed rose. Tightly gripped in a dirty paw were two wildflowers, and it was to give these to his mother that he had come. 

He staggered toward her, the wagon gave a jolt, and he fell, claspingher knees and filling the air with the sweetness of his laughter. Thenholding to her arm and shoulder, he drew himself higher and pressed theflowers close against her nose. 

"Is it a bu'full smell?" he inquired, watching her face with eyes ofbright inquiry. 

"Beautiful, " she said, trying to see the knitting. 

"Aren't you glad I brought them?" still anxiously inquiring. 

"Very"--she pushed them away. "You're soaked. Take off your things. "

And little Bob, still holding his flowers, was stripped to his skin. 

"Now lie down, " said his mother. "I'm turning the heel. "

He obeyed, but turbulently, and with much pretense, making believe tofall and rolling on the sacks, a naked cherub writhing with laughter. Finally, his mother had to stop her heel-turning to seize him by oneleg, drag him toward her, roll him up in the end of the blanket andwith a silencing slap say, "There, lie still. " This quieted him. Helay subdued save for a waving hand in which the flowers were stillimbedded and with which he made passes at the two girls, murmuring withthe thick utterance of rising sleep "Bu'full flowers. " And in a momenthe slept, curled against his mother, his face angelic beneath the wethair. 

When Susan came to the giving of her personal data--the few factsnecessary to locate and introduce her--her engagement was the item ofmost interest. A love story even on the plains, with the raindribbling in through the cracks of the canvas, possessed the old, deathless charm. The doctor and his philanthropies, on which she wouldhave liked to dilate, were given the perfunctory attention thatpoliteness demanded. By himself the good man is dull, he has to have awoman on his arm to carry weight. David, the lover, and Susan, theobject of his love, were the hero and heroine of the story. Even themarried woman forgot the turning of the heel and fastened her mild gazeon the young girl. 

"And such a handsome fellow, " she said. "I said to Lucy--she'll tellyou if I didn't--that there wasn't a man to compare with him in ourtrain. And so gallant and polite. Last night, when I was heating thewater to wash the children, he carried the pails for me. None of themen with us do that. They'd never think of offering to carry ourbuckets. "

Her husband who had appeared to be asleep said:

"Why should they?" and then shouted "Gee Haw" and made a futile kicktoward the nearest ox. 

Nobody paid any attention to him and Lucy said:

"Yes, he's very fine looking. And you'd never met till you started onthe trail? Isn't that romantic?"

Susan was gratified. To hear David thus commended by other womenincreased his value. If it did not make her love him more, it made herfeel the pride of ownership in a desirable possession. There wascomplacence in her voice as she cited his other gifts. 

"He's very learned. He's read all kinds of books. My father says it'swonderful how much he's read. And he can recite poetry, verses andverses, Byron and Milton and Shakespeare. He often recites to me whenwe're riding together. "

This acquirement of the lover's did not elicit any enthusiasm fromBella. 

"Well, did you ever!" she murmured absently, counting stitches underher breath and then pulling a needle out of the heel, "Reciting poetryon horseback!"

But it impressed Lucy, who, still in the virgin state with fancy freeto range, was evidently inclined to romance:

"When you have a little log house in California and live in it with himhe'll recite poetry to you in the evening after the work's done. Won'tthat be lovely?"

Susan made no response. Instead she swallowed silently, looking out onthe rain. The picture of herself and David, alone in a log cabinsomewhere on the other side of the world, caused a sudden return ofyesterday's dejection. It rushed back upon her in a flood under whichher heart declined into bottomless depths. She felt as if actuallysinking into some dark abyss of loneliness and that she must clutch ather father and Daddy John to stay her fall. 

"We won't be alone, " with a note of protest making her voice plaintive. "My father and Daddy John will be there. I couldn't be separated fromthem. I'd never get over missing them. They've been with me always. "

Bella did not notice the tone, or maybe saw beyond it. 

"You won't miss them when you're married, " she said with her benigncontent. "Your husband will be enough. "

Lucy, with romance instead of a husband, agreed to this, and arrangedthe programme for the future as she would have had it:

"They'll probably live near you in tents. And you'll see them often;ride over every few days. But you'll want your own log house just foryourselves. "

This time Susan did not answer, for she was afraid to trust her voice. She pretended a sudden interest in the prospect while the unbearablepicture rose before her mind--she and David alone, while her father andDaddy John were somewhere else in tents, somewhere away from her, outof reach of her hands and her kisses, not there to laugh with her andtease her and tell her she was a tyrant, only David loving her in anunintelligible, discomforting way and wanting to read poetry and admiresunsets. The misery of it gripped down into her soul. It was as thethought of being marooned on a lone sand bar to a free buccaneer. Theynever could leave her so; they never could have the heart to do it. And anger against David, the cause of it, swelled in her. It was hewho had done it all, trying to steal her away from the dear, familiarways and the people with whom she had been so happy. 

Lucy looked at her with curious eyes, in which there was admiration anda touch of envy. 

"You must be awfully happy?" she said. 

"Awfully, " answered Susan, swallowing and looking at the rain. 

When she went back to her own wagon she found a consultation inprogress. Daddy John, streaming from every fold, had just returnedfrom the head of the caravan, where he had been riding with the pilot. From him he had heard that the New York Company on good roads, in fairweather, made twenty miles a day, and that in the mountains, where thefodder was scarce and the trail hard, would fall to a slower pace. Thedoctor's party, the cow long since sacrificed to the exigencies ofspeed, had been making from twenty-five to thirty. Even with a dropfrom this in the barer regions ahead of them they could look forward toreaching California a month or six weeks before the New York Company. 

There was nothing to be gained by staying with them, and, so far, thesmall two-wagon caravan had moved with a speed and absence of accident, which gave its members confidence in their luck and generalship. Itwas agreed that they should leave the big train the next morning andmove on as rapidly as they could, stopping at Fort Laramie to repairthe wagons which the heat had warped, shoe the horses, and lay in thesupplies they needed. 

Susan heard it with regret. The comfort of dropping back into thefeminine atmosphere, where obvious things did not need explanation, andall sorts of important communications were made by mental telepathy, was hard to relinquish. She would once again have to adjust herself tothe dull male perceptions which saw and heard nothing that was notvisible and audible. She would have to shut herself in with her ownproblems, getting no support or sympathy unless she asked for it, andthen, before its sources could be tapped, she would have to explain whyshe wanted it and demonstrate that she was a deserving object. 

And it was hard to break the budding friendship with Lucy and Bella, for friendships were not long making on the Emigrant Trail. One day'scompanionship in the creaking prairie schooner had made the three womenmore intimate than a year of city visiting would have done. They madepromises of meeting again in California. Neither party knew its exactpoint of destination--somewhere on that strip of prismatic color, nottoo crowded and not too wild but that wanderers of the same blood andbirth might always find each other. 

In the evening the two girls sat in Susan's tent enjoying a lastexchange of low-toned talk. The rain had stopped. The thick, bluishwool of clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon was here andthere rent apart, showing strips of lemon-colored sky. The ground wassoaked, the footprints round the wagons filled with water, the rutsbrimming with it. There was a glow of low fires round the camp, forthe mosquitoes were bad and the brown smudge of smoldering buffalochips kept them away. 

Susan gave the guest the seat of honor--her saddle spread with ablanket--and herself sat on a pile of skins. The tent had been pitchedon a rise of ground and already the water was draining off. Throughthe looped entrance they could see the regular lights of the fires, spotted on the twilight like the lamps of huge, sedentary glow worms, and the figures of men recumbent near where the slow smoke spiralswound languidly up. Above the sweet, moist odor of the rain, the tangof the burning dung rose, pungent and biting. 

Here as the evening deepened they comfortably gossiped, their voicesdropping lower as the camp sunk to rest. They exchanged vows of thefriendship that was to be renewed in California, and then, drawingcloser together, watching the fires die down to sulky red sparks andthe sentinel's figure coming and going on its lonely beat, came to anexchange of opinions on love and marriage. 

Susan was supposed to know most, her proprietorship of David giving herwords the value of experience, but Lucy had most to say. Her tongueloosened by the hour and a pair of listening ears, she revealed herselfas much preoccupied with all matters of sentiment, and it was onlynatural that a love story of her own should be confessed. It was backin Cooperstown, and he had been an apprentice of Glen's. She hadn'tcared for him at all, judging by excerpts from the scenes of hiscourtship he had been treated with unmitigated harshness. But herwords and tones--still entirely scornful with half a continent betweenher and the adorer--gave evidence of a regret, of self-accusing, uneasydoubt, as of one who looks back on lost opportunities. The listener'sear was caught by it, indicating a state of mind so different from herown. 

"Then you did like him?"

"I didn't like him at all. I couldn't bear him. "

"But you seem sorry you didn't marry him. "

"Well-- No, I'm not sorry. But"--it was the hour for truth, the stillindifference of the night made a lie seem too trivial for the effort oftelling--"I don't know out here in the wilds whether I'll ever getanyone else. "

CHAPTER VII

By noon the next day the doctor's train had left the New York Companyfar behind. Looking back they could see it in gradual stages ofdiminishment--a white serpent with a bristling head of scatteredhorsemen, then a white worm, its head a collection of dark particles, then a white thread with a head too insignificant to be deciphered. Finally it was gone, absorbed into the detailless distance where theriver coiled through the green. 

Twenty-four hours later they reached the Forks of the Platte. Here thetrail crossed the South Fork, slanted over the plateau that lay betweenthe two branches, and gained the North Fork. Up this it passed, looping round the creviced backs of mighty bluffs, and bearingnorthwestward to Fort Laramie. The easy faring of the grassed bottomwas over. The turn to the North Fork was the turn to the mountains. The slow stream with its fleet of islands would lose its dreamydeliberateness and become a narrowed rushing current, sweeping roundthe bases of sandstone walls as the pioneers followed it up and ontoward the whitened crests of the Wind River Mountains, where the snowsnever melted and the lakes lay in the hollows green as jade. 

It was afternoon when they reached the ford. The hills had sunk awayto low up-sweepings of gray soil, no longer hiding the plain which layyellow against a cobalt sky. As the wagons rolled up on creakingwheels the distance began to darken with the buffalo. The prospect waslike a bright-colored map over which a black liquid has been spilled, here in drops, there in creeping streams. Long files flowed from therifts between the dwarfed bluffs, unbroken herds swept in a wave overthe low barrier, advanced to the river, crusted its surface, passedacross, and surged up the opposite bank. Finally all sides showed themoving mass, blackening the plateau, lining the water's edge in anendless undulation of backs and heads, foaming down the faces of thesand slopes. Where the train moved they divided giving it right ofway, streaming by, bulls, cows, and calves intent on their ownbusiness, the earth tremulous under their tread. Through breaks intheir ranks the blue and purple of the hills shone startlingly vividand beyond the prairie lay like a fawn-colored sea across which darkshadows trailed. 

The ford was nearly a mile wide, a shallow current, in some places onlya glaze, but with shifting sands stirring beneath it. Through thethin, glass-like spread of water the backs of sand bars emerged, smoothas the bodies of recumbent monsters. On the far side the plateaustretched, lilac with the lupine flowers, the broken rear line of theherd receding across it. 

The doctor, feeling the way, was to ride in the lead, his wagonfollowing with Susan and Daddy John on the driver's seat. It seemed aneasy matter, the water chuckling round the wheels, the mules not wetabove the knees. Half way across, grown unduly confident, the doctorturned in his saddle to address his daughter when his horse walked intoa quicksand and unseated him. It took them half an hour to drag itout, Susan imploring that her father come back to the wagon and changehis clothes. He only laughed at her which made her angry. Withfrowning brows she saw him mount again, and a dripping, white-hairedfigure, set out debonairly for the opposite bank. 

The sun was low, the night chill coming on when they reached it. Theirwet clothes were cold upon them and the camp pitching was hurried. Susan bending over her fire, blowing at it with expanded cheeks and, between her puffs, scolding at her father, first, for having got wet, then for having stayed wet, and now for being still wet, was to Davidjust as charming as any of the other and milder apotheoses of the Susanhe had come to know so well. It merely added a new tang, a fresh spiceof variety, to a personality a less ravished observer might havethought unattractively masterful for a woman. 

Her fire kindled, the camp in shape, she lay down by the little blazewith her head under a lupine plant. Her wrath had simmered toappeasement by the retirement of the doctor into his wagon, and David, glimpsing at her, saw that her eyes, a thread of observation betweenblack-fringed lids, dwelt musingly on the sky. She looked as if shemight be dreaming a maiden's dream of love. He hazarded a tentativeremark. Her eyes moved, touched him indifferently, and passed back tothe sky, and an unformed murmur, interrogation, acquiescence, casualresponse, anything he pleased to think it, escaped her lips. Hewatched her as he could when she was not looking at him. A loosenedstrand of her hair lay among the lupine roots, one of her hands rested, brown and upcurled, on a tiny weed its weight had broken. She turnedher head with a nestling movement, drew a deep, soft breath and hereyelids drooped. 

"David, " she said in a drowsy voice, "I'm going to sleep. Wake me atsupper time. "

He became rigidly quiet. When she had sunk deep into sleep, only herbreast moving with the ebb and flow of her quiet breath, he creptnearer and drew a blanket over her, careful not to touch her. Helooked at the unconscious face for a moment, then softly dropped theblanket and stole back to his place ready to turn at the first footfall and lift a silencing hand. 

It was one of the beautiful moments that had come to him in his wooing. He sat in still reverie, feeling the dear responsibilities of hisownership. That she might sleep, sweet and soft, he would work as noman ever worked before. To guard, to comfort, to protect her--thatwould be his life. He turned and looked at her, his sensitive facesoftening like a woman's watching the sleep of her child. Susan, allunconscious, with her rich young body showing in faint curves under thedefining blanket, and her hair lying loose among the roots of thelupine bush, was so devoid of that imperious quality that marked herwhen awake, was so completely a tender feminine thing, with peacefuleyelids and innocent lips, that it seemed a desecration to look uponher in such a moment of abandonment. Love might transform her intothis--in her waking hours when her body and heart had yieldedthemselves to their master. 

David turned away. The sacred thought that some day he would be theowner of this complex creation of flesh and spirit, so rich, so fine, with depths unknown to his groping intelligence, made a rush ofsupplication, a prayer to be worthy, rise in his heart. He looked atthe sunset through half-shut eyes, sending his desire up to thatunknown God, who, in these wild solitudes, seemed leaning down tolisten:

"Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. "

The sun, falling to the horizon like a spinning copper disk, was as asign of promise and help. The beauty of the hour stretched into thefuture. His glance, shifting to the distance, saw the scattered dotsof the disappearing buffalo, the shadows sloping across the sand hills, and the long expanse of lupines blotting into a thick foam of lilacblue. 

Susan stirred, and he woke from his musings with a start. She sat up, the blanket falling from her shoulders, and looking at him withsleep-filled eyes, smiled the sweet, meaningless smile of ahalf-awakened child. Her consciousness had not yet fully returned, andher glance, curiously clear and liquid, rested on his withoutintelligence. The woman in her was never more apparent, her seductionnever more potent. Her will dormant, her bounding energies at low ebb, she looked a thing to nestle, soft and yielding, against a man's heart. 

"Have I slept long?" she said stretching, and then, "Isn't it cold. "

"Come near the fire, " he answered. "I've built it up while you wereasleep. "

She came, trailing the blanket in a languid hand, and sat beside him. He drew it up about her shoulders and looked into her face. Meetinghis eyes she broke into low laughter, and leaning nearer to himmurmured in words only half articulated:

"Oh, David, I'm so sleepy. "

He took her hand, and it stayed unresisting against his palm. Shelaughed again, and then yawned, lifting her shoulders with a supplemovement that shook off the blanket. 

"It takes such a long time to wake up, " she murmured apologetically. 

David made no answer, and for a space they sat silent looking at thesunset. As the mists of sleep dispersed she became aware of his handpressure, and the contentment that marked her awakening was marred. But she felt in a kindly mood and did not withdraw her hand. Instead, she wanted to please him, to be as she thought he would like her to be, so she made a gallant effort and said:

"What a wonderful sunset--all yellow to the middle of the sky. "

He nodded, looking at the flaming west. She went on:

"And there are little bits of gold cloud floating over it, like themelted lead that you pour through a key on all Hallowe'en. "

He again made no answer, and leaning nearer to spy into his face, sheasked naïvely:

"Don't you think it beautiful?"

He turned upon her sharply, and she drew back discomposed by his look. 

"Let me kiss you, " he said, his voice a little husky. 

He was her betrothed and had never kissed her but once in themoonlight. It was his right, and after all, conquering the inevitablerepugnance, it did not take long. Caught thus in a yielding mood sheresolved to submit. She had a comforting sense that it was a rite towhich in time one became accustomed. With a determination to performher part graciously she lowered her eyelids and presented a duskycheek. As his shoulder touched hers she felt that he trembled and wasinstantly seized with the antipathy that his emotion woke in her. Butit was too late to withdraw. His arms closed round her and he crushedher against his chest. When she felt their strength and the beating ofhis heart against the unstirred calm of her own, her good resolutionswere swept away in a surge of abhorrence. She struggled for freedom, repelling him with violent, pushing hands, and exclaiming breathlessly:

"Don't, David! Stop! I won't have it! Don't!"

He instantly released her, and she shrunk away, brushing off the bosomof her blouse as if he had left dust there. Her face was flushed andfrowning. 

"Don't. You mustn't, " she repeated, with heated reproof. "I don'twant you to. "

David smiled a sheepish smile, looking foolish, and not knowing what tosay. At the sight of his crestfallen expression she averted her eyes, sorry that she had hurt him but not sufficiently sorry to risk arepetition of the unpleasant experience. He, too, turned his glancefrom her, biting his lip to hide the insincerity of his smile, irritated at her unmanageableness, and in his heart valuing her morehighly that she was so hard to win. Both were exceedingly conscious, and with deepened color sat gazing in opposite directions like childrenwho have had a quarrel. 

A step behind them broke upon their embarrassment, saving them from thenecessity of speech. Daddy John's voice came with it:

"Missy, do you know if the keg of whisky was moved? It ain't where Iput it. "

She turned with a lightning quickness. 

"Whisky! Who wants whisky?"

Daddy John looked uncomfortable. 

"Well, the doctor's took sort of cold, got a shiver on him like theague, and he thought a nip o' whisky'd warm him up. "

She jumped to her feet. 

"There!" flinging out the word with the rage of a disregarded prophet, "a chill! I knew it!"

In a moment all the self-engrossment of her bashfulness was gone. Hermind had turned on another subject with such speed and completenessthat David's kiss and her anger might have taken place in another worldin a previous age. Her faculties leaped to the sudden call like aliberated spring, and her orders burst on Daddy John:

"In the back of the wagon, under the corn meal. It was moved when wecrossed the Big Blue. Take out the extra blankets and the medicinechest. That's in the front corner, near my clothes, under the seat. Achill--out here in the wilderness!"

David turned to soothe her:

"Don't be worried. A chill's natural enough after such a wetting. "

She shot a quick, hard glance at him, and he felt ignominiouslyrepulsed. In its preoccupation her face had no recognition of him, notonly as a lover but as a human being. Her eyes, under low-drawn brows, stared for a second into his with the unseeing intentness of inwardthought. Her struggles to avoid his kiss were not half so chilling. Further solacing words died on his lips. 

"It's the worst possible thing that could happen to him. Everybodyknows that"--then she looked after Daddy John. "Get the whisky atonce, " she called. "I'll find the medicines. "

"Can't I help?" the young man implored. 

Without answering she started for the wagon, and midway between it andthe fire paused to cry back over her shoulder:

"Heat water, or if you can find stones heat them. We must get himwarm. "

And she ran on. 

David looked about for the stones. The "we" consoled him a little, buthe felt as if he were excluded into outer darkness, and at a momentwhen she should have turned to him for the aid he yearned to give. Hecould not get over the suddenness of it, and watched them forlornly, gazing enviously at their conferences over the medicine chest, oncestraightening himself from his search for stones to call longingly:

"Can't I do something for you over there?"

"Have you the stones?" she answered without raising her head, and hewent back to his task. 

In distress she had turned from the outside world, broken every lien ofinterest with it, and gone back to her own. The little circle in whichher life had always moved snapped tight upon her, leaving the loveroutside, as completely shut out from her and her concerns as if he hadbeen a stranger camped by her fire. 

CHAPTER VIII

The doctor was ill. The next day he lay in the wagon, his chestoppressed, fever burning him to the dryness of an autumn leaf. To theheads that looked upon him through the circular opening with asuccession of queries as to his ailment, he invariably answered that itwas nothing, a bronchial cold, sent to him as a punishment fordisobeying his daughter. But the young men remembered that the journeyhad been undertaken for his health, and Daddy John, in the confidentialhour of the evening smoke, told them that the year before an attack ofcongestion of the lungs had been almost fatal. 

Even if they had not known this, Susan's demeanor would have told themit was a serious matter. She was evidently wracked by anxiety whichtransformed her into a being so distant, and at times so cross, thatonly Daddy John had the temerity to maintain his usual attitude towardher. She would hardly speak to Leff, and to David, the slightingcoldness that she had shown in the beginning continued, holding him atarm's length, freezing him into stammering confusion. When he tried tooffer her help or cheer her she made him feel like a foolish andtactless intruder, forcing his way into the place that was hers alone. He did not know whether she was prompted by a cruel perversity, or heldin an absorption so intense she had no warmth of interest left foranybody. He tried to explain her conduct, but he could only feel itseffect, wonder if she had grown to dislike him, review the last week ina search for a cause. In the daytime he hung about the doctor's wagon, miserably anxious for a word from her. He was grateful if she askedhim to hunt for medicine in the small, wooden chest, or to spread theblankets to air on the tops of the lupine bushes. 

And while she thus relegated him to the outer places where strangershovered, a sweetness, so gentle, so caressing, so all pervading that itmade of her a new and lovely creature, marked her manner to the sickman. There had always been love in her bearing to her father, but thisnew tenderness was as though some hidden well of it, sunk deep in therecesses of her being, had suddenly overflowed. David saw the hardnessof the face she turned toward him transmute into a brooding passion ofaffection as she bent over the doctor's bed. The fingers he did notdare to touch lifted the sick man's hand to her cheek and held it therewhile she smiled down at him, her eyes softening with a light thatstirred the lover's soul. The mystery of this feminine complexity awedhim. Would she ever look at him like that? What could he do to makeher? He knew of no other way than by serving her, trying unobtrusivelyto lighten her burden, effacing himself, as that seemed to be what shewanted. And in the night as he lay near the wagon, ready to start ather call, he thought with exalted hope that some day he might win sucha look for himself. 

The doctor was for going on. There was no necessity to stay in campbecause one man happened to wheeze and cough, he said, and anyway, hecould do that just as well when they were moving. So they started outand crossed the plateau to where the road dropped into the cleft of AshHollow. Here they stopped and held a conference. The doctor wasworse. The interior of the wagon, the sun beating on the canvas roof, was like a furnace, where he lay sweltering, tossed this way and thatby the jolting wheels. Their dust moved with them, breezes lifting itand carrying it careening back to them where it mingled with new dust, hanging dense like a segment of fog in the scene's raw brilliancy. 

Ash Hollow looked a darkling descent, the thin pulsations of the littleleaves of ash trees flickering along its sides. The road bent downwardin sharp zigzags, and somewhere below the North Fork ran. The plainwas free, blue clothed and blue vaulted, with "the wonderful winds ofGod" flowing between. The conference resulted in a unanimous decisionto halt where they were, and stay in camp till the doctor improved, moving him from the wagon to a tent. 

For four days he lay parched with fever, each breath drawn with astifled inner rustling, numerous fine wrinkles traced in a network onhis dried cheeks. Then good care, the open air, and the medicine chestprevailed. He improved, and Susan turned her face again to the worldand smiled. Such was the changefulness of her mood that her smileswere as radiant and generously bestowed as her previous demeanor hadbeen repelling. Even Leff got some of them, and they fell on Davidprodigal and warming as the sunshine. Words to match went with them. On the morning of the day when the doctor's temperature fell and hecould breathe with ease, she said to her betrothed:

"Oh, David, you've been so good, you've made me so fond of you. "

It was the nearest she had yet come to the language of lovers. It madehim dizzy; the wonderful look was in his mind. 

"You wouldn't let me be good, " was all he could stammer. "You didn'tseem as if you wanted me at all. "

"Stupid!" she retorted with a glance of beaming reproach, "I'm alwayslike that when my father's sick. "

It was noon of the fifth day that a white spot on the plain told themthe New York Company was in sight. The afternoon was yet young whenthe dust of the moving column tarnished the blue-streaked distance. Then the first wagons came into view, creeping along the winding ribbonof road. As soon as the advance guard of horsemen saw the camp, piecesof it broke away and were deflected toward the little group of tentsfrom which a tiny spiral of smoke went up in an uncoiling, milky skein. Susan had many questions to answer, and had some ado to keep theinquirers away from the doctor, who was still too weak to be disturbed. She was sharp and not very friendly in her efforts to preserve him fromtheir sympathizing curiosity. 

Part of the train had gone by when she heard from a woman who rode upon a foot-sore nag that the McMurdo's were some distance behind. Abull boat in which the children were crossing the river had upset, andMrs. McMurdo had been frightened and "took faint. " The children wereall right--only a wetting--but it was a bad time for their mother toget such a scare. 

"I'm not with the women who think it's all right to take such risks. Stay at home _then_, " she said, giving Susan a sage nod out of thedepths of her sunbonnet. 

The news made the young girl uneasy. A new reticence, the "grown-up"sense of the wisdom of silence that she had learned on the trail, madeher keep her own council. Also, there was no one to tell but herfather, and he was the last person who ought to know. The call ofunaided suffering would have brought him as quickly from his buffaloskins in the tent as from his bed in the old home in Rochester. Susanresolved to keep it from him, if she had to stand guard over him andfight them off. Her philosophy was primitive--her own first, and if, to save her own, others must be sacrificed, then she would aid in thesacrifice and weep over its victims, weep, but not yield. 

When the train had disappeared into the shadows of Ash Hollow, curses, shouts, and the cracking of whips rising stormily over its descent, thewhite dot of the McMurdo's wagon was moving over the blue and greendistance. As it drew near they could see that Glen walked beside theoxen, and the small figure of Bob ran by the wheel. Neither of thewomen were to be seen. "Lazy and riding, " Daddy John commented, spyingat them with his far-sighted old eyes. "Tired out and gone to sleep, "David suggested. Susan's heart sank and she said nothing. It lookedas if something was the matter, and she nerved herself for a struggle. 

When Glen saw them, his shout came through the clear air, keen-edged asa bird's cry. They answered, and he raised a hand in a gesture thatmight have been a beckoning or merely a hail. David leaped on a horseand went galloping through the bending heads of the lupines to meetthem. Susan watched him draw up at Glen's side, lean from his saddlefor a moment's parley, then turn back. The gravity of his faceincreased her dread. He dismounted, looking with scared eyes from oneto the other. Mrs. McMurdo was sick. Glen was glad--he couldn't sayhow glad--that it was their camp. He'd camp there with them. His wifewasn't able to go on. 

Susan edged up to him, caught his eye and said stealthily:

"Don't tell my father. "

He hesitated. 

"They--they--seemed to want him. "

"I'll see to that, " she answered. "Don't you let him know thatanything's the matter, or I'll never forgive you. "

It was a command, and the glance that went with it accented itsauthority. 

The prairie schooner was now close at hand, and they straggled forwardto meet it, one behind the other, through the brushing of the knee-highbushes. The child recognizing them ran screaming toward them, hishands out-stretched, crying out their names. Lucy appeared at thefront of the wagon, climbed on the tongue and jumped down. She waspale, the freckles on her fair skin showing like a spattering of brownpaint, her flaming hair slipped in a tousled coil to one side of herhead. 

"It's you!" she cried. "Glen didn't know whose camp it was till he sawDavid. Oh, I'm so glad!" and she ran to Susan, clutched her arm andsaid in a hurried lower key, "Bella's sick. She feels terribly bad, out here in this place with nothing. Isn't it dreadful?"

"I'll speak to her, " said Susan. "You stay here. "

The oxen, now at the outskirts of the camp, had come to a standstill. Susan stepping on the wheel drew herself up to the driver's seat. Bella sat within on a pile of sacks, her elbows on her knees, herforehead in her hands. By her side, leaning against her, stood thelittle girl, blooming and thoughtful, her thumb in her mouth. Shewithdrew it and stared fixedly at Susan, then smiled a slow, shy smile, full of meaning, as if her mind held a mischievous secret. At Susan'sgreeting the mother lifted her head. 

"Oh, Susan, isn't it a mercy we've found you?" she exclaimed. "We sawthe camp hours ago, but we didn't know it was yours. It's as if Godhad delayed you. Yes, my dear, it's come. But I'm not going to beafraid. With your father it'll be all right. "

The young girl said a few consolatory words and jumped down from thewheel. She was torn both ways. Bella's plight was piteous, but tomake her father rise in his present state of health and attend such acase, hours long, in the chill, night breath of the open--it might killhim! She turned toward the camp, vaguely conscious of the men standingin awkward attitudes and looking thoroughly uncomfortable as thoughthey felt a vicarious sense of guilt--that the entire male sex hadsomething to answer for in Bella's tragic predicament. Behind themstood the doctor's tent, and as her eyes fell on it she saw Lucy's bodystanding in the opening, the head and shoulders hidden within theinclosure. Lucy was speaking with the doctor. 

Susan gave a sharp exclamation and stopped. It was too late tointerfere. Lucy withdrew her head and came running back, cryingtriumphantly:

"Your father's coming. He says he's not sick at all. He's putting onhis coat. "

Following close on her words came the doctor, emerging slowly, for hewas weak and unsteady. In the garish light of the afternoon he lookedsingularly white and bleached, like a man whose warm, red-veined lifeis dried into a sere grayness of blood and tissue. He was out ofharmony with the glad living colors around him, ghostlike amid thebrightness of the flowering earth and the deep-dyed heaven. He met hisdaughter's eyes and smiled. 

"Your prisoner has escaped you, Missy. "

She tried to control herself, to beat down the surge of anger thatshook her. Meeting him she implored with low-toned urgence:

"Father, you can't do it. Go back. You're too sick. "

He pushed her gently away, his smile gone. 

"Go back, Missy? The woman is suffering, dear. "

"I know it, and I don't care. You're suffering, you're sick. Sheshould have known better than to come. It's her fault, not ours. Because she was so foolhardy is no reason why you should be victimized. "

His gravity was crossed by a look of cold, displeased surprise, a lookshe had not seen directed upon her since once in her childhood when shehad told him a lie. 

"I don't want to feel ashamed of you, Missy, " he said quietly, andputting her aside went on to the wagon. 

She turned away blinded with rage and tears. She had a dim vision ofDavid and fled from it, then felt relief at the sight of Daddy John. He saw her plight, and hooking his hand in her arm took her behind thetent, where she burst into furious words and a gush of stifled weeping. 

"No good, " was the old man's consolation. "Do you expect the doctor tolie comfortable in his blanket when there's some one around with apain?"

"Why did she come? Why didn't she stay at home?"

"That ain't in the question, " he said, patting her arm; "she's here, and she's got the pain, and you and I know the doctor. "

The McMurdo's prairie schooner rolled off to a place where the lupineswere high, and Glen pitched the tent. The men, not knowing what elseto do to show their sympathy, laid the fires and cleaned the camp. Then the two younger ones shouldered their rifles and wandered away totry and get some fresh buffalo meat, they said; but it was obvious thatthey felt out of place and alarmed in a situation where those of theirsex could only assume an apologetic attitude and admit the blame. 

The children were left to Susan's care. She drew them to the clearedspace about the fires, and as she began the preparations for supperasked them to help. They took the request very seriously, and shefound a solace in watching them as they trotted up with useless pans, bending down to see the smile of thanks to which they were accustomed, and which made them feel proud and important. Once she heard Bob, inthe masterful voice of the male, tell his sister the spoon she was sotriumphantly bringing was not wanted. The baby's joy was stricken fromher, she bowed to the higher intelligence, and the spoon slid from herlimp hand to the ground, while she stood a figure of blankdisappointment. Susan had to set down her pan and call her over, andkneeling with the soft body clasped close, and the little kneespressing against her breast, felt some of the anger there melting away. After that they gathered broken twigs of lupine, and standing afarthrew them at the flames. There was a moment of suspense when theywatched hopefully, and then a sad awakening when the twigs fell abouttheir feet. They shuffled back, staring down at the scattered leavesin a stupor of surprise. 

Sunset came and supper was ready. Daddy John loomed up above the lipof Ash Hollow with a load of roots and branches for the night. Lucyemerged from the tent and sat down by her cup and plate, harrassed andsilent. Glen said he wanted no supper. He had been sitting for anhour on the pole of David's wagon, mute and round-shouldered in hisdusty homespuns. No one had offered to speak to him. It was he whohad induced the patient woman to follow him on the long journey. Theyall knew this was now the matter of his thoughts. His ragged figureand down-drooped, miserable face were dignified with the tragedy of auseless remorse. As Lucy passed him he raised his eyes, but saidnothing. Then, as the others drew together round the circle of tincups and plates, a groan came suddenly from the tent. He leaped up, made a gesture of repelling something unendurable, and ran away, scudding across the plain not looking back. The group round the firewere silent. But the two children did not heed. With their blondheads touching, they held their cups close together and argued as towhich one had the most coffee in it. 

When the twilight came there was no one left by the fire but Susan andthe children. She gathered them on a buffalo robe and tucked a blanketround them watching as sleep flowed over them, invaded and subdued themeven while their lips moved with belated, broken murmurings. Thelittle girl's hand, waving dreamily in the air, brushed her cheek witha velvet touch, and sank languidly, up-curled like a rose petal. Withheads together and bodies nestled close they slept, exhaling thefragrance of healthy childhood, two sparks of matter incased in anenvelope of exquisite flesh, pearly tissue upon which life would tracea pattern not yet selected. 

Darkness closed down on the camp, pressing on the edges of thefirelight like a curious intruder. There was no wind, and the mound ofcharring wood sent up a line of smoke straight as a thread, whichsomewhere aloft widened and dissolved. The stillness of the wildernessbrooded close and deep, stifling the noises of the day. When thesounds of suffering from the tent tore the airy veil apart, itshuddered full of the pain, then the torn edges delicately adhered, andit was whole again. Once Lucy came, haggard and tight-lipped, andasked Susan to put on water to heat. Bella was terribly sick, thedoctor wouldn't leave her. The other children were nothing to this. But the Emigrant Trail was molding Lucy. She made no complaints, andher nerves were steady as a taut string. It was one of the hazards ofthe great adventure to be taken as it came. 

After she had gone, and the iron kettle was balanced on a bed of heat, Susan lay down on her blanket. Fear and loathing were on her. For thefirst time a shrinking from life and its requirements came coldly overher, for the first time her glad expectancy knew a check, fell backbefore tremendous things blocking the path. Her dread for her fatherwas submerged in a larger dread--of the future and what it might bring, of what might be expected of her, of pains and perils once so far awaythey seemed as if she would never reach them, now suddenly close toher, laying a gripping hand on her heart. 

Her face was toward the camp, and she could not see on the plain behindher a moving shadow bearing down on the fire's glow, visible for milesin that level country. It advanced noiselessly through the swayingbushes, till, entering the limits of the light, it detached itself fromthe darkness, taking the form of a mounted man followed by a packanimal. The projected rays of red played along the barrel of a rifleheld across the saddle, and struck answering gleams from touches ofmetal on the bridle. So soundless was the approach that Susan heardnothing till a lupine stalk snapped under the horse's hoof. She sat upand turned. Over the horse's ears she saw a long swarthy face framedin hanging hair, and the glint of narrowed eyes looking curiously ather. She leaped to her feet with a smothered cry, Indians in her mind. The man raised a quick hand, and said:

"It's all right. It's a white man. "

He slid off his horse and came toward her. He was so like an Indian, clad in a fringed hunting shirt and leggings, his movements lithe andlight, his step noiseless, his skin copper dark, that she stood alert, ready to raise a warning cry. Then coming into the brighter light shesaw he was white, with long red hair hanging from the edge of his cap, and light-colored eyes that searched her face with a hard look. He wasas wild a figure as any the plains had yet given up, and she drew awaylooking fearfully at him. 

"Don't be afraid, " he said in a deep voice. "I'm the same kind as you. "

"Who are you?" she faltered. 

"A mountain man. I'll camp with you. " Then glancing about, "Where arethe rest of them?"

"They're round somewhere, " she answered. "We have sickness here. "

"Cholera?" quickly. 

She shook her head. 

Without more words he went back and picketed his horses, and took thepack and saddle off. She could see his long, pale-colored figuremoving from darkness into light, and the animals drooping withstretched necks as their bonds were loosened. When he came back to thefire he dropped a blanket and laid his gun close to it, then threwhimself down. The rattle of the powder horn and bullet mold he worehanging from his shoulder came with the movement. He slipped the strapoff and threw it beside the gun. Then drew one foot up and unfasteneda large spur attached to his moccasined heel. He wore a raggedotter-skin cap, the animal's tail hanging down on one side. This hetook off too, showing his thick red hair, damp and matted from the heatof the fur. With a knotted hand he pushed back the locks pressed downon his forehead. The skin there was untanned and lay like a white bandabove the darkness of his face, thin, edged with a fringe of red beardand with blue eyes set high above prominent cheek bones. He threw hisspur on the other things, and looking up met Susan's eyes staring athim across the fire. 

"Where are you going?" he asked. 

"To California. "

"So am I. "

She made no answer. 

"Were you asleep when I came?"

"No, I was thinking. "

A sound of anguish came from the tent, and Susan set her teeth on herunderlip stiffening. He looked in its direction, then back at her. 

"What's the matter there?" he asked. 

"A child is being born. "

He made no comment, swept the background of tents and wagon roofs withan investigating eye that finally came to a stop on the sleepingchildren. 

"Are these yours?"

"No, they belong to the woman who is sick. "

His glance left them as if uninterested, and he leaned backward to pullhis blanket out more fully. His body, in the sleekly pliant buckskins, was lean and supple. As he twisted, stretching an arm to draw out thecrumpled folds, the lines of his long back and powerful shouldersshowed the sinuous grace of a cat. He relaxed into easeful fulllength, propped on an elbow, his red hair coiling against his neck. Susan stole a stealthy glance at him. As if she had spoken, heinstantly raised his head and looked into her eyes. 

His were clear and light with a singularly penetrating gaze, not boldbut intent, eyes not used to the detailed observation of the peopledways, but trained to unimpeded distances and to search the faces ofprimitive men. They held hers, seeming to pierce the acquired veneerof reserve to the guarded places beneath. She felt a slow stir ofantagonism, a defensive gathering of her spirit as against an intruder. Her pride and self-sufficiency responded, answering to a hurriedsummons. She was conscious of a withdrawal, a closing of doors, ashutting down of her defenses in face of aggression and menace. Andwhile she rallied to this sudden call-to-arms the strange man held herglance across the fire. It was she who spoke slowly in a low voice:

"Where do you come from?"

"From Taos, and after that Bent's Fort. "

"What is your name?"

"Low Courant. "

Then with an effort she turned away and bent over the children. Whenshe looked back at him he was rolled in his blanket, and with his faceto the fire was asleep. 

Lucy came presently for the hot water with a bulletin of progressgrowing each moment more direful. Her eyes fell on the sleeping man, and she said, peering through the steam of the bubbling water:

"Who's that?"

"A strange man. "

"From where?"

"Taos, and after that Bent's Fort, " Susan repeated, and Lucy forgot himand ran back to the tent. 

There was a gray line in the east when she returned to say the childwas born dying as it entered the world, and Bella was in desperatecase. She fell beside her friend, quivering and sobbing, burying herface in Susan's bosom. Shaken and sickened by the dreadful night theyclung together holding to each other, as if in a world where loveclaimed such a heavy due, where joy realized itself at such exceedingcost, nothing was left but the bond of a common martyrdom. Yet each ofthem, knowing the measure of her pain, would move to the head of herdestiny and take up her heavy engagement without fear, obeying theuniversal law. 

But now, caught in the terror of the moment, they bowed their heads andwept together while the strange man slept by the fire. 

END OF PART II

PART III

The Mountains

CHAPTER I

Fort Laramie stood where the eastern roots of the mountains start intoothed reef and low, premonitory sweep from the level of the plains. Broken chains and spurs edged up toward it. Far beyond, in a faintaerial distance, the soaring solidity of vast ranges hung on thehorizon, cloudy crests painted on the sky. Laramie Peak loomed closer, a bold, bare point, gold in the morning, purple at twilight. And theBlack Hills, rock-ribbed and somber, dwarf pines clutching theirlodges, rose in frowning ramparts to the North and West. 

It was a naked country, bleak and bitter. In winter it slept under asnow blanket, the lights of the fort encircled by the binding, breathless cold. Then the wandering men that trapped and traded withthe Indians came seeking shelter behind the white walls, where the furswere stacked in storerooms, and the bourgeois' table was hospitablewith jerked meat and meal cakes. When the streams began to stir underthe ice, and a thin green showed along the bottoms, it opened its gatesand the men of the mountains went forth with their traps rattling atthe saddle horn. Later, when the spring was in waking bloom, and eachevening the light stayed longer on Laramie Peak, the Indians came inmigrating villages moving to the summer hunting grounds, and in paintedwar parties, for there was a season when the red man, like the Hebrewkings, went forth to battle. 

It was midsummer now, the chalk-white walls of the fort were bathed ina scorching sunshine, and the nomads of the wilderness met and pickedup dropped threads in its courtyard. It stood up warlike on a rise ofground with the brown swiftness of a stream hurrying below it. Oncethe factors had tried to cultivate the land, but had given it up, asthe Indians carried off the maize and corn as it ripened. So theshort-haired grass grew to the stockade. At this season thesurrounding plain was thick with grazing animals, the fort's ownsupply, the ponies of the Indians, and the cattle of the emigrants. Encampments were on every side, clustering close under the walls, whence a cannon poked its nose protectingly from the bastion above thegate. There was no need to make the ring of wagons here. White manand red camped together, the canvas peaks of the tents showing besidethe frames of lodge poles, covered with dried skins. The pale facetreated his red brother to coffee and rice cakes, and the red brotheroffered in return a feast of boiled dog. 

Just now the fort was a scene of ceaseless animation. Its courtyardwas a kaleidoscopic whirl of color, shifting as the sun shifted and theshadow of the walls offered shade. Indians with bodies bare above thedropped blankets, moved stately or squatted on their heels watching theemigrants as they bartered for supplies. Trappers in fringed andbeaded leather played cards with the plainsmen in shady corners orlounged in the cool arch of the gateway looking aslant at the emigrantgirls. Their squaws, patches of color against the walls, sat docile, with the swarthy, half-breed children playing about their feet. Therewere French Canadians, bearded like pirates, full of good humor, filling the air with their patois, and a few Mexicans, who passed thedays sprawled on serapes and smoking sleepily. Over all the bourgeoisruled, kindly or crabbedly, according to his make, but alwaysabsolutely the monarch of a little principality. 

The doctor's train had reached the fort by slow stages, and now laycamped outside the walls. Bella's condition had been serious, and theyhad crawled up the valley of the North Platte at a snail's pace. Thegradual change in the country told them of their advance--the intrusionof giant bluffs along the river's edge, the disappearance of the manylovely flower forms, the first glimpses of parched areas dotted withsage. From the top of Scotts Bluffs they saw the mountains, and stood, a way-worn company, looking at those faint and formidable shapes thatblocked their path to the Promised Land. It was a sight to daunt themost high-hearted, and they stared, dropping ejaculations that told ofthe first decline of spirit. Only the sick woman said nothing. Herlanguid eye swept the prospect indifferently, her spark of life burningtoo feebly to permit of any useless expenditure. It was the strangeman who encouraged them. They would pass the mountains without effort, the ascent was gradual, South Pass a plain. 

The strange man had stayed with them, and all being well, would go onto Fort Bridger, probably to California, in their company. It was goodnews. He was what they needed, versed in the lore of the wilderness, conversant with an environment of which they were ignorant. The trainhad not passed Ash Hollow when he fell into command, chose the campinggrounds, went ahead in search of springs, and hunted with Daddy John, bringing back enough game to keep them supplied with fresh meat. Theybegan to rely upon him, to defer to him, to feel a new security whenthey saw his light, lean-flanked figure at the head of the caravan. 

One morning, as the doctor rode silently beside him, he broke into alow-toned singing. His voice was a mellow baritone, and the words hesung, each verse ending with a plaintive burden, were French:

"Il y a longtemps que je t'ai aimé jamais je ne t'oublierai. "

Long ago the doctor had heard his wife sing the same words, and heturned with a start:

"Where did you learn that song?"

"From some voyageur over yonder, " nodding toward the mountains. "It'sone of their songs. "

"You have an excellent accent, better than the Canadians. "

The stranger laughed and addressed his companion in pure and fluentFrench. 

"Then you're a Frenchman?" said the elder man, surprised. 

"Not I, but my people were. They came from New Orleans and went up theriver and settled in St. Louis. My grandfather couldn't speak asentence in English when he first went there. "

When the doctor told his daughter this he was a little triumphant. They had talked over Courant and his antecedents, and had some argumentabout them, the doctor maintaining that the strange man was agentleman, Susan quite sure that he was not. Dr. Gillespie used theword in its old-fashioned sense, as a term having reference as much tobirth and breeding as to manners and certain, ineradicable instincts. The gentleman adventurer was not unknown on the plains. Sometimes hehad fled from a dark past, sometimes taken to the wild because therestraints of civilization pressed too hard upon the elbows of hisliberty. 

"He's evidently of French Creole blood, " said the doctor. "Many ofthose people who came up from New Orleans and settled in St. Louis wereof high family and station. "

"Then why should he be out here, dressed like an Indian and wanderinground with all sorts of waifs and strays? I believe he's just the samekind of person as old Joe, only younger. Or, if he does come fromeducated people, there's something wrong about him, and he's had tocome out here and hide. "

"Oh, what a suspicious little Missy! Nothing would make me believethat. He may be rough, but he's not crooked. Those steady, straight-looking eyes never belonged to any but an honest man. No, mydear, there's no discreditable past behind him, and he's a gentleman. "

"Rubbish!" she said pettishly. "You'll be saying Leff's a gentlemannext. "

From which it will be seen that Low Courant had not been communicativeabout himself. Such broken scraps of information as he had dropped, when pieced together made a scanty narrative. His grandfather had beenone of the early French settlers of St. Louis, and his father aprosperous fur trader there. But why he had cut loose from them he didnot vouchsafe to explain. Though he was still young--thirtyperhaps--it was evident that he had wandered far and for many years. He knew the Indian trails of the distant Northwest, and spoke thelanguage of the Black Feet and Crows. He had passed a winter in theold Spanish town of Santa Fé, and from there joined a regiment ofUnited States troops and done his share of fighting in the Mexican War. Now the wanderlust was on him, he was going to California. 

"Maybe to settle, " he told the doctor. "If I don't wake up somemorning and feel the need to move once more. "

When they reached the fort he was hailed joyously by the bourgeoishimself. The men clustered about him, and there were loud-voicedgreetings and much questioning, a rumor having filtered to his oldstamping ground that he had been killed in the siege of the Alamo. Thedoctor told the bourgeois that Courant was to go with his train toCalifornia, and the apple-cheeked factor grinned and raised hiseyebrows:

"Vous avez de la chance! He's a good guide. Even Kit Carson, whoconducted the General Fremont, is no better. "

The general satisfaction did not extend to Susan. The faint thrill ofantagonism that the man had roused in her persisted. She knew he was again to the party, and said nothing. She was growing rapidly in thisnew, toughening life, and could set her own small prejudices aside inthe wider view that each day's experience was teaching her. Thepresence of such a man would lighten the burden of work andresponsibility that lay on her father, and whatever was beneficial tothe doctor was accepted by his daughter. But she did not like LowCourant. Had anyone asked her why she could have given no reason. Hetook little notice of any of the women, treating them alike with abrusque indifference that was not discourteous, but seemed to lump themas necessary but useless units in an important whole. 

The train was the focus of his interest. The acceleration of itsspeed, the condition of the cattle, the combination of lightness andcompleteness in its make-up were the matters that occupied him. In theevening hour of rest these were the subjects he talked of, and shenoticed that Daddy John was the person to whom he talked most. Withaverted eyes, her head bent to David's murmurings, she was reallylistening to the older men. Her admiration was reluctantly evoked bythe stranger's dominance and vigor of will, his devotion to the work hehad undertaken. She felt her own insignificance and David's also, andchafed under the unfamiliar sensation. 

The night after leaving Ash Hollow, as they sat by the fire, David ather side, the doctor had told Courant of the betrothal. His glancepassed quickly over the two conscious faces, he gave a short nod ofcomprehension, and turning to Daddy John, inquired about the conditionof the mules' shoes. Susan reddened. She saw something ofdisparagement, of the slightest gleam of mockery, in that short look, which touched both faces and then turned from them as from the faces ofchildren playing at a game. Yes, she disliked him, disliked his mannerto Lucy and herself, which set them aside as beings of a lower order, that had to go with them and be taken care of like the stock, only muchless important and necessary. Even to Bella he was off-hand andunsympathetic, unmoved by her weakness, as he had been by hersufferings the night he came. Susan had an idea that he thoughtBella's illness a misfortune, not so much for Bella as for the welfareof the train. 

They had been at the fort now for four days and were ready to move on. The wagons were repaired, the mules and horses shod, and Bella wasmending, though still unable to walk. The doctor had promised to keepbeside the McMurdos till she was well, then his company would forgeahead. 

In the heat of the afternoon, comfortable in a rim of shade in thecourtyard, the men were arranging for the start the next morning. Thesun beat fiercely on the square opening roofed by the blue of the skyand cut by the black shadow of walls. In the cooling shade the motleycompany lay sprawling on the ground or propped against the doors of thestore rooms. The open space was brilliant with the blankets ofIndians, the bare limbs of brown children, and the bright serapes ofthe Mexicans, who were too lazy to move out of the sun. In a cornerthe squaws played a game with polished cherry stones which they tossedin a shallow, saucerlike basket and let drop on the ground. 

Susan, half asleep on a buffalo skin, watched them idly. The gamereminded her of the jack-stones of her childhood. Then her eye slantedto where Lucy stood by the gate talking with a trapper called ZavierLeroux. The sun made Lucy's splendid hair shine like a flaming nimbus, and the dark men of the mountains and the plain watched her withimmovable looks. She was laughing, her head drooped sideways. Abovethe collar of her blouse a strip of neck, untouched by tan, showed in amilk-white band. Conscious of the admiring observation, sheinstinctively relaxed her muscles into lines of flowing grace, andlowered her eyes till her lashes shone in golden points against herfreckled cheeks. With entire innocence she spread her little lure, following an elemental instinct, that, in the normal surroundings ofher present life, released from artificial restraints, was growingstronger. 

Her companion was a voyageur, a half-breed, with coarse black hairhanging from a scarlet handkerchief bound smooth over his head. He wasof a sinewy, muscular build, his coppery skin, hard black eyes, andhigh cheek bones showing the blood of his mother, a Crow squaw. Hisfather, long forgotten in the obscurity of mountain history, hadevidently bequeathed him the French Canadian's good-humored gayety. Zavier was a light-hearted and merry fellow, and where he came laughtersprang up. He spoke English well, and could sing French songs thatwere brought to his father's country by the adventurers who crossed theseas with Jacques Cartier. 

The bourgeois, who was aloft on the bastion sweeping the distance witha field glass, suddenly threw an announcement down on the courtyard:

"Red Feather's village is coming and an emigrant train. "

The space between the four walls immediately seethed into a whirlpoolof excitement. It eddied there for a moment, then poured through thegateway into the long drainlike entrance passage and spread over thegrass outside. 

Down the face of the opposite hill, separated from the fort by a narrowriver, came the Indian village, streaming forward in a broken torrent. Over its barbaric brightness, beads and glass caught the sun, and thenervous fluttering of eagle feathers that fringed the upheld lancesplayed above its shifting pattern of brown and scarlet. It descendedthe slope in a broken rush, spreading out fanwise, scattered, disorderly, horse and foot together. On the river bank it paused, theweb of color thickening, then rolled over the edge and plunged in. Thecurrent, beaten into sudden whiteness, eddied round the legs of horses, the throats of swimming dogs, and pressed up to the edges of thetravaux where frightened children sat among litters of puppies. Poniesbestrode by naked boys struck up showers of spray, squaws with liftedblankets waded stolidly in, mounted warriors, feathers quivering intheir inky hair, indifferently splashing them. Here a dog, caught bythe current, was seized by a sinewy hand; there a horse, strugglingunder the weight of a travaux packed with puppies and old women, wasgrasped by a lusty brave and dragged to shore. The water round themfrothing into silvery turmoil, the air above rent with their cries, they climbed the bank and made for the camping ground near the fort. 

Among the first came a young squaw. Her white doeskin dress was asclean as snow, barbarically splendid with cut fringes and work of beadand porcupine quills. Her mien was sedate, and she swayed to her horselightly and flexibly as a boy, holding aloft a lance edged with aflutter of feathers, and bearing a round shield of painted skins. Beside her rode the old chief, his blanket falling away from hiswithered body, his face expressionless and graven deep with wrinkles. 

"That's Red Feather and his favorite squaw, " said the voice of Courantat Susan's elbow. 

She made no answer, staring at the Indian girl, who was handsome andyoung, younger than she. 

"And look, " came the voice again, "there are the emigrants. "

A long column of wagons had crested the summit and was rolling down theslope. They were in single file, hood behind hood, the drivers, bearded as cave men, walking by the oxen. The line moved steadily, without sound or hurry, as if directed by a single intelligencepossessed of a single idea. It was not a congeries of separatedparticles, but a connected whole. As it wound down the face of thehill, it suggested a vast Silurian monster, each wagon top a vertebra, crawling forward with definite purpose. 

"That's the way they're coming, " said the voice of the strange man. "Slow but steady, an endless line of them. "

"Who?" said Susan, answering him for the first time. 

"The white men. They're creeping along out of their country into this, pushing the frontier forward every year, and going on ahead of it withtheir tents and their cattle and their women. Watch the way that traincomes after Red Feather's village. That was all scattered and broken, going every way like a lot of glass beads rolling down the hill. Thiscomes slow, but it's steady and sure as fate. "

She thought for a moment, watching the emigrants, and then said:

"It moves like soldiers. "

"Conquerors. That's what they are. They're going to roll overeverything--crush them out. "

"Over the Indians?"

"That's it. Drive 'em away into the cracks of the mountains, wipe themout the way the trappers are wiping out the beaver. "

"Cruel!" she said hotly. "I don't believe it. "

"Cruel?" he gave her a look of half-contemptuous amusement. "Maybe so, but why should you blame them for that? Aren't you cruel when you killan antelope or a deer for supper? They're not doing you any harm, butyou just happen to be hungry. Well, those fellers are hungry--landhungry--and they've come for the Indian's land. The whole world'scruel. You know it, but you don't like to think so, so you say itisn't. You're just lying because you're afraid of the truth. "

She looked angrily at him and met the gray eyes. In the center of eachiris was a dot of pupil so clearly defined and hard that they looked toSusan like the heads of black pins. "That's exactly what he'd say, "she thought; "he's no better than a savage. " What she said was:

"I don't agree with you at all. "

"I don't expect you to, " he answered, and making an ironical bow turnedon his heel and swung off. 

The next morning, in the pallor of the dawn, they started, rolling outinto a gray country with the keen-edged cold of early day in the air, and Laramie Peak, gold tipped, before them. As the sky brightened andthe prospect began to take on warmer hues, they looked ahead toward theprofiles of the mountains and thought of the journey to come. At thishour of low vitality it seemed enormous, and they paced forward asilent, lifeless caravan, the hoof beats sounding hollow on the beatentrack. 

Then from behind them came a sound of singing, a man's voice carolingin the dawn. Both girls wheeled and saw Zavier Leroux ambling afterthem on his rough-haired pony, the pack horse behind. He waved hishand and shouted across the silence:

"I come to go with you as far as South Pass, " and then he broke outagain into his singing. It was the song Courant had sung, and as heheard it he lifted up his voice at the head of the train, and the twostrains blending, the old French chanson swept out over the barren land:

 "A la claire fontaine! M'en allant promener J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle Que je me suis baigné!"

Susan waved a beckoning hand to the voyageur, then turned to Lucy andsaid joyously:

"What fun to have Zavier! He'll keep us laughing all the time. Aren'tyou glad he's coming?"

Lucy gave an unenthusiastic "Yes. " After the first glance backward shehad bent over her horse smoothing its mane her face suddenly dyed witha flood of red. 

CHAPTER II

Everybody was glad Zavier had come. He brought a spirit of good cheerinto the party which had begun to feel the pressure of the long marchbehind them, and the still heavier burden that was to come. His gayetywas irrepressible, his high spirits unflagging. When the others rodesilent in the lifeless hours of the afternoon or drooped in the middayheats, Zavier, a dust-clouded outline on his shaggy pony, lifted up hisvoice in song. Then the chanted melody of French verses issued fromthe dust cloud, rising above the rattling of the beaver traps and thecreaking of the slow wheels. 

He had one especial favorite that he was wont to sing when he rodebetween the two girls. It recounted the adventures of _troiscavalières_, and had so many verses that Zavier assured them neither henor any other man had ever arrived at the end of them. Should he go toCalifornia with them and sing a verse each day, he thought there wouldstill be some left over to give away when he got there. Susan learnedthe first two stanzas, and Lucy picked up the air and a few words. When the shadows began to slant and the crisp breath of the mountainscame cool on their faces, they sang, first Zavier and Susan, then Lucyjoining in in a faint, uncertain treble, and finally from the front ofthe train the strange man, not turning his head, sitting straight andsquare, and booming out the burden in his deep baritone:

 "Dans mon chemin j'ai recontré Trois cavalières bien montées, L'on, ton laridon danée L'on, ton laridon dai. 

 "Trois cavalières bien montées L'une a cheval, l'autre a pied L'on, ton, laridon danée L'on ton laridon dai. "

Zavier furnished another diversion in the monotony of the days, injected into the weary routine, a coloring drop of romance, for, as hehimself would have said, he was _diablement épris_ with Lucy. This wasregarded as one of the best of Zavier's jokes. He himself laughed atit, and his extravagant compliments and gallantries were well withinthe pale of the burlesque. Lucy laughed at them, too. The only onethat took the matter seriously was Bella. She was not entirely pleased. 

"Talk about it's being just a joke, " she said to Susan in the bedtimehour of confidences. "You can joke too much about some things. Zavier's a man just the same as the others, and Lucy's a nice-lookinggirl when she gets rested up and the freckles go off. But he's anIndian if he does speak French, and make good money with his beavertrapping. "

"He's not _all_ Indian, " Susan said soothingly. "He's half white. There are only a few Indian things about him, his dark skin andsomething high and flat about his cheek bones and the way he turns inhis toes when he walks. "

"Indian enough, " Bella fumed. "And nobody knows anything about hisfather. We're respectable people and don't want a man with no namehanging round. I've no doubt he was born in a lodge or under a pinetree. What right's that kind of man to come ogling after a decentwhite girl whose father and mother were married in the PresbyterianChurch?"

Susan did not take it so much to heart. What was the good when Lucyobviously didn't care? As for Zavier, she felt sorry for him, forthose keen observing faculties of hers had told her that the voyageur'sraillery hid a real feeling. Poor Zavier was in love. Susan waspensive in the contemplation of his hopeless passion. He was to leavethe train near South Pass and go back into the mountains, and there, alone, camp on the streams that drained the Powder River country. Inall probability he would never see one of them again. His trapping didnot take him West to the great deserts, and he hated the civilizationwhere man became a luxurious animal of many needs. Like the buffaloand the red man he was restricted to the wild lands that sloped away oneither side of the continent's mighty spine. His case was sad, andSusan held forth on the subject to Lucy, whom she thought callous andunkind. 

"It's terrible to think you'll never see him again, " she said, lookingfor signs of compassion. "Don't you feel sorry?"

Lucy looked down. She had been complaining to her friend of Zavier'sfollies of devotion. 

"There are lots of other men in the world, " she said indifferently. 

Susan fired up. If not yet the authorized owner of a man, she felt herresponsibilities as a coming proprietor. The woman's passion forinterference in matters of sentiment was developing in her. 

"Lucy, you're the most hard-hearted girl! Poor Zavier, who's going offinto the mountains and may be killed by the Indians. Don't you feelany pity for him? And he's in love with you--truly in love. I'vewatched him and I know. "

She could not refrain from letting a hint of superior wisdom, of anadvantage over the unengaged Lucy, give solemnity to her tone. 

Lucy's face flushed. 

"He's half an Indian, " she said with an edge on her voice. "Doesn'teveryone in the train keep saying that every ten minutes? Do you wantme to fall in love with a man like that?"

"Why no, of course not. You couldn't. That's the sad part of it. Heseems as much like other men as those trappers in the fort who were allwhite. Just because he had a Crow mother it seems unjust that heshould be so sort of on the outside of everything. But of course youcouldn't marry him. Nobody ever heard of a girl marrying a half-breed. "

Lucy bent over the piece of deer meat that she was cutting apart. Theywere preparing supper at the flaring end of a hot day, when the wagonshad crawled through a loose alkaline soil and over myriads of cricketsthat crushed sickeningly under the wheels. Both girls were tired, their throats parched, their hair as dry as hemp, and Lucy wasirritable, her face unsmiling, her movement quick and nervous. 

"What's it matter what a man's parents are if he's kind to you?" shesaid, cutting viciously into the meat. "It's a lot to have some onefill the kettles for you and help you get the firewood, and when you'retired tell you to go back in the wagon and go to sleep. Nobody doesthat for me but Zavier. "

It was the first time she had shown any appreciation of her swain'sattentions. She expressed the normal, feminine point of view that herfriend had been looking for, and as soon as she heard it Susan adroitlyvaulted to the other side:

"But, Lucy, you _can't_ marry him!"

"Who says I'm going to?" snapped Lucy. "Do I have to marry everyIndian that makes eyes at me? All the men in the fort were doing it. They hadn't a look for anyone else. "

Susan took this with reservations. A good many of the men in the forthad made eyes at her. It was rather grasping of Lucy to take it all toherself, and in her surprise at the extent of her friend's claims shewas silent. 

"As for me, " Lucy went on, "I'm dead sick of this journey. I wish wecould stop or go back or do something. But we've got to keep on and onto the end of nowhere. It seems as if we were going forever in thesetiresome old wagons or on horses that get lame every other day, andthen you have to walk. I don't mind living in a tent. I like it. ButI hate always going on, never having a minute to rest, getting up inthe morning when I'm only half awake, and having to cook at night whenI'm so tired I'd just like to lie down on the ground without taking myclothes off and go to sleep there. I wish I'd never come. I wish I'dmarried the man in Cooperstown that I wouldn't have wiped my feet onthen. "

She slapped the frying pan on the fire and threw the meat into it. Hervoice and lips were trembling. With a quick, backward bend she stoopedto pick up a fork, and Susan saw her face puckered and quivering like achild's about to cry. 

"Oh, Lucy, " she cried in a burst of sympathy. "I didn't know you feltlike that, " and she tried to clasp the lithe uncorseted waist thatflinched from her touch. Lucy's elbow, thrown suddenly out, kept herat a distance, and she fell back repulsed, but with consolations stillready to be offered. 

"Let me alone, " said Lucy, her face averted. "I'm that tired I don'tknow what I'm saying. Go and get the children for supper, and don'tlet them stand round staring at me or they'll be asking questions. "

She snatched the coffee pot and shook it upside down, driblets ofcoffee running out. With her other hand she brushed the tears off hercheeks. 

"Don't stand there as if you never saw a girl cry before, " she said, savagely. "I don't do it often, and it isn't such a wonderful sight. Get the children, and if you tell anyone that I feel this way I'llmurder you. "

The children were at some distance lying on the ground. Suchunpromising materials as dust and sage brush had not quenched theirinventive power or hampered their imaginations. They played with as anabsorbed an industry here as in their own garden at home. They hadscraped the earth into mounded shapes marked with the print of babyfingers and furrowed with paths. One led to a central mound crownedwith a wild sunflower blossom. Up the path to this Bob conducted twigsof sage, murmuring the adventures that attended their progress. Whenthey reached the sunflower house he laid them carefully against itssides, continuing the unseen happenings that befell them on theirentrance. The little girl lay beside him, her cheek resting on anoutflung arm, her eyes fixed wistfully on the personally conductedparty. Her creative genius had not risen to the heights of his, andher fat little hands were awkward and had pushed the sunflower from itsperch. So she had been excluded from active participation, and nowlooked on, acquiescing in her exclusion, a patient and humble spectator. 

"Look, " Bob cried as he saw Susan approaching. "I've builded a houseand a garden, and these are the people, " holding up one of the sagetwigs, "they walk fru the garden an' then go into the house and havecoffee and buf'lo meat. "

Susan admired it and then looked at the baby, who was pensivelysurveying her brother's creation. 

"And did the baby play, too?" she asked. 

"Oh, no, she couldn't. She doesn't know nuffing, she's too small, "with the scorn of one year's superiority. 

The baby raised her solemn eyes to the young girl and made no attemptto vindicate herself. Her expression was that of subdued humility, ofone who admits her short-comings. She rose and thrust a soft hand intoSusan's, and maintained her silence as they walked toward the camp. The only object that seemed to have power to rouse her from herdejected reverie were the broken sage stalks in the trail. At each ofthese she halted, hanging from Susan's sustaining grasp, and stubbedher toe accurately and carefully against the protruding root. 

They would have been silent that evening if it had not been for Zavier. His mood was less merry than usual, but a stream of frontier anecdoteand story flowed from him, that held them listening with charmedattention. His foreign speech interlarded with French words added tothe picturesqueness of his narratives, and he himself sittingcrosslegged on his blanket, his hair hanging dense to his shoulders, his supple body leaning forward in the tension of a thrilling climax, was a fitting minstrel for these lays of the wild. 

His final story was that of Antoine Godin, one of the classics ofmountain history. Godin was the son of an Iroquois hunter who had beenbrutally murdered by the Blackfeet. He had become a trapper of theSublette brothers, then mighty men of the fur trade, and in theexpedition of Milton Sublette against the Blackfeet in 1832 joined thetroop. When the two bands met, Godin volunteered to hold a conferencewith the Blackfeet chief. He chose as his companion an Indian of theFlathead tribe, once a powerful nation, but almost exterminated by warswith the Blackfeet. From the massed ranks of his warriors the chiefrode out for the parley, a pipe of peace in his hand. As Godin and theFlathead started to meet him, the former asked the Indian if his piecewas charged, and when the Flathead answered in the affirmative told himto cock it and ride alongside. 

Midway between the two bands they met. Godin clasped the chief's hand, and as he did so told the Flathead to fire. The Indian levelled hisgun, fired, and the Blackfeet chief rolled off his horse. Godinsnatched off his blanket and in a rain of bullets fled to the Sublettecamp. 

"And so, " said the voyageur with a note of exultation in his voice, "Godin got revenge on those men who had killed his father. "

For a moment his listeners were silent, suffering from a sense ofbewilderment, not so much at the story, as at Zavier's evident approvalof Godin's act. 

It was Susan who first said in a low tone, "What an awful thing to do!"This loosened Bella's tongue, who lying in the opening of her tent hadbeen listening and now felt emboldened to express her opinion, especially as Glen, stretched on his face nearby, had emitted a snortof indignation. 

"Well, of all the wicked things I've heard since I came out here that'sthe worst. "

Zavier shot a glance at them in which for one unguarded moment, raceantagonism gleamed. 

"Why is it wicked?" he said gently. 

David answered heatedly, the words bursting out:

"Why, the treachery of it, the meanness. The chief carried the pipe ofpeace. That's like our flag of truce. You never heard of anycivilized man shooting another under the flag of truce. "

Zavier looked stolid. It was impossible to tell whether hecomprehended their point of view and pretended ignorance, or whether hewas so restricted to his own that he could see no other. 

"The Blackfeet had killed his father, " he answered. "They weretreacherous too. Should he wait to be murdered? It was his chance andhe took it. "

Sounds of dissent broke out round the circle. All the eyes weretrained on him, some with a wide, expectant fixity, others bright withcombative fire. Even Glen sat up, scratching his head, and remarkingsotto voce to his wife:

"Ain't I always said he was an Indian?"

"But the Blackfeet chief wasn't the man who killed his father, " saidthe doctor. 

"No, he was chief of the tribe who did. "

"But why kill an innocent man who probably had nothing to do with it?"

"It was for vengeance, " said Zavier with unmoved patience and carefulEnglish. "Vengeance for his father's death. "

Several pairs of eyes sought the ground giving up the problem. Otherscontinued to gaze at him either with wonder, or hopeful of extractingfrom his face some clew to his involved and incomprehensible moralattitude. They suddenly felt as if he had confessed himself of analien species, a creature as remote from them and their ideals as adweller in the moon. 

"He had waited long for vengeance, " Zavier further explained, movinghis glittering glance about the circle, "and if he could not find theright man, he must take such man as he could. The chief is the biggestman, and he comes where Godin has him. 'My father is avenged at last, 'he says, and bang!"--Zavier levelled an imaginary engine of destructionat the shadows--"it is done and Godin gets the blanket. "

The silence that greeted this was one of hopelessness; the blanket hadadded the final complication. It was impossible to make Zavier see, and this new development in what had seemed a boyish and light-heartedbeing, full to the brim with the milk of human kindness, was a thing tosink before in puzzled speechlessness. Courant tried to explain:

"You can't see it Zavier's way because it's a different way from yours. It comes out of the past when there weren't any laws, or you had tomake 'em yourself. You've come from where the courthouse and thepolice take care of you, and if a feller kills your father, sees to itthat he's caught and strung up. It's not your business to do it, andso you've got to thinking that the man that takes it into his own handsis a desperate kind of criminal. Out here in those days you wiped outsuch scores yourself or no one did. It seems to you that Godin did apretty low down thing, but he thought he was doing the right thing forhim. He'd had a wrong done him and he'd got to square it. And itdidn't matter to him that the chief wasn't the man. Kill an Indian andit's the tribe's business to settle the account. The Blackfeet killedhis father and it was Godin's business to kill a Blackfeet whenever hegot the chance. I guess when he saw the chief riding out to meet himwhat he felt most was, that it was the best chance he'd ever get. "

The faces turned toward Courant--a white man like themselves! So deepwas their disapproving astonishment that nobody could say anything. For a space they could only stare at him as though he, too, weresuddenly dropping veils that had hidden unsuspected, baleful depths. 

Then argument broke out and the clamor of voices was loud on the night. Courant bore the brunt of the attack, Zavier's ideas being scanty, hismode of procedure a persistent, reiteration of his originalproposition. Interruptions were furnished in a sudden, cracked laughfrom Daddy John, and phrases of dissent or approval from Glen and Bellastretching their ears from the front of the tent. Only Lucy saidnothing, her head wrapped in a shawl, her face down-drooped and pale. 

Late that night Susan was waked by whispering sounds which woundstealthily through her sleep feeling for her consciousness. At firstshe lay with her eyes shut, breathing softly, till the soundspercolated through the stupor of her fatigue and she woke, disentangling them from dreams. She threw back her blankets and satalert thinking of Indians. 

The moon was full, silver tides lapping in below the tent's rim. Shestole to the flap listening, then drew it softly open. Her tent hadbeen pitched beneath a group of trees which made a splash of shadowbroken with mottlings of moonlight. In the depths of this shadow shediscerned two figures, the white flecks and slivers sliding along thedark oblong of their shapes as they strayed with loitering steps orstood whispering. The straight edge of their outline, the unbrokensolidity of their bulk, told her they were wrapped in the same blanket, a custom in the Indian lover's courtship. Their backs were toward her, the two heads rising from the blanket's folds, showing as a roundedpyramidal finish. As she looked they paced beyond the shadow into thefull unobscured light, and she saw that the higher head was dark, theother fair, crowned with a circlet of shining hair. 

Her heart gave an astounded leap. Her first instinct was to draw back, her second to stand where she was, seemly traditions overwhelmed inamazement. The whispering ceased, the heads inclined to each other, the light one drooping backward, the dark one leaning toward it, tillthey rested together for a long, still moment. Then they separated, the woman drawing herself from the blanket and with a whispered wordstealing away, a furtive figure flitting through light and shade to theMcMurdo tents. The man turned and walked to the fire, and Susan saw itwas Zavier. He threw on a brand and in its leaping ray stoodmotionless, looking at the flame, a slight, fixed smile on his lips. 

She crept back to her bed and lay there with her heart throbbing andher eyes on the edges of moonlight that slipped in over the trampledsage leaves. Zavier was on sentry duty that night, and she could hearthe padding of his step as he moved back and forth through the sleepingcamp. On the dark walls of the tent the vision she had seen keptrepeating itself, and as it returned upon her mental sight, newquestions surged into her mind. A veil had been raised, and she hadcaught a glimpse of something in life, a new factor in the world, shehad never known of. The first faint comprehension of it, the firststir of sympathy with it, crept toward her understanding and tried toforce an entrance. She pushed it out, feeling frightened, feeling asif it were an intruder, that once admitted would grow dominant andmasterful, and she would never be her own again. 

CHAPTER III

The next morning Susan could not help stealing inquiring looks at Lucy. Surely the participant in such a nocturnal adventure must bear somesigns of it upon her face. Lucy had suddenly become a disturbing andincomprehensible problem. In trying to readjust her conception of thepractical and energetic girl, Susan found herself confronted with theartifices of a world-old, feminine duplicity that she had never beforeencountered, and knew no more of than she did of the tumult that hadpossession of poor Lucy's tormented soul. Here was the heroine of amidnight rendezvous going about her work with her habitual nervouscapability, dressing the children, preparing the breakfast, seeing thatBella was comfortably disposed on her mattress in the wagon. She hadnot a glance for Zavier. Could a girl steal out to meet and kiss a manin the moonlight and the next morning look at him with a limpid, undrooping eye as devoid of consciousness as the eye of a preoccupiedcat?

The standards of the doctor's daughter were comparative and their rangelimited. All she had to measure by was herself. Her imagination intrying to compass such a situation with Susan Gillespie as the heroine, could picture nothing as her portion but complete abasement and, ofcourse, a confession to her father. And how dreadful that would havebeen! She could feel humiliation stealing on her at the thought of thedoctor's frowning displeasure. But Lucy had evidently told no one. Why had she not? Why had she pretended not to like Zavier? Why? Why?Susan found her thoughts trailing off into a perspective of questionsthat brought up against a wall of incomprehension above which Lucy'sclear eyes looked at her with baffling secretiveness. 

It was a warm morning, and the two girls sat in the doctor's wagon. Lucy was knitting one of the everlasting stockings. In the heat shehad unfastened the neck of her blouse and turned the edges in, atriangle of snowy skin visible below her sunburned throat. She lookedthin, her arms showing no curve from wrist to elbow, the lines of herbody delicately angular under the skimpy dress of faded lilac cotton. The sun blazing through the canvas cast a tempered yellow light overher that toned harmoniously with the brown coating of freckles and thecopper burnish of her hair. Her hands, vibrating over her work withlittle hovering movements like birds about to light, now and thenflashing out a needle which she stabbed into her coiffure, werelarge-boned and dexterous, the strong, unresting hands of thefrontierswoman. 

Susan was lazy, leaning back on the up-piled sacks, watching the quick, competent movements and the darts of light that leaped along theneedles. Before they had entered the wagon she had decided to speak toLucy of what she had overseen. In the first place she felt guilty andwanted to confess. Besides that the need to give advice was strongupon her, and the natural desire to interfere in a matter of the heartwas another impelling impulse. So she had determined to speak forconscience, for friendship, for duty, and it is not beyond the boundsof possibility, for curiosity. 

But it was a hard subject to approach, and she was uncomfortable. Diplomacy had not been one of the gifts the fairies gave her when theygathered at her cradle. Looking at the quivering needles she tried tothink of a good beginning, and like most direct and candid peopleconcluded there was no better one than that of the initial fact, beforethe complicating intrusion of inference:

"I woke up in the middle of the night last night. "

Lucy knit unmoved. 

"The moonlight was as bright as day. Out beyond the shadow where mytent was I could see the weeds and little bunches of grass. "

"How could you see them when you were in your tent?" This withoutstopping her work or raising her head. 

Susan, feeling more uncomfortable than ever, answered, her voiceinstinctively dropping, "I got up and looked out of my tent. "

She kept her eyes on the busy hands and saw that the speed of theirmovements slackened. 

"Got up and looked out? What did you do that for?"

The time for revelation had come. Susan was a little breathless. 

"I heard people whispering, " she said. 

The hands came to a stop. But the knitter continued to hold them inthe same position, a suspended, waiting expectancy in their attitude. 

"Whispering?" she said. "Who was it?"

"Oh, Lucy, you know. "

There was a pause. Then Lucy dropped her knitting and, raising herhead, looked at the anxious face opposite. Her eyes were quiet andsteady, but their look was changed from its usual frankness by a newdefiance, hard and wary. 

"No, I don't know. How should I?"

"Why, why"--Susan now was not only breathless but pleading--"it wasyou. "

"Who was me?"

"The woman--Lucy don't look at me like that, as if you didn'tunderstand. I saw you, you and Zavier, wrapped in the blanket. Youwalked out into the moonlight and I _saw_. "

Lucy's gaze continued unfaltering and growing harder. Under thefreckles she paled, but she stood her ground. 

"What do you mean? Saw me and Zavier? Where?"

"Under the trees first and then you went out into the moonlight withthe blanket wrapped round your shoulders. "

"You didn't see me, " the hardness was now in her voice. "It was someone else. "

A feeling of alarm rose in the other girl. It was not the lie alone, it was the force behind it, the force that made it possible, that gavethe teller will to hold her glance steady and deny the truth. Ascaring sense of desperate powers in Lucy that were carrying heroutside the familiar and established, seized her friend. It was alldifferent from her expectations. Her personal repugnance andfastidiousness were swept aside in the menace of larger things. Sheleaned forward and clasped Lucy's knee. 

"Don't say that. I saw you. Lucy, don't say I didn't. Don't botherto tell me a lie. What did it mean? Why did you meet him? What areyou doing?"

Lucy jerked her knee away. Her hands were trembling. She took up theknitting, tried to direct the needles, but they shook and she droppedthem. She made a sharp movement with her head in an effort to averther face, but the light was merciless, there was no shade to hide in. 

"Oh, don't bother me, " she said angrily. "It's not your affair. "

Susan's dread rose higher. In a flash of vision she had a glimpse intothe storm-driven depths. It was as if a child brought up in a gardenhad unexpectedly looked into a darkling mountain abyss. 

"What are you going to do?" she almost whispered. "You mustn't. Youmust stop. I thought you didn't care about him. You only laughed andeverybody thought it was a joke. Don't go on that way. Somethingdreadful will happen. "

Lucy did not answer. With her back pressed against the roof arch andher hands clinched in her lap--she sat rigid, looking down. She seemedgripped in a pain that stiffened her body and made her face pinched andhaggard. Under the light cotton covering her breast rose and fell. She was an embodiment of tortured indecision. 

Susan urged: "Let me tell my father and he'll send Zavier away. "

Lucy raised her eyes and tried to laugh. The unnatural sound fell witha metallic harshness on the silence. Her mouth quivered, and puttingan unsteady hand against it, she said brokenly, "Oh, Missy, don't torment me. I feel bad enough already. "

There was a longer pause. Susan broke it in a low voice:

"Then you're going to marry him?"

"No, " loudly, "no. What a question!"

She made a grab at her knitting and started feverishly to work, theneedles clicking, stitches dropping, the stocking leg trembling as ithung. 

"Why, he's an Indian, " she cried suddenly in a high, derisive key. 

"But"--the questioner had lost her moment of vision and was once againfloundering between ignorance and intuition--"Why did you kiss himthen?"

"I didn't. He kissed me. "

"You let him. Isn't that the same thing?"

"No, no. You're so silly. You don't know anything. " She gave ahysterical laugh and the bonds of her pride broke in a smothered cry:"I couldn't help it. I didn't want to. I didn't mean to. I didn'tmean to go out and meet him and I went. I--" she gathered up thestocking and, needles and all, buried her face in it. It was the onlything she could find to hide behind. "I'm so miserable, " she sobbed. "You don't know. It's such a terrible thing first feeling one way andthen the other. I'm so mixed up I don't know what I feel. I wish Iwas dead. "

There was a sound of men's voices outside, and the wagon came to ajolting halt. Daddy John, on the driver's seat, silhouetted againstthe circle of sky, slipped the whip into its ring of leather and turnedtoward the girls. Lucy threw herself backward and lay with her face onthe sacks, stifling her tears. 

"What are you two girls jawing about in there?" he asked, squintingblindly from the sun dazzle into the clear, amber light of the canvascavern. 

"We're just telling stories and things, " said Susan. 

The old man peered at Lucy's recumbent figure. 

"Ain't she well?" he queried. "Thought I heard crying. "

"Her head aches, it's so hot. "

"Let her stay there. We'll do her cooking for her. Just stay whereyou are, Lucy, and don't worrit about your work. "

But the voices outside demanded her. It was the noon halt and Lucy wasan important factor in the machinery of the train. Glen's call for herwas mingled with the fresh treble of Bob's and Bella's at a fartherdistance, rose in a plaintive, bovine lowing. She stretched a handsideways and gripped Susan's skirt. 

"I can't go, " she gasped in a strangled whisper. "I can't seem to geta hold on myself. Ask Zavier to build the fire and cook. He'll do it, and Courant will help him. And tell the others I'm sick. "

Lucy's headache lasted all through the dinner hour, and when the trainstarted she still lay in the back of the doctor's wagon. For once sheseemed indifferent to the comfort of her relatives. The clamor thatrose about their disorderly fire and unsavory meal came to her earsthrough the canvas walls, and she remained deaf and unconcerned. WhenSusan crept in beside her and laid a cool cheek on hers, and asked herif she wanted anything, she said no, she wanted to rest that was all. Daddy John turned his head in profile and said:

"Let her alone, Missy. She's all tuckered out. They've put too muchwork on her sence her sister took sick. You let her lie there and I'llkeep an eye to her. "

Then he turned away and spat, as was his wont when thoughtful. He hadseen much of the world, and in his way was a wise old man, but he didnot guess the secret springs of Lucy's trouble. Women on the trailshould be taken care of as his Missy was. Glen McMurdo was the kind ofman who let the women take care of him, and between him and thechildren and the sick woman they'd half killed the girl with work. Daddy John had his opinion of Glen, but like most of his opinions hekept it to himself. 

Susan had no desire for talk that afternoon. She wanted to be alone tomuse on things. As the train took the road for the second stage, shedrew her horse back among the sage and let the file of wagons pass her. She saw hope gleaming in Leff's eye, and killed it with a stony glance, then called to her father that she was going to ride behind. David washunting in the hills with Courant, Zavier driving in his stead. Thelittle caravan passed her with the dust hovering dense around it andthe slouching forms of the pack horses hanging fringe-like in its rear. 

They were nearing the end of their passage by the river, shrunk to aclear, wild stream which they came upon and lost as the trail borewestward. Their route lay through an interminable sequence of plainsheld together by channels of communication that filtered through thegaps in hills. The road was crossed by small streams, chuckling at thebottom of gullies, the sides of which were cracked open like pale, parched lips gasping for air. The limpid transparency of the prospectwas blotted by the caravan's moving dust cloud. Beyond this the plainstretched, empty as the sky, a brown butte rising here and there. 

Susan heard hoof beats behind her and turned. Courant was ridingtoward her, his rifle across his saddle. She made a motion ofrecognition with her hand and turned away thinking how well he matchedthe surroundings, his buckskins melting into the fawn-colored shadingof the earth, his red hair and bronzed face toning with the umberbuttes and rustlike stains across the distance. He was of a piece withit, even in its suggestion of an unfeeling, confidant hardness. 

He joined her and they paced forward. It was the first time he hadever sought any conversation with her and she was conscious andsecretly shy. Heretofore it had been his wont to speak little to her, to sweep an indifferent eye over her which seemed to include her in theunimportant baggage that went to the making of the train. Now, thoughhis manner was brusque, he spoke simply and not discourteously of thehunt in the hills. He had got nothing, but David had killed ablack-tailed deer, and possessed by the passion of the chase, wasfollowing the tracks of a second. The girl flushed with pleasure. 

"David's a very good shot, " she said complacently, not at all sure ofher statement, for David did not excel in the role of Nimrod. "He keptus supplied with buffalo meat all the way up the Platte. "

This was a falsehood. Daddy John and Leff had been the hunters of theparty. But Susan did not care. Courant had never said a word in herhearing derogatory to David, but she had her suspicions that theromantic nature of her betrothed was not of the stuff the mountain manrespected. 

"First rate, " he said heartily. "I didn't know it. I thought hegenerally rode with you or drove the wagon. "

To an outsider the tone would have seemed all that was frank and open. But Susan read irony into it. She sat her horse a little squarer andallowed the muse to still further possess her:

"David can shoot anything, an antelope even. He constantly broughtthem in when we were on the Platte. It was quite easy for him. DaddyJohn, who's been in all sorts of wild places, says he's never seen abetter shot. "

A slight uneasiness disturbed the proud flow of her imagination at thethought that Daddy John, questioned on this point, might show atendency to contradict her testimony. But it didn't matter. The joyof proving David's superiority compensated. And she was settingCourant in his place which had a separate and even rarer charm. 

His answer showed no consciousness of the humbling process:

"You think a lot of David, don't you?"

Susan felt her color rising. This time she not only sat squarer in hersaddle, but raised her shoulders and chin a trifle. 

"Yes. I am engaged to be married to him. "

"When will you be married?" said the uncrushable man. 

She inclined her head from its haughty pose just so far that she couldcommand his face from an austere eye. Words were ready to go with thequelling glance, but they died unspoken. The man was regarding herwith grave, respectful attention. It is difficult to suddenly smite aproud crest when the owner of the crest shows no consciousness of itselevation. 

"When we get to California, " she said shortly. 

"Not till then? Oh, I supposed you were going to marry him at Bridgeror along the road if we happened to meet a missionary. "

The suggestion amazed, almost appalled her. It pierced through herfoolish little play of pride like a stab, jabbing down to her secret, sentient core. Her anger grew stronger, but she told herself she wastalking to one of an inferior, untutored order, and it was her part tohold herself in hand. 

"We will be married when we get to California, " she said, seeing to itthat her profile was calm and carried high. "Sometime after we getthere and have a home and are settled. "

"That's a long time off. "

"I suppose so--a year or two. "

"A year or two!" he laughed with a careless jovial note. "Oh, youbelong to the old towns back there, " with a jerk of his head toward therear. "In the wilderness we don't have such long courtships. "

"We? Who are we?"

"The mountain men, the trappers, the voyageurs. "

"Yes, " she said, her tone flashing into sudden scorn, "they marrysquaws. "

At this the man threw back his head and burst into a laugh, so deep, sorich, so exuberantly joyous, that it fell upon the plain's grim silencewith the incongruous contrast of sunshine on the dust of a dungeon. She sat upright with her anger boiling toward expression. Before sherealized it he had leaned forward and laid his hand on the pommel ofher saddle, his face still red and wrinkled with laughter. 

"That's all right, little lady, but you don't know quite all about us. "

"I know enough, " she answered. 

"Before you get to California you'll know more. There's a mountain manand a voyageur now in the train. Do you think Zavier and I have squawwives?"

With the knowledge that Zavier was just then so far from contemplatingunion with a squaw, she could not say the contemptuous "yes" that wason her tongue. As for the strange man--she shot a glance at him andmet the gray eyes still twinkling with amusement. "Savage!" shethought, "I've no doubt he has"--and she secretly felt a great desireto know. What she said was, "I've never thought of it, and I haven'tthe least curiosity about it. "

They rode on in silence, then he said, "What's made you mad?"

"Mad? I'm not mad. "

"Not at all?"

"No. Why should I be?"

"That's what I want to know. You don't like me, little lady, is thatit?"

"I neither like nor dislike you. I don't think of you. "

She immediately regretted the words. She was so completely a woman, sodowered with the instinct of attraction, that she realized they werenot the words of indifference. 

"My thoughts are full of other people, " she said hastily, trying toamend the mistake, and that was spoiled by a rush of color thatsuddenly dyed her face. 

She looked over the horse's head, her anger now turned upon herself. The man made no answer, but she knew that he was watching her. Theypaced on for a silent moment then he said:

"Why are you blushing?"

"I am not, " she cried, feeling the color deepening. 

"You've told two lies, " he answered. "You said you weren't angry, andyou're mad all through, and now you say you're not blushing, and yourface is as pink as one of those little flat roses that grow on theprairie. It's all right to get mad and blush, but I'd like to know whyyou do it. I made you mad someway or other, I don't know how. Have_I_ made you blush, too?" he leaned nearer trying to look at her. "How'd I do that?"

She had a sidelong glimpse of his face, quizzical, astonished, full ofpiqued interest. She struggled with the mortification of a pettedchild, suddenly confronted by a stranger who finds its caprices onlyridiculous and displeasing. Under the new sting of humiliation shewrithed, burning to retaliate and make him see the height of herpedestal. 

"Yes, I _have_ told two lies, " she said. "I was angry and I _am_blushing, and it's because I'm in a rage with you. "

The last touch was given when she saw that his surprise contained thebitter and disconcerting element of amusement. 

"Isn't that just what I said, and you denied it?" he exclaimed. "Now_why_ are you in a rage with me?"

"Because--because--well, if you're too stupid to know why, or are justpretending, I won't explain. I don't intend to ride with you any more. Please don't try and keep up with me. "

She gave her reins a shake and her horse started on a brisk canter. Asshe sped away she listened for his following hoof beats, for she madeno doubt he would pursue her, explain his conduct, and ask her pardon. The request not to keep up with her he would, of course, set aside. David would have obeyed it, but this man of the mountains, at oncedomineering and stupid, would take no command from any woman. She kepther ear trained for the rhythmic beat in the distance and decided whenshe heard it she would increase her speed and not let him catch hertill she was up with the train. Then she would coldly listen to hiswords of apology and have the satisfaction of seeing him look small, and probably not know what to say. 

Only it didn't happen that way. He made no attempt to follow. As shegalloped across the plain he drew his horse to a walk, his face darkand frowning. Her scorn and blush had left his blood hot. Her lastwords had fired his anger. He had known her antagonism, seen it in herface on the night when Bella was sick, felt its sting when she turnedfrom him to laugh with the others. And it had stirred him to a secretirritation. For he told himself she was only a baby, but a prettybaby, on whose brown and rosy face and merry slits of eyes a man mightlike to look. Now he gazed after her swearing softly through his beardand holding his horse to its slowest step. As her figure receded hekept his eyes upon it. They were long-sighted eyes, used to greatdistances, and they watched, intent and steady, to see if she wouldturn her head. 

"Damn her, " he said, when the dust of the train absorbed her. "Doesshe think she's the only woman in the world?"

After supper that evening Susan called David over to sit on the edge ofher blanket. This was a rare favor. He came hurrying, all alight withsmiles, cast himself down beside her and twined his fingers in her warmgrasp. She answered his hungry glance with a sidelong look, glowinglytender, and David drew the hand against his cheek. Nobody was nearexcept Daddy John and Courant, smoking pipes on the other side of thefire. 

"Do you love me?" he whispered, that lover's text for every sermonwhich the unloving find so irksome to answer, almost to bear. 

But now she smiled and whispered, "Of course, silly David. "

"Ah, Susan, you're awakening, " he breathed in a shaken undertone. 

She again let the soft look touch his face, sweet as a caress. Fromthe other side of the fire Courant saw it, and through the film of pipesmoke, watched. David thought no one was looking, leaned nearer, andkissed her cheek. She gave a furtive glance at the man opposite, sawthe watching eyes, and with a quick breath like a runner, turned herface to her lover and let him kiss her lips. 

She looked back at the fire, quiet, unflurried, then slowly raised herlids. Courant had moved his pipe and the obscuring film of smoke wasgone. Across the red patch of embers his eyes gazed steadily at herwith the familiar gleam of derision. Her tenderness died as a flameunder a souse of water, and an upwelling of feeling that was almosthatred, rose in her against the strange man. 

CHAPTER IV

The last fording of the river had been made, and from the summit of theRed Buttes they looked down on the long level, specked with sage andflecked with alkaline incrustings, that lay between them and theSweetwater. Across the horizon the Wind River mountains stretched achain of majestic, snowy shapes. Desolation ringed them round, theswimming distances fusing with the pallor of ever-receding horizons, the white road losing itself in the blotting of sage, red elevationsrising lonely in extending circles of stillness. The air was so clearthat a tiny noise broke it, crystal-sharp like the ring of a smittenglass. And the sense of isolation was intensified as there was nosound from anywhere, only a brooding, primordial silence that seemed tohave remained unbroken since the first floods drained away. 

Below in the plain the white dots of an encampment showed like a growthof mushrooms. Near this, as they crawled down upon it, the enormousform of Independence Rock detached itself from the faded browns andgrays to develop into a sleeping leviathan, lost from its herd andfallen exhausted in a sterile land. 

Courant was curious about the encampment, and after the night halt rodeforward to inspect it. He returned in the small hours reporting it atrain of Mormons stopped for sickness. A boy of fifteen had broken hisleg ten days before and was now in a desperate condition. The trainhad kept camp hoping for his recovery, or for the advent of help in oneof the caravans that overhauled them. Courant thought the boy beyondhope, but in the gray of the dawn the doctor mounted, and with Susan, David, and Courant, rode off with his case of instruments strapped tohis saddle. 

The sun was well up when they reached the Mormon camp. Scattered abouta spring mouth in the litter of a three days' halt, its flocks andherds spread wide around it, it was hushed in a sullen dejection. Theboy was a likely lad for the new Zion, and his mother, one of the wivesof an elder, had forgotten her stern training, and fallen to a commondespair. Long-haired men lolled in tent doors cleaning their rifles, and women moved between the wagons and the fires, or sat in rims ofshade sewing and talking low. Children were everywhere, their spiritsundimmed by disaster, their voices calling from the sage, little, light, half-naked figures circling and bending in games that babiesplayed when men lived in cliffs and caves. At sight of the mountedfigures they fled, wild as rabbits, scurrying behind tent flaps andwomen's skirts, to peep out in bright-eyed curiosity at the strangers. 

The mother met them and almost dragged the doctor from his horse. Shewas a toil-worn woman of middle age, a Mater Dolorosa now in her hourof anguish. She led them to where the boy lay in a clearing in thesage. The brush was so high that a blanket had been fastened to thetops of the tallest blushes, and under its roof he was stretched, gray-faced and with sharpened nose. The broken leg had been boundbetween rough splints of board, and he had traveled a week in thewagons in uncomplaining agony. Now, spent and silent, he awaiteddeath, looking at the newcomers with the slow, indifferent glance ofthose whose ties with life are loosening. But the mother, in theruthless unbearableness of her pain, wanted something done, anything. An Irishman in the company, who had served six months as a helper in aNew York hospital, had told her he could amputate the leg, as he hadseen the operation performed. Now she clamored for a doctor--a realdoctor--to do it. 

He tried to persuade her of its uselessness, covering the leg in whichgangrene was far advanced, and telling her death was at hand. But herdespair insisted on action, her own suffering made her remorseless. The clamor of their arguing voices surrounded the moribund figure lyingmotionless with listless eyes as though already half initiated into newand profound mysteries. Once, his mother's voice rising strident, heasked her to let him rest in peace, he had suffered enough. 

Unable to endure the scene Susan left them and joined a woman whom shefound sewing in the shade of a wagon. The woman seemed unmoved, chatting as she stitched on the happenings of the journey and theaccident that had caused the delay. Here presently David joined them, his face pallid, his lips loose and quivering. Nothing could be donewith the mother. She had insisted on the operation, and the Irishmanhad undertaken it. The doctor and Courant would stay by them; Courantwas to hold the leg. He, David, couldn't stand it. It was like anexecution--barbarous--with a hunting knife and a saw. 

In a half hour Courant came walking round the back of the wagon andthrew himself on the ground beside them. The leg had been amputatedand the boy was dying. Intense silence fell on the camp, only thelaughter and voices of the children rising clear on the thin air. Thena wail arose, a penetrating, fearful cry, Rachel mourning for herchild. Courant raised his head and said with an unemotional air ofrelief, "he's dead. " The Mormon woman dropped her sewing, gave a lowexclamation, and sat listening with bitten lip. Susan leaned againstthe wagon wheel full of horror and feeling sick, her eyes on David, who, drawing up his knees, pressed his forehead on them. He restedthus, his face hidden, while the keening of the mother, the cries of ananimal in pain, fell through the hot brightness of the morning like thedropping of agonized tears down blooming cheeks. 

When they ceased and the quiet had resettled, the Mormon woman rose andput away her sewing. 

"I don't seem to have no more ambition to work, " she said and walkedaway. 

"She's another of his wives, " said Courant. 

"She and the woman whose son is dead, wives of the same man?"

He nodded. 

"And there's a younger one, about sixteen. She was up there helpingwith water and rags--a strong, nervy girl. She had whisky all ready ina tin cup to give to the mother. When she saw it was all up with himshe went round collecting stones to cover the grave with and keep thewolves off. "

"Before he was dead?"

"Yes. They've got to move on at once. They can't lose any more time. When we were arguing with that half-crazy woman, I could see the girlpicking up the stones and wiping off her tears with her apron. "

"What dreadful people, " she breathed. 

"Dreadful? What's dreadful in having some sense? Too bad about theboy. He set his teeth and didn't make a sound when that fool of anIrishman was sawing at him as if he was a log. I never saw such grit. If they've got many like him they'll be a great people some day. "

David gave a gasping moan, his arms relaxed, and he fell limplybackward on the ground. They sprang toward him and Susan seeing hispeaked white face, the eyes half open, thought he was dead, and droppedbeside him, a crouched and staring shape of terror. 

"What is it? What's the matter?" she cried, raising wild eyes toCourant. 

"Nothing at all, " said that unmoved person, squatting down on his heelsand thrusting his hand inside David's shirt. "Only a faint. Why, where's your nerve? You're nearly as white as he is. "

His eyes were full of curiosity as he looked across the outstretchedfigure at her frightened face. 

"I--I--thought for a moment he was dead, " she faltered. 

"And so you were going to follow his example and die on his body?" Hegot up. "Stay here and I'll go and get some water. " As he turned awayhe paused and, looking back, said, "Why didn't you do the fainting?That's more your business than his, " gave a sardonic grin and walkedoff. 

Susan raised the unconscious head and held it to her bosom. Alone, with no eye looking, she pressed her lips on his forehead. Courant'scallousness roused a fierce, perverse tenderness in her. He mightsneer at David's lack of force, but she understood. She crooned overhim, moved his hair back with caressing fingers, pressing him againstherself as if the strength of her hold would assure her of the love shedid not feel and wanted to believe in. Her arms were close round him, his head on her shoulder when Courant came back with a dipper of water. 

"Get away, " he said, standing over them. "I don't want to wet you. "

But she curled round her lover, her body like a protecting shieldbetween him and danger. 

"Leave go of him, " said Courant impatiently. "Do you think I'm goingto hurt him with a cup full of water?"

"Let me alone, " she answered sullenly. "He'll be all right in aminute. "

"You can be any kind of a fool you like, but you can't make me one. Come, move. " He set the dipper on the ground. 

He leaned gently over her and grasped her wrists. The power of hisgrip amazed her; she was like a mouse in the paws of a lion. Her punystrength matched against his was conquered in a moment of futileresistance. 

"Don't be a fool, " he said softly in her ear. "Don't act like a sillybaby, " and the iron hands unclasped her arms and drew her back tillDavid's head slid from her knees to the ground. 

"There! We're all right now. " He let her go, snatched up the dipperand sent a splash of water into David's face. 

"Poor David, " he said. "This'll spoil his good looks. "

"Stop, " she almost screamed. "I'd rather have him lie in a faint foran hour than have you speak so about him. "

Without noticing her, he threw another jet of water and David stirred, drew a deep breath and opened his eyes. They touched the sky, thewagon, the nearby sage, and then Susan's face. There they rested, recognition slowly suffusing them. 

"What happened?" he said in a husky voice. 

"Fainted, that was all, " said Courant. 

David closed his eyes. 

"Oh, yes, I remember now. "

Susan bent over him. 

"You frightened me so!"

"I'm sorry, Missy, but it made me sick--the leg and those awful cries. "

Courant emptied the dipper on the ground. 

"I'll see if they've got any whisky. You'll have to get your grit up, David, for the rest of the trail, " and he left them. 

A half hour later the cry of "Roll out" sounded, and the Mormon campbroke. The rattling of chains and ox yokes, and the cursing of menruptured the stillness that had gathered round the moment of death. Life was a matter of more immediate importance. Tents were struck, thepots and pans thrown into the wagons, the children collected, the stockdriven in. With ponderous strain and movement the great train formedand took the road. As it drew away the circle of its bivouac showed intrampled sage and grass bitten to the roots. In the clearing where theboy had lain was the earth of a new-made grave, a piece of wood thrustin at the head, the mound covered with stones gathered by the elder'syoung wife. The mountain tragedy was over. 

By the fire that evening Zavier employed himself scraping the dust froma buffalo skull. He wiped the frontal bone clean and white, and whenasked why he was expending so much care on a useless relic, shruggedhis shoulders and laughed. Then he explained with a jerk of his headin the direction of the vanished Mormons that they used buffalo skullsto write their letters on. In the great emigration of the year beforetheir route was marked by the skulls set up in prominent places andbearing messages for the trains behind. 

"And are you going to write a letter on that one?" Susan asked. 

"No; I do not write English good, and French very bad. But maybe someone else will use it, " and he laughed boyishly and laid the skull bythe fire. 

In the depth of the night Susan was wakened by a hand on her shoulderthat shook her from a dreamless sleep. She started up with a cry andfelt another hand, small and cold on her mouth, and heard a whisperingvoice at her ear, "Hush. Don't make a sound. It's Lucy. "

She gripped at the figure, felt the clasp of trembling arms, and acheek chill with the night cold, against her own. 

"Lucy, " she gasped, "what's the matter?"

"I want to speak to you. Be quiet. "

"Has anything happened? Is some one sick?"

"No. It's not that. I'm going. "

"Going? Going where--" She was not yet fully awake, filaments ofsleep clouded her clearness. 

"Into the mountains with Zavier. "

The filaments were brushed away in a rough sweep. But her brainrefused to accept the message. In the dark, she clutched at the bodyagainst her, felt the beat of pulses distinct through the clothing, thetrembling of the hands going down through her flesh and muscle to herheart. 

"What do you mean? Where?"

"I don't know, into the mountains somewhere. "

"With Zavier? Why?"

"Because he wants me to and I must. "

"But-- Oh, Lucy--" she struggled from the blanket to her knees--"Oh, Lucy!"

Her voice rose high and the hand felt for her mouth. She caught it andheld it off, her head bent back straining her eyes for the face aboveher. 

"Running away with him?"

"Yes. I couldn't go without telling you. I had to say good-by. "

"Going with him forever, not coming back?"

"No, never!"

"But where--where to?"

"I don't know. In the mountains somewhere. There's a trail here heknows. It branches off to the north and goes up to the places wherethey get the skins. "

"I don't believe you. "

"It's true. The horses are waiting outside. "

"Lucy, you've gone crazy. Don't--don't"-- She clung to the hand sheheld, grasped upward at the arm. Both were cold and resistant. Herpleading struck back from the hardness of the mind made up, theirrevocable resolution. 

"But he's not your husband. "

Even at this moment, keyed to an act of lawlessness that in thesheltered past would have been as impossible as murder, the greattradition held fast. Lucy's answer came with a sudden flare of shockedrepudiation:

"He will be. There are priests and missionaries up there among theIndians. The first one we meet will marry us. It's all right. Heloves me and he's promised. "

Nothing of her wild courage came to the other girl, no echo of the callof life and passion. It was a dark and dreadful fate, and Susanstrained her closer as if to hold her back from it. 

"It's been fixed for two days. We had to wait till we got here andcrossed the trail. We're going right into the mountains and it'ssummer, and there's plenty of game. "

"The Indians?"

"We'll be in the Crow's country, and Zavier's mother was a Crow. "

The words proved the completeness of her estrangement--the acceptanceof the alien race as no longer alien. 

"Oh, Lucy, don't, don't. Wait till we get to Fort Bridger and marryhim there. Make him come to California with us. Don't do such anawful thing--run away into the mountains with a half-breed. "

"I don't care what he is. There's no one else for me but him. He's myman and I'll go with him wherever he wants to take me. "

"Wait and tell Bella. "

"She wouldn't let me go. There'd be nothing but fighting and misery. When you've made up your mind to do a thing you've got to do ityourself, not go by what other people think. "

There was a silence and they hung upon each other. Then Lucy put herface against her friend's and kissed her. 

"Good-by, " she whispered, loosening her arms. 

"I can't let you go. I won't. It'll kill you. "

"I must. He's waiting. "

She struggled from the embrace, pulling away the clasping handsnoiselessly, but with purpose. There was something of coldness, of thesemblance but not the soul of affection, in the determined softnesswith which she sought release. She stole to the tent flap and peeredout. Her thoughts were already outside, flown to the shape hiding inthe shadow like birds darting from a cage. She did not turn at Susan'sstrangled whisper. 

"We'll never see you again, Bella, nor I, nor the children. "

"Perhaps, some day, in California. He's there. I must go. "

"Lucy!" She leaped after her. In the tent opening they once moreclasped each other. 

"I can't let you go, " Susan moaned. 

But Lucy's kiss had not the fervor of hers. The strength of her beinghad gone to her lover. Friendship, home, family, all other claims hungloose about her, the broken trappings of her maidenhood. The greatprimal tie had claimed her. 

A black figure against the pallor of the night, she turned for a lastword. 

"If you tell them and they come after us, Zavier'll fight them. He'llfight if he kills them. They'll know to-morrow. Good-by, " and she wasgone, a noiseless shadow, flitting toward the denser group of shadowwhere her heart was. 

Susan, crouched at the tent flap, saw her melt into the waitingblackness, and then heard the muffled hoof beats growing thinner andfainter as the silence absorbed them. 

She sat thus till the dawn came. Once or twice she started up to givethe alarm, but fell back. Under the tumult of her thoughts aconviction lay that Lucy must follow her own wild way. In the welterof confused emotion it was all that was clear. It may have come fromthat sense of Lucy's detachment, that consciousness of cords andfeelers stretching out to a new life which commanded and held closerthan the old had ever done. All she knew was that Lucy was obeyingsome instinct that was law to her, that was true for her to obey. Ifthey caught her and brought her back it would twist her life into abroken form. Was it love? Was that what had drawn her over allobstacles, away from the established joys and comforts, drawn her likea magnet to such a desperate course? With wide eyes the girl saw thewhiteness of the dawn, and sat gripped in her resolution of silence, fearful at the thought of what that mighty force must be. 

CHAPTER V

The cross, drowsy bustle of the camp's uprising was suddenly broken bya piercing cry. It came from Bella, who, standing by the mess chest, was revealed to her astonished companions with a buffalo skull in herhands, uttering as dolorous sounds as ever were emitted by that animalin the agony of its death throes. Her words were unintelligible, buton taking the skull from her the cause of her disturbance was madeknown. Upon the frontal bone were a few words scrawled inpencil--Lucy's farewell. 

It came upon them like a thunderbolt, and they took it in differentways--amazed silence, curses, angry questionings. The skull passedfrom hand to hand till Courant dropped it and kicked it to one sidewhere Leff went after it, lifted it by the horns and stood spelling outthe words with a grin. The children, at first rejoicing in the newexcitement, soon recognized the note of dole, lifted up their voicesand filled the air with cries for Lucy upon whom, in times attribulation, they had come to look. Glen broke into savage anger, called down curses on his sister-in-law, applying to her certain termsof a scriptural simplicity till the doctor asked him to go afield andvent his passion in the seclusion of the sage. Bella, sunk in heavy, uncorseted despair upon the mess chest, gripped her children to herknees as though an army of ravishers menaced the house of McMurdo. Herwords flowed with her tears, both together in a choked and bitter floodof wrath, sorrow, and self-pity. She bewailed Lucy, not only as avanished relative but as a necessary member of the McMurdo escort. Anddoubts of Zavier's lawful intentions shook her from the abandon of hergrief, to furious invective against the red man of all places andtribes whereso'er he be. 

"The dirty French-Indian, " she wailed, "to take her off where he knowsfast enough there's no way of marrying her. "

Courant tried to console her by telling her there was a good chance ofthe fugitives meeting a Catholic missionary, but that, instead ofassuaging, intensified her woe. 

"A Catholic!" she cried, raising a drenched face from her apron. "Andain't that just as bad? My parents and hers were decent Presbyterians. Does their daughter have to stand up before a priest? Why don't yousay a Mormon elder at once?"

The McMurdos' condition of grief and rage was so violent, that thedoctor suggested following the runaways. Bella rose in glad assent tothis. Catch Lucy and bring her back! She was cheered at the thoughtand shouted it to Glen, who had gone off in a sulky passion and stoodby his oxen swearing to himself and kicking their hoofs. The mentalked it over. They could lay off for a day and Courant, who knew thetrails, could lead the search party. He was much against it, and DaddyJohn was with him. Too much time had been lost. Zavier was anexperienced mountain man and his horses were good. Besides, what wasthe use of bringing them back? They'd chosen each other, they'd takentheir own course. It wasn't such a bad lookout for Lucy. Zavier was afirst-rate fellow and he'd treat her well. What was the sense ofinterfering? Bella was furious, and shouted, "The sense is to get her back here and keep her where it's civilized, since she don't seem to know enough to keep there herself. "

Daddy John, who had been listening, flashed out:

"It don't seem to me so d--d civilized to half kill her with work. "

Then Bella wept and Glen swore, and the men had pulled up the picketstakes, cinched their girths tight and started off in Indian filetoward the distant spurs of the hills. 

Susan had said little. If it did not violate her conscience to keepsilent, it did to pretend a surprise that was not hers. She sat at hertent door most of the day watching for the return of the search party. She was getting supper when she looked up and saw them, gave a lowexclamation, and ran to the outskirts of the camp. Here she stoodwatching, heard Daddy John lounge up behind her and, turning, caughthis hand. 

"Is she there?" she said in an eager whisper. 

"I can't see her. "

They both scrutinized the figures, small as toy horsemen, loping overthe leathern distance. 

"Ain't there only four?" he said. "You can see better'n I. "

"Yes, " she cried. "Four. I can count them. She isn't there. Oh, I'mglad!"

The old man looked surprised:

"Glad! Why?"

"I don't know. Oh, don't tell, Daddy John, but I wanted her to getaway. I don't know why, I suppose it's very wicked. But--but--itseemed so--so--as if she was a slave--so unfair to drag her away fromher own life and make her lead some one else's. "

Lucy gone, lost as by shipwreck in the gulfs and windings of themountains, was a fact that had to be accepted. The train moved on, foron the Emigrant Trail there was no leisure for fruitless repining. Only immediate happenings could fill the minds of wanderers strugglingacross the world, their energies matched against its primal forces. 

The way was growing harder, the animals less vigorous, and the strainof the journey beginning to tell. Tempers that had been easy in thelong, bright days on the Platte now were showing sharp edges. Leff hadbecome surly, Glen quarrelsome. One evening Susan saw him strike Bob ablow so savage that the child fell screaming in pain and terror. Bellarushed to her first born, gathered him in her arms and turned acrimsoned face of battle on her spouse. For a moment the storm wasfurious, and Susan was afraid that the blow would be repeated on themother. She tried to pacify the enraged woman, and David and thedoctor coaxed Glen away. The child had struck against an edge of stoneand was bleeding, and after supper the father rocked him to sleepcrooning over him in remorseful tenderness. But the incident left anugly impression. 

They were passing up the Sweetwater, a mountain stream of busyimportance with a current that was snow-cold and snow-pure. It woundits hurrying way between rock walls, and then relaxed in lazy coilsthrough meadows where the grass was thick and juicy and the air musicalwith the cool sound of water. These were the pleasant places. Wherethe rocks crowded close about the stream the road left it and soughtthe plain again, splinding away into the arid desolation. The wheelsground over myriads of crickets that caked in the loose soil. Therewas nothing to break the eye-sweep but the cones of rusted buttes, thenearer ones showing every crease and shadow thread, the fartherfloating detached in the faint, opal shimmer of the mirage. 

One afternoon, in a deep-grassed meadow they came upon an encampedtrain outflung on the stream bank in wearied disarray. It was fromOhio, bound for California, and Glen and Bella decided to join it. This was what the doctor's party had been hoping for, as the slow paceof the McMurdo oxen held them back. Bella was well and the doctorcould conscientiously leave her. It was time to part. 

Early in the morning the two trains rolled out under a heavy drizzle. Rain fell within the wagons even as it did without, Susan weeping amongthe sacks behind Daddy John and Bella with her children whimperingagainst her sides, stopping in her knitting to wipe away her tears withthe long strip of stocking leg. They were to meet again inCalifornia--that everyone said. But California looked a long way off, and now. --For some reason or other it did not gleam so magically brightat the limit of their vision. Their minds had grown tired of dwellingon it and sank down wearied to each day's hard setting. 

By midday the doctor's wagons had left the others far behind. The rainfell ceaselessly, a cold and penetrating flood. The crowding crownsand crests about them loomed through the blur, pale and slowlywhitening with falling snow. Beyond, the greater masses veiledthemselves in cloud. The road skirted the river, creeping through aseries of gorges with black walls down which the moisture spread in aripple-edged, glassy glaze. Twice masses of fallen rock blocked theway, and the horses had to be unhitched and the wagons dragged into thestream bed. It was heavy work, and when they camped, ferociouslyhungry, no fire could be kindled, and there was nothing for it but toeat the hard-tack damp and bacon raw. Leff cursed and threw his pieceaway. He had been unusually morose and ill-humored for the last week, and once, when obliged to do sentry duty on a wet night, had flown intoa passion and threatened to leave them. No one would have been sorry. Under the stress of mountain faring, the farm boy was not developingwell. 

In the afternoon the rain increased to a deluge. The steady beat onthe wagon hoods filled the interior with a hollow drumming vibration. Against the dimmed perspective the flanks of the horses undulated undera sleek coating of moisture. Back of the train, the horsemen rode, heads lowered against the vicious slant, shadowy forms like drooping, dispirited ghosts. The road wound into a gorge where the walls rosestraight, the black and silver of the river curbed between them inglossy outspreadings and crisp, bubbling flashes. The place was fullof echoes, held there and buffeted from wall to wall as if flying backand forth in a distracted effort to escape. 

David was driving in the lead, Susan under cover beside him. Themorning's work had exhausted him and he felt ill, so she had promisedto stay with him. She sat close at his back, a blanket drawn over herknees against the intruding wet, peering out at the darkling cleft. The wagon, creaking like a ship at sea, threw her this way and that. Once, as she struck against him he heard her low laugh at his ear. 

"It's like a little earthquake, " she said, steadying herself with agrab at his coat. 

"There must have been a big earthquake here once, " he answered. "Lookat the rocks. They've been split as if a great force came up fromunderneath and burst them open. "

She craned her head forward to see and he looked back at her. Her facewas close to his shoulder, glowing with the dampness. It shone againstthe shadowed interior rosily fresh as a child's. Her eyes, clear blackand white, were the one sharp note in its downy softness. He could seethe clean upspringing of her dark lashes, the little whisps of hairagainst her temple and ear. He could not look away from her. Thegrinding and slipping of the horses' hoofs did not reach his senses, held captive in a passionate observation. 

"You don't curl your hair any more?" he said, and the intimacy of thispersonal query added to his entrancement. 

She glanced quickly at him and broke into shamefaced laughter. Asudden lurch threw her against him and she clutched his arm. 

"Oh, David, " she said, gurgling at the memory. "Did _you_ know that?I curled it for three nights on bits of paper that I tore out of theback of father's diary. And now I don't care what it looks like. Seehow I've changed!"

And she leaned against him, holding the arm and laughing at her pastfrivolity. His eyes slid back to the horses, but he did not see them. With a slight, listening smile he gave himself up to the intoxicationof the moment, feeling the pressure of her body soft against his arm. 

The reins which hung loose suddenly jerked through his fingers and themare fell crashing to her knees. She was down before he knew it, headforward, and then with a quivering subsidence, prone in a tangle oftorn harness. He urged her up with a jerked rein, she made astruggling effort, but fell back, and a groan, singularly human in itspain, burst from her. The wagon behind pounded almost on them, themules crowding against each other. Daddy John's voice rising in acracked hail. Courant and Leff came up from the rear, splashingthrough the river. 

"What's happened?" said the former. 

"It's Bess, " said David, his face pallid with contrition. "I hope toGod she's not hurt. Up, Bess, there! Up on your feet, old girl!"

At her master's voice the docile brute made a second attempt to rise, but again sank down, her sides panting, her head strained up. 

Leff leaped off his horse. 

"Damn her, I'll make her get up, " he said, and gave her a violent kickon the ribs. The mare rolled an agonized eye upon him, and with asudden burst of fury he rained kick after kick on her face. 

David gave a strange sound, a pinched, thin cry, as if wrung from himby unbearable suffering, and leaped over the wheel. He struck Leff onthe chest, a blow so savage and unexpected that it sent him staggeringback into the stream, where, his feet slipping among the stones, hefell sprawling. 

"Do that again and I'll kill you, " David cried, and moving to the horsestood over it with legs spread and fists clinched for battle. 

Leff scrambled to his knees, his face ominous, and Courant, who hadbeen looking at the mare, apparently indifferent to the quarrel, nowslipped to the ground. 

"Let that hound alone, " he said. "I'm afraid it's all up with Bess. "

David turned and knelt beside her, touching her with hands so tremuloushe could hardly direct them. His breath came in gasps, he was shakenand blinded with passion, high-pitched and nerve-wracking as a woman's. 

Leff rose, volleying curses. 

"Here you, " Courant shifted a hard eye on him, "get out. Get on yourhorse and go, " then turning to Bess, "Damn bad luck if we got to loseher. "

Leff stood irresolute, his curses dying away in smothered mutterings. His skin was gray, a trickle of blood ran down from a cut on his neck, his face showed an animal ferocity, dark and lowering as the front ofan angry bull. With a slow lift of his head he looked at Susan, whowas still in the wagon. She met the glance stonily with eyes in whichher dislike had suddenly crystallized into open abhorrence. She gave ajerk of her head toward his horse, a movement of contemptuous command, and obeying it he mounted and rode away. 

She joined the two men, who were examining Bess, now stretchedmotionless and uttering pitiful sounds. David had the head, bruisedand torn by Leff's kicks, on his knees, while Courant with expert handssearched for her hurt. It was not hard to find. The left foreleg hadbeen broken at the knee, splinters of bone penetrating the skin. Therewas nothing to do with Bess but shoot her, and Courant went back forhis pistols, while Daddy John and the doctor came up to listen withlong faces. It was the first serious loss of the trip. 

Later in the day the rain stopped and the clouds that had sagged lowwith its weight, began to dissolve into vaporous lightness, floatairily and disperse. The train debouched from the gorge into one ofthe circular meadows and here found Leff lying on a high spot on theground, his horse cropping the grass near him. He made no remark, andas they came to a halt and began the work of camping, he continued tolie without moving or speaking, his eyes fixed on the mountains. 

These slowly unveiled themselves, showing in patches of brilliant colorthrough rents in the mist which drew off lingeringly, leaving filamentscaught delicately in the heights. The sky broke blue behind them, andclarified by the rain, the shadows brimmed high in the clefts. The lowsun shot its beams across the meadow, leaving it untouched, andglittering on the remote, immaculate summits. 

In exhaustion the camp lay resting, tents unpitched, the animals nosingover the grass. David and Daddy John slept a dead sleep rolled inblankets on the teeming ground. Courant built a fire, called Susan toit, and bade her dry her wet skirts. He lay near it, not noticing her, his glance ranging the distance. The line of whitened peaks began totake on a golden glaze, and the shadows in the hollow mounted till thecamp seemed to be at the bottom of a lake in which a tide of some gray, transparent essence was rising. 

"That's where Lucy's gone, " he said suddenly without moving his head. 

Susan's eyes followed his. 

"Poor Lucy!" she sighed. 

"Why is she poor?"

"Why?" indignantly. "What a question!"

"But why do you call her poor? Is it because she has no money?"

"Of course not. Who was thinking of money? I meant she wasunfortunate to run away to such a life with a half-breed. "

"She's gone out into the mountains with her lover. I don't call thatunfortunate, and I'll bet you she doesn't. She was brave enough totake her life when it came. She was a gallant girl, that Lucy. "

"I suppose that's what you'd think. "

And in scorn of more words she gave her attention to her skirt, spreading its sodden folds to the heat. Courant clasped his handsbehind his head and gazed ruminantly before him. 

"Do you know how she'll live, that 'poor Lucy'?"

"Like a squaw. "

He was unshaken by her contempt, did not seem to notice it. 

"They'll go by ways that wind deep into the mountains. It's wonderfulthere, peaks and peaks and peaks, and down the gorges and up over thepasses, the trails go that only the trappers and the Indians know. They'll pass lakes as smooth as glass and green as this hollow we'rein. You never saw such lakes, everything's reflected in them like amirror. And after a while they'll come to the beaver streams andZavier'll set his traps. At night they'll sleep under the stars, greatbig stars. Did you ever see the stars at night through the branches ofthe pine trees? They look like lanterns. It'll seem to be silent, butthe night will be full of noises, the sounds that come in those wildplaces, a wolf howling in the distance, the little secret bubbling ofthe spring, and the wind in the pine trees. That's a sad sound, as ifit was coming through a dream. "

The girl stirred and forgot her skirt. The solemn beauty that hiswords conjured up called her from her petty irritation. She looked atthe mountains, her face full of a wistful disquiet. 

"And it'll seem as if there was no one else but them in the world. Twolovers and no one else, between the sunrise and the sunset. Therewon't be anybody else to matter, or to look for, or to think about. Just those two alone, all day by the river where the traps are set andat night under the blanket in the dark of the trees. "

Susan said nothing. For some inexplicable reason her spirits sank andshe felt a bleak loneliness. A sense of insignificance fell heavilyupon her, bearing down her high sufficiency, making her feel that shewas a purposeless spectator on the outside of life. She struggledagainst it, struggled back toward cheer and self-assertion, and in hereffort to get back, found herself seeking news of less picturesquemoments in Lucy's lot. 

"But the winter, " she said in a small voice like a pleading child's, "the winter won't be like that?"

"When the winter comes Zavier'll build a hut. He'll make it out ofsmall trees, long and thin, bent round with their tops stuck in theground, and he'll thatch it with skins, and spread buffalo robes on thefloor of it. There'll be a hole for the smoke to get out, and near thedoor'll be his graining block and stretching frame to cure his skins. On a tree nearby he'll hang his traps, and there'll be a brace ofelkhorns fastened to another tree that they'll use for a rack to hangthe meat and maybe their clothes on. They'll have some coffee andsugar and salt. That's all they'll need in the way of eatables, forhe'll shoot all the game they want, _les aliments du pays_, as the furmen call it. It'll be cold, and maybe for months they'll see no one. But what will it matter? They'll have each other, snug and warm wayoff there in the heart of the mountains, with the big peaks lookingdown at them. Isn't that a good life for a man and a woman?"

She did not answer, but sat as if contemplating the picture with fixed, far-seeing gaze. He raised himself on his elbow and looked at her. 

"Could you do that, little lady?" he said. 

"No, " she answered, beating down rebellious inner whisperings. 

"Wouldn't you follow David that way?"

"David wouldn't ask it. No civilized man would. "

"No, David wouldn't, " he said quietly. 

She glanced quickly at him. Did she hear the note of mockery which shesensed whenever he alluded to her lover? She was ready at once to takeup arms for David, but the face opposite was devoid of any expressionsave an intent, expectant interest. She dropped her eyes to her dress, perturbed by the closeness of her escape from a foolish exhibitionwhich would have made her ridiculous. She always felt with Courantthat she would be swept aside as a trivial thing if she lost herdignity. He watched her and she grew nervous, plucking at her skirtwith an uncertain hand. 

"I wonder if you could?" he said after a pause. 

"Of course not, " she snapped. 

"Aren't you enough of a woman?"

"I'm not enough of a fool. "

"Aren't all women in love fools--anyway for a while?"

She made no answer, and presently he said, his voice lowered:

"Not enough of a woman to know how to love a man. Doesn't even for amoment understand it. It's 'poor Susan. '"

Fury seized her, for she had not guessed where he was leading her, andnow saw herself not only shorn of her dignity but shorn of her woman'sprerogative of being able to experience a mad and unreasonable passion. 

"You're a liar, " she burst out before she knew what words were coming. 

"Then you think you could?" he asked without the slightest show ofsurprise at her violence, apparently only curious. 

"Don't I?" she cried, ready to proclaim that she would follow David todestruction and death. 

"I don't know, " he answered. "I've been wondering. "

"What business have you got to wonder about me?"

"None--but, " he leaned toward her, "you can't stop me doing that, little lady; that's one of the things you _can't_ control. "

For a moment they eyed each other, glance held glance in a smolderingchallenge. The quizzical patronage had gone from his, the gleam of asubdued defiance taken its place. Hers was defiant too, but it wasopenly so, a surface thing that she had raised like a defense in hasteand tremor to hide weakness. 

David moved in his blanket, yawned and threw out a languid hand. Sheleaped to her feet and ran to him. 

"David, are you better?" she cried, kneeling beside him. "Are youbetter, dear?"

He opened his eyes, blinking, saw the beloved face, and smiled. 

"All right, " he said sleepily. "I was only tired. "

She lifted one of the limp hands and pressed it to her cheek. 

"I've been so worried about you, " she purred. "I couldn't put my mindon anything else. I haven't known what I was saying, I've been soworried. "

CHAPTER VI

South Pass, that had been pictured in their thoughts as a cleft betweensnow-crusted summits, was a wide, gentle incline with low hills sweepingup on either side. From here the waters ran westward, following the sun. Pacific Spring seeped into the ground in an oasis of green whencewhispering threads felt their way into the tawny silence and subdued byits weight lost heart and sank into the unrecording earth. 

Here they found the New York Company and a Mormon train filling up theirwater casks and growing neighborly in talk of Sublette's cut off and theroute by the Big and Little Sandy. A man was a man even if he was aMormon, and in a country so intent on its own destiny, so rapt in thecalm of contemplation, he took his place as a human unit on whom hiscreed hung like an unnoticed tag. 

They filled their casks, visited in the two camps, and then moved on. Plain opened out of plain in endless rotation, rings of sun-scorchedearth brushed up about the horizon in a low ridge like the raised rim ona plate. In the distance the thin skein of a water course drew anintricate pattern that made them think of the thread of slime left by awandering snail. In depressions where the soil was webbed with cracks, alivid scurf broke out as if the face of the earth were scarred with thetraces of inextinguishable foulness. An even subdual of tint marked itall. White had been mixed on the palette whence the colors were drawn. The sky was opaque with it; it had thickened the red-browns and yellowsto ocher and pale shades of putty. Nothing moved and there were nosounds, only the wheeling sun changed the course of the shadows. In themorning they slanted from the hills behind, eagerly stretching after thetrain, straining to overtake and hold it, a living plaything in thisabandoned land. At midday a blot of black lay at the root of every sagebrush. At evening each filigreed ridge, each solitary cone risingdetached in the sealike circle of its loneliness, showed a slant ofamethyst at its base, growing longer and finer, tapering prodigiously, and turning purple as the earth turned orange. 

There was little speech in the moving caravan. With each day their wordsgrew fewer, their laughter and light talk dwindled. Gradual changes hadcrept into the spirit of the party. Accumulations of habit and customthat had collected upon them in the dense life of towns were droppingaway. As the surface refinements of language were dying, so their faceshad lost a certain facile play of expression. Delicate nuances offeeling no longer showed, for they no longer existed. Smiles had grownrarer, and harder characteristics were molding their features intosterner lines. The acquired deceptiveness of the world of men wasleaving them. Ugly things that they once would have hidden cropped outunchecked by pride or fear of censure. They did not care. There was nostandard, there was no public opinion. Life was resolving itself into afew great needs that drove out all lesser and more delicate desires. Beings of a ruder make were usurping their bodies. The primitive man inthem was rising to meet the primitive world. 

In the young girl the process of elimination was as rapid if not asradical as in the case of the men. She was unconsciously ridding herselfof all that hampered and made her unfit. From the soft feminine tissue, intricacies of mood and fancy were being obliterated. Rudimentaryinstincts were developing, positive and barbaric as a child's. In theold days she had been dainty about her food. Now she cooked it inblackened pans and ate with the hunger of the men. Sleep, that once hadbeen an irksome and unwelcome break between the pleasures of well-ordereddays, was a craving that she satisfied, unwashed, often half-clad. InRochester she had spent thought and time upon her looks, had stood beforeher mirror matching ribbons to her complexion, wound and curled her hairin becoming ways. Now her hands, hardened and callous as a boy's, werecoarse-skinned with broken nails, sometimes dirty, and her hair hungrough from the confining teeth of a comb and a few bent pins. When inflashes of retrospect she saw her old self, this pampered self of crispfresh frocks and thoughts moving demurely in the narrow circle of herexperience, it did not seem as if it could be the same Susan Gillespie. 

All that made up the little parcel of her personality seemed gone. Inthose days she had liked this and wanted that and forgotten and wantedsomething else. Rainy weather had sent its ashen sheen over her spirit, and her gladness had risen to meet the sun. She remembered the suddensweeps of depression that had clouded her horizon when she had drooped inan unintelligible and not entirely disagreeable melancholy, and thecontrasting bursts of gayety when she laughed at anything and lovedeverybody. Hours of flitting fancies flying this way and that, hoveringover chance incidents that were big by contrast with the surroundinguneventfulness, the idleness of dropped hands and dreaming eyes, thecharmed peerings into the future--all were gone. Life had seized her ina mighty grip, shaken her free of it all, and set her down where she feltonly a few imperious sensations, hunger, fatigue, fear of danger, love ofher father, and-- She pulled her thoughts to obedience with a sharp jerkand added--love of David and hatred of Courant. 

These two latter facts stood out sentinel-wise in the foreground. In thelong hours on horseback she went over them like a lesson she was tryingto learn. She reviewed David's good points, dwelt on them, held them upfor her admiration, and told herself no girl had ever had a finer or moregallant lover. She was convinced of it and was quite ready to convinceanybody who denied it. Only when her mental vision--pressed on by someinward urge of obscure self-distrust--carried her forward to that futurewith David in the cabin in California, something in her shrank andfailed. Her thought leaped back as from an abhorrent contact, and herbody, caught by some mysterious internal qualm, felt limp and faintlysickened. 

She dwelt even more persistently on Courant's hatefulness, impressed uponherself his faults. He was hard and she had seen him brutal, a manwithout feeling, as he had shown when the Mormon boy died, a harsh andremorseless leader urging them on, grudging them even their seventh dayrest, deaf to their protests, lashing them forward with contempt of theirweakness. This was above and apart from his manner to her. That shetried to feel was a small, personal matter, but, nevertheless, it stung, did not cease to sting, and left an unhealed sore to rankle in her pride. He did not care to hide that he held her cheaply, as a useless futilething. Once she had heard him say to Daddy John, "It's the women in thetrain that make the trouble. They're always in the way. " And she wasthe only woman. She would like to see him conquered, beaten, some of hisheady confidence stricken out of him, and when he was humbled have stoodby and smiled at his humiliation. 

So she passed over the empty land under the empty sky, a particle ofmatter carrying its problem with it. 

It was late afternoon when they encamped by the Big Sandy. The march hadbeen distressful, bitter in their mouths with the clinging clouds ofpowdered alkali, their heads bowed under the glaring ball of the sun. All day the circling rim of sky line had weaved up and down, undulatingin the uncertainty of the mirage, the sage had blotted into indistinctseas that swam before their strained vision. When the river cleft showedin black tracings across the distance, they stiffened and took heart, coolness and water were ahead. It was all they had hope or desire forjust then. At the edge of the clay bluff, they dipped and poured down acorrugated gully, the dust sizzling beneath the braked wheels, theanimals, the smell of water in their nostrils, past control. The impetusof the descent carried them into the chill, purling current. Man andbeast plunged in, laved in it, drank it, and then lay by it resting, spent and inert. 

They camped where a grove of alders twinkled in answer to the swift, telegraphic flashes of the stream. Under these the doctor pitched histents, the hammering of the pegs driving through the sounds of man'soccupation into the quietude that lapped them like sleeping tides. Theothers hung about the center of things where wagons and mess chests, pansand fires, made the nucleus of the human habitation. 

Susan, sitting on a box, with a treasure of dead branches at her feet, waited yet a space before setting them in the fire form. She was sunk inthe apathy of the body surrendered to restoring processes. The men'svoices entered the channels of her ears and got no farther. Her visionacknowledged the figure of Leff nearby sewing up a rent in his coat, buther brain refused to accept the impression. Her eye held him in a heavyvacuity, watched with a trancelike fixity his careful stitches and thearmlong stretch of the drawn thread. 

Had she shifted it a fraction, it would have encountered David squattingon the bank washing himself. His long back, the red shirt drawn tautacross its bowed outline, showed the course of his spine in small regularexcrescences. The water that he raised in his hands and rinsed over hisface and neck made a pleasant, clean sound, that her ear noted with theother sounds. Somewhere behind her Daddy John and Courant made a noisewith skillets and picket pins and spoke a little, a sentence mutteringlydropped and monosyllabically answered. 

David turned a streaming face over his shoulder, blinking through thewater. The group he looked at was as idyllically peaceful as wayfarersmight be after the heat and burden of the day. Rest, fellowship, ahealthy simplicity of food and housing were all in the picture eithervisibly or by implication. 

"Throw me the soap, Leff, " he called, "I forgot it. "

The soap lay on the top of a meal sack, a yellow square, placed there byDavid on his way to the water. It shone between Susan and Leff, standingforth as a survival of a pampered past. Susan's eye shifted toward it, fastened on it, waiting for Leff's hand to come and bear it away. Butthe hand executed no such expected maneuver. It planted the needledeliberately, pushed it through, drew it out with its long tail ofthread. Surprise began to dispel her lethargy. Her eye left the soap, traveled at a more sprightly speed back to Leff, lit on his face with aquestioning intelligence. 

David called again. 

"Hurry up. I want to light the fire. "

Leff took another considered stitch. 

"I don't know where it is, " he answered without looking up. 

The questioning of Susan's glance became accusative. 

"It's there beside you on the meal sack, " she said. "Throw it to him. "

Leff raised his head and looked at her. His eyes were curiously pale andwide. She could see the white round the fixed pupil. 

"Do it yourself, " he answered, his tone the lowest that could reach her. "Do it or go to Hell. "

She rested without movement, her mouth falling slightly open. For themoment there was a stoppage of all feeling but amazement, which invadedher till she seemed to hold nothing else. David's voice came from a fardistance, as if she had floated away from him and it was a cord jerkingher back to her accustomed place. 

"Hurry up, " it called. "It's right there beside you. "

Leff threw down his sewing and leaped to his feet. Leaning against thebank behind him was his gun, newly cleaned and primed. 

"Get it yourself and be d--d to you!" he roared. 

The machinery of action stopped as though by the breaking of a spring. Their watches ticked off a few seconds of mind paralysis in which therewas no expectancy or motive power, all action inhibited. Sight was allthey used for those seconds. Leff spoke first, the only one among themwhose thinking process had not been snapped:

"If you keep on shouting for me to do your errands, I'll show you"--hesnatched up the gun and brought it to his shoulder with a lightningmovement--"I'll send you where you can't order me round--you and thisd--d ------ here. "

The inhibition was lifted and the three men rushed toward him. DaddyJohn struck up the gun barrel with a tent pole. The charge passed overDavid's head, spat in the water beyond, the report crackling sharp in thenarrow ravine. David staggered, the projection of smoke reaching outtoward him, his hands raised to ward it off, not knowing whether he washurt or not. 

"That's a great thing to do, " he cried, dazed, and stubbing his foot on astone stumbled to his knees. 

The two others fell on Leff. Susan saw the gun ground into the dustunder their trampling feet and Leff go down on top of it. Daddy John'stent pole battered at him, and Courant on him, a writhing body, grappledand wrung at his throat. The doctor came running from the trees, thehammer in his hand, and Susan grabbed at the descending pole, screaming:

"You're killing him. Father, stop them. They'll murder him. "

The sight of his Missy clinging to the pole brought the old man to hissenses, but it took David and the doctor to drag Courant away. For amoment they were a knot of struggling bodies, from which oaths andsobbing breaths broke. Upright he shook them off and backed toward thebank, leaving them looking at him, all expectant. He growled a fewbroken words, his face white under the tan, the whole man shaken by apassion so transforming that they forgot the supine figure and stoodalert, ready to spring upon him. He made a movement of his head towardLeff. 

"Why didn't you let me kill him?" he said huskily. 

It broke the tension. Their eyes dropped to Leff, who lay motionless andunconscious, blood on his lips, a slip of white showing under hiseyelids. The doctor dropped on his knees beside him and opened hisshirt. Daddy John gave him an investigating push with the tent pole, andDavid eyed him with an impersonal, humane concern. Only Susan's glanceremained on Courant, unfaltering as the beam of a fixed star. 

His savage excitement was on the ebb. He pulled his hunting shirt intoplace and felt along his belt for his knife, while his broad breast roselike a wave coming to its breakage then dropped as the wave drops intoits hollow. The hand he put to his throat to unfasten the band of hisshirt shook, it had difficulty in manipulating the button, and he ran histongue along his dried lips. She watched every movement, to the outwardeye like a child fascinated by an unusual and terrifying spectacle. Buther gaze carried deeper than the perturbed envelope. She looked throughto the man beneath, felt an exultation in his might, knew herself kindredwith him, fed by the same wild strain. 

His glance moved, touched the unconscious man at his feet, then liftingmet hers. Eye held eye. In each a spark leaped, ran to meet itsopposing spark and flashed into union. 

When she looked down again the group of figures was dim. Their talk camevaguely to her, like the talk of men in a dream. David was explaining. Daddy John made a grimace at him which was a caution to silence. Thedoctor had not heard and was not to hear the epithet that had beenapplied to his daughter. 

"He's sun mad, " the old man said. "Half crazy. I've seen 'em go thatway before. How'll he get through the desert I'm asking you?"

There were some contusions on the head that looked bad, the doctor said, but nothing seemed to be broken. He'd been half strangled; they'd haveto get him into the wagon. 

"Leave him at Fort Bridger, " came Courant's voice through the haze. "Leave him there to rot. "

The doctor answered in the cold tones of authority:

"We'll take him with us as we agreed in the beginning. Because hehappens not to be able to stand it, it's not for us to abandon him. It'sa physical matter--sun and hard work and irritated nerves. Take a handand help me lift him into the wagon. "

They hoisted him in and disposed him on a bed of buffalo robes spread onsacks. He groaned once or twice, then settled on the softness of theskins, gazing at them with blood-shot eyes of hate. When the doctoroffered him medicine, he struck the tin, sending its contents flying. However serious his hurts were they had evidently not mitigated theferocity of his mood. 

For the three succeeding days he remained in the wagon, stiff withbruises and refusing to speak. Daddy John was detailed to take him hismeals, and the doctor dressed his wounds and tried to find the cause ofhis murderous outburst. But Leff was obdurate. He would express noregret for his action, and would give no reason for it. Once when thequestioner asked him if he hated David, he said "Yes. " But to thesucceeding, "Why did he?" he offered no explanation, said he "didn't knowwhy. "

"Hate never came without a reason, " said the physician, curious andpuzzled. "Has David wronged you in any way?"

"What's that to you?" answered the farm boy. "I can hate him if I like, can't I?"

"Not in my train. "

"Well there are other trains where the men aren't all fools, and thewomen----"

He stopped. The doctor's eye held him with a warning gleam. 

"I don't know what's the matter with that boy, " he said afterwards in theevening conference. "I can't get at him. "

"Sun mad, " Daddy John insisted. 

Courant gave a grunt that conveyed disdain of a question of such smallimport. 

David couldn't account for it at all. 

Susan said nothing. 

At Green River the Oregon Trail broke from the parent road and slantedoff to the northwest. Here the Oregon companies mended their wagons andbraced their yokes for the long pull across the broken teeth of mountainsto Fort Hall, and from there onward to the new country of great riversand virgin forests. A large train was starting as the doctor's wagonscame down the slope. There was some talk, and a little bartering betweenthe two companies, but time was precious, and the head of the Oregoncaravan had begun to roll out when the California party were raisingtheir tents on the river bank. 

It was a sere and sterile prospect. Drab hills rolled in lazy wavestoward the river where they reared themselves into bolder forms, a lineof ramparts guarding the precious thread of water. The sleek, greenishcurrent ate at the roots of lofty bluffs, striped by bands of umber andorange, and topped with out-croppings of rock as though a vanished racehad crowned them with now crumbling fortresses. At their feet, suckinglife from the stream, a fringe of alder and willows decked the sallowlandscape with a trimming of green. 

Here the doctor's party camped for the night, rising in the morning tofind a new defection in their ranks. Leff had gone. Nailed to the messchest was a slip of paper on which he had traced a few words announcinghis happiness to be rid of them, his general dislike of one and all, andhis intention to catch up the departed train and go to the Oregoncountry. This was just what they wanted, the desired had beenaccomplished without their intervention. But when they discovered that, beside his own saddle horse, he had taken David's, their gladnesssuffered a check. It was a bad situation, for it left the young man withbut one horse, the faithful Ben. There was nothing for it but to abandonthe wagon, and give David the doctor's extra mount for a pack animal. With silent pangs the student saw his books thrown on the banks of theriver while his keg of whisky, sugar and coffee were stored among theGillespies' effects. Then they started, a much diminished train--onewagon, a girl, and three mounted men. 

CHAPTER VII

It was Sunday afternoon, and the doctor and his daughter were sittingby a group of alders on the banks of the little river called Ham'sFork. On the uplands above, the shadows were lengthening, and atintervals a light air caught up swirls of dust and carried themcareening away in staggering spirals. 

The doctor was tired and lay stretched on the ground. He lookedbloodless and wan, the grizzled beard not able to hide the thinness ofhis face. The healthful vigor he had found on the prairie had lefthim, each day's march claiming a dole from his hoarded store ofstrength. He knew--no one else--that he had never recovered thevitality expended at the time of Bella's illness. The call then hadbeen too strenuous, the depleted reservoir had filled slowly, and nowthe demands of unremitting toil were draining it of what was left. Hesaid nothing of this, but thought much in his feverish nights, and inthe long afternoons when his knees felt weak against the horse's sides. As the silence of each member of the little train was a veil oversecret trouble, his had hidden the darkest, the most sinister. 

Susan, sitting beside him, watching him with an anxious eye, noted thelanguor of his long, dry hands, the network of lines, etched deep onthe loose skin of his cheeks. Of late she had been shut in with herown preoccupations, but never too close for the old love and the oldhabit to force a way through. She had seen a lessening of energy andspirit, asked about it, and received the accustomed answers that camewith the quick, brisk cheeriness that now had to be whipped up. Shehad never seen his dauntless belief in life shaken. Faith and adebonair courage were his message. They were still there, but theeffort of the unbroken spirit to maintain them against the body'sweakness was suddenly revealed to her and the pathos of it caught ather throat. She leaned forward and passed her hand over his hair, hereyes on his face in a long gaze of almost solemn tenderness. 

"You're worn out, " she said. 

"Not a bit of it, " he answered stoutly. "You're the mostuncomplimentary person I know. I was just thinking what a hardypioneer I'd become, and that's the way you dash me to the ground. "

She looked at the silvery meshes through which her fingers were laced. 

"It's quite white and there were lots of brown hairs left when westarted. "

"That's the Emigrant Trail, " he smothered a sigh, and his trouble foundwords: "It's not for old men, Missy. "

"Old!" scornfully; "you're fifty-three. That's only thirty-two yearsolder than I am. When I'm fifty-three you'll be eighty-five. Thenwe'll begin to talk about your being old. "

"My little Susan fifty-three!" He moved his head so that he couldcommand her face and dwell upon its blended bloom of olive and clearrose, "With wrinkles here and here, " an indicating finger helped him, "and gray hairs all round here, and thick eyebrows, and--" he droppedthe hand and his smile softened to reminiscence, "It was only yesterdayyou were a baby, a little, fat, crowing thing all creases and dimples. Your mother and I used to think everything about you so wonderful thatwe each secretly believed--and we'd tell each other so when nobody wasround--that there _had_ been other babies in the world, but neverbefore one like ours. I don't know but what I think that yet. "

"Silly old doctor-man!" she murmured. 

"And now my baby's a woman with all of life before her. From where youare it seems as if it was never going to end, but when you get where Iam and begin to look back, you see that it's just a little journey overbefore you've got used to the road and struck your gait. We ought tohave more time. The first half's just learning and the second's wherewe put the learning into practice. And we're busy over that when wehave to go. It's too short. "

"Our life's going to be long. Out in California we're going to comeinto a sort of second childhood, be perennials like those larkspurs Ihad in the garden at home. "

They were silent, thinking of the garden behind the old house inRochester with walks outlined by shells and edged by long flower beds. The girl looked back on it with a detached interest as an unregrettedfeature of a past existence in which she had once played her part andthat was cut from the present by a chasm never to be bridged. The manheld it cherishingly as one of many lovely memories that stretched fromthis river bank in a strange land back through the years, a link in thelong chain. 

"Wasn't it pretty!" she said dreamily, "with the line of hollyhocksagainst the red brick wall, and the big, bushy pine tree in the corner. Everything was bright except that tree. "

His eyes narrowed in wistful retrospect:

"It was as if all the shadows in the garden had concentratedthere--huddled together in one place so that the rest could be full ofcolor and sunshine. And when Daddy John and I wanted to cut it downyou wouldn't let us, cried and stamped, and so, of course, we gave itup. I actually believe you had a sentiment about that tree. "

"I suppose I had, though I don't know exactly what you mean by asentiment. I loved it because I'd once had such a perfect time upthere among the branches. The top had been cut off and a ring ofboughs was left round the place, and it made the most comfortable seat, almost like a cradle. One day you went to New York and when you cameback you brought me a box of candy. Do you remember it--burnt almondsand chocolate drops with a dog painted on the cover? Well, I wanted toget them at their very best, enjoy them as much as I could, so Iclimbed to the seat in the top of the pine and ate them there. I canremember distinctly how lovely it was. They tasted better than anycandies I've ever had before or since, and I leaned back on the boughs, rocking and eating and looking at the clouds and feeling the windswaying the trunk. I can shut my eyes and feel again the sense ofbeing entirely happy, sort of limp and forgetful and _so_ contented. Idon't know whether it was only the candies, or a combination of thingsthat were just right that day and never combined the same way again. For I tried it often afterwards, with cake and fruit tart and othercandies, but it was no good. But I couldn't have the tree cut down, for there was always a hope that I might get the combination right andhave that perfectly delightful time once more. "

The doctor's laughter echoed between the banks, and hers fell in withit, though she had told her story with the utmost sedateness. 

"Was there ever such a materialist?" he chuckled. "It all rose from abox of New York candy, and I thought it was sentiment. Twenty-oneyears old and the same baby, only not quite so fat. "

"Well, it was the truth, " she said defensively. "I suppose if I'd leftthe candy out it would have sounded better. "

"Don't leave the candy out. It was the candy and the truth that madeit all Susan's. "

She picked up a stone and threw it in the river, then as she watchedits splash: "Doesn't it seem long ago when we were in Rochester?"

"We left there in April and this is June. "

"Yes, a short time in weeks, but some way or other it seems like ages. When I think of it I feel as if it was at the other side of the world, and I'd grown years and years older since we left. If I go on this wayI'll be fully fifty-three when we get to California. "

"What's made you feel so old?"

"I don't exactly know. I don't think it's because we've gone over somuch space, but that has something to do with it. It seems as if thechange was more in me. "

"How have you changed?"

She gathered up the loose stones near her and dropped them from palm topalm, frowning a little in an effort to find words to clothe her vaguethought. 

"I don't know that either, or I can't express it. I liked things therethat I don't care for any more. They were such babyish things andamounted to nothing, but they seemed important then. Now nothing seemsimportant but things that are--the things that would be on a desertisland. And in getting to think that way, in getting so far from whatyou once were, a person seems to squeeze a good many years into a fewweeks. " She looked sideways at him, the stones dropping from aslanting palm. "Do you understand me?"

He nodded:

"'When I was a child I thought as a child--now I have put away childishthings. ' Is that it?"

"Yes, exactly. "

"Then you wouldn't like to go back to the old life?"

She scattered the stones with an impatient gesture:

"I couldn't. I'd hate it. I wouldn't squeeze back into the sameshape. I'd be all cramped and crowded up. You see every day out hereI've been growing wider and wider, " she stretched her arms to theirlength, "widening out to fit these huge, enormous places. "

"The new life will be wide enough for you. You'll grow like a tree, abeautiful, tall, straight tree that has plenty of room for its branchesto spread and plenty of sun and air to nourish it. There'll be nocrowding or cramping out there. It's good to know you'll be happy inCalifornia. In the beginning I had fears. "

She picked up a stone and with its pointed edge drew lines on the dustwhich seemed to interest her, for she followed them with intent eyes, not answering. He waited for a moment, then said with an undernote ofpleading in his voice, "You think you will be happy, dearie?"

"I--I--don't--know, " she stammered. "Nobody can tell. We're not thereyet. "

"I can tell. " He raised himself on his elbow to watch her face. Sheknew that he expected to see the maiden's bashful happiness upon it, and the difference between his fond imaginings and the actual factssickened her with an intolerable sense of deception. She could nevertell him, never strike out of him his glad conviction of hercontentment. 

"We're going back to the Golden Age, you and I, and David. We'll liveas we want, not the way other people want us to. When we get toCalifornia we'll build a house somewhere by a river and we'll plant ourseeds and have vines growing over it and a garden in the front, andDaddy John will break Julia's spirit and harness her to the plow. Thenwhen the house gets too small--houses have a way of doing that--I'llbuild a little cabin by the edge of the river, and you and David willhave the house to yourselves where the old, white-headed doctor won'tbe in the way. "

He smiled for the joy of his picture, and she turned her head from him, seeing the prospect through clouded eyes. 

"You'll never go out of my house, " she said in a low voice. 

"Other spirits will come into it and fill it up. "

A wish that anything might stop the slow advance to this roseate futurechoked her. She sat with averted face wrestling with her sickdistaste, and heard him say:

"You don't know how happy you're going to be, my little Missy. "

She could find no answer, and he went on: "You have everything for it, health and youth and a pure heart and David for your mate. "

She had to speak now and said with urgence, trying to encourageherself, since no one else could do it for her, "But that's all in the future, a long time from now. "

"Not so very long. We ought to be in California in five or six weeks. "

To have the dreaded reality suddenly brought so close, set at the limitof a few short weeks, grimly waiting at a definite point in thedistance, made her repugnance break loose in alarmed words. 

"Longer than that, " she cried. "The desert's the hardest place, andwe'll go slow, very slow, there. "

"You sound as if you wanted to go slow, " he answered, his smileindulgently quizzical, as completely shut away from her, in his man'signorance, as though no bond of love and blood held them together. 

"No, no, of course not, " she faltered. "But I'm not at all sure we'llget through it so easily. I'm making allowance for delays. There arealways delays. "

"Yes, there may be delays, but we'll hope to be one of the lucky trainsand get through on time. "

She swallowed dryly, her heart gone down too far to be plucked up byfutile contradition [Transcriber's note: contradiction?]. He mused amoment, seeking the best method of broaching a subject that had beengrowing in his mind for the past week. Frankness seemed the mostsimple, and he said:

"I've something to suggest to you. I've been thinking of it since weleft the Pass. Bridger is a large post. They say there are trainsthere from all over the West and people of all sorts, and quite oftenthere are missionaries. "

"Missionaries?" in a faint voice. 

"Yes, coming in and going out to the tribes of the Northwest. Supposewe found one there when we arrived?"

He stopped, watching her. 

"Well?" her eyes slanted sideways in a fixity of attention. 

"Would you marry David? Then we could all go on together. "

Her breath left her and she turned a frightened face on him. 

"Why?" she gasped. "What for?"

He laid his hand on hers and said quietly:

"Because, as you say, the hardest part of the journey is yet to come, and I am--well--not a strong man any more. The trip hasn't done for mewhat I hoped. If by some mischance--if anything should happen tome--then I'd know you'd be taken care of, protected and watched over bysome one who could be trusted, whose right it was to do that. "

"Oh, no. Oh, no, " she cried in a piercing note of protest. "Icouldn't, I couldn't. "

She made as if to rise, then sank back, drawn down by his graspinghand. He thought her reluctance natural, a girl's shrinking at thesudden intrusion of marriage into the pretty comedy of courtship. 

"Susan, I would like it, " he pleaded. 

"No, " she tried to pull her hand away, as if wishing to draw everyparticle of self together and shut it all within her own protectingshell. 

"Why not?"

"It's--it's--I don't want to be married out here in the wilds. I wantto wait and marry as other girls do, and have a real wedding and ahouse to go to. I should hate it. I couldn't. It's like a squaw. You oughtn't to ask it. "

Her terror lent her an unaccustomed subtlety. She eluded the mainissue, seizing on objections that did not betray her, but that werereasonable, what might have been expected by the most unsuspicious ofmen:

"And as for your being afraid of falling sick in these dreadful places, isn't that all the more reason why I should be free to give all my timeand thought to you? If you don't feel so strong, then marrying is thelast thing I'd think of doing. I'm going to be with you all the time, closer than I ever was before. No man's going to come between us. Marry David and push you off into the background when you're not welland want me most--that's perfectly ridiculous. "

She meant all she said. It was the truth, but it was the truthreinforced, given a fourfold strength by her own unwillingness. Thethought that she had successfully defeated him, pushed the marriageaway into an indefinite future, relieved her so that the dread usuallyevoked by his ill health was swept aside. She turned on him a face, once again bright, all clouds withdrawn, softened into dimplingreassurance. 

"What an idea!" she said. "Men have no sense. "

"Very well, spoiled girl. I suppose we'll have to put it off till weget to California. "

She dropped back full length on the ground, and in the expansion of herrelief laid her cheek against the hand that clasped hers. 

"And until we get the house built, " she cried, beginning to laugh. 

"And the garden laid out and planted, I suppose?"

"Of course. And the vines growing over the front porch. "

"Why not over the second story? We'll have a second story by thattime. "

"Over the whole house, up to the chimneys. "

They both laughed, a cheerful bass and a gay treble, sweeping outacross the unquiet water. 

"It's going to be the Golden Age, " she said, in the joy of her respitepressing her lips on the hand she held. "A cottage covered with vinesto the roof and you and I and Daddy John inside it. "

"And David, don't forget David. "

"Of course, David, " she assented lightly, for David's occupancy wasremoved to a comfortable distance. 

After supper she and David climbed to the top of the bank to see thesunset. The breeze had dropped, the dust devils died with it. Thesilence of evening lay like a cool hand on the heated earth. Dusk wassoftening the hard, bright colors, wiping out the sharpness ofstretching shadows the baked reflection of sun on clay. The Westblazed above the mountains, but the rest of the sky was a thick, pureblue. Against it to the South, a single peak rose, snow-enameled on aturquoise background. 

Susan felt at peace with the moment and her own soul. She radiated thegood humor of one who has faced peril and escaped. Having postponedthe event that was to make her David's forever, she felt bound to offerrecompense. Her conscience went through one of those processes bywhich the consciences of women seek ease through atonement, promptingthem to actions of a baleful kindliness. Contrition made her tender tothe man she did not love. The thought that she had been unfair added acruel sweetness to her manner. 

He lay on the edge of the bluff beside her, not saying much, for it washappiness to feel her within touch of his hand, amiable and gentle asshe had been of late. It would have taken an eye shrewder than David'sto have seen into the secret springs of her conduct. He only knew thatshe had been kinder, friendlier, less withdrawn into the sanctuary ofher virgin coldness, round which in the beginning he had hovered. Hisheart was high, swelled by the promise of her beaming looks and readysmiles. At last, in this drama of slow winning she was drawing closer, shyly melting, her whims and perversities mellowing to the rich, sweetyielding of the ultimate surrender. 

"We ought to be at Fort Bridger now in a few days, " he said. "Courantsays if all goes well we can make it by Thursday and of course heknows. "

"Courant!" she exclaimed with the familiar note of scorn. "He knows alittle of everything, doesn't he?"

"Why don't you like him, Missy? He's a fine man for the trail. "

"Yes, I dare say he is. But that's not everything. "

"Why don't you like him? Come, tell the truth. "

They had spoken before of her dislike of Courant. She had revealed itmore frankly to David than to anyone else. It was one of the subjectsover which she could become animated in the weariest hour. She likedto talk to her betrothed about it, to impress it upon him, warming toan eloquence that allayed her own unrest. 

"I don't know why I don't like him. You can't always tell why you likeor dislike a person. It's just something that comes and you don't knowwhy. "

"But it seems so childish and unfair. I don't like my girl to beunfair. Has he ever done anything or said anything to you thatoffended you?"

She gave a petulant movement: "No, but he thinks so much of himself, and he's hard and has no feeling, and-- Oh, I don't know--it's justthat I don't like him. "

David laughed:

"It's all prejudice. You can't give any real reason. "

"Of course I can't. Those things don't always have reasons. You'realways asking for reasons and I never have any to give you. "

"I'll have to teach you to have them. "

She looked slantwise at him smiling. "I'm afraid that will be a greatundertaking. I'm very stupid about learning things. You ask fatherand Daddy John what a terrible task it was getting me educated. Theonly person that didn't bother about it was this one"--she laid afinger on her chest-- "She never cared in the least. "

"Well I'll begin a second education. When we get settled I'll teachyou to reason. "

"Begin now. " She folded her hands demurely in her lap and lifting herhead back laughed: "Here I am waiting to learn. "

"No. We want more time. I'll wait till we're married. "

Her laughter diminished to a smile that lay on her lips, looking stiffand uncomfortable below the fixity of her eyes. 

"That's such a long way off, " she said faintly. 

"Not so very long. "

"Oh, California's hundreds of miles away yet. And then when we getthere we've got to find a place to settle, and till the land, and layout the garden and build a house, quite a nice house; I don't want tolive in a cabin. Father and I have just been talking about it. Whyit's months and months off yet. "

He did not answer. She had spoken this way to him before, wafting thesubject away with evasive words. After a pause he said slowly: "Whyneed we wait so long?"

"We must. I'm not going to begin my married life the way the emigrantwomen do. I want to live decently and be comfortable. "

He broke a sprig off a sage bush and began to pluck it apart. She hadreceded to her defenses and peeped nervously at him from behind them. 

"Fort Bridger, " he said, his eyes on the twig, "is a big place, a sortof rendezvous for all kinds of people. "

She stared at him, her face alert with apprehension, ready to dart intoher citadel and lower the drawbridge. 

"Sometimes there are missionaries stopping there. "

"Missionaries?" she exclaimed in a high key. "I hate missionaries!"

This was a surprising statement. David knew the doctor to be asupporter and believer in the Indian missions, and had often heard hisdaughter acquiesce in his opinions. 

"Why do you hate them?"

"I don't know. There's another thing you want a reason for. It'sgetting cold up here--let's go down by the fire. "

She gathered herself together to rise, but he turned quickly upon her, and his face, while it made her shrink, also arrested her. She hadcome to dread that expression, persuasion hardened into desperatepleading. It woke in her a shocked repugnance, as though something hadbeen revealed to her that she had no right to see. She felt shame forhim, that he must beg where a man should conquer and subdue. 

"Wait a moment, " he said. "Why can't one of those missionaries marryus there?"

She had scrambled to her knees, and snatched at her skirt preparatoryto the jump to her feet. 

"No, " she said vehemently. "No. What's the matter with you alltalking about marriages and missionaries when we're in the middle ofthe wilds?"

"Susan, " he cried, catching at her dress, "just listen a moment. Icould take care of you then, take care of you properly. You'd be myown, to look after and work for. It's seemed to me lately you loved meenough. I wouldn't have suggested such a thing if you were as you werein the beginning. But you seem to care now. You seem as if--as if--itwouldn't be so hard for you to live with me and let me love you. "

She jerked her skirt away and leaped to her feet crying again, "No, David, no. Not for a minute. "

He rose too, very pale, the piece of sage in his hand shaking. Theylooked at each other, the yellow light clear on both faces. Hers washard and combative, as if his suggestion had outraged her and she wasready to fight it. Its expression sent a shaft of terror to his soul, for with all his unselfishness he was selfish in his man's longing forher, hungered for her till his hunger had made him blind. Now in aflash of clairvoyance he saw truly, and feeling the joy of lifeslipping from him, faltered:

"Have I made a mistake? Don't you care?"

It was her opportunity, she was master of her fate. But her promisewas still a thing that held, the moment had not come when she sawnothing but her own desire, and to gain it would have sacrificed allthat stood between. His stricken look, his expression of nervinghimself for a blow, pierced her, and her words rushed out in a burst ofcontrition. 

"Of course, of course, I do. Don't doubt me. Don't. But-- Oh, David, don't torment me. Don't ask anything like that now. I can't, Ican't. I'm not ready--not yet. "

Her voice broke and she put her hand to her mouth to hide itstrembling. Over it, her eyes, suddenly brimming with tears, lookedimploringly into his. 

It was a heart-tearing sight to the lover. He forgot himself and, without knowing what he did, opened his arms to inclose her in anembrace of pity and remorse. 

"Oh, dearest, I'll never ask it till you're willing to come to me, " hecried, and saw her back away, with upheld shoulders raised in defenseagainst his hands. 

"I won't touch you, " he said, quickly dropping his arms. "Don't drawback from me. If you don't want it I'll never lay a finger on you. "

The rigidity of her attitude relaxed. She turned away her head andwiped her tears on the end of the kerchief knotted round her neck. Hestood watching her, struggling with passion and foreboding, reassuredand yet with the memory of the seeing moment, chill at his heart. 

Presently she shot a timid glance at him, and met his eyes restingquestioningly upon her. Her face was tear stained, a slight, frightened smile on the lips. 

"I'm sorry, " she whispered. 

"Susan, do you truly care for me?"

"Yes, " she said, looking down. "Yes--but--let me wait a little whilelonger. "

"As long as you like. I'll never ask you to marry me till you sayyou're willing. "

She held out her hand shyly, as if fearing a repulse. He took it, andfeeling it relinquished to his with trust and confidence, swore thatnever again would he disturb her, never demand of her till she wasready to give. 

CHAPTER VIII

Fort Bridger was like a giant magnet perpetually revolving and sweepingthe western half of the country with its rays. They wheeled from thewest across the north over the east and down to the south. Ox teams, prairie schooners, pack trains, horsemen came to it from the barrenlands that guarded the gates of California, from the tumultuous riversand fragrant forests of the Oregon country, from the trapper's pathsand the thin, icy streams of the Rockies, from the plains where thePlatte sung round its sand bars, from the sun-drenched Spanish deserts. All roads led to it, and down each one came the slow coil of the longtrains and the pacing files of mounted men. Under its walls theyrested and repaired their waste, ere they took the trail again intenton the nation's work of conquest. 

The fort's centripetal attraction had caught the doctor's party, andwas drawing it to the focus. They reckoned the days on their fingersand pressed forward with a feverish hurry. They were like waywornmariners who sight the lights of a port. Dead desires, revived, blewinto a glow extinguished vanities. They looked at each other, and forthe first time realized how ragged and unkempt they were, then draggedout best clothes from the bottom of their chests and hung theirlooking-glasses to the limbs of trees. They were coming to the surfaceafter a period of submersion. 

Susan fastened her mirror to the twig on an alder trunk and ransackedher store of finery. It yielded up a new red merino bodice, and theoccasion was great enough to warrant breaking into her reserve ofhairpins. Then she experimented with her hair, parted and rolled it inthe form that had been the fashion in that long dead past--was ittwenty years ago?--when she had been a girl in Rochester. Sheinspected her reflected image with a fearful curiosity, as if expectingto find gray hairs and wrinkles. It was pleasant to see that shelooked the same--a trifle thinner may be. And as she noted that hercheeks were not as roundly curved, the fullness of her throat hadmelted to a more muscular, less creased and creamy firmness, she felt aglow of satisfaction. For in those distant days--twenty-five years agoit must be--she had worried because she was a little _too_ fat. No onecould say that now. She stole a look over her shoulder to make sureshe was not watched--it seemed an absurdly vain thing to do--and turnedback the neck of her blouse. The faintest rise of collar bone showedunder the satiny skin, fine as a magnolia petal, the color of faintlytinted meerschaum. She ran her hand across it and it was smooth ascurds yielding with an elastic resistance over its bedding of firmflesh. The young girl's pride in her beauty rose, bringing with it asense of surprise. She had thought it gone forever, and now it stillheld, the one surviving sensation that connected her with that otherSusan Gillespie who had lived a half century ago in Rochester. 

It was the day after this recrudescence of old coquetry that the firsttragedy of the trail, the tragedy that was hers alone, smote her. 

The march that morning had been over a high level across which theyheaded for a small river they would follow to the Fort. Early in theafternoon they saw its course traced in intricate embroidery across theearth's leathern carpet. The road dropped into it, the trail grooveddeep between ramparts of clay. On the lip of the descent the waywardJulia, maddened with thirst, plunged forward, her obedient matesfollowed, and the wagon went hurling down the slant, dust rising likethe smoke of an explosion. The men struggled for control and, seizedby the contagion of their excitement, the doctor laid hold of a wheel. It jerked him from his feet and flung him sprawling, stunned by theimpact, a thin trickle of blood issuing from his lips. The others sawnothing, in the tumult did not hear Susan's cry. When they came backthe doctor was lying where he had fallen, and she was sitting besidehim wiping his lips with the kerchief she had torn from her neck. Shelooked up at them and said:

"It's a hemorrhage. "

Her face shocked them into an understanding of the gravity of theaccident. It was swept clean of its dauntless, rosy youth, hadstiffened into an unelastic skin surface, taut over rigid muscles. Buther eyes were loopholes through which anguish escaped. Bending them onher father a hungry solicitude suffused them, too all-pervading to bedenied exit. Turned to the men an agonized questioning took its place. It spoke to them like a cry, a cry of weakness, a cry for succor. Itwas the first admission of their strength she had ever made, the firstlook upon them which had said, "You are men, I am a woman. Help me. "

They carried the doctor to the banks of the stream and laid him on aspread robe. He protested that it was nothing, it had happened before, several times. Missy would remember it, last winter in Rochester? Heranswering smile was pitiable, a grimace of the lips that went nofarther. She felt its failure and turned away plucking at a weed nearher. Courant saw the trembling of her hand and the swallowing movementof her throat, bared of its sheltering kerchief. She glanced up with astealthy side look, fearful that her moment of weakness was spied upon, and saw him, the pity surging from his heart shining on his face like asoftening light. She shrank from it, and, as he made an involuntarystep toward her, warned him off with a quick gesture. He turned to thecamp and set furiously to work, his hands shaking as he drove in thepicket pins, his throat dry. He did not dare to look at her again. The desire to snatch her in his arms, to hold her close till he crushedher in a passion of protecting tenderness, made him fear to look ather, to hear her voice, to let the air of her moving body touch him. 

The next morning, while lifting the doctor into the wagon, there was asecond hemorrhage. Even the sick man found it difficult to maintainhis cheery insouciance. Susan looked pinched, her tongue seemedhardened to the consistency of leather that could not flex for theready utterance of words. The entire sum of her consciousness wasfocused on her father. "Breakfast?"--with a blank glance at thespeaker--"is it breakfast time?" The men cooked for her and broughther a cup of coffee and her plate of food. She set them on thedriver's seat, and when the doctor, keeping his head immovable, andturning smiling eyes upon her, told her to eat she felt for them like ablind woman. It was hard to swallow the coffee, took effort to forceit down a channel that was suddenly narrowed to a parched, resistenttube. She would answer no one, seemed to have undergone an ossifyingof all faculties turned to the sounds and sights of life. Davidremembered her state when the doctor had been ill on the Platte. Butthe exclusion of the outer world was then an obsession of worry, ajealous distraction, as if she resented the well-being of others whenhers were forced to suffer. This was different. She did not draw awayfrom him now. She did not seem to see or hear him. Her glance litunknowing on his face, her hand lay in his, passive as a thing ofstone. Sometimes he thought she did not know who he was. 

"Can't we do anything to cheer her or take her mind off it?" he said toDaddy John behind the wagon. 

The old man gave him a glance of tolerant scorn. 

"You can't take a person's mind off the only thing that's in it. She'sgot nothing inside her but worry. She's filled up with it, level tothe top. You might as well try and stop a pail from overflowing that'stoo full of water. "

They fared on for two interminable, broiling days. The pace was of theslowest, for a jolt or wrench of the wagon might cause anotherhemorrhage. With a cautious observance of stones and chuck holes theycrawled down the road that edged the river. The sun was blinding, beating on the canvas hood till the girl's face was beaded with sweat, and the sick man's blankets were hot against the intenser heat of hisbody. Outside the world held its breath spellbound in a white dazzle. The river sparkled like a coat of mail, the only unquiet thing on theearth's incandescent surface. When the afternoon declined, shadowscrept from the opposite bluffs, slanted across the water, slippedtoward the little caravan and engulfed it. Through the front openingSusan watched the road. There was a time when each dust ridge showed aside of bright blue. To half-shut eyes they were like painted stripesweaving toward the distance. Following them to where the trail bentround a buttress, her glance brought up on Courant's mounted figure. He seemed the vanishing point of these converging stripes, the objectthey were striving toward, the end they aimed for. Reaching him theyceased as though they had accomplished their purpose, led the woman'seyes to him as to a symbolical figure that piloted the train to succor. 

With every hour weakness grew on the doctor, his words were fewer. Bythe ending of the first day, he lay silent looking out at the vista ofbluffs and river, his eyes shining in sunken orbits. As dusk fellCourant dropped back to the wagon and asked Daddy John if the mulescould hold the pace all night. Susan heard the whispered conference, and in a moment was kneeling on the seat, her hand clutched like aspread starfish on the old man's shoulder. 

Courant leaned from his saddle to catch the driver's ear with hislowered tones. "With a forced march we can get there to-morrowafternoon. The animals can rest up and we can make him comfortable andmaybe find a doctor. "

Her face, lifted to him, was like a transparent medium through whichanxiety and hope that was almost pain, shone. She hung on his wordsand breathed back quick agreement. It would have been the same if hehad suggested the impossible, if the angel of the Lord had appeared andbarred the way with a flaming sword. 

"Of course they can go all night. They must. We'll walk and ride byturns. That'll lighten the wagon. I'll go and get my horse, " and shewas out and gone to the back of the train where David rode at the headof the pack animals. 

The night was of a clear blue darkness, suffused with the misty lightof stars. Looking back, Courant could see her upright slendernesstopping the horse's black shape. When the road lay pale and unshadedbehind her he could decipher the curves of her head and shoulders. Then he turned to the trail in front, and her face, as it had been whenhe first saw her and as it was now, came back to his memory. Once, toward midnight, he drew up till they reached him, her horse's muzzlenosing soft against his pony's flank. He could see the gleam of hereyes, fastened on him, wide and anxious. 

"Get into the wagon and ride, " he commanded. 

"Why? He's no worse! He's sleeping. "

"I was thinking of you. This is too hard for you. It'll wear you out. "

"Oh, I'm all right, " she said with a slight movement of impatience. "Don't worry about me. Go on. "

He returned to his post and she paced slowly on, keeping level with thewheels. It was very still, only the creaking of the wagon and the hoofbeats on the dust. She kept her eyes on his receding shape, watched itdisappear in dark turns, then emerge into faintly illumined stretches. It moved steadily, without quickening of gait, a lonely shadow thatthey followed through the unknown to hope. Her glance hung to it, herear strained for the thud of his pony's feet, sight and sound of himcame to her like a promise of help. He was the one strong human thingin this place of remote skies and dumb unfeeling earth. 

It was late afternoon when the Fort came in sight. A flicker ofanimation burst up in them as they saw the square of its long, lowwalls, crowning an eminence above the stream. The bottom lay wide atits feet, the river slipping bright through green meadows sprinkledwith an army of cattle. In a vast, irregular circle, a wheel of lifewith the fort as its hub, spread an engirdling encampment. It wasscattered over plain and bottom in dottings of white, here drawn closein clustering agglomerations, there detached in separate spatterings. Coming nearer the white spots grew to wagon hoods and tent roofs, andamong them, less easy to discern, were the pointed summits of thelodges with the bunched poles bristling through the top. The air wasvery still, and into it rose the straight threads of smoke fromcountless fires, aspiring upwards in slender blue lines to the bluersky. They lifted and dispersed the smell of burning wood that comes tothe wanderer with a message of home, a message that has lain in hisblood since the first man struck fire and turned the dry heap of sticksto an altar to be forever fixed as the soul of his habitation. 

They camped in the bottom withdrawn from the closer herding of tents. It was a slow settling, as noiseless as might be, for two at least oftheir number knew that the doctor was dying. That afternoon Daddy Johnand Courant had seen the shadow of the great change. Whether Susan sawit they neither knew. She was full of a determined, cold energy, urging them at once to go among the camps and search for a doctor. They went in different directions, leaving her sitting by her father'sfeet at the raised flap of the tent. Looking back through thegathering dusk Courant could see her, a dark shape, her body droopingin relaxed lines. He thought that she knew. 

When they came back with the word that there was no doctor to be found, darkness was closing in. Night came with noises of men and thetwinkling of innumerable lights. The sky, pricked with stars, lookeddown on an earth alive with answering gleams, as though a segment ofits spark-set shield had fallen and lay beneath it, winking backmessages in an aerial telegraphy. The fires leaped high or glowed insmoldering mounds, painting the sides of tents, the flanks ofruminating animals, the wheels of wagons, the faces of men and women. Coolness, rest, peace brooded over the great bivouac, with the guardianshape of the Fort above it and the murmur of the river at its feet. 

A lantern, standing on a box by the doctor's side, lit the tent. Through the opening the light from the fire outside poured in, sendingshadows scurrying up the canvas walls. Close within call David sat byit, his chin on his knees, his eyes staring at the tongues of flames asthey licked the fresh wood. There was nothing now for him to do. Hehad cooked the supper, and then to ease the pain of his unclaimedsympathies, cleaned the pans, and from a neighboring camp brought apiece of deer meat for Susan. It was the only way he could serve her, and he sat disconsolately looking now at the meat on a tin plate, thentoward the tent where she and Daddy John were talking. He could hearthe murmur of their voices, see their silhouettes moving on the canvas, gigantic and grotesque. Presently she appeared in the opening, pausedthere for a last word, and then came toward him. 

"He wants to speak to Daddy John for a moment, " she said and droppingon the ground beside him, stared at the fire. 

David looked at her longingly, but he dared not intrude upon her somberabstraction. The voices in the tent rose and fell. Once at a louderphrase from Daddy John she turned her head quickly and listened, asheaf of strained nerves. The voices dropped again, her eye came backto the light and touched the young man's face. It contained norecognition of him, but he leaped at the chance, making stammeringproffer of such aid as he could give. 

"I've got you some supper. "

He lifted the plate, but she shook her head. 

"Let me cook it for you, " he pleaded. "You haven't eaten anythingsince morning. "

"I can't eat, " she said, and fell back to her fire-gazing, slippingaway from him into the forbidding dumbness of her thoughts. He couldonly watch her, hoping for a word, an expressed wish. When it came itwas, alas! outside his power to gratify:

"If there had only been a doctor here! That was what I was hoping for. "

And so when she asked for the help he yearned to give, it was his fatethat he should meet her longing with a hopeless silence. 

When Daddy John emerged from the tent she leaped to her feet. 

"Well?" she said with low eagerness. 

"Go back to him. He wants you, " answered the old man. "I've gotsomething to do for him. "

He made no attempt to touch her, his words and voice were brusque, yetDavid saw that she responded, softened, showed the ragged wound of herpain to him as she did to no one else. It was an understanding thatwent beneath all externals. Words were unnecessary between them, heartspoke to heart. 

She returned to the tent and sunk on the skin beside her father. Hesmiled faintly and stretched a hand for hers, and her fingers slippedbetween his, cool and strong against the lifeless dryness of his palm. She gave back his smile bravely, her eyes steadfast. She had no desirefor tears, no acuteness of sensation. A weight as heavy as the worldlay on her, crushing out struggle and resistance. She knew that he wasdying. When they told her there was no doctor in the camp herflickering hope had gone out. Now she was prepared to sit by him andwait with a lethargic patience beyond which was nothing. 

He pressed her hand and said: "I've sent Daddy John on a hunt. Do youguess what for?"

She shook her head feeling no curiosity. 

"The time is short, Missy. "

The living's instinct to fight against the acquiescence of the dyingprompted her to the utterance of a sharp "No. "

"I want it all arranged and settled before it's too late. I sent himto see if there was a missionary here. "

She was leaning against the couch of robes, resting on the piledsupport of the skins. In the pause after his words she slowly drewherself upright, and with her mouth slightly open inhaled a deepbreath. Her eyes remained fixed on him, gleaming from the shadow ofher brows, and their expression, combined with the amaze of the droppedunderlip, gave her a look of wild attention. 

"Why?" she said. The word came obstructed and she repeated it. 

"I want you to marry David here to-night. "

The doctor's watch on a box at the bed head ticked loudly in thesilence. They looked at each other unconscious of the length of thepause. Death on the one hand, life pressing for its due on the other, were the only facts they recognized. Hostility, not to the man but tothe idea, drove the amazement from her face and hardened its softnessto stone. 

"Here, to-night?" she said, her comprehension stimulated by anautomatic repetition of his words. 

"Yes. I may not be able to understand tomorrow. "

She moved her head, her glance touching the watch, the lantern, thendropping to the hand curled round her own. It seemed symbolic of thewill against which hers was rising in combat. She made an involuntaryeffort to withdraw her fingers but his closed tighter on them. 

"Why?" she whispered again. 

"Some one must take care of you. I can't leave you alone. "

She answered with stiffened lips: "There's Daddy John. "

"Some one closer than Daddy John. I want to leave you with David. "

Her antagonism rose higher, sweeping over her wretchedness. Worn andstrained she had difficulty to keep her lips shut on it, to preventherself from crying out her outraged protests. All her dormantwomanhood, stirring to wakefulness in the last few weeks, broke intolife, gathering itself in a passion of revolt, abhorrent of theindignity, ready to flare into vehement refusal. To the dim eyesfastened on her she was merely the girl, reluctant still. He watchedher down-drooped face and said:

"Then I could go in peace. Am I asking too much?"

She made a negative movement with her head and turned her face awayfrom him. 

"You'll do this for my happiness now?"

"Anything, " she murmured. 

"It will be also for your own. "

He moved his free hand and clasped it on the mound made by their lockedfingers. Through the stillness a man's voice singing Zavier's Canadiansong came to them. It stopped at the girl's outer ear, but, like ahail from a fading land, penetrated to the man's brain and he stirred. 

"Hist!" he said raising his brows, "there's that French song yourmother used to sing. "

The distant voice rose to the plaintive burden and he lay motionless, his eyes filmed with memories. As the present dimmed the past grewclearer. His hold on the moment relaxed and he slipped away from it ona tide of recollection, muttering the words. 

The girl sat mute, her hand cold under his, her being passing in anagonized birth throe from unconsciousness to self-recognition. Herwill--its strength till now unguessed--rose resistant, a thing of iron. Love was too strong in her for open opposition, but the instinct tofight, blindly but with caution, for the right to herself was stronger. 

His murmuring died into silence and she looked at him. His eyes wereclosed, the pressure of his fingers loosened. A light sleep held him, and under its truce she softly withdrew her hand, then stole to thetent door and stood there a waiting moment, stifling her hurriedbreathing. She saw David lying by the fire, gazing into its smolderingheart. With noiseless feet she skirted the encircling ropes and pegs, and stood, out of range of his eye, on the farther side. Here shestopped, withdrawn from the light that came amber soft through thecanvas walls, slipping into shadow when a figure passed, searching thedarkness with peering eyes. 

Around her the noises of the camp rose, less sharp than an hourearlier, the night silence gradually hushing them. The sparks andshooting gleams of fires still quivered, imbued with a tenacious life. She had a momentary glimpse of a naked Indian boy flinging loose hisblanket, a bronze statue glistening in a leap of flame. Nearer by awoman's figure bent over a kettle black on a bed of embers, then agirl's fire-touched form, with raised arms, shaking down a snake ofhair, which broke and grew cloudy under her disturbing hands. Aresounding smack sounded on a horse's flank, a low ripple of laughtercame tangled with a child's querulous crying, and through the walls oftents and the thickness of smoke the notes of a flute filtered. 

Her ear caught the pad of a footstep on the grass, and her eyes seizedon a shadow that grew from dusky uncertainty to a small, bent shape. She waited, suffocated with heartbeats, then made a noiseless pounce onit. 

"Daddy John, " she gasped, clutching at him. 

The old man staggered, almost taken off his feet. 

"Is he worse?" he said. 

"He's told me. Did you find anyone?"

"Yes--two. One's Episcopal--in a train from St. Louis. "

A sound came from her that he did not understand. She gripped at hisshoulders as if she were drowning. He thought she was about to swoonand put his arm around her saying:

"Come back to the tent. You're all on a shake as if you had ague. "

"I can't go back. Don't bring him. Don't bring him. Don't tellfather. Not now. I will later, some other time. When we get toCalifornia, but not now--not to-night. "

The sentences were cut apart by breaths that broke from her as if shehad been running. He was frightened and tried to draw her to the lightand see her face. 

"Why, Missy!" he said with scared helplessness, "Why, Missy! What'sgot you?"

"Don't get the clergyman. Tell him there isn't any. Tell him you'velooked all over. Tell him a lie. "

He guessed the trouble was something more than the grief of the moment, and urged in a whisper:

"What's the matter now? Go ahead and tell me. I'll stick by you. "

She bent her head back to look into his face. 

"I don't want to marry him now. I can't. I can't. I _can't_. "

Her hands on his shoulders shook him with each repetition. The forceof the words was heightened by the suppressed tone. They should havebeen screamed. In these whispered breaths they burst from her likeblood from a wound. With the last one her head bowed forward on hisshoulder with a movement of burrowing as though she would have crawledup and hidden under his skin, and tears, the most violent he had everseen her shed, broke from her. They came in bursting sobs, asuccession of rending throes that she struggled to stifle, swaying andquivering under their stress. 

He thought of nothing now but this new pain added to the hour'stragedy, and stroked her shoulder with a low "Keep quiet--keep quiet, "then leaned his face against her hair and breathed through its tangles. 

"It's all right, I'll do it. I'll say I couldn't find anyone. I'lllie for you, Missy. "

She released him at once, dropped back a step and, lifting a distortedface, gave a nod. He passed on, and she fell on the grass, close tothe tent ropes and lay there, hidden by the darkness. 

She did not hear a step approaching from the herded tents. Had shebeen listening it would have been hard to discern, for the feet weremoccasin shod, falling noiseless on the muffling grass. A man's figurewith fringes wavering along its outline came round the tent wall. Thehead was thrust forward, the ear alert for voices. Faring softly hisfoot struck her and he bent, stretching down a feeling hand. Ittouched her shoulder, slipped along her side, and gripped at her arm. "What's the matter?" came a deep voice, and feeling the pull on her armshe got to her knees with a strangled whisper for silence. When thelight fell across her, he gave a smothered cry, jerked her to her feetand thrust his hand into her hair, drawing her head back till her facewas uplifted to his. 

There was no one to see, and he let his eyes feed full upon it, a thiefwith the coveted treasure in his hands. She seemed unconscious of him, a broken thing without sense or volition, till a stir came from thetent. Then he felt her resist his grasp. She put a hand on his breastand pressed herself back from him. 

"Hush, " she breathed. "Daddy John's in there. "

A shadow ran up the canvas wall, bobbing on it, huge and wavering. Sheturned her head toward it, the tears on her cheeks glazed by the light. He watched her with widened nostrils and immovable eyes. In the mutualsuspension of action that held them he could feel her heart beating. 

"Well?" came the doctor's voice. 

The old servant answered:

"There weren't no parsons anywhere, I've been all over and there's notone. "

"Parsons?" Courant breathed. 

She drew in the fingers spread on his breast with a clawing movementand emitted an inarticulate sound that meant "Hush. "

"Not a clergyman or missionary among all these people?"

"Not one. "

"We must wait till to-morrow, then. "

"Yes--mebbe there'll be one to-morrow. "

"I hope so. "

Then silence fell and the shadow flickered again on the canvas. 

She made a struggle against Courant's hold, which for a moment he triedto resist, but her fingers plucked against his hand, and she toreherself free and ran to the tent opening. She entered withoutspeaking, threw herself at the foot of the couch, and laid her headagainst her father's knees. 

"Is that you, Missy?" he said, feeling for her with a groping hand. "Daddy John couldn't find a clergyman. "

"I know, " she answered, and lay without moving, her face buried in thefolds of the blanket. 

They said no more, and Daddy John stole out of the tent. 

The next day the doctor was too ill to ask for a clergyman, to know orto care. At nightfall he died. The Emigrant Trail had levied itsfirst tribute on them, taken its toll. 

END OF PART III

PART IV

The Desert

CHAPTER I

They were camped on the edges of that harsh land which lay between theGreat Salt Lake and the Sierra. Behind them the still, heavy reach ofwater stretched, reflecting in mirrored clearness the mountainscrowding on its southern rim. Before them the sage reached out to diminfinities of distance. The Humboldt ran nearby, sunk in a stony bed, its banks matted with growths of alder and willow. The afternoon wasdrawing to the magical sunset hour. Susan, lying by the door of hertent, could see below the growing western blaze the bowl of the earthfilling with the first, liquid oozings of twilight. 

A week ago they had left the Fort. To her it had been a blank space oftime, upon which no outer interest had intruded. She had presented aninvulnerable surface to all that went on about her, the men's care, theday's incidents, the setting of the way. Cold-eyed and dumb she hadmoved with them, an inanimate idol, unresponsive to the observances oftheir worship, aloof from them in somber uncommunicated musings. 

The men respected her sorrow, did her work for her, and let her alone. To them she was set apart in the sanctuary of her mourning, and thather grief should express itself by hours of drooping silence was athing they accepted without striving to understand. Once or twiceDavid tried to speak to her of her father, but it seemed to rouse inher an irritated and despairing pain. She begged him to desist and gotaway from him as quickly as she could, climbing into the wagon andlying on the sacks, with bright, unwinking eyes fastened on DaddyJohn's back. But she did not rest stunned under an unexpected blow asthey thought. She was acutely alive, bewildered, but with senses keen, as if the world had taken a dizzying revolution and she had come uppanting and clutching among the fragments of what had been her life. 

If there had been some one to whom she could have turned, relievingherself by confession, she might have found solace and set her feet insafer ways. But among the three men she was virtually alone, guardingher secret with that most stubborn of all silences, a girl's in thefirst wakening of sex. She had a superstitious hope that she couldregain peace and self-respect by an act of reparation, and at suchmoments turned with expiatory passion to the thought of David. Shewould go to California, live as her father had wished, marry herbetrothed, and be as good a wife to him as man could have. And for aspace these thoughts brought her ease, consoled her as a compensatingact of martyrdom. 

She shunned Courant, rarely addressing him, keeping her horse to therear of the train where the wagon hood hid him from her. But when hisfoot fell on the dust beside her, or he dropped back for a word withDaddy John, a stealthy, observant quietude held her frame. She turnedher eyes from him as from an unholy sight, but it was useless, for hermental vision called up his figure, painted in yellow and red upon thebackground of the sage. She knew the expression of the lithe body asit leaned from the saddle, the gnarled hand from which the rein hungloose, the eyes, diamond hard and clear, living sparks set in leatheryskin wrinkled against the glare of the waste. She did not lie toherself any more. No delusions could live in this land stripped of allconciliatory deception. 

The night before they left the Fort the men had had a consultation. Sitting apart by the tent she had watched them, David and Daddy Johnbetween her and the fire, Courant beyond it. His face, red lit betweenthe hanging locks of hair, his quick eyes, shifting from one man to theother, was keen with a furtive anxiety. At a point in the murmuredinterview, he had looked beyond them to the darkened spot where shesat. Then Daddy John and David had come to her and told her that ifshe wished they would turn back, take her home to Rochester, and staythere with her always. There was money enough they said. The doctorhad left seven thousand dollars in his chest, and David had three toadd to it. It would be ample to live on till the men could set to workand earn a maintenance for them. No word was spoken of her marriage, but it lay in the offing of their argument as the happy finale that thelong toil of the return journey and the combination of resources wereto prelude. 

The thought of going back had never occurred to her, and shocked herinto abrupt refusal. It would be an impossible adaptation to outgrownconditions. She could not conjure up the idea of herself refitted intothe broken frame of her girlhood. She told them she would go on, therewas nothing now to go back for. Their only course was to keep to theoriginal plan, emigrate to California and settle there. They returnedto the fire and told Courant. She could see him with eager gazelistening. Then he smiled and, rising to his feet, sent a bold, exultant glance through the darkness to her. She drew her shawl overher head to shut it out, for she was afraid. 

They rested now on the lip of the desert, gathering their forces forthe last lap of the march. There had been no abatement in the pressureof their pace, and Courant had told them it must be kept up. He hadheard the story of the Donner party two years before, and the first ofSeptember must see them across the Sierra. In the evenings heconferred with Daddy John on these matters and kept a vigilant watch onthe animals upon whose condition the success of the journey depended. 

David was not included in these consultations. Both men now realizedthat he was useless when it came to the rigors of the trail. Of latehe had felt a physical and spiritual impairment, that showed in aslighted observance of his share of the labor. He had never learned tocord his pack, and day after day it turned under his horse's belly, discharging its cargo on the ground. The men, growling withirritation, finally took the work from him, not from any pityingconsideration, but to prevent further delay. 

He was, in fact, coming to that Valley of Desolation where the bodyfaints and only the spirit's dauntlessness can keep it up and doing. What dauntlessness his spirit once had was gone. He moved wearily, automatically doing his work and doing it ill. The very movements ofhis hands, slack and fumbling, were an exasperation to the other men, setting their strength to a herculean measure, and giving of it withoutbegrudgment. David saw their anger and did not care. Fatigue made himindifferent, ate into his pride, brought down his self-respect. Heplodded on doggedly, the alkali acrid on his lips and burning in hiseyeballs, thinking of California, not as the haven of love and dreams, but as a place where there was coolness, water, and rest. When in thedawn he staggered up to the call of "Catch up, " and felt for the buckleof his saddle girth, he had a vision of a place under trees by a riverwhere he could sleep and wake and turn to sleep again, and go onrepeating the performance all day with no one to shout at him if he wasstupid and forgot things. 

Never having had the fine physical endowment of the others all thefires of his being were dying down to smoldering ashes. His love forSusan faded, if not from his heart, from his eyes and lips. She was asdear to him as ever, but now with a devitalized, undemanding affectionin which there was something of a child's fretful dependence. He rodebeside her not looking at her, contented that she should be there, butwith the thought of marriage buried out of sight under the weight ofhis weariness. It did not figure at all in his mind, which, whenroused from apathy, reached forward into the future to gloat upon thedream of sleep. She was grateful for his silence, and they rode sideby side, detached from one another, moving in separated worlds ofsensation. 

This evening he came across to where she sat, dragging a blanket in anindolent hand. He dropped it beside her and threw himself upon it witha sigh. He was too empty of thought to speak, and lay outstretched, looking at the plain where dusk gathered in shadowless softness. Incontrast with his, her state was one of inner tension, strained to thebreaking point. Torturings of conscience, fears of herself, theunaccustomed bitterness of condemnation, melted her, and she was ripefor confession. A few understanding words and she would have pouredher trouble out to him, less in hope of sympathy than in a craving forrelief. The widening gulf would have been bridged and he would havegained the closest hold upon her he had yet had. But if she were morea woman than ever before, dependent, asking for aid, he was less a man, wanting himself to rest on her and have his discomforts made bearableby her consolations. 

She looked at him tentatively. His eyes were closed, the lidscuriously dark, and fringed with long lashes like a girl's. 

"Are you asleep?" she asked. 

"No, " he answered without raising them. "Only tired. "

She considered for a moment, then said:

"Have you ever told a lie?"

"A lie? I don't know. I guess so. Everybody tells lies sometime orother. "

"Not little lies. Serious ones, sinful ones, to people you love. "

"No. I never told that kind. That's a pretty low-down thing to do. "

"Mightn't a person do it--to--to--escape from something they didn'twant, something they suddenly--at that particular moment--dreaded andshrank from?"

"Why couldn't they speak out, say they didn't want to do it? Why didthey have to lie?"

"Perhaps they didn't have time to think, and didn't want to hurt theperson who asked it. And--and--if they were willing to do the thinglater, sometime in the future, wouldn't that make up for it?"

"I can't tell. I don't know enough about it. I don't understand whatyou mean. " He turned, trying to make himself more comfortable. "Lord, how hard this ground is! I believe it's solid iron underneath. "

He stretched and curled on the blanket, elongating his body in a mightyyawn which subsided into the solaced note of a groan. "There, that'sbetter. I ache all over to-night. "

She made no answer, looking at the prospect from morose brows. More atease he returned to the subject and asked, "Who's been telling lies?"

"I, " she answered. 

He gave a short laugh, that drew from her a look of quick protest. Hewas lying on his side, one arm crooked under his head, his eyes on herin a languid glance where incredulity shone through amusement. 

"Your father told me once you were the most truthful woman he'd everknown, and I agree with him. "

"It was to my father I lied, " she answered. 

She began to tremble, for part at least of the story was on her lips. She clasped her shaking hands round her knees, and, not looking at him, said "David, " and then stopped, stifled by the difficulties and thelonging to speak. 

David answered by laughing outright, a pleasant sound, not guiltless ofa suggestion of sleep, a laugh of good nature that refuses to abdicate. It brushed her back into herself as if he had taken her by theshoulders, pushed her into her prison, and slammed the door. 

"That's all imagination, " he said. "When some one we love dies we'realways thinking things like that--that we neglected them, or slightedthem, or told them what wasn't true. They stand out in our memoriesbigger than all the good things we did. Don't you worry about any liesyou ever told your father. You've got nothing to accuse yourself ofwhere he's concerned--or anybody else, either. "

Her heart, that had throbbed wildly as she thought to begin herconfession, sunk back to a forlorn beat. He noticed her dejected air, and said comfortingly:

"Don't be downhearted, Missy. It's been terribly hard for you, butyou'll feel better when we get to California, and can live likeChristians again. "

"California!" Her intonation told of the changed mind with which shenow looked forward to the Promised Land. 

His consolatory intentions died before his own sense of grievance atthe toil yet before them. 

"Good Lord, it does seem far--farther than it did in the beginning. Iused to be thinking of it all the time then, and how I'd get to workthe first moment we arrived. And now I don't care what it's like orthink of what I'm going to do. All I want to get there for is to stopthis eternal traveling and rest. "

She, too, craved rest, but of the spirit. Her outlook was blacker thanhis, for it offered none and drew together to a point where hertribulations focused in a final act of self-immolation. There was apause, and he said, drowsiness now plain in his voice:

"But we'll be there some day unless we die on the road, and then we cantake it easy. The first thing I'm going to do is to get a mattress tosleep on. No more blankets on the ground for me. Do you ever thinkwhat it'll be like to sleep in a room again under a roof, a good, waterproof roof, that the sun and the rain can't come through? The wayI feel now that's my idea of Paradise. "

She murmured a low response, her thoughts far from the flesh pots ofhis wearied longing. 

"I think just at this moment, " he went on dreamily, "I'd rather have agood sleep and a good meal than anything else in the world. I oftendream of 'em, and then Daddy John's kicking me and it's morning and Igot to crawl out of the blanket and light the fire. I don't knowwhether I feel worse at that time or in the evening when we're makingthe last lap for the camping ground. " His voice dropped as ifexhausted before the memory of these unendurable moments, then cameagain with a note of cheer: "Thank God, Courant's with us or I don'tbelieve we'd ever get there. "

She had no reply to make to this. Neither spoke for a space, and thenshe cautiously stole a glance at him and was relieved to see that hewas asleep. Careful to be noiseless she rose, took up a tin water pailand walked to the river. 

The Humboldt rushed through a deep-cut bed, nosing its way betweenstrewings of rock. Up the banks alders and willows grew thick, thrusting roots, hungry for the lean deposits of soil, into cracks andover stony ledges. By the edge the current crisped about a flat rock, and Susan, kneeling on this, dipped in her pail. The water slipped inin a silvery gush which, suddenly seething and bubbling, churned in thehollowed tin, nearly wrenching it from her. She leaned forward, dragging it awkwardly toward her, clutching at an alder stem with herfree hand. Her head was bent, but she raised it with a jerk when sheheard Courant's voice call, "Wait, I'll do it for you. "

He was on the opposite bank, the trees he had broken through swishingtogether behind him. She lowered her head without answering, her facesuddenly charged with color. Seized by an overmastering desire toescape him, she dragged at the pail, which, caught in the force of thecurrent, leaped and swayed in her hand. She took a hurried upwardglimpse, hopeful of his delayed progress, and saw him jump from thebank to a stone in mid-stream. His moccasined feet clung to itsslippery surface, and for a moment he oscillated unsteadily, thengained his balance and, laughing, looked at her. For a breathing spaceeach rested motionless, she with strained, outstretched arm, he on therock, a film of water covering his feet. It was a moment of physicalmastery without conscious thought. To each the personality of theother was so perturbing, that without words or touch, the heart beatsof both grew harder, and their glances held in a gaze fixed andgleaming. The woman gained her self-possession first, and with it ananimal instinct to fly from him, swiftly through the bushes. 

But her flight was delayed. A stick, whirling in the current, caughtbetween the pail's rim and handle and ground against her fingers. Withan angry cry she loosed her hold, and the bucket went careening intomidstream. That she had come back to harmony with her surroundings wasattested by the wail of chagrin with which she greeted the accident. It was the last pail she had left. She watched Courant wade into thewater after it, and forgot to run in her anxiety to see if he would getit. "Oh, good!" came from her in a gasp as he caught the handle. Butwhen he came splashing back and set it on the rock beside her, itsuddenly lost its importance, and as suddenly she became a prey tolow-voiced, down-looking discomfort. A muttered "thank you, " was allthe words she had for him, and she got to her feet with looks directedto the arrangement of her skirt. 

He stood knee-high in the water watching her, glad of her down-droopedlids, for he could dwell on the bloom that deepened under his eye. 

"You haven't learned the force of running water yet, " he said. "It canbe very strong sometimes, so strong that a little woman's hand likeyours has no power against it. "

"It was because the stick caught in the handle, " she muttered, bendingfor the pail. "It hurt my fingers. "

"You've never guessed that I was called 'Running Water, ' have you?"

"You?" she paused with look arrested in sudden interest. "Who callsyou that?"

"Everybody--you. _L'eau courante_ means running water, doesn't it?That's what you call me. "

In the surprise of the revelation she forgot her unease and looked athim, repeating slowly, "L'eau courante, running water. Why, of course. But it's like an Indian's name. "

"It is an Indian's name. The Blackfeet gave it to me because they saidI could run so fast. They were after me once and a man makes the besttime he can then. It was a fine race and I won it, and after that theycalled me, 'The man that goes like Running Water. ' The voyageurs andcoureurs des bois put it into their lingo and it stuck. "

"But your real name?" she asked, the pail forgotten. 

"Just a common French one, Duchesney, Napoleon Duchesney, if you wantto know both ends of it. It was my father's. He was called after theemperor whom my grandfather knew years ago in France. He and Napoleonwere students together in the military school at Brienne. In theRevolution they confiscated his lands, and he came out to Louisiana andnever wanted to go back. " He splashed to the stone and took up thebucket. 

She stood absorbed in the discovery, her child's mind busy over thisnew conception of him as a man whose birth and station had evidentlybeen so different to the present conditions of his life. When shespoke her mental attitude was naïvely displayed. 

"Why didn't you tell before?"

He shrugged. 

"What was there to tell? The mountain men don't always use their ownnames. "

The bucket, swayed by the movement, threw a jet of water on her foot. He moved back from her and said, "I like the Indian name best. "

"It is pretty, " and in a lower key, as though trying its sound, sherepeated softly, "_L'eau Courante_, Running Water. "

"It's something clear and strong, sometimes shallow and then againdeeper than you can guess. And when there's anything in the way, itgathers all its strength and sweeps over it. It's a mighty force. Youhave to be stronger than it is--and more cunning too--to stop it in theway it wants to go. "

Above their heads the sky glowed in red bars, but down in the stream'shollow the dusk had come, cool and gray. She was suddenly aware of it, noticed the diminished light, and the thickening purplish tones thathad robbed the trees and rocks of color. Her warm vitality was invadedby chill that crept inward and touched her spirit with an eerie dread. She turned quickly and ran through the bushes calling back to him, "Imust hurry and get supper. They'll be waiting. Bring the pail. "

Courant followed slowly, watching her as she climbed the bank. 

CHAPTER II

For some days their route followed the river, then they would leave itand strike due west, making marches from spring to spring. The countrywas as arid as the face of a dead planet, save where the water's coursewas marked by a line of green. Here and there the sage was broken bybare spaces where the alkali cropped out in a white encrusting. Lowmountains edged up about the horizon, thrusting out pointed scarps likecapes protruding into slumbrous, gray-green seas. These capes wereobjects upon which they could fix their eyes, goals to reach and pass. In the blank monotony they offered an interest, something to strivefor, something that marked an advance. The mountains never seemed toretreat or come nearer. They encircled the plain in a crumpled wall, the same day after day, a low girdle of volcanic shapes, cleft withmoving shadows. 

The sun was the sun of August. It reeled across a sky paled by itsardor, at midday seeming to pause and hang vindictive over the littlecaravan. Under its fury all color left the blanched earth, all shadowsshrunk away to nothing. The train alone, as if in desperate defiance, showed a black blot beneath the wagon, an inky snake sliding over theground under each horse's sweating belly. The air was like a stretchedtissue, strained to the limit of its elasticity, in places parting indelicate, glassy tremblings. Sometimes in the distance the mirage hungbrilliant, a blue lake with waves crisping on a yellow shore. Theywatched it with hungry eyes, a piece of illusion framed by the bleachedand bitter reality. 

When evening came the great transformation began. With the firstdeepening of color the desert's silent heart began to beat inexpectation of its hour of beauty. Its bleak detail was lost inshrouding veils and fiery reflection. The earth floor became a goldensea from which the capes reared themselves in shapes of bronze andcopper. The ring of mountains in the east flushed to the pink of thetopaz, then bending westward shaded from rosy lilac to mauve, and wherethe sunset backed them, darkened to black. As the hour progressed thestillness grew more profound, the naked levels swept out in wilderglory, inundated by pools of light, lines of fire eating a glowing waythrough sinks where twilight gathered. With each moment it became amore tremendous spectacle. The solemnity attendant on the passage of amiracle held it. From the sun's mouth the voice of God seemed callingthe dead land to life. 

Each night the travelers gazed upon it, ragged forms gilded by itsradiance, awed and dumb. Its splendors crushed them, filling them withnostalgic longings. They bore on with eyes that were sick for a sightof some homely, familiar thing that would tell them they were stillhuman, still denizens of a world they knew. The life into which theyfitted and had uses was as though perished from the face of the earth. The weak man sunk beneath the burden of its strangeness. Its beautymade no appeal to him. He felt lost and dazed in its iron-ringedruthlessness, dry as a skeleton by daylight, at night transformed bywitchfires of enchantment. The man and woman, in whom vitality wasstrong, combatted its blighting force, refused to be broken by itspower. They desired with vehemence to assert themselves, to rebel, notto submit to the sense of their nothingness. They turned to oneanother hungry for the life that now was only within themselves. Theyhad passed beyond the limits of the accustomed, were like detachedparticles gone outside the law of gravity, floating undirected throughspaces where they were nothing and had nothing but their bodies, theirpassions, themselves. 

To a surface observation they would have appeared as stolid as savages, but their nerves were taut as drawn violin strings. Strangeself-assertions, violences of temper, were under the skin ready tobreak out at a jar in the methodical routine. Had the train beenlarger, its solidarity less complete, furious quarrels would have takenplace. With an acknowledged leader whom they believed in and obeyed, the chances of friction were lessened. Three of them could meet thephysical demands of the struggle. It was David's fate that, unable todo this, he should fall to a position of feeble uselessness, endurablein a woman, but difficult to put up with in a man. 

One morning Susan was waked by angry voices. An oath shook sleep fromher, and thrusting her head out of the wagon where she now slept, shesaw the three men standing in a group, rage on Courant's face, disguston Daddy John's, and on David's an abstraction of aghast dismay thatwas not unlike despair. To her question Daddy John gave a shortanswer. David's horses, insecurely picketed, had pulled up theirstakes in the night and gone. A memory of the young man's exhaustionthe evening before, told the girl the story; David had forgotten topicket them and immediately after supper had fallen asleep. He hadevidently been afraid to tell and invented the explanation of draggedpicket pins. She did not know whether the men believed it, but she sawby their faces they were in no mood to admit extenuating circumstances. The oath had been Courant's. When he heard her voice he shut his lipson others, but they welled up in his eyes, glowering furiously on theculprit from the jut of drawn brows. 

"What am I to do?" said the unfortunate young man, sending a despairingglance over the prospect. Under his weak misery, rebellious ill humorwas visible. 

"Go after them and bring them back. "

Susan saw the leader had difficulty in confining himself to such briefphrases. Dragging a blanket round her shoulders she leaned over theseat. She felt like a woman who enters a quarrel to protect a child. 

"Couldn't we let them go?" she cried. "We've still my father's horse. David can ride it and we can put his things in the wagon. "

"Not another ounce in the wagon, " said Daddy John. "The mules aredoing their limit now. " The wagon was his kingdom over which he ruledan absolute monarch. 

Courant looked at her and spoke curtly, ignoring David. "We can't losea horse now. We need every one of them. It's not here. It's beyondin the mountains. We've got to get over by the first of September, andwe want every animal we have to do it. _He's_ not able to walk. "

He shot a contemptuous glance at David that in less bitter times wouldhave made the young man's blood boil. But David was too far from hisnormal self to care. He was not able to walk and was glad that Courantunderstood it. 

"I've got to go after them, I suppose, " he said sullenly and turned towhere the animals looked on with expectant eyes. "But it's the lasttime I'll do it. If they go again they'll stay gone. "

There was a mutter from the other men. Susan, full of alarm, scrambledinto the back of the wagon and pulled on her clothes. When she emergedDavid had the doctor's horse saddled and was about to mount. His face, heavy-eyed and unwashed, bore an expression of morose anger, butfatigue spoke pathetically in his slow, lifeless movements, the droopof his thin, high shoulders. 

"David, " she called, jumping out over the wheel, "wait. "

He did not look at her or answer, but climbed into the saddle andgathered his rein. She ran toward him crying, "Wait and have somebreakfast. I'll get it for you. "

He continued to pay no attention to her, glancing down at his foot asit felt for the stirrup. She stopped short, repulsed by his manner, watching him as he sent a forward look over the tracks of the losthorses. They wound into the distance fading amid the sweep ofmotionless sage. It would be a long search and the day was alreadyhot. Pity rose above all other feelings, and she said:

"Have they told you what they're going to do? Whether we'll wait hereor go on and have you catch us up?"

"I don't know what they're going to do and don't care, " he answered, and touching the horse with his spur rode away between the brushingbushes. 

She turned to Daddy John, her eyes full of alarmed question. 

"He knows all about it, " said the old man with slow phlegm, "I told himmyself. There's food and water for him packed on behind the saddle, Idone that too. He'd have gone without it just to spite himself. We'llrest here this morning, and if he ain't back by noon move on slow tillhe catches us up. Don't you worry. He done the wrong thing and he'sgot to learn. "

No more was said about David, and after breakfast they waited doing theodd tasks that accumulated for their few periods of rest. Susan satsewing where the wagon cast a cooling slant of shade. Daddy John wasbeyond her in the sun, his sere old body, from which time had strippedthe flesh, leaving only a tenuous bark of muscle, was impervious to theheat. In the growing glare he worked over a broken saddle, thewhitening reaches stretching out beyond him to where the mountainswaved in a clear blue line as if laid on with one wash of a saturatedpaint brush. Courant was near him in the shadow of his horse, cleaninga gun, sharp clicks of metal now and then breaking into the stillness. 

As the hours passed the shadow of the wagon shrunk and the girl movedwith it till her back was pressed against the wheel. She was making acalico jacket, and as she moved it the crisp material emitted lowcracklings. Each rustle was subdued and stealthy, dying quickly awayas if it were in conspiracy with the silence and did not want todisturb it. Courant's back was toward her. He had purposely set hisface away, but he could hear the furtive whisperings of the stirredcalico. He was full of the consciousness of her, and this sound, whichcarried a picture of her drooped head and moving hands, came with astealing unquiet, urgently intrusive and persistent. He tried to holdhis mind on his work, but his movements slackened, grew intermittent, his ear attentive for the low rustling that crept toward him atintervals like the effervescent approach of waves. Each time he heardit the waves washed deeper to his inner senses and stole something fromhis restraining will. For days the desert had been stealing from ittoo. He knew it and was guarded and fearful of it, but this morning heforgot to watch, forgot to care. His reason was drugged by the sound, the stifled, whispering sound that her hands made moving the materialfrom which she fashioned a covering for her body. 

He sat with his back turned to her, his hands loose on the gun, hiseyes fixed in an unseeing stare. He did not know what he looked at orthat the shadow of the horse had slipped beyond him. When he heard hermove his quietness increased to a trancelike suspension of movement, the inner concentration holding every muscle in spellbound rigidness. Suddenly she tore the calico with a keen, rending noise, and it was asif her hands had seized upon and so torn the tension that held him. His fists clinched on the gun barrel, and for a moment the mountainline undulated to his gaze. Had they been alone, speech would haveburst from him, but the presence of the old man kept him silent. Hebowed his head over the gun, making a pretense of giving it a lastinspection, then, surer of himself, leaped to his feet and said gruffly:

"Let's move on. There's no good waiting here. "

The other two demurred. Susan rose and walked into the glare sweepingthe way David had gone. Against the pale background she stood out avital figure, made up of glowing tints that reached their brightestnote in the heated rose of her cheeks and lips. Her dark head with itscurly crest of hair was defined as if painted on the opaque blue of thesky. She stood motionless, only her eyes moving as they searched thedistance. All of life that remained in the famished land seemed tohave flowed into her and found a beautified expression in the richvitality of her upright form, the flushed bloom of her face. DaddyJohn bent to pick up the saddle, and the mountain man, safe fromespial, looked at her with burning eyes. 

"David's not in sight, " she said. "Do you think we'd better go on?"

"Whether we'd better or not we will, " he answered roughly. "Catch up, Daddy John. "

They were accustomed to obeying him like children their master. Sowithout more parley they pulled up stakes, loaded the wagon, andstarted. As Susan fell back to her place at the rear, she called toCourant:

"We'll go as slowly as we can. We mustn't get too far ahead. Davidcan't ride hard the way he is now. "

The man growled an answer that she did not hear, and without looking ather took the road. 

They made their evening halt by the river. It had dwindled to afragile stream which, wandering away into the dryness, would creepfeebly to its sink and there disappear, sucked into secret subways thatno man knew. To-morrow they would start across the desert, where theycould see the road leading straight in a white seam to the west. Davidhad not come. The mules stood stripped of their harness, the wagonrested with dropped tongue, the mess chest was open and pans shone inmingled fire and sunset gleams, but the mysteries of the distance, overwhich twilight veils were thickening, gave no sign of him. Daddy Johnbuilt up the desert fire as a beacon--a pile of sage that burned liketinder. It shot high, tossed exultant flames toward the dimmed starsand sent long jets of light into the encircling darkness. Its waveringradiance, red and dancing, touched the scattered objects of the camp, revealing and then losing them as new flame ran along the leaves orcharred branches dropped. Outside the night hung, deep and silent. Susan hovered on the outskirts of the glow. Darkness was thickening, creeping from the hills that lay inky-edged against the scarlet of thesky. Once she sent up a high cry of David's name. Courant, busy withhis horses, lifted his head and looked at her, scowling over hisshoulder. 

"Why are you calling?" he said. "He can see the fire. "

She came back and stood near him, her eyes on him in uneasy scrutiny:"We shouldn't have gone on. We should have waited for him. "

There was questioning and also a suggestion of condemnation in hervoice. She was anxious and her tone and manner showed she thought ithis fault. 

He bent to loosen a girth. 

"Are you afraid he's lost?" he said, his face against the horse. 

"No. But if he was?"

"Well! And if he was?"

The girth was uncinched and he swept saddle and blanket to the ground. 

"We'd have to go back for him, and you say we must lose no time. "

He kicked the things aside and made no answer. Then as he groped forthe picket pins he was conscious that she turned again with the nervousmovement of worry and swept the plain. 

"He was sick. We oughtn't to have gone on, " she repeated, and the noteof blame was stronger. "Oh, I wish he'd come!"

Their conversation had been carried on in a low key. Suddenly Courant, wheeling round on her, spoke in the raised tone of anger. 

"And am I to stop the train because that fool don't know enough or careenough to picket his horses? Is it always to be him? Excuses made andthings done for him as if he was a sick girl or a baby. Let him belost, and stay lost, and be damned to him. "

Daddy John looked up from the sheaf of newly gathered sage with thealertness of a scared monkey. Susan stepped back, feeling suddenlybreathless. Courant made a movement as if to follow her, then stopped, his face rived with lines and red with rage. He was shaken by what toher was entirely inexplicable anger, and in her amazement she staredvacantly at him. 

"What's that, what's that?" chirped Daddy John, scrambling to his feetand coming toward them with chin thrust belligerently forward andblinking eyes full of fight. 

Neither spoke to him and he added sharply:

"Didn't I hear swearing? Who's swearing now?" as if he had his doubtsthat it might be Susan. 

Courant with a stifled phrase turned from them, picked up his hammerand began driving in the stakes. 

"What was it?" whispered the old man. "What's the matter with him? Ishe mad at David?"

She shook her head, putting a finger on her lip in sign of silence, andmoving away to the other side of the fire. She felt the strain in themen and knew it was her place to try and keep the peace. But a senseof forlorn helplessness amid these warring spirits lay heavily on herand she beckoned to the old servant, wanting him near her as one who, no matter how dire the circumstances, would never fail her. 

"Yes, he's angry, " she said when they were out of earshot. "I supposeit's about David. But what can we do? We can't make David over intoanother man, and we can't leave him behind just because he's not asstrong as the rest of us. I feel as if we were getting to be savages. "

The old man gave a grunt that had a note of cynical acquiescence, thenheld up his hand in a signal for quiet. The thud of a horse's hoofscame from the outside night. With a quick word to get the supperready, she ran forward and stood in the farthest rim of the lightwaiting for her betrothed. 

David was a pitiable spectacle. The dust lay thick on his face, saveround his eyes, whence he had rubbed it, leaving the sockets lookingunnaturally sunken and black. His collar was open and his neck rosebare and roped with sinews. There was but one horse at the end of thetrail rope. As he slid out of the saddle, he dropped the rope on theground, saying that the other animal was sick, he had left it dying hethought. He had found them miles off, miles and miles--with a weakwave of his hand toward the south--near an alkaline spring where hesupposed they had been drinking. The other couldn't move, this one hehad dragged along with him. The men turned their attention to thehorse, which, with swollen body and drooping head, looked as if itmight soon follow its mate. They touched it, and spoke together, browsknit over the trouble, not paying any attention to David, who, back inthe flesh, was sufficiently accounted for. 

Susan was horrified by his appearance. She had never seen him look somuch a haggard stranger to himself. He was prostrate with fatigue, andthroughout the day he had nursed a sense of bitter injury. Now backamong them, seeing the outspread signs of their rest, and with the goodsmell of their food in his nostrils, this rose to the pitch ofhysterical rage, ready to vent itself at the first excuse. The sightof the girl, fresh-skinned from a wash in the river, instead ofsoothing, further inflamed him. Her glowing well-being seemed boughtat his expense. Her words of concern spoke to his sick ear with a noteof smug, unfeeling complacence. 

"David, you're half dead. Every thing'll be ready in a minute. Sitdown and rest. Here, take my blanket. "

She spread her blanket for him, but he stood still, not answering, staring at her with dull, accusing eyes. Then, with a dazed movement, he pushed his hand over the crown of his head throwing off his hat. The hand was unsteady, and it fell, the hooked forefinger catching inthe opening of his shirt, dragging it down and showing his bony breast. If he had been nothing to her she would have pitied him. Sense ofwrongs done him made the pity passionate. She went to him, theconsoling woman in her eyes, and laid her hand on the one that restedon his chest. 

"David, sit down and rest. Don't move again. I'll get you everything. I never saw you look as you do to-night. "

With an angry movement he threw her hand off. 

"You don't care, " he said. "What does it matter to you when you'vebeen comfortable all day? So long as you and the others are all rightI don't matter. "

It was so unlike him, his face was so changed and charged with achildish wretchedness, that she felt no check upon her sympathy. Sheknew it was not David that spoke, but a usurping spirit born of evildays. The other men pricked their ears and listened, but she wasindifferent to their watch, and tried again to take his hand, saying, pleadingly:

"Sit down. When I get your supper you'll be better. I'll have itready in a few minutes. "

This time he threw her hand off with violence. His face, under itsdust mask, flamed with the anger that had been accumulating through theday. 

"Let me alone, " he cried, his voice strangled like a wrathful child's. "I don't want anything to do with you. Eat your supper. When I'mready I'll get mine without any help from you. Let me be. "

He turned from her, and moving over the blanket, stumbled on its folds. The jar was the breaking touch to his overwrought nerves. Hestaggered, caught his breath with a hiccoughing gasp, and dropping hisface into his hands burst into hysterical tears. Then in a suddenabandonment of misery he threw himself on the blanket, buried his headin his folded arms and rending sobs broke from him. For a moment theywere absolutely still, staring at him in stupefied surprise. DaddyJohn, his neck craned round the blaze, surveyed him with bright, sharpeyes of unemotional query, then flopped the bacon pan on the embers, and said:

"He's all done. "

Courant advanced a step, looked down on him and threw a sidelong glanceat Susan, bold with meaning. After her first moment of amazement, shemoved to David's side, drew the edge of the blanket over him, touchedhis head with a light caress, and turned back to the fire. The platesand cups were lying there and she quietly set them out, her eye now andthen straying for a needed object, her hand hanging in suspended searchthen dropping upon it, and noiselessly putting it in its place. Unconsciously they maintained an awed silence, as if they were sittingby the dead. Daddy John turned the bacon with stealthy care, thescrape of his knife on the pan sounding a rude and unseemly intrusion. Upon this scrupulously maintained quietude the man's weeping brokeinsistent, the stifled regular beat of sobs hammering on it as ifdetermined to drive their complacency away and reduce them to the lowebb of misery in which he lay. 

They had almost finished their meal when the sounds lessened, dwindlingto spasmodic, staggering gasps with lengthening pauses that brokesuddenly in a quivering intake of breath and a vibration of therecumbent frame. The hysterical paroxysm was over. He lay limp andturned his head on his arms, too exhausted to feel shame for the shineof tears on his cheek. Susan took a plate of food and a coffee cup andstole toward him, the two men watching her under their eyelids. Sheknelt beside him and spoke very gently, "Will you take this, David?You'll feel stronger after you've eaten. "

"Put it down, " he said hoarsely, without moving. 

"Shall I give you the coffee?" She hung over him looking into hisface. "I can hold the cup and you can drink it. "

"By and by, " he muttered. 

She bent lower and laid her hand on his hair. 

"David, I'm so sorry, " she breathed. 

Courant leaped to his feet and walked to where his horses stood. Hestruck one of them a blow on the flank that after the silence and thelow tones of the girl's crooning voice sounded as violent as a pistolshot. They all started, even David lifted his head. 

"What's the matter now?" said Daddy John, alert for any outbreak of manor beast. 

But Courant made no answer, and moved away into the plain. It was sometime before he came back, emerging from the darkness as noiselessly ashe had gone. David had eaten his supper and was asleep, the girlsitting beyond him withdrawn from the fire glow. Daddy John wasexamining the sick horse, and Courant joined him, walking round thebeast and listening to the old man's opinions as to its condition. They were not encouraging. It seemed likely that David's carelessnesswould cost the train two valuable animals. 

To the outward eye peace had again settled on the camp. The lowconferrings of the two men, the dying snaps of the charred twigs, werethe only sounds. The night brooded serene about the bivouac, the largestars showing clear now that the central glare had sunk to a red heapof ruin. Far away, on the hills, the sparks of Indian fires gleamed. They had followed the train for days, watching it like the eyes ofhungry animals, too timid to come nearer. But there was no cause foralarm, for the desert Indians were a feeble race, averse to bloodshed, thieves at their worst, descending upon the deserted camping grounds tocarry away what the emigrants left. 

Nevertheless, when the sound of hoof beats came from the trail both menmade a quick snatch for their rifles, and Susan jumped to her feet witha cry of "Some one's coming. " They could see nothing, the darknesshanging like a curtain across their vision. Courant, with his rifle inthe hollow of his arm, moved toward the sounds, his hail reaching clearand deep into the night. An answer came in a man's voice, the hoofbeats grew louder, and the reaching light defined approaching shapes. Daddy John threw a bunch of sage on the fire, and in the rush of flamethat flew along its branches, two mounted men were visible. 

They dropped to the ground and came forward. "From California to theStates, " the foremost said to Susan, seeing a woman with fears to beallayed. He was tall and angular with a frank, copper-tanned face, overtopped by a wide spread of hat, and bearded to the eyes. He wore aloose hickory shirt and buckskin breeches tucked into long boots, already broken from the soles. The other was a small and comicalfigure with an upstanding crest of sunburned blond hair, tight curledand thick as a sheep's fleece. When he saw Susan he delayed hisadvance to put on a ragged army overcoat that hung to his heels, andevidently hid discrepancies in his costume not meet for a lady's eye. Both men were powdered with dust, and announced themselves as hungryenough to eat their horses. 

Out came pans and supplies, and the snapping of bacon fat and smell ofcoffee rose pungent. Though, by their own account, they had riddenhard and far, there was a feverish energy of life in each of them thatroused the drooping spirits of the others like an electrifying current. They ate ravenously, pausing between mouthfuls to put quick questionson the condition of the eastward trail, its grazing grounds, whatsupplies could be had at the Forts. It was evident they were new tojourneying on the great bare highways of the wilderness, but that factseemed to have no blighting effect on their zeal. What and who theywere came out in the talk that gushed in the intervals of feeding. Thefair-haired man was a sailor, shipped from Boston round the Horn forCalifornia eight months before. The fact that he was a deserterdropped out with others. He was safe here--with a side-long laugh atSusan--no more of the sea for him. 

He was going back for money, money and men. It was too late to getthrough to the States now? Well he'd wait and winter at Fort Laramieif he had to, but he guessed he'd make a pretty vigorous effort to getto St. Louis. His companion was from Philadelphia, and was going backfor his wife and children, also money. He'd bring them out nextspring, collect a big train, stock it well, and carry them across withhim. 

"And start early, not waste any time dawdling round and talking. Startwith the first of 'em and get to California before the rush begins. "

"Rush?" said Courant. "Are you looking for a rush next year?"

The man leaned forward with upraised, arresting hand, "The biggest rushin the history of this country. Friends, there's gold in California. "

Gold! The word came in different keys, their flaccid bodies stiffenedinto upright eagerness-- Gold in the Promised Land!

Then came the great story, the discovery of California's treasure toldby wanderers to wanderers under the desert stars. Six months beforegold had been found in the race of Sutter's mill in the foothills. Thestreams that sucked their life from the snow crests of the Sierras wereyellow with it. It lay, a dusty sediment, in the prospector's pan. Itspread through the rock cracks in sparkling seams. 

The strangers capped story with story, chanted the tales of fantasticexaggeration that had already gone forth, and up and down Californiawere calling men from ranch and seaboard. They were coming down fromOregon along the wild spine of the coast ranges and up from the Missiontowns strung on highways beaten out by Spanish soldier and padre. Thenews was now en route to the outer world carried by ships. It wouldfly from port to port, run like fire up the eastern coast and leap tothe inland cities and the frontier villages. And next spring, when theroads were open, would come the men, the regiments of men, on foot, mounted, in long caravans, hastening to California for the gold thatwas there for anyone who had the strength and hardihood to go. 

The bearded man got up, went to his horse and brought back his pack. He opened it, pulled off the outer blanketing, and from a piece ofdirty calico drew a black sock, bulging and heavy. From this in turnhe shook a small buckskin sack. He smoothed the calico, untied ashoestring from the sack's mouth, and let a stream of dun-colored dustrun out. It shone in the firelight in a slow sifting rivulet, here andthere a bright flake like a spangle sending out a yellow spark. Several times a solid particle obstructed the lazy flow, which brokeupon it like water on a rock, dividing and sinking in two heavystreams. It poured with unctious deliberation till the sack was empty, and the man held it up to show the powdered dust of dust clinging tothe inside. 

"That's three weeks' washing on the river across the valley beyondSacramento, " he said, "and it's worth four thousand dollars in theUnited States mint. "

The pile shone yellow in the fire's even glow, and they stared at it, wonderstruck, each face showing a sudden kindling of greed, the longingto possess, to know the power and peace of wealth. It came with addedsharpness in the midst of their bare distress. Even the girl felt it, leaning forward to gloat with brightened eyes on the little pyramid. David forgot his injuries and craned his neck to listen, dreams oncemore astir. California became suddenly a radiant vision. No longer afaint line of color, vaguely lovely, but a place where fortune waitedthem, gold to fill their coffers, to bring them ease, to give theiraspirations definite shape, to repay them for their bitter pilgrimage. They were seized with the lust of it, and their attentive facessharpened with the strain of the growing desire. They felt the onwardurge to be up and moving, to get there and lay their hands on thewaiting treasure. 

The night grew old and still they talked, their fatigue forgotten. They heard the tale of Marshall's discovery and how it flew right andleft through the spacious, idle land. There were few to answer thecall, ranches scattered wide over the unpeopled valleys, small tradersin the little towns along the coast. In the settlement of Yerba Buena, fringing the edge of San Francisco Bay, men were leaving their goods attheir shop doors and going inland. Ships were lying idle in the tidewater, every sailor gone to find the golden river. The fair-haired manlaughed and told how he'd swam naked in the darkness, his money in hismouth, and crawled up the long, shoal shore, waist high in mud. 

The small hours had come when one by one they dropped to sleep as theylay. A twist of the blanket, a squirming into deeper comfort, and restwas on them. They sprawled in the caked dust like dead men fallen inbattle and left as they had dropped. Even the girl forgot the habitsof a life-long observance and sunk to sleep among them, her head on asaddle, the old servant curled at her feet. 

CHAPTER III

In the even dawn light the strangers left. It was hail and farewell indesert meetings. They trotted off into the ghostlike stillness of theplain which for a space threw back their hoof beats, and then closedround them. The departure of the westward band was not so prompt. With unbound packs and unharnessed animals, they stood, a dismayedgroup, gathered round a center of disturbance. David was ill. Theexertions of the day before had drained his last reserve of strength. He could hardly stand, complained of pain, and a fever painted hisdrawn face with a dry flush. Under their concerned looks, he climbedon his horse, swayed there weakly, then slid off and dropped on theground. 

"I'm too sick to go on, " he said in the final collapse of misery. "Youcan leave me here to die. "

He lay flat, looking up at the sky, his long hair raying like amourning halo from the outline of his skull, his arms outspread as ifhis soul had submitted to its crucifixion and his body was inagreement. That he was ill was beyond question. The men had theirsuspicions that he, like the horses, had drunk of the alkaline spring. 

Susan was for remaining where they were till he recovered, the otherswanted to go on. He gave no ear to their debate, interrupting it onceto announce his intention of dying where he lay. This called forth alook of compassion from the girl, a movement of exasperation from themountain man. Daddy John merely spat and lifted his hat to the faintdawn air. It was finally agreed that David should be placed in thewagon, his belongings packed on his horse, while the sick animal mustfollow as best it could. 

During the morning's march no one spoke. They might have been apicture moving across a picture for all the animation they showed. Theexaltation of the evening before had died down to a spark, alight andwarming still, but pitifully shrunk from last night's high-flamingbuoyancy. It was hard to keep up hopes in these distressful hours. California had again receded. The desert and the mountains were yet topass. The immediate moment hemmed them in so closely that it was aneffort to look through it and feel the thrill of joys that lay so farbeyond. It was better to focus their attention on the lonepromontories that cut the distance and gradually grew from flatsurfaces applied on the plain to solid shapes, thick-based and shadowcloven. 

They made their noon camp at a spring, bubbling from a rim ofwhite-rooted grass. David refused to take anything but water, groaningas he sat up in the wagon and stretching a hot hand for the cup thatSusan brought. The men paid no attention to him. They showed moreconcern for the sick horse, which when not incapacitated did its partwith good will, giving the full measure of its strength. That theyrefrained from open anger and upbraiding was the only concession theymade to the conventions they had learned in easier times. WhetherDavid cared or not he said nothing, lying fever-flushed, his wanderingglance held to attention when Susan's face appeared at the canvasopening. He hung upon her presence, querulously exacting in hisunfamiliar pain. 

Making ready for the start their eyes swept a prospect that showed nospot of green, and they filled their casks neck high and rolled outinto the dazzling shimmer of the afternoon. The desert was widening, the hills receding, shrinking away to a crenelated edge that fretted ahorizon drawn as straight as a ruled line. The plain unrolled morespacious and grimmer, not a growth in sight save sage, not a trickle ofwater or leaf murmur, even the mirage had vanished leaving the distancebare and mottled with a leprous white. At intervals, outstretched likea pointing finger, the toothed summit of a ridge projected, its baseuplifted in clear, mirrored reflection. 

The second half of the day was as unbroken by speech or incident as themorning. They had nothing to say, as dry of thought as they weredespoiled of energy. The shadows were beginning to lengthen when theycame to a fork in the trail. One branch bore straight westward, theother slanted toward the south, and both showed signs of recent travel. Following them to the distance was like following the tracks ofcreeping things traced on a sandy shore. Neither led toanything--sage, dust, the up-standing combs of rocky reefs were all thesearching eye could see till sight lost itself in the earth's curve. The girl and the two men stood in the van of the train consulting. Theregion was new to Courant, but they left it to him, and he decided forthe southern route. 

For the rest of the afternoon they followed it. The day deepened toevening and they bore across a flaming level, striped with giganticshadows. Looking forward they saw a lake of gold that lapped the rootsof rose and lilac hills. The road swept downward to a crimsoned butte, cleft apart, and holding in its knees a gleam of water. The animals, smelling it, broke for it, tearing the wagon over sand hummocks andcrackling twigs. It was a feeble upwelling, exhausted by a singledraught. Each beast, desperately nosing in its coolness, drained it, and there was a long wait ere the tiny depression filled again. Finally, it was dried of its last drop, and the reluctant ooze stopped. The animals, their thirst half slaked, drooped about it, looking withmournful inquiry at the disturbed faces of their masters. 

It was a bad sign. The men knew there were waterless tracts in thedesert that the emigrant must skirt. They mounted to the summit of thebutte and scanned their surroundings. The world shone a radiant floorout of which each sage brush rose a floating, feathered tuft, but ofgleam or trickle of water there was none. When they came down Davidlay beside the spring his eyes on its basin, now a muddied hole, therim patterned with hoof prints. When he heard them coming he rose onhis elbow awaiting them with a haggard glance, then seeing their blanklooks sank back groaning. To Susan's command that a cask be broached, Courant gave a sullen consent. She drew off the first cupful and gaveit to the sick man, his lean hands straining for it, his fingersfumbling in a search for the handle. The leader, after watching herfor a moment, turned away and swung off, muttering. David dropped backon the ground, his eyes closed, his body curved about the dampdepression. 

The evening burned to night, the encampment growing black against thescarlet sky. The brush fire sent a line of smoke straight up, a longmilky thread, that slowly disentangled itself and mounted to a finaloutspreading. Each member of the group was still, the girl lying adark oblong under her blanket, her face upturned to the stars whichblossomed slowly in the huge, unclouded heaven. At the root of thebutte, hidden against its shadowy base, the mountain man laymotionless, but his eyes were open and they rested on her, not closingor straying. 

When no one saw him he kept this stealthy watch. In the daytime, withthe others about, he still was careful to preserve his brusqueindifference, to avoid her, to hide his passion with a jealoussubtlety. But beneath the imposed bonds it grew with each day, stronger and more savage as the way waxed fiercer. It was not anobsession of occasional moments, it was always with him. As pilot herimage moved across the waste before him. When he fell back for wordswith Daddy John, he was listening through the old man's speech, for thefall of her horse's hoofs. Her voice made his heart stop, the rustleof her garments dried his throat. When his lowered eyes saw her handon the plate's edge, he grew rigid, unable to eat. If she brushed byhim in the bustle of camp pitching, his hands lost their strength andhe was sick with the sense of her. Love, courtship, marriage, werewords that no longer had any meaning for him. All the tenderness andhumanity he had felt for her in the days of her father's sickness weregone. They were burned away, as the water and the grass were. When hesaw her solicitude for David, his contempt for the weak man hardenedinto hatred. He told himself that he hated them both, and he toldhimself he would crush and kill them both before David should get her. The desire to keep her from David was stronger than the desire to haveher for himself. He did not think or care what he felt. She was theprey to be won by cunning or daring, whose taste or wishes had no placein the struggle. He no longer looked ahead, thought, or reasoned. Theelemental in him was developing to fit a scene in which only theelemental survived. 

They broke camp at four the next morning. For the last few days theheat had been unbearable, and they decided to start while the air wasstill cool and prolong the noon halt. The landscape grew barer. Therewere open areas where the soil was soft and sifted from the wheels likesand, and dried stretches where the alkali lay in a caked, white crust. In one place the earth humped into long, wavelike swells each cresttopped with a fringe of brush, fine and feathery as petrified spray. At mid-day there was no water in sight. Courant, standing on hissaddle, saw no promise of it, nothing but the level distance streakedwith white mountain rims, and far to the south a patch of yellow--baresand, he said, as he pointed a horny finger to where it lay. 

They camped in the glare and opened the casks. After the meal theytried to rest, but the sun was merciless. The girl crawled under thewagon and lay there on the dust, sleeping with one arm thrown acrossher face. The two men sat near by, their hats drawn low over theirbrows. There was not a sound. The silence seemed transmuted to aslowly thickening essence solidifying round them. It pressed upon themtill speech was as impossible as it would be under water. A brokengroup in the landscape's immensity, they were like a new expression ofits somber vitality, motionless yet full of life, in consonance withits bare and brutal verity. 

Courant left them to reconnoiter, and at mid afternoon came back toannounce that farther on the trail bent to an outcropping of red rockwhere he thought there might be water. It was the hottest hour of theday. The animals strained at their harness with lolling tongues andwhite-rimmed eyeballs, their sweat making tracks on the dust. Tolighten the wagon Daddy John walked beside it, plodding on in hisbroken moccasins, now and then chirruping to Julia. The girl rodebehind him, her blouse open at the neck, her hair clinging in a blackveining to her bedewed temples. Several times he turned back to lookat her as the only other female of the party to be encouraged. Whenshe caught his eye she nodded as though acknowledging the salutation ofa passerby, her dumbness an instinctive hoarding of physical force. 

The red rock came in sight, a nicked edge across the distance. As theyapproached, it drew up from the plain in a series of crumpled pointslike the comb of a rooster. The detail of the intervening space waslost in the first crepuscular softness, and they saw nothing but astretch of darkening purple from which rose the scalloped crest paintedin strange colors. Courant trotted forward crying a word of hope, andthey pricked after him to where the low bulwark loomed above theplain's swimming mystery. 

When they reached it he was standing at the edge of a cavernedindentation. Dead grasses dropped against the walls, withered weedsthickened toward the apex in a tangled carpet. There had once beenwater there, but it was gone, dried, or sunk to some hidden channel inthe rock's heart. They stood staring at the scorched herbage and thebasin where the earth was cracked apart in its last gasping throes ofthirst. 

David's voice broke the silence. He had climbed to the front seat, andhis face, gilded with the sunlight, looked like the face of a dead manpainted yellow. 

"Is there water?" he said, then saw the dead grass and dried basin, andmet the blank looks of his companions. 

Susan's laconic "The spring's dry, " was not necessary. He fell forwardon the seat with a moan, his head propped in his hands, his fingersburied in his hair. Courant sent a look of furious contempt over hisabject figure, then gave a laugh that fell on the silence bitter as acurse. Daddy John without a word moved off and began unhitching themules. Even in Susan pity was, for the moment, choked by a swell ofdisgust. Had she not had the other men to measure him by, had she notwithin her own sturdy frame felt the spirit still strong for conflict, she might still have known only the woman's sympathy for the feeblercreature. But they were a trio steeled and braced for invincibleeffort, and this weakling, without the body and the spirit for theenterprise, was an alien among them. 

She went to the back of the wagon and opened the mess chest. As shepicked out the supper things she began to repent. The lean, bentfigure and sunken head kept recurring to her. She saw him not as Davidbut as a suffering outsider, and for a second, motionless, with ablackened skillet in her hand, had a faint, clairvoyant understandingof his soul's desolation amid the close-knit unity of their endeavor. She dropped the tin and went back to the front of the wagon. He wasclimbing out, hanging tremulous to the roof support, a haggardspectacle, with wearied eyes and skin drawn into fine puckerings acrossthe temples. Pity came back in a remorseful wave, and she ran to himand lifted his arm to her shoulder. It clasped her hard and theywalked to where at the rock's base the sage grew high. Here she laid ablanket for him and spread another on the top of the bushes, fasteningit to the tallest ones till it stretched, a sheltering canopy, overhim. She tried to cheer him with assurances that water would be foundat the next halting place. He was listless at first, seeming not tolisten, then the life in her voice roused his sluggish faculties, hischeeks took color, and his dull glance lit on point after point in itspassage to her face, like the needle flickering toward the pole. 

"If I could get water enough to drink, I'd be all right, " he said. "The pains are gone. "

"They _must_ find it soon, " she answered, lifting the weight of hisfallen courage, heavy as his body might have been to her arms. "Thisis a traveled road. There _must_ be a spring somewhere along it. "

And she continued prying up the despairing spirit till the man began torespond, showing returning hope in the eagerness with which he hung onher words. When he lay sinking into drowsy quiet, she stole away fromhim to where the camp was spread about the unlit pyre of Daddy John'ssage brush. It was too early for supper, and the old man, with theaccouterments of the hunt slung upon his person and his rifle in hishand, was about to go afield after jack rabbit. 

"It's a bad business this, " he said in answer to the worry she darednot express. "The animals can't hold out much longer. "

"What are we to do? There's only a little water left in one of thecasks. "

"Low's goin' to strike across for the other trail. He's goin' aftersupper, and he says he'll ride all night till he gets it. He thinks ifhe goes due that way, " pointing northward, "he can strike it soonerthan by goin' back. "

They looked in the direction he pointed. Each bush was sending aphenomenally long shadow from its intersection with the ground. Therewas no butte or hummock to break the expanse between them and thefaint, far silhouette of mountains. Her heart sank, a sinking thatfatigue and dread of thirst had never given her. 

"He may lose us, " she said. 

The old man jerked his head toward the rock. 

"He'll steer by that, and I'll keep the fire going till morning. "

"But how can he ride all night? He must be half dead now. "

"A man like him don't die easy. It's not the muscle and the bones, it's the grit. He says it's him that made the mistake and it's himthat's goin' to get us back on the right road. "

"What will he do for water?"

"Take an empty cask behind the saddle and trust to God. "

"But there's water in one of our casks yet. "

"Yes, he knows it, but he's goin' to leave that for us. And we got tohang on to it, Missy. Do you understand that?"

She nodded, frowning and biting her underlip. 

"Are you feelin' bad?" said the old man uneasily. 

"Not a bit, " she answered. "Don't worry about me. "

He laid a hand on her shoulder and looked into her face with eyes thatsaid more than his tongue could. 

"You're as good a man as any of us. When we get to California we'llhave fun laughing over this. "

He gave the shoulder a shake, then drew back and picked up his rifle. 

"I'll get you a rabbit for supper if I can, " he said with his cacklinglaugh. "That's about the best I can do. "

He left her trailing off into the reddened reaches of the sage, and shewent back to the rock, thinking that in some overlooked hollow, watermight linger. She passed the mouth of the dead spring, then skirtedthe spot where David lay, a motionless shape under the canopy of theblanket. A few paces beyond him a buttress extended and, rounding it, she found a triangular opening inclosed on three sides by walls, theirsummits orange with the last sunlight. There had once been water herefor the grasses, and thin-leafed plants grew rank about the rock'sbase, then outlined in sere decay what had evidently been the path of astreamlet. She knelt among them, thrusting her hands between theirrustling stalks, jerking them up and casting them away, the friablesoil spattering from their roots. 

The heat was torrid, the noon ardors still imprisoned between theslanting walls. Presently she sat back on her heels, and with anearthy hand pushed the moist hair from her forehead. The movementbrought her head up, and her wandering eyes, roving in moroseinspection, turned to the cleft's opening. Courant was standing there, watching her. His hands hung loose at his sides, his head was droopedforward, his chin lowered toward his throat. The position lent to hisgaze a suggestion of animal ruminance and concentration. 

"Why don't you get David to do that?" he said slowly. 

The air in the little cleft seemed to her suddenly heavy and hard tobreathe. She caught it into her lungs with a quick inhalation. Dropping her eyes to the weeds she said sharply, "David's sick. Hecan't do anything. You know that. "

"He that ought to be out in the desert there looking for water's lyingasleep under a blanket. That's your man. "

He did not move or divert his gaze. There was something singularlysinister in the fixed and gleaming look and the rigidity of hiswatching face. She plucked at a weed, saw her hand's trembling and tohide it struck her palms together shaking off the dust. The soundfilled the silent place. To her ears it was hardly louder than theterrified beating of her heart. 

"That's the man you've chosen, " he went on. "A feller that gives outwhen the road's hard, who hasn't enough backbone to stand a few days'heat and thirst. A poor, useless rag. "

He spoke in a low voice, very slowly, each word dropping distinct andseparate. His lowering expression, his steady gaze, his deliberatespeech, spoke of mental forces in abeyance. It was another man, notthe Courant she knew. 

She tried to quell her tremors by simulating indignation. If herbreathing shook her breast into an agitation he could see, the look shekept on him was bold and defiant. 

"Don't speak of him that way, " she cried scrambling to her feet. "Keepwhat you think to yourself. "

"And what do _you_ think?" he said and moved forward toward her. 

She made no answer, and it was very silent in the cleft. As he camenearer the grasses crackling under his soft tread were the only sound. She saw that his face was pale under the tan, the nostrils slightlydilated. Stepping with a careful lightness, his movements suggested acarefully maintained adjustment, a being quivering in a breathlessbalance. She backed away till she stood pressed against the rock. Shefelt her thoughts scattering and made an effort to hold them as thoughgrasping at tangible, escaping things. 

He stopped close to her, and neither spoke for a moment, eye hard oneye, then hers shifted and dropped. 

"You think about him as I do, " said the man. 

"No, " she answered, "no, " but her voice showed uncertainty. 

"Why don't you tell the truth? Why do you lie?"

"No, " this time the word was hardly audible, and she tried to impressit by shaking her head. 

He made a step toward her and seized one of her hands. She tried totear it away and flattened herself against the rock, panting, her facegone white as the alkaline patches of the desert. 

"You don't love him. You never did. "

She shook her head again, gasping. "Let me out of here. Let go of me. "

"You liar, " he whispered. "You love me. "

She could not answer, her knees shaking, the place blurring on hersight. Through a sick dizziness she saw nothing but his altered face. He reached for the other hand, spread flat against the stone, and asshe felt his grasp upon it, her words came in broken pleading:

"Yes, yes, it's true. I do. But I've promised. Let me go. "

"Then come to me, " he said huskily and tried to wrench her forward intohis arms. 

She held herself rigid, braced against the wall, and tearing one handfree, raised it, palm out, between his face and hers. 

"No, no! My father--I promised him. I can't tell David now. I willlater. Don't hold me. Let me go. "

The voice of Daddy John came clear from outside. "Missy! Hullo, Missy! Where are you?"

She sent up the old man's name in a quavering cry and the mountain mandropped her arm and stepped back. 

She ran past him, and at the mouth of the opening, stopped and leanedon a ledge, getting her breath and trying to control her trembling. Daddy John was coming through the sage, a jack rabbit held up in onehand. 

"Here's your supper, " he cried jubilant. "Ain't I told you I'd get it?"

She moved forward to meet him, walking slowly. When he saw her face, concern supplanted his triumph. 

"We got to get you out of this, " he said. "You're as peaked as one ofthem frontier women in sunbonnets, " and he tried to hook acompassionate hand in her arm. But she edged away from him, fearfulthat he would feel her trembling, and answered:

"It's the heat. It seems to draw the strength all out of me. "

"The rabbit'll put some of it back. I'll go and get things started. You sit by David and rest up, " and he skurried away to the camp. 

She went to David, lying now with opened eyes and hands clasped beneathhis head. When her shadow fell across him he turned a brightened faceon her. 

"I'm better, " he said. "If I could get some water I think I'd soon beall right. "

She stood looking down on him with a clouded, almost sullen, expression. 

"Did you sleep long?" she asked for something to say. 

"I don't know how long. A little while ago I woke up and looked foryou, but you weren't anywhere round, so I just lay here and looked outacross to the mountains and began to think of California. I haven'tthought about it for a long while. "

She sat down by him and listened as he told her his thoughts. With arenewal of strength the old dreams had come back--the cabin by theriver, the garden seeds to be planted, and now added to them was thegold they were to find. She hearkened with unresponsive apathy. Therepugnance to this mutually shared future which had once made herrecoil from it was a trivial thing to the abhorrence of it that was nowhers. Dislikes had become loathings, a girl's whims, a woman'spassions. As David babbled on she kept her eyes averted, for she knewthat in them her final withdrawal shone coldly. Her thoughts keptreverting to the scene in the cleft, and when she tore them from it andforced them back on him, her conscience awoke and gnawed. She could nomore tell this man, returning to life and love of her, than she couldkill him as he lay there defenseless and trusting. 

At supper they measured out the water, half a cup for each. Therestill remained a few inches in the cask. This was to be hoardedagainst the next day. If Courant on his night journey could not strikethe upper trail and a spring they would have to retrace their steps, and by this route, with the animals exhausted and their own strengthdiminished, the first water was a twelve hours' march off. Susan andCourant were silent, avoiding each other's eyes, torpid to the outwardobservation. But the old man was unusually garrulous, evidentlyattempting to raise their lowered spirits. He had much to say aboutCalifornia and the gold there, speculated on their chances of fortune, and then carried his speculations on to the joys of wealth and a futurein which Susan was to say with the Biblical millionaire, "Now soul takethine ease. " She rewarded him with a quick smile, then tipped her cuptill the bottom faced the sky, and let the last drop run into her mouth. 

The night was falling when Courant rode out. She passed him as he wasmounting, the canteen strapped to the back of his saddle. "Good-by, and good luck, " she said in a low voice as she brushed by. His"good-by" came back to her instilled with a new meaning. The reservebetween them was gone. Separated as the poles, they had suddenlyentered within the circle of an intimacy that had snapped round themand shut them in. Her surroundings fell into far perspective, losingtheir menace. She did not care where she was or how she fared. Anindifference to all that had seemed unbearable, uplifted her. It waslike an emergence from cramped confines to wide, inspiring spaces. Heand she were there--the rest was nothing. 

Sitting beside David she could see the rider's figure grow small, as itreceded across the plain. The night had come and the great levelbrooded solemn under the light of the first, serene stars. In themiddle of the camp Daddy John's fire flared, the central point ofillumination in a ring of fluctuant yellow. Touched and lost by itswaverings the old man's figure came and went, absorbed in outerdarkness, then revealed his arms extended round sheaves of brush. David turned and lay on his side looking at her. Her knees were drawnup, her hands clasped round her ankles. With the ragged detail of herdress obscured, the line of her profile and throat sharp in clearsilhouette against the saffron glow, she was like a statue carved inblack marble. He could not see what her glance followed, only felt theconsolation of her presence, the one thing to which he could turn andmeet a human response. 

He was feverish again, his thirst returned in an insatiable craving. Moving restlessly he flung out a hand toward her and said querulously:

"How long will Low be gone?"

"Till the morning unless he finds water by the way. "

Silence fell on him and her eyes strained through the darkness for thelast glimpse of the rider. He sighed deeply, the hot hand stirringtill it lay spread, with separated fingers on the hem of her dress. Hemoved each finger, their brushing on the cloth the only sound. 

"Are you in pain?" she asked and shrunk before the coldness of hervoice. 

"No, but I am dying with thirst. "

She made no answer, resting in her graven quietness. The night hadclosed upon the rider's figure, but she watched where it had been. Over a blackened peak a large star soared up like a bright eye spyingon the waste. Suddenly the hand clinched and he struck down at theearth with it. 

"I can't go without water till the morning. "

"Try to sleep, " she said. "We must stand it the best way we can. "

"I can't sleep. "

He moaned and turned over on his face and lying thus rolled from sideto side as if in anguish that movement assuaged. For the first timeshe looked at him, turning upon him a glance of questioning anxiety. She could see his narrow, angular shape, the legs twisted, the armsbent for a pillow, upon which his head moved in restless pain. 

"David, we've got to wait. "

"The night through? Stay this way till morning? I'll be dead. I wishI was now. "

She looked away from him seized by temptation that rose from contritionnot pity. 

"If you cared for me you could get it. Low's certain to find a spring. "

"Very well. I will, " she said and rose to her feet. 

She moved softly to the camp the darkness hiding her. Daddy John wastaking a cat nap by the fire, a barrier of garnered sage behind him. She knew his sleep was light and stole with a tiptoe tread to the backof the wagon where the water cask stood. She drew off a cupful, then, her eye alert on the old man, crept back to David. When he saw hercoming he sat up with a sharp breath of satisfaction, and she kneltbeside him and held the cup to his lips. He drained it and sank backin a collapse of relief, muttering thanks that she hushed, fearful ofthe old man. Then she again took her seat beside him. She saw DaddyJohn get up and pile the fire high, and watched its leaping flame throwout tongues toward the stars. 

Midnight was past when David woke and again begged for water. Thistime she went for it without urging. When he had settled into rest shecontinued her watch peaceful at the thought that she had given him whatwas hers and Courant's. Reparation of a sort had been made. Her mindcould fly without hindrance into the wilderness with the lonelyhorseman. It was a luxury like dearly bought freedom, and she sat onlost in it, abandoned to a reverie as deep and solemn as the night. 

CHAPTER IV

She woke when the sun shot its first rays into her eyes. David laynear by, breathing lightly, his face like a pale carven mask againstthe blanket's folds. Down below in the camp the fire burned low, itsflame looking ineffectual and tawdry in the flushed splendor of thesunrise. Daddy John was astir, moving about among the animals andpausing to rub Julia's nose and hearten her up with hopeful words. 

Susan mounted to a ledge and scanned the distance. Her figure caughtthe old man's eye and he hailed her for news. Nothing yet, shesignaled back, then far on the plain's rose-brown limit saw a dust blurand gave a cry that brought him running and carried him in nimbleascent to her side. His old eyes could see nothing. She had to pointthe direction with a finger that shook. 

"There, there. It's moving--far away, as if a drop of water had beenspilled on a picture and made a tiny blot. "

They watched till a horseman grew from the nebulous spot. Then theyclimbed down and ran to the camp, got out the breakfast things andthrew brush on the fire, speaking nothing but the essential word, forhope and fear racked them. When he was within hail Daddy John ran tomeet him, but she stayed where she was, her hands making useless dartsamong the pans, moistening her lips that they might frame speech easilywhen he came. With down-bent head she heard his voice hoarse from adust-dried throat: he had found the trail and near it a spring, thecask he carried was full, it would last them for twelve hours. But theway was heavy and the animals were too spent for a day's march in suchheat. They would not start till evening and would journey through thenight. 

She heard his feet brushing toward her through the sage, and smelledthe dust and sweat upon him as he drew up beside her. She was forcedto raise her eyes and murmur a greeting. It was short and cold, andDaddy John marveled at the ways of women, who welcomed a man from suchlabors as if he had been to the creek and brought up a pail of water. His face, gaunt and grooved with lines, made her heart swell with thepity she had so freely given David, and the passion that had never beenhis. There was no maternal softness in her now. The man beside herwas no helpless creature claiming her aid, but a conqueror upon whomshe leaned and in whom she gloried. 

After he had eaten he drew a saddle back into the rock's shade, spreada blanket and threw himself on it. Almost before he had composed hisbody in comfort he was asleep, one arm thrown over his head, his sinewyneck outstretched, his chest rising and falling in even breaths. 

At noon Daddy John in broaching the cask discovered the deficit in thewater supply. She came upon the old man with the half-filledcoffee-pot in his hand staring down at its contents with a puzzledface. She stood watching him, guilty as a thievish child, the colormounting to her forehead. He looked up and in his eyes she read theshock of his suspicions. Delicacy kept him silent, and as he rinsedthe water round in the pot his own face reddened in a blush for thegirl he had thought strong in honor and self-denial as he was. 

"I took it, " she said slowly. 

He had to make allowances, not only to her, but to himself. He feltthat he must reassure her, keep her from feeling shame for the firstunderhand act he had ever known her commit. So he spoke with all thecheeriness he could command:

"I guess you needed it pretty bad. Turning out as it has I'm glad youdone it. "

She saw he thought she had taken it for herself, and experienced reliefin the consciousness of unjust punishment. 

"You were asleep, " she said, "and I came down and took it twice. "

He did not look at her for he could not bear to see her humiliation. It was his affair to lighten her self-reproach. 

"Well, that was all right. You're the only woman among us, and you'vegot to be kept up. "

"I--I--couldn't stand it any longer, " she faltered now, wanting tojustify herself. "It was too much to bear. "

"Don't say no more, " he said tenderly. "Ain't you only a little girlput up against things that 'ud break the spirit of a strong man?"

The pathos of his efforts to excuse her shook her guarded self-control. She suddenly put her face against his shoulder in a lonely dreariness. He made a backward gesture with his head that he might toss off his hatand lay his cheek on her hair. 

"There, there, " he muttered comfortingly. "Don't go worrying aboutthat. You ain't done no harm. It's just as natural for you to havetaken it as for you to go to sleep when you're tired. And there's nota soul but you and me'll ever know it, and we'll forget by to-night. "

His simple words, reminiscent of gentler days, when tragic problems laybeyond the confines of imagination, loosed the tension of her mood, andshe clasped her arms about him, trembling and shaken. He patted herwith his free hand, the coffee-pot in the other, thinking her agitationmerely an expression of fatigue, with no more knowledge of its complexprovocation than he had of the mighty throes that had once shaken theblighted land on which they stood. 

David was better, much better, he declared, and proved it by helpingclear the camp and pack the wagon for the night march. He was kneelingby Daddy John, who was folding the blankets, when he said suddenly:

"If I hadn't got water I think I'd have died last night. "

The old man, stopped in his folding to turn a hardening face on him. 

"Water?" he said. "How'd you get it?"

"Susan did. I told her I couldn't stand it, and she went down twice tothe wagon and brought it to me. I was at the end of my rope. "

Daddy John said nothing. His ideas were readjusting themselves to anew point of view. When they were established his Missy was back uponher pedestal, a taller one than ever before, and David was once and forall in the dust at its feet. 

"There's no one like Susan, " the lover went on, now with returningforces, anxious to give the mead of praise where it was due. "Shetried to talk me out of it, and then when she saw I couldn't stand itshe just went quietly off and got it. "

"I guess you could have held out till the morning if you'd put yourmind to it, " said the old man dryly, rising with the blankets. 

For the moment he despised David almost as bitterly as Courant did. Itwas not alone the weakness so frankly admitted; it was that his actionhad made Daddy John harbor secret censure of the being dearest to him. The old man could have spat upon him. He moved away for fear of thewords that trembled on his tongue. And another and deeper paintormented him--that his darling should so love this feeble creaturethat she could steal for him and take the blame of his misdeeds. Thiswas the man to whom she had given her heart! He found himself wishingthat David had never come back from his search for the lost horses. Then the other man, the real man that was her fitting mate, could havewon her. 

At sunset the train was ready. Every article that could be dispensedwith was left, a rich find for the Indians whose watch fires winkedfrom the hills. To the cry of "Roll out, " and the snap of the longwhip, the wagon lurched into motion, the thirst-racked animalsstraining doggedly as it crunched over sage stalks and dragged throughpowdery hummocks. The old man walked by the wheel, the long lash ofhis whip thrown afar, flashing in the upper light and descending in alick of flame on the mules' gray flanks. With each blow fell a phraseof encouragement, the words of a friend who wounds and wounding himselfsuffers. David rode at the rear with Susan. The two men had told himhe must ride if he died for it, and met his offended answer that heintended to do so with sullen silence. In advance, Courant's figurebrushed between the bushes, his hair a moving patch of copper color inthe last light. 

Darkness quickly gathered round them. The bowl of sky became anintense Prussian blue that the earth reflected. In this clear, deepcolor the wagon hood showed a pallid arch, and the shapes of man andbeast were defined in shadowless black. In the west a band oflemon-color lingered, and above the stars began to prick through, greatscintillant sparks, that looked, for all their size, much farther awaythan the stars of the peopled places. Their light seemed caught andheld in aerial gulfs above the earth, making the heavens clear, whilethe night clung close and undisturbed to the plain's face. Once fromafar the cry of an animal arose, a long, swelling howl, but around thetrain all was still save for the crackling of the crushed sage stalks, and the pad of hoofs. 

It was near midnight when Susan's voice summoned Daddy John. The wagonhalted, and she beckoned him with a summoning arm. He ran to her, circling the bushes with a youth's alertness, and stretched up to hearher as she bent from the saddle. David must go in the wagon, he wasunable to ride longer. The old man swept him with a look ofinspection. The starlight showed a drooping figure, the face hidden bythe shadow of his hat brim. The mules were at the limit of theirstrength, and the old man demurred, swearing under his breath andbiting his nails. 

"You've got to take him, " she said, "if it kills them. He would havefallen off a minute ago if I hadn't put my arm around him. "

"Come on, then, " he answered with a surly look at David. "Come on andride, while the rest of us get along the best way we can. "

"He can't help it, " she urged in an angry whisper. "You talk as if hewas doing it on purpose. "

David slid off his horse and made for the wagon with reeling steps. The other man followed muttering. 

"Help him, " she called. "Don't you see he can hardly stand?"

At the wagon wheel Daddy John hoisted him in with vigorous and ungentlehands. Crawling into the back the sick man fell prone with a groan. Courant, who had heard them and turned to watch, came riding up. 

"What is it?" he said sharply. "The mules given out?"

"Not they, " snorted Daddy John, at once all belligerent loyalty toJulia and her mates, "it's this d--d cry baby again, " and he picked upthe reins exclaiming in tones of fond urgence:

"Come now, off again. Keep up your hearts There's water and grassahead. Up there, Julia, honey!"

The long team, crouching in the effort to start the wagon, heaved itforward, and the old man, leaping over the broken sage, kept the pacebeside them. Courant, a few feet in advance, said over his shoulder:

"What's wrong with him now?"

"Oh, played out, I guess. She, " with a backward jerk of his head, "won't have it any other way. No good telling her it's nerve not bodythat he ain't got. "

The mountain man looked back toward the pathway between the slashed andbroken bushes. He could see Susan's solitary figure, David's horsefollowing. 

"What's _she_ mind for?" he said. 

"Because she's a woman and they're made that way. She's more set onthat chump than she'd be on the finest man you could bring her if youhunted the world over for him. "

They fared on in silence, the soft soil muffling their steps. Thewagon lurched on a hummock and David groaned. 

"Are you meaning she cares for him?" asked Courant. 

"All her might, " answered the old man. "Ain't she goin' to marry thevarmint?"

It was an hour for understanding, no matter how bitter. Daddy John'sown dejection made him unsparing. He offered his next words asconfirmation of a condition that he thought would kill all hope in theheart of the leader. 

"Last night he made her get him water--the store we had left if youhadn't found any. Twict in the night while I was asleep she took andgave it to him. Then when I found it out she let me think she took itfor herself, " he spat despondently. "She the same as lied for him. Idon't want to hear no more after that. "

The mountain man rode with downdrooped head. Daddy John, who did notknow what he did, might well come to such conclusions. _He_ knew thesecret of the girl's contradictory actions. He looked into herperturbed spirit and saw how desperately she clung to the letter of herobligation, while she repudiated the spirit. Understanding hersolicitude for David, he knew that it was strengthened by theconsciousness of her disloyalty. But he felt no tenderness for thesedistracted feminine waverings. It exhilarated him to think that whileshe held to the betrothed of her father's choice and the bond of hergiven word, her hold would loosen at his wish. As he had felt towardenemies that he had conquered--crushed and subjected by his will--hefelt toward her. It was a crowning joy to know that he could make herbreak her promise, turn her from her course of desperate fidelity, andmake her his own, not against her inclination, but against her pity, her honor, her conscience. 

The spoor left by his horse the night before was clear in thestarlight. He told Daddy John to follow it and drew up beside thetrack to let the wagon pass him. Motionless he watched the girl'sapproaching figure, and saw her rein her horse to a standstill. 

"Come on, " he said softly. "I want to speak to you. "

She touched the horse and it started toward him. As she came nearer hecould see the troubled shine of her eyes. 

"Why are you afraid?" he said, as he fell into place beside her. "We're friends now. "

She made no answer, her head bent till her face was hidden by her hat. He laid his hand on her rein and brought the animal to a halt. 

"Let the wagon get on ahead, " he whispered. "We'll follow at adistance. "

The whisper, so low that the silence was unbroken by it, came to her, aclear sound carrying with it a thrill of understanding. She trembledand--his arm against hers as his hand held her rein--he felt thesubdued vibration like the quivering of a frightened animal. The wagonlumbered away with the sifting dust gushing from the wheels. A stirredcloud rose upon its wake and they could feel it thick and stifling intheir nostrils. She watched the receding arch cut down the back by thecrack in the closed canvas, while he watched her. The sound of crushedtwigs and straining wheels lessened, the stillness gathered betweenthese noises of laboring life and the two mounted figures. As itsettled each could hear the other's breathing and feel a mutual throb, as though the same leaping artery fed them both. In the blue nightencircled by the waste, they were as still as vessels balanced to ahair in which passion brimmed to the edge. 

"Come on, " she said huskily, and twitched her reins from his hold. 

The horses started, walking slowly. A strip of mangled sage lay infront, back of them the heavens hung, a star-strewn curtain. It seemedto the man and woman that they were the only living things in theworld, its people, its sounds, its interests, were in some undescrieddistance where life progressed with languid pulses. How long thesilence lasted neither knew. He broke it with a whisper:

"Why did you get David the water last night?"

Her answer came so low he had to bend to hear it. 

"He wanted it. I had to. "

"Why do you give him all he asks for? David is nothing to you. "

This time no answer came, and he stretched his hand and clasped thepommel of her saddle. The horses, feeling the pull of the powerfularm, drew together. His knee pressed on the shoulder of her pony, andfeeling him almost against her she bent sideways, flinching from thecontact. 

"Why do you shrink from me, Missy?"

"I'm afraid, " she whispered. 

They paced on for a moment in silence. When he tried to speak his lipswere stiff, and he moistened them to murmur:

"Of what?"

She shrunk still further and raised a hand between them. He snatchedat it, pulling it down, saying hoarsely:

"Of me?"

"Of something--I don't know what. Of something terrible and strange. "

She tried to strike at her horse with the reins, but the man's handdropped like a hawk on the pommel and drew the tired animal back to thefoot pace. 

"If you love me there's no need of fear, " he said, then waited, thesound of her terrified breathing like the beating of waves in his ears, and murmured lower than before, "And you love me. I know it. "

Her face showed in dark profile against the deep sky. He stared at it, then suddenly set his teeth and gave the pommel a violent jerk thatmade the horse stagger and grind against its companion. The creakingof the wagon came faint from a wake of shadowy trail. 

"You've done it for weeks. Before you knew. Before you lied to yourfather when he tried to make you marry David. "

She dropped the reins and clinched her hands against her breast, amovement of repression and also of pleading to anything that wouldprotect her, any force that would give her strength to fight, not theman alone, but herself. But the will was not within her. The desertgrew dim, the faint sounds from the wagon faded. Like a charmed bird, staring straight before it, mute and enthralled, she rocked lightly toleft and right, and then swayed toward him. 

The horse, feeling the dropped rein, stopped, jerking its neck forwardin the luxury of rest, its companion coming to a standstill beside it. Courant raised himself in his saddle and gathered her in an embracethat crushed her against his bony frame, then pressed against her facewith his, till he pushed it upward and could see it, white, with closedeyes, on his shoulder. He bent till his long hair mingled with hersand laid his lips on her mouth with the clutch of a bee on a flower. 

They stood a compact silhouette, clear in the luminous starlight. Thecrack in the canvas that covered the wagon back widened and the eyethat had been watching them, stared bright and wide, as if all the lifeof the feeble body had concentrated in that one organ of sense. Thehands, damp and trembling, drew the canvas edges closer, but left spaceenough for the eye to dwell on this vision of a shattered world. Itcontinued to gaze as Susan slid from the encircling arms, dropped fromher horse, and came running forward, stumbling on the fallen bushes, asshe ran panting out the old servant's name. Then it went back to themountain man, a black shape in the loneliness of the night. 

CHAPTER V

A slowly lightening sky, beneath it the transparent sapphire of thedesert wakening to the dawn, and cutting the blue expanse the line ofthe new trail. A long butte, a bristling outline on the paling north, ran out from a crumpled clustering of hills, and the road bent to meetit. The air came from it touched with a cooling freshness, and as theypressed toward it they saw the small, swift shine of water, a littlepool, grass-ringed, with silver threads creeping to the sands. 

They drank and then slept, sinking to oblivion as they dropped on theground, not waiting to undo their blankets or pick out comfortablespots. The sun, lifting a bright eye above the earth's rim, shot itslong beams over their motionless figures, "bundles of life, " alone in alifeless world. 

David alone could not rest. Withdrawn from the others he lay in theshadow of the wagon, watching small points in the distance with aglance that saw nothing. All sense of pain and weakness had left him. Physically he felt strangely light and free of sensation. With hisbrain endowed with an abnormal activity he suffered an agony of spiritso poignant that there were moments when he drew back and looked athimself wondering how he endured it. He was suddenly broken away fromeverything cherished and desirable in life. The bare and heart-rendingearth about him was as the expression of his ruined hopes. And afterthese submergences in despair a tide of questions carried him tolivelier torment: Why had she done it? What had changed her? When hadshe ceased to care?

All his deadened manhood revived. He wanted her, he owned her, she washis. Sick and unable to fight for her she had been stolen from him, and he writhed in spasms of self pity at the thought of the cruelty ofit. How could he, disabled, broken by unaccustomed hardships, copewith the iron-fibered man whose body and spirit were at one with theseharsh settings? _He_ was unfitted for it, for the heroic struggle, forthe battle man to man for a woman as men had fought in the world's dawninto which they had retraced their steps. He could not make himselfover, become another being to appeal to a sense in her he had nevertouched. He could only plead with her, beg mercy of her, and he sawthat these were not the means that won women grown half savage incorrespondence with a savage environment. 

Then came moments of exhaustion when he could not believe it. Closinghis eyes he called up the placid life that was to have been his andSusan's, and could not think but that it still must be. Like a childhe clung to his hope, to the belief that something would intervene andgive her back to him; not he, he was unable to, but something thatstood for justice and mercy. All his life he had abided by the law, walked uprightly, done his best. Was he to be smitten now through nofault of his own? It was all a horrible dream, and presently therewould be an awakening with Susan beside him as she had been in thefirst calm weeks of their betrothal. The sweetness of those daysreturned to him with the intolerable pang of a fair time, long past andnever to come again. He threw his head back as if in a paroxysm ofpain. It could not be and yet in his heart he knew it was true. Inthe grip of his torment he thought of the God that watching over Israelslumbered not nor slept. With his eyes on the implacable sky he triedto pray, tried to drag down from the empty gulf of air the help thatwould bring back his lost happiness. 

At Susan's first waking movement he started and turned his head towardher. She saw him, averted her face, and began the preparations for themeal. He lay watching her and he knew that her avoidance of his glancewas intentional. He also saw that her manner of preoccupied bustle wasaffected. She was pale, her face set in hard lines. When she spokeonce to Daddy John her voice was unlike itself, hoarse and throaty, itsmellow music gone. 

They gathered and took their places in silence, save for the old man, who tried to talk, but meeting no response gave it up. Between thethree others not a word was exchanged. A stifling oppression lay onthem, and they did not dare to look at one another. The girl found itimpossible to swallow and taking a piece of biscuit from her mouththrew it into the sand. 

The air was sultry, light whisps of mist lying low over the plain. Theweight of these vaporous films seemed to rest on them heavy as theweight of water, and before the meal was finished, Susan, overborne bya growing dread and premonition of tragedy, rose and left her place, disappearing round a buttress of the rock. Courant stopped eating andlooked after her, his head slowly moving as his eye followed her. Toanyone watching it would have been easy to read this pursuing glance, the look of the hunter on his quarry. David saw it and rose to hisknees. A rifle lay within arm's reach, and for one furious moment hefelt an impulse to snatch it and kill the man. But a rush ofinhibiting instinct checked him. Had death or violence menaced her hecould have done it, but without the incentive of the immediate horrorhe could never rise so far beyond himself. 

Susan climbed the rock's side to a plateau on its western face. Thesun beat on her like a furnace mouth. Here and there black filigreesof shade shrank to the bases of splintered ledges. Below the plain layoutflung in the stupor of midday. On its verge the mountainsstretched, a bright blue, shadowless film. A mirage trembled to thesouth, a glassy vision, crystal clear amid the chalky streakings andthe rings of parched and blanching sinks. Across the prospect thefaint, unfamiliar mist hung as if, in the torrid temperature, the earthwas steaming. 

She sat down on a shelf of rock not feeling the burning sunshine or theheat that the baked ledges threw back upon her. The life within herwas so intense that no impressions from the outside could enter, evenher eyes took in no image of the prospect they dwelt on. Courant'skiss had brought her to a place toward which, she now realized, she hadbeen moving for a long time, advancing upon it, unknowing, but impelledlike a somnambulist willed toward a given goal. What was to happen shedid not know. She felt a dread so heavy that it crushed all else fromher mind. They had reached a crisis where everything had stopped, adark and baleful focus to which all that had gone before had beenslowly converging. The whole journey had been leading to this climaxof suspended breath and fearful, inner waiting. 

She heard the scraping of ascending feet, and when she saw David staredat him, her eyes unblinking in stony expectancy. He came and stoodbefore her, and she knew that at last he had guessed, and felt no fear, no resistance against the explanation that must come. He suddenly hadlost all significance, was hardly a human organism, or if a humanorganism, one that had no relation to her. Neither spoke for someminutes. He was afraid, and she waited, knowing what he was going tosay, wishing it was said, and the hampering persistence of his claimwas ended. 

At length he said tremulously:

"Susan, I saw you last night. What did you do it for? What am I tothink?"

That he had had proof of her disloyalty relieved her. There would beless to say in this settling of accounts. 

"Well, " she answered, looking into his eyes. "You saw!"

He cried desperately, "I saw him kiss you. You let him. What did itmean?"

"Why do you ask? If you saw you know. "

"I don't know. I want to know. Tell me, explain to me. " He paused, and then cried with a pitiful note of pleading, "Tell me it wasn't so. Tell me I made a mistake. "

He was willing, anxious, for her to lie. Against the evidence of hisown senses he would have made himself believe her, drugged his painwith her falsehoods. What remnant of consideration she had vanished. 

"You made no mistake, " she answered. "It was as you saw. "

"I don't believe it. I can't. You wouldn't have done it. It's Iyou're promised to. Haven't I your word? Haven't you been kind as anangel to me when the others would have let me die out here like a dog?What did you do it for if you didn't care?"

"I was sorry, " and then with cold, measured slowness, "and I feltguilty. "

"That's it--you felt guilty. It's not your doing. You've been ledaway. While I've been sick that devil's been poisoning you against me. He's tried to steal you from me. But you're not the girl to let him dothat. You'll come back to me--the man that you belong to, that's lovedyou since the day we started. "

To her at this naked hour, where nothing lived but the truth, thethought that he would take her back with the other man's kisses on herlips, made her unsparing. She drew back from him, stiffening inshocked repugnance, and speaking with the same chill deliberation. 

"I'll never come back to you. It's all over, that love with you. Ididn't know. I didn't feel. I was a child with no sense of what shewas doing. Now everything's different. It's he I must go with and bewith as long as I live. "

The hideousness of the discovery had been made the night before. Hadher words been his first intimation they might have shocked him intostupefied dumbness and made him seem the hero who meets his fate withclosed lips. But hours long he had brooded and knew her severance fromhim had taken place. With the mad insistance of a thought whirling onin fevered repetition he had told himself that he must win her back, urge, struggle, plead, till he had got her where she was before or loseher forever. 

"You can't. You can't do it. It's a temporary thing. It's the desertand the wildness and because he could ride and get water and find thetrail. In California it will be different. Out there it'll be thesame as it used to be back in the States. You'll think of this assomething unreal that never happened and your feeling for him--it'llall go. When we get where it's civilized you'll be like you were whenwe started. You couldn't have loved a savage like that then. Well, you won't when you get where you belong. It's horrible. It'sunnatural. "

She shook her head, glanced at him and glanced away. The sweat waspouring off his face and his lips quivered like a weeping child's. 

"Oh, David, " she said with a deep breath like a groan, "_this_ isnatural for me. The other was not. "

"You don't know what you're saying. And how about your promise? _You_gave that of your own free will. Was it a thing you give and take backwhenever you please? What would your father think of your breakingyour word--throwing me off for a man no better than a half-bloodIndian? Is that your honor?" Then he was suddenly fearful that he hadsaid too much and hurt his case, and he dropped to a wild pleading:"Oh, Susan, you can't, you can't. You haven't got the heart to treatme so. "

She looked down not answering, but her silence gave no indication of asoftened response. He seemed to throw himself upon its hardness inhopeless desperation. 

"Send him away. He needn't go on with us. Tell him to go back to theFort. "

"Where would we be now without him?" she said and smiled grimly at thethought of their recent perils with the leader absent. 

"We're on the main trail. We don't need him now. I heard him sayyesterday to Daddy John we'd be in Humboldt in three or four days. Wecan go on without him, there's no more danger. "

She smiled again, a slight flicker of one corner of her mouth. Thedangers were over and Courant could be safely dispensed with. 

"He'll go on with us, " she said. 

"It's not necessary. We don't want him. I'll guide. I'll help. Ifhe was gone I'd be all right again. Daddy John and I are enough. If Ican get you back as you were before, we'll be happy again, and I _can_get you back if he goes. "

"You'll never get me back, " she answered, and rising moved away fromhim, aloof and hostile in the deepest of all aversions, the woman tothe unloved and urgent suitor. He followed her and caught at her dress. 

"Don't go. Don't leave me this way. I can't believe it. I can'tstand it. If I hadn't grown into thinking you were going to be my wifemaybe I could. But it's just unbearable when I'd got used to lookingupon you as mine, almost as good as married to me. You can't do it. You can't make me suffer this way. "

His complete abandonment filled her with pain, the first relenting shehad had. She could not look at him and longed to escape. She tried todraw her dress from his hands, saying:

"Oh, David, don't say any more. There's no good. It's over. It'sended. I can't help it. It's something stronger than I am. "

He saw the repugnance in her face and loosened his hold, dropping backfrom her. 

"It's the end of my life, " he said in a muffled voice. 

"I feel as if it was the end of the world, " she answered, and going tothe pathway disappeared over its edge. 

She walked back skirting the rock's bulk till she found a break in itsside, a small gorge shadowed by high walls. The cleft penetrated deep, its mouth open to the sky, its apex a chamber over which the clovenwalls slanted like hands with finger tips touching in prayer. It wasdark in this interior space, the floor mottled with gleaming sun-spots. Across the wider opening, unroofed to the pale blue of the zenith, thefirst slow shade was stretching, a creeping gray coolness, encroachingon the burning ground. Here she threw herself down, looking outthrough the entrance at the desert shimmering through the heat haze. The mist wreaths were dissolving, every line and color glassily clear. Her eyes rested vacantly on it, her body inert, her heart as heavy as astone. 

David made no movement to follow her. He had clung to his hope withthe desperation of a weak nature, but it was ended now. Nointerference, no miracle, could restore her to him. He saw--he had tosee--that she was lost to him as completely as if death had claimedher. More completely, for death would have made her a stranger. Nowit was the Susan he had loved who had looked at him with eyes not evenindifferent but charged with a hard hostility. She was the same andyet how different! Hopeless!--Hopeless! He wondered if the word hadever before voiced so abject a despair. 

He turned to the back of the plateau and saw the faint semblance of apath leading upward to higher levels, a trail worn by the feet of otheremigrants who had climbed to scan with longing eyes the weary way tothe land of their desire. As he walked up it and the prospect widenedon his sight, its message came, clearer with every mounting step. Thusforever would he look out on a blasted world uncheered by sound orcolor. The stillness that lapped him round was as the stillness of hisown dead heart. The mirage quivered brilliant in the distance, and hepaused, a solitary shape against the exhausted sky, to think that hisdream of love had had no more reality. Beautiful and alluring it hadfloated in his mind, an illusion without truth or substance. 

He reached the higher elevation, barren and iron hard, the stone hot tohis feet. On three sides the desert swept out to the horizon, held inits awful silence. Across it, a white seam, the Emigrant Trail wound, splindling away into the west, a line of tortuous curves, a loop, astraight streak, and then a tiny thread always pressing on to thatwonderful land which he had once seen as a glowing rim on the world'sremotest verge. It typified the dauntless effort of man, neverflagging, never broken, persisting to its goal. He had not been ableto thus persist, the spirit had not reached far enough to know its aimand grasp it. He knew his weakness, his incapacity to cope with thelarger odds of life, a watcher not an actor in the battle, andunderstanding that his failure had come from his own inadequacy hewished that he might die. 

On one side the eminence broke away in a sheer fall to the earth below. At its base a scattering of sundered bowlders and fragments lay, veiledby a growth of small, bushy shrubs to which a spring gave nourishment. Behind this the long spine of the rock tapered back to the parent ridgethat ran, a bristling rampart, east and west. He sat down on the edgeof the precipice watching the trail. He had no idea how long heremained thus. A shadow falling across him brought him back to life. He turned and saw Courant standing a few feet from him. 

Without speech or movement they eyed one another. In his heart eachhated the other, but in David the hate had come suddenly, the hystericgrowth of a night's anguish. The mountain man's was tempered by aprocess of slow-firing to a steely inflexibility. He hated David thathe had ever been his rival, that he had ever thought to lay claim tothe woman who was his, that he had ever aspired to her, touched her, desired her. He hated him when he saw that, all unconsciously, he hadstill a power to hold her from the way her passion led. And back ofall was the ancient hatred, the heritage from ages lost in thebeginnings of the race, man's of man in the struggle for a woman. 

David rose from his crouching posture to his knees. The other, all hissavage instincts primed for onslaught, saw menace in the movement, andstood braced and ready. Like Susan he understood that David hadguessed the secret. He could judge him only by his own measure, and heknew the settling of the score had come. There was no right or justicein his claim, only the right of the stronger to win what he wanted, butthat to him was the supreme right. 

David's sick fury shot up into living flame. He judged Susan innocent, a tool in ruthless hands. He saw the destroyer of their lives, a devilwho had worked subtly for his despoilment. The air grew dark and inthe center of the darkness, his hate concentrated on the watching face, and an impulse, the strongest of his life, nerved him with the force tokill. For once he broke beyond himself, rose outside the restrictionsthat had held him cowering within his sensitive shell. His rage hadthe vehemence of a distracted woman's, and he threw himself upon hisenemy, inadequate now as always, but at last unaware and unconscious. 

They clutched and rocked together. From the moment of the grapple itwas unequal--a sick and wounded creature struggling in arms that wereas iron bands about his puny frame. But as a furious child fights fora moment successfully with its enraged elder, he tore and beat at hisopponent, striking blindly at the face he loathed, writhing in the gripthat bent his body and sent the air in sobbing gasps from his lungs. Their trampling was muffled on the stone, their shadows leaped incontorted waverings out from their feet and back again. Broken andtwisted in Courant's arms, David felt no pain only the blind hate, sawthe livid plain heaving about him, the white ball of the sun, andtwisting through the reeling distance the pale thread of the EmigrantTrail, glancing across his ensanguined vision like a shuttle weavingthrough a blood-red loom. 

They staggered to the edge of the plateau and there hung. It was onlyfor a moment, a last moment of strained and swaying balance. Courantfelt the body against his weaken, wrenched himself free, and with adriving blow sent it outward over the precipice. It fell with the armsflung wide, the head dropped backward, and from the open mouth a crybroke, a shrill and dreadful sound that struck sharp on the plain'sabstracted silence, spread and quivered across its surface likewidening rings on the waters of a pool. The mountain man threw himselfon the edge and looked down. The figure lay limp among the bushesthirty feet below. He watched it, his body still as a panther'scrouched for a spring. He saw one of the hands twitch, a loosenedsliver of slate slide from the wall, and cannoning on projections, leapdown and bury itself in the outflung hair. The face looking up at himwith half-shut eyes that did not wink as the rock dust sifted intothem, was terrible, but he felt no sensation save a grim curiosity. 

He stole down a narrow gulley and crept with stealthy feet andsteadying hands toward the still shape. The shadows were cool downthere, and as he touched the face its warmth shocked him. It shouldhave been cold to have matched its look and the hush of the place. Hethrust his hand inside the shirt and felt at the heart. No throb roseunder his palm, and he sent it sliding over the upper part of the body, limp now, but which he knew would soon be stiffening. The man was dead. 

Courant straightened himself and sent a rapid glance about him. Thebushes among which the body lay were close matted in a thick screen. Through their roots the small trickle of the spring percolated, stealing its way to the parched sands outside. It made a continuousmurmuring, as if nature was lifting a voice of low, insistent protestagainst the desecration of her peace. 

The man standing with stilled breath and rigid muscles listened forother sounds. Reassured that there were none, his look swept right andleft for a spot wherein to hide the thing that lay at his feet. At itsbase the rock wall slanted outward leaving a hollow beneath its eavewhere the thin veneer of water gleamed from the shadows. He took thedead man under the arms and dragged him to it, careful of branches thatmight snap under his foot, pausing to let the echoes of rolling stonesdie away--a figure of fierce vitality with the long, limp body hangingfrom his hands. At the rock he crouched and thrust his burden underthe wall's protecting cope, the trickle of the water dying into asudden, scared silence. Stepping back he brushed the bushes intoshape, hiding their breakage, and bent to gather the scattered leavesand crush them into crevices. When it was done the place showed nosign of the intruder, only the whispering of the streamlet told thatits course was changed and it was feeling for a new channel. 

Then he crept softly out to the plain's edge where the sunlight laylong and bright. It touched his face and showed it white, with lipsclose set and eyes gleaming like crystals. He skirted the rock, makinga soft, quick way to where the camp lay. Here the animals stood, headsdrooped as they cropped the herbage round the spring. Daddy John satin the shade of the wagon, tranquilly cleaning a gun. The mountainman's passage was so soundless that he did not hear it. The animalsraised slow eyes to the moving figure, then dropped them indifferently. He passed them, his step growing lighter, changing as he withdrew fromthe old man's line of vision, to a long, rapid glide. His blood-shoteyes nursed the extending buttresses, and as he came round them, withcraned neck and body reaching forward, they sent a glance into eachrecess that leaped round it like a flame. 

Susan had remained in the same place. She made no note of the passageof time, but the sky between the walls was growing deeper in color, theshadows lengthening along the ground. She was lying on her sidelooking out through the rift's opening when Courant stood there. Hemade an instant's pause, a moment when his breath caught deep, and, seeing him, she started to her knees with a blanching face. As he cameupon her she held out her hands, crying in uprising notes of terror, "No! No! No!" But he gathered her in his arms, stilled her crieswith his kisses, and bending low carried her back into the darkenedcavern over which the rocks closed like hands uplifted in prayer. 

CHAPTER VI

Till the afternoon of the next day they held the train for David. Whenevening fell and he did not come Daddy John climbed the plateau andkindled a beacon fire that threw its flames against the stars. Then hetook his rifle and skirted the rock's looming bulk, shattering thestillness with reports that let loose a shivering flight of echoes. All night they sat by the fire listening and waiting. As the hourspassed their alarm grew and their speculations became gloomier and moresinister. Courant was the only one who had a plausible theory. Themoving sparks on the mountains showed that the Indians were stillfollowing them and it was his opinion that David had strayed afar andbeen caught by a foraging party. It was not a matter for desperatealarm as the Diggers were harmless and David would no doubt escape fromthem and join a later train. This view offered the only possibleexplanation. It was Courant's opinion and so it carried with the othertwo. 

Early in the evening the girl had shown no interest. Sitting back fromthe firelight, a shawl over her head, she seemed untouched by theanxiety that prompted the old man's restless rovings. As the nightdeepened Daddy John had come back to Courant who was near her. Hespoke his fears low, for he did not want to worry her. Glancing to seeif she had heard him, he was struck by the brooding expression of herface, white between the shawl folds. He nodded cheerily at her but hereyes showed no responsive gleam, dwelling on him wide and unseeing. Ashe moved away he heard her burst into sudden tears, such tears as shehad shed at the Fort, and turning back with arms ready for hercomforting, saw her throw herself against Courant's knees, her faceburied in the folds of her shawl. He stood arrested, amazed not somuch by the outburst as by the fact that it was to Courant she hadturned and not to him. But when he spoke to her she drew the shawltighter over her head and pressed her face against the mountain man'sknees. Daddy John had no explanation of her conduct but that she hadbeen secretly fearful about David and had turned for consolation to thehuman being nearest her. 

The next day her anxiety was so sharp that she could not eat and themen grew accustomed to the sight of her mounted on the rock's summit, or walking slowly along the trail searching with untiring eyes. Whenalone with her lover he kissed and caressed her fears into abeyance. As he soothed her, clasped close against him, her terrors graduallysubsided, sinking to a quiescence that came, not alone from his calmand practical reassurances, but from the power of his presence to drugher reason and banish all thoughts save those of him. He wanted hermind free of the dead man, wanted him eliminated from her imagination. The spiritual image of David must fade from her thoughts as hiscorporeal part would soon fade in the desiccating desert airs. Aloneby the spring, held against Courant's side by an arm that trembled witha passion she still only half understood, she told him of her lastinterview with David. In an agony of self-accusation she whispered:

"Oh, Low, could he have killed himself?"

"Where?" said the man. "Haven't we searched every hole and corner ofthe place? He couldn't have hidden his own body. "

The only evidence that some mishap had befallen David was Daddy John's, who, on the afternoon of the day of the disappearance had heard a cry, a single sound, long and wild. It had seemed to come from the crest ofthe rock, and the old man had listened and hearing no more had thoughtit the yell of some animal far on the mountains. This gave color toCourant's theory that the lost man had been seized by the Diggers. Borne away along the summit of the ridge he would have shouted to themand in that dry air the sound would have carried far. He could havebeen overpowered without difficulty, weakened by illness and carryingno arms. 

They spent the morning in a fruitless search and in the afternoonCourant insisted on the train moving on. They cached provisions by thespring and scratched an arrow on the rock pointing their way, andunderneath it the first letters of their names. It was useless, theleader said, to leave anything in the form of a letter. As soon astheir dust was moving on the trail the Diggers would sweep down on thecamp and carry away every scrap of rag and bone that was there. Thiswas why he overrode Susan's plea to leave David's horse. Why presentto the Indians a horse when they had only sufficient for themselves?She wrung her hands at the grewsome picture of David escaping andstealing back to find a deserted camp. But Courant was inexorable andthe catching-up went forward with grim speed. 

She and the old man were dumb with depression as the train rolled out. To them the desertion seemed an act of appalling heartlessness. Butthe mountain man had overcome Daddy John's scruples by a picture oftheir own fate if they delayed and were caught in the early snows ofthe Sierras. The girl could do nothing but trust in the word that wasalready law to her. He rode beside her murmuring reassurances andwatching her pale profile. Her head hung low on her breast, her hatcasting a slant of shadow to her chin. Her eyes looked gloomilyforward, sometimes as his words touched a latent chord of hope, turningquickly upon him and enveloping him in a look of pathetic trust. 

At the evening halt she ate nothing, sitting in a muse against thewagon wheel. Presently she put her plate down and, mounting on theaxle, scanned the way they had come. She could see the rock, risinglike the clumsy form of a dismantled galleon from the waters of adarkling sea. For a space she stood, her hand arched above her eyes, then snatched the kerchief from her neck and, straining an arm aloft, waved it. The white and scarlet rag flapped with a languid motion, aninfinitesimal flutter between the blaze of the sky and the purplinglevels of the earth. Her arm dropped, her signal fallen futile on theplain's ironic indifference. 

During the next day's march she constantly looked back, and severaltimes halted, her hand demanding silence as if she were listening forpursuing footsteps. Courant hid a growing irritation, which onceescaped him in a query as to whether she thought David, if he got awayfrom the Indians, could possibly catch them up. She answered that ifhe had escaped with a horse he might, and fell again to her listeningand watching. At the night camp she ordered Daddy John to build thebeacon fire higher than ever, and taking a rifle moved along theoutskirts of the light firing into the darkness. Finally, standingwith the gun caught in the crook of her arm, she sent up a shrill callof "David. " The cry fell into the silence, cleaving it with a note ofwild and haunting appeal. Courant went after her and brought her back. When they returned to the fire the old man, who was busy with thecooking, looked up to speak but instead gazed in silence, caught bysomething unusual in their aspect, revivifying, illuminating, like theradiance of an inner glow. It glorified the squalor of their clothing, the drawn fatigue of their faces. It gave them the fleeting glamour ofspiritual beauty that comes to those in whom being has reached itshighest expression, the perfect moment of completion caught amid life'sincompleteness. 

In the following days she moved as if the dust cloud that inclosed herwas an impenetrable medium that interposed itself between her and theweird setting of the way. She was drugged with the wine of a new life. She did not think of sin, of herself in relation to her past, of thebreaking with every tie that held her to her old self. All herbackground was gone. Her conscience that, in her dealings with David, had been so persistently lively, now, when it came to herself, wasdead. Question of right or wrong, secret communings, self judgment, had no place in the exaltation of her mood. To look at her conduct andreason of it, to do anything but feel, was as impossible for her as itwould have been to disengage her senses from their trancedconcentration and restore them to the composed serenity of the past. 

It was not the sudden crumbling of a character, the collapse of astructure reared on a foundation of careful training. It was a logicalgrowth, forced by the developing process of an environment with whichthat character was in harmony. Before she reached the level where shecould surrender herself, forgetful of the rites imposed by law, unshocked by her lover's brutality, she had been losing every ingraftedand inherited modification that had united her with the world in whichshe had been an exotic. The trials of the trail that would have driedthe soul and broken the mettle of a girl whose womanhood was less rich, drew from hers the full measure of its strength. Every day had madeher less a being of calculated, artificial reserves, of inculcatedmodesties, and more a human animal, governed by instincts that belongedto her age and sex. She was normal and chaste and her chastity hadmade her shrink from the man whose touch left her cold, and yield tothe one to whom her first antagonism had been first response. When shehad given Courant her kiss she had given herself. There was no needfor intermediary courtship. After that vacillations of doubt andconscience ended. The law of her being was all that remained. 

She moved on with the men, dust-grimed, her rags held together withpins and lacings of deer hide. She performed her share of the workwith automatic thoroughness, eating when the hour came, sleeping on theground under the stars, staggering up in the deep-blue dawn andbuckling her horse's harness with fingers that fatigue made clumsy. She was more silent than ever before, often when the old man addressedher making no reply. He set down her abstraction to grief over David. When he tried to cheer her, her absorbed preoccupation gave place tothe old restlessness, and once again she watched and listened. Thesewere her only moods--periods of musing when she rode in front of thewagon with vacant eyes fixed on the winding seam of the trail, andperiods of nervous agitation when she turned in her saddle to sweep theroad behind her and ordered him to build the night fire high and bright. 

The old servant was puzzled. Something foreign in her, an innervividness of life, a deeper current of vitality, told him that this wasnot a woman preyed upon by a gnawing grief. He noted, withoutunderstanding, a change in her bearing to Courant and his to her. Without words to give it expression he saw in her attitude to theleader a pliant, docile softness, a surreptitious leap of light in theglance that fell upon him in quick welcome before her lids shut it in. With Courant the change showed in a possessive tenderness, a broodingconcern. When, at the morning start, he waited as she rode toward him, his face was irradiated with a look that made the old man remember thedead loves of his youth. It was going to be all right Daddy Johnthought. David gone, whether forever or for an unknown period, themountain man might yet win her. And then again the old man fell awondering at something in them that did not suggest the unassuredbeginnings of courtship, a settled security of relation as of completeunity in a mutual enterprise. 

One afternoon a faint spot of green rose and lingered on the horizon. They thought it a mirage and watched it with eyes grown weary of thedesert's delusions. But as the road bore toward it, it steadied totheir anxious gaze, expanded into a patch that lay a living touch onthe earth's dead face. By the time that dusk gathered they saw that itwas trees and knew that Humboldt was in sight. At nightfall theyreached it, the first outpost sent into the wilderness by the newcountry. The red light of fires came through the dusk like a welcominghail from that unknown land which was to be theirs. After supper DaddyJohn and Courant left the girl and went to the mud house round whichthe camps clustered. The darkness was diluted by the red glow of firesand astir with dusky figures. There were trains for California andOregon and men from the waste lands to the eastward and the south, flotsam and jetsam thrown up on the desert's shore. Inside, where theair was thick with smoke and the reek of raw liquors, they heard againthe great news from California. The old man, determined to get all theinformation he could, moved from group to group, an observant listenerin the hubbub. Presently his ear was caught by a man who declared hehad been on the gold river and was holding a circle in thrall by histales. Daddy John turned to beckon to Courant and, not seeing him, elbowed his way through the throng spying to right and left. But themountain man had gone. Daddy John went back to the gold seeker anddrew him dry of information, then foregathered with a thin individualwho had a humorous eye and was looking on from a corner. This strangerintroduced himself as a clergyman, returning from the East to Oregon byway of California. They talked together. Daddy John finding his newacquaintance a tolerant cheery person versed in the lore of the trail. The man gave him many useful suggestions for the last lap of thejourney and he decided to go after Courant, to whom the route over theSierra was unknown ground. 

The camps had sunk to silence, the women and children asleep. Heskirted their tents, bending his course to where he saw the hood of hisown wagon and the shadowy forms of Julia and her mates. The fire stillburned bright and on its farther side he could make out the figures ofSusan and Courant seated on the ground. They were quiet, the girlsitting with her feet tucked under her, idly throwing scraps of sage onthe blaze. He was about to hail Courant when he saw him suddenly dropto a reclining posture beside her, draw himself along the earth andcurl about her, his elbow on the ground, his head propped on asustaining hand. With the other he reached forward, caught Susan's anddrawing it toward him pressed it against his cheek. Daddy John watchedthe sacrilegious act with starting eyes. He would have burst in uponthem had he not seen the girl's shy smile, and her body gently droopforward till her lips rested on the mountain man's. When she drew backthe old servant came forward into the light. Its reflection hid hispallor, but his heart was thumping like a hammer and his throat wasdry, for suddenly he understood. At his step Susan drew away from hercompanion and looked at the advancing shape with eyes darkly soft asthose of an antelope. 

"Where have you been?" she said. "You were a long time away. "

"In the mud house, " said Daddy John. 

"Did you find anyone interesting there?"

"Yes. When I was talkin' with him I didn't know he was so powerfulinterestin', but sence I come out o' there I've decided he was. "

They both looked at him without much show of curiosity, merely, heguessed, that they might not look at each other and reveal their secret. 

"What was he?" asked Courant. 

"A clergyman. "

This time they both started, the girl into sudden erectness, then heldher head down as if in shame. For a sickened moment, he thought shewas afraid to look at her lover for fear of seeing refusal in his face. Courant leaned near her and laid his hand on hers. 

"If there's a clergyman here we can be married, " he said quietly. 

She drew her hand away and with its fellow covered her face. Courantlooked across the fire and said:

"Go and get him, Daddy John. He can do the reading over us now. "

END OF PART IV

PART V

The Promised Land

CHAPTER I

In the light of a clear September sun they stood and looked down onit--the Promised Land. 

For days they had been creeping up through defiles in the mountainwall, crawling along ledges with murmurous seas of pine below and thesnow lying crisp in the hollows. On the western slope the greatbulwark dropped from granite heights to wooded ridges along the spinesof which the road wound. Through breaks in the pine's close ranks theysaw blue, vaporous distances, and on the far side of aerial chasms theswell of other mountains, clothed to their summits, shape undulatingbeyond shape. 

Then on this bright September afternoon a sun-filled pallor of emptyspace shone between the tree trunks, and they had hurried to the summitof a knoll and seen it spread beneath them--California!

The long spurs, broken apart by ravines, wound downward to where a flatstretch of valley ran out to a luminous horizon. It was a yellowfloor, dotted with the dark domes of trees and veined with a line ofwater. The trail, a red thread, was plain along the naked ridges, andthen lost itself in the dusk of forests. Right and left summit andslope swelled and dropped, sun-tipped, shadow filled. Slants of light, rifts of shade, touched the crowded pine tops to gold, darkened them tosweeps of unstirred olive. The air, softly clear, was impregnated witha powerful aromatic scent, the strong, rich odor of the earth and itsteeming growths. It lay placid and indolent before the way-worn trio, a new world waiting for their conquering feet. 

The girl, with a deep sigh, dropped her head upon her husband'sshoulder and closed her eyes. She weakened with the sudden promise ofrest. It was in the air, soft as a caress, in the mild, beneficentsun, in the stillness which had nothing of the desert's sinister quiet. Courant put his arm about her, and looking into her face, saw it drawnand pinched, all beauty gone. Her closed eyelids were dark and seamedwith fine folds, the cheek bones showed under her skin, tanned to a drybrown, its rich bloom withered. Round her forehead and ears her hairhung in ragged locks, its black gloss hidden under the trail's reddust. Even her youth had left her, she seemed double her age. It wasas if he looked at the woman she would be twenty years from now. 

Something in the sight of her, unbeautiful, enfeebled, her high spiritdimmed, stirred in him a new, strange tenderness. His arm tightenedabout her, his look lost its jealous ardor and wandering over herblighted face, melted to a passionate concern. The appeal of herbeauty gave place to a stronger, more gripping appeal, never felt byhim before. She was no longer the creature he owned and ruled, nolonger the girl he had broken to an abject submission, but the woman heloved. Uplifted in the sudden realization he felt the world widenaround him and saw himself another man. Then through the wonder of therevelation came the thought of what he had done to win her. Itastonished him as a dart of pain would have done. Why had heremembered it? Why at this rich moment should the past send out thiseerie reminder? He pushed it from him, and bending toward her murmureda lover's phrase. 

She opened her eyes and they met an expression in his that she had feltthe need of, hoped and waited for, an answer to what she had offeredand he had not seen or wanted. It was completion, arrival at the goal, so longed for and despaired of, and she turned her face against hisshoulder, her happiness too sacred even for his eyes. He did notunderstand the action, thought her spirit languished and, pointingoutward, cried in his mounting gladness:

"Look--that's where our home will be. "

She lifted her head and followed the directing finger. The old manstood beside them also gazing down. 

"It's a grand sight, " he said. "But it's as yellow as the desert. Must be almighty dry. "

"There's plenty of water, " said Courant. "Rivers come out of thesemountains and go down there into the plain. And they carry the gold, the gold that's going to make us rich. "

He pressed her shoulder with his encircling arm and she answereddreamily:

"We are rich enough. "

He thought she alluded to the Doctor's money that was hidden in thewagon. 

"But we'll be richer. We've got here before the rest of 'em. We'rethe first comers and it's ours. You'll be queen here, Susan. I'llmake you one. " His glance ranged over the splendid prospect, eagerwith the man's desire to fight and win for his own. She thought littleof what he said, lost in her perfect content. 

"When we've got the gold we'll take up land and I'll build a house foryou, a good house, my wife won't live in a tent. It'll be of logs, strong and water tight, and as soon as they bring things in--and theships will be coming soon--we'll furnish it well. And that'll be onlythe beginning. "

"Where will we build it?" she said, catching his enthusiasm andstraining her eyes as if then and there to pick out the spot. 

"By the river under a pine. "

"With a place for Daddy John, " she cried, stretching a hand toward theold man. "He must be there too. "

He took it and stood linked to the embracing pair by the girl's warmgrasp. 

"I'll stick by the tent, " he said; "no four walls for me. "

"And you two, " she looked from one to the other, "will wash for thegold and I'll take care of you. I'll keep everything clean andcomfortable. It'll be a cozy little home--our log house under thepine. "

She laughed, the first time in many weeks, and the clear sound rangjoyously. 

"And when we've got all the dust we want, " Courant went on, his spiritexpanding on the music of her laughter, "we'll go down to the coast. They'll have a town there soon for the shipping. We'll grow up withit, build it into a city, and as it gets richer so will we. It's goingto be a new empire, out here by the Pacific, with the gold rivers backof it and the ocean in front. And it's going to be ours. "

She looked over the foreground of hill and vale to the shimmering sweepof the rich still land. Her imagination, wakened by his words, passedfrom the log house to the busy rush of a city where the sea shonebetween the masts of ships. It was a glowing future they were to marchon together, with no cloud to mar it now that she had seen the new lookin his eyes. 

A few days later they were in the Sacramento Valley camped near thewalls of Sutter's Fort. The plain, clad with a drab grass, stretchedto where the low-lying Sacramento slipped between oozy banks. Herewere the beginnings of a town, shacks and tents dumped down in a helterskelter of slovenly hurry. Beyond, the American river crept from themountains and threaded the parched land. Between the valley and thewhite sky-line of the Sierra, the foot hills swelled, indented withravines and swathed in the matted robe of the chaparral. 

While renewing their supplies at the fort they camped under a live oak. It was a mighty growth, its domed outline fretted with the fineness ofhorny leaves, its vast boughs outflung in contorted curves. The riversucked about its roots. Outside its shade the plain grew dryer underunclouded suns, huge trees casting black blots of shadow in which theFort's cattle gathered. Sometimes vaqueros came from the gates in theadobe walls, riding light and with the long spiral leap of the lassorising from an upraised hand. Sometimes groups of half-naked Indianstrailed through the glare, winding a way to the spot of color that wastheir camp. 

To the girl it was all wonderful, the beauty, the peace, the cessationof labor. When the men were at the Fort she lay beneath the great treewatching the faint, white chain of the mountains, or the tawny valleyburning to orange in the long afternoons. For once she was idle, comeat last to the end of all her journeyings. Only the present, thetranquil, perfect present, existed. What did not touch upon it, fit inand have some purpose in her life with the man of whom she was a part, was waste matter. She who had once been unable to endure the thoughtof separation from her father could now look back on his death and say, "How I suffered then, " and know no reminiscent pang. She would havewondered at herself if, in the happiness in which she was lapped, shecould have drawn her mind from its contemplation to wonder at anything. There was no world beyond the camp, no interest in what did not focuson Courant, no people except those who added to his trials or hiswelfare. The men spent much of their time at the Fort, conferring withothers en route to the river bed below Sutter's mill. When they cameback to the camp there was lively talk under the old tree. The silenceof the trail was at an end. The pendulum swung far, and now they weregarrulous, carried away by the fever of speculation. The evening cameand found them with scattered stores and uncleaned camp, their voicesloud against the low whisperings of leaves and water. 

Courant returned from these absences aglow with fortified purpose. Reestablished contact with the world brightened and humanized him, acting with an eroding effect on a surface hardened by years of lawlessroving. In his voluntary exile he had not looked for or wanted thecompany of his fellows. Now he began to soften under it, shift hisviewpoint from that of the all-sufficing individual to that of thebonded mass from which he had so long been an alien. The girl'sinfluence had revivified a side almost atrophied by disuse. Men's wereaiding it. As her sympathies narrowed under the obsession of herhappiness, his expanded, awaked by a reversion to forgotten conditions. 

One night, lying beside her under the tent's roof, he found himselfwakeful. It was starless and still, the song of the river fusing in acontinuous flow of low sound with the secret, self-communings of thetree. The girl's light breathing was at his ear, a reminder of hisownership and its responsibilities. In the idleness of the unoccupiedmind he mused on the future they were to share till death should comebetween. It was pleasant thinking, or so it began. Then, gradually, something in the darkness and the lowered vitality of night caused itto lose its joy, become suffused by a curious, doubting uneasiness. Helay without moving, given up to the strange feeling, not knowing whatinduced it or from whence it came. It grew in poignancy, clearer andstronger, till it led him like a clew to the body of David. 

For the first time that savage act came back to him with a surge ofrepudiation, of scared denial. He had a realizing sense of how itwould look to other men--the men he had met at the Fort. Distinctly, as if their mental attitude were substituted for his, he saw it as theywould see it, as the world he was about to enter would see it. Hisheart began to thump with something like terror and the palms of hishands grew moist. Turning stealthily that he might not wake her, hestared at the triangle of paler darkness that showed through the tent'sraised flap. He had no fear that Susan would find out. Even if shedid, he knew her securely his, till the end of time, her thoughts totake their color from him, her fears to be lulled at his wish. But theothers--the active, busy, practical throng into which he would beabsorbed. His action, in the heat of a brutal passion, had made him anoutsider from the close-drawn ranks of his fellows. He had been ableto do without them, defied their laws, scorned their truckling topublic opinion--but now?

The girl turned in her sleep, pressing her head against his shoulderand murmuring drowsily. He edged away from her, flinching from thecontact, feeling a grievance against her. She was the link between himand them. Hers was the influence that was sapping the foundations ofhis independence. She was drawing him back to the place of lostliberty outside which he had roamed in barbarous content. His love wasriveting bonds upon him, making his spirit as water. He felt a revolt, a resistance against her power, which was gently impelling him towardhome, hearth, neighbors--the life in which he felt his place was gone. 

The next day the strange mood seemed an ugly dream. It was not he whohad lain wakeful and questioned his right to bend Fate to his owndemands. He rode beside his wife at the head of the train as theyrolled out in the bright, dry morning on the road to the river. Therewere men behind them, and in front the dust rose thick on the rear ofpack trains. They filed across the valley, watching the foot hillscome nearer and the muffling robe of the chaparral separate intocheckered shadings where the manzanita glittered and the faint, bluishdomes of small pines rose above the woven greenery. 

Men were already before them, scattered along the river's bars, waisthigh in the pits. Here and there a tent showed white, but a blanketunder a tree, a pile of pans by a blackened heap of fire marked most ofthe camps. Some of the gold-hunters had not waited to undo their packswhich lay as they had been dropped, and the owners, squatting by thestream's lip, bent over their pans round which the water sprayed in asilver fringe. There were hails and inquiries, answering cries of goodor ill luck. Many did not raise their eyes, too absorbed by the hopeof fortune to waste one golden moment. 

These were the vanguard, the forerunners of next year's thousands, scratching the surface of the lower bars. The sound of their voiceswas soon left behind and the river ran free of them. Pack trainsdropped from the line, spreading themselves along the rim of earthbetween the trail and the shrunken current. Courant's party moved on, going higher, veiled in a cloud of brick-colored dust. The hills sweptup into bolder lines, the pines mounted in sentinel files crowding outthe lighter leafage. At each turn the vista showed a loftier uprise, crest peering above crest, and far beyond, high and snow-touched, thesummits of the Sierra. The shadows slanted cool from wall to wall, theair was fresh and scented with the forest's resinous breath. Acrossthe tree tops, dense as the matted texture of moss, the winged shadowsof hawks floated, and paused, and floated again. 

Here on a knoll under a great pine they pitched the tent. At its basethe river ran, dwindled to a languid current, the bared mud bankswaiting for their picks. The walls of the cañon drew close, a drop ofnaked granite opposite, and on the slopes beyond were dark-aisleddepths, golden-moted, and stirred to pensive melodies. The girlstarted to help, then kicked aside the up-piled blankets, dropped theskillets into the mess chest, and cried:

"Oh, I can't, I want to look and listen. Keep still--" The menstopped their work, and the music of the murmurous boughs and thegliding water filled the silence. She turned her head, sniffing theforest's scents, her glance lighting on the blue shoulders of distanthills. 

"And look at the river, yellow, yellow with gold! I can't work now, Iwant to see it all--and feel it too, " and she ran to the water's edgewhere she sat down on a rock and gazed up and down the cañon. 

When the camp was ready Courant joined her. The rock was wide enoughfor two and he sat beside her. 

"So you like it, Missy?" he said, sending a side-long glance at herflushed face. 

"Like it!" though there was plenty of room she edged nearer to him, "I'm wondering if it really is so beautiful or if I just think it soafter the trail. "

"You'll be content to stay here with me till we've made our pile?"

She looked at him and nodded, then slipped her fingers between his andwhispered, though there was no one by to hear, "I'd be content to stayanywhere with you. "

He was growing accustomed to this sort of reply. Deprived of it hewould have noticed the omission, but it had of late become so common afeature in the conversation he felt no necessity to answer in kind. Heglanced at the pine trunks about them and said:

"If the claim's good, we'll cut some of those and build a cabin. You'll see how comfortable I can make you, the way they do on thefrontier. "

She pressed his fingers for answer and he went on:

"When the winter comes we can move farther down. Up here we may getsnow. But there'll be time between now and then to put up somethingwarm and waterproof. "

"Why should we move down? With a good cabin we can be comfortablehere. The snow won't be heavy this far up. They told Daddy John allabout it at the Fort. And you and he can ride in there sometimes whenwe want things. "

These simple words gratified him more than she guessed. It was as ifshe had seen into the secret springs of his thought and said what hewas fearful she would not say. That was why--in a spirit of testing agranted boon to prove its genuineness--he asked with tentativequestioning:

"You won't be lonely? There are no people here. "

She made the bride's answer and his contentment increased, for again itwas what he would have wished her to say. When he answered he spokealmost sheepishly, with something of uneasy confession in his look:

"I'd like to live in places like this always. I feel choked andstifled where there are walls shutting out the air and streets full ofpeople. Even in the Fort I felt like a trapped animal. I want to bewhere there's room to move about and nobody bothering with differentkinds of ideas. It's only in the open, in places without men, that I'mmyself. "

For the first time he had dared to give expression to the mood of thewakeful night. Though it was dim in the busy brightness of thepresent--a black spot on the luster of cheerful days--he dreaded thatit might come again with its scaring suggestions. With a nerve thathad never known a tremor at any menace from man, he was frightened of athought, a temporary mental state. In speaking thus to her, herecognized her as a help-meet to whom he could make a shamed admissionof weakness and fear no condemnation or diminution of love. This time, however, she made the wrong reply:

"But we'll go down to the coast after a while, if our claim's good andwe get enough dust out of it. I think of it often. It will be so niceto live in a house again, and have some one to do the cooking, and wearpretty clothes. It will be such fun living where there are people andgoing about among them, going to parties and maybe having parties ofour own. "

He withdrew his hand from hers and pushed the hair back from hisforehead. Though he said nothing she was conscious of a drop in hismood. She bent forward to peer into his face and queried with bright, observing eyes:

"You don't seem to like the thought of it. "

"Oh, it's not me, " he answered. "I was just wondering at the queer waywomen talk. A few minutes ago you said you'd be content anywhere withme. Now you say you think it would be such fun living in a city andgoing to parties. "

"With you, too, " she laughed, pressing against his shoulder. "I don'twant to go to the parties alone. "

"Well, I guess if you ever go it'll have to be alone, " he said roughly. 

She understood now that she had said something that annoyed him, andnot knowing how she had come to do it, felt aggrieved and sought tojustify herself:

"But we can't live here always. If we make money we'll want to go backsome day where there are people, and comforts and things going on. We'll want friends, everybody has friends. You don't mean for usalways to stay far away from everything in these wild, uncivilizedplaces?"

"Why not?" he said, not looking at her, noting her rueful tone andresenting it. 

"But we're not that kind of people. You're not a real mountain man. You're not like Zavier or the men at Fort Laramie. You're NapoleonDuchesney just as I'm Susan Gillespie. Your people in St. Louis andNew Orleans were ladies and gentlemen. It was just a wild freak thatmade you run off into the mountains. You don't want to go on livingthat way. That part of your life's over. The rest will be with me. "

"And you'll want the cities and the parties?"

"I'll want to live the way Mrs. Duchesney should live, and you'll wantto, too. " He did not answer, and she gave his arm a little shake andsaid, "Won't you?"

"I'm more Low Courant than I am Napoleon Duchesney, " was his answer. 

"Well, maybe so, but whichever you are, you've got a wife now and_that_ makes a great difference. "

She tried to infuse some of her old coquetry into the words, but theeyes, looking sideways at him, were troubled, for she did not yet seewhere she had erred. 

"I guess it does, " he said low, more as if speaking to himself than her. 

This time she said nothing, feeling dashed and repulsed. Theycontinued to sit close together on the rock, the man lost in morosereverie, the girl afraid to move or touch him lest he should showfurther annoyance. 

The voice of Daddy John calling them to supper came to both withrelief. They walked to the camp side by side, Low with head drooped, the girl at his elbow stealing furtive looks at him. As theyapproached the fire she slid her hand inside his arm and, glancingdown, he saw the timid questioning of her face and was immediatelycontrite. He laid his hand on hers and smiled, and she caught herbreath in a deep sigh and felt happiness come rushing back. Whateverit was she had said that displeased him she would be careful not to sayit again, for she had already learned that the lion in love is stillthe lion. 

CHAPTER II

Their claim was rich and they buckled down to work, the old manconstructing a rocker after a model of his own, and Courant digging inthe pits. Everything was with them, rivals were few, the grounduncrowded, the season dry. It was the American River before theForty-niners swarmed along its edges, and there was gold in its sands, sunk in a sediment below its muddy deposit, caked in cracks through therocks round which its currents had swept for undisturbed ages. 

They worked feverishly, the threat of the winter rains urging them on. The girl helped, leaving her kettle settled firm on a bed of emberswhile the water heated for dish washing, to join them on the shore, heaped with their earth piles. She kept the rocker in motion while theold man dipped up the water in a tin ladle and sent it running over thesifting bed of sand and pebbles. The heavier labor of digging wasCourant's. Before September was over the shore was honeycombed withhis excavations, driven down to the rock bed. The diminishing streamshrunk with each day and he stood in it knee high, the sun beating onhis head, his clothes pasted to his skin by perspiration, and the thudof his pick falling with regular stroke on the monotonous rattle of therocker. 

Sometimes she was tired and they ordered her to leave them and rest inthe shade of the camp. She loitered about under the spread of the pineboughs, cleaning and tidying up, and patching the ragged remnants oftheir clothes. Often, as she sat propped against the trunk, her sewingfell to her lap and she looked out with shining, spell-bound eyes. Themen were shapes of dark importance against the glancing veil of water, the soaked sands and the low brushwood yellowing in the autumn's soft, transforming breath. Far away the film of whitened summits dreamedagainst the blue. In the midwash of air, aloft and dreaming, too, thehawk's winged form poised, its shadow moving below it across the sea oftree tops. 

She would sit thus, motionless and idle, as the long afternoon woreaway, and deep-colored veils of twilight gathered in the cañon. Shetold the men the continuous sounds of their toil made her drowsy. Buther stillness was the outward sign of an inner concentration. Ifdelight in rest had replaced her old bodily energy, her mind had gaineda new activity. She wondered a little at it, not yet at the heart ofher own mystery. Her thoughts reached forward into the future, busiedthemselves with details of the next twelve months, dwelt anxiously onquestions of finance. The nest-building instinct was astir in her andshe pondered on the house they were to build, how they must arrangesomething for a table, and maybe fashion armchairs of barrels and redflannel. Finally, in a last voluptuous flight of ecstasy, she sawherself riding into Sacramento with a sack of dust and abandoningherself to an orgie of bartering. 

One afternoon three men, two Mexicans and an Australian sailor from aship in San Francisco cove, stopped at the camp for food. TheAustralian was a loquacious fellow, with faculties sharpened byglimpses of life in many ports. He told them of the two emigrantconvoys he had just seen arrive in Sacramento, worn and wasted by thelast forced marches over the mountains. Susan, who had been busy overher cooking, according him scant attention, at his description of thetrains, suddenly lifted intent eyes and leaned toward him:

"Did you see a man among them, a young man, tall and thin, with blackhair and beard?"

"All the men were tall and thin, or any ways thin, " said the sailor, laughing. "How tall was he?"

"Six feet, " she replied, her face devoid of any answering smile, "withhigh shoulders and walking with a stoop. He had a fine, handsome face, and long black hair to his shoulders and gray eyes. "

"Have you lost your sweetheart?" said the man, who did not know therelations of the party. 

"No, " she said gravely, "my friend. "

Courant explained:

"She's my wife. The man she's speaking of was a member of our companythat we lost on the desert. We thought Indians had got him and hopedhe'd get away and join with a later westbound train. His name wasDavid. "

The sailor shook his head. 

"Ain't seen no one answering to that name, nor to that description. There wasn't a handsome-featured one in the lot, nor a David. But ifyou're expecting him along, why don't you take her in and let her look'em over? They told me at the Fort the trains was mostly all in orought to be. Any time now the snow on the summit will be too deep for'em. If they get caught up there they can't be got out, so they'recoming over hot foot and are dumped down round Hock Farm. Not much tosee, but if you're looking for a friend it's worth trying. "

That night Courant was again wakeful. Susan's face, as she hadquestioned the sailor, floated before him on the darkness. With itcame the thought of the dead man. In the silence David called upon himfrom the sepulcher beneath the rock, sent a message through the nightwhich said that, though he was hidden from mortal vision, the memory ofhim was still alive, imbued with an unquenchable vitality. Hisunwinking eyes, with the rock crumbs sifting on them, looked at thoseof his triumphant enemy and spoke through their dusted films. In themoment of death they had said nothing to him, now they shone--notangrily accusing as they had been in life--but stern with a vindictivepurpose. 

Courant began to have a fearful understanding of their meaning. Thoughdead to the rest of the world, David would maintain an intense andsecret life in his murderer's conscience. He had never fought such asubtle and implacable foe, and he lay thinking of how he could createconditions that would give him escape, push the phantom from him, makehim forget, and be as he had been when no one had disputed hissovereignty over himself. He tried to think that time would mitigatethis haunting discomfort. His sense of guilt, his fear of his wife, would die when the novelty of once again being one with the crowd hadworn away. It was not possible that he, defiant of man and God, couldlanguish under this dread of a midnight visitation or a discovery thatnever would be made. It was the reentering into the communal life thathad upset his poise--or was it the influence of the woman, the softlypervasive, enervating influence? He came up against this thought witha dizzying impact and felt himself droop and sicken as one who is facedwith a task for which his strength is inadequate. 

He turned stealthily and lay on his back, his face beaded with sweat. The girl beside him waked and sat up casting a side glance at him. Bythe starlight, slanting in through the raised tent door, she saw hisopened eyes and, leaning toward him, a black shape against the faintlyblue triangle, said:

"Low, are you awake?"

He answered without moving, glad to hear her speak, to know that sleephad left her and her voice might conjure away his black imaginings. 

"Why aren't you sleeping?" she asked. "You must be half dead aftersuch work as you did today. "

"I was thinking--" then hastily, for he was afraid that she might sensehis mood and ply him with sympathetic queries: "Sometimes people aretoo tired to sleep. I am, and so I was lying here just thinking ofnothing. "

His fears were unnecessary. She was as healthily oblivious of hisdisturbance as he was morbidly conscious of it. She sat still, herhands clasped round her knees, about which the blanket draped blackly. 

"I was thinking, too, " she said. 

"Of what?"

"Of what that man was saying of David. "

There was a silence. He lay motionless, his trouble coming back uponhim. He wished that he might dare to impose upon her a silence on thatone subject. David, given a place in her mind, would sit at everyfeast, walk beside them, lie between them in their marriage bed. 

"Why do you think of him?" he asked. 

"Because--" her tone showed surprise. "It's natural, isn't it? Don'tyou? I'm sure you do. I do often, much oftener than you think. I'malways hoping that he'll come. "

"You never loved him, " he said, in a voice from which all spring wasgone. 

"No, but he was my friend, and I would like to keep him so for always. I think of his kindness, his gentleness, all the good part of himbefore the trail broke him down. And, I think, too, how cruel I was tohim. "

The darkness hid her face, but her voice told that she, too, had herlittle load of guilt where David was concerned. 

The man moved uneasily. 

"That's foolishness. You only told the truth. If it was cruel, that'snot your affair. "

"He loved me. A woman doesn't forget that. "

"That's over and done with. He's probably here somewhere, come throughwith a train that's scattered. And, anyway, you can't do any good bythinking about him. "

This time the false reassurances came with the pang that the dead manwas rousing in tardy retribution. 

"I should like to know it, " she said wistfully, "to feel sure. It'sthe only thing that mars our happiness. If I knew he was safe and wellsomewhere there'd be nothing in the world for me but perfect joy. "

Her egotism of satisfied body and spirit jarred upon him. The passionshe had evoked had found no peace in its fulfillment. She had got whathe had hoped for. All that he had anticipated was destroyed by theunexpected intrusion of a part of himself that had lain dead till shehad quickened it, and quickening it she had killed his joy. In a flashof divination he saw that, if she persisted in her worry over David, she would rouse in him an antagonism that would eventually drive himfrom her. He spoke with irritation:

"Put him out of your mind. Don't worry about him. You can't do anygood, and it spoils our love. "

After a pause, she said with a hesitating attempt at cajolery:

"Let me and Daddy John drive into the valley and try and get news ofhim. We need supplies and we'll be gone only two or three days. Wecan inquire at the Fort and maybe go on to Sacramento, and if he's beenthere we'll hear of it. If we could only hear, just hear, he was safe, it would be such a relief. It would take away this dreary feeling ofanxiety, and guilt too, Low. For I feel guilty when I think of how weleft him. "

"Where was the guilt? You've no right to say that. You understood wehad to go. I could take no risks with you and the old man. "

"Yes, " she said, slowly, tempering her agreement with a self-soothingreluctance, "but even so, it seemed terrible. I often tell myself wecouldn't have done anything else, but----"

Her voice dropped to silence and she sat staring out at the quietnight, her head blurred with the filaments of loosened hair. 

He did not speak, gripped by his internal torment, aggravated now bytorment from without. He wondered, if he told her the truth, would sheunderstand and help him to peace. But he knew that such knowledgewould set her in a new attitude toward him, an attitude of secretjudgment, of distracted pity, of an agonized partisanship built onloyalty and the despairing passion of the disillusioned. He couldnever tell her, for he could never support the loss of her devotedbelief, which was now the food of his life. 

"Can I go?" she said, turning to look at him, smiling confidently asone who knows the formal demand unnecessary. 

"If you want, " he answered. 

"Then we'll start to-morrow, " she said, and, leaning down, kissed him. 

He was unresponsive to the touch of her lips, lay inert as she nestleddown into soft-breathing, child-like sleep. He watched the tentopening pale into a glimmering triangle wondering what their life wouldbe with the specter of David standing in the path, an angel with aflaming sword barring the way to Paradise. 

Two days later she and Daddy John, sitting on the front seat of thewagon, saw the low drab outlines of the Fort rising from the plain. Under their tree was a new encampment, one tent with the hood of awagon behind it, and oxen grazing in the sun. As they drew near theycould see the crouched forms of two children, the light filteringthrough the leafage on the silky flax of their heads. They wereoccupied over a game, evidently a serious business, its floor ofoperations the smooth ground worn bare about the camp fire. One ofthem lay flat with a careful hand patting the dust into mounds, theother squatted near by watching, a slant of white hair falling across arounded cheek. They did not heed the creak of the wagon wheels, but asa woman's voice called from the tent, raised their heads listening, butnot answering, evidently deeming silence the best safeguard againstinterruption. 

Susan laid a clutching hand on Daddy John's arm. 

"It's the children, " she cried in a choked voice. "Stop, stop!" andbefore he could rein the mules to order she was out and running towardthem, calling their names. 

They made a clamor of welcome, Bob running to her and making delightedleaps up at her face, the little girl standing aloof for the firstbashful moment, then sidling nearer with mouth upheld for kisses. Bella heard them and came to the tent door, gave a great cry, and ranto them. There were tears on her cheeks as she clasped Susan, held heroft and clutched her again, with panted ejaculations of "Deary me!" and"Oh, Lord, Missy, is it you?"

It was like a meeting on the other side of the grave. They babbledtheir news, both talking at once, not stopping to finish sentences, orwait for the answer to questions of the marches they had not shared. Over the clamor they looked at each other with faces that smiled andquivered, the tie between them strengthened by the separation when eachhad longed for the other, closer in understanding by the younger'sadded experience, both now women. 

Glen was at the Fort and Daddy John rolled off to meet him there. Thenovelty of the moment over, the children returned sedately to theirplay, and the women sat together under the canopy of the tree. Bella'sadventures had been few and tame, Susan's was the great story. She wasnot discursive about her marriage. She was still shy on the subjectand sensitively aware of the disappointment that Bella was tooartlessly amazed to conceal. She passed over it quickly, pretendingthat she did not hear Bella's astonished:

"But why did you get married at Humboldt? Why didn't you wait till yougot here?"

It was the loss of David that she made the point of her narrative, anxiously impressing on her listener their need of going on. She stolequick looks at Bella, watchful for the first shade of disapprobation, with all Low's arguments ready to sweep it aside. But Bella, withmaternal instincts in place of a comprehensive humanity, agreed thatLow had done right. Nature, in the beginning, combined with the needsof the trail, had given her a viewpoint where expediency counted formore than altruism. She with two children and a helpless man wouldhave gone on and left anyone to his fate. She did not say this, butSusan, with intelligence sharpened by a jealous passion, felt thatthere was no need to defend her husband's action. As for the rest ofthe world--deep in her heart she had already decided it should neverknow. 

"You couldn't have done anything else, " said Bella. "I've learned thatwhen you're doing that sort of thing, you can't have the same feelingsyou can back in the States, with everything handy and comfortable. Youcan be fair, but you got to fight for your own. They got to comefirst. "

She had neither seen nor heard anything of David. No rumor of a manheld captive by the Indians had reached their train. She tried not tolet Susan see that she believed the worst. But her melancholyheadshake and murmured "Poor David--and him such a kind, whole-heartedman" was as an obituary on the dead. 

"Well, " she said in pensive comment when Susan had got to the end ofher history, "you can't get through a journey like that without someone coming to grief. It's not in human nature. But your father--thatgrand man! And then the young feller that would have made you such agood husband--" Susan moved warningly--"Not but what I'm sure you'vegot as good a one as it is. And we've got to take what we can get inthis world, " she added, spoiling it all by the philosophical acceptanceof what she evidently regarded as a make-shift adjusting to Nature'sneeds. 

When the men came back Glen had heard all about the gold in the riverand was athirst to get there. Work at his trade could wait, and, anyway, he had been in Sacramento and found, while his services were indemand on every side, the materials wherewith he was to help raise aweatherproof city were not to be had. Men were content to live intents and cloth shacks until the day of lumber and sawmills dawned, andwhy wait for this millennium when the river called from its goldensands?

No one had news of David. Daddy John had questioned the captains oftwo recently arrived convoys, but learned nothing. The men thought itlikely he was dead. They agreed as to the possibility of the Indianabduction and his future reappearance. Such things had happened. Butit was too late now to do anything. No search party could be sent outat this season when at any day the mountain trails might be neck highin snow. There was nothing to do but wait till the spring. 

Susan listened with lowered brows. It was heavy news. She did notknow how she had hoped till she heard that all hope must lie inabeyance for at least six months. It was a long time to be patient. She was selfishly desirous to have her anxieties at rest, for, as shehad told her husband, they were the only cloud on her happiness, andshe wanted that happiness complete. It was not necessary for her peaceto see David again. To know he was safe somewhere would have satisfiedher. 

The fifth day after leaving the camp they sighted the pitted shores oftheir own diggings. Sitting in the McMurdos' wagon they had speculatedgayly on Low's surprise. Susan, on the seat beside Glen, had beenjoyously full of the anticipation of it, wondered what he would say, and then fell to imagining it with closed lips and dancing eyes. Whenthe road reached the last concealing buttress she climbed down andmounted beside Daddy John, whose wagon was some distance in advance. 

"It's going to be a surprise for Low, " she said in the voice of amischievous child. "You mustn't say anything. Let me tell him. "

The old man, squinting sideways at her, gave his wry smile. It wasgood to see his Missy this way again, in bloom like a refreshed flower. 

"Look, " she cried, as her husband's figure came into view kneeling bythe rocker. "There he is, and he doesn't see us. Stop!"

Courant heard their wheels and, turning, started to his feet and cameforward, the light in his face leaping to hers. She sprang down andran toward him, her arms out. Daddy John, slashing the wayside busheswith his whip, looked reflectively at the bending twigs while theembrace lasted. The McMurdos' curiosity was not restrained by any suchinconvenient delicacy. They peeped from under the wagon hood, grinningappreciatively, Bella the while maintaining a silent fight with thechildren, who struggled for an exit. None of them could hear what thegirl said, but they saw Courant suddenly look with a changed face, itslight extinguished, at the second wagon. 

"He don't seem so terrible glad to see us, " said Glen. "I guess hewanted to keep the place for himself. "

Bella noted the look and snorted. 

"He's a cross-grained thing, " she said; "I don't see what got into herto marry him when she could have had David. "

"She can't have him when he ain't round to be had, " her husbandanswered. "Low's better than a man that's either a prisoner with theIndians or dead somewhere. David was a good boy, but I don't seem tosee he'd be much use to her now. "

Bella sniffed again, and let the squirming children go to get what goodthey could out of the unpromising moment of the surprise. 

What Low had said to Susan was an angry, "Why did you bring them?"

She fell back from him not so crestfallen at his words as at his darkfrown of disapproval. 

"Why, I wanted them, " she faltered, bewildered by his obviousdispleasure at what she thought would be welcome news, "and I thoughtyou would. "

"I'd rather you hadn't. Aren't we enough by ourselves?"

"Yes, of course. But they're our friends. We traveled with them fordays and weeks, and it's made them like relations. I was so glad tosee them I cried when I saw Bella. Oh, do try and seem more as if youliked it. They're here and I've brought them. "

He slouched forward to greet them. She was relieved to see that hemade an effort to banish his annoyance and put some warmth of welcomeinto his voice. But the subtlety with which he could conceal hisemotions when it behooved him had deserted him, and Bella and Glen sawthe husband did not stand toward them as the wife did. 

It was Susan who infused into the meeting a fevered and fictitiousfriendliness, chattering over the pauses that threatened to fall uponit, leaving them a reunited company only in name. She presently sweptBella to the camp, continuing her nervous prattle as she showed her thetent and the spring behind it, and told of the log house they were toraise before the rains came. Bella was placated. After all, it was alovely spot, good for the children, and if Glen could do as well on alower bend of the river as they had done here, it looked as if they hadat last found the Promised Land. 

After supper they sat by Daddy John's fire, which shot an eddyingcolumn of sparks into the plumed darkness of the pine. It was like oldtimes only--with a glance outward toward the water and the star-strewnsky--so much more--what was the word? Not quiet; they could neverforget the desert silence. "Homelike, " Susan suggested, and theydecided that was the right word. 

"You feel as if you could stay here and not want to move on, " Bellaopined. 

Glen thought perhaps you felt that way because you knew you'd come tothe end and couldn't move much farther. 

But the others argued him down. They all agreed there was something inthe sun maybe, or the mellow warmth of the air, or the richness ofwooded slope and plain, that made them feel they had found a placewhere they could stay, not for a few days' rest, but forever. Susanhad hit upon the word "homelike, " the spot on earth that seemed to youthe one best fitted for a home. 

The talk swung back to days on the trail and finally brought up onDavid. They rehearsed the tragic story, conned over the details thathad begun to form into narrative sequence as in the time-worn lay of aminstrel. Bella and Glen asked all the old questions that had oncebeen asked by Susan and Daddy John, and heard the same answers, leaningto catch them while the firelight played on the strained attention oftheir faces. With the night pressing close around them, and themelancholy, sea-like song sweeping low from the forest, a chill creptupon them, and their lost comrade became invested with the unreality ofa spirit. Dead in that bleak and God-forgotten land, or captive insome Indian stronghold, he loomed a tragic phantom remote from them andtheir homely interests like a historical figure round which legend hasbegun to accumulate. 

The awed silence that had fallen was broken by Courant rising andwalking away toward the diggings. This brought their somber ponderingto an end. Bella and Glen picked up the sleeping children and went totheir tent, and Susan, peering beyond the light, saw her man sitting ona stone, dark against the broken silver of the stream. She stole downto him and laid her hand on his shoulder. He started as if her touchscared him, then saw who it was and turned away with a gruff murmur. The sound was not encouraging, but the wife, already so completely partof him that his moods were communicated to her through the hiddensubways of instinct, understood that he was in some unconfessed trouble. 

"What's the matter, Low?" she asked, bending to see his face. 

He turned it toward her, met the penetrating inquiry of her look, andrealized his dependence on her, feeling his weakness but not caringjust then that he should be weak. 

"Nothing, " he answered. "Why do they harp so on David?"

"Don't you like them to?" she asked in some surprise. 

He took a splinter from the stone and threw it into the water, a smallsilvery disturbance marking its fall. 

"There's nothing more to be said. It's all useless talk. We can do nomore than we've done. "

"Shall I tell them you don't like the subject, not to speak of itagain?"

He glanced at her with sudden suspicion:

"No, no, of course not. They've a right to say anything they please. But it's a waste of time, there's nothing but guessing now. What's theuse of guessing and wondering all through the winter. Are they goingto keep on that way till the spring?"

"I'll tell them not to, " she said as a simple solution of thedifficulty. "I'll tell them it worries you. "

"Don't, " he said sharply. "Do you hear? Don't. Do you want to actlike a fool and make me angry with you?"

He got up and moved away, leaving her staring blankly at his back. Hehad been rough to her often, but never before spoken with this note ofperemptory, peevish displeasure. She felt an obscure sense of trouble, a premonition of disaster. She went to him and, standing close, puther hand inside his arm. 

"Low, " she pleaded, "what's wrong with you? You were angry that theycame. Now you're angry at what they say. I don't understand. Tell methe reason of it. If there's something that I don't know let me hearit, and I'll try and straighten things out. "

For a tempted moment he longed to tell her, to gain ease by letting hershare his burden. The hand upon his arm was a symbol of her hold uponhim that no action of his could ever loose. If he could admit herwithin the circle of his isolation he would have enough. He would losethe baleful consciousness of forever walking apart, separated from hiskind, a spiritual Ishmaelite. She had strength enough. For the momenthe felt that she was the stronger of the two, able to bear more thanhe, able to fortify him and give him courage for the future. He had aright to claim such a dole of her love, and once the knowledge hers, they two would stand, banished from the rest of the world, knittogether by the bond of their mutual knowledge. 

The temptation clutched him and his breast contracted in the risingstruggle. His pain clamored for relief, his weakness for support. Thelion man, broken and tamed by the first pure passion of his life, wouldhave cast the weight of his sin upon the girl he had thought to bearthrough life like a pampered mistress. 

With the words on his lips he looked at her. She met the look with asmile that she tried to make brave, but that was only a surfacegrimace, her spirit's disturbance plain beneath it. There was pathosin its courage and its failure. He averted his eyes, shook his armfree of her hand, and, moving toward the water, said:

"Go back to the tent and go to bed. "

"What are you going to do?" she called after him, her voice soundingplaintive. Its wistful note gave him strength:

"Walk for a while. I'm not tired. I'll be back in an hour, " and hewalked away, down the edge of the current, past the pits and into thedarkness. 

She watched him, not understanding, vaguely alarmed, then turned andwent back to the tent. 

CHAPTER III

The stretch of the river where the McMurdos had settled was richer thanCourant's location. Had Glen been as mighty a man with the pick, evenin the short season left to him, he might have accumulated a goodlystore. But he was a slack worker. His training as a carpenter madehim useful, finding expression in an improvement on Daddy John'srocker, so they overlooked his inclination to lie off in the sun withhis ragged hat pulled over his eyes. In Courant's camp Bella wasregarded as the best man of the two. To her multiform duties she addedthat of assistant in the diggings, squatting beside her husband in themud, keeping the rocker going, and when Glen was worked out, not abovetaking a hand at the shovel. Her camp showed a comfortable neatness, and the children's nakedness was covered with garments fashioned by thefirelight from old flour sacks. 

There was no crisp coming of autumn. A yellowing of the leafage alongthe river's edge was all that denoted the season's change. Natureseemed loth to lay a desecrating hand on the region's tranquil beauty. They had been told at the Fort that they might look for the first rainsin November. When October was upon them they left the pits and set towork felling trees for two log huts. 

Susan saw her home rising on the knoll, a square of logs, log roofed, with a door of woven saplings over which canvas was nailed. They builta chimney of stones rounded by the water's action, and for a hearthfound a slab of granite which they sunk in the earth before thefireplace. The bunk was a frame of young pines with canvas stretchedacross, and cushioned with spruce boughs and buffalo robes. Shewatched as they nailed up shelves of small, split trunks and sawed thelarger ones into sections for seats. The bottom of the wagon came outand, poised on four log supports, made the table. 

Her housewife's instincts rose jubilant as the shell took form, and shesang to herself as she stitched her flour sacks together for towels. No princess decked her palace with a blither spirit. All the littletreasures that had not been jettisoned in the last stern march acrossthe desert came from their hiding places for the adornment of the firsthome of her married life. The square of mirror stood on the shelf nearthe door where the light could fall on it, and the French gilt clockthat had been her mother's ticked beside it. The men laughed as sheset out on the table the silver mug of her baby days and a two-handledtankard bearing on its side a worn coat of arms, a heritage from theadventurous Poutrincourt, a drop of whose blood had given boldness andcourage to hers. 

It was her home--very different from the home she had dreamed of--butso was her life different from the life she and her father had plannedtogether in the dead days of the trail. She delighted in it, gloatedover it. Long before the day of installation she moved in herprimitive furnishings, disposed the few pans with an eye to theireffect as other brides arrange their silver and crystal, hung herflour-sack towels on the pegs with as careful a hand as though they hadbeen tapestries, and folded her clothes neat and seemly in her father'schest. Then came a night when the air was sharp, and they kindled thefirst fire in the wide chimney mouth. It leaped exultant, revealingthe mud-filled cracks, playing on the pans, and licking the bosses ofthe old tankard. The hearthstone shone red with its light, and theysat drawn back on the seats of pine looking into its roaringdepths--housed, sheltered, cozily content. When Glen and Bella retiredto their tent a new romance seemed to have budded in the girl's heart. It was her bridal night--beneath a roof, beside a hearth, with a doorto close against the world, and shut her away with her lover. 

In these days she had many secret conferrings with Bella. They kepttheir heads together and whispered, and Bella crooned and fussed overher and pushed the men into the background in a masterful, aggressivemanner. Susan knew now what had waked the nest-building instinct. Theknowledge came with a thrilling, frightened joy. She sat apartadjusting herself to the new outlook, sometimes fearful, then upliftedin a rapt, still elation. All the charm she had once held over thehearts of men was gone. Glen told Bella she was getting stupid, evenDaddy John wondered at her dull, self-centered air. She would not havecared what they had said or thought of her. Her interest in men ascreatures to snare and beguile was gone with her lost maidenhood. Allthat she had of charm and beauty she hoarded, stored up and jealouslyguarded, for her husband and her child. 

"It'll be best for you to go down to the town, " Bella had said to her, reveling discreetly in her position as high priestess of thesemysteries, "there'll be doctors in Sacramento, some kind of doctors. "

"I'll stay here, " Susan answered. "You're here and my husband andDaddy John. I'd die if I was sent off among strangers. I can't liveexcept with the people I'm fond of. I'm not afraid. "

And the older woman decided that maybe she was right. She could seeenough to know that this girl of a higher stock and culture, pluckedfrom a home of sheltered ease to be cast down in the rude life of thepioneer, was only a woman like all the rest, having no existenceoutside her own small world. 

So the bright, monotonous days filed by, always sunny, always warm, till it seemed as if they were to go on thus forever, glide into awinter which was still spring. An excursion to Sacramento, a big day'sclean up, were their excitements. They taught little Bob to help atthe rocker, and the women sat by the cabin door sewing, long periods ofsilence broken by moments of desultory talk. Susan had grown muchquieter. She would sit with idle hands watching the shifting lightsand the remoter hills turning from the afternoon's blue to the richpurple of twilight. Bella said she was lazy, and urged industry andthe need of speed in the preparation of the new wardrobe. She laughedindolently and said, time enough later on. She had grown indifferentabout her looks--her hair hanging elfish round her ears, her blouseunfastened at the throat, the new boots Low had brought her fromSacramento unworn in the cabin corner, her feet clothed in the raggedmoccasins he had taught her to make. 

In the evening she sat on a blanket on the cabin floor, blinkingsleepily at the flames. Internally she brimmed with a level content. Life was coming to the flood with her, her being gathering itself forits ultimate expression. All the curiosity and interest she had onceturned out to the multiple forms and claims of the world were nowconcentrated on the two lives between which hers stood. She was theprimitive woman, a mechanism of elemental instincts, moving up anincline of progressive passions. The love of her father had filled heryouth, and that had given way to the love of her mate, which in timewould dim before the love of her child. Outside these phases of agoverning prepossession--filial, conjugal, maternal--she knew nothing, felt nothing, and could see nothing. 

Low, at first, had brooded over her with an almost ferocioustenderness. Had she demanded a removal to the town he would have givenway. He would have acceded to anything she asked, but she askednothing. As the time passed her demands of him, even to his help insmall matters of the household, grew less. A slight, inscrutablechange had come over her: she was less responsive, often held him withan eye whose blankness told of inner imaginings, when he spoke made noanswer, concentrated in her reverie. When he watched her withdrawn inthese dreams, or in a sudden attack of industry, fashioning smallgarments from her hoarded store of best clothes, he felt an alienationin her, and he realized with a start of alarmed divination that thechild would take a part of what had been his, steal from him somethingof that blind devotion in the eternal possession of which he hadthought to find solace. 

It was a shock that roused him to a scared scrutiny of the future. Heput questions to her for the purpose of drawing out her ideas, and heranswers showed that all her thoughts and plans were gathering round thewelfare of her baby. Her desire for its good was to end herunresisting subservience to him. She was thinking already of betterthings. Ambitions were awakened that would carry her out of thesolitudes, where he felt himself at rest, back to the world where shewould struggle to make a place for the child she had never wanted forherself. 

"We'll take him to San Francisco soon"--it was always "him" in herspeculations--"We can't keep him here. "

"Why not?" he asked. "Look at Bella's children. Could anything behealthier and happier?"

"Bella's children are different. Bella's different. She doesn't knowanything better, she doesn't care. To have them well fed and healthyis enough for her. _We're_ not like that. _Our_ child's going to haveeverything. "

"You're content enough here by yourself and you're a different sort toBella. "

"For myself!" she gave a shrug. "I don't care any more than Belladoes. But for my child--my son--I want everything. Want him agentleman like his ancestors, French and American"--she gave his arm apropitiating squeeze for she knew he disliked this kind of talk--"wanthim to be educated like my father, and know everything, and have aprofession. "

"You're looking far ahead. "

"Years and years ahead, " and then with deprecating eyes andirrepressible laughter, "Now don't say I'm foolish, but sometimes Ithink of him getting married and the kind of girl I'll choose forhim--not stupid like me, but one who's good and beautiful and knows allabout literature and geography and science. The finest girl in theworld, and I'll find her for him. "

He didn't laugh, instead he looked sulkily thoughtful:

"And where will we get the money to do all this?"

"We'll make it. We have a good deal now. Daddy John told me the otherday he thought we had nearly ten thousand dollars in dust beside whatmy father left. That will be plenty to begin on, and you can go intobusiness down on the coast. They told Daddy John at the Fort therewould be hundreds and thousands of people coming in next spring. They'll build towns, make Sacramento and San Francisco big places withlots going on. We can settle in whichever seems the most thriving andget back into the kind of life where we belong. "

It was her old song, the swan song of his hopes. He felt a lonelinessmore bitter than he had ever before conceived of. In the jarringtumult of a growing city he saw himself marked in his own eyes, aloofin the street and the market place, a stranger by his own fireside. Inhis fear he swore that he would thwart her, keep her in the wildplaces, crush her maternal ambitions and force her to share his chosenlife, the life of the outcast. He knew that it would mean conflict, the subduing of a woman nerved by a mother's passion. And as he workedin the ditches he thought about it, arranging the process by which hewould gradually break her to his will, beat down her aspirations tillshe was reduced to the abject docility of a squaw. Then he would holdher forever under his hand and eye, broken as a dog to his word, content to wander with him on those lonely paths where he would treadout the measure of his days. 

Toward the end of November the rains came. First in hesitant showers, then in steadier downpourings, finally, as December advanced, intorrential fury. Veils of water descended upon them, swept round theirknoll till it stood marooned amid yellow eddies. The river roseboisterous, swirled into the pits, ate its way across the honey-combedreach of mud and fingered along the bottom of their hillock. They hadnever seen such rain. The pines bowed and wailed under its assault, and the slopes were musical with the voices of liberated streams. Mossand mud had to be pressed into the cabin's cracks, and when they sat bythe fire in the evening their voices fell before the angry lashings onthe roof and the groaning of the tormented forest. 

Daddy John and Courant tried to work but gave it up, and the youngerman, harassed by the secession of the toil that kept his body weariedand gave him sleep, went abroad on the hills, roaming free in thedripping darkness. Bella saw cause for surprise that he should absenthimself willingly from their company. She grumbled about it to Glen, and noted Susan's acquiescence with the amaze of the woman who holdsabsolute sway over her man. One night Courant came back, drenched andstaggering, on his shoulders a small bear that he had shot on theheights above. The fresh bear meat placated Bella, but she shook herhead over the mountain man's morose caprices, and in the bedtime hourmade dismal prophecies as to the outcome of her friend's strangemarriage. 

The bear hunt had evil consequences that she did not foresee. It leftCourant, the iron man, stricken by an ailment marked by shiverings, when he sat crouched over the fire, and fevered burnings when theircombined entreaties could not keep him from the open door and the cool, wet air. When the clouds broke and the landscape emerged from itsmourning, dappled with transparent tints, every twig and leaf washedclean, his malady grew worse and he lay on the bed of spruce boughstossing in a sickness none of them understood. 

They were uneasy, came in and out with disturbed looks and murmuredinquiries. He refused to answer them, but on one splendid morning, blaring life like a trumpet call, he told them he was better and wasgoing back to work. He got down to the river bank, fumbled over hisspade, and then Daddy John had to help him back to the cabin. Withgray face and filmed eyes he lay on the bunk while they stood roundhim, and the children came peeping fearfully through the doorway. Theywere thoroughly frightened, Bella standing by with her chin caught inher hand and her eyes fastened on him, and Susan on the ground besidehim, trying to say heartening phrases with lips that were stiff. Themen did not know what to do. They pushed the children from the doorroughly, as if it were their desire to hurt and abuse them. In someobscure way it seemed to relieve their feelings. 

The rains came back more heavily than ever. For three days the heavensdescended in a downpour that made the river a roaring torrent and isledthe two log houses on their hillocks. The walls of the cabin trickledwith water. The buffets of the wind ripped the canvas covering fromthe door, and Susan and Daddy John had to take a buffalo robe from thebed and nail it over the rent. They kept the place warm with the fire, but the earth floor was damp to their feet, and the tinkle of dropsfalling from the roof into the standing pans came clear through theoutside tumult. 

The night when the storm was at its fiercest the girl begged the oldman to stay with her. Courant had fallen into a state of lethargy fromwhich it was hard to rouse him. Her anxiety gave place to anguish, andDaddy John was ready for the worst when she shook him into wakefulness, her voice at his ear:

"You must go somewhere and get a doctor. I'm afraid. "

He blinked at her without answering, wondering where he could find adoctor and not wanting to speak till he had a hope to offer. She readhis thoughts and cried as she snatched his hat and coat from a peg:

"There must be one somewhere. Go to the Fort, and if there's nonethere go to Sacramento. I'd go with you but I'm afraid to leave him. "

Daddy John went. She stood in the doorway and saw him lead the horsefrom the brush shed and, with his head low against the downpour, vaultinto the saddle. The moaning of the disturbed trees mingled with thetriumphant roar of the river. There was a shouted good-by, and sheheard the clatter of the hoofs for a moment sharp and distinct, thenswallowed in the storm's high clamor. 

In three days he was back with a ship's doctor, an Englishman, whodescribed himself as just arrived from Australia. Daddy John hadsearched the valley, and finally run his quarry to earth at the PorterRanch, one of a motley crew waiting to swarm inland to the rivers. Theman, a ruddy animal with some rudimentary knowledge of his profession, pronounced the ailment "mountain fever. " He looked over the doctor'smedicine chest with an air of wisdom and at Susan with subduedgallantry. 

"Better get the wife down to Sacramento, " he said to Daddy John. "Theman's not going to last and you can't keep her up here. "

"Is he going to die?" said the old man. 

The doctor pursed his lips. 

"He oughtn't to. He's a Hercules. But the strongest of 'em go thisway with the work and exposure. Think they can do anything and don'tlast as well sometimes as the weak ones. "

"Work and exposure oughtn't to hurt him. He's bred upon it. Whyshould he cave in and the others of us keep up?"

"Can't say. But he's all burned out--hollow. There's no rebound. He's half gone now. Doesn't seem to have the spirit that you'd expectin such a body. "

"Would it do any good to get him out of here, down to the valley or thecoast?"

"It might--change of air sometimes knocks out these fevers. You couldtry the coast or Hock Farm. But if you want my opinion I don't thinkthere's much use. "

Then on the first fine day the doctor rode away with some of their dustin his saddlebags, spying on the foaming river for good spots to locatewhen the rains should cease and he, with the rest of the world, couldtry his luck. 

His visit had done no good, had given no heart to the anguished womanor roused no flicker of life in the failing man. Through the weaknessof his wasting faculties Courant realized the approach of death andwelcomed it. In his forest roamings, before his illness struck him, hehad thought of it as the one way out. Then it had come to him vaguelyterrible as a specter in dreams. Now bereft of the sustaining power ofhis strength the burden of the days to come had grown insupportable. To live without telling her, to live beside her and remain a partialstranger, to live divorcing her from all she would desire, had been theonly course he saw, and in it he recognized nothing but misery. Deathwas the solution for both, and he relinquished himself to it with lessgrief at parting from her than relief at the withdrawal from anexistence that would destroy their mutual dream. What remained to himof his mighty forces went to keep his lips shut on the secret she mustnever know. Even as his brain grew clouded, and his senses feeble, heretained the resolution to leave her her belief in him. This would behis legacy. His last gift of love would be the memory of an undimmedhappiness. 

But Susan, unknowing, fought on. The doctor had not got back to thePorter Ranch before she began arranging to move Low to Sacramento andfrom there to the Coast. He would get better care, they would findmore competent doctors, the change of air would strengthen him. Shehad it out with Bella, refusing to listen to the older woman'sobjections, pushing aside all references to her own health. Bella wasdistracted. "For, " as she said afterwards to Glen, "what's the senseof having her go? She can't do anything for him, and it's like as notthe three of them'll die instead of one. "

There was no reasoning with Susan. The old willfulness wasstrengthened to a blind determination. She plodded back through therain to Daddy John and laid the matter before him. As of old he didnot dispute with her, only stipulated that he be permitted to go onahead, make arrangements, and then come back for her. He, too, feltthere was no hope, but unlike the others he felt the best hope for hisMissy was in letting her do all she could for her husband. 

In the evening, sitting by the fire, they talked it over--the stagedown the river, the stop at the Fort, then on to Sacramento, and thelong journey to the seaport settlement of San Francisco. The sick manseemed asleep, and their voices unconsciously rose, suddenly droppingto silence as he stirred and spoke:

"Are you talking of moving me? Don't. I've had twelve years of it. Let me rest now. "

Susan went to him and sat at his feet. 

"But we must get you well, " she said, trying to smile. "They'll wantyou in the pits. You must be back there working with them by thespring. "

He looked at her with a wide, cold gaze, and said:

"The spring. We're all waiting for the spring. Everything's going tohappen then. "

A silence fell. The wife sat with drooped head, unable to speak. Daddy John looked into the fire. To them both the Angel of Deathseemed to have paused outside the door, and in the stillness theywaited for his knock. Only Courant was indifferent, staring at thewall with eyes full of an unfathomable unconcern. 

The next day Daddy John left. He was to find the accommodations, gettogether such comforts as could be had, and return for them. He took asack of dust and the fleetest horse, and calculated to be back insidetwo days. As he clattered away he turned for a last look at her, standing in the sunshine, her hand over her eyes. Man or devil wouldnot stop him, he thought, as he buckled to his task, and his seventyyears sat as light as a boy's twenty, the one passion of his heartbeating life through him. 

Two days later, at sundown, he came back. She heard the ringing ofhoofs along the trail and ran forward to meet him, catching the bridleas the horse, a white lather of sweat, came to a panting halt. She didnot notice the lined exhaustion of the old man's face, had no care foranything but his news. 

"I've got everything fixed, " he cried, and then slid off holding to thesaddle for he was stiff and spent. "The place is ready and I've founda doctor and got him nailed. It'll be all clean and shipshape for you. How's Low?"

An answer was unnecessary. He could see there were no good tidings. 

"Weaker a little, " she said. "But if it's fine we can start to-morrow. "

He thought of the road he had traveled and felt they were in God'shands. Then he stretched a gnarled and tremulous claw and laid it onher shoulder. 

"And there's other news, Missy. Great news. I'm thinking that it mayhelp you. "

There was no news that could help her but news of Low. She was sofixed in her preoccupation that her eye was void of interest, as his, bright and expectant, held it:

"I seen David. "

He was rewarded. Her face flashed into excitement and she grabbed athim with a wild hand:

"David! Where?"

"In Sacramento. I seen him and talked to him. "

"Oh, Daddy John, how wonderful! Was he well?"

"Well and hearty, same as he used to be. Plumped up considerable. "

"How had he got there?"

"A train behind us picked him up, found him lyin' by the spring wherehe'd crawled lookin' for us. "

"Then, it wasn't Indians? Had he got lost?"

"That's what I says to him first-off--'Well, gol darn yer, whathappened to yer?' and before he answers me he says quick, 'How'sSusan?' It ain't no use settin' on bad news that's bound to come outso I give it to him straight that you and Low was married at Humboldt. And he took it very quiet, whitened up a bit, and says no words for aspell, walkin' off a few steps. Then he turns back and says, 'Is shehappy?'"

Memory broke through the shell of absorption and gave voice to aforgotten sense of guilt:

"Oh, poor David! He always thought of me first. "

"I told him you was. That you and Low was almighty sot on each otherand that Low was sick. And he was quiet for another spell, and I couldsee his thoughts was troublesome. So to get his mind off it I askedhim how it all happened. He didn't answer for a bit, standin' thinkin'with his eyes lookin' out same as he used to look at the sunsets beforehe got broke down. And then he tells me it was a fall, that he clum upto the top of the rock and thinks he got a touch o' sun up there. Forfirst thing he knew he was all dizzy and staggerin' round, goin' thisside and that, till he got to the edge where the rock broke off andover he went. He come to himself lying under a ledge alongside somebushes, with a spring tricklin' over him. He guessed he rolled thereand that's why we couldn't find him. He don't know how long it was, orhow long it took him to crawl round to the camp--maybe a day, hethinks, for he was 'bout two thirds dead. But he got there and saw wewas gone. The Indians hadn't come down on the place, and he seen thewriting on the rock and found the cache. The food and the water kep'him alive, and after a bit a big train come along, the finest train heeven seen--eighteen wagons and an old Ashley man for pilot. They wasalmighty good to him; the women nursed him like Christians, and he ridin the wagons and come back slow to his strength. The reason we didn'thear of him before was because they come by a southern route that took'em weeks longer, moving slow for the cattle. They was fine people, hesays, and he's thick with one of the men who's a lawyer, and him andDavid's goin' to the coast to set up a law business there. "

The flicker of outside interest was dying. "Thank Heaven, " she said ona rising breath, then cast a look at the cabin and added quickly:

"I'll go and tell Low. Maybe it'll cheer him up. He was always soworried about David. You tell Bella and then come to the cabin and seehow you think he is. "

There was light in the cabin, a leaping radiance from the logs on thehearth, and a thin, pale twilight from the uncovered doorway. Shepaused there for a moment, making her step light and composing herfeatures into serener lines. The gaunt form under the blanket wasmotionless. The face, sunk away to skin clinging on sharp-set bones, was turned in profile. He might have been sleeping but for the glintof light between the eyelids. She was accustomed to seeing him thus, to sitting beside the inanimate shape, her hand curled round his, hereyes on the face that took no note of her impassioned scrutiny. Wouldher tidings of David rouse him? She left herself no time to wonder, hungrily expectant. 

"Low, " she said, bending over him, "Daddy John's been to Sacramento andhas brought back wonderful news. "

He turned his head with an effort and looked at her. His glance wasvacant as if he had only half heard, as if her words had caught theouter edges of his senses and penetrated no farther. 

"He has seen David. "

Into the dull eyes a slow light dawned, struggling through their apathytill they became the eyes of a live man, hanging on hers, charged witha staring intelligence. He made an attempt to move, lifted a waveringhand and groped for her shoulder. 

"David!" he whispered. 

The news had touched an inner nerve that thrilled to it. She crouchedon the edge of the bunk, her heart beating thickly:

"David, alive and well. "

The fumbling hand gripped on her shoulder. She felt the fingerspressing in stronger than she had dreamed they could be. It pulled herdown toward him, the eyes fixed on hers, searching her face, glaringfearfully from blackened hollows, riveted in a desperate questioning. 

"What happened to him?" came the husky whisper. 

"He fell from the rock; thinks he had a sunstroke up there and thenlost his balance and fell over and rolled under a ledge. And after afew days a train came by and found him. "

"Is that what he said?"

Her answering voice began to tremble, for the animation of his lookgrew wilder and stranger. It was as if all the life in his body wasburning in those hungry eyes. The hand on her shoulder clutched like atalon, the muscles informed with an unnatural force. Was it the endcoming with a last influx of strength and fire? Her tears began tofall upon his face, and she saw it through them, ravaged and fearful, with new life struggling under the ghastliness of dissolution. Therewas an awfulness in this rekindling of the spirit where death had setits stamp that broke her fortitude, and she forgot the legend of hercourage and cried in her agony:

"Oh, Low, don't die, don't die! I can't bear it. Stay with me!"

The hand left her shoulder and fumblingly touched her face, feelingblindly over its tear-washed surface. 

"I'm not going to die, " came the feeble whisper. "I can live now. "

Half an hour later when Daddy John came in he found her sitting on theside of the bunk, a hunched, dim figure against the firelight. Sheheld up a warning hand, and the old man tiptoed to her side and leanedover her to look. Courant was sleeping, his head thrown back, hischest rising in even breaths. Daddy John gazed for a moment, then benttill his cheek was almost against hers. 

"Pick up your heart, Missy, " he whispered. "He looks to me better. "

CHAPTER IV

From the day of the good news Courant rallied. At first they hardlydared to hope. Bella and Daddy John talked about it together andwondered if it were only a pause in the progress of his ailment. ButSusan was confident, nursing her man with a high cheerfulness thatdefied their anxious faces. 

She had none of their fear of believing. She saw their doubts andangrily scouted them. "Low will be all right soon, " she said, inanswer to their gloomily observing looks. In her heart she called themcowards, ready to join hands with death, not rise up and fight till thefinal breath. Her resolute hope seemed to fill the cabin with lightand life. It transformed her haggardness, made her a beaming presence, with eyes bright under tangled locks of hair, and lips that hummedsnatches of song. He was coming back to her like a child staggering toits mother's outheld hands. While they were yet unconvinced "when Lowgets well" became a constant phrase on her tongue. She began to planagain, filled their ears with speculations of the time when she and herhusband would move to the coast. They marveled at her, at thedauntlessness of her spirit, at the desperate courage that made hergrip her happiness and wrench it back from the enemy. 

They marveled more when they saw she had been right--Susan who had beena child so short a time before, knowing more than they, wiser andstronger in the wisdom and strength of her love. 

There was a great day when Low crept out to the door and sat on thebench in the sun with his wife beside him. To the prosperous passerbythey would have seemed a sorry pair--a skeleton man with uncertain feetand powerless hands, a worn woman, ragged and unkempt. To them it wasthe halcyon hour, the highest point of their mutual adventure. Thecabin was their palace, the soaked prospect a pleasance decked fortheir delight. And from this rude and ravaged outlook their mindsreached forward in undefined and unrestricted visioning to all theworld that lay before them, which they would soon advance on andtogether win. 

Nature was with them in their growing gladness. The spring was coming. The river began to fall, and Courant's eyes dwelt longingly on theexpanding line of mud that waited for his pick. April came with aprocession of cloudless days, with the tinkling of streams shrinkingunder the triumphant sun, with the pines exhaling scented breaths, anda first, faint sprouting of new green. The great refreshed landscapeunveiled itself, serenely brooding in a vast, internal energy ofgermination. The earth was coming to life as they were, gatheringitself for the expression of its ultimate purpose. It was rising tothe rite of rebirth and they rose with it, with faces uplifted to itskindling glory and hearts in which joy was touched by awe. 

On a May evening, when the shadows were congregating in the cañon, Susan lay on the bunk with her son in the hollow of her arm. Thechildren came in and peeped fearfully at the little hairless head, pulling down the coverings with careful fingers and eying the newcomerdubiously, not sure that they liked him. Bella looked over theirshoulders radiating proud content. Then she shooed them out and wentabout her work of "redding up, " pacing the earthen floor with the proudtread of victory. Courant was sitting outside on the log bench. Shemoved to the door and smiled down at him over the tin plate she wasscouring. 

"Come in and sit with her while I get the supper, " she said. "Don'ttalk, just sit where she can see you. "

He came and sat beside her, and she drew the blanket down from thetiny, crumpled face. They were silent, wondering at it, looking backover the time when it had cried in their blood, inexorably drawn themtogether, till out of the heat of their passion the spark of its beinghad been struck. Both saw in it their excuse and their pardon. 

She recovered rapidly, all her being revivified and reinforced, comingback glowingly to a mature beauty. Glimpses of the Susan of old beganto reappear. She wanted her looking-glass, and, sitting up in the bunkwith the baby against her side, arranged her hair in the becoming knotand twisted the locks on her temples into artful tendrils. She wouldsew soon, and kept Bella busy digging into the trunks and bringing outwhat was left of her best things. They held weighty conferences overthese, the foot of the bunk littered with wrinkled skirts and jacketsthat had fitted a slimmer and more elegant Susan. A trip to Sacramentowas talked of, in which Daddy John was to shop for a lady and baby, andbuy all manner of strange articles of which he knew nothing. 

"Calico, that's a pretty color, " he exclaimed testily. "How am I toknow what's a pretty color? Now if it was a sack of flour or aspade--but I'll do my best, Missy, " he added meekly, catching her eyein which the familiar imperiousness gleamed through softening laughter. 

Soon the day came when she walked to the door and sat on the bench. The river was settling decorously into its bed, and in the sunlight thedrenched shores shone under a tracery of pools and rillets as though asilvery gauze had been rudely torn back from them, catching and tearinghere and there. The men were starting the spring work. The rocker wasup, and the spades and picks stood propped against the rock upon whichshe and Low had sat on that first evening. He sat there now, watchingthe preparations soon to take part again. His lean hand fingered amongthe picks, found his own, and he walked to the untouched shore andstruck a tentative blow. Then he dropped the pick, laughing, and cameback to her. 

"I'll be at it in a week, " he said, sitting down on the bench. "It'llbe good to be in the pits again and feel my muscles once more. "

"It'll be good to see you, " she answered. 

In a week he was back, in two weeks he was himself again--the mightiestof those mighty men who, sixty years ago, measured their strength alongthe American River. The diggings ran farther upstream and were richerthan the old ones. The day's takings were large, sometimes so largethat the men's elation beat like a fever in their blood. At night theyfigured on their wealth, and Susan listened startled to the sums thatfell so readily from their lips. They were rich, rich enough to go tothe coast and for Courant to start in business there. 

It was he who wanted this. The old shrinking and fear of the city weregone. Now, with a wife and child, he turned his face that way. He waslonging to enter the fight for them, to create and acquire for them, toset them as high as the labor of his hands and work of his brain couldcompass. New ambitions possessed him. As Susan planned for a home andits comforts, he did for his work in the market place in competitionwith those who had once been his silent accusers. 

But there was also a strange humbleness in him. It did not weaken hisconfidence or clog his aspiration, but it took something from the hardarrogance that had recognized in his own will the only law. He hadheard from Daddy John of that interview with David, and he knew thereason of David's lie. He knew, too, that David would stand to thatlie forever. Of the two great passions that the woman had inspired theone she had relinquished was the finer. He had stolen her from David, and David had shown that for love of her he could forego vengeance. Once such an act would have been inexplicable to the mountain man. Nowhe understood, and in his humility he vowed to make the life she hadchosen as perfect as the one that might have been. Through this last, and to him, supremest sacrifice, David ceased to be the puny weaklingand became the hero, the thought of whom would make Courant "go softlyall his days. "

The summer marched upon them, with the men doing giant labor on thebanks and the women under the pine at work beside their children. Thepeace of the valley was broken by the influx of the Forty-niners, whostormed its solitudes, and changed the broken trail to a crowdedhighway echoing with the noises of life. The river yielded up itstreasure to their eager hands, fortunes were made, and friendshipsbegun that were to make the history of the new state. These bronzedand bearded men, these strong-thewed women, were waking from her sleepthe virgin California. 

Sometimes in the crowded hours Susan dropped her work and, with herbaby in her arms, walked along the teeming river trail or back into theshadows of the forest. All about her was the stir of a fecund earth, growth, expansion, promise. From beneath the pines she looked up andsaw the aspiration of their proud up-springing. At her feet the groundwas bright with flower faces completing themselves in the sunshine. Wherever her glance fell there was a busyness of development, aprogression toward fulfillment, a combined, harmonious striving inwhich each separate particle had its purpose and its meaning. Theshell of her old self-engrossment cracked, and the call of a wider lifecame to her. It pierced clear and arresting through the fairy flutingsof "the horns of elfland" that were all she had heretofore heard. 

The desire to live as an experiment in happiness, to extract from lifeall there was for her own enjoying, left her. Slowly she began to seeit as a vast concerted enterprise in which she was called to play herpart. The days when the world was made for her pleasure were over. The days had begun when she saw her obligation, not alone to the manand child who were part of her, but out and beyond these to thediminishing circles of existences that had never touched hers. Herlove that had met so generous a response, full measure, pressed downand running over, must be paid out without the stipulation ofrecompense. Her vision widened, dimly descried horizons limitless asthe prairies, saw faintly how this unasked giving would transform agray and narrow world as the desert's sunsets had done. 

So gradually the struggling soul came into being and possessed thefragile tissue that had once been a girl and was now a woman. 

They left the river on a morning in September, the sacks of dust makingthe trunk heavy. The old wagon was ready, the mess chest strapped tothe back, Julia in her place. Bella and the children were to follow assoon as the rains began, so the parting was not sad. The valleysteeped in crystal shadow, the hills dark against the flush of dawn, held Susan's glance for a lingering minute as she thought of the daysin the tent under the pine. She looked at her husband and met his eyesin which she saw the same memory. Then the child, rosy with life, leaped in her arms, bending to snatch with dimpled hands at itsplaymates, chuckling baby sounds as they pressed close to give himtheir kisses. 

Daddy John, mounting to his seat, cried:

"There's the sun coming up to wish us God-speed. "

She turned and saw it rising huge and red over the hill's shoulder, andheld up her son to see. The great ball caught his eyes and he staredin tranced delight. Then he leaped against the restraint of her arm, kicking on her breast with his heels, stretching a grasping hand towardthe crimson ball, a bright and shining toy to play with. 

Its light fell red on the three faces--the child's waiting for life tomold its unformed softness, the woman's stamped with the gravity ofdeep experience, the man's stern with concentrated purpose. Theywatched in silence till the baby gave a cry, a thin, sweet sound ofwondering joy that called them back to it. Again they looked at oneanother, but this time their eyes held no memories. The thoughts ofboth reached forward to the coming years, and they saw themselvesshaping from this offspring of their lawless passion what should be aman, a molder of the new Empire, a builder of the Promised Land. 

FINIS