Читать бесплатно онлайн книгу  The Fortune of the Landrays

автор Vaughn Kester

THE FORTUNE OF THE LANDRAYS

By Vaughn Kester

Illustrated by The Kinneys

New York: McClure Phillips and Company

1905

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

|CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER ONE

THE boy on the box was surfeited with travel. Glancing back over the swaying top of the coach, he had seen miles upon miles of hot dusty road, between banked-up masses of forests or cultivated fields, dwindle to a narrow thread of yellow. Day after day there had been the same tiresome repetition of noisy towns and sleepy cross-road villages, each one very like the other and all having a widely different appearance from that which he conceived Benson would present.

The wonderful life of the road, varied and picturesque, no longer claimed his attention. The black dot a mile distant was unnoticed. It was a long line of freight wagons north-bound to some lake port, laden with pork, flour and hides. Presently, these wagons would be passed by a party of mounted traders, travelling south to Baltimore for supplies, with their sacks of Spanish dollars loaded upon pack horses. Next they would journey for a little space with a cattle dealer and his men, who were taking a drove of Marino sheep across the state to Indiana. But the boy’s curiosity had been more than satisfied; he had only to close his eyes to see again the vivid panorama of the road in the blaze of that hot June sun.

They had changed drivers so many times he had lost all count of them; and with the changing drivers a wearisome succession of passengers had come and gone; but to-day he and his father rode alone upon the box. That morning, the latter had told him they would reach Benson by noon, yet strangely enough his interest flagged; the miles seemed endless—interminable. He was sore and stiff; his little legs ached from their cramped position, and at last utterly weary he fell into a troubled sleep, his head resting on his father’s arm, and his small hands, moist and warm, clasped idly in his lap.

His father, grim, motionless, and predisposed to silence, gave brief replies to such questions as Mr. Bartlett, the driver, saw fit to ask;—for Mr. Bartlett was frankly curious. As he said himself, he always liked to know who his passengers were, where they came from, where they were going, and if possible their business.

Now as they began the long descent of Landray’s Hill, south of Benson, Mr. Bartlett pushed forward his brake handle and said, “That’s Benson ahead of us, off yonder where you see the church spires; would you ‘a knowed it, do you think?”

Instantly the man at his side who had been sitting low in his seat, took a more erect position, while a sudden light kindled in his dull eyes.

“Known it?” after a moment’s survey of the scene before him. “Well, I guess not.” There was palpable regret in his tone, just touched by some hidden emotion; a passing shade of feeling not anticipated, that moved him.

“I allowed you wouldn’t. Twenty years makes a heap of difference, don’t it? Gives you a turn?” interestedly.

“Well, sort of,” with gentle sadness.

“I know how you feel. I been that way myself,” said the driver. Mr. Bartlett was short and stocky, with ruddy cheeks and great red hands. As one who mingled muck with the world, he prided himself on his social adaptability.

The stranger bestowed upon him a glance of frank displeasure. He felt vaguely that the other’s sentiment was distasteful to him. It smacked of such fat complacency. At last he said, “I’d about made up my mind that I wa’n’. to see it again.” here a violent fit of coughing interrupted him. When it subsided, Mr. Bartlett remarked sympathetically:

“You ought to take something for that cough of your’s. I would if it was mine.”

The stranger, still choking, shook his head.

“Where does it take you?”

“Here,” resting a bony hand on his sunken chest.

“Lungs?”

The stranger’s jaws grew rigid. He favoured the driver with a sinister frown.

There was silence between them for a little space, which Mr. Bartlett devoted to a thoughtful study of his companion. Under this close scrutiny the stranger moved restlessly. A sense of the other’s physical health oppressed him; it seemed to take from his own slender stock of vitality.

“Hope I ain’t crowding you,” said Mr. Bartlett. “Here, I’ll make more room for you. Well sir, Benson’s about the healthiest place I know of. When a man gets ready to die there, he has to move away to do it.”

“Who the hell’s talking about dying?” demanded the stranger savagely. “There are plenty of graveyards where I came from.”

“There are plenty of graveyards everywhere; yes sir, you’d have to do a heap of travelling to get shut of them.” admitted Mr. Bartlett impartially.

“And all the thundering fools ain’t buried yet,” said the stranger shortly.

Mr. Bartlett meditated on this apparently irrelevant remark in silence. He had found the stranger taciturn and sullen, or given to flashes of grim humour.

“Where’s Landray’s mill?” the latter now demanded, the glint of anger slowly fading from his eyes.

“See that clump of willows down yonder, to the right of the road? It’s just back of them.”

“Who’s running it?”

“Old General Landray’s sons, Bush and Steve,” he spoke of them with easy familiarity.

“I see you know them,” said the stranger.

“It’d be funny if I didn’t,—everybody knows ‘em.”

“I reckon so,” said the stranger briefly.

“I allow you knowed the general?” remarked Mr. Bartlett.

“I recollect him well enough.”

“He was right smart of a man in his day, and one of the old original first settlers. I knowed him well myself,” observed Mr. Bartlett.

“Powerful easy man to get acquainted with; awful familiar, wa’n’. he?” and the stranger grinned evilly.

“Well, I knowed him when I seen him,” said Mr. Bartlett, with some reserve; and he seemed willing to abandon the subject. “What you laughing at?” he added quickly, for the stranger was chuckling softly to himself.

“Oh, nothing much. Did you know him after he was took with the gout? You’re sort of fat; say now, did he ever cuss you for getting in his way? It’s likely that’s what brought you to his notice,” and he exploded in a burst of harsh laughter. “Oh, yes, I reckon you knowed him well—when you seen him.”

This singular assault on his innocent pretensions had a marked and chilling effect on the driver. He edged away from the stranger, and there was a long pause; but silence was not to be where Mr. Bartlett was concerned. He now asked, pointing to the sleeping child, “Ain’t you going to wake him up? He’ll feel as if he’d missed something.”

“I guess he’ll have a chance to see all there is to see when we get there. He’s clean tired out. You say the Landray boys have the mill? The old general used to own a distillery across the race from it; what became of that?”

“It’s there yet; Levi Tucker has it now. He’s got the tavern, too, and I don’t suppose he’d care to part with either. He’s his own best customer; Colonel Sharp says he’s producer and consumer both; I allow you didn’t know the colonel?”

Again the stranger shook his head, and the driver’s placid voice just pitched to carry above the rattle of wheels and the beat of hoofs, droned on, a colourless monotone of sound.

“I didn’t suppose you did, he’s since your time, I guess; he’s editor of the Pioneer at Benson, and a powerful public speaker; I reckon near about as good as old Webster himself, only he ain’t got the name. I don’t remember ever seeing him but what he had his left hand tucked in at the top of his wes’-coat; yes, I reckon you might say he was a natural born speaker; when he gets stumped for a word he just digs it up from one of them dead languages, and everything he says is as full of meat as an egg; it makes you puzzle and study, and think, and even then you don’t really get what he’s driving at more than half the time. He’s a mighty strong tobacco chewer, too, and spits clean as a fox—why clean as a fox I don’t know,” he added, but he was evidently much pleased with this picturesque description of the colonel’s favourite vice.

The stranger’s glance had wandered down into the cool depths of the valley. It was twenty years since his eyes had rested on its peace and calm; its beauty of sun and shade and summer-time; much of his courage and more of his hope had gone in those years; he was coming back, wasted and worn, to the spot he had never ceased to speak of and to think of as home. He had looked forward to this return for health, but he knew now that the magic he had expected in his misery and home-sickness was not there; but he was inarticulate in his suffering, and perhaps mercifully enough did not know its depths, so even his own rude pity for himself was after all but the burlesque of the tragedy he had lived. Yet there still remained that greater purpose which was to make the road smooth for the child at his side where it had been filled with difficulties for him; there should be no more hardships, no more of those vast solitudes that sapped the life that filtered into them, that crazed or brutalized; these he had know; but these the boy should never know, for him there should be ease and riches,—splendid golden riches; his ignorance could scarce conceive their limit, the possibilities were so vast. Now he leaned far forward in his seat, hunger for the sight of some familiar object pinched his face with sudden longing.

“It’s mighty pretty!” he said at last with a deep breath.

“Ain’t it?” agreed Mr. Bartlett indulgently.

But the log cabins he had known were gone, and frame houses painted an unvarying white with vivid green blinds closed to the sun had taken their place. To the east and to the west of the town were waving fields of grain; with here and there an island of dense shade where a strip of woodland had been spared by the axe of the pioneer; on some of the more rugged hillsides from which the timber had been but recently cleared the blackened stumps were still standing. A blur of sound rose from the valley, it was like the droning of bees.

“That’s the old Bendy furnace I hear, ain’t it?”

“That’s what it is,” said Mr. Bartlett.

The stranger sank back with a gesture of weariness, “It’s a hell of a ways to come,” he said sourly. “It will be a lot easier when they get the railroads through here; that will knock you, pardner,” he added as a pleasant afterthought.

“I don’t know about that;” said Mr. Bartlett quickly. “I guess it’s going to be a right smart while before we hit on anything to beat hosses; the railroads is all right as far as they go, but the stages is here to stay. I reckon folks will always be in a hurry for the mail.”

“Well, I’d hate to think anything would ever interfere with you,” said the stranger with an ugly grin.

“How far did you say you’d come?” inquired Mr. Bartlett casually.

“I allow I didn’t say,” said the other briefly.

“I reckon you ain’t come any further than Pittsburg,” urged Mr. Bartlett tentatively.

“You reckon not?” and the stranger smiled.

“Philadelphia?” queried the driver.

“No.”

“New York, maybe?” cautiously.

“I been there, but that ain’t a patch on the distance I’ve come.”

“Sailoring, maybe?”

“Not any. I seen all the salt water I want to.”

“Sick?” inquired Mr. Bartlett deeply interested.

“I like to throw up my toes.”

“You don’t say!”

Here the boy awoke with a start. “Are we there yet, Pop?” he asked, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

The man’s lips parted in a smile. “That’s Benson ahead of us, son; we’re almost there. Them’s the church spires; and that round, dome-like thing’s the court-house that you’ve heard me tell about.” There was not much of the town to see beyond the roofs of a few buildings which here and there showed among the trees, but the child was deeply impressed.

“Is that the place where you was a little boy, Pop?” he questioned in an awestruck tone. He was quite overcome by the sight of it; he stretched his tired limbs with a sense of freedom and physical relief.

It’s a pretty gay looking town, ain’t it? remarked Mr. Bartlett, with ponderous playfulness.

The child nestled closer to his father’s side. “Is that the crick off yonder?” he asked.

“That’s what it is, son, but the banks are pretty well grown up with willows since my time.”

“Where’s the sheep-wash, Pop, where you swum the lambs?” He was a grave little boy, and he had come a great way to see all these wonders.

His father turned a trifle shame-facedly to Mr. Bartlett:

“I been trying to hearten him up a bit on the trip,” he explained; then he added, “You can’t see the sheep-wash from here, son; it’s off to the other side of the town.”

“Oh! Where’s the sugar bush, where you and Grandpap made the long sweetening, and where you killed the timber-wolf, have we passed that?”

The man glanced back over his shoulder, “I reckon from the look of things that’s been cleaned up,” he said regretfully. “I laid off to show it to you as we come along.”

“I wish she was here, don’t you, Pop?” said the boy in a whisper, and he tucked his small hand into that of his father. The latter made no answer to this.

“Do you plan to locate in Benson?” asked Mr. Bartlett.

“Eh?” said the stranger, roused from the revery into which the child’s words had thrown him. “No, I guess not; I ain’t come back to stop. I reckon I need more elbow room than you got left in this part of the country.”

The boy nudged his father, and then placing a small hand with elaborate caution over his own lips as if to signify the need of reticence, smiled with deep cunning. The stranger lapsed into a moody silence and withdrew his eyes from the reach of valley into which they were descending, while Mr. Bartlett returned his undivided attention to the four horses he was driving. At intervals the child raised his eyes to his father’s face as if to ask some question, but respecting his silence turned away again with the question unasked.

Having by his time reached the foot of Landray’s Hill, Mr. Bartlett deftly released the brake, shook out his lines, and the stage made its rapid entry into Benson.

CHAPTER TWO

THE old stage road became the Main Street at Benson. Daily over its surface, beneath the thick shade of maples and oaks, creaked and rumbled the huge stages Northward and Southward bound. The drivers on these stages, a tanned and whiskered fraternity, were wont to get the most out of the short half mile that went to make up the distance between the covered bridge south of town and Levi Tucker’s red brick tavern on the square. Much pure display was achieved in the way of galloping horses and cracking whips, as well as some extra speed.

The arrival of each stage was the cause of a lively, if temporary excitement. No merchant was so busy, but he found time to hurry to his door to note its passing. Dogs barked shrilly; hens, vocal with fright, driving their panic-stricken broods before them, would scurry across the cool bricks of the checkered, grass-grown pavement, to seek safety under some lilac hedge. Even the idlers on the courthouse steps, rose wearily, as men swayed by a strong but repellant sense of duty, and slouched silently across the square. They were chary of words; for much sitting on those steps had given them the wasted speech of men who are talked out.

Previous to this sudden awakening, Levi Tucker would anticipate by his frequent appearance before his tavern, the coming of the stage. He would stand looking off down the road, nervously snapping the lid of his massive silver watch. A wait of five minutes sent him to the barn to Jim, the stableman, for a theory that would explain this extraordinary occurrence. A delay of ten minutes sent him to the bar for a drink. When, finally he heard the distant rumble of wheels, he would return his watch to the fob pocket of his drab trousers, and call to Jim: “Here she comes!” as the stage, reeling awkwardly from side to side, thundered through the covered bridge and out into the dusty sunlight.

The teamsters, loading their freight wagons at the warehouses along the river front, followed these arrivals with the easy flow of impartial criticism. As men possessing profoundly subtle views on horse flesh, no little detail escaped them. They, too, were a part of the life of that great artery of pioneer existence; and the road and its happenings, were to each one of them, as something intimate and personal. A change of horses or a change of drivers, were matters that could not be lightly banished.

The stage road followed in its general direction, over hills and through valleys and across long reaches of level land, what had been an Indian trail at the waning of the eighteenth century, when Andrew Ballard, of Pennsylvania, the first ripple in a vast wave of emigration, pushing manfully out into the wilderness, built his cabin among the hazel-bushes and scrub-oak south of Benson, where he lived for perhaps a year, the only white man in all that region.

The next settler, a solitary Jersey man, penetrated some five miles further into the wilderness to the west of Benson, and set up a forge, from which he supplied the Indians with knives and hatchets.

Another year elapsed, and Colonel Stephen Landray of Oxen Hill, Westmoreland County, Virginia, surveyor and soldier, with horses, wagons and a few slaves, following the Indian trail, found his way into the country. He wintered with the Jersey axe-maker, after sending his wagons back to Baltimore, loaded with ginseng for the Chinese trade.

The fourth settler was a lone Yankee, Jacob Benson, who came down the trail from the lakes. With chain and compass he layout the town, with its large public green, its Main Street, its North Street, and South Street, and its Front and Water Streets, together with one hundred and sixty lots in Section number five, Township eight, Range five, United States Military District. Then, with his town plot in his pocket, he made his way on foot to the nearest land office, eighty-five miles distant, and before a Justice of the Peace, acknowledged this important instrument; whereupon Andrew Ballard, feeling that he had been crowded out of the country, got together his half-breed family and moved over into Indiana, where there was nothing but echoes to answer the crack of his rifle.

The country round about Benson was soon parcelled out in what were known as tomahawk rights. The pioneer cut his name with hatchet or hunting knife on some convenient tree, and thus marked his claim. Jacob Benson built his cabin of hewn logs on the south side of the public square and opened a store, selling guns, ammunition, cheap trinkets, and poor whisky to passing whites and Indians, at a fabulous profit to himself.

But the stage road had been a great highway long before Jacob Benson’s day—a highway when the eighteenth century was younger, and Jacob Benson not at all. From time immemorial the Indians had used it in their passings to and fro between the Great Lakes on the north, and the Ohio River on the south. They were using it when the first white man set his foot upon the Western World. They were following its windings beneath the broad arches of the forest by summer and winter; when the sunlight lay in golden patches on the mossy mould of its surface; when snow and frost clung thick to bough and bush, and the sunlight glistened white and blinding among its pale shadows; and even further back than this, the trail had been there, a means of human intercourse between the North and the South. Strange earth-works and mounds rudely outlined its course, showing plainly that it had been known to the Indians predecessors. But the Mound Builder had vanished, and tall trees thrived at amplest girth on the mounds of his building. He had gone his way upon the trail, had stepped from it as silently as the sunlight faded over its length at evening to become as intangible as a myth; and the Indian had gone his way upon it too, leaving not even the print of his moccasin among the dead leaves rotting beneath the old trees.

Following the Mound Builders and the Indians, came the superior race to occupy the soil. Their first need was a road, so they felled a few trees at the trail-side, or blew out a few stumps with gunpowder, and the state established it as a post route between the lake ports and river points. Cabins sprang up along it and were occupied by the pioneers who made their living partly from their land; partly by hunting or in trading with the Indians.

As emigration increased, inns and taverns dotted the road; for it was destined to know the passing of those, who, impelled by the earth hunger, were pushing west, always west; on foot, on horseback, by wagon and by stage, to found states in the wilderness beyond. The blacksmith, gun-maker, wheelwright, cooper, and cobbler, plied their trades beside it; there was the busy hum of their ceaseless primitive industry.

It soon became a place of wonderful fascination and romance; with its own abundant life, its traders, teamsters, and drovers; its home-seekers, hunters, Indian fighters, and adventurers of every conceivable description. Up it went the first rumour of war in 1812, and back down it swept the first news of Hull’s defeat. It saw the passing of General Winchester’s troops north to the Lake in the dead of winter; many of them barefoot and all in tattered buckskin or ragged homespun, with their long, brown rifles held in their frosted fingers; and later it echoed to the news of Harrison’s victory on the Thames, when bonfires blazed at every cross-road station, and live trees were split with gunpowder.

And now the road had seen half a century of use. It was heavy with dust in summer from the almost continual trampling of the herds of horses and cattle, or droves of white, bleating sheep; and axle-deep with mud in spring and fall between frost and thaw; or rutted deep in winter where the wheels of the lumbering coaches and slow-moving freight wagons had cut.

In Jacob Benson’s day, the fine old taste for classic learning still survived; men having the time as well as the inclination for such things; and many a land owner in plotting his town site, gave it some name culled from Greek or Roman history. The Athens, Romes, Homers, and Spartas, dotted the map; but old Jacob Benson, with the egotism of rude and satisfied ignorance, when he lay out his town, and dug or burnt a few stumps from the centre of what he hoped would some day be a street, named it after himself; and so it has stood to this very day, growing steadily and with no apparent haste, but growing always.

In the course of time the cabins, built by the early settlers, of unbarked logs with outside chimneys of mud and sticks, clapboard roofs, and puncheon floors, were replaced by more pretentious dwellings of hewn logs, with shingled roof, having sawed lumber for doors, window sash, and floors. These survived as stables, loom-houses, and shops of various sorts; for they in their turn gave way to substantial and often spacious homes of frame and brick. Indeed, as early as 1815, the town boasted a brick court-house which men came from afar to see. In their reckless pride the townspeople declared that it was one of the finest public buildings in the state.

They had been wonderfully patient in industry, these pioneers. They had built schools, churches, roads and mills; they had driven out the Indians; and had waged incessant conflict against the wild life of their woods. They had fought the forest back from their doors foot by foot, and from clearing to clearing; until their rail and stump fences were everywhere in the landscape, climbing every hillside or reaching out across every stretch of fertile bottom land. Nor had their activities stopped here. They had played their part in the war of 1812, a part men still spoke of with pride; Colonel Landray recruiting a band of riflemen from among the sparse population. They had sent a company of fifty men to aid Texas in her struggle for independence, they had furnished and equipped two companies of volunteers for the war with Mexico, and all this while, year by year, beckoning to them in the West was the wilderness, with its compelling mystery that drew them on to its subduing; that made them leave their homes when they were built, their fields when they were cleared.

CHAPTER THREE

MR. Bartlett drew rein before the tavern and greeted Mr. Tucker with a bluff “Good-morning.”

He looked as a man may look who has accomplished some great thing, for so he had, he had brought the news of the world to Benson’s door; and what matter if that news had been stale for a week or better; if it chanced to be politics from Washington, or fashions from New York, these slight delays did not disturb Benson in the least, for the news had not always come so quickly.

Colonel Sharp, the editor of the American Pioneer, with his inevitable volume of the “Odes of Horace,” protruding from his coat pocket; and Captain Gibbs, editor of The True Whig, with his inevitable cigar protruding from his lips, hurried across the square from their respective offices, each intent upon receiving his bundle of Eastern papers.

Mr. Bendy, the postmaster, appeared, accompanied by a half-grown boy carrying a mail sack; and Jim, the stableman, led out the four fresh horses that were to take the place of Mr. Bartlett’s jaded teams.

The child gathered up the small bundle which contained his own and his father’s few belongings, and climbed quickly down from the box.

Before he left his seat, the stranger turned to Mr. Bartlett and tapping him on the chest with a long forefinger, said: “You’re mighty curious, you are, but just you remember what I said about the graveyards and the fools; or maybe you’d better ask some friend’s opinion—he’ll see the point.”

He seemed to fling the words at him with an insolence that was indifferent of consequences, and before the astonished driver could make any reply, stepped to the wheel and from thence to the ground, and the coach an instant later rolled up Main Street.

The stranger stood like a man in a dream in the centre of the dusty road. He was a tall gaunt man of thirty-eight or forty, and, judging from the cheap decency of his attire, he might have been a mechanic or superior sort of a labourer in his best, for his clothes fit him illy, and he wore them as one accustomed to some other dress. He glanced across the hot square and on beyond it to the vista of shaded streets, where lay the spell of the summer’s heat and lethargy. His appearance was that of one seeking out some familiar object, and seeking in vain.

After a moment’s hesitation Mr. Tucker stepped to his side and touched him on the arm. The stranger turned on him with a frown of displeasure.

“Well?” he said shortly.

Mr. Tucker regarded him with amiable interest.

“Are you expecting to meet any one?” he inquired, smiling genially.

The stranger shook his head sadly. “No, I guess not,” he said slowly. “You don’t happen to know a man by the name of Silas Rogers about here, do you? He used to run a blacksmith shop.”

“Why! Man, he’s been dead near about eight years. It was all of eight years ago that we buried Silas, wa’n’. it, boys?” and he turned to the group of idlers before the inn.

“Going on nine,” corrected one of these laconically.

“He was well liked,” said Mr. Tucker.

The stranger made an impatient gesture.

“Maybe you know Tom Rogers?” he said.

“He’s been dead about ten years,” answered the innkeeper promptly. “It was all of ten years ago that we buried Tom, wa’n’. it boys?” and again he turned to the idlers before the inn.

The stranger interrupted him quickly and resentfully.

“Seems to me you take a right smart interest in burying people; I reckon you have never thought how us that are left will feel when we come to plant you.”

At this, Mr. Tucker’s mouth opened in silent wonder. He was a man of few ideas, and these did not yield themselves readily to words; but it occurred to him afterward that the stranger’s chance of being present on the occasion alluded to, was highly problematical.

The latter stood for a moment scowling at the innkeeper, then he drew his tall form erect and taking his son’s hand, turned abruptly on his heel and strode firmly off across the Square.

“Touchy, ain’t he?” said Mr. Tucker, still amiably smiling.

Conscious that the eyes of the idlers were upon him, the stranger gained the centre of the Square before his pace slackened and his shoulders drooped again.

“It’s everywhere!” he muttered to himself.

The boy looked up into his face with a glance of mute inquiry. He could not understand what the trouble was, but to him their homecoming was already a tragic failure. At last he said.

“Ain’t this Benson, Pop?”

“Yes, it’s Benson, sure enough, son.”

He glanced down at the child, and saw that his eyes were filled with tears. A spasm of pain crossed his own face.

“We’ll find them presently, son; and they’ll be mighty glad to see us when we tell them why we have come back; and we mustn’t forget to ask about that pony I’ve laid off to get you when our ship comes in.”

But the child had ceased to care. He scarcely raised his eyes as they went down the street.

The maples cast cool shadows about them. It was very still, for the town seemed sleeping in the sultry warmth of that June day. Once, twice, the stranger paused, and glanced about him as if to make sure of his surroundings, and then went on unhesitatingly, leading the child by the hand.

“There was a many of us once, son,” he was moved to say in a voice of reminiscent melancholy. “Your grandpap built a cabin down on the crick bank.”

They had already left the centre of the town, and were approaching a region of grass-grown side streets.

“There, yonder, you can see it—that old log house through the trees!”

He had quickened his pace, and presently they came to a yard, neglected and overgrown with jimson-weed and pokeberry, and with here and there a tall hollyhock nodding above the rank vegetation. The ground fell way abruptly from the street level, and at the foot of a steep incline flowed the Little Wolf River. The house was an utter ruin. The windows were gone, and the huge stone chimney, built of flat rocks gathered from the bed of the Little Wolf, leaned dangerously. Like the windows the doors were gone too; the heavy hand-rived shingles were moss-grown; while daylight showed through the wide gaping chinks between the logs from which the clay had long since fallen. Nailed to the trunk of a great elm that stood near the street, was a sign with “For Sale,” painted on it in a palpably unprofessional hand.

The stranger surveyed the desolation with something very like dismay.

“I reckon twenty years is a right smart of a spell after all, son. It seemed like yesterday to me—coming back.”

But they were not unobserved. An old man had been watching them, and now he crossed the street, moving slowly with the aid of a heavy cane. He was close upon them before either became aware of his presence; then they turned, hearing his shuffling step upon the path, and saw that he was regarding them with eager curiosity out of a pair of beady black eyes.

“Maybe you are thinking of buying?” he said shrilly.

“No, I reckon not,” said the stranger; then his face changed with a look of quick recognition. “Why, you’re old Pap Randall!” he cried. He seemed about to extend his hand, but the other gave him a blank stare; then he screwed his weazened wrinkled old face into a grin.

“I reckon I been old Pap Randall a heap longer than your memory lasts,” he said, chuckling. “Your father might a called me that, if he’d knowed me. The Rogers lived there onct, a do-less tribe outen the mountings of Virginia. Old Tom Rogers and me was soldiers in Colonel Landray’s company in the second war agin the British; afore that, I’d fit under General Washington in the fust war—”

“What’s come of the family?” asked the stranger.

“Gone—scattered like a bevy of pa’tridges as soon as they could fly. The oldest boy’s dead; the second’s gone back to Virginia; two of the girls married and moved west to Illinoy; and the youngest boy’s in Texas or somewheres outen that ways. Old Tom was one of the fust settlers in Benson. He might a owned four hundred acres of land right about here if he’d a mind to, but he never held title to more’n this here scrap of an allotment, and a bit of an out lot up the crick, where Appleseed Johnny onct had one of his orchards; I reckon you’ve heard tell of him? He thought he had a call to kiver this here country with fruit trees; they say there ain’t a county in the state but what’s got its orchards that Appleseed Johnny planted.”

The stranger laughed shortly.

“I’ve heard you tell all this before, Pap.” he said, “and about when the first stage come through here from across the mountains.”

The old man caught eagerly at his last words. “Yes, and I rid on it too! I rid on the fust stage coach from across the mountings, and I’m a going to live to ride on the fust railroad. They’re building the ‘butments for the new bridge down by the old kivered bridge now.” His beady eyes were wonderfully brilliant. “I reckon you’re a stranger here?”

“Well, no, I’m old Tom Rogers’s son.”

And by nightfall, all Benson knew that Truman Rogers, who had gone to Texas, a raw stripling some twenty years before, had returned home from California.

CHAPTER FOUR

AS night came on the weather changed abruptly, and a cold drizzle set in.

At his red-brick tavern, Levi Tucker, in a splint-bottom chair, dozed in front of his bar. The rain now falling in torrents and driven by a strong wind, splashed loudly against the closely-shuttered windows. The sperm oil in the dingy reeking lamps, burnt noisily, protestingly. There was a steady drip from the eave troughs; and the gutters were roaring rivers of muddy water.

The innkeeper sat with his feet thrust far out, and his fat freckled hands peacefully clasped before him. The rain had served to keep people in doors, and there was a strong counter attraction at the church, just around the corner, where the apostle of a new and preposterous propaganda, known as the Temperance Movement, was lecturing.

The innkeeper was frankly indignant. What made the whole affair seem especially aggravating and personal, was the fact that his wife was a communicant of that church, Mr. Tucker’s religion as well as his distillery, was in his wife’s name, and her devotion cost him annually the equivalent of many gallons of his famous “Lone Stager Rye,” a whisky which sophisticated travellers had pronounced to be unrivalled west of the Alleghanies.

During the interchange of certain light domestic confidences that had preceded Mrs. Tucker’s departure for the lecture, her husband had remarked that he did not believe in mixing liquor and religion; whereupon Mrs. Tucker, who was young and pretty and high-spirited had retorted that he could never be accused of doing that, since he never ventured inside a church door; this had led to more words; and Mr. Tucker with some heat had denounced the lecturer as a meddlesome busybody; he had further informed his wife that he served drinks every hour of the day, and every day of his life, to better men.

“Meaning yourself, I suppose.” said Mrs. Tucker, tartly, but with heightened colour.

Mr. Tucker had ignored this, and had reminded her that even ministers of the Gospel had been known to seek his bar, and had there slacked their clerical thirst, without fear and without shame, “As man to man,” he added feelingly.

“One minister,” corrected Mrs. Tucker, “and he had a very red nose.”

This seemed such an unworthy objection to Mr. Tucker that he had allowed the matter to drop. But the lecture and the rain combined had proven disastrous to business. Colonel Sharp had dropped in for his usual nightcap, a carefully-measured three fingers; he had favoured Mr. Tucker with a Latin quotation, and Mr. Tucker had favoured him with the opinion that they were likely to have a spell of weather. Next, a belated farmer had stopped to have a jug filled with apple brandy; he had ventured a few occult observations on the condition of the crops, and had informed Mr. Tucker that it was the first rainy tenth of June in two years, and that up to four o’clock in the afternoon it had been the hottest tenth of June in five years; then he had gathered his jug of brandy up under his arm, and had departed into the night; and the innkeeper, rotund and grey, with his two sparse wisps of hair carefully plastered back of his ears, and looking not unlike an aged and degenerate cupid, a cupid, who through some secret grief had taken to drink, dozed in solitude before his bar.

Suddenly, he was aroused by hearing a step on the brick pavement outside the door. A man seemed to pause there irresolutely; then a hand was placed upon the latch, the door swung slowly open, and Truman Rogers, with his son at his side, stood revealed upon the threshold.

“Come in, man, come in,” cried Mr. Tucker.

Rogers pulled the door to after him, and moved into the room; his clothes were wet and steaming, the wide brim of his hat drooped, hiding his face, and in the half light of the dingy lamps he looked more like a gaunt shadow than a living man.

The boy at his side kept fast hold of his hand; he, too, was shivering under the drag of his clammy garments, but he seemed to exercise a certain protecting care toward his father, for his glance was full of childish tenderness, not unmixed with concern.

“You’d better have a dish of liquor right now,” said Mr. Tucker; he added hospitably: “It’s on the house, man; I knew your father well.”

The innkeeper hurried behind his bar, and the Californian poured himself a full glass from the bottle he pushed toward him. “Here’s how,” he said, and he drained it at a single swallow.

Mr. Tucker emptied a dash of spirits into a second glass and added a generous portion of water; this he handed to the child, saying, “Here, sonny, this will warm you up inside.”

The child drank the mixture with a wry face. Mr. Tucker laughed.

“Takes right hold, don’t it? Well, it’s a good friend, but a poor master,” and he thoughtfully filled a third glass for himself. “Here’s to you, and me, and all of us,” he said, smiling genially.

Rogers seated himself in the chair the innkeeper had vacated; the child stole quietly to his side.

“I reckon you didn’t find many people you knew here about,” observed Mr. Tucker, as he returned his glass to the bar.

“Not one.” His tone was one of utter hopelessness. It gave a tragic touch to his drooping figure. The boy crept into his father’s arms; his movement gave a new direction to the latter’s thoughts. “I expect you’re plumb tuckered out, son,” he said gently, smiling sadly down on the grave, upturned face. “I expect bed’s about the best place for you; what do you say?”

The child nodded wearily.

Rogers turned to the innkeeper. “I suppose you can House us over night?” he said.

“To be sure I can,” answered Mr. Tucker promptly. “That’s my business; entertainment for man and beast.”

“I’ll put my boy to bed then; show a way with a light, will you?” he rose stiffly with the child in his arms, and preceded by the innkeeper, carrying a lamp, quitted the room. A few minutes later the two men returned to the bar, and Rogers resumed his chair. His attitude was one of profound dejection. His hope was dying a hard death. Perhaps he could not have told if he had tried, just all he had expected from his return to Benson, but for days and weeks and months, it had been the background of his splendid dreams.

Not heeding the presence of his host, he leaned forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees, and his chin sunk in his palms, grim, desperate.

The innkeeper seated himself at the opposite side of the room, and fell to studying him. He had seen men look much as he looked, who had lost their last dollar at cards.

Mrs. Tucker, thrilled and edified, and under escort of the faithful

Jim, carrying a lantern, returned from the lecture and entered the tavern by a rear door. Her husband presently heard her footsteps in the room overhead, where the heels of her shoes tapped the floor aggressively; and he muttered the single word “Tantrums,” under his breath, while his face took on an expression of great resignation.

Here Rogers broke the silence. “Hope I ain’t keeping you,” he said.

“You ain’t,” answered Mr. Tucker, with what was for him unusual decision.

“I didn’t know but you might want to close up,” explained Rogers civilly.

“I don’t,” returned Mr. Tucker, with quiet determination. “I want to chew a little more tobacco before I go to bed.”

There was another long pause. Rogers continued to stare into vacancy, and Mr. Tucker, round-eyed and wondering, continued to stare at Rogers. They might have been sitting thus ten minutes, when suddenly the street door swung open, and three men entered the room. The first of these was Captain Nathan Gibbs, editor of The True Whig; The captain, whose title had been derived from the militia, was blond and florid, and attired in immaculate broadcloth and spotless linen. He was, perhaps, five and thirty years old, but he had been a man of many and varied activities.

His companions were Bushrod and Stephen Landray. They were men in the prime of life, and much alike in appearance. They were tall and lean and strong, with dark animated eyes, and fine expressive faces. There was something Roman and patrician in their bearing; and when they spoke it was with a perceptibly Southern drawl; for the Landrays were from Virginia, and of good cavalier stock. The fifth of their name in the Royal Colony, a Stephen Mason Landray, had afterward risen to a high rank in the Continental Army. His son, another Stephen Mason Landray, had been the third settler at Benson, and the great man of the community in pioneer days. His fame still survived; he had served with distinction against the Indians and English, when war was abroad in the land, and he had lived in times of peace, with much simple dignity and kindliness, among the ruder and poorer folk of the frontier who were his neighbours.

“Yes sir,” Gibbs was saying as the three men entered the room. “If what we hear is true, it offers the grandest opportunity for youth and energy; of new field for capital; a—”

“Hold on, Gibbs,” interrupted Stephen Landray. “This will never do; in common with the rest of the Whigs you were opposed to the annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, and the seizure of California. If your memory fails you on this point, you have only to read some of your own editorials.”

“But this, my dear fellow, puts a new complexion on the whole matter.”

“Oh! no, it don’t, Gibbs; you must be consistent,” urged Bushrod.

“Consistency be damned,” retorted Gibbs, as he turned to the innkeeper who had retired behind the bar. “The case bottle, if you please, Tucker. Thanks—She will be admitted to the Union inside of ten years; I wish to go on record as saying so. Gentlemen, metaphorically speaking, we will now proceed to moisten the soil of California.”

Then, as the three men raised their glasses, Truman Rogers rose from his chair; he was all alive now to what was passing before him.

“What’s wrong with California, Cap?” inquired Mr. Tucker, with amiable interest. “What’s she been a doing anyhow?”

“The Eastern papers say that gold has been discovered there,” replied Gibbs.

Truman Rodgers strode to his side, and took him almost fiercely by the arm. “Is that so?” he demanded, his voice hoarse with emotion.

The four men looked at him in mute surprise.

“Is that so?” he repeated. “Do they say where it was found?” he released his hold on the captain’s arm, and rested limply against the bar.

“At Sutter’s Fort, on the American River,” said Stephen Landray, slowly.

The effect on the Californian was electrical. He threw out his arms despairingly in a single gesture of tragic renunciation. “I’m too late again, my luck every time—damn them! Damn them! Why couldn’t they keep still! the fools!”

“And why should they keep still?” demanded Gibbs toying with his empty glass.

“Why should they?” furiously. “What chance will there be now for the men who went into the country first—what chance will there be for me?” Again he threw out his arms, he seemed to put from him all hope; his mouth was bitter with the very taste of his words.

“You’ll have as good a chance as any,” retorted Gibbs, still toying with his glass. “And, pardon me, you’re a fool to expect more than that.”

“If what the Eastern papers say is true, there will be gold enough for all who are likely to go in search of it,” interrupted Bushrod Landray, good-naturedly. “You are Truman Rogers?”

Rogers nodded dully.

“And you are direct from California?” continued Landray.

“I left there five months ago, Mister.”

“You don’t remember us, perhaps, I am Bushrod Landray, and this is my brother, Stephen,” and he held out his hand. “You have reasons for believing this news of Captain Gibbs to be true?”

“Mighty good reasons, too; that’s what brought me here, fetched me all this distance, when I wa’n’. fit to travel.”

“You know the gold to be there?” and Landray regarded the Californian with quickened interest.

Rogers hesitated a moment; concealment had become second nature to him. At last he said, “I reckon I know as much about that as any man alive,” and now his sunken eyes began to flash, and the colour came and went on his waxen cheeks, his long fingers opened and closed convulsively. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I thought I was the only one who knew it was there, but the word must have come around the Horn on the next ship that sailed after the one I took, Sutter’s Fort—that’s a good hundred miles from where I found it.”

“What I’d like to know,” and Mr. Tucker cleared his throat impressively, “Is how you found it?”

“It’s in small nuggets, or like fine dust.”

“The gold is?” said Mr. Tucker.

“Yes.”

“It’s agin nature. Blamed if it ain’t fishy,” and Mr. Tucker shook his head dubiously. “It may be true; mind, I’m not disputing your word; but I don’t believe it. No sir, it’s agin nature,” reiterated Mr. Tucker. “I reckon you didn’t pick out much now, did you?” he added shrewdly.

“No,” said Rogers regretfully, “I didn’t. I ain’t fit any more; I got an Indian arrow through my right lung,” here a violent fit of coughing interrupted him.

“No, you ain’t fit any more,” agreeed Mr. Tucker commiseratingly.

“I been looking to get even with the game,” said Rogers, with a flash of hope in his deep eyes. “But I reckon this news near about knocks me. I was empty-handed when I left here twenty years ago, thinking to better myself, but I’ve come back just as poor as I went. I’ve played it in the hardest kind of luck right along, friends. I fought Indians and Mexicans in Texas, and helped drive them out of the country, but some one else always got the pick of the land. I herded sheep and cattle, only to have them run off; and, last of all, the Indians cleaned me out, and killed my wife. Then I moved over onto the Coast, hoping for a white man’s chance; and when I found the gold I thought my fortune was made,” harsh, unhappy laughter issued from his lips. He swept a hand across his eyes, emotion seemed to choke him. “I been like a boy thinking how I’d spend that fortune. I been staying awake nights figuring what I’d buy with it; but I reckon I’ll have chilly fingers before it burns a hole in my pockets. I wanted to bring my boy home, and then I was going to go back overland. It’s a damnation trip across the plains.”

“Indians?” asked Mr. Tucker, his mouth agape.

“Indians, and no water, and no grub, and no guides, and no nothing. It’s a hell of a trip, and it’s a hell of a country.”

“I can’t see how this news hurts your chances in the least,” said Stephen Landray kindly, he had not spoken until now. “To be candid with you, I think it rather benefits you than otherwise.”

“Why, of course,” said Bushrod. “It will all tend to create an interest in such ventures as the one you have to propose.”

Rogers looked first from the one to the other. “If I could think that, I’d sleep easy to-night,” but he shook his head sadly. “The bloom’s off; it ain’t a secret any longer.”

“Yes, but don’t you see this news is all in proof of what you would want to make people believe?” urged Stephen. “Not that any proof would be necessary, perhaps.”

“I’ve fetched my own proofs,” said Rogers. “Some of the gold. If it’s proof you want, I reckon you can’t better that,” and he took from his pocket a small glass vial filled with a dirty yellow substance. “There’s over three ounces of gold dust there. It’s worth sixteen dollars an ounce. I reckon you can’t beat that. Want to hold it?” he added indulgently, and passed the vial to the innkeeper, who took it gingerly, caressingly, in his fat fingers.

At least two of his auditors were rich men, according to the easy standard of the times, while Tucker was well-to-do, and the editor fairly prosperous; but the romance of it all had taken a powerful hold on them. A subtle excitement was in the mind of each. Here, shorn of the vexations and delays of trade, and within reach of the strong arm of the willing digger, was that which was the measure of the world’s necessity, that by which men guaged success or failure in life. In the presence of so simple a process, each felt a sudden distaste for his own task.

“I wish I was ten years younger and free-footed,” said Mr. Tucker, at last. “I’d pull out of here to-morrow, blamed if I wouldn’t.”

The editor laughed softly. He was like a man rousing from a dream. “Nonsense! Luck won’t be for one in a hundred; perhaps not for one in a thousand.”

“I’d run the risk, Cap; and if I found any of that dust, I wouldn’t sleep or eat or drink, until I’d fished it out of the soil.”

“What will be my chance at making up a company here?” asked Rogers, and now he addressed himself to the Landrays. He recognized in their silence a deeper interest than that manifested by either Mr. Tucker or Captain Gibbs.

“Are you really in earnest about going back?” asked Bushrod Landray, curiously.

Rogers drew his tall form erect. “I allow there’s just about two thousand miles of go left in me, Mister,” he said.

“And you think you could pilot a wagon train across the plains?” asked Stephen.

“You give me the chance to show what I can do—that’s all I ask. Of course, I see now, I must have been clean crazy to leave the Coast when it took my last dollar, but I ain’t fit for heavy work any more; I go shut like a clasp-knife; and I was near about wild to be with some of my own kin.”

“You may be able to make up a party here,” said Stephen.

“If you are wise, you will take your brother home, Bush!” said Gibbs.

Stephen turned to him: “Don’t you see it would not be necessary for me to go to California to share in a speculation of this sort?”

“No, I can’t see it Landray.”

“A company could be organized. Whoever wished to, could take shares in the venture; there would be little or no difficulty in finding men to go and do the actual work of digging for the gold.”

“Have you any scheme to propose that would guarantee a fair division of the profits in the event of there being any?” asked the captain.

Landray smiled slightly. “There would be no trouble about that,” he said hastily. “For, of course, we would only send men in whom we had the fullest confidence; and the returns could be made regularly by ship, by way of the Horn—”

“The small end of it,” suggested Gibbs, lightly.

Mr. Tucker laughed boistrously at this sally, but neither of the Landrays smiled.

Gibbs yawned. “I think we had all better go home and sleep on it,” he said.

“You’re right, so we should,” said Stephen. He turned to Rogers. “I’d like to see you again, there are some questions I want to ask you. You’ll be here for a while, I suppose?”

“There ain’t any time to waste if you mean business,” urged Rogers eagerly.

“No, I suppose not; but I don’t know that I do mean business. You must not take my interest too seriously, and yet—”

Gibbs slipped his arm through Stephen’s. “Oh, come along! you will wake up sane in the morning. Good-night, Tucker. Goodnight, Mr. Rogers. Coming, Bush?”

CHAPTER FIVE

A YOUNG man in a dusty road-cart drawn by a sedate and comfortable looking horse, turned in between the tall whitewashed posts at the foot of Landray’s Lane.

The occupant of the cart had reached that fortunate period where he was knowing the best of both youth and age, for he was, perhaps, six or eight and twenty, but so boyishly slight of figure that he might readily have passed for much younger; his apparent youth being still further accented by his smoothly-shaven face. It was in no sense a striking nor a handsome face, but it was fresh-coloured and pleasant to look at; while the frank glance of the grey eyes that lighted it, inspired confidence;and if there was a suggestion of the commonplace, there was also much good nature and not a little shrewdness.

As he turned in at the lane he permitted his grasp to loosen on the reins, and his horse, an animal of evident worth, which seemed to be instantly aware of a change of mood on the part of its driver, went slowly forward with head down, its hoofs and the wheels of the cart making scarcely any sound at all on the smooth, closely-cropped turf; now and again it paused to snatch at some tuft of tall growing grass, but this provoked its master to only the most indulgent of remonstrances.

On either hand were corn-fields. The long rows rooted in the rich, black loam of the flat bottom land were at right angles with the lane, down which ran the faint print of wheels, for it was little used. Beyond the corn-fields on the east was a low growth of willows, here and there overshadowed by the fantastically twisted top of some old sycamore; and beyond the willows and the sycamores was still another flat reach of bottom land, from which came the faint scent of freshly-cut hay.

The broad green leaves of the corn drooped and curled in the hot noon sun, or rustled softly where a breath of wind stirred them. There was intense, searching heat, and silence—the waiting, expectant silence of an August day when the long rainless skies are about to break their drought. A thin blue mist quivered in the level distance, and on the soft green undulations of the pasture land, which sloped up to the densely wooded heights of Landray’s Hill, sun steeped and vivid; where the day first smote with light, and where in early spring the arbutus bloomed among the melting patches of snow. In the valley, in the old Indian fields, as the first settlers had called the open grass-land they found along the creek-bank, short shadows from the sycamores barred the rustling corn with slanting shafts of a richer, darker green. Then in a remote field was heard the first sound that disturbed the silent noon hour; and from the meadow beyond the corn-field, came the keen swish of scythes in the tall grass, and a sharp metallic ring tuned to a certain rhythmic beat and swing where a mower had paused to sharpen his blade.

The lane ended at a pair of bars near a clump of trees which clustered about a spacious brick farm-house. This was the Landray home. Back of the farm-house could be distinguished the queer, high-hipped roof of Landray’s mill; and from it now, mingling with the other sounds, came the rush of water and the droning splash of wheels.

The young man in the cart glanced about him with a quick sense of pleasure. He was in the second generation away from the soil himself; his father had been a trader, and he was a lawyer; but the peace of it all, the promised plenty of the great corn-fields, the distant droves of cattle in the shaded pasture lands, the scent of the hay, stirred him to something very like envy.

“And he’ll be leaving all this!” he muttered under his breath at last; then he added: “And he’ll be leaving her—I cannot understand it!”

A woman emerged from a path that led off across the fields, and came down the lane toward him. He did not see her until she was quite close; but when he became aware of her presence he rose hastily from his seat in the cart, and hat in hand, sprang to the ground at her side.

“Mrs. Landray,” he said, and drew the reins forward from the bit so that he could walk beside her and lead his horse.

She was Stephen Landray’s wife, and it was of her he had been thinking but the moment before, for he thought of her more often than he realized. To him she had always seemed a most majestic person, strangely mature, and with a dignity and repose of bearing that was the consequence neither of age nor any large experience.

He was vaguely aware that in actual years he must be older than she; but nevertheless on these not frequent occasions when they met, she made him feel conscious and ill at ease; he was oppressed by a sense of his youth and inexperience; and the fact that his acquaintance with life went no further than Benson, and the three abutting counties, became a thing to regret and realize even with shame. But why she, whose life had been quite as limited as his own, should seem to carry with her this breath as from a larger world, was something he could not explain, reason it out as he would.

Her beauty was of the generous Southern type. The soft waves of her hair gleamed like polished brass in the sunlight; it clustered in soft rings on her low, broad brow; her skin was like creamy satin. He allowed his eyes to rest on the masses of her hair, then on the strong beautiful face, her full round throat, and the lovely lines of her perfect figure.

“You have come to see my husband, Mr. Benson?” she said.

“Yes, Mrs. Landray; he sent for me.” He hesitated an instant, for he did not wish to tell her of the nature of the business that had brought him out from the town. Then he added in a matter of fact tone: “I suppose it’s something to do with this California project.”

Mrs. Landray’s face flushed, then it grew very white; she paused and her foot tapped the ground nervously.

“They are two very foolish men, Mr. Benson—I mean my husband and his brother.”

“Then he has told you?” he said quickly.

“That he is going with the party—yes.”

She put out her hand and touched the reins Benson loosely held. “You can spare me a moment? I have been waiting for you.”

He bowed a trifle stiffly. To him she had always seemed, if anything, too undemonstrative, too self-reliant; but he saw now that she was shaken out of her dignity and serenity; she was struggling as her mother and her mother’s mother before her had struggled, when the wilderness spoke to the men they loved; and she was knowing as they must have known, that this masculine passion which no woman could comprehend, much less share in, but against which she had set her love, was as vital as that love itself.

The lawyer put his hand in the breast pocket of his coat upon a paper there; one sentence in this paper burned in his memory: To my dearly beloved wife, Virginia Randolph Landray, and then the description of the property Stephen Landray owned and wished to pass to her in the event of his death. Benson had drawn up the will only the week before, and he was now taking it to Landray to be signed and witnessed. “I am a childless man, Benson,” Landray had said, “and should anything happen to me, I want every dollar I own on earth to go to her.” And Landray had shown no little emotion, for the moment putting aside the habitual reserve with which he cloaked any special stress of feeling.

“But what do you want with a will?” Benson had asked. “Whom have you but your wife?”

“I’ve got to worrying about that Californian venture of our’s, and before I go I want to put my affairs in some sort of shape.”

“Then you shall go, after all?” Benson had said.

“I must; there’s no help for it. What do you think of the scheme, anyhow?”

“Well, I think better of it now that I know you are going to assume the direction of it.”

“That’s odd, with the knowledge you have,” said Landray, with a short laugh.

Benson had not been surprised at what Landray had told him of his intentions; indeed, the whole project, the journey overland, with its hardships and possible danger, the search for the gold when California should be reached, would be but episodes in a speculation for which he felt the Landrays were singularly fitted. They were not business men, no one knew this better than he; they had possessed large means, though the fortune which they had inherited from their father was now much impaired by bad management and the luckless ventures in which they had involved themselves.

He had felt, however, that their lack of ordinary business thrift would not be any special hindrance in such an enterprise as this; where, after all, success would come more as the result of chance, than because of shrewdness or capacity. Even when he was most critical of the brothers, not being able to quite free himself of a secret contempt, since they had started life with such exceptional opportunities, and had made such poor use of them, he admitted that under such conditions as he imagined would be found in California, their strength and courage, their physical readiness and vigour would perhaps more than compensate for the lack of those other qualities in which they had proved themselves so deficient.

“Yes, I think well of the scheme now,” said the lawyer slowly. “Much better than I did before.”

Landray laughed again carelessly.

“One would think I had a long career of success to point to, lucky ventures and the like. But, Jake, we are going to come back rich men, and then, by George! no more risks for me! I’ll just potter around out at the farm, keep some trotting stock, and breed fancy cattle, and let it go at that.”

“How does Mrs. Landray feel about this?” the lawyer had asked.

“Why, you can fancy, Benson,” and Landray’s handsome face wore a look of keen distress. “She does not know yet, she only suspects. Indeed, no one knows but you, and of course, the investors; they have made a point of it that Bush or I go; indeed, a good share of the money comes into the enterprise on condition that one of us takes its direction.”

A humorous twinkle lurked in the tail of the lawyer’s grey eyes. He knew it was the Landray honesty rather than the Landray ability, of which the investors wished to assure themselves.

“Rogers is all right,” continued Landray. “But he is not the man to handle such a venture, and then he may give down any day; it’s a question in my mind if he lives through the fall and winter here.”

“So Mrs. Landray does not know yet?”

“I don’t imagine there is much left to tell her,” said Landray. “It’s too bad she’s going to feel it as she is. If I could I would willingly make any sacrifice to be relieved of my obligation to go—short of giving up the chance itself to make a fortune. But one of us must go, our own money and money that would not have come into the scheme but for us will be involved. Bush is quite willing to make the trip alone, but I can’t let him do that.”

“I cautioned you to avoid committing yourselves,” said Benson, “for I feared this very thing would happen.”

“I know you did,” said Landray ruefully, “but what was I to do? They hung back until we let them think that we were going; it was only then money came in sight.”

And Mr. Benson, who admired a nice sense of honour, considering it the loftiest guide to human action, had concurred in this view of the case; but now, with Virginia Landray’s great sad eyes fixed upon him, his ready sympathy all went out to her. He regretted that he had agreed with her husband; he felt, for a brief instant, that the reasonable thing for the latter to do was to abandon the whole project, with credit if he could, without credit if he must; for what did it matter what men said or thought, where her peace of mind was concerned?

“You are Stephen’s lawyer,” Mrs. Landray said, “and I suppose he has few secrets from you; perhaps you know more of his plans than he has told me; until now he has had no secrets from me.” She bestowed upon Benson a troubled, questioning glance, then she made an imperious gesture. “You are to tell me quite honestly if he is as hopelessly committed as he thinks to this matter, and to this man, Rogers—I am not to be put off!”

“He has told you that he is going?” asked Benson, who wished to be quite sure on this point.

“Yes,” impatiently.

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. “Very well, then, I suppose I can speak plainly.”

She felt a sudden sense of jealous displeasure; by what right did he assume this attitude of intimacy with her husband; and how dared he even suggest that he might, by any chance, know more of Stephen’s intentions than she did herself; but her resentment was only momentary. “You are to tell me if he is committed,” she said.

“I think he is,” said Benson slowly.

She set her lips firmly. “Then I suppose it is useless for me to object.”

“You are very much opposed to his going?” said Benson. She opened her eyes wide in wonder at the question.

“Would any woman wish the man—” she broke off abruptly, and glanced about her. “He will be leaving all this, and me; and for what?” She made a little gesture with her shapely hand and arm.

“It is rather incomprehensible, Mrs. Landray,” said the lawyer.

“But why should he wish to go? What can he gain by going? I wonder if I am to blame.” She regarded Benson with anxious, searching eyes.

“Men are restless,” he said lamely.

“But why should he be? You would not go—”

“I, no—I have wanted to, though. But it’s better for me to stay. They are involved,” he went on slowly. “I warned them in the start that they must be careful or this would happen; and now they are stubborn and unwilling to abandon a venture for which they are largely responsible. Nothing would have come of this man Rogers’s efforts without their help.”

“Have you taken shares in this absurd company?”

He smiled a little cynically. “No, and I scarcely think I shall.” he hesitated. “Still I admit the speculation has its fascinations. I can’t quite explain even to myself what they are; but they exist. Yes, I’ve even wanted to go,” he went on, smiling at her, “but I’ve never found I could afford to give way to my impulses.”

“But in going you would leave no one who would suffer as I shall suffer if Stephen goes. I don’t mean but that your friends would regret your absence—” she added hastily.

He looked at her curiously. A faint, wistful smile played about the corners of his mouth. “I haven’t a wife, if that is what you mean,” he said at last.

She looked up quickly into his face.

“Do you mean—?” she hesitated.

“Mean what?” he asked.

“Do you love some one?” she coloured slightly.

“I’d hardly call it that—if by that you mean a person. Perhaps I’d better call it an idea,” he said, still smiling at her.

A sudden change came to her manner. A shade of reserve crept into it. The man was only her husband’s lawyer, he was almost a stranger to her; even her husband, with the fuller democracy of American manhood, hardly counted him his equal; for he was old Jacob Benson’s son, and old Jacob Benson had made his money in questionable ways no Landray had ever condescended to employ. More than this, as speculator and land owner, and afterward as member of the State Legislature he had been General Landray’s rival and opponent in all matters of private concern and public enterprise. This was something no rightly constituted Landray would ever forgive. They might respect young Jacob Benson for what he had made of himself, handicapped as he was by such a parent, but they were not men to forget whose son he was.

Young Jacob Benson was, happily, wholly unconscious of the reason for her change in manner; if he noticed it at all, he attributed it to a natural feminine modesty—he spoke now with a generous wish that his words might prove of some comfort to her.

“One thing is sure, Mrs. Landray, they cannot go until spring, and who knows what may happen to change their plans.”

“They will go,” she said quietly. “I know Stephen too well not to know that.”

“I dare say, if the investors are of their present mind eight months hence—but they may withdraw.”

“That will make no difference to Stephen and his brother.”

“Even so, I don’t think you need worry, Mrs. Landray. They will soon be sick enough of the venture. I fancy we shall soon see them back here. I know at first they had no intention of going; they were simply the largest shareholders in the enterprise. A more active part has been forced upon them by the other shareholders. You know almost five thousand dollars have been subscribed already, and as much more will probably be raised; and while there are any number of men offering themselves who are willing to go and dig for the gold, they are not the kind of men one would care to trust with the control of such a sum. Your husband and his brother have really been coerced into going; they would hardly admit this, but it is true, nevertheless.”

There was a long pause. At last Mrs. Landray said: “I don’t speak of this matter to my husband any more.” She set her lips firmly and went on. “We do not agree on this point; but you can tell me how far their plans are made. I am quite out of his confidence; and it is just the same with Ann and Bushrod; he never tells her.” She smiled sadly. “You see this thirst for sudden riches has destroyed the peace and happiness of at least two homes. I wonder how many more are to be affected by it.”

“I suppose I am violating their confidence,” Benson said, “but I believe their present plan is to start down the Ohio in the early spring.”

Mrs. Landray turned from him abruptly; her emotion mastered her; a sob rose in her throat.

“Thank you, Mr. Benson,” she faltered with a poor attempt at self-control; and then she passed swiftly down the lane toward the house.

Benson followed her retreating figure with his glance until she passed from sight among the trees; then he climbed slowly into the cart.

CHAPTER SIX

ROGERS had taken up his abode at the tavern. The Land-rays had arranged with Tucker that he should be their guest, and that he should want for nothing.

At first he had shown some interest in the town and in the changes that had taken place during the twenty years covered by his absence; but as the summer merged into fall, and fall into winter, he kept more and more within doors, establishing himself in the cheerful tavern bar, where Mr. Tucker presided with a benignity of bearing that had mellowed with the years and the passing of the human traffic of the stage road, whose straying feet had worn deep hollows in the brick pavement beyond his door.

During those first weeks of his stay in Benson, Rogers might have been a Columbus newly returned, or a Ponce de Leon with discovered fountains of perpetual youth; and in the spell of the wonders in which he dealt, and in which his hearers delighted, Tucker felt his reason reel and totter and all but collapse. As he came and went about the place, his eyes were always turned in the direction of the grim Californian. They sought him out over the rim of his glass, each time it was raised to his lips; and he watched him by the hour as he sat in his chair and sucked at the reed stem of his red-clay pipe, sucked and marvelled, or meditated investment in the company, a transaction of which he invariably thought better, however, before the day was ended. And when Rogers was not there to tell his own story, which sometimes chanced, he did it for him, but always with the nicest regard for accuracy. He had not been ten yards from his own front door in five years, indeed, not since he had courted the third and present Mrs. Tucker, so that such news as he usually had to disseminate was known to all Benson long before he was in possession of it; but the excitement of which Rogers was the centre, and in the reflected glory of which he now dwelt, recalled the days that had followed the knifing of Sheriff Cadwaller by Mr. Johnny Saul in that very room, and, considerately enough, with himself as the only witness.

Rogers had placed Benny in school, and each evening after supper he would steal up to the child’s room, where Benny carefully rehearsed for his benefit such portions of the lessons of the day as he remembered, while his father listened, with a look of tender yearning in his dark, sunken eyes. Then, when Benny was safely bestowed in his bed, if custom was slack at the bar, and he alone with Tucker, he would sit silent and absorbed, thinking of the boy and the future he had planned, of the riches he would yet achieve for him in spite of sickness and mortal weariness. It was all so fair a dream, and his hopes so tenderly unselfish, that the harsh lines of his face would soften; and his thin, shaven lips whose hard expression usually indicated nothing beyond a dry reserve, would relax in a slow, wistful smile; and the old innkeeper watching him, would wonder in his vague way that one who had seen so much of violence and bloodshed, who, by his own indifferent telling, had been no better than others of his own reckless class, could look so mild and gentle.

“I tell you, Tucker, he’s keen as a briar!” Rogers never wearied of telling his companion. “I reckon he’s about the first of us Rogers in many a long year who’s done more than make a cross when it came to signing his name.”

“But you got something better than learning,” Tucker would say, with a wise shake of his head. “You got knowledge; wonderful, astonishing knowledge. Personally you’ve wedged open my mind more than any other man I know, not excepting Colonel Sharp, who’s been talking Latin to me, which I never did understand, for near about twenty years; but I can’t see that it’s ever done me the good you’re doing me. What’ll you drink?”

From the incipiency of the company on, that enterprise had seemed to Rogers to go forward with a deadly slowness: Those who invested in the shares requiring so much of him before they were convinced that their money would not only be safe, but would increase with the dazzling rapidity he said, and believed it must. Yet, devoured as he was by impatience, he told his story over and over, with an earnestness that never failed to fascinate his hearers, though he had to meet the habitual caution of men whose means had grown slowly in trade or petty speculations.

“It’s disencouraging,” agreed Mr. Tucker benevolently. “But you couldn’t a done better than get the Landray boys to take hold. Everybody knows them—they got money—they got influence; no one can’t ever complain of any sharp practice from them. I’ve had dealings with them myself; I bought the distillery from them. I traded them land, a thousand acres in Belmont County. They took that at a valuation of twenty-five hundred dollars, and I got as much more to pay; but I’m trying to talk them into taking another thousand acres instead of the cash. My aim is to get shut of all that there land; then my money will be here where I can watch it.”

There were those among Rogers’s auditors, however, who appeared quite ready to be convinced of the reasonableness of all he promised, arguing with him against their own doubt even; and when he thought it only remained for them to decide how many shares they could take, their enthusiasm would suddenly wane, they would become cold and hesitating, frankly anxious to make their escape uncommitted from him and from the Landrays, and this would be the last he would see of them for days; he would give them up for lost; and after he had fully made up his mind that nothing would come of it, they would appear and put their names to the paper which Stephen Landray always carried, and it was perhaps another hundred dollars added to the capital stock of the Benson and California Mining and Trading Company.

The necessity for haste was the one thing he urged on Stephen and his brother; but it was December before all of the shares were actually taken, and he was forced to own that to start across the plains in the dead of winter was out of the question, even if it had been feasible to make the first stage of the journey down the Ohio. They must wait until spring. This delay had seemed the last vengeful fling of fate. Whatever was evil to know and endure he had known and endured on that far frontier where his best years had been spent; he had acquired a fortitude and patience that rarely failed him; he had accepted hardship and danger as the natural, expected, things of life; and the ordinary deaths he had seen men die, by knife or bullet, he had himself bravely faced; but the slow approach of an enemy he could not see, but could only feel in his wasted muscles and weakened will, appalled him.

“I can feel it here—here—gnawing at my throat, gnawing like some hungry varment,” he told Stephen Landray. “I reckon if I was a praying man, I’d pray to die a sudden death; this is just wasting away—wasting and remembering, and hoping. God Almighty! Such hope and such remembering.”

But it was only to Stephen that he told his fears; he did not speak of them to the others, and they never guessed that a fever of despair was consuming him.

Stephen Landray was as free from superstitious imaginings as most men, but Rogers’s low spirits, coupled with the sorrow and apprehension Virginia vainly strove to conceal, had its effect on his mental vigour. A dozen times he was on the verge of appealing to the other shareholders for his release from the active direction of an enterprise that was going forward under such distressing auspices; but he comforted himself with the thought that his absence would only be for a year or two.

Pride had a good deal to do with keeping him true to his purpose. He could recall the day when the property he and Bushrod had inherited had constituted a great fortune, by far the greatest in Benson, but times were slowly changing, improvements in machinery and methods had closed the carding and fulling mill his father had built during his lifetime; the distillery, which they had sold to Tucker, no longer sent its produce by flat-boat down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. Shrewder men than he and his brother, had taken away their once profitable business as forwarding agents, and the great warerooms at the mill, which had once been piled high with barrels of flour awaiting shipment, were now all but empty. He felt that they were being slowly but surely elbowed into the background by strangers with greater capital or greater ability. This was a sore grief to both brothers, though it was, perhaps, not the loss of money they dreaded so much as the fancied loss of prestige.

While Stephen hoped that Rogers might live to enjoy the wealth he felt would be the fruit of their venture, he cast about him for some man who possessed a similar acquaintance with the West, if not with the gold-fields, and remembered his cousin Basil. This Basil Landray was the son of his father’s younger brother, the late Colonel Rupert Landray, of the United States Army. Of Basil he knew little, except that he had been at one time a civilian hanger-on of the army at Detroit; Later he had known of him as an employee of the American Fur Company.

In the early fall he hazarded a letter to this cousin at Council Bluffs, telling him of the undertaking in which they were about to embark, and asking him if he would care to join their party in the spring, at Independence. After many months a reply came; an illy-written, illy-spelt letter, that rather shocked the recipient. From the letter he gathered that Basil was seeking just such an opportunity as that he had offered.

About this time young Jacob Benson had occasion to drive out to the farm to see Landray.

“Tell Mr. Landray I’m here, Sam,” he said to the farm-hand who had taken his horse, and was preparing to lead it away to the stable. “He’s at the mill,” said Sam.

“Let him know I’m here, please,” and the lawyer made his way into the house, where he was shown into the library. Ten minutes later Stephen and his brother entered the room.

“I hope we haven’t kept you waiting, Benson,” said the former. “I’ve seen Mr. Stark, and it’s all right,” said the lawyer. “I promised you I’d let you know at once.”

“So he’ll renew the note?” said Stephen, seating himself before his desk.

“You are both to see him at the bank to-morrow,” answered Benson. There was a brief pause, and then the lawyer asked:

“How’s the California scheme coming on?”

“I told you I had heard from our cousin, Basil Landray, did I not?”

“Yes, you had just received his letter the last time I saw you in town. Do you know yet when you shall start?”

“As soon as the Ohio is free of ice.”

“That won’t be long now.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Stephen absently. “Look here,” he added abruptly. “We’ve got an offer for the mill.”

“Paxon?” inquired Benson.

“Yes. We find we shall have to let go of something,” said Stephen; there was a shade of embarrassment in his tone, for the subject was an unpleasant one. “And the mill is about the only piece of property we own that we care to part with.”

The mill, a huge structure of stone, had been erected by General Landray, and was said to occupy the site of a building of logs and bark, where almost half a century before had been ground the first corn and wheat grown in the county. Rude as had been this pioneer mill, it had represented the mechanical skill of the entire community. A sugar trough had served as a meal trough; while the stones had been bound with elm bark for the want of a proper metal.

“Well, Paxon is willing to pay ten thousand dollars for the mill,” Stephen continued. “Two thousand down, and the balance secured by his notes. This includes the water rights, and about ninety acres of land, and the miller’s house.”

“It goes rather hard with us to let go,” said Bushrod Landray, who had been standing before one of the windows, his glance fixed on the out-of-doors, now he turned on his heel and faced his two companions.

Stephen moved uneasily in his chair.

“This silly fellow is influenced by all sorts of impracticable sentiment. He doesn’t seem to see that we can’t eat our cake and have it, too. If we go to California, we shall have to make some sacrifice here; and unless we go fully prepared to make the most of our chances, we would far better stay at home. I tell you, the men who go with a few thousands in hand to be put out in such advantageous speculations as may offer, will have unlimited opportunities for money-making. The mill isn’t doing for us what it did for father; there is too much opposition for one thing, but Paxon says he can control a profitable Ohio River trade.”

“Yes,” agreed his brother reluctantly, “I suppose it is better in his hands doing something, than in ours, doing nothing. There’s too much opposition, as you say. I can remember when there was not another mill within fifteen miles of here, and now there is twenty run of stone in the township.”

“And we have made a botch of the business!” said Stephen shortly. “Just remember we borrowed that money of Stark to buy wheat with, and the flour was thrown back on us when we shipped it to the lake. Musty and unsalable, the agent said. That cut last year’s profits exactly in half: I’m sick of the mill!”

Bushrod sighed. “We have gone along easily enough, thanks to no special cleverness of our own, but we have been drones and spenders rather than anything else. If I oppose the sale of the mill, it is only because I have no mind to see the property dwindle.”

“Do be reasonable, Bush! A year or two in California will remedy all that,” said Stephen quickly. “Even Benson here has faith in our project!”

Thus appealed to, the lawyer said, “There will probably be many bitter disappointments, but there’s no reason why cautious men, having some capital, should not do well in California, men of that kind are generally successful in new countries.”

“Why, you can’t take up an Eastern newspaper without reading of fabulous strikes.” Stephen’s dark eyes sparkled. “They say the country will soon be flooded with diggers from all parts of the world. Already they are crowding in from Texas and Mexico, and the Sandwich Islands. Of course, there will be some luckier than others, but thank God, there promises to be enough for all!”

Benson smiled cynically. The depth of Landray’s worldly inexperience tickled his fancy. He knew better than to believe that man ever got something for nothing, or that Nature would suddenly open her heart to the gold-seekers as she had never before opened it to the struggling children of men. He saw that Bushrod shared his brother’s enthusiasm where their joint venture was concerned; it was only that he was somewhat less ruthless in paving the way for it. To Stephen, though he was the younger, was left the initiative. The latter went on: “We wish to leave the loose ends of several matters in your hands.”

“What are you going to do with the farm?” asked Benson.

“Oh, Trent’s brother Tom is going to take it, stock and all. I keep the house for Virginia, who wishes to remain here. I wanted her to go into town, but she prefers not to.”

“Then there is the distillery,” said Bushrod.

“Yes,” said Stephen, “Tucker still owes us twenty-five hundred dollars on it, but we’ve about agreed to take a thousand acres more of his Belmont County land in lieu of the money.”

“How about the farm north of town where Leonard lives?”

“Leonard is to stay on. He pays a hundred and fifty a year, and you’ll have to keep after him to get it. We have about five thousand dollars on our books at the mill; most of it’s good, and I expect we can collect some of it ourselves, what’s left we shall place in your hands.”

“Hadn’t you better draw up a statement of your affairs?” suggested Benson. “Directing what I am to do during your absence, where such and such money is to be used? Of course, you will have to allow me a certain latitude, and you’d better keep a copy of the memorandum; for if you should be detained in the West longer than you think you shall be, you may need it to refer to.”

“If Bush agrees to the sale of the mill—” began Stephen.

“Oh, I guess I’ll come around to that if you’ll just wait a while,” interposed his brother rather hopelessly. “There wasn’t a dollar against the property in father’s time, and we have already sold the distillery; and now we are figuring on the sale of the mill.

“It simply means that while the estate was ample for the support of one family, it is not ample for the support of two; and times have changed; it costs more to live now.”

“I’d be glad to think the fault was not all ours,” said Bushrod.

As they talked, the light had faded in the western sky to a cold radiance. The room was illuminated only by the dancing flames of the blazing hickory logs upon the hearth. The three men had gradually drawn nearer the fire as the shadows deepened about them. Now Benson rose from his chair.

“We’d better get together at my office in the course of a week or so, and we’ll fix up these matters.”

“Won’t you stay and take supper with us?” said Stephen.

“No, thank you.”

There was a gentle tap at the door, and Virginia entered the room, carrying a lamp. She bowed slightly to Benson, whom she had not seen before, and who, to her, seemed to be taking much too active a part in her husband’s concerns. Her dislike, for it already amounted to that, was scarcely reasonable, but then she was not always reasonable.

“I thought you would need a light,” she explained, addressing her husband, “and Martha is busy with the men’s supper.”

“Thank you for remembering us,” said Stephen.

He had risen and now took the lamp from her hand; in doing so his fingers closed about her’s with a gentle pressure, while his eyes looked smilingly into her’s; but there was no answering smile. She turned abruptly and quitted the room.

There was an awkward pause, then Bushrod rose quickly from his chair, with something like a look of dismay on his dark face.

“I declare, Stephen, you shouldn’t go! What’s the use of every one being made miserable?”

“Nonsense, man!” said Stephen with a shrug.

A little later Bushrod and Benson drove away together, and Stephen, who had followed them to the door, paused on the porch watching them out of sight. A soft step roused him; his wife stood at his side, and placed a hand on his arm.

“I am sorry,” she said simply.

“You’re not to blame,” he said kindly. “I know it’s not the sort of thing a woman could have much interest in.”

“Oh, don’t let us speak of it again! I want you to remember only that you were happy during these, our last days together, and that I loved you, as I have always loved you, Stephen—sometimes I think better than even you comprehend.”

“Why, you speak as if it were the end of it all, when it’s only the beginning! Bush and I will make our fortunes—”

“Oh, why can’t we be content to be just poor, Stephen? What does it matter what we lack so long as we have each other? Once, not very long ago, we thought that would be sufficient,” she whispered softly, and to him her every word was a reproach; only his fancied needs, defended by his native stubbornness and his inability to look down any path save that he had chosen, was keeping him true to his purpose.

“But we can’t be poor,” he said at last doggedly. “I’ve wished it were possible, but it’s not! We can’t stand by and see the fortune go to pot!”

“But I thought our love was enough—it is for me,” she said sadly.

“Why, bless your heart, dear, and so it is!” he cried in a tone of sturdy conviction, slipping an arm about her.

“Then why must you go?” But she knew that opposition was useless.

“Nothing but our necessity is taking me from you.”

“Money!” with brave contempt. “We can live without that!”

“I’m afraid not, dear.”

“Why do you so dread the loss of fortune? There are other things I dread more to lose.”

“I swear I don’t know; but there is something shameful in it to me,” he said.

“But why?”

“Well, for us it would mean that we had failed, Bush and I, in everything; that we hadn’t the ability to even hold on to what father left us. No, no, dear, the family can’t go to the dogs quite yet: It’s true we have no children, and sometimes I have been almost thankful, but there’s Bush’s boy to carry on the name; he’s got to have his chance in life. I only hope he’ll turn out a shrewder hand than either his father or uncle!”

“There will be enough, there has always been enough.”

“That doesn’t follow: We have about reached the point now where we’ll feel the pinch. You mustn’t think that anything short of a real need would take me from you; only that shall separate us, and the separation will be but brief; and then Bush and I will come back with a fortune—”

“Only return safe and well, dear, and never mind about the fortune,” she said tenderly, as they turned back into the house.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE town bell had struck the hour, three clanging strokes, and even as their echoes lingered in the silence and the night, a candle blinked like a solitary eye in an upper window of Levi Tucker’s red-brick tavern.

The night wind, an evil searching wind, that cut like a knife and chilled to the bone, swept both snow and rain in troubled gusts across the square; while the last quarter of an April moon gave a faint uncertain radiance. Smoke, illumined by a few flying sparks, which the wind promptly extinguished, issued from the tavern’s kitchen chimney, and diffused itself low over the adjacent housetops. It seemed to bring with it certain domestic odours, as if a breakfast were being prepared, and so it was, the last which three members of the Benson and California Mining and Trading Company anticipated sitting down to in the town of Benson in many a long day.

The three wagons containing’ the company’s property stood before the tavern door, their white canvas covers tightly drawn; and Robert Dunlevy who, with young Walsh and Bingham, was to accompany the Landrays, was already busy in the stable putting their harness on the horses. He wondered why Bingham and Jim, Mr. Tucker’s stableman, after promising over night to help him with the teams, had failed to appear; but evidently they had overslept themselves.

Across the yard in the inn he heard Mr. Tucker, his voice pitched in a most unusual key; but he was far too intent on his work to even pause to listen to what was passing there.

Presently, Jacob Benson and Bushrod Landray, well muffled in their great coats, hurried across the square; by the wagons they paused.

“This looks like business, don’t it?” said Landray cheerfully.

“I guess we are the first,” remarked the lawyer, glancing about.

“No, Rogers is stirring; I saw a light in his room a moment ago. Let’s go in; Tucker promised to have a breakfast for us.”

A few minutes later, when Stephen Landray pulled up before the tavern with Sam and the man who was to help back from Cincinnati with the horses and gear, he found that the teams were being led from the inn stable by Dunlevy and the tardy Bingham; they were whistling, “O, Susanna!” but they paused to hail him with boisterous good-will, and he returned their greeting with curt civility; their cheerfulness being the reverse of agreeable to him just then, for his thoughts were all of Virginia; each word and look of her’s, each eloquent gesture, seemed to burn in his memory. To part from her had been so hard and cruel a thing to do, that his courage had almost failed him; and he had driven into town hoping, absurd as he knew the hope was, that something might have occurred to block the venture; and under his breath he cursed the implacable zeal of his teamsters, who were leaving nothing they desired not to leave, since no ties bound them to one spot of earth more than another. He would have welcomed with joy, a single day’s delay; but that was not to be, and he looked about him with a feeling of utter helplessness.

Under the parted hood of one of the wagons, and holding a lantern between his knees, he saw the Californian with Benny at his side. Two spots of vivid colour burned on Rogers’s hollow cheeks; his dark eyes were wondrously brilliant; a smile hovered about the corners of his mouth; he was knowing a foretaste of success. At last, out of talk and argument, endless considering and planning, out of the deluge of words that had preceded any actual doing, he had been able to get these men started. Seeing Stephen, he cried triumphantly:

“I’ll show you California before you see this again, Mr. Landray!” and he swept the square with a fine free gesture.

“Is Bush here—and where is Walsh?” asked Stephen.

“Your brother’s indoors, I haven’t seen Walsh.”

“He hasn’t come yet, Mr. Landray,” said Dunlevy, tightening a hame strap.

“Something’s gone wrong with Tucker,” said Rogers, “but I didn’t stay to see what it was. I’m off for California, and we don’t climb down out of here until the first stage of the journey’s done; do we, son?”

In the tavern, as he had intimated, all was confusion. Levi Tucker, powerfully excited, was stamping back and forth in front of his bar; while Landray and the lawyer were vainly seeking to calm him.

“Here’s a pretty mess,” said the former as Stephen entered the room. “Tucker’s wife seems to be missing.”

“Seems to be missing!” cried the innkeeper furiously. “I tell you, Bush, she’s skipped clean out! Left me, do you hear? Left me! Well, I hope he’ll trim the nonsense out of her—I do that!”

“What’s this?” demanded Stephen, looking first from one to the other of the three men.

“He thinks Julia has run away,” said Benson quietly, but his face was rather white. Mrs. Tucker was his cousin.

“Thinks!” snorted the innkeeper contemptuously. “What sort of proofs may you be looking for, Jacob? Ain’t I furnishing them by the cartloads? She’s kin to you, and you don’t want to think ill of her; but just hear me, all of you—”

“He’s been drinking,” whispered Bushrod; but Tucker, whose senses appeared to be wonderfully acute all at once, heard him.

“Drinking!” he exploded, in a thin shriek of anguish. “Of course I been drinking. What was good, red licker made for if it wa’n’. for a time like this when you’re publicly made a fool of by a trifling no-account woman, whose head never held an ounce of sense in all her born days! She’s your cousin, Jake, I mind that, and my word! she’s damn little credit to you—but she’s worse shame to me.”

Stephen, with some difficulty, possessed himself of these facts. The night before, the faithful Jim had taken Mrs. Tucker out to her father’s farm on the South Road. She had sent him back with the message that her father would drive her home when she should be ready to return. Midnight came, and she did not appear; Mr. Tucker, somewhat alarmed for her safety, dispatched Jim in quest of her. He had shortly returned with the information that Captain Gibbs had called at the farm early in the evening and had proposed driving her home, and they had ridden away together, behind a most excellent span of horses which the perfidious Gibbs had hired of Mr. Tucker. This was the last any one had seen of them.

The tavernkeeper told Stephen this between sobs, and oaths, and threats.

“Think of it, Steve—she’s quit me for that infernal scalawag!”

“You are too willing to think ill of her, Tucker,” said Landray. “It may turn out all right, and then you will be the first to regret your haste.”

“Man, I know she’s gone with him!” cried the tavernkeeper.

“Ain’t he been hanging about here for days past, and all to get a word with her—I seen it!”

“Perhaps they’ve stopped somewhere on the way into town, they may have had a breakdown, or their horses may have run off,” suggested Benson.

“Run off? That team? No, sir! They have lit out together—damn her foolishness, and him just next door to nothing! I’ll catch them yet, though! Jim! You Jim!” he bawled. The stableman appeared at the door.

“What do you want now, Tucker?” he asked.

“What I been wanting for the last half hour—a horse and fix!”

“That’s what I’m trying to get for you, if you’d just leave off yelling for me,” said Jim.

But Tucker paid no heed to him, he was threatening again.

“When I catch up with them it will go hard with him! I’ll learn him he can’t run off with no wife of mine! You hear me? Him or me’ll go down!”

“But you are sure of nothing yet,” interposed Stephen, shocked at the readiness he was displaying to think the worst of his wife.

“I’ve watched ‘em together,” raged the wronged husband. “I’ve seen her blushing and giggling. They thought I didn’t see; getting too old to notice or have good sense, I reckon; but I ain’t been married three times not to know what a pair of fools look like when they are in love.” and he stormed back and forth in front of his bar. “I had good luck with all of my wives but her; they were perfect ladies, each of them, and to think she’d serve me a trick like this!” Then he calmed down. “You and Bush come into the sitting-room; and you too, Jacob.”

The three men silently followed him into the adjoining room, where he threw open the door of a cupboard, and fell to rumaging among its contents. Presently he brought to light two huge horse-pistols, relics of the War of 1812. As they were much too large to go into his pockets he wrapped them in a gaily-coloured quilt.

“I’ll have satisfaction,” he remarked grimly. “I’ll blow him as full of holes as he’ll stick. They got my bay team and six hours start; but I’ll be after them hot-footed with that fractious mare of mine, and when I come up with them it will be him or me.”

“I hope you’ll not do anything hasty, Tucker,” said Stephen gravely.

“Don’t you worry about me, Steve. The right’s on my side.”

He seemed so weak despite his rage and brave boastings, and he had aged, too, in that single night, that Stephen, feeling only pity for him, rested his strong hand on his shoulder with a kindly pressure.

“Come, Tucker, why go after him at all?” he said.

“Thank’ee Steve,” cried the tavernkeeper in a husky voice, and his bleary eyes sought the handsome face of the younger man. “Thank’ee—but you can’t keep me back. She’s my wife, she’s skipped out with another man, and now I’m going to make her skip back, and I reckon she’ll do quite a little skipping one way and another before this affair’s settled,” and he shook his head ominously.

Then he said:

“Them deeds covering the transfers of that land, and the distillery, are in Jake’s hands. He can get ‘em recorded. It’s all right to leave it with him to close up the deal, ain’t it, boys?”

“Yes, certainly. He will have to attend to it,” said Stephen.

Jim appeared at the door. “Well, Tucker, if you are going, look spry. The mare’s hooked to the light fix.”

Mr. Tucker, who had been standing by the window with his head sunk on his breast, turned quickly, roused by his words.

“Thank’ee, Jim, I’m ready. You’ll look after things until I get back?” and he gathered up the gaily-coloured quilt that hid the horse pistols. Jim seemed slightly crestfallen.

“Don’t I go too, Tucker?” he asked. “You know when it comes to the madam you ain’t no match for her. Don’t you reckon you’ll want me?”

“I’ll attend to her. You do as you’re told.” said the old man with a touch of unexpected dignity. He crossed the room to where the Lan-drays stood with Benson. “Good-bye, boys, and good luck to you!” he gave a tremulous hand to each in turn. “I’m mighty sorry to see you go.”

“And we are sorry to see you in this trouble,” said Stephen.

“I trust you’ll not do anything hasty,” urged Benson.

“Well, I won’t be too everlasting slow, Jacob,” said Tucker grimly. Then he followed Jim from the room. A moment later they heard him issue his final commands to his stableman, the crack of a whip, the clatter of four shod hoofs on the brick pavement, the rattle of wheels, and Mr. Tucker, his hat awry, and his two wisps of white hair streaming out behind his ears like a pair of cupid’s wings, whirled out of the inn-yard, and down the street, the fractious mare at a wild gallop.

The three men looked from one to another in silence. Stephen spoke first.

“Do you think she’s gone with Gibbs?” he asked.

“I shouldn’t wonder, there’s been a good deal of talk,” It was Benson who answered his question.

“We should not have allowed him to start off after them,” said Stephen.

“I imagine we would have had our hands full if we had tried to stop him,” responded Bushrod with a shrug. Here, Jasper Walsh entered the room.

“Let us be off, Mr. Landray,” he cried. He was a boyish-looking young fellow, with a refined and gentle face, that was now working piteously enough. A stranger in Benson, fresh from an eastern college, he had come west—bringing with him a young wife—to teach school and in his leisure time study law, but he had decided that a year or so in California would furnish him with the means to carry out his ambitions, and from the savings of his slender earnings he had purchased a few shares in the company. “They are waiting for us, they are all ready—can’t we start?” he asked.

“Yes, I know, Walsh,” said Stephen, then he added, “See here, why don’t you throw it over? I’ll see that your interests are well looked to. Come, be sensible, and stay here with your wife.”

“No,” answered the boy determinedly. “It’s my chance. It’s best for her, and it’s best for me that I go, and I’ve parted from her and the worst is over,” his lips quivered. “What’s keeping us?” he asked anxiously.

“Nothing,” said Stephen, but he did not move. Bushrod laughed dismally.

“Walsh is right, let’s start. I don’t want to hang about here until Anna’s awake, and sees us go past the house.”

Stephen looked at him in wonder.

“Until Anna’s what?” he demanded sharply.

“Awake. Thank God, she was fast asleep when I left home.”

Stephen’s glance dwelt sadly upon his brother for a brief instant, then he moved to the door and they passed out through the bar, where Jim had put out the lights and was already opening the heavy wooden shutters.

When they emerged upon the square, they found the wind had lulled. The rain was tailing in a quiet drizzle, with here and there an occasional snow-flake that melted the instant it touched the ground. Bushrod and Walsh said good-bye to the lawyer, and took their places in the wagons, while Stephen turned back for a last word.

“I’m leaving everything in your care, Jake,” he said, in a voice of stifled emotion, as he wrung Benson’s hand.

“I understand, Landray. I’ll do for her in everyway I can.”

“I know you will. God bless you, and good-bye.”

They passed down the silent street that echoed dismally to the beat of their horses’ hoofs, they crossed the covered bridge and began the long ascent of Landray’s Hill. As they neared the summit, the vapours lifted from the valley below them, and the first long level rays of the sun shot across it, just touching the woods that were its furthest boundary.

Stephen, who was driving the first wagon, leaned far out from under the canvas hood, for down in the valley he saw the dark bulk of the old stone mill; then the farm-house flanked by its great barns and lesser buildings, came into view; and, last of all, the white porch of his home, and on the porch a figure, that he knew had been waiting there since the day broke. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and waved it frantically: there was an answering flutter of white, and then a turn in the road brought the leafless woods about him, and he had looked his last upon the valley.

As the sun swept higher in the heavens, and as the day advanced and the miles grew behind them, the drooping spirits of the party seemed to revive. Dunlevy and Bingham whistled or sang or chaffed poor Walsh who rode in their wagon; while Bushrod Landray and Rogers discussed the latest news from California, with an interest and cheerfulness that had been but temporarily eclipsed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

AT Cincinnati, a dilapidated wharf boat absorbed the wagons of The Benson and California Mining and Trading Company, and an affable shipping agent, after dwelling with enthusiasm on the fact that freights were steadily advancing, and the oldest river men unwilling to predict their ultimate figure, agreed to furnish transportation for the party on the “Caledonia,” which was due to arrive some time the following day, and at a price which represented but a slight advance on the regular western rate; indeed, he assured Stephen he might reasonably consider the increase merely nominal, in view of the peculiar and extraordinary advantages this particular boat had to offer in the way of safety, speed, and comfort.

But in spite of the ample promises of this individual, Stephen found he had purchased a very limited amount of space indeed, for the steamer was crowded when they boarded it, and each stop it made added to the numbers who stamped the decks when the weather permitted, and at other times clustered about the smoky wood stoves in the dingy cabins.

As they steamed down the Ohio, they passed, or were passed, by other boats, each crowded with its adventurers. They entered the Missouri, and on its banks saw the camps and canvas-covered wagons of those who had come overland to join in the epic march of the gold-seekers. At first, it was two or three wagons—further along the two or three became a score—this score grew to fifty—the fifty to a hundred—a long, slow-moving monotonous line.

Late one afternoon they reached Independence, and tied up to the bank. A tall black-bearded man of thirty-eight or forty, in greasy buckskins, had established himself at a near-by wood-pile, from which he could command an excellent prospect of the river and what was passing there. He had kept his watch from dawn until dark for a week or more. It was only when some steamer made a landing in his vicinity that he would forsake his post; then he would hurry along the bank, thrusting his vigorous way among the passengers, eagerly questioning from whence they came. During those intervals when there were no boats arriving, he cultivated a measure of intimacy with the proprietor of the wood-yard; and the latter had hospitably urged him to make free with a shelter of blankets he had devised in the rear of one of the wood ranks. But his impatience had increased as the days passed, and the good-nature which had at first expressed itself in ill-flavoured jests at the expense of the emigrants seemed to leave him; this was Basil Landray. He saw the “Caledonia” tie up to the shore; and he watched her passengers as they made their way to land, laden with the more easily portable of their belongings; suddenly, however, he uttered an exclamation and strode down the bank.

“If your name ain’t Landray, I’ll never guess again!” he said, when he had made his way to where Stephen and Bushrod stood.

“Basil?” cried the former, “Basil Landray?”

In spite of certain differences, which later on became so apparent that they seemed to destroy all family resemblance, the cousins were wonderfully alike.

“How long have you been here?” said Stephen.

“Not above a fortnight. I counted on your getting here sooner; but you’re full early; there’s no grass to speak of yet, and you can’t start a hoof across the plains until that gets up.”

In a covert, secret fashion of his own he was taking careful stock of the brothers. When Stephen’s letter had been put into his hands at Council Bluffs the previous fall, it had required an effort of memory on his part to determine who this Stephen Landray was, and just how they were related. Of the writer’s circumstances he had known absolutely nothing, and of these the letter gave no hint; this was a point upon which he had felt certain misgivings, but the very appearance of the brothers was in itself reassuring. He noted, for nothing was lost on him, that the others of the party treated them with a marked respect, which he instantly attributed to superiority of fortune, that to him being the basis of all social differences.

“Well, now;” he cried, with boisterous heartiness, “and to think I should have known the pair of you the minute I clapped eyes on you! Singular, ain’t it?”

“No,” said Stephen, surveying the fine muscular figure of the fur trader with frank approval. “No, it is not so singular after all; for we do look alike.”

“Aye, with this off,” running his fingers through his bushy heard. “As like as three peas in a pod.”

Their wagons, which were among the last loaded on the “Caledonia,” and consequently among the first to be put ashore, were soon drawn up the bank; and Dunlevy, with Bingham and Walsh busied themselves settling the camp.

“Now,” said Basil, “What are your plans?”

The Landrays had drawn apart from the others, and had thrown themselves down on the short turf which was already specked with flowers. They told him first of the return of Rogers, and of the formation of the company.

“Yonder tall fellow?” nodding in the direction of the Californian.

“Yes.”

Basil grinned. “You must have had right smart faith,” he said. “I should judge you’d have thought twice before trusting yourself to him.”

“We did.” said Stephen. “It was then I thought of you.”

“Well, if he drops off, I reckon I can fill his shoes.”

“God forbid that he should drop off!” cried Stephen quickly. “I want to see him successful. He’s a tragic and pathetic figure, with his hope and patience.”

Basil stared at him blankly, “Oh! I reckon he’ll pull through,” he said at length.

They were soon absorbed in the discussion of their plans. They kept nothing back from the fur trader, for was he not a Landray? They told him how much was invested in the enterprise, what had been spent in equipment, and what, remained in cash in hand, which they intended to invest when they should reach California, together with five thousand dollars of their own. His dark eyes sparkled, and the enthusiasm which worked up out of the sullen depths of his nature quite mastered him. He felt his heart warm toward these prosperous kinsmen of his.

“Well, freeze on to your money,” then he laughed as he added, “I didn’t know any of the Landrays could round up so much. I suppose you sold clean out to do it?”

“Not quite,” said Bushrod a little stiffly, and he glanced quickly at his brother; but Stephen avoided meeting his eye, for somehow he felt responsible for Basil, and Basil, he feared, was not quite all he had expected.

“Well, it’s a lot of money,” said the fur trader, “a lot of money. I’ve known one Landray who ain’t seen so much in many a long day, how do you plan to lay it out?”

“If possible, in mining properties,” said Stephen.

“And lose every doggone cent of it, like enough. No sir, I’d put it in something surer.”

They looked at him in mute surprise. What could be surer?

He explained.

“Every one’s crazy to dig, and while they dig they’re going to be hungry—they’re going to be mortal thirsty too. Start a store, or, better still, start a tavern; but keep your hands clean.”

“We intend to,” said Stephen drily. The fur trader swore a mighty oath.

“The crowd here’s one thing, but what will be left of it after it crosses the plains will be something else. The soft-headed and the soft-hearted will turn back, but a many a one ‘ll go through, and if money comes easy it will go easy. They’ll be a long ways from home, most of ‘em will forget they ever had homes; I’ve seen how that works in the fur country. Drink and cards will do for ‘em: I’ve seen ‘em gamble their last dollar away—their horses—their Indian women—the shirts off their backs—and once the scalps off their own heads, it’s the traders and gamblers makes the money.” he broke off abruptly with a light laugh. “You’ll figure it out to suit yourselves, I reckon, but there’ll be other ways of getting gold than digging for it.”

His unlucky candour acted like a wet blanket on the brothers. The manner of each became stiff, their tone formal; their enthusiasm changed to a forced and tepid warmth; but apparently Basil did not notice this; relaxed and at ease in his greasy buckskins, and with a short black pipe between his teeth, he lounged on the soft flower-specked turf, his mind filled with pleasant fancies.

“We’ll pick up our teams to-morrow;” he said. “Mules cost a heap more than cattle, but mules are what you want.”

“We heard at St. Louis that the cholera was here, and at St. Joseph,” said Bushrod.

“I reckon what you heard was near about so. That’s one reason why we want to pull out of here as soon as we can. When the first man died, there was a right lively stampede.” he sucked at his pipe in silence for a moment. “I ain’t partial to cholera myself,” he added.

Then he explained with some show of embarrassment that his reckoning at the tavern where he had lodged since his arrival in Independence, was still unpaid, and that he was looking to the brothers to settle it for him.

As evening fell, the open spaces about the town, common and waste, smoked with the fires of a thousand camps. The rolling upland rioted with feverish life, or vibrated with a boisterous cheerfulness, for hope was everywhere. Numberless white-topped wagons gleamed opaquely in the gathering darkness; black figures moved restlessly to and fro about the fires; there was the continual lowing of oxen; now a noisy chorus of men’s voices could be heard; then nearer at hand a clear tenor voice took up the words.

“I soon shall be in ‘Frisco,

And then I’ll look around,

And when I see the gold lumps there,

I’ll pick ‘em off the ground.

I’ll scrape the mountains clean, my boys,

I’ll drain the rivers dry,

A pocket full of rocks bring home,

So, brothers, don’t you cry!”

A hundred men roared out the refrain:

“Oh! California,

That’s the land for me!

I’m bound for San Francisco,

With my wash-bowl on my knee!”

The fur trader grinned and nodded over his tin cup of steaming coffee.

“Some of ‘em will do their singing out the other side of their mouths before they finish the first five hundred miles; eh, California?”

“I reckon so,” said Rogers, sententiously.

“Stephen, here, tells me you’ve crossed the mountains?”

Again Rogers contented himself with a brief answer in the affirmative.

“Ever been in the fur trade?” asked Basil.

“No.”

“Oh, aye, just knocking about maybe?”

“Trying mighty hard to make a living,” corrected Rogers shortly.

“That’s easy to pick up.”

“The kind I wanted wa’n’..”

“What kind were you looking for?” inquired Basil.

“Something a mighty sight different from what I got out of soldiering and ranching,” responded Rogers.

The fur trader devoted a moment to a close scrutiny of the Californian.

“It don’t seem to have agreed with you specially well, for a fact,” he commented drily.

“Come, Basil,” said Stephen, “if you are ready, we’d better go into town before it gets any later.”

They found the town alive with the unwonted traffic of that season. Before the warehouses and stores, which for years past had outfitted the Santa Fe traders and the great fur companies, freight wagons from the river landings or from St. Louis were still discharging their loads. There were other wagons from the country about, each drawn by its six or eight oxen or mules, and laden with flour, pork, and farm produce; and from the distant trading posts were still other wagons, loaded with bales of beaver and buffalo robes. The teams blocked the street, and their drivers swore hoarsely at each other; and the crowds showered them with advice.

In the stores with their barbaric display of coloured cloths, blankets, and beads, and their stacks of rifles, an army might have been equipped and armed. In and out the crowds came and went, buying and trading with a feverish haste. In the stock-yards—which seemed to be everywhere—by lantern light, men bargained for teams. There was the slow drawl of the Southerner; the nasal twang of the Yankee; the French of dark-skinned Canadian voyagers; the Spanish of swarthy Mexican packers; the frank and loudly expressed wonder of the men of the frontier, teamsters, and trappers, at the sudden invasion of their trading centre.

Basil’s reckoning at the tavern was settled, and the fur trader shouldered his pack and rifle, and they again sought the street.

“We’ll go back to camp by a nearer way,” said he, and he led them down a narrow alley. Here a rapidly driven wagon caused them to draw to one side. A negro was driving the team of mules, and following him came a two-wheeled cart. In it were two men, one of whom held a lantern in his lap. In the light it gave they could see that the handles of a pick and shovel protruded from between his knees. His companion rocked drunkenly at his side.

Basil started back with an oath.

“The cholera!” he cried.

They were bearing a body to a grave on the plains, beyond the town and the camps of the gold-seekers.

CHAPTER NINE

MR. TUCKER took the south road out of Benson, his belief being that the runaways would drive across the State to Indiana. Events proved him so far right in this conjecture that he dined at the tavern where they had breakfasted, and supped where they had dined. Then, since they had gone on presumedly in the direction of Columbus, he mounted to his seat again and urged the fractious mare forward at the best pace which the condition of the roads rendered safe. He himself was now on the verge of exhaustion; and his desire to be revenged on the fugitives, alone sustained him; it was nothing that he ached in every bone and muscle, or that his old joints had stiffened so that as he swung forward over the rutted road, or splashed through mud-holes, he was tossed and jolted from side to side quite lacking the power to protect or save himself.

The bitter sense of shame never left him; and with each weary mile the wish to be avenged for the monstrous evil he was suffering grew in his sodden brain. Yet as darkness closed about him, between the paroxysms of his rage, he thought miserably enough of his own comfortable tavern bar, filled as he knew it must be with the pleasant odour of tobacco smoke—that soft familiar haze through which for thirty years he had looked each night. He thought of the long rows of bottles on the shelves back of the deal bar, and of what they held; of the open fireplace with its warmth and cheer, which Jim had heaped with great logs. There was something inspiring and of high domestic virtue even in the reek of the sperm oil in the brass lamps; indeed, there was not a single memory which his mind fed upon, that he would have had changed in the minutest particular, or that did not add to the wretchedness of his present plight.

He thought of the excellent and thirsty company that was gathering there, and the best company was always thirsty. He thought tenderly of the little cherished peculiarities of each of his cronies; of Mr. Harden the undertaker, and the accurate information he was always ready to impart touching the ravages of sickness and death in the county; of Mayor Kirby, and Squire Riley, and the argument on certain mooted points of constitutional law they had been carrying on almost nightly, for more years than he could remember; and which had become so intricate that these distinguished opponents were as often as not astonished to find themselves on the wrong side of the question, each upholding the opinions of the other with a most embarrassing force and logic; he thought of Mr. Bently, the postmaster, and his interesting political reminiscences, the chiefest gem being the narrative of his meeting with Andrew Jackson, and the wealth of whose impressions concerning that remarkable man—which might be said to have compounded themselves most industriously—now bore no relation whatever to the actual time which the victor of New Orleans had devoted to Mr. Bently’s case, generally supposed to have been the Benson post-office. He thought of Colonel Sharp, stately but condescending, and his agreeable conversation embellished as it was by classical quotations, which never failed to carry a sense of conviction and fullness to the mental stomach: of the British bullet he had brought away from the disastrous fight at Fallen Timbers, but which no surgeon’s probe had ever been able to locate, and concerning the outrageous behaviour of which Mr. Tucker was expected to show daily the keenest interest, since the most subtle change in the weather, a rise or fall in the temperature, a shift in the wind, affected this piece of lead in the most singular manner, enabling it, so the colonel stoutly averred, to travel up and down his leg between the knee and thigh quite at its own pleasure, but much to his discomfort.

Probably they were all at the tavern even now; and here was he, wet and wretched, with a cold wind and a yet colder rain beating in his face, miles and miles away!

Then at last, out of the darkness and mist and the falling rain, down the waste of muddy roads, and far across the desolate fields, one by one the lights of the capitol city blinked at him. He drove up High Street, past the Niel House, for he was prejudiced against so pretentious an establishment; and turning down a side street drew up in front of a small frame building, which a creaking sign announced to be Roebuck’s Tavern.

Roebuck was an old friend, though they had not met in years; and it was Roebuck himself, who, hearing the rattle of wheels before his door, hurried out from the bar, lantern in hand, to bid his guest welcome. He was a burly figure of a man, florid of face, but bland and smiling.

“John,” cried Mr. Tucker weakly, “John, I wonder if you’ll know me!”

“Know you?” swinging up the lantern. “Know you?” scrutinizing doubtfully the limp figure in the buggy. “Why, God bless me—it’s Tucker, of the Red Brick at Benson!”

He seized Tucker’s cold fingers in a friendly grasp, and fell to bawling for his hostler. When the latter appeared, he assisted his friend to alight, and bore him indoors.

“Why, man, you’re wet to the skin!” he cried. “You’ll be after having something to eat, a drop to drink, and a pipe.”

“A dish of licker right now, if you please, John,” said Tucker, turning his eyes in the direction of the bar; and though he doubted if Roebuck would have anything to tell him, he made his inquiries concerning the runaways. Roebuck nodded.

“They stopped here for supper. Gibbs I knowed by sight, but his lady was a stranger to me.”

“Where are they now?” cried Tucker fiercely. “Here?”

“Nay, man, they only stopped for supper, as I told you. When they were leaving they asked me about the road to Washington in Fayette County; but they’ll have to stop for the night on the way; their team wa’n’. good for ten miles more when they drove away from here.”

Mr. Tucker groaned aloud. “I’d keep on after them, but I ain’t fit, John,” he said.

“You do look beat,” agreed his friend.

“I been after them since early morning,” said Tucker.

“Your daughter, maybe?”

“My wife,” answered Tucker briefly.

“You don’t tell me!” cried Roebuck. “Let’s see, it was your first wife I knowed, wa’n’. it?”

“My second,” said Tucker. “Sarah.”

“So it was. I mind now that was her name.”

“A good woman,” said Tucker, and said no more.

Presently, however, when he had eaten, and his eating included much drinking, they established themselves for privacy’s sake in the tavern parlour near a small table, where as the night wore on, there was a steady accumulation of empty bottles, “Dead soldiers,” Roebuck called them.

It was then that Tucker poured the narrative of his wrongs into the listening ear of his ancient friend.

“I mind now I heard of your second wife’s death, and that you’d married again,” said Roebuck, when he had finished.

“It was once too often, John,” said Tucker sadly. “I know it now though I didn’t think so then. She was a tidy-looking girl when I carried her home to the Red Brick.”

“She’s an uncommon fine looker yet,” Roebuck assured him.

“She is,” agreed Tucker. “I seen her the first time at her father’s farm, I’d gone there to buy grain. Only to buy grain, mind you; I had no more idea of marrying again than nothing at all; but being married once makes a man bold, and I allow being married twice makes him downright reckless; so while old Tom Gough, her father—”

“I knowed him,” said Roebuck, interrupting him. “One eye missing,” he added, wishing to establish Mr. Gough’s identity beyond peradventure.

“Fourth of July,” said Tucker. “Breach of his rifle blowed out.”

“That’s him,” said Roebuck nodding. “Go on—old Tom Gough—”

“Went down to the barn to hook up,” said Tucker, resuming his narrative, “you see he wanted to show me his crops, I was intending buying in the field, and he left me setting on his front porch where I could see her through the hall whisking about helping her mother at the back of the house. Watching her I got so lonely that presently I called to her to come out where I was, and she called back that there was more between us than the house. ‘More than the house between us,’ says I, ‘perhaps you mean a man.’ ‘Not a man,’ says she, ‘but I don’t know as I fancy your looks, Mr. Tucker.’ ‘The liking of looks,’ says I, ‘is a matter of habit. Give me time and perhaps you’ll like such looks as I have well enough.’ That,” added Mr. Tucker savagely, “was the beginning.”

“And you married her,” said Roebuck.

“Damn her, I did,” said Tucker.

“Trouble from the start?” asked Roebuck.

“No, we got along satisfactory, you might say, with now and then a spat as is to be expected, and which signifies little enough.”

“Little enough surely,” agreed Roebuck.

“And then along came this scalawag Gibbs.”

“One man’s as good as another until the other heaves into sight, I’ve noticed that,” observed Roebuck.

“Exactly,” said Tucker moodily.

Mr. Tucker left Columbus at dawn the next day, and in a pouring rain, which rendered the roads all but impassible.

The runaways kept their lead of him, and again he dined where they had breakfasted and supped where they had dined. This brought him to Washington. He followed them to Leesburg, almost due south, and he feared they were directing their course to some river point. At Leesburg, however, they turned north again taking the Wilmington Pike. He was now convinced that Gibbs had in mind reaching some station on the Little Miama railroad, and felt that if he was to overtake them he must do so that day.

Just beyond Wilmington where they had stopped at a cross-road blacksmith shop, the runaways caught their first sight of Mr. Tucker, who like a battered fate, toiled into view. They had scarcely reckoned on the old tavernkeeper showing such tenacity of purpose; indeed, he was within a hundred yards of them, when Gibbs happening to glance back up the road, descried the fractious mare, urged on by the injured husband, charging down upon them, and at a speed, which had this backward glance of his been delayed another moment would have brought the chase to a conclusion of some sort then and there. With a muttered oath he tossed a handful of change to the smith who had just replaced the shoe one of the bays had cast, and lashed his horses with the whip. Yet prompt as their flight was, he heard Tucker call, bidding him stop.

First the mare gained slowly inch by inch. Then the bays worked ahead. But they in their turn lost ground and the mare gained on them once more, until Mr. Tucker’s voice could be heard again. He was calling to them to stop or take the consequences; but they did not stop and there were no consequences; for the bays quickly recovered their lead.

Gibbs stood in no actual fear of the old tavernkeeper, but he felt that under the circumstances a meeting with him would have its disagreeable features; and to do him justice, he was not lacking in the wish to spare the woman at his side the distress of such an interview.

The bays now drew steadily ahead, and Tucker dropped back until a good quarter of a mile separated him from the pair in the buggy; this grew to half a mile—three-quarters—though he plied the whip with desperate energy.

Suddenly he was surprised to see the bays slow down to a walk, but a moment later he realized what the difficulty was. They were approaching a ford. He had already experienced both difficulty and danger in fording swollen streams; perhaps this one would force the runaways to turn and face him. He slipped the quilt from about the pistols with one hand while he guided his horse with the other, for he had caught the glint of the angry current where it ran level with the bank, sending a placid stretch of dirty yellow water down the road to meet the fugitives. An instant later the bays splashed into this.

Gibbs drew in his horses. He had no intention of attempting the ford.

“I am sorry,” he said to his companion, “but we shall have to meet him here, the ford is not safe.”

Tucker saw the bays come to a stand, and shaking with excitement and rage, snatched up one of the pistols and sought to cock it; but his fingers were numb with cold, the lock rusted and stiff, and he could not start the hammer. He put the reins between his knees, and took both hands to the task. The hammer rose slowly from the cap. Then suddenly his fingers seemed to lose all power and strength, the hammer fell, the piece exploded.

When the smoke that for a moment enveloped him cleared away, he saw that Gibbs had changed his mind about waiting for him to come up. The bays were struggling in midstream, and when he reached the ford were just emerging on the other bank. He reined in his horse and considered. The stream had an ugly look. It was quite narrow, however, and he could see plainly where the wheels of the buggy had left their impress on the soft bank opposite. But his fury got the better of a constitutional timidity that usually turned him back from any hazardous undertaking. He touched the mare sharply with the whip; she started forward; and then as she felt the water deepen about her, flung back. He jerked her round savagely, and she plunged forward once more; but when she felt the force of the current, veered sharply, overturning the buggy. Tucker was pitched headlong from his seat. He gained a footing, but the water was waist deep, and the current instantly twisted his feet from under him, and he was rolled over and over like a cork. To have extricated himself would have been an easy task for a strong swimmer; but Mr. Tucker was not a strong swimmer. The current was sweeping him toward the opposite shore, and perhaps safety; but he was entirely possessed by the confused idea that he must recover his horse, which, rid of its master had kicked itself free of buggy and harness, and was now galloping down the road toward Wilmington.

He put his might against the current’s might. It swept him further and further away from the ford. Splinters and fragments of the wrecked buggy floated after him. He gave up all idea of regaining the Wilmington shore. He wondered desperately if Gibbs had not seen the accident, and if he would let him go to his death in that flood of rushing muddy water without an effort to save him; but Gibbs had passed about a turn in the road, and knew nothing of the tragedy that was being enacted so close at hand.

He snatched at the drooping boughs of willows and elms where they trailed about him in the water, but though his fingers touched them again and again, he lacked the power to retain his hold upon them. The cold was numbing him; his arms and legs had the weight of lead. Once he sank—then his dripping bald head, white scared face, and starting eyes appeared, and the fight for life went on. Twice he sank—and again he came to the surface, choking, strangling, his old face purple. A third time he sank—but this time he did not reappear.

CHAPTER TEN

THE weeks that followed Stephen’s departure held for Virginia Landray the misery of a first separation. It was the uprooting of all she had counted on as most secure and abiding. That thousands of other men had left their homes on the same errand meant nothing to her, for it was not in her nature to generalize.

Her one comfort was his letters, which reached her at short and reasonably regular intervals. He was all buoyancy and hope; he seemed to think only of the success in store for them; and he so dwelt upon this need of money, a need he magnified to himself and to her, that it was not strange she ended by having a wholly wrong and exaggerated idea of the condition of the family fortunes.

“He is doing it all for me,” she told herself with quivering lips, “and that only makes it the more wicked and monstrous! He has left his home for my sake, becauses he wishes to give me every comfort and luxury; as if I cared for anything—but him!”

Inspired by this thought, she regulated her personal expenditures with an eye to the most rigid economy. These economies of hers threatened to become a scandal and a reproach to Anna, Bushrod’s wife, who, however much she regretted her husband’s absence, refused to believe that any sacrifice could be made even tributary to her comfort, or could in any way lighten the sorrow and apprehension, she declared she was knowing for the first time in her married life.

But Virginia, whose faith was rather less than her affection for this cheerful sufferer, determined to propose to her that they live together at the farm, and thus save the expense of one household. She planned it all in detail. Anna could have the big front room over the parlour with the smaller one adjoining that looked out upon the west meadow. It would do admirably as a nursery for little Stephen. She grew quite excited over this project, and was on the point of driving into town to see Anna, when Anna herself in all the ingenious gaiety of new spring finery, drove into the yard.

She swept up the steps to Virginia, who had hurried to the door to receive her, adjusting her bonnet with one neatly gloved hand, and gathering up her skirts out of the way with the other; her small person radiant with grace and charm.

She seemed to be thrilling with some pleasurable excitement; and Virginia immediately thought it must be a letter from Bushrod.

“Have you heard about Mr. Tucker?” she asked quite breathlessly.

“What about Mr. Tucker?” said Virginia disappointed.

“He’s dead—drowned—my dear! I hurried out to tell you, for I knew you would be interested. One always is, in these dreadful shocking tragedies.”

“Dead! Drowned!” cried Virginia in horror.

“Yes, my dear, drowned!” said Anna, with a small air of triumph.

“Oh!” cried Virginia; and added, “Poor, poor old man!”

“He was following his wife and that dreadful Captain Gibbs—it’s quite settled now that she ran off with him; he tracked them half across the state, it seems.”

“But how did he lose his life?” asked Virginia.

“It seems he attempted to ford a dangerously swollen stream and was swept away; no one has the full particulars yet, but I saw Mr. Benson, and he says there is no doubt but that Mr. Tucker is dead.”

“Poor old man!” repeated Virginia pityingly.

“Well!” said Anna, “Captain Gibbs will never dare to show his face here again. They say they will tar and feather him if he does; and I think myself that would be none too good for him.”

Virginia looked inquiringly at her. She wondered if she had come merely to tell her this.

“Did Stephen ever say anything to you about his and Bush’s business with Mr. Tucker—the distillery, I mean?” asked Anna.

Virginia shook her head.

“I really think it shocking the ignorance in which those men have kept us about their affairs! Just suppose anything should happen to them!”

“But nothing will,” said Virginia quickly.

“How does one know that, my dear? The papers say the cholera is at Independence.”

“Oh! Don’t, Anna! How can you?” and Virginia put up her hands appealingly.

“Well, dear, one mustn’t always look on the bright side: It’s just as well to be serious sometimes. Goodness knows! You are always saying that I am not half serious enough, and now when I am willing to be—”

“But I never meant in this way!” cried Virginia.

“I know, dear, but there is absolutely nothing else to be serious about!”

“What do they say about Mrs. Tucker and Captain Gibbs?” asked Virginia, wishing to bring Anna back to her original theme.

“They kept on of course; isn’t it scandalous! I knew that woman was no better than she should be, but Bush always wanted me to be civil on account of poor Mr. Tucker. Imagine, my dear, she was his third wife! You must admit there is a sort of levity about such marriages that prevents one being altogether serious in thinking of them; but did Stephen ever tell you anything about the distillery? Every one seems to think that all of Mr. Tucker’s property will go to his wife; and I always understood that he had never finished paying for the distillery; but Mr. Benson seems to think there was a settlement just before Stephen and Bushrod started West. Did Stephen ever say anything to you about it?”

“No,” said Virginia, “or if he did, I have forgotten it. But what were those papers they had us sign just before they left, don’t you remember, Anna?”

“Why, yes—I am sure that Bush told me that it had something to do with Mr. Tucker. Well, I hope they won’t lose the distillery,” said Anna.

“Mr. Tucker’s death will make no difference,” said Virginia. And then she outlined her plan, which Anna received coldly and with every outward evidence of disfavour.

“What, me bury myself in the country?” she cried. “And to save a few dollars? No, indeed; and I am sure Bush would not be pleased if I did. He begged me not to mope—he was always such a dear; you may feel quite sure that they are perfectly happy; men always get along very well when they are by themselves like that. I sometimes think we are of no special use to them except to keep their homes and to mother their children.”

“How is little Stephen, Anna?” Virginia asked, and a shade of constraint crept into her manner. This was one of her hidden griefs.

Her little nephew had been named in honour of his grandfather, and there could never be a son of hers who might bear that name. She never thought of this without a secret jealous pang.

“I had intended to bring him with me, but I came off in such haste—”

“If you were at the farm”—began Virginia.

“Now don’t, dear,” and Anna put up her hands in pretty appeal. “I know all the many advantages of this dreadful lonely place; I spent the first year of my married life here, and I’m not likely to forget it, for I never gave Bush a moment’s peace until he had bought the place in town and we had moved into it. That nearly broke up the family! General Landray—a terribly determined old man—never forgave me for that up to the very day of his death; he wanted us to stay on here. I know just what you would say, Virginia; I know all you would do for Stephen. It’s such a pity you haven’t children of your own.”

Virginia said nothing, but the colour came and went on her cheeks. There was a pause during which Anna moved restlessly in her chair; when Virginia was serious she was very depressing.

Anna was small and dark and pretty, and under the cloak of yielding pliant femininity hid a stout heart and certain strenuous characteristics, conspicuous among which was a really notable determination to have her own way in all small matters affecting her comfort and pleasure. Any large purpose was quite beyond her mental scope, but in the trivial doings of life, its little intrigues and sly manouvres, she was an industrious schemer for petty victories and petty spoils. These were her failings; but on the other hand her good nature rarely forsook her, and she was prolific with those kindnesses that involved no special self-denial.

When Virginia spoke again, it was still to urge the merits of the change. Anna listened patiently and when the other had finished, said, tempering her refusal with a compliment.

“I declare, I never knew you were such a manager, Virginia. You are positively clever. Candidly, dear, I couldn’t think of it. It’s quite awful; and it’s coming summer, too, with all those frightful noisy bugs and frogs to keep one awake nights—I should positively die!”

“That’s absurd, Anna,” retorted Virginia sharply. “I do wish you would be sensible, Think of the economy of the arrangement.”

“That’s the very thing I refuse to think of. Do be reasonable, Virginia; what will our petty scrimpings amount to in the course of a year? And Stephen—he must be kept at school, he is awfully backward for a child of his years,” and her face assumed a pretty look of maternal anxiety. “This fall I want to enter him at Doctor Long’s Academy, and if he were at the farm that would be impossible.”

“It’s easy enough to find objections,” said Virginia resentfully.

“No, dear, the whole difficulty is to overcome them,” answered Anna sweetly. “If I really thought it was for the best, I would gladly sacrifice my personal preference; but I don’t think it is for the best. Besides, I have asked Mr. Benson to see Doctor Long, and arrange for Stephen’s admission to the Academy in the fall.”

“I should have thought you would have preferred to attend to that yourself,” said Virginia, who cherished no little resentment where the lawyer was concerned, because of the innocent part he had been forced to play in the organization of the hated company.

“He is always very kind and considerate,” murmured Anna, who by nature was a lukewarm champion.

“Is he?” said Virginia, but the look on her face was cold and repellent.

“You don’t like him!”

“There is no reason why I should either like or dislike him. He is merely my husband’s lawyer. So you feel, Anna, that you cannot give up the house in town?”

“Impossible, dear,” briskly. Her conviction as to what was needed for her happiness was always perfectly clear; she seldom had cause to reconsider.

Anna was now ready to return to town; Virginia urged her to stay to dinner, but she had many reasons why her presence was needed at her own home, and Virginia saw that it was useless to insist. At parting she reached up to kiss Virginia, she had to stand on tiptoe to do this, but the latter with the stateliest of inclinations presented her cheek for the caress.

“Why, I believe you are angry with me, Virginia,” she cried. “Let me look at you; yes, you are. Oh! How unfair of you, Virginia—and it is all on account of Stephen, I am sure you wouldn’t have him grow up an ignoramus when he has his uncle’s name, now would you?”

From her seat on the porch Virginia watched Anna drive away. She rested her chin in the palm of her hand and gazed out across the fields. She wondered if it were true, as Anna had suggested; if Stephen had wearied of the life that to her had seemed perfect in its peace and happiness.

“He didn’t leave me because he would be happier away from me! he has gone to earn money for me—as if I cared for money! I hate it!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IT was not until the morning of the third day following their arrival in Independence that the members of the Benson and California Mining and Trading Company fell in at the rear of the wagon train that since midnight had been moving in one unbroken line out from the town and its environs.

Day was just breaking when their three wagons, drawn by stout mules, wheeled briskly into place, and as the sun came up and they saw the train stretching out ahead of them, they felt afresh the inspiration of their common hope in this peaceful conquest of fortune. A wave of joyous exultation seemed to sweep along the line; whips cracked, the mounted men galloped to and fro; while out of the uncertain light beyond, as the sun crept up above the horizon, the white lurching tops of the great wagons burst into view, one by one; but growing always smaller until finally they became mere white specks, dropping back in the track of the receding mist.

For the first two hundred miles west from the Missouri the country presented vast reaches of freshest green, gently rolling and intersected at intervals by streams, along whose banks grew scattered elms and cottonwoods. Hidden away in the fertile bottoms they came upon farms or ranches, each with its patch of cultivated land; but as they advanced these became less and less frequent; the uniform view was now one wide, rolling plain, with a distant fringe of timber marking the water-courses.

Then the waves of land ceased, the soil seemed to lose its fertility; and a dead level spread before the unresisting eye. They were entering upon the region of the Platte River and the plains proper. Long ere this the slow-moving oxen had fallen to the rear of the line of white-topped wagons; the mules had outstripped them as they, in their turn, were outstripped by the mounted men. But a greater change was making itself manifest throughout the caravan. The enthusiasm of the gold-seekers was waning in the face of unlooked for hardship and suffering. The cholera had caught them as they left the Missouri, and their line of march was dotted with newly-made graves.

Then, even as Basil Landray had foretold, the faint-hearted sickened of their enterprise, and with the stricken ones who had lost friends or relatives, turned back. The fur trader, giving way to boistrous merriment, showed an inclination to chaff these as they passed; but Stephen sternly bade him keep silent.

He was finding Basil a sore trial, yet the fur trader retained a measure of his faith and confidence, for he displayed a tireless energy in the face of every difficulty. If their mules or horses strayed over night, it was usually Basil who found them in the morning; if there was a stream to be crossed, it was Basil who located the ford; if they needed game, Basil was almost certain to bring it into camp; these were real and tangible benefits which could not be overlooked.

Stephen and Bushrod discussed him privately; at first with a palpable bias in his favour, magnifying each redeeming trait; but gradually their feeling of exasperation toward him was wholly in the ascendent.

“He’s positively servile to us,” complained Bushrod. “That’s what I can’t stand. If he treated us as he treats Rogers, for instance, I don’t know but what I’d like him a great deal better; at least I’d have a sufficient excuse to kick him out of camp.”

“Don’t you think we’ve allowed him to wear on us?” said Stephen. “After all, I don’t know that we have any right to expect him to be different from what he is; and he certainly is the most useful member of the company; we must admit that.”

“Yes, he’s handy with the stock,” said Bushrod grudgingly.

Early in June they reached Fort Laramie, where they camped with the intention of giving their teams a rest of several days. At the Fort, which had been one of the many posts of the American Fur Company, and which the government had only recently acquired by purchase, they found a detachment of Mounted Rifles, while the employees of the Company were still in camp on the river. Among these latter Basil found a number of former associates, and for a night and a day they saw nothing of him; but on the second evening he suddenly strode into camp, and flung himself down in the midst of the little group about the fire.

“I know what I reckon there’s many a one would give a good deal to know,” he said jubilantly. “Steve, how’d you fancy shortening up the trail into Salt Lake? I been talking with one of the company’s men who knows all the country hereabouts, and he’s marked a trail for me.”

“I allowed you knew this here country yourself,” said Rogers sarcastically. “The whole of it, too.”

“I know the trail we been following, for it’s the same I took when I helped fetch Brigham Young across the plains after he was run out of Illinois.”

“Which, I reckon, was a damn good job,” said Rogers.

“Which, I reckon, it was nothing of the sort,” retorted Basil quickly.

“What about the new route?” Stephen asked.

“Oh, aye. Well, coming with Brigham Young we followed the Platte clear around until we came to the head of the Sweet Water, then we struck across to the Big Sandy, and on down to Jim Bridger’s trading post, pretty nearly south. But see, now—” he took up a bit of charred stick, and rising, turned to one of the wagons whose canvas side showed clearly in the light of the camp-fire. “Now, here’s Fort Laramie—Fort John it was in the old days—and off here’s Fort Bridger, and way round here runs the north fork of the Platte, and here the Sweet Water lets in.” He sketched rapidly, and soon the canvas was covered with a rude outline map. “Bear in mind that’s the emigrant road, as they call it; now we can strike south from here and follow the Chugwater up toward its source; it runs hereaways for a matter of a hundred miles, with this range of hills to the westward of it; just here the hills break away, and the trail turns west; three day’s march will bring us to the Laramie—which lets in here—eight days more will bring us off here to Bridger’s Pass; and from there on, the trail is almost due west to the head waters of the Weber.”

“And we won’t go near Fort Bridger at all?”

“Certain we shan’t; that’s north of us. When we reach the Weber we’ll follow it into the valley; and if we need anything there, I reckon I’ll have little enough trouble in getting what’s wanted; they won’t have forgotten me, or if they have, I’ll jog their memories for them. What do you say?”

Stephen looked at Rogers.

“What do you think?” he asked. “He did this because it had been evident from the first that Rogers viewed the fur trader with no friendly eye, just as it was equally evident that Basil’s feelings for the Californian were similarly hostile, each regarding the other as a rival in his own special field.”

“I don’t know anything about this new trail,” said Rogers sullenly.

The fur trader grinned and pulled at his black beard. “No? That’s odd, too. I allowed you knew the whole blame country, from hearing you talk,” he jeered.

Rogers ignored this, and addressed himself to Stephen.

“You’d better bear in mind that there’ll be plenty of Indians, and instead of fifty or a hundred wagons which they daren’t fool with, there’ll be just three.”

“I don’t need to tell Mr. Rogers that these here Indians of his will be mostly armed with bows and arrows,” said Basil scornfully, but he drew his bushy brows together and scowled at the Californian.

“No, and you don’t need to Mister me,” retorted Rogers.

“Well, among friends—”

“And you don’t need to make any mistake about that either,” cried Rogers quickly. “I ain’t always been able to choose my company, but it’s different with my friends.”

“Why, you—” Basil began, his beard quivering; but Stephen put out his hand and rested it heavily on his shoulder.

“Go on, Basil,” he said quietly. “How about grass and water?”

“There’s enough of both,” he answered moodily, with eyes still fixed on Rogers.

“But is the road possible for wagons?”

The fur trader grinned arrogantly. “It ain’t a road, it’s just something between a scent and a trail,” he turned to his map again. “We’ll strike water here, and here, and all along here, and where there’s water there’s grass. You’ll admit, Mr. Rogers, the emigrant road is a pretty round about way to Salt Lake, if there’s anything nearer.”

“I’m not disputing the distances,” said Rogers reluctantly, for he felt that the leadership of the company was passing from him. “But I don’t like the risks of getting caught up with by the Indians.”

“We’ll think about it over night,” said Stephen. “We shan’t leave here until day after to-morrow, and, in the meantime, I’d like to see your friend.”

“All right,” said Basil, “That’s fair enough. I’ll fetch him round in the morning and you can talk with him.”

The result of this was, that when the Landrays left Fort Laramie they turned to the south instead of to the west, and followed down the Chugwater.

“It’s a mistake,” Rogers said sadly to Walsh. “It’s too much of a risk to run to save a few days. It’s a big mistake.”

Even Basil seemed to recognize that a caution greater than they had yet shown was now necessary; for he instructed his companions not, on any account, to leave the close proximity of the wagons, while their mules were no longer turned loose at night to graze, but were tied to the wagons instead, and grass cut for them.

At his request Stephen had bought a horse for him before leaving Fort Laramie, and he usually rode in advance of the company, alert and vigilant; sometimes Stephen or Bushrod rode with him on the saddle horses they had brought from the Missouri. Occasionally they encountered small roving bands of Indians, to whom Basil made protestations of friendship and trifling gifts, but he refused to allow them to enter the camp on any pretext.

Rogers, who was not beyond a certain fairness, admitted that the fur trader’s presence was of supreme value, and he surprised the others by the unquestioning obedience he yielded him in all matters that bore upon their safety. His condition had steadily improved since leaving Missouri, he now insisted upon doing his share of guard duty, from which he had formerly been exempt, and Basil declared him the most trustworthy member of the party.

“I don’t have to stir about when it’s his watch,” he told Bushrod. “He don’t go to sleep like Walsh and Bingham, who have to be kicked awake every now and then, and he don’t take the flapping of the wagon canvases for Indians like Dunlevy does. I reckon he’s been a man in his day.”

But beyond the Chugwater an incident occurred which effectually destroyed the apparent good feeling that had prevailed since they left Fort Laramie. They had camped for the night at the head of a small stream, and not far from a sparse growth of cottonwoods, whither Basil had gone with Rogers and Dunlevy to bring in a supply of firewood. Benny, near the wagons which had been drawn together in the form of a triangle, had already started a fire of dry twigs against the return of the choppers. Not far off the others of the party with their hunting-knives were busy cutting grass for the mules and horses.

Suddenly, coming from the cottonwoods, Stephen caught the sound of angry voices. First it was Rogers’s voice, high pitched and bitter with the ready rancour of ill-health; a pause succeeded, and then Basil seemed to answer him, but in a more moderate tone. Stephen, suspending his work, glanced at Bushrod in mute inquiry, and at that moment Dunlevy stepped out of the wood.

“Landray!” he called loudly. “You and your brother had better come here.”

The two men dropped their knives, and strode toward him in haste.

“Basil must let Rogers alone,” said Bushrod. “Can’t he see the man’s sick and to be pitied?”

They had entered the woods, and now they came out upon its furthest margin and upon a surprising group. Rogers, pale and shaking with rage, Basil very red in the face, and three figures on horseback. One of these was a white man, a tall fellow in a ragged uniform, which they recognized as that of the Mounted Rifles; his two companions were wrapped in gaudy blankets, their long rifles resting across the horns of their saddles. Stephen and Bushrod instantly divined that they were half-breeds, while the likeness they bore each other was sufficiently marked to indicate that they were brothers. Their glance was fixed on the fur trader, but the stoical composure they maintained told nothing of what was passing in their minds. The white man, too, was preserving a strictly impartial silence.

Rogers was saying: “I got as much to say about this as any one.”

Basil lowered at him with sour hatred. “You? Who the hell are you? You ain’t got a dollar in the outfit!”

“I got what counts for money,” answered Rogers, and shook his fist in Basil’s face.

“What’s the matter, Basil?” demanded the Landrays in a breath.

The fur trader smiled rather sheepishly. “It’s this fool, Rogers,” he began sullenly.

“Oh, go to hell!” interrupted Rogers. He pointed to the three silent figures on horseback and cried fiercely: “This half-breed outfit’s his!”

“Easy!” said the uniformed stranger, with a light, good-natured laugh. “I’m no half-breed, and I’m just mighty glad to see you white folks!”

“And who are you?” demanded Stephen.

“It’s too bad, Cap, but I came off in such a hurry I clean left my kyards behind, but if you’ll take my word for it, Raymond’s my name.” He leaned slightly toward Stephen as he spoke, with an air of winning candour. “I’m real put out that yonder party’s so upset.” He spoke with grave concern. “Yes, sir, real put out.”

“But who are you? And what are you doing here?”

“Raymond’s my name, Cap,” repeated the stranger affably. “Like I should spell it for you?”

“Where’s his rifle, why ain’t he armed, and how does it come he knows your cousin?” cried Rogers.

“Party’s eyesight ain’t a failing him yet,” murmured the stranger in a tone of caressing confidence to Stephen. “Well,” he added, “since you seem to object to us, me and my friends here’ll just cut loose.”

“No you don’t, Raymond!” cried Basil angrily.

“See you in Salt Lake,” said Raymond, gathering up his reins. “Enquire for me.”

“I’ll see you all the way there, too,” retorted Basil with an oath. He spoke sharply to the half-breeds, who at once closed up, one on each side of Raymond. The latter dropped back in his saddle, relaxing his hold on the bridle rein. Stephen regarded him in silence for a moment.

“Didn’t I see you at Fort Laramie?” he asked.

The stranger, still smiling, nodded, and raising his hand to the corner of his mouth spat decorously back of it.

“In the colonel’s quarters, was it not?” said Stephen sternly.

“The blamed old tarrapin was snapping away at me right lively;” he was still smiling pleasantly. He gestured slightly with his hand. “Out here, me and him would have had some sort of a falling out I reckon, but back yonder I had to swallow what he said, though his words were choky enough. Them army men’s real candid.”

“I believe you had attempted to desert,” said Stephen, with illy-concealed disgust.

“Well, you might call it an attempt. I reckon the colonel counts it more then that. I held the lead for more than a hundred miles, and I reckon I’d be holding it yet only my hoss went lame. It was the best hoss the colonel owned, too.” His smile never lost a certain amiability; it seemed to spring from the unperverted innocence of his nature.

“How did you get here?” demanded Stephen.

“Ask him. He done it,” and he jerked his thumb in the direction of Basil. Stephen turned to the fur trader.

“What have you to say about this?” he asked gravely.

“He’s all right. I’ll vouch for him and the half-breeds,” he said.

“That isn’t what I want to know. I want to know how he happens to be here,” insisted Stephen.

“I fixed that with the half-breeds,” and Basil laughed.

“You mean you got them to break jail for him?”

“What the devil difference does it make?”

“The man’s a deserter, and the part you have played in releasing him—”

“What odds does it make to you?” retorted Basil. Then he moderated his tone. “Oh, come now, Steve, what’s the use of your sweating about this? Louis and Baptiste here will help with the stock; Raymond’s all right, too. They’re three mighty good men to have about.”

But now Rogers broke in with objections. “It’s right enough for the rest of you. But my wife was killed by the Indians. These are half-breeds, but I got no more use for half-breeds than whole breeds. They’re all one to me.”

“Yes,” said Basil roughly, “you’d have used your rifle on Louis there. Lucky for you I saw you getting ready to shoot.”

“I may have a chance to use it on him yet,” answered Rogers, and he directed a volley of abuse at the fur trader. The latter flushed hotly.

“Come aside, you two,” said Stephen, nodding to his brother and the fur trader. “Now,” he said, when they were out of ear shot of the others, “am I to understand, Basil, that you induced those halfbreeds to liberate that man?”

“You’ve got the idea exactly. See here, Steve, Raymond’s a friend of mine; his father’s one of the big men in Salt Lake. Raymond and the old man never got along any too well, and a while back Raymond joined the army. He knew that would make the old man hop and swear, but he found he’d rather overdone the business, and, naturally, he tried to cut loose from the whole thing. He deserted, and was fetched back; that’s when you saw him. I heard he was in the guard-house and managed to see him; and he offered me five hundred dollars if I’d help him out and get him into the valley where all the soldiers in the United States can’t touch him. As he ain’t any money, and as he’s pretty slippery, I just had the two half-breeds bring him along so I’d have him where I could keep my hands on him. They’re to get half the money, you see.”

Stephen had regarded the fur trader in blank astonishment while he explained the part he had had in the deserter’s release. Now he turned to Bushrod, who burst out laughing.

“This is a unique adventure for two law-abiding citizens.”

“What would you do?” asked Stephen.

“Do?” cried Bushrod. “Send the miserable rascal back, with our compliments to his colonel.”

“Try it!” said Basil, sullenly.

“Well, and what if we do try it?” said Bushrod, flushing angrily at the other’s tone and manner.

“Try it!” repeated Basil doggedly.

But Stephen shook his head slowly. “We’re two hundred miles from Fort Laramie,” he said.

“You can keep on. I’ll take him back myself, and join you in Salt Lake,” said Bushrod.

“No, if one goes back, all must go back.”

“Well, then, none will go, Steve, you know that.”

“But what about the two half-breeds and the deserter?” asked Stephen, with a troubled frown.

“I expect they’ll accompany us into Salt Lake,” said Bushrod, with a shrewd smile. Then he turned on his cousin.

“We’ll dispense with you when we reach Salt Lake, do you hear?”

That night the two Indians and the deserter hobbled their horses and went into camp on the edge of the cottonwoods, and within a stone’s throw of the wagons.

CHAPTER TWELVE

AS Anna turned from the lane into the public road she met a cart which held a man and a woman. They were on the point of entering the lane as she left it. She smiled and nodded gaily to the man; then she stared hard at his companion. She wondered whom it could be that Mr. Benson had with him, and what he was doing there. Then she regretted she had been in such haste to leave Virginia.

“I am always doing the most stupid things,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve almost a mind to turn back and pretend I’ve forgotten something. I wonder if I haven’t?” but a hasty search revealed that her purse and handkerchief were in her pocket, and so, perforce, she continued on her way into town.

Meanwhile the cart had kept on up the lane toward the house. “That was Mrs. Bushrod Landray,” Benson explained. “I might have taken you to her, but I think you will prefer to meet her sister.”

When they reached the horse-block by the front steps, Benson climbed briskly down from the cart and turned to assist his companion to alight; but he saw that she hesitated. His glance was full of sympathy.

“I am very sorry, Mrs. Walsh,” he said gently, and his whole manner was the extreme of kindness; then his face brightened. “Perhaps you’d rather I saw her first alone; I can just as well as not. It will save you all explanation. If you don’t mind sitting here—” Mrs. Walsh hesitated. “I hardly like to ask so much of you, you have been more than kind already.”

“You must regard me merely as your intermediary. We lawyers are accustomed to execute all kinds of commissions.” and he handed her the reins.

“But not always for such an unprofitable client, Mr. Benson,” she answered gravely.

“Sometimes the mere ability to serve carries its own recompense, Mrs. Walsh. The idea of any other would degrade the service,” and he made her a formal little bow. Then he turned away and went slowly up the steps.

He had not seen Virginia since the day he had driven out to the farm to consult Stephen about the renewal of the note. Virginia herself answered his knock, but her beautiful face was impassive and calm, and her glance strayed on beyond him to the woman in the cart. He felt a sudden sense of exultation in her presence, and the blood mounted warmly to his cheek. He half extended his hand, but while he hesitated, Virginia drew back a step, it might have been unconsciously, and his hand fell at his side.

“Will you grant me a moment in private, Mrs. Landray?” he said deferentially, for even when he came to have the feeling for her that was neither hate nor love, but some part of each, he still paid her this tacit homage; his manner never altered.

Virginia looked at him in surprise, but said: “Certainly, will you come into the library, Mr. Benson?” The conscious severity of her manner toward him did not relax.

This call was quite incomprehensible to her. She acknowledged, however, that to gratify a reasonable curiosity on this point she must sacrifice the opportunity to show her just indignation at the part she still believed he had played in sending her husband West. She led the way down the hall and into the library, where she silently motioned him to a chair. He seated himself and carefully placed his hat and gloves on the floor at his feet. While he was thus engaged her calm eyes were fixed upon him, their look grave and inquiring; and he experienced somewhat the same feeling he had known some five years before when he faced his first judge and jury; there were the same dry lips and parched throat, the same wonder in his heart if anything would come of it when he opened his lips to speak. He knew that his task would not be lightened by any word of hers.

“It’s rather a difficult matter that brings me here,” he began haltingly. “I should not have ventured on this errand had it not been that the need was very urgent. You will remember that when your husband went West he took with him a young man by the name of Walsh?”

It was an unlucky start, for Virginia’s face hardened perceptibly. He was immediately conscious of this, even while he did not divine the reason for it. He bit his lip, angry with himself that he had not first made his appeal to her pity. Then his pride came to the rescue; this was not the first hostile judge he had confronted.

“Walsh was only recently married when he joined the company; he was a stranger here, but, I believe, a man of excellent antecedents; however, the really serious part of it is, that his wife is quite alone and entirely friendless.”

“I have no patience with him for leaving her,” said Virginia.

“It is hard to condone,” admitted the lawyer.

“It seems to me, Mr. Benson, that since he was too careless to think of his wife’s happiness himself, some friend should have reminded him of his duty.”

“I am aware his judgment in the matter may readily be called into question, Mrs. Landray, but I suppose he expects to make his fortune.” He was bent on agreeing with her. He felt her anger but was unable to determine a motive for it.

“And so make amends for all his selfishness? As if he ever could,” cried Virginia in a tone of keen exasperation.

Benson picked up his hat and smoothed the crown nervously. Her manner was inexplicable.

“I wonder you did not advise him as to his duty,” added Virginia.

“I, Mrs. Landray? Why, I never spoke ten words to the man in my life until the day before the company left; then he came to my office and placed one or two small matters of business in my hands.”

“Oh,” said Virginia haughtily. “Your advice was reserved for your friends and clients.”

“Really, Mrs. Landray,” answered Benson quietly, “I am very unfortunate in that I seem to have offended you, but I assure you I am quite in the dark as to what my misdeeds are.”

But Virginia was in no mood to explain; indeed, she considered him quite unworthy of any such frankness, which would have argued an intimacy she did not admit.

“Just now you were speaking to me of Mrs. Walsh,” she said, with a swift change of position, and with a polite if passive interest. “What more have you to tell me of her?”

“While I quite agree with you that Walsh was singularly negligent of her happiness in going West, and in leaving her here among strangers, still the fact remains he did go, but that’s not the worst of it. It seems—and Mrs. Walsh told me this with the greatest reluctance—it seems that the money he had put aside for her support in his absence has been lost in some speculation of his brother’s, in whose hands the money was left. As nearly as I can gather, Mrs. Walsh is absolutely penniless. She has appealed to me for advice, and I am quite at a loss to know what to suggest; I suppose she can secure employment here of some sort.” Benson paused, and rubbed his chin reflectively and a trifle ruefully. “The whole matter is rather out of my line; but she is so manifestly a lady that I should say it narrowed her chances very materially; naturally, too, she is crushed and humiliated by the whole circumstance, and is hardly able to think for herself. I hoped—I thought—you might be willing to see and advise with her. I know I have no right to impose this upon you, still you have nothing to fear from her, in the way of becoming a dependent, I mean; she is in no sense an object of charity; on the contrary she shows a commendable pride and entire independence of spirit; but she is very young and inexperienced, really scarcely more than a child. I thought you might be able to suggest something she could do. I hardly know what, but surely there is some occupation she can take up until such time as her husband can make suitable provision for her,” he concluded hesitatingly. “I didn’t know whom to turn to, until I thought of you.”

There was a pause during which Virginia considered the matter in all its lights. At another time her sympathies, which were always generous, would have led her to prompt action, but now, with the idea of the decay of the family fortunes firmly implanted in her mind, she was reluctant to take a step that might involve her in any way.

Benson’s face fell. He had expected something different of her. He half rose from his chair.

“I fear I was entirely too hasty.” There was palpable disappointment in his manner which he did not attempt to conceal.

“No, no,” said Virginia quickly. “I was only wondering if I knew of anything.”

“Then you will see her?” he was immensely relieved.

“Oh, yes, I will go out to her,” and she turned swiftly to the door, but he detained her by a gesture.

“If you will permit it I will ask her to come here to you; probably she will prefer to see you alone. I’ll just step down to the mill; I wish to see Paxon,” he said.

Virginia signified her assent, and taking up his hat and gloves he hurried from the room and, a moment later, Mrs. Walsh came quickly into the library, though, evidently, with no little trepidation. She was very young, as Benson had said, slight and fair, and exceedingly pretty. She was dressed in black, but her veil was thrown back so that Virginia could see her face.

“I am very glad to meet you,” said Virginia kindly; then she made a forward step, extending her hand. “Won’t you sit down? It’s quite a drive out from town; do make yourself comfortable.” And she led her to a chair.

Mrs. Walsh was vastly relieved by her cordiality. She mutely looked her gratitude. After a moment’s silence she said: “I should hardly have dared to come to you, Mrs. Landray, without Mr. Benson had urged it. I can’t tell you what cause I have to be grateful to him, he has been so kind.”

“It was his place to be kind,” said Virginia; and something told her visitor that Mrs. Landray did not like Mr. Benson. This caused her an instant’s surprise.

“You know I am an utter stranger here, Mrs. Landray; my husband came West to fill a position as instructor in Doctor Long’s Academy.” The connection had evidently seemed a notable one to the young wife, for she referred it it with manifest pride.

“I think,” said Mrs. Landray shortly, “it was very foolish of him to leave you, and sacrifice such a desirable position.”

“I thought so, too,” agreed the young wife, “but he hopes for such great things from this journey to California. His letters are so brave and full of courage. I am trying to share in all he feels. It was not easy for him to go; I am sure this separation is quite as hard for him to bear as it is for me.”

“But what about you, my dear?” said Virginia. “The fortune he is to make is all in the future. What about the present?”

“Ah, that is very serious,” and her face clouded with doubt. “I shall not know where to write him until after he reaches California; and even then I must wait weeks and months for his answer telling me what to do, and all that while I must live—but how?”

“Then you are quite without means?” said Virginia gravely.

“Yes, but when Jasper left, there was a small sum of money which he had placed with his brother in New York when he came to Benson. He had arranged, as he thought, that this money was to be sent to me, and I was to place it in Mr. Benson’s hands for safe keeping, who was to let me have it as I needed it; but now Jasper’s brother writes that the business in which the money was invested has been a failure, and that it is lost; that there is no hope of recovering any part of it.”

“Has he made no effort to recover it?” asked Virginia frowning. It was a matter of no small regret to her that this brother had been permitted to shirk his responsibilities. She felt that something should be done to him.

“Mr. Benson has written him, and I, of course; but all he will say is that his business is a failure, and that he has been able to save nothing from the wreck. It is useless to look to him for help; I must do for myself.”

“And what can you do?” asked Virginia.

“I might become a seamstress, or a nurse, or a companion.”

Virginia shook her head. “You are not strong enough to be a nurse, and I know of no one who wants a companion; as for sewing, it is illy-paid work at best; you could scarcely make a living at that. Have you no one—in the East, I mean, who might be willing to help you until your husband can provide for you himself?”

“My aunt, with whom I lived as a child, has died since my marriage, and Jasper only has this brother, and he is on the point of leaving for California himself.”

“I should like to see him,” said Virginia. Mrs. Walsh looked at her in some surprise. “I would give him a piece of my mind.” Virginia added, for her fuller enlightenment.

“He is not very reliable, I fear,” admitted Mrs. Walsh.

“So I should suppose,” said Virginia drily

“Dr. Long would have given me a position in his academy to teach the very small children, but his daughter will do that so really he can do nothing for me. I think he was rather put out at my husband’s leaving so suddenly. Of course, I went to him first. I have been very wretched and lonely—” and her lips quivered pathetically.

“My dear,” said Virginia with sudden animation, “you shall stay here with me until you hear from your husband!”

“Oh, Mrs. Landray!”

“I am lonely, too. It may be that we can cheer each other up. At any rate you shall remain with me until your husband knows of your need and provides for you. It will not be for long, and I shall be most happy to serve you in this way.”

“But I can’t be a dependent—that of all things—”

“But you won’t be. No, I won’t listen to your objections. I know Stephen would expect me to do this.”

Just then, through the open window, she saw Benson crossing the yard from the mill. She turned toward the door.

“Here comes Mr. Benson. I will see him and tell him it is all arranged.”

She found the lawyer with one foot on the porch steps, hesitating as to whether or not he should enter the house.

“Mr. Benson,” she said in her clear, calm voice, “Mrs. Walsh will stay with me. May I ask you to see that her trunk is sent out from the town in the morning? Though, perhaps, I’d better send Sam in for it, so I need not trouble you.”

“It will be no trouble in the world,” he made haste to assure her. “Mrs. Landray, this is most kind of you, most generous; I am more than grateful,” and his boyish face flushed with real feeling. Virginia’s face, however, remained wholly impassive. She did not ask him into the house, but stood above him on the top step, statuesque and beautiful, her tall figure sharply outlined against the dark green of the woodbine and wisteria that rioted over the porch. Benson stole a glance at her. His face was still radiant. This was what he had secretly expected of her, and his own generous enthusiasm leaped up to touch her’s; but it met with no response.

“She doesn’t want praise,” he thought. “She is satisfied to be kind and generous.” He hesitated irresolutely, but there was no invitation in her manner, and she did not speak. It occurred to him that she might be waiting for him to go, and his face burnt again.

“I will drive out and see Mrs. Walsh in a day or so if I may.”

“Certainly,” said Virginia. “Perhaps you will see her before you go?”

“You will say good-bye to her for me, please. I’ll not go in.” He half hoped she would insist; but her attitude was one of waiting. He turned slowly toward his horse.

“If there is anything I can do, Mrs. Landray, I trust you will not hesitate to command me,” and he took his leave in some haste; more haste, it occurred to him afterward, than the occasion warranted. .

As Virginia turned back into the hall, Mrs. Walsh met her. “Oh, has he gone?” she said. “I so wanted to thank him.” and her voice was full of regret. “What will he think of me, after all he has done! Can’t I run after him?”

“It is too late now, I fear, but he will be here again and then you will have your opportunity.” Then her glance softened. “You are such a child,” she said, extending her hand with a cordial gesture. “What is your name?”

“Jane,” answered the other, smiling happily and forgetting all about Benson; and then she slipped her arms about Virginia, and there was a moment given up to hushed confidences on the part of the young wife in the darkened hall. At last Virginia cried: “Oh, my dear, how could he leave you when he knew that?” and her great eyes, now all softness and tenderness, swam with pity. “How could he?” she repeated.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE deserter squatted on his haunches and spat reflectively at the fire; his mild blue eyes, large and oxlike, gazed into the dancing flames, with an expression of placid content. Stephen and Bushrod lay on their blankets, weary from the day’s travel. Walsh was playing cards with the two teamsters. Rogers leaned against the wheel of one of the wagons, with Benny asleep in the shadow at his side.

The deserter nodded silently to each in turn and they as silently nodded back to him. He glanced from the group he had joined to the group he had just left, and a matter of fifty feet separated the two. The burly half-breeds sat motionless and erect in the circle of light cast by their camp-fire, their blankets drawn about their shoulders. The fur trader was deep in earnest conversation with them and the deserter, noting this, his face took on a curious, puzzled expression; then, with a lingering glance in Basil’s direction, he turned to Stephen. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

“He seems to find plenty to say when I ain’t about. Mr. Landray, white’s no name for the way you’ve treated me. I reckon I’d be mighty lonely if I’d to mess steady with them.” He spoke gratefully in a slow, soft voice; he put up his hands and shielded his face from the campfire’s light and heat. “A week or so and I’ll be doing my best to get friendly with father; but I reckon fatted calf won’t form no part of the first meal I set down to with him,” and a shrewd, sly, smile curled his lips.

Ten days had elapsed since the complete disruption of the party, when Basil had cast his lot wholly with the half-breeds. His intercourse with his cousins was now limited to the fewest possible words. Not so the late member of the Mounted Rifles. Had he been an ordinary ruffian, they would have regretted the evident preference he had displayed from the very first for their society; but clearly he was not an ordinary ruffian. He appeared a frank, simple soul; and even his morality, which was more than doubtful, seemed entirely a matter of accident, and something for which he could not be held responsible. He came and went freely between the two camps; he treated all with the same gentle affection; he overflowed with a graceful considerate charity of deeds; and he was helpful, not alone in deeds, but words of the most winning friendliness accompanied all his acts.

“We can’t be far from Green River,” he suggested tentatively.

“Something less than forty miles, I should say,” Stephen answered.

Raymond pondered this in silence but when he spoke again, he had apparently lost all interest concerning their nearness to the river. “I’ve heard father say when Brigham Young fetched the saints out here, he’d promised ‘em a land leaking with milk and honey; the land about Salt Lake looks as if it’ll be a right smart while before it does any leaking. The trouble with this blame country is there’s too much of it. I reckon it’ll take a thousand years to fill her up.” he speculated idly.

“Was your father always a Mormon?” Stephen asked.

“He went into the business about as early as any of ‘em, Mr. Landray. He’s always had a gift for religion. He’s tried ‘em all. He was a Methodist to begin with, but I’ve heard him say he mighty early got discouraged with that as a means of grace; then he took up with the Millerites, had his robes ready and climbed up on the housetop to get his start for the kingdom come. You’ve heard of the Millerites, I reckon.”

“Oh, yes,” Stephen said; he added, “Religion doesn’t seem to have occupied your thoughts to any extent. I should have imagined, with such an example before you—”

“Me? Oh, no; I don’t see no reason for worry. I figure it out this way; I always been lucky, and I sort of look for some one to snake me in and say: ‘Why, how are you, Raymond? I’m mighty surprised to see you here.’.rdquo;

“They’ll hardly say less than that,” observed Stephen drily.

The deserter meditated in silence for a moment, and when he spoke again it was with an air of amiable tolerance.

“Yes, sir, father was so certain sure he’d never have any more use for it, that he gave away as good a farm as ever lay out doors. He wanted to feel that nothing was holding him to earth.”

“Meaning no offence to you, he was a pretty considerable fool to do that,” said Rogers, who had been listening to the conversation, and who now joined in it.

“No, you can’t quite say that, for he deeded it to mother; he know’d he’d be pretty bad off if the world didn’t bust according to prophecy, and he wanted to keep the property in the family; though I’ve heard him say he was that sincere he’d made up his mind that just him and a few of his friends was to be saved; he looked for all the rest to get scorched up bad; but he was uncertain about having the date of the bust up just right, and if it went over another season he thought he’d like to skin the farm for one more corn crop. He’s always been powerful forehanded in them ways. What was this millennium anyhow, that old Bill Miller had him so stirred up over?”

“I don’t know quite the sort of a millennium that your father was expecting,” said Stephen, “but I believe the millennium is supposed to mean a period which is to last a thousand years, when the world will be free of sin and death.”

“No deserting—no horse-stealing,” said Bushrod.

“You got me there!” said Raymond pleasantly. “So that’s the millennium; it’s a right pretty idea, ain’t it? But tedious I should reckon.”

“Is your father satisfied with Mormonism?” asked Stephen.

“Yes, sir, and it’s a pretty fair sort of a religion.”

“How about Brigham Young?” said Stephen.

“Oh, they’re thick as thieves. Brigham’s right smart of a schemer, too,” with gentle approval. “There’s no foolishness about him—none whatever.”

“I suppose you are acquainted with Young, too?” said Stephen.

“Me? Oh, yes. I tell you, Mr. Landray, the valley’s no healthy place unless you keep on the right side of him. I’ve heard father say that even after he’d been made elder, he kicked over the traces, and they had to baptise him all over a few times, to give him a fresh start. I reckon they didn’t keep him in long enough ‘airy time, if I’d been doing the job I’d left him in over night.”

While he talked his glance had been continually straying in the direction of the fur trader. The latter’s apparently earnest conversation with his companions had come to an end, and the two halfbreeds had stretched themselves on the ground, but Basil still sat beside the camp-fire, his pipe between his teeth, moody and solitary.

The deserter hitched a little nearer Stephen, and dropped his voice to a low whisper.

“I’d like mighty well to tie up with you gentlemen, and give Basil yonder the slip. It was downright underhand of him to run me and the breeds in on you the way he done; I was real distressed, honest I was. It’d about serve him right if you helped me cut loose; we could wait until we got to the valley, and then if you’d just furnish me with a gun—” He looked wistfully at the row of rifles that leaned against the wagon-bed, each within easy reach of its owner’s hand “and if there was any shooting to be done—him, I mean—I’d do it. Of course, his being kin to you, you wouldn’t just want to do that yourselves. I’d want to feel though, that you’d take care of the half-breeds until I done for Basil. You never can trust a half-breed anyhow.”

“You’re not in earnest, Raymond; you’re surely not serious?” cried Stephen, drawing away from him in disgust and horror. The deserter gave him a swift, searching glance, then he laughed easily.

“Well, no, I ain’t. I was joking—just joking.”

“It was a poor joke,” said Stephen sternly.

Raymond came slowly to his feet. “Well,” said he, “I’ll turn in. You couldn’t oblige me with the loan of a rifle, if I made up my mind to strike off for Fort Bridger?”

“No, we have no guns to spare,” said Stephen shortly.

A look of keen disappointment appeared on the deserter’s face, but it swiftly passed and left him smiling and ingenuous.

“Good-night,” he said.

The camp-fire died down until nothing remained of it but a mass of glowing embers. The teamsters and Walsh had put away their cards and wrapped themselves in their blankets; Bushrod and Rogers had followed their example; their heavy breathing told that they already slept. The night wind that threshed the wagon canvases blew raw and cold. Stephen took up his rifle and made the circuit of the wagons, looking closely to the mules and horses, for the first watch was his.

His mind reverted more than once to the questionable wit of Raymond’s joke, and it occurred to him as a thing to be steadily borne in mind that the Benson and California Mining and Trading Company had chosen illy who should be its friends. It would be a matter for deep thankfulness when they should reach Salt Lake, and could forever dispense with Basil, the half-breeds, and the too-smiling Raymond, whose perverted sense of humour permitted him to jestingly propose a murder.

The camp was astir at the first break of day. The night wind had blown itself out, and the sombre plains were heavy with silence. One by one the gold-seekers shook themselves out of their blankets, and without waste of words began their preparation for the day’s journey.

Rogers drove the mules to water at a muddy hole a quarter of a mile from camp and beyond a slight ridge. He had just disappeared beyond this ridge, when the half-breed, Louis, took two of the horses, and started after him on the same errand. A moment later Basil and Baptiste mounted their’s and rode out from camp. Raymond lounged across to his friends.

“Basil says you can start on if you like; he’s gone to see if he can’t knock over a buffalo cow, we’re about out of meat,” he explained, and then, as if in verification of his words, they heard the sharp report of a rifle. “I reckon they’ve found what they’re looking for,” said Raymond.

“I thought the shot sounded down by the water-hole,” said Bushrod.

“Yes, they were going around that way on account of their horses. Here, Mr. Landray, let me give you a hand with them blankets.” For Bushrod was making a roll of the bedding, preparatory to stowing it away in one of the wagons; the others were busy wedging up a shrunken wheel.

An instant later Rogers appeared on the ridge, but without the mules; he came running toward them, with his long rifle held in the crook of his arm.

“I’ve done it!” he cried hoarsely. “I’ve done it!” he repeated, when he reached them.

There was silence for a moment. No man spoke, for each feared to ask him what it was that he had done.

“I tell you I’ve done it, are you dumb?” he cried in wild and agonized appeal, and he looked from one to the other of his friends.

“What have you done?” Stephen asked.

“I’ve killed him.”

“You’ve killed whom?”

“Yonder half-breed. Damn his soul, he’ll never get in a white man’s way again—he’ll keep his place!”

“You’ve murdered him, you mean?” Stephen spoke in a shocked whisper.

“It wa’n’. murder, Landray, I swear to God it wa’n’.! Who says murder to me, I’ve always been a fair man—who says murder to me?” and his wild, bloodshot eyes searched the circle of white faces.

“He’d a done for me if I hadn’t shot him. He came down to the hole with his two horses; I was ahead of him, but he yelled to me to get out of his way; and when I told him he’d have to wait until I’d watered my stock, he tried to ride me down. I didn’t lift a hand until then.”

Raymond was the first to speak.

“I wonder if that don’t save me a hundred and a quarter; they certainly ain’t entitled to his share, now are they?” But if they heard him, no one replied to the deserter, who continued to regard Rogers with an envious admiration. “The eternally condemned bag of bones, where’d he get the heart for it?” he muttered.

And then a savage cry came from the direction of the water-hole, telling that the body had been found by Basil and Baptiste. Stephen turned to Rogers.

“Get in one of the wagons, and lie still—take Benny with you—and, no matter what happens, stay there!” to the others he added: “Mind, right or wrong, we are not going to surrender him to them. That would but make a bad matter worse.”

“What’s your notion, Steve?” asked Bushrod briskly. “Hadn’t we better look sharp for the half-breed?”

“Yes, but don’t be hasty. I’ll attend to Basil.”

“Say, Mr. Landray, if you’ll give me a gun I’ll make the shot for you.” said the deserter officiously. He was not regarded, but he continued to loudly lament that he was unarmed.

Rogers had scarcely disappeared in one of the wagons when Basil and Baptiste galloped into camp; they flung themselves from their horses and confronted the little group about Stephen.

“Where is he?” Basil shouted, seizing the latter by the arm. “Where’s Rogers? You’re no kin to me unless you give him up to us.”

“Basil,” said Stephen quietly, falling back a step and freeing himself from the other’s clutch, “it was the result of a quarrel, the fight was a fair one.”

“It’s a lie—it was murder!” the fur trader cried hoarsely. “Where is he?” and he glared about him.

“Where you shan’t touch him.”

“Shan’t?” he raged, his black beard bristling.

“No.”

“Where’ve you hidden him?”

“Never mind. Where you can’t find him?”

“Do you make this you’re affair?”

“I won’t say that, but it was self-defence. If he hadn’t shot the Indian, the Indian would probably have shot him.”

“Who says so? Did you see the fight? Fight?” he laughed aloud. “Fight? It was murder, cowardly murder!”

“No, we didn’t see the fight,” Stephen answered calmly.

“Oh, you take his word, do you? Well, I don’t,” and he started toward the wagons. “He’s in there, and by God, I’ll have him out, and Baptiste here shall settle with him!”

“Dunlevy! Walsh!” called Stephen sharply.

The two men stepped in front of the fur trader.

“Basil,” said Stephen, “we’ll inquire into this when we’re all cooler.”

“We’ll settle it now!” swore Basil, with a great oath.

“If he’s done wrong he shall be punished; but not by you, not by us; the law—”

“Damn the law! There’s only one law for the plains.”

“We’ll hand him over to the commandant of the first military post.”

Rogers, who heard every word that was said where he lay in the bed of one of the wagons, with a barricade of boxes about him, smiled grimly at this.

“No they won’t, son,” he whispered to the boy. “You and me will see California for all of them.”

He reached up over his barricade, and with his hunting-knife cut a slit in the wagon’s canvas cover. The slit was just large enough to accommodate the muzzle of his rifle.

But now Basil withdrew to his own camp, taking with him the halfbreed and the deserter. The latter went with him reluctantly enough, for he knew the fur trader was in no mood to tamper with.

The five men about the wagons waited, never relaxing their vigilance. They expected something would be done or attempted, they scarcely knew what. They could hear nothing of what passed between Basil and his two companions, but they saw that he was talking earnestly with Raymond. Twice the deserter turned and looked toward them, finally he appeared to give a satisfactory answer to what Basil had been saying, and the conference came to an end; they heard the echo of his light laugh. He turned from Basil and the half-breed and approached Stephen, whom he seemed to regard with a quickened interest, but the friendly smile never left his selfish, good-natured face.

“Well, good-bye,” he said, and extended his hand. “I reckon I’ll have to go with him yonder.”

“Are you willing to go with him?” Stephen asked.

“Oh, yes,” smiling evasively. “Yes, I’m plenty willing to go with him,” he said.

“Because if you have any fears for your safety—”

“No, I’m worth a heap more to him alive than I would be dead,” responded the deserter with an air of complacent conviction. He added pleasantly. “I reckon, though, it’s right handsome of you to want to look out for me, and me a stranger.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “He’ll calm down some; give him time. I allow he feels Baptiste is looking to him to take on like hell, but once he cuts loose from you gentlemen you needn’t bother about him; he’ll be mainly interested in getting on to California. Now if you keep on about due west you’ll strike Green River sometime to-morrow; after you ford it, your trail leads a little south of west to the Bear.” He looked hard at Stephen.

“Thank you,” said the latter.

“Beyond the Bear you shouldn’t have any trouble. You’ll strike the Weber next, and you can just follow it into the valley, crossing Kamas Prairie. I know all that country—and don’t worry none about him, he ain’t hunting trouble. Well, good-bye, and good luck.”

He rejoined Basil and Baptiste.

“Why did he tell us that?” asked Bushrod suspiciously.

“Just his good-nature,” said Stephen indifferently, and thought no more of the deserter’s advice until it became necessary to follow it.

The three men mounted their horses, and the fur trader again approached his cousins.

“Once more, will you give him up?” he asked.

But no one answered him.

“You won’t give him up, eh? Well, look out,” and he shook his fist at them. “Look out, for I’ll even this before I’m done with you.”

They heard his threat in silence, then seeing he was not to be answered, he wheeled about, and, followed by the half-breed and Raymond, crossed the ridge at a gallop. They stopped at the water-hole just long enough to lash the dead man to his saddle.

But Raymond, the deserter, rode away rejoicing in the possession of Louis’s rifle which Basil had given him. When they had disappeared from sight, Stephen said to Bingham and Dunlevy: “Go down and look up the stock; if you find it’s strayed from the water-hole, come back and we’ll all turn out after it.”

Then, followed by Bushrod, he went to the wagons and called to Rogers. “They’ve gone. You’ve nothing to fear,” he said. The Californian crawled stiffly from his place of concealment. His friends were silent as he emerged from the wagon, against which he leaned for support.

“God knows it was a fair fight, Landray,” he said tremulously, for now, that the sustaining excitement was past, he was like one shaken with the ague. His face was drawn and ghastly, and his dark eyes burnt with an unearthly light. “He’d a done for me if I hadn’t shot him. It was him or me; but it was mighty fair of you to stand by me.”

“We’ve stood by you, but I’m not satisfied, Rogers,” said Stephen moodily. “It’s true he was an Indian, and it may be true, as you say, that you did the shooting in self-defence; I hope it was; but you’ve had bad blood for them from the start.”

“Bad blood! Yes, curse them—and curse me! for I’ve lived and camped with them for days and nights,” cried Rogers fiercely, glaring at Stephen. “If I’d been the man I was once I’d a fetched it to an issue long ago. See—” he held out a shaking hand, “You might think from that, he was the first. The heart’s gone out of me with this cough that’s tearing me asunder. It was the Indians killed my wife; I reckon if you stood in my place now you’d wonder why the hell we was arguing whether I shot yonder varment in fair fight or not: She’d gone to the corral—I’m telling you how my wife died—when I heard her cry out, and I ran to the ranch door. It wa’n’. two hundred yards to the coral, but it might as well been miles and she’d been no worse off; for it was surrounded; and when she ran shrieking through the bars, trying with all the strength God Almighty had given her, to make the house, they closed in about her and I saw one of them drive his axe into her brain.” The sweat stood in great beads on his brow. “I saw I was too late to help her, and I went back into the house and fastened the door, I still had him to think of—” pointing to the child. There was a long pause. Rogers gulped down something that rose in his throat, and went on: “Well, when the settlers who’d been hot on their trail ever since they broke loose on the settlement, come in and drove them off, and pulled Benny here and me out of the burning ranch house, they laid out ten of the red brutes. I’d let the daylight through.” He threw up his head defiantly. “What the hell do you suppose I care for one greasy half-breed!” and he clutched the stock of his gun with trembling fingers. “For God’s sake,” he moaned, “Let’s be moving. It was only a half-breed, what the hell’s use quarrelling about him. I’ve sent him where he’ll do no more harm.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THEY saw no more of Basil Landray, Baptiste, and the too-smiling Raymond, which caused them some surprise at first; for the fur trader’s sinister threat at parting had not sounded like an empty menace; yet when a week elapsed they decided that he had spoken rather for the half-breed than to them.

“What can they do?” said Bushrod contemptuously. “I’ve been looking for them to take pot shots at some of us; but after all that would be a risky business.”

“I wish,” said Stephen, “that we might find another way into Salt Lake; I don’t like this thing of keeping on after them.”

“No,” said Rogers slowly, as though he were himself reluctantly abandoning some such idea. “No, our best chance is to keep on as we are going until we strike the head waters of the Weber. But look here, Mr. Landray, I didn’t count on seeing the last of them so soon. Do you reckon they’ve hatched some plan to hold us up there in the valley?”

“How could they?” Stephen demanded. “You mean you think they may try to hold us for the murder,” he added.

“Mr. Landry, it wa’n’. no murder,” said Rogers, deeply offended at his unfortunate choice of words. “I wouldn’t ask to die no fairer than he done.”

“I didn’t mean to say that, Rogers,” said Stephen hastily.

“No, but you think of it as that,” retorted Rogers bitterly. “There’s no use of our quarrelling about it, Rogers,” said Stephen. “You settled with him in your own fashion.”

“I never knowed of a case,” said Rogers moodily, “but I’ve heard of a white man being tried for killing a redskin; and the one I shot was a half-breed, and so some sort white just as he was some sort red.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Stephen.

“Well,” observed Rogers, “three or four days now will bring us into the valley. Mr. Landray, that’s one redskin I’m mighty sorry I put out of business; if I’d been at the same pains to stave off the trouble I was to fetch it to a head, or if I’d sort of nursed it along until we got to the other side of this two-wife country, it might have saved us a heap of bother.”

Early the following morning Rogers was roused by Stephen, and as he came to consciousness he felt Stephen’s hand on his shoulder.

“Turn out, Rogers,” said Landray. “One of the mules has broken its rope and strayed.”

The Californian crawled sleepily from among his blankets.

“What do you say—the mules—”

“The piebald’s slipped her picket rope.”

“Dam her pepper and salt hide anyhow!” said Rogers, now wide awake. “I bet I rope her to-night so she don’t get loose.”

“She can’t have gone far for she was here when Bingham relieved me three hours after midnight.”

It was then just dawn.

“Where are the others?” asked Rogers, glancing about.

“They have gone down into the valley; suppose you take the back track up the pass while I get breakfast. Will you ride?”

“No, it ain’t likely she’s strayed far.”

He went back down the pass narrowly scanning the ground for the trail of the straying animal. A walk of a mile brought him to a point where a small canyon led off from the pass; a high separating wedge-shaped ridge lay between the two defiles, and it occurred to him that if he climbed to the summit of this ridge he would command a view of the pass proper as well as of the smaller canyon. He made the ascent with some difficulty and gaining the top of the ridge carefully scanned the pass, down which he could look for a mile or more; then he turned and found that he was overlooking a small valley, which but for the canyon would have been completely enclosed by a low range of hills, beyond which but at some distance rose the grey flanks of the mountains.

He did not see the lost mule, but he did see something that caused him an exclamation of surprise. Across the valley, and just rising above the low hill, what looked to be a small blue cloud was ascending lazily in the clear air. It was smoke; smoke from some camp-fire; and the camp-fire probably that of some roving band of Indians.

He went down the ridge a matter of half a mile, and entered a thick growth of service berry, aspin, and willows; this was so dense that he no longer saw the hill opposite and toward which he was bending his steps. He worked his way well into the thicket and had gained the centre of the narrow bottom, when he suddenly became aware that a man or some animal was crashing through the bush ahead of him which not only covered the bottom but clothed the base of the hill as well. Man or beast, the disturber of that solitude was coming forward rapidly and apparently with no attempt at concealment, for there was a continual snapping of branches.

Rogers paused; he could see nothing though the sounds drew nearer each moment. He cautiously forced his way yet deeper into the thicket, his gun cocked and swung forward ready for immediate use. Then suddenly he came out upon an open piece of ground, and found himself looking squarely into the face of the smiling Raymond. But the deserter was not smiling now. With a startled cry he had swung up his rifle and presented its muzzle at Rogers’s breast; yet quick as he was, the Californian had been equally prompt, his long rifle was levelled, too, and his forefinger rested lightly on the trigger. There was this difference, however, the hammer of the deserter’s gun still covered the cap. It forever settled a most important question.

“Drop it!” said Rogers quietly between his teeth; and Raymond, whose face was grey and drawn, and whose eyes never left the Californian’s eyes, instantly opened his hands and the gun dropped at his feet. By a quick movement Rogers kicked it to one side. There was a long moment while the two men, breathing hard, glared at each other. It was the deserter who spoke first.

“Why, Mr. Rogers,” he said in a shaken whisper, “I wa’n’. counting on seeing you.”

“I bet you wa’n’.,” said Rogers briefly, but with grim sarcasm; and moving forward a step he kicked Raymond’s rifle yet further into the brush.

There ensued an ominous silence. A tortured sickly smile seemed to snatch at the corners of the deserter’s mouth, but it was past his power to fix it there; it left him loose-lipped, gaping helplessly down the muzzle of Rogers’s long rifle. He was struggling with a terrible fear that the Californian might make some sudden and deadly use of his weapon. He remembered how they had found the half-breed with the single round hole in his hunting-shirt attesting to the excellence of his slayer’s markmanship.

“Why don’t you shoot?” he cried at last in agony.

“Hold your jaw!” said Rogers in a savage whisper.

“If you’re going to shoot, why don’t you?” the deserter demanded with hoarse, dry-throated rage.

“I reckon that’s something I’ll take my time to,” said Rogers calmly. “Maybe I’ll shoot and maybe I won’t. I’m thinking about it—hard. Fall back a step, I got no hankering for your company. There, that’ll do, and if you so much as raise your voice again—” he did not finish the sentence, but tapped the stock of his rifle with sinister significance. There was another pause and then Rogers said more mildly, “I reckon you can tell me how you happen to be here.”

Raymond took grace of his altered tone; with a final desperate twitching of the lips the smile fixed itself at the corners of his mouth. “You pretty nearly took my breath away,” he faltered.

“You’re right there, I did,” said Rogers with sudden ferocity.

Raymond smiled vaguely. To the very marrow of his bones he feared this gaunt captor of his.

“Quick now,” said Rogers sternly, “what are you doing here?”

“Well, you see I’ve give Basil the slip—”

“That’s a lie,” retorted Rogers. “Whose smoke is that off yonder back of you?”

“I reckon you mean my camp-fire.”

“That’s another lie. Some one’s been throwing on wood, green wood, since we been standing here,” said Rogers with an ugly grin. “Look and see—the smoke’ll tell you that as plain as it tells me.”

“You’re plumb suspicious, Mr. Rogers, it’s my camp; ain’t I always been a friend?”

“You ain’t friend to no man, unless it be to yourself, that’s my idea of you,” said Rogers.

“It’s my camp-fire I tell you—”

“Yes, and Basil’s there, and the half-breed’s there,” he took his eyes off Raymond’s face, and for the first time noticed that he had exchanged his ragged uniform for an excellent suit of grey homespun. “You’ve crossed the range and been down into the valley. Now what are you doing here on the back track when you were all so keen for trying your luck in California?”

“Well,” said the deserter with a quick shift of ground, “maybe Basil is there, and maybe the half-breed is there; what does it signify?”

“Why are you following us?”

But at this Raymond shook his head vehemently. “Following you—and why’d we be following you? I’ll tell you the truth, fact is, sometimes it gravels me to tell the truth; but with a friend—we’re taking a party of Saints back to the Missouri. There was money in the job, and darn California anyhow; it’s a long way off, and they say in the valley the bottom’s dropped clean out of this here gold business. It’s all rank foolishness, they are beginning to come back, and the Saints are feeding them and helping them on toward the States; we mighty soon got shut of that notion when we’d seen and talked with a few of them that’d crossed to the Coast; and when Young offered to hire us to take a score of his missionaries to the Missouri we jumped at the chance.”

“You daren’t go near Fort Laramie,” said Rogers, but his theories as to what had brought Raymond there had been rather shaken by the excellent account he was now giving of himself.

“I wa’n’. aware I said I was going near the fort. No, sir, we’re going out the way we come in. We allow to hit the trail a hundred miles the other side of old Laramie.”

Rogers looked at him doubtfully, yet he was almost inclined to believe that it was as he said, that the first rush of emigration might have encountered a few discouraged ones who had gone into California the preceding fall, and who having been unfortunate were making the best of their way back to the States—this might even have resulted in a stampede among the emigrants. He recalled how the fear of the cholera had turned back thousands before a quarter of their journey had been completed.

With his shifty eyes narrowed to a slit, the deserter watched the Californian. He could see something of what was passing in his mind and he could guess the rest; yet when he spoke again he said, “I reckon you don’t take any great stock in what I’m telling you; come up to the top of yonder ridge and you can see our camp, and that it’s exactly as I say.”

This was the very thing Rogers had resolved on doing.

“I’m going with you all right, but look here, if you so much as make a sign or a sound, to let ‘em know we’re close at hand, I’m going to blow the top of your head off. Here, walk before me, and heed every word I say. If I find you’re telling me the truth about its being a party of Mormon missionaries, I’ll bring you back here and turn you loose. We’ll leave your gun here.”

“That’s fair enough,” said Raymond genially. “Well I certainly am proud to see you, though I took you for a redskin first off; lucky you spoke—”

“I allow it was a sight luckier for me I got you covered first,” said Rogers sourly. “Go ahead now, and mind you, no noise.”

It was evident, however, that the deserter felt he had quite as much at stake as Rogers himself, for he advanced cautiously through the thicket that clothed the base of the hill. Rogers followed him with his rifle held ready for instant use, but no thought was further from Raymond’s mind than betrayal. At first he had felt the desperate need of some explanation, that would account for his presence there; and the story he had finally told had seemed to him to cover the case and to leave no reasonable room for doubt in Rogers’s mind.

As they neared the top of the ridge he threw himself flat on his stomach and wormed his way up toward its broken crest, and Rogers keeping close at his heels followed his example. He gained the crest, and peering about the base of a stunted pine, found that he was looking down into a snug pocket of the hills, and so close to the camp that he might have tossed his cap into it, though it lay far below him. He counted eighteen or twenty picketed horses; a number of men were moving about, and a glance told him they were white men. He looked long and earnestly, and then turned to Raymond with a frankly puzzled expression. The deserter was smiling and triumphant.

“Want I should take you into camp?” he asked in an eager whisper, but Rogers shook his head; he was not convinced, yet why and what he doubted was more than he could have told.

“We’ll go back,” he said at last. “Go first;” and they descended the ridge in silence. Rogers was vainly seeking to fit some explanations to the mystery, beyond Raymond’s words. When they reached the scene of their original encounter, he paused for an instant.

“I reckon you’ll have to go on with me for a little spell before I turn you loose,” he said. “No, you can come back here and get your gun when I’m through with you,” and he laughed shortly.

“Oh, all right,” said Raymond cheerfully. “It’s just as you say.”

“You bet it’s as I say,” and he motioned the deserter to precede him again.

They crossed the ridge that lay between them and the pass.

“I reckon this’ll do,” said Rogers. “I sha’n’. want you to go any further. Look here, the Landrays treated you all right.”

“They did indeed,” said Raymond gratefully.

“Well, what are those men yonder in camp for?”

“I just got through telling you that, Mr. Rogers,” responded Raymond with an injured air. “The outfit’s bound for the States. Old Brigham reckons you godless cusses back East need some converting; that’s what he’s up to, and I’m helping rush ‘em to the river.”

“I’m pretty certain you’re lying whatever you say,” observed Rogers.

“Well, sir, I’ve fooled people telling them the truth,” retorted Raymond. “But that was their own fault.”

“I reckon maybe that’s so,” said Rogers.

“This is a mighty one-sided conversation anyway you look at it,” said the deserter pleasantly, and smiling without offence. “No, sir, I’m telling you God Almighty’s truth, they are Mormon missionaries going back to the States.”

“Well, whatever they are, I sha’n’. want you any more; you can travel back to ‘em as fast as you like; but look here, you see that none of them don’t stray in the direction I’m going.” And the Californian moved off up the pass.

“Good luck, Mr. Rogers!” the deserter called after him, and then he began leisurely to climb the ridge.

When Rogers reached the camp he saw that the mule had been found and that the teams were made up and ready to start.

“What’s kept you so long?” asked Stephen.

“I was following what I took to be old piebald’s trail,” answered Rogers.

At first he had been undecided as to whether or not he should tell the others of his encounter with Raymond; but he had finally determined to say nothing of this meeting. Silent and preoccupied he took his place in one of the wagons, seeking some excuse for Raymond’s presence so close at hand, beyond that which the deserter had himself given.

Their trail first led across a narrow valley, and then they entered the pass again, which with each slow mile mounted to a higher altitude; but by the middle of the morning it seemed to have reached its greatest elevation, for on beyond them it wound down and down, opening at last into a wide level valley lying in a vast amphitheatre of hills and mountains.

“Mr. Landray, I don’t know but I’d like to ride your horse for a spell,” said Rogers.

“You’ll find it much cooler in the wagon,” said Stephen.

“It is hot,” agreed the Californian, wiping the sweat from his face.

Nevertheless he swung himself into the saddle, and fell in at the rear of the wagons; and then he increased the distance that separated him from the train, from a few yards to almost half a mile, keeping his horse at the slowest walk. Once or twice in the last hour before their brief noon halt, he thought he heard the distant clatter of hoofs in the pass back of him, but he dismissed this as a mere nervous fancy. A little after midday they entered the valley. For a matter of two miles they toiled forward over a perfectly level plain, barren and bare of all useful vegetation.

Stephen who was in the first wagon reined in his mules to say, “We’ll let our teams have a few minutes rest.”

“I’d push ahead, Mr. Landray; I wouldn’t waste no time here,” said Rogers anxiously, as he rode up.

“In just a moment, Rogers—hullo! what’s that?”

He was looking toward the point where they had entered the valley. Rogers turned quickly and saw that a number of small black objects were emerging from the pass; distant as they were, all knew they were mounted men.

“What do you make them out to be?” Stephen asked.

“I reckon I don’t know and I reckon I don’t care. Do you see that bit of a hill ahead of us? There’s water and grass somewhere near there; push on for that.”

He fell in at the rear of the last wagon, and the look of indifference his face had worn a moment before vanished the instant he was alone. He rode in silence for perhaps five minutes with his face turned toward the black dots. He never once took his eyes from them.

“Faster!” he called. “Push the mules!”

Now the black objects had become individual, separate; they were men who rode in open order, and as they rode they spread out in a half-circle that swept momentarily nearer the train. Presently he caught the hoof beats of the swiftly galloping horses, now loud, now scarcely audible in the sultry stillness; and then it became a steady beat like the rattle of hail on frozen ground; the beat and throb of his own pulse took up and magnified the rhythm until his temples ached with the sound.

“Faster!” he called again. “Faster yet! Give them the rawhide!”

But his companions knew now why he urged greater speed; and the long lashes of their whips fell again and again on the backs of the straining mules.

“We must make that hill—don’t let them cut us off from it!” cried Rogers, as he reined in his horse and faced about; he dropped the butt of his rifle to his shoulder and sent a bullet in the direction of their pursuers.

As the first shot vibrated sharply across the plains the horsemen were seen to draw rein, but this was only for a brief instant, and then the race for the hill was begun afresh, and with renewed energy. The huge wagons lurched to and fro, tossed like ships in a seaway, the mules at a gallop; while Rogers, a spectral figure, his long hair flying in the wind, hung in the rear of the train, or rode back and forth menacing their pursuers.

“Keep off!” he called, and sent a second messenger in the direction of the horsemen; this at closer range than the first seemed to find a mark, for one was seen to sway in his saddle, and there was a momentary pause in their onward rush as his companions gathered about the wounded man.

“I can shoot yet!” said Rogers with grim joy, He loaded his rifle again with a deliberation and care no peril could shake, then he felt his horse’s forefeet strike rising ground, and glanced about; he had reached the base of the hill, he turned again in the saddle, fired, and without waiting to see the effect of his shot, drove his spurs into his horse’s flank and fled forward after the wagons.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE wagons were arranged in a triangle on the hill, and their wheels chained together. Into this enclosure the mules were hastily driven and secured. While Bushrod, assisted by the teamsters and Walsh, was busy preparing this defence, Stephen and Rogers stood ready to repel any advance on the part of the horsemen; but having failed to cut the train off on the open plain they circled once or twice about the base of the hill, taking care, however, to keep well out of gun-shot range; then they separated into two bands, one of which rode rapidly off toward the west, while the other remained in the vicinity of the hill, withdrawing after a little time to a distance of perhaps half a mile.

Stephen and Rogers had watched their movements closely and in silence; now Landray turned to the Californian: “What does that mean?” he asked.

Rogers shook his head. He looked at Stephen as if he expected him to say something more, but evidently no suspicion had entered the latter’s mind; yet to the Californian the disguise was so apparent that he wondered at this. A few fluttering blankets and a smear of red dirt would never have deceived him; the silence they had maintained with never a shout nor shot as they spurred in pursuit of the wagons, was characteristic of men who saw no glory in mere murder, though they might be keenly desirous of the profits it could be made to yield.

“What are they doing, Steve?” Bushrod asked, stepping to his brother’s side.

“They seem to be waiting.”

“They act as though they had pocketed us and could finish this business in their own way and time,” said Bushrod, with a troubled laugh.

“I reckon that won’t come any too easy to their hands,” said Rogers quietly.

“Look here,” said Bushrod, “what do you say to my banking up the earth under the wagons?”

“It’s an excellent idea; I’d do it,” said Stephen.

“Come,” said Rogers, “lets you and me take a look around, Mr. Landray. I reckon they’re in no hurry to try this hill, I wouldn’t be if I was them.” They crossed the barricade, and inspected their surroundings. The top of the hill was perfectly flat, and an acre or more in extent; beyond this level space the ground fell gently away to the plain below.

“It’s right smart of a place for a fight,” remarked Rogers, after a brief glance about.

Stephen nodded; he admitted to himself that with such an enemy the spot had its own peculiar advantages; he could believe that they might hold it for an almost indefinite period, even against much greater odds. His memory reverted to the glories of the freshly fought fields of Texas and Mexico: Odds? What had odds meant in the past to the men of America; and what were they still meaning on a thousand miles of lonely frontier?

To the west, near the base of the mountains, a fringe of cottonwoods and willows marked a water course; there the herbage of the plain was a richer green. Stephen almost fancied he could seen the water sparkling among the trees, then he remembered that their own supply was wholly exhausted. Rogers seemed to understand what was passing in his mind; he touched him on the arm.

“We could never have made it, Mr. Landray,” he said regretfully. “They’d have cut us off in the open.”

The horsemen who had ridden away toward the west were now nearing the cottonwoods. Rogers turned from regarding them to look at the forted wagons.

“Your brother ‘ll fix the camp snug enough. I reckon after he gets finished we can make it hot for the redskin who thinks his road lays across the top of this hill.”

“You have told me of these fights; what chance have we?” asked Stephen gravely.

“No twenty men that ever lived can cross them wagon poles unless we are willing they should.”

“But why should they attempt that when they can keep us here on a strain until our powder and lead is exhausted, or the need of water forces us to abandon the hill?”

“I reckon that’ll be their game; but see here, by the time our guns are silent we may have them pretty considerably crippled up. I needn’t tell you that twenty men in the open against six with good cover like we got, have their work ahead of them.”

“Look!” cried Stephen, pointing.

On the edge of the cottonwoods which they had just reached, the horsemen were joined by a much larger party which suddenly rode out of the timber.

“We reckoned ‘em too quick and too few,” said Rogers simply. “There’s forty or fifty of the varments.”

The horsemen were now galloping toward the hill. Rogers watched them in silence, then turned again to Stephen.

“Good God! Mr. Landray, don’t you see no difference?” the Californian demanded almost angrily. Stephen’s lack of all suspicion was too much for him.

“There is a difference in dress, if that is what you mean.”

“Yes, that; and do you note the size of their horses?”

“They are smaller certainly.”

“I wa’n’. going to let you know, but it’s a heap easier to be fair with you; those down yonder’s white men; this new lot’s Indians—there’s no mistaking that.”

“What!” cried Stephen in astonishment.

“It’s Basil and Raymond and some cutthroats from the valley trigged out to look like redskins.”

“Nonsense, Rogers, that’s the wildest surmise; how can you know that?”

“You don’t believe me. Well, I seen him.”

“You saw whom? Basil?”

“No, Raymond.”

“The deserter—when?”

“This morning;” and Rogers told him in the fewest words of his meeting with Raymond. “I allow they’re mainly after me, and I reckon you can make some sort of terms by handing me over to them. I ain’t saying but what it would be right for you to do this; you got your folks back East to think about; I only got Benny; I reckon you’ll look out for him. My first notion was to let matters stand until we’d put our mark on a few of them, knowing it would be too late to do anything then.”

“No,” said Stephen, “if it’s so, if it’s Basil, he’s wanting more than revenge; he knows we have a large sum of money with us.”

“Well, I allow we’ve both made a few mistakes,” said Rogers.

He added, “I’m ready to do what’s right. Give me your horse, and I’ll make a dash for the hills. You can tell ‘em you’ve turned me out of camp.”

But Stephen shook his head. “Why, man, we wouldn’t think of that!” he said earnestly.

Above the mountain tops the sun was sinking, filling the grey plain with floods of glorious gold and violet. Rogers took off his hat and faced the west; his mouth twitched and his look of resolution softened.

“This is mighty decent in you, Mr. Landray, it is so. I ain’t saying much, but Benny and me won’t forget this in many a long day.” and he held out his hand. “Maybe it is the money they’re after, as you say; I reckon it is, for they’ve undertaken right smart of a contract just to get even with me for killing that half-breed.”

The two bands had now united, and after a brief parley, charged down on the hill with loud yells. Stephen and Rogers withdrew from their exposed position and sought the shelter of the barricade.

“There’s no need of throwing away ammunition,” said Rogers, surveying the little group that formed about him. “There’ll be plenty of noise, but you’ll get used to that. Hear the vermin yell!”

His first thought was of Benny. He hid the child away in a safe place.

“Is this an Indian fight, pop? And is them real live Indians?” the child asked eagerly, as he nestled down in the nook his father had found for him.

“I allow some of them will presently be dead Indians, son,” answered his father hopefully. “You pray that your old daddy’s aim may be what it used to be, for he wants mightily to fetch you and him out of this with a whole hide apiece.” and repeating his injunction to Benny to lie very still, he rejoined his companions.

A glance sufficed, and the experienced eye of the frontiersman told him that as yet little harm had been done by his companions fire, though it had served to keep the Indians at a respectful distance.

In spite of the presence of their white associates, the tactics of these latter did not differ materially from what they must have been had they been alone. They circled about the hill evidently keenly sensible of the fact that there existed a zone of deadly peril into which it was not wise to venture; on the outer edge of this they hung with noisy zeal, and it was only when some one of their number more daring and reckless than his fellows dashed in toward the wagons, that the men on the hill levelled their rifles; but they were not long in discovering that these displays of prowess were more than likely to be attended by fatal consequences; for twice Rogers stopped them in mid career; once Bushrod was similarly successful; he killed the pony and crippled the Indian; then as he showed a disinclination to fire on a wounded man, Rogers who had withheld his hand out of consideration for what he conceived to be his friend’s rights in the matter, made the shot for him.

“That’s three!” he cried in high good humour. “I tell you, Lan-dray, you mustn’t hang back from giving them their full dose. It’s them or us, and I’m all in favour of it being them.”

“How long will this last?” asked Bushrod, crouching at his elbow. “Why don’t they come in where we can get at them?”

“It’s their notion of fighting; they’ll draw off when night falls.”

“I suppose there is no hope of their drawing off entirely?”

“Not until they’ve had a fair try at us.”

While he was speaking his gun had been thrust cautiously over the top of the barricade, and fired at a savage who had ventured within easy range, but the light was now uncertain and the bullet sped wide of its mark. With a muttered oath he turned to Bushrod. But before Landray could bring his rifle to bear on the savage the latter’s gun was discharged, and Dunlevy at the opposite side of the barricade rose from his knees with a startled cry, spun round once and fell back among the mules. Walsh who was nearest him, turned a white scared face on Stephen.

“Poor Dunlevy’s hurt I think! Won’t you help him, Mr. Landray? I can’t, the sight of his blood makes me ill.”

But Rogers had already crept to the teamster’s side; he reached out a hand and pushed the boy back in his place.

“Never mind him, you keep out of sight,” he said quietly.

“Do you mean he’s dead!” cried Walsh.

Here Bushrod Landray’s warning cry recalled the Californian to his post.

“They seem to be forming for a charge,” he said.

“And they’re nearer than they need be,” rejoined Rogers, throwing his rifle to his shoulder. The group melted away at the flash, but one of the savages tumbled from his saddle and lay as he had fallen until one of his friends crept up on hands and knees and dragged the body off; at him the Californian fired again, but apparently without effect.

“The varments will fetch away their dead and wounded every time if they can!” he said.

“Dunlevy was killed outright?” asked Landray.

“Yes, he wan’t much of a shot, and he would raise his head to see what was going on. I heard your brother tell him more than once to keep down,” said Rogers resentfully.

The fight continued until the sun sank beyond the ragged lines of peaks; and its glory turned first to grey and then deepened into twilight; a twilight through which the horsemen moved vaguely like shadows; then suddenly the attack ceased; the brisk volleys dwindled to a few straggling shots, and silence usurped the place of sound, silence absolute and supreme. Bushrod turned to Rogers who rose slowly and stood erect. “I reckon it’s over until daylight comes again,” he said.

They lifted Dunlevy into one of the wagons and drew his blanket over his face. Now that the excitement of the day was past, a deadly weariness had come upon them; they were oppressed and silent; they ached like men who had been bruised and beaten. Looking about them they saw things that they had not seen before; two of their mules were dead, and three others wounded, the wagon covers were in tatters. They seemed hours away from the fight in point of time, and yet their ears still roared with the sound of crashing volleys, the clatter of hoofs, a medley of yells and shrieks; yet while these sounds had been in actual continuance they had scarcely heard them.

When they had eaten a few cold mouthfuls. Rogers said:

“I’m going to take the first watch. Mr. Landray you’ll relieve me; your brother can follow you; and Bingham and Walsh can finish out the night together. I reckon I needn’t tell you all, that you’d best get what sleep you can.” And with this he took up his rifle, crossed the barrier, and with noiseless step made the circuit of the wagons.

The enemy had withdrawn to the cottonwoods where their blazing camp-fires were now plainly visible. At his back in the shelter of the forted wagons, his companions had huddled close together in the darkness, and were now talking in whispers; he heard nothing of what they said, and presently the murmur of their voices ceased entirely.

Until this day he had known never a doubt as to the success of their journey; the reasonable uncertainty he might have felt had long since faded from his mind; others might fail, but he never; and now their way was blocked. Twenty white men alone he would not have feared; the Indians by themselves he would have feared even less; but together, the cunning of the one supplemented by the intelligence of the other, was something he had not reckoned on. Even should they beat them off, their whole plan must be changed. He was quite sure that it would not be safe to venture into Salt Lake. He had heard too much of the justice the Mormon leaders were wont to mete out to such of the Gentiles as came under their displeasure, especially when these Gentiles had in their possession valuable property; and Basil knew, and probably by this time Raymond knew, that they had with them a large sum of money. The needy saints would never let them out of their hands while any pretext remained on which to detain them; and what better pretext could be furnished them than that some of their co-religionists had been killed by members of the party. Then his brain became busy with the problem of immediate escape. They could mount the mules and make a dash for the mountains; but his reason warned him than any such desperate measure must be attempted only when their need of water had rendered the hill absolutely untenantable; for the chances were that thy would be surrounded and butchered before they had gone a mile. No, clearly such an attempt should be made only in the last and direst extremity.

In the stillness of his own thoughts the noises of the camp in the cottonwoods came to his ears. He heard the neighing of horses, the voices of men; now it was a burst of laughter, a fragment of song, that reached him; the white men were carousing with their red allies. He stood in an attitude of listening; he seemed to find something insulting in these sounds, and scarcely knowing what he did he fell to threatening the camp; he shook his gun at it and waved his free hand menacingly, then, he fell to cursing under his breath, softly so as not to disturb the others. How long he continued thus he did not know; he was finally aroused by hearing Stephen call his name; and Stephen stepping to his side placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Why, Rogers, what’s the matter?” he asked in a whisper.

“Matter, Landray? They’re having water when better men are going thirsty!” he said stupidly, and his utterance was thick and difficult. “That’s matter enough I reckon,” he added, with something of his usual voice and manner; he was like a man waking from a dream.

“You have seen nothing?” questioned Stephen.

“Nothing—have you slept?”

“A little; not much.”

Here a burst of sound from the camp reached them, long continued and sustained; it was strident, fierce, primitive; Stephen turned to Rogers.

“I’d almost say they were singing hymns,” and he smiled at the fancy.

“They are dancing our scalps,” said Rogers.

“That’s premature,” said Stephen.

Rogers moved off toward the wagons. A moment later he had stretched himself on the ground at Benny’s side.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

STEPHEN fell to pacing about the wagons as Rogers had done. He saw the fires of the Indians die down until they became mere specks of living colour that seemed to glare steadily at him out of the distance. As the fires died, so did all sound until at last a mighty silence held the plain in its spell; and with the silence came a tormenting loneliness. But for the black outline of the mountain peaks against a lighter sky he might have been looking off into infinite space. The night wind sinking to a murmur, sighed about the wagons, softly flapping their bullet-torn canvases. It seemed to hold the very soul of that lone land. He turned his face to the east; somewhere there beyond the night, in the new day that was breaking, was Benson. With a gulp of sudden emotion he saw the valley as he had seen it on a thousand summer mornings, with no special realization of its beauty; dawn, the day’s beginning; here and there a lantern flashing in and out among barns and outbuildings; the darkness growing always greyer, always toward the light, until the sleek cattle could be seen in the fields, newly risen from the long wet grass and with the dew yet sparkling on flanks and sides, crossing slowly to pasture bars to be fed and tended; and then far down the valley a touch of glowing colour that crept above the low hills to become fixed in a narrow luminous rim which changed swiftly to a great flaming quadrant of light that grew into the level sun.

Regret, terrible because it was unavailing, lay hold of him. Virginia was there. Was it possible that by any gift of divination she could know of their danger? She had told him more than once that no evil would ever befall him and she be wholly unconscious of it, no matter what the distance that separated them. He hoped this was so. He prayed that if the coming day closed on a tragedy, she might learn at once of the destruction of the train; but who would there be left to tell her of the end? None of his companions would survive, he was sure of this, if Basil and Raymond were responsible for the attack; indeed, it would be the merest chance if she ever knew. He would not go back to her—that would be all; this alone she would know, that he had not returned; the rest would be conjecture.

He recalled how they had passed in indifference the graves by the trail side; they had not once been moved to curiosity, even the most idle; for what were these little tragedies in the supreme selfishness of that rush across the plains, and who would stop or turn aside to unravel the small mystery of their last stand? What man would care who they had been, or whence they came, when the certain hand of death had done its work? Their very bones might bleach there for a hundred years before another white man climbed that hill.

He told himself his fears were cowardly; he sought to reason himself out of his forebodings; a thousand things might happen when day came to make the situation seem less hopeless. It was only the night, the unspeakable loneliness and silence, or the memory of that ghastly presence in the wagon, with its white upturned face, that filled him with abject fear. He closed his eyes, but the white face was there before him—always the white face—with the small dark stain on the temple among the brown curls; the visible cause so inadequate measured by the consequences. Dunlevy might have lived for sixty years without that mark; and sixty years were countless weeks, endless days, hours and minutes innumerable; and yet all in a second the possibilities of life had been withdrawn, and there remained only the senseless clay and the uncertainty that hope and love had crystallized into its high belief of immortality.

To get away from this he tried to think only of Virginia. He saw her again on the white porch of their home; he could only remember her so; the days they had spent together seemed blotted out and to have dwindled to the agony of that last look; yet even this gave him hope and courage. He thought now of the time when the toil and effort of the trail should be ended, when he should have made or lost in this foolish enterprise, to his sobered judgment it mattered not which.

But what if this was his last night; his lips parched, and his breathing became laboured; already in anticipation he tasted death. What if it would be his lot to share poor Dunlevy’s sleep! He thought with bitter regret how he had filled Virginia’s heart; there were no children to take his place; all her strong maternal love had been given to him.

His mind drifted back to commonplaces. He had disposed of his business in an orderly fashion before he left home. Benson knew just how matters stood, and he believed Benson to be scrupulously honest. There would be ample left for her, if the worst came to the worst, out of the wreck he and Bushrod had made of the family fortunes; ample for the simple life she would choose to live. Then he remembered the packet of papers in his pocket; among them was the memorandum which he and his brother had drawn up at Benson’s request and which included an accurate inventory of their interests. He had intended sending Virginia a copy, but had neglected to do so.

The sound of a light footfall roused him from his revery; he turned quickly. In the grey light he saw the figure of the child; his hold on his gun relaxed; the boy stole to his side.

“Why aren’t you asleep, Benny?” he asked in a whisper so as not to disturb the others.

“I have been sleeping,” the boy answered, “but I waked up and got lonely, and I couldn’t wake my pop.”

“Couldn’t wake your father? That’s odd; he usually rouses at the slightest sound.”

“I know; but he didn’t to-night, and I got scared.”

A horrible doubt flashed through Stephen’s mind. “Here,” he said, “you hold my gun, and I’ll go and see if he’s all right.” And he made his way to the Californian’s side, but the latter’s regular breathing instantly dispelled his fears. He returned to Benny. “What did you do; did you call him?” he asked.

“Yes, and I put my hand on his face as I always do when I want him to wake up.”

“Oh, well, he’s very tired, that’s all.”

“Have they gone away, Mr. Landray?” the boy asked.

“Are you afraid, Benny?”

“No”—slowly and uncertainly—“at least I reckon not so very afraid. Are they still there?”

“I expect they are.”

The child was silent. Stephen stood leaning on his rifle looking down at him with a wistful pity in his eyes. He had scarcely noticed him before, he was so silent, so little in the way; and now for the first time he was seeing how small and weak he was. Why had Rogers brought him with them; why had he not left him behind with some woman who would have cared for him? His sudden sense of pity made him bitterly resentful of what he considered the man’s ignorant unimaginative devotion, for of course he knew that the boy was all in all to the Californian; but why since he loved him had he brought him out into the wilderness to face hardship and possible death? It was bad enough for men, but this child—he sickened at the thought.

Then he recalled with no little satisfaction that even Basil had shown more than a passing interest in the boy; brutal and hard as he was with every living thing, the child had yet found a way into his surly, grudging regard, and this in spite of the open breach that from the first had existed between Rogers and himself. Remembering this, he could not believe that the fur trader would allow any harm that it was in his power to avert, to come to him. Then he thought again of the packet of papers in his pocket; why not give them to Benny to keep?

“See here, Benny, do you think you could take care of some papers for me to-morrow?”

The child nodded interestedly. “What are they?” he asked.

Stephen took the packet from the pocket of his flannel hunting shirt. “I am going to give you these papers to take care of for me, Benny,” he said. “Now you are to remember, if anything should happen to me they are to go back to Benson.” He paused hopelessly; could the child understand?

“Yes, sir, they are to go back to Benson.”

“Now think, Benny, how would you send them there?”

“I’d give them to Mr. Bushrod, or to my pop, or Mr. Walsh.”

“Good, so you would, Benny; they would know perfectly what to do; but if anything should happen to them, you are to keep in mind just two things, the name of Benson, and the name of Landray. Do you think you can remember?”

The child laughed softly. “Why, of course I can, Mr. Landray. I can remember you; and Benson’s the name of the place where my pop was a little boy.”

“Yes, but do you know where Benson is?”

The child’s face fell for an instant, then it lighted up with sudden intelligence, he turned quickly and pointed to the East. “It’s there. That’s Benson,” he said.

“It’s there true enough, but it’s a long way off, a very long way. Benny, Benson’s in the State of Ohio; do you think you can remember that?”

“Benson’s in the State of Ohio,” said Benny dutifully.

“That’s right, Benson’s in the State of Ohio,” Stephen slowly repeated after him. He smiled almost pityingly, his hope hung by such a slender thread; a child’s drifting memory.

“Yes, sir,” said the boy, “Benson’s in the State of Ohio.”

“And you are never to part with these papers unless it is to give them to some white man who will send them to the person whose name is written in the packet; and should you ever meet Basil Lan-dray again, you are not to let him know that you have the papers.”

Benny looked at him shrewdly. “He won’t come around, Mr. Landray. My pop ‘lows he’ll fix him if he ever shows his head in this camp.”

The papers were in a buckskin bag that closed with a stout drawstring. “You can wear it around your neck, Benny—so,” said Stephen. “Keep it under your blouse, like this—it will be safe there. It’s a very important matter, Benny, and you are such a little fellow for so big a trust.”

Here he was interrupted by the discharge of a gun, and within the barricade Rogers sprang to his feet. Almost simultaneously with his warning cry, the dark slopes of the hill were lighted up with spurts of flame from the belching muzzles of fifty rifles.

It had all been so sudden and unexpected that for a moment Stephen was stunned and stupefied; then he gave a swift glance about him, and felt rather than saw that a score or more of dark forms were stealing up the slope of the hill. He heard Rogers storming and cursing as he bade his startled companions rouse and arm themselves. He gathered up the child in his arms and darted toward the wagons: there he met Rogers.

“Is this the way you keep watch?” the Californian shouted fiercely. “You’ve thrown our lives away!”

Between the wagons where Stephen entered the enclosure, ten or a dozen dark forms now appeared. He put down the child bidding him run and hide himself in a safe spot, and sprang to Roger’s aid where he stood beating back the enemy with the stock of his clubbed gun. It was only for an instant, however, that they faced these odds alone; for Bushrod, Walsh, and Bingham rushed to their assistance, and there succeeded a wild moment; the mingled sound of blows and oaths, and then the attack having failed, the dark forms melted silently away in the grey light.

“Who’s hurt?” Rogers inquired eagerly.

“I guess I’m not, for one,” said Bushrod. “How about you, Steve, and you, Walsh, are your skins whole yet?”

“Yes, but good God, where is Bingham! What’s become of him?” cried Stephen.

“He was at my elbow a moment ago,” faltered Walsh. There was a pause while they stared blankly at each other. Then from the plain below they heard a yell of savage triumph.

“Hark, what’s that?” said Stephen, but his blood ran cold at the sound.

“What does it mean, Rogers?” Bushrod demanded, for the yells continued. “Why don’t you speak, man?” he cried.

“I was listening to see if I could hear him; he must have been done for when they fetched him off with their own dead and wounded. Hear the devils yell! I reckon he can thank God Almighty he died in time;” and he licked his dry lips with the tip of his tongue.

“You mean—” began Stephen in a voice of horror; but the Californian cut him short.

“I tell you he was dead when they found out who they had fetched away; ain’t that enough for you to know?” he cried, but he clapped his hands to his ears, and stood rocking from side to side.

“How did they get so close?” asked Walsh at last.

“You’d better ask Landray that,” said Rogers bitterly. “It was his watch.” He had stooped, and was picking up his rifle which he had dropped the moment before.

“No, it was mine,” said Bushrod. “Why didn’t you call me, Steve?” They were grateful to have something to talk of.

“You were asleep, and—well, I couldn’t sleep, so what was the use of calling you?”

They could see now indistinctly what was passing below them; merely a dark cluster of huddled men and horses, where they waited for day to come; but with the first streaks of yellow light the plains resounded with the beat of hoofs.

Half an hour passed, and then Walsh pitched forward without a word or groan, shot through the heart; an instant later Bushrod put aside his rifle.

“You’ll have to finish it,” he said shortly to his brother, and held up his right hand; his wrist had been shattered by a ball. He looked at the hurt member for a moment considering what he should do; and then began moodily to wrap it in long strips of cloth which he cut with his hunting-knife from the front of his shirt.

The sun rose higher and higher in the sky, until its rays fell vertically on the three men and the child. Stephen and Rogers, their faces black with powder stains and their lips parched and swollen, intently watched the enemy; from time to time they warily raised themselves on their knees and made a hasty discharge of their rifles. Benny, at his father’s side, helped him to load; his little face, pinched with suffering and terror, was streaked with sweat and grime. At Stephen’s elbow, Bushrod, working clumsily with his uninjured hand performed the same offices for his brother; thus they managed to keep two rifles always loaded. In this manner the morning passed.

The Californian’s fire had slackened by imperceptible degrees; now each time his gun was loaded it was jerked recklessly to his shoulder and discharged without aim; his dark eyes lighted wildly, he began to sing the emigrant’s song,

“Oh, California,

That’s the land for me,

I’m bound for San Francisco

With my wash bowl on my knee.”

At first he sang the words under his breath, crooning them softly over and over to himself; then the song grew louder and louder until he finally bellowed the words in a deep rugged bass. The sound cut like a knife, and Benny shrank from his side in alarm.

“Be still, Rogers!” ordered Stephen sharply.

“Why the hell do you want me to keep still? I’m letting ‘em know how gay we feel,” and he began to sing again,

“I soon shall be in ‘Frisco

And then I’ll look all round—”

“I tell you, Rogers, keep still!” cried Landray.

The Californian paused, and glared at him vacantly.

“Rogers,” he repeated slowly, “Who’s talking about Rogers? That’s a good joke; Rogers is dead—the redskins done for him handsome; but first he killed ten of the devils. They stripped off his shirt and cut ten gashes in his back, and then they stabbed him ten times, and drove a stake in his eye and filled the hole with powder and blew his skull to pieces. That’s the trick they played Rogers.” He seemed to dwell on this horrible fancy with positive delight. “Rogers was a murdering cuss anyhow, but God Almighty fixed it so he got come up with all right!” While he was speaking he had half risen to his feet, but now he squatted down once more. Benny thrust the stock of a rifle toward him, his hands closed about it instinctively; he seemed to be recalled to himself. “Keep low, son,” he cautioned, “they sha’n’. serve us as they served Rogers. Presently we’ll be on the move.”

But Benny, wide-eyed and frightened, and not comprehending the change that had come over him, only shrank further and further away. An instant later the Californian dropped his gun.

“What’s the use!” he cried, springing to his feet.

“Get down, Rogers! Get down, you fool!” cried Stephen angrily.

“I want some of Bingham’s luck!” He swung about on his heel, searching the horizon with heavy bloodshot eyes. “Where’s the West? There’s gold there; put the mules to the wagons—let’s be moving—gold! Do you hear? Me and Benny needs it!” And before they divined his purpose he had leaped the barricade. Bushrod sprang after him and with his uninjured hand sought to draw him back; they struggled fiercely together for a moment, and then Rogers exerting his strength dragged him across the hilltop.

“Let him go, Bush!” shouted Stephen.

Bushrod freed himself from the madman’s clutch and turned to regain the shelter of the wagons; but at this moment a horseman galloped swiftly up the slope and drew rein not ten paces distant; he threw himself from his horse and raised his rifle. It might have been some horrid fancy that the eyes that looked at him out of the smear of paint were Basil Landray’s eyes, but there was no mistaking the beard.

“You!” he cried, and with his left hand sought to draw the hunting-knife from its sheath at his belt, since save for this he was weaponless. The fur trader thrust his rifle across his horse’s back and taking deliberate aim, fired. Bushrod, with his eyes still fixed intently on his cousin’s face, and his hand still fumbling clumsily with the hilt of his knife, sank first to his knees, then he pitched forward with a single groan.

It all occupied but an instant in the doing, yet each slightest detail was distinct and vivid to Stephen. Until Bushrod fell he made neither sound or movement; he durst not use the loaded rifle he held in his hand, since his brother stood between him and the fur trader; but as Bushrod sank to the ground he strode forward with his piece resting loosely in the crook of his arm. Basil saw him coming and his first impulse was evidently flight; then he released his hold on his horse, dropped his rifle, and drawing a pistol from his belt, stepped eagerly forward to meet his cousin.

When the two men were quite near, the fur trader lifted his pistol. Stephen saw his black beard bristle like the mane of some angry animal, and caught the glint of his cruel eyes along the short barrel; the hammer fell, the cap exploded, but there was no report; and with an oath Basil threw down the useless weapon.

“It’s my turn. I knew it would come,” said Stephen sternly; and he drew the stock of his rifle up to his shoulder. He was so secure in this belief of his, that no power on earth could have moved him to haste. He heard the hoof beats of the horses as they charged up the hill, yet the gun came slowly to his shoulder, and his aim was taken with the utmost deliberation. It seemed minutes while his eyes were finding the sights.

Basil, with an uncontrollable emotion of fear and horror, threw out his arms in a gesture of mute entreaty; then he covered his face with his hands, while a sob burst from his twitching lips; a deep groan followed almost instantly.

Stephen stood like a man in a daze, with his still smoking rifle held in his hand. The trampling of the horses roused him to some thought of his own safety; he took his eyes away from the writhing figure on the ground, and turned, intending if possible to regain the shelter of the barricade; but what was the use? One place was no better than another, for the end had clearly come. He seized his rifle by the barrel and heaved up the stock.

“Come on!” he cried hoarsely; and at his words the dark shouting mass of straining men and trampling horses closed about him.

He struck out fiercely but never blindly; each time his weapon was raised he selected his victim, and each time he crushed the life out of this victim with a terrible sweeping blow; for he had gone beyond fear, the dread of wounds and death, even the strong desire of man’s strength in its prime, to live. A dozen guns blazed in his face; now he was down, now up; now down again; his footing slippery with his own blood and with that of his assailants; but now he was down, and for the last time; and the savages struggled fiercely among themselves, each intent on striking the body of this mighty fallen warrior.

The Californian had kept on down the western slope of the hill. When Basil released his horse, the animal trotted off toward the cottonwoods, and before it had gone a hundred yards Rogers caught and threw himself astride of it, and fled out across the plain, while back to the hill making lessening head against the freshening wind was borne snatches of his song. He had covered a third of the distance to the cottonwoods, when a child’s frightened voice reached him.

“Pop! Pop! Come back! It’s me—Benny!”

He drew rein instantly, turned, and at a canter rode back toward the camp. There was absolute silence there now, save for the screams of the terrified child, who stood outside the barricade, clinging to the spokes of a wagon wheel.

“Benny, where are you?” Rogers called, when he reached the foot of the hill, and his dull eyes lit up with a sudden sense of things.

For answer there came a crashing volley; and out of the drifting patches of smoke a great bay horse appeared to spring, and stung with wounds dashed along the plain dragging the limp figure of a man whose heavy-booted foot had caught in a stirrup-iron.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE letters which the brothers and Walsh had written at Fort Laramie, and which they had entrusted to a party of returning emigrants, were the last that reached the town of Benson. They were poured over in secret; and afterward Colonel Sharp was permitted to print in the Pioneer such descriptive passages as were deemed of general public interest.

They marked the end of what had seemed as permanent as anything can seem in this world; and all that remained in record of what three men in their varying ways had counted of supreme worth, was the yellowing paper with the many seals and the words that meant so little or so much.

One month, then two, then three, dragged by in silence; a silence which Virginia, and Jane, and Anna, bore with differing degrees of fear and uncertainty, as they waited from day to day for some sign from the gold-seekers; but no word came. The trail and the campfire with the love that watched beside them had spoken for the last time.

Each day Virginia with Jane, from the white porch of the farmhouse, anticipated the coming of the north bound stage which carried the western mails. They heard it with its squeaking brake block hard set against the wheels the moment it began the long descent of Landray’s Hill; they watched it with anxious glances as it came careening into sight, tossed and troubled in the ruts of the Little River road; and their eyes, now filled with a world of hope and yearning, followed it until it was lost in the depths of the covered bridge at the foot of Main Street.

Sam West, sometimes dusty, and sometimes muddy—for they would not let him start for town until they saw the last of the coach since they found some comfort in sending him off post-haste, and in bidding him ride hard, and above all things be sure and bring back the letters—would each day present his honest red face at the little square window in the post-office, with a cheerful, “Anything to-day, Mr. Bently?” And Mr. Bendy, who knew there was nothing for him would answer, “No, I think not, Sam, but I won’t be sure; just wait a minute and I’ll look.” And he would search through the letters only to lay them down with a regretful shake of the head. “I am sorry, Sam, but there don’t seem to be as much as the scratch of a pen,” he would say.

At first, Sam, by a variety of ingenious theories strove to explain away the repetition of this tragic fact; then theories being exhausted, he fixed his faith for a time on the inherent weakness of human nature.

“I didn’t think it of Stephen Landray—I vow I didn’t! Looks like out of sight out of mind, don’t it? Well, I’m dummed!” However, the cynic’s mood endured but briefly. “I wish she wouldn’t send me,” he told the postmaster one rainy day late in September. “I’d give a good deal not to have to go back and tell her there’s nothing; why don’t he write; what’s to hinder him, anyway?”

“I don’t know what’s to hinder, Sam, but something is a-hinder-ing,” said Mr. Bently.

“Mighty singular; ain’t it?” and Sam meditated in silence for a moment. “Do you reckon anything’s wrong with them?” he asked, dropping his voice to a confidential whisper. He could never quite rid himself of the conviction that the postmaster, with all those letters, must have a means of knowing.

“I hope not; I’d hate to think that,” said Mr. Bently.

“You don’t reckon the letters could be lost?” Sam ventured hesitatingly, for to him the question somehow seemed to argue lack of faith in Mr. Bently’s official ability.

“That might happen, Sam; I won’t say it is at all likely; still it might happen.”

“Can I tell her that, Mr. Bently, that you said so? I got to tell her something; she just listens to any fool thing I say, and turns back into the house without a word except a ‘Thank you, Sam.’ She’s got to stop sending me, or I’ll quit the place! It don’t make no difference if Stephen Landray did tell me he wanted me to stay on. He ain’t acting right, not letting her know where he’s at.”

“I am afraid the boys made a big mistake,” said Mr. Bently. “They was well fixed here.”

“They was indeed,” agreed Sam. “Say, would you mind looking at them letters again to make sure, Mr. Bently? No? Don’t it beat all why she don’t hear from him! Well, I must be getting along, she’s waiting for me. You think there is some sort of a slim chance that the letters are lost? It will be a comfort for them to think that. Indians, maybe?”

“No, I wouldn’t say a word about Indians, Sam,” objected Mr. Bently hastily.

“Well, then, they are just lost, you reckon.”

“That may be, Sam, I don’t say it’s so, but the western mails are very oncertain. They probably had to give their letters to some party that was coming East, and they may have lost them.”

“Then I’d like to put my hands on the cuss that done it! I’d make him jump clean out of his skin to get shut of me.”

The honest fellow galloped back to the farm through the mud, and in the face of a cold rain that drenched him to the skin. It was early candle-light when he entered the lane, and he walked his horse up the strip of soggy turf while he meditated on what he should tell Mrs. Landray. The storm had driven her from the porch, but as he turned the corner of the house on his way to the barn he saw her face at the library window, and merely shook his head.

When he had stabled and fed his horse he hurried into the kitchen. Martha, his wife, met him with a look of inquiry on her broad, good-natured face.

“No letters?” she asked, and he answered her with her own words, “No letters.”

“There’s a drink of brandy for you, Sam,” she said. “Mrs. Landray wanted you should have it.”

Sam stalked to the table and emptied the glass at a swallow.

“Best French spirits! The Landrays always was gentlemen when it came to their drinks.”

“We are expecting things, we are,” said his wife. “You’re to be ready to go into town after supper for the doctor, if he’s wanted.”

In the dining-room with its dark walnut wainscoating, doubly sombre in the half light of the flickering candles that burnt on the mantel, Virginia watched and waited alone. No sound came from the room above; silence filled the house with a hush that was like expectation. But a moment before she had heard Martha moving to and fro; a chair had been pushed across the floor; and she had heard the sound of voices. She had listened intently but the words they spoke had been indistinguishable; perhaps Jane was resting more quietly now.

An hour had elapsed since Sam had rattled out of the yard in the covered cart, the beat of his horse’s hoofs on the spongy earth soon dying away in the distance. He had been dispatched in urgent haste into town to bring Dr. Harrison.

Meanwhile Martha had the care of the sick woman; for Virginia had no heart to go near her. If she should be needed, or if Jane asked for her, then she would go; but not unless. The situation with its hope and uncertainty baffled her usually ready courage; she could only think of that boyish husband, for so Jane described him, and his absence and silence. Why had he gone—he of all men? What fitness had he, with his impractical Latin and Greek, for the hard actualities of the plains?

From her seat before the fire, she heard the sullen insistent rush of the wind outside; and at intervals the dull surging echoes the wooded heights of Landray’s Hill gave to the storm. They had roared among those oaks for perhaps a thousand years, as now, when the grey clouds and slanted mists of the equinox were tossed and twisted in the face of the night. She rested her cheek in the palm of her hand; she heard the fall of the rain in a lull of the storm; and again rising out of the silence, the wind, as it roared on the hill and sweeping nearer beat against the shuttered windows high up in the gable of the old stone mill: then it dribbled and died away on the brown meadow land of the Little River bottom.

Jane was quite happy; how happy, Virginia had only her woman’s instinct to tell her; she had talked incessantly all day of the future when her husband should have returned. But what if he did not return, what was in store for her then? This doubt now took possession of Virginia’s fancy, for her own hope had crumbled; perhaps it was only the night, the loneliness; perhaps later when all was over, her courage would come back; and then there was the morrow, it might bring the looked-for letters; it surely would, she had waited patiently; but now—now she could endure no longer.

Presently disturbing her revery the brass knocker on the front door sounded discordantly. She rose hurriedly, and picking up a candle hastened out into the hall to admit Dr. Harrison; but she admitted more than the doctor; for there in the portly physician’s shadow, bowing and smiling, not quite diffident and not quite confident, stood young Jacob Benson.

The doctor was saying as Virginia opened the door, “So it was you, Jacob; we heard your horse floundering through the mud after us all the way out from town and wondered who it was.”

“Yes, it was I, doctor,” but Benson looked past him to Virginia, who stood in the doorway shading the light she held with one hand. There was a brief silence; the doctor seemed to smile behind the turned-up collar of his great coat. The lawyer spoke first.

“I trust you are not ill, Mrs. Landray?” he said.

“I? Oh, no, Mr. Benson—pray come in.”

The doctor grinned at Virginia, who gave him a slightly embarrassed glance; and Benson noting it, felt somehow that he was in the way; yet he followed the physician into the hall and closed the door. In the library, Dr. Harrison promptly divested himself of his outer coat and fell to warming his hands before the fire. Benson stood at a little distance fingering the rim of his hat, and wondering who was ill since it was not Virginia.

“You must have had a very disagreeable ride, doctor,” Virginia was saying.

“I’ll leave Jacob to speak of that; he couldn’t have enjoyed it any more than I did.” He smiled again; then picking up his case of medicines he quitted the room.

“Won’t you come nearer the fire, Mr. Benson?” said Virginia; her words were civil enough, but there was the old hostility in her manner, which Benson had never been able to explain.

“I rather fear I’ve chosen a poor time for my call,” he observed.

“If it is to see Mrs. Walsh—”

“It is to see Mrs. Walsh,” he replied.

“She is not well.”

“I’m very sorry. It’s nothing serious, I hope?” he said.

He drew forward a chair, and seated himself with no little composure before the fire.

“I am not detaining you?” he said suddenly, half rising.

“No, I think not; Martha is with her.”

He wondered vaguely at her reticence regarding Jane.

“There’s a good deal of sickness,” he said, as one presenting a valuable fact for her consideration.

“So I hear.”

“I fear her affairs are in a rather bad way,” he continued, suddenly recalled to the ostensible purpose of his visit.

“You have heard from her husband’s brother then?” said Virginia quickly.

“Not from him personally, but from a lawyer in New York for whom I occasionally transact business here.”

“Oh!” and Virginia waited for him to go on.

“I gather that this brother of Walsh’s is entirely irresponsible. In the first place his business did not fail; he disposed of it at a remunerative figure.”

“And the money which was left for Jane is lost?” asked Virginia.

“That seems to be the case. In fact Walsh has himself sailed for California.”

They were silent. Benson had said all there was to say, yet he made no move to go. That he had not seen Mrs. Walsh did not matter since the real purpose of his drive to the farm had been accomplished. He had seen Virginia; he had lacked the strength to deny himself this perilous joy. Away from her he forgot rebuffs and slights; he remembered only her beauty, the depths of her eyes; the poise of her head; some swift graceful gesture; and he lived in the spell of these things; and the desire, strong and not to be denied, to see her, would assert itself. To be near her was to feel himself ennobled, to thrill with a curious sense of purification; but he was conscious that his feeling for her, which had grown out of a boyish admiration for a woman’s beauty that seemed finer and nobler than anything he had known in a woman before, was sweeping him away by imperceptible gradations from all his ideals of conduct and manhood; yet he would have been loath to call this secret ecstasy he knew in her presence, love. In his moments of self-searching he told himself that her indifference more than punished him for the pleasure he derived from being near her; but he expected to suffer; that was something he could not hope to escape.

Virginia moved impatiently.

“I will tell Jane all you have told me, when I think she is able to bear it. It will be a terrible disappointment to her.” Then she shot him a swift glance. “You have not heard from Stephen?” she spoke unsteadily, and to Benson it seemed reluctantly as well.

“Not since he left Fort Laramie. I suppose we can hardly realize the difficulties he encounters in sending his letters East for mailing, here we have every modern convenience; the stage each day—”

Her grave eyes were bent upon his face; she was seeking to determine the depth of his conviction.

“What would you do if it was one you loved who was so strangely silent, who had gone, and from whom you could not hear?” she asked.

He met her glance helplessly.

“Perhaps the letters are lost,” he said at last.

“That’s what every one tells me,” she smiled wearily.

“It is not an unreasonable conjecture,” he urged.

“Nothing is unreasonable; but nothing will satisfy me until I hear from him.”

“No, of course not.”

“It was three months ago—three months ago—that I heard last!”

“But consider the difficulties, the distance; I wouldn’t give way to—” he did not finish the sentence, for Virginia had risen, and moving swiftly to the window stood with her back to him, looking out into the night.

“Can’t you explain his silence? I am dying for some word of comfort—why don’t you speak and tell me he is safe!”

“Most assuredly I think he is safe, Mrs. Landray,” said Benson, who had also risen.

“What do you understand by their silence then? I’ve wanted to ask you,” she turned toward him as she spoke.

Benson fell back a step, and under her steady gaze his face lost colour.

“Why, I—I hope for the best,” he said at last.

“Then you do think this silence means something more than the mere loss of letters—you—” she choked and could not go on, and her hands went up to her white round throat.

“No, no!” he cried hastily. “God forbid that we should think anything but the best for them; we can hardly understand their situation, a thousand things might stand in the way of your hearing.”

Her hands fell at her side.

“You are a man; you should know more of these matters than we women; what are the dangers that they may meet?”

“I don’t know. Really, Mrs. Landray, you exaggerate the gravity of their silence. You mustn’t give way to your fears,” he said with gentle insistance.

“My pride, my courage, has kept me up till now, in Jane’s presence and in Anna’s; perhaps because they were weak too, weak and helpless as only women can be; but you are a man, and it makes no difference to you!”

“Pardon me, it makes every difference to me; if you mean by that, this fear you have that some harm has come to them. I regard your husband as my best friend,” his voice shook with real feeling. “He is one of the few men to whom I am sincerely attached. Of course, I grant it is impossible that I should feel this silence as deeply as you feel it—”

“Yet you urged him to go!”

“I—Mrs. Landray? Surely you cannot think that!”

“You told me so.”

Benson flushed hotly at her words. “Oh,” he said coldly and resentfully. “This accounts for a good deal I was at a loss to explain.”

“You mean—”

“Your quite evident dislike for me.”

“Well, was not that enough to make me hate you?” she cried fiercely. She was very beautiful in her wrath, as she stood before him drawn up to her fullest height, her head thrown back, and the quick colour coming and going on her face.

“It is very unworthy of you,” he said indignantly. “To hold this against me when I had nothing at all to do with his venture.”

“But you told me in the lane that day that he must go—”

“Pardon me, I told you he could not honourably withdraw.” It was plain that he was shaken by her words and manner. “I warned him in the first instance that he must be careful or he would become committed; I warned him repeatedly. Frankly, I thought the venture singularly ill-advised and rash. I told him so.”

“He owed a higher duty to me than to any one else! What does money count for beside my love? I have endured everything that a woman can endure, since he left; I have been a prey to every imaginable fear—”

“I am very unfortunate in that I have earned your dislike. I shall never cease to regret that,” he said at last, furious with himself that he should have harboured a moment’s resentment against her, unjust as he felt her to be in her attitude toward him.

While he was speaking he had slipped his hand into an inner pocket of his coat where his fingers closed over a letter. He debated whether or not he should show it to Virginia.

“What is there to think, Mrs. Landray, but that he is safe and well wherever he is?” he said, after the lapse of a moment.

“Oh, I don’t know, but why are there no letters? If we could only hear from them!”

“The letters will come if you will only have patience,” he said.

“Patience!” and she made him a scornful gesture.

Benson drew the letter from his pocket. “Of course it was quite unnecessary, and I can only explain it on the score of my sincere regard for Stephen—” he hesitated.

“A letter! It is from Stephen!” she cried.

“No, I only wish it were; but it is from the commandant at Fort Laramie. I wrote him last month. I thought since we were not hearing from them—my dear Mrs. Landray, you need not be alarmed,” for Virginia had grown white, and had uttered a startled exclamation. “This is the reply to my letter, I received it to-day.”

“May I read it?” she asked breathlessly.

“To be sure;” and he handed her the letter.

“Oh, thank you—but why did you not tell me before?” she added reproachfully. She did not wait for him to answer, she was already devouring the letter with eager eyes.

“You see he says he remembers the party perfectly, and he speaks of them as in excellent health. That’s very encouraging, is it not?” He had feared she might ask him why he had written to Fort Laramie. His motive he would have found difficult to explain even to himself.

She finished reading the letter. “May I keep it?” she asked.

“Certainly, Mrs. Landray.”

“Oh, Mr. Benson, thank you so much for what you have done!” and she held out her hand.

He had passed into her confidence; and his heart throbbed with a sudden intoxication that was new and strange. But he still feared the questions she might ask, and turned reluctantly to the door.

“I thought the letter very encouraging,” he murmured.

“Must you go?”

“Yes, it is quite late.”

She followed him into the hall, eager now to make amends for all her former unkindness.

“You have made me very happy, Mr. Benson, and it was so kind of you to come out through all this rain. I don’t know how you thought to write! It seems a very natural thing to have done. It’s not like hearing from him, but it is such a comfort to know that he was well!”

“You will hear from Stephen when he reaches Salt Lake City,” he assured her confidently. “Good-night, Mrs. Landray.”

He threw open the door and a sudden gust of mingled rain and wind assailed him. Apparently Virginia did not hear another door that was opened and closed somewhere in the silent house, but Benson did; and he was quite sure he caught the weak fretful cry of a new-born child. A look of sudden intelligence crossed his face; he blushed furiously as he hurried away.

“I should have known! Well, I guess I’ve plenty to learn, and especially about women!” he murmured.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

TWO men had built a fire beside a boulder that half filled the narrow pass, and with their feet toward the cold ashes of this fire, still slept in the friendly shelter of the rock.

To the west the pass broadened, forming a miniature valley, where a partially dry watercourse circled about the base of the cliff; on the steep hillside above, stunted pines clung among the masses of rocks. The valley supported a scanty growth of coarse grass, and here two gaunt mules fed and shivered in the half light. Shadows filled the pass, but high above in the cloudless sky the birds sang; and long stretches of purple and gold and orange rested on the mountain side.

At last one of the sleepers rose stiffly from among his blankets and looked about him; then with a stick he searched the remains of the camp-fire until deep down in the ashes he discovered a live coal, he added some dry grass and an armful of fuel, and fanned the spark into a blaze, then he gravely took a chew of tobacco.

The builder of the fire was a lank, loose-jointed man of thirty, with a face disfigured by a ragged red beard of many days growth; his skin was sallow and his hair sun bleached.

As it had been dusk when he went into camp the night before, he now inspected his surroundings with mild incurious eyes. He seemed quite emotionless, to accept their forbidding aspect with a certain languid indifference, that was almost weariness; and yet with an inward secret satisfaction since they were as bad as he had anticipated; lastly his glance sought the ground and the figure of the sleeping man.

Then he went slowly up the pass and down into the dry bed of the stream and paused beside a muddy pool; he had been drawn thither by some consideration of personal cleanliness, but the pool did not tempt him, for he shook his head.

“No, I reckon not, it’s bad enough inside,” he drawled softly; and he went back to the camp, where after making choice of what he knew to be a vulnerable spot, he gently kicked his companion.

“Get up, Jim!” he said, as the sleeper moved. “It’s time we was stirring.”

Jim threw off his blankets and stood erect; he evidently had no lingering prejudice in favour of cleanliness, indeed he had gradually discarded each unessential labour, conserving himself for the hardship of the trail. He did not even go down to the stream as the other had done; he merely put on his hat, and his toilet was complete. His companion took stock of the omission.

“I notice that it ain’t your day to wash,” he drawled.

“It ain’t,” said the other shortly.

“I reckon it’s a mortifying oversight to that pink skin of yours, Mr. Orphan. I’d rather fancy having you tuck along sweet and clean myself; but your habits is your own—”

“You bet they are.”

His friend surveyed him with a mild jocularity of mien.

“Well, they don’t brag none for you, but I reckon maybe you’re figuring on taking all of this heah God-forsaken country you can right along with you into California. I certainly am glad it suits you.”

Jim ignored this, and they ate their breakfast in silence.

“You ain’t saying much,” observed Jim, as if this was an unwonted occurrence.

“Can’t you wait until I thaw out?” demanded his friend with some asperity. “I like to froze last night; give me time; opinions will come to me right lively when the sun crawls up yonder above them rocks.”

He moved leisurely off in the direction of their mules, while Jim stowed away the blankets and cooking utensils in the packs. They were soon in the saddle, their mules limping wearily forward. They had gone half a mile when they crossed the dry bed of the stream; its general course until now had been nearly parallel with their trail.

“This must be the head waters of Flynn’s Fork,” said Jim.

“I reckon Flynn was a pretty mean spirited cuss or he would never have named such a dribbling chuck hole after himself,” observed his companion. Then he added, “Perhaps he was killed by the Indians heah about and his friends did the naming; all I got to say is it was a mighty mean advantage to take of a dead man.”

“Thawed out?” inquired his companion.

“Not entirely,” and he lapsed into silence for another half mile.

They had met for the first time on the banks of the Missouri. In the party to which they had then belonged were forty wagons and over a hundred men, representing almost every state in the Union; but the cholera had broken out among them just as they were commencing their journey, and had followed them into the mountains beyond Fort Laramie. Their numbers had dwindled day by day; many died, but many more had turned back. Then their overloaded teams failed them; they had thrown away the bulk of their belongings, but still their stock gave out; for thousands of teams had been before them, and grass was scarce along the line of march. At last, these two, abandoning their wagons and taking two of the best mules remaining to them, set out alone for the land of promise.

At Fort Bridger they had fallen in with a truthful trapper who had told them of a route into Salt Lake by way of the Weber, which he had declared to be practicable for mounted men; he had further drawn them a map of the country, whose accuracy was a source of constant joy to the red-whiskered man, who had himself written in the names of the mountains and rivers.

Jim came from Illinois. All his life had been passed on the frontier, where there was still the mystery and romance of new lands into which men went and from which they sometimes returned with tales of wonder for the credulous; and Jim, a meek and silent lad, had cherished a chilling fear that the last Indian would be killed, and the last beaver trapped before he could quit his home.

He had told his companion, while under the spell of the other’s frank confidence concerning himself, that his father had only recently died.

“It was him being so old and all crippled up that held me,” he had said. “Or you bet I’d a been out here long ago. Of course I knew he couldn’t last forever, but when he did go, I had such a heap of trouble settling up and selling out, some times I almost wished he hadn’t died at all.”

And his friend, bearing in mind this recent bereavement, usually addressed him as “Mr. Orphan.”

After they crossed the dry bed of the stream, the valley narrowed to a pass again; and the jutting rocks seemed almost to touch high above their heads.

The red-whiskered man spoke again in his soft drawl.

“Ain’t this the doggondest country? And I was well fixed back yonder in old Missouri. I owned as good a farm as ever lay out doors; right on the river it was, and I was selling rotten fence rails to steamboats at cord wood prices. I certainly wish I was roosting on that old punk pile of mine right now—I do so.”

Jim shrugged his shoulders. “Seems like I’ve heard of that farm of yours before, maybe it was yesterday,” he said with fine sarcasm.

“Why, you dough-faced son of a gun, I bet there ain’t such land in the whole State of Illinoy. Illinoy! I like to bust when I hear a man talk of Illinoy!”

“Like enough,” said Jim stolidly.

The Missourian groaned aloud. “Eight head of mules gone to thunder, and they was good mules, too; two wagons, and a whole raft of other stuff; why, man, we began to chuck away dry-goods, and grub, and lickers, and tools, from the time we crossed the Platte!”

“Well, we wasn’t the only one’s done it,” retorted Jim.

“No,” said the Missourian, “we wasn’t. I ain’t complaining, but I want this heah country to know what I think of it; for I don’t reckon I’ll ever pass this way again—not any!” with emphasis; then he subsided into his usual drawl. “Say, I reckon it’s a whole heap nearer hell than any other section of these heah United States.”

He relapsed into silence, and they rode on without speech for another half mile; then the Missourian spoke again, sadly, plaintively.

“I was certainly doing well back yonder. I was making money hand over fist; and like a doggone fool I had to lope off out heah. I had no more gumption than that!”

“Well, this suits me,” said Jim.

“I suspicioned it did; but I allow if any one had a told me a year ago that I’d be tackling a thousand miles of God knows what, with these heah legs of mine hung over a spavined, wind-broke, saddle-galled, caterpiller of a mule, I’d a been fighting mad; but the Lord’s with us, Mr. Orphan, He says you mustn’t be in any thing of a sweat for riches—and we all certainly ain’t. My, what a country! Nary a drop of water fit to drink; nary a stick of timber fit to burn; nary a blade of grass; but I reckon it will get some better when we strike the Mormon country. Ever know anything about the Mormons in Illinoy, Jim?”

Jim shook his head.

The Missourian continued. “I know’d ‘em in Missouri before they was run out of the State. It must be a mighty nourishing belief for a man who ain’t no ways industrious himself and yet likes to see things going forward, but it must be powerful harassing on the ladies. Still, I reckon it’s a lot easier for a dozen ladies to support one man, than for one man to support a dozen ladies. If I was a Mormon, I allow that’s the way I would look at it.” He turned to his companion, but Jim’s glance was fixed ahead; he was giving no heed to what his friend was saying, but the latter was in no wise discouraged by his lack of interest. “I seen Jo Smith before he was killed; I may say I knowed him slightly.”

“Did you have a hand in that?” asked Jim, and he now displayed a languid interest, but the Missourian shook his head.

“No, you bloodthirsty cuss, and I’m mighty glad I didn’t.”

By a glance Jim inquired why.

“Well, you see, there’s been a right smart fatality among them that did; considerable many of them has died since. This heah Smith was a prophet; he run the whole doggone shootin’ match; he done it by revelation; and no matter what he’d said before, or promised, or sworn to, if he changed his mind, all he done, was to get a new revelation; and in the end it was these heah revelations that soured his dough; a man who got his orders direct from the Lord, people found wa’n’. a good neighbour. It made him too blame arrogant, for one thing.”

They had ascended a long, rocky incline, and had gone down a steep boulder-strewn declivity; now the walls of the pass fell away and they entered a wide valley; it was crescent-shaped, and possibly fifteen miles in length, while its breadth was half that. It was without timber except for a sparse growth which could be distinguished toward the west. Both men knew there would be no water until they reached this timber, for, as they moved along, the level plain became more and more barren, while from under the feet of their mules a fine white dust arose and enveloped them.

Presently the Missourian reined in his mule, and pointed with a long forefinger to something on the ground in front of of him.

“Look heah, Mr. Orphan, what do you make of those there?”

Jim answered with a slightly nettled air.

“Wagon tracks. What did you suppose I’d make of them?”

“Yes, but they are going our way—see where that mule planted a hoof beside yonder bunch of cactus? How do you reckon they got heah? They couldn’t have come up the trail we came by; you couldn’t drag a wagon through there for the rocks, not to save your neck!”

“That’s so!” agreed Jim. “But I reckon there’s a way in below.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You can see where their trail runs off to the south.”

“I reckon that’s it.” said the Missourian.

It was some hours later when the afternoon was wearing to a close, that the Missourian called his friend’s attention to a low hill which rose from the perfectly level plain. As they neared it, two buzzards rose lazily from the summit of this hill; and a grey object, the size of a mongrel dog, fled down its nearest slope and skurried away toward the timber. The Missourian noticed this; nothing escaped his mild, incurious eyes.

“I wonder what’s up yonder. Hello! Right smart of a crowd’s been heah. How old do you reckon them signs is, Jim?” and he drew in his mule.

Jim scrutinized the ground before he answered.

“Horses this time; ain’t it? Maybe they are a week old,” but he unslung the long rifle he carried attached to his saddle; seeing which the Missourian laughed.

“Now, what do you allow to use that on, Jim? Don’t you see it ain’t Indians? Most of these hosses had their forefeet shod. Emigrants, don’t you reckon?”

He pushed back his hat, and leaned languidly forward in his saddle.

“They seem to have been doing right smart cavorting about heah, don’t they? Some pretty aimless riding for folks who was going anywhere in particular—no—” slowly, “they certainly seemed pushed for time—these hosses was on the jump. Say, Jim, why do you reckon they was on the jump?” He moved forward a step or two, with his mild eyes still fixed on the ground. “Fact is, they seem to have been riding in a sort of a circle about this heah hill—”

A dark shadow slipped across the sandy plain, and the Missourian glanced up quickly. It was another buzzard; but it was winging its way toward the hill. His glance followed it—it flew straight, with large lazy flappings.

“That bird certainly knows where it’s going, and it ain’t wasting no time in getting there; what do you reckon’s on that hill, Jim?”

Jim moved uneasily in his saddle, but he managed to say with tolerable composure.

“If you’re so blame curious, why don’t you go see?”

“Well, I’m doggone certain if I left it to you we’d never know.”

“We wouldn’t,” the other said positively.

“Well, you hold my mule; I’m going up.” He swung himself out of the saddle, and strode off up the hill. He gained the summit, and paused there, a tall dark figure against the red of the sunset.

“Oh, Jim! Come heah!” he presently called.

“What in blazes do you expect me to do with my mule and yours?” Jim answered angrily.

“Turn them loose, they’ll make for the water, it ain’t more than a mile or two from heah,” advised the Missourian, with placid good nature. “Bring your gun,” he added, and then he stepped forward a pace, and Jim saw only the top of his battered hat bobbing about.

When Jim joined him he was digging in a great pile of ashes with the charred spoke of a wagon-wheel. At a little distance from him were the remains of numerous mules. The Missourian looked up from his work as Jim approached.

“There was at least three wagons burnt heah; I can tell that by the iron work I’ve found; but most of their loads must have been carried off, or else they was pretty nearly empty.”

Jim received this information with stolid indifference; had the Missourian called him there to tell him that?

“I wonder why they took the trouble to burn their wagons?” continued the Missourian. “You’d a thought if they had wanted to get shut of them they’d just left them.”

And now Jim’s ill-temper mastered him.

“They was probably figuring on some damn fool happening along this way—” he began, but the Missourian cut him short.

“They must have had you in mind then,” he said. “Hold on, Mr. Orphan, can you tell me why these heah parties pulled up to the top of this heah hill?”

“To burn their wagons,” retorted Jim sarcastically. “Ain’t that plain?”

“And why did they want to burn their outfit?”

“Because their stock had all give out; that’s plain, ain’t it?” said Jim promptly.

“Exactly; and the stock gave out the minute the wagons was burnt; but I don’t reckon you see anything curious in that,” retorted the Missourian triumphantly.

While they were speaking, he had been pursuing his investigations in a constantly widening circle. Now he stepped quickly toward a shallow ditch the rains had cut in the south slope of the hill. Jim was at his side, and the two men came to a sudden pause on the bank of this ditch.

“I guess it’s a bundle of bedding—or clothes—” said Jim nervously, and with a tremor in his voice.

“I reckon there’s another guess coming to you,” said the Missourian as he cautiously slipped into the ditch.

“I’d be careful if it was me. Maybe it was the cholera,” cautioned Jim.

“Hell! I never thought of that!” and the Missourian sprang back to the bank. There was silence while they looked into each other’s eyes.

“Man, there was five of them!” said the Missourian at last in a hoarse, shocked whisper, and his bearded lips quivered. “I noticed a part of a shovel and a right good pick back by where the wagons was burnt; don’t you reckon we could spare the time to heave this heah bank in on top of them—those damn buzzards—”

“Look here, pardner, I’m all for getting out of this. I wouldn’t expect any one to bury me if I up and died of the cholera,” said Jim.

“I’m not so doggone sure it was the cholera; hand me that stick, I’m going to find out,” and he slid back into the ditch. He worked in silence with the stick for a moment while Jim watched spellbound, fearing to stay and yet not daring to leave, for their discovery had filled that wide solitude with a sudden chilling horror. “No, this gentleman’s got a bullet hole in his head—that ain’t the cholera.” There was another pause while the Missourian was busy with the stick; then perspiring but indefatigable he spoke once more.

“Look heah, Jim, right through the heart; you can see where his shirt’s all bloody. Me and you have seen enough of cholera to know that ain’t the way it takes a man.” The stick was used again. “This heah consumptive looking chap’s all shot to pieces; whoever done it made a sieve out of him.” He gained the ditch bank.

“I wish I had a good drink of licker right now,” said Jim weakly.

“Same here,” echoed the Missourian. “Well,” said he, after a moment’s reflection, “it ain’t a job I hanker for, but I’m going through their pockets. I am going to see who they was and where they come from. You go fetch that pick and shovel; we’ll be ready for them in a minute.”

But he was white faced and shaking when his fruitless search was finished. He had found nothing that served to throw any light on the identity of the dead men.

“There ain’t the scratch of a pen about any of them; no letters—no papers—no nothing. Somebody’s been ahead of me.”

“I wouldn’t have did what you just done for five hundred dollars!” declared Jim.

“I wouldn’t either—for the money,” said the Missourian. “Give me the pick.”

The two men attacked the bank with feverish energy and their task was soon finished; then the Missourian said:

“Now we’ll just take one more look about among those cinders and then we’ll get away from heah just as fast as the Lord will let us. I seen places I liked a heap better.”

But the search revealed nothing new.

“Who do you allow done it? Indians?” asked Jim, as they hurried away in the direction their mules had taken.

“Who else would it be?”

“No one else, judging from the way they’d been used. They—”

“Shut up!” cried the Missourian with sudden fierceness, “I ain’t likely to forget how they was used! Good God! That’s going to stick in my crop to the end of my days, I reckon—don’t you rub it in!”

“Well, you done what was white!” said Jim, with unexpected and generous enthusiasm.

But for the rest of that day and far into the night, they could talk and think of nothing else than those dead men in the ditch.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE Missourian and Jim camped on the edge of the timber. So little of the day was remaining to them after they left the hill that they had been forced to stop here; but they were in the saddle again with the first pale glimmer of light that shot across the plain.

“We’ll tuck along out of heah in pretty considerable of a hurry, Jim,” said the Missourian.

They crossed the narrow bottom and entered the mountains; but before these quite closed about them, moved by common impulse, they turned for a last look at the hill.

“I certainly am proud to see the end of that!” observed the Missourian as he faced ahead once more.

“You bet I wouldn’t care to loaf around there none; most any place’d suit me better,” and Jim took a long, deep breath.

“I tell you, Mr. Orphan, daylight’s a thundering fine thing, and I’m going to hanker for it for twenty-four hours at a stretch from now on for right smart of a spell. What sleep I took last night I took in jerks; and what, between seeing Indians and finding dead men, there was no manner of comfort in it.”

“I was some that way myself,” admitted Jim.

“But there’s a thing or two I can’t just understand, Jim; there wasn’t so much as the broken haft of an arrow anywhere about that hill; and a many of them hosses was shod all round.”

“What do you think?” asked Jim.

“Well, I reckon I don’t think—I’m plumb beat.”

“I’d like mighty well to have learned who they was, and where they came from. I reckon they got friends and kin back in the States who wouldn’t mind hearing what had become of them,” said Jim.

“I guess there’s no use our figuring on finding that out; it’s annoying, but it can’t be helped,” and the Missourian shook his head with an air of settled conviction; “I done my best; I went through ‘em for papers or letters; but you seen there was nary the scratch of a pen.”

“I had a brother once,” began Jim, with an air of reminiscent melancholy, “George was his name; and he was some older than me. He went like that; leastways he just sort of never came back to explain what was keeping him. He crossed the Mississippi to hunt and never showed up any more. We ‘lowed after a time the Indians had got him all right; and when folks would come round the place asking if we’d heard anything new about George, it was powerful distressing to mother; she’d a sort of special fancy for George.”

After this they continued in silence for a little time, and then, as usual, it was the Missourian who renewed the conversation.

“Who do you reckon had a leg over them shod hosses, Jim?” he asked.

“I ain’t the least idea in the world, unless it was redskins,” Jim responded.

“I guess you’re right, maybe. It must have been redskins.” Yet it was plain that he was not satisfied, for again and again as the morning advanced he returned to the subject. Finally, however, he seemed to weary of fruitless theorizing, for he drew the map with which the trapper at Fort Bridger had furnished him, from his pocket, and fell to studying it.

“He was a right clever cuss, Jim—we’ve covered each day just about the distances he said we would; I’ve marked ‘em all off. At this rate about four days more will fetch us out at Raymond’s ranch on the bench above Salt Lake; that’s the first Mormon settlement we strike. He was sort of sour on Mormons in general, but he spoke well of this heah Raymond.”

The contemplation of the map, and the prospect of so soon reaching the valley had a noticeably cheering effect on him; he began to sing, and the song was a classic of the trail.

“Oberdier, he dreampt a dream,

Dreampt he was drivin’ a ten mule team,

But when he woke, he heaved a sigh,

The lead mule kicked out the swing mule’s eye.”

But he got no further than the end of the first verse when the words suddenly died on his lips; he reined in his mule and turned to Jim.

“We seem to have found their trail, and they seem to be going in toward the valley; do you see that?” he said.

“I noticed,” answered Jim laconically.

The Missourian dismounted and examined the signs which had compelled his attention. His examination was brief, however, and when he settled himself in the saddle again, he said quietly:

“It’s them all right. You and me’s got company ahead of us, Jim.”

“They got plenty start of us,” said Jim, moving restlessly in his saddle.

“That’s so, these signs are all of a week old. We dassent take any chances trying to find another road into the valley.”

“Scarcely,” said Jim, with a vague, uneasy smile.

An hour later they came upon a spot where the party preceding them had evidently camped, for the ground was trampled and bare where their horses had been picketed. Here, too, were a variety of bulky articles of comparatively small value.

“They seem to have been getting shut of a good deal of their stuff heah,” was the Missourian’s comment.

“We know how that goes,” said Jim.

“I reckon they was sort of dividing up their plunder, and chucked out what they didn’t think worth toting farther; for you see this couldn’t well have been a night camp. I ‘low they must have halted heah about midday. You notice their hosses was picketed close, not turned out to graze; if it had been a night camp, a party this size would have let their stock range, because there was plenty of them to herd it through the night.”

From this point on, for perhaps a mile, the signs were quite plain, and then the party appeared to have broken up; one well-marked trail led off to the south; another kept on toward the west; but presently this, too, turned into a branching pass and was lost.

“Humph!” said the Missourian. “Those was mostly the shod hosses; pretty singular, ain’t it?”

But it was evident that both he and Jim experienced a sense of positive relief.

All that morning they had toiled through the mountains; but toward the middle of the afternoon they emerged upon a high ridge; here there was good grass and a scattering growth of small timber. They crossed the ridge and descending found themselves in a fertile, well-watered valley.

“We’ll camp heah,” said the Missourian, with a sweeping gesture. “Yonder, by that thicket—a stream heads there.”

As they neared the spot he had designated, Jim, who was riding a pace or two in advance and to his right, all at once swung around his long rifle. But the Missourian threw up his hand in protest.

“Don’t shoot, Jim!” he called, urging his mule into a shuffling trot.

There was the sound of a stealthy, guarded movement in the tangled undergrowth they were approaching. Jim, whose sense of sight and hearing were strained to the utmost, heard a dead branch snap loudly, and then he saw a small, vague object appear on the opposite side of the thicket, and run limping away. His nerves were quite shattered by the events of the previous day, but here was something tangible, something at which to shoot, and, in his present frame of mind, the mere noise of his gun in that sombre solitude would have been a consolation; but the Missourian’s ear caught the ominous click of the lock as he drew back the hammer.

“Don’t shoot, you blame fool!” he called again as he crashed through the thicket in pursuit of the fleeing object. The race was a short one, and through an opening in the brush Jim saw his friend rein in his mule suddenly with a savage jerk, and swing himself from his saddle; at the same instant he heard him say:

“There, son, I ain’t going to hurt you.”

An instant later Jim broke through the intervening thicket himself, and to his astonishment found the Missourian bending above the prostrate figure of a child.

“He tripped up and fell, he was powerful keen to get away,” explained the Missourian. “I might have hollered at him and saved him the tumble,” he added regretfully.

The boy was lying prone on his back on the ground, gazing up at the two men. Bewilderment, doubt, and fear were mingled in his glance. He did not speak.

“And you wanted to shoot the little cuss, Jim,” he was mildly resentful. “You’re always in such a sweat to use that gun of your’s, seems like you’ll not be content until you plug some one with it.”

Jim merely looked at the child. He saw that he was wretched enough; that his face and hands were torn and bruised, while his clothes were a fluttering mass of unpicturesque rags. The man’s mouth opened in silent wonder.

“I certainly am mighty glad we found him,” said the Missourian; and at these words a look of keen suspicion flashed in the child’s eyes. Then they had been hunting for him! That was what the man meant!

“Look at him, Jim,” continued the Missourian, all of whose emotions were easily translatable into words. “If he ain’t most starved to death I certainly don’t know what starving is! He’s all skin and bones—what you had to eat, son?”

The child struggled to his feet with difficulty; he was, evidently, very weak, for he shivered and trembled as he stood there. The Missourian put out a staying hand.

“There was things growing on the bushes—I ate them,” he said in a hoarse whisper, begotten of hunger, fatigue, and exposure.

“Wild plums I reckon you mean. Well, sir, me and my pardner here will fill your pinched little carcass full of bread and bacon. Wild plums! Hell! and him a growing child.”

“Where’s your folks?” Jim now asked, he had found his voice at last.

“I ain’t got any,” replied the child sullenly.

“You ain’t got any? Then what in blazes are you doing here all by yourself?” demanded Jim; he was quite indignant.

The child made no response to this, but his restless glance searched the faces of the two men. His expression was one of dark mistrust; it almost seemed that he meditated flight; but the Missourian’s hand was on his shoulder.

“And so you ain’t got no pa?” said the latter ingratiatingly, for he recognized something of the boy’s distrust and suspicion, though he was quite at a loss to account for it.

“He’s dead,” and his lips trembled pathetically.

“Dead,” repeated the Missourian after him.

“You knew that,” and the child turned on him with sudden fierceness, his small hands tightly clinched, and his eyes glittering feverishly.

“I suspicioned it,” said the Missourian.

“The Indians killed him!” the boy added dully.

“But I allow your pa put up a pretty stiff fight; it was on a hilltop, now warn’t it? and your pa drove his teams up there and took out and fit them from behind the wagons—him and those who was with him?”

The child shrank from the questioner’s touch, but he answered:

“Yes, it was on a hill.”

“I knowed it,” declared the Missourian triumphantly.

“Knowed what?” demanded Jim with some impatience.

“Why, this little cuss came out of that scuffle back yonder; most anybody would have guessed that but you, Jim.”

“And he come here all by himself? Not any,” but his friend ignored what he said to turn again to the boy.

“There were four other men beside your pa with the wagons, warn’t there, son?”

The child nodded, but his eyes still flashed with a precocious sense of wrong and hate.

“I knowed it,” declared the Missourian in triumph a second time. “And it was the Indians they fit with, you’re sure about that?”

“It was the Indians,” said the child indifferently. “My pop said it was the Indians.”

“I reckon he ought to have knowed,” said the baffled Missourian. “But they were certainly curious Indians from what we seen.”

“It was the Indians, they said they was Indians.”

“Who?” cried the Missourian quickly.

“The men,” answered the child.

“The Indians told you that, did they? Well, they was real obliging.” He turned to Jim. “I’m having doubts about these heah Indians.”

“Look here, son, what was your idea about them redskins?” asked Jim.

The child did not answer him, but there came a sudden flash of intelligence to his pinched little face which the instant before had been quite expressionless in its abject misery. It was plain he understood what the man meant when he spoke of the Indians; then he smiled slyly, cunningly.

“What I want to know,” said Jim, “is how he got away from them.”

“That’s so, son, how do you happen to be heah?”

“The Indians fetched me here,” answered the child readily enough.

“And left you heah?”

“I ran away in the night; when they was all asleep.”

“So you fooled ‘em—well, you was smart; but didn’t they hunt for you any afterwards?”

“I hid in the rocks.” He pointed vaguely to the broken hills in the west. “They looked all around for me and never found me, but I saw them. Then they went away.”

“How long ago was that?”

The child looked troubled.

“I don’t know,” he finally answered.

“I ‘low you ain’t forgot your name?”

“No.

“Well, what is it, son?”

“Benny Rogers,” then all at once he began to cry from sheer weakness and wretchedness.

The two men were puzzled and mystified. There was that one point about the Indians that they could not understand; and yet what they had seen in the ditch was in accord with their preconceived notions as to Indian warfare.

“We’d better go into camp, Jim,” said the Missourian. “You keep hold of the boy while I unsaddle the mules and turn them out,” but midway in his task he paused and glanced at the child who was still crying softly, miserably.

“I half believe the little codger lied to us,” he muttered. “Well, maybe it was Indians after all, he surely ought to know.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPHRIAM RAYMOND, standing in the doorway of his ranch house, well within the shadow of the foothills, was watching two horsemen as they crept along the trail.

To the west, where the land dropped from bench to bench until it finally found the level of the flat valley with its farms and irrigating ditches, lay Great Salt Lake; a gleam of sunlight was reflected on the water, and a few misty clouds low in the sapphire light betokened its nearness.

A year before, and the trail had been illy marked through the mountains; and scarcely more than a trace, as it crossed the desert beyond, where it wound its course from failing streams which fought the dry, thirsty sands, on to brackish water holes that were evil to smell, and yet more evil to drink from. But that single season had altered without lessening its terrors. It was heavy now with alkali du$t, dry with the season’s rainless suns, and fine with the grinding wheels of freight and emigrant wagons; it was further marked by the bones of cattle and horses. No one could mistake it now.

As the two men came nearer, Ephriam saw that they were mounted on mules, and that one of the men, a gaunt, red-whiskered fellow, shared his saddle with a child.

“Is this heah Raymond’s settlement?” the latter demanded, reining in his mule before the ranch house door.

“Yes,” answered Ephriam. “Won’t you light down?” he added. He was a kindly, venerable man, with a patriarchal beard and long, grey hair; there was more than a touch of the ministerial in the decent black broadcloth suit he wore; the fact that he was collarless, and that his trousers were tucked in at the tops of his heavy boots, did not detract in the least from his palpable pulpit dignity.

“We will, elder, if it’s agreeable to you, and we’d admire to fill up on kitchen victuals.” And the red-whiskered man drew the back of his hand across his bearded lips.

“You’re just in time,” said Ephriam smiling.

“I told you, Jim! Elder, I smelt ‘em from the moment we broke out of the hills.” He lifted the boy down as he spoke, and making a common movement with Jim, swung himself stiffly from the saddle; a half-grown boy had appeared from the direction of the corrals, and at a sign from Ephriam led away the mules.

“Are there no more of your party coming?” said the old man.

“What’s left of us is right heah, elder,” answered the Missourian; then he saw that Ephriam was regarding Benny curiously. “Oh, him? You allow he don’t belong to either Jim or me—and you’re right, elder, for he don’t.”

Ephriam turned on him with unexpected sternness at this.

“Perhaps that is your excuse for his condition!” and he pointed to the child, whose white, scared face wore a preternatural look of age and suffering; and whose tattered clothes scarcely covered his pinched little body; while his hands and bare feet were cruelly torn and bruised.

“Well, sir, I admit he ain’t much to brag on, and his looks is a scandal to this outfit. We picked him up only four days back; he says he’d run off from the redskins. He’d most starved to death.”

His own gaunt frame and hollow cheeks, however, told plainly of the hardships all had endured, and lack of food had not been the least of these. Ephriam’s face softened.

“Yes,” he said, in apology for his momentary suspicion, “I can see you have suffered.”

“But you have got a fine climate, elder,” broke in the Missourian, bent on being conciliatory. “Jim and me noticed that right along. This is the place to come for climate; there’s nothing else heah to take your mind off it; it’s heah thick.”

But Ephriam’s glance had gone back to the child.

“Poor little fellow! Some emigrant’s boy, probably.”

Benny looked up quickly into his face and stole to his side. Whatever those first suspicions of his concerning Jim and the Missourian they had in no wise abated; all their kindness had not altered his doubt of them. The questions they had asked him, but more than all their strange and to him utterly incomprehensible knowledge of so much that had taken place on that hill, had bred conviction in his brain. He hated and feared them.

“Seems to fancy you, elder,” said the Missourian. “We certainly done what we could for him, which ain’t saying much, for we’d liked to do a heap more.”

A young girl appeared in the doorway; the Missourian turned quickly, hearing her light step, and swept off his battered hat with an elaborate flourish.

“Ma’am,” he said.

Jim, by a casual gesture, brushed the flapping brim that shaded his eyes; he was speechless.

“If you will come in, dinner is on the table, father,” said the girl. She had outgrown all curiosity concerning these wayfarers from the States; yet she gave the Missourian a smile, and to him that smile was an event.

Seated at the table the old man contented himself with seeing that his guests wanted for nothing, while his glance constantly shifted first from one to the other of the men and then on to the child.

Jim ate in stony silence, but his more social companion, once the first rigours of his hunger were appeased, was disposed to talk.

“Our finding him, elder,” indicating the child by a flourish of his knife, “was certainly mighty curious.”

“Yes?” inquiringly.

“It was four days back. Jim and me had come to a sandy valley, it was like a good many other valleys we’d seen, except that it had a little more sand and a little less of grass than some of the others, but, perhaps, the most singular thing about it was a flat-topped hill that stood right out on the plain; a wagon trail led up to the top of that hill, but just where the trail struck up the slope, we noticed that it was crossed and crossed again by another trail—not a wagon trail—which led in a circle about the hill.”

“Indians,” said Ephriam; he was deeply interested.

“But a many of them hosses was shod, elder, and Jim and me made it our business to go to the top of that hill; we found there had been some sort of a scuffle there; there was five dead men in a wash on one of the slopes, and we could see where three wagons had been emptied of their loads and burnt; but the uncommonest thing about it was those dead men; for, when we come to examine them, we found their pockets had been looked through and pretty well emptied, and no letters nor no nothing left to show who they was or where they come from. The next day we found this boy; he remembered about the hill and about the fight, said his pa had been killed there, and said it was the Indians done it.”

“What of that? It was all quite likely,” said Ephriam.

“But was it so blame likely?” remonstrated the Missourian. “Recollect a many of the hosses was shod.”

“But the dead men?” asked Ephriam.

“Well, what had been done to them was a plenty; but I made up my mind that in some sort it was a white man’s job,” responded the Missourian, staring fixedly at him. The lids of Raymond’s eyes drooped for an instant.

“A white man’s job?” he cried. “White men?” he repeated dully; he seemed stunned by the idea.

“Which it might have been redskins,” said Jim, with his mouth full. “Elder, this cooking hits me hard.”

“Does the boy know who he is, and where he comes from?” asked Ephriam.

“He knows little that’s going to help in finding his folks; but I don’t allow he’s got any. He’s a pretty complete orphan.”

“Who are you, and where do you come from, child?” asked the old man gently, and he placed his hand on Benny’s head, his long fingers straying among his sunburned curls.

“My name’s Benny Rogers.” He spoke with a shrill little voice. “And where do you come from, Benny?”

“From Benson,” answered the child.

Ephriam seemed to consider, then he looked at the Missourian, who shook his head.

“Never heard of it,” said he shortly.

“Benson—and where is Benson?” and Ephriam turned again to Benny.

The boy’s glance instantly became troubled.

“I don’t know, but he told me I was to remember,” he said at last.

“Who told you to remember, Benny?”

“Mr. Landray.”

“Where is he?”

“The Indians killed him.”

“Where?”

“On the hill.”

“When? How long ago, I mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“You are sure they killed him?”

“I seen them,” in a frightened whisper.

“And they were Indians?” he watched the child’s face narrowly.

“Yes—”

“You are sure, Benny?”

Benny looked up into the old man’s face doubtfully; he appeared to hesitate before answering.

“Yes, I am sure they was Indians.”

The three men glanced at each other.

“And your father, Benny, what became of him?”

“The Indians killed him; but that was after they killed Mr. Landray.”

“That’s every blessed thing we could get out of him, elder,” said the Missourian.

But here a quite unexpected interruption occurred. There was the sound of wheels on the trail, and an open carriage to which was attached four spirited horses, drew up at the door. Ephriam rose hastily from his chair.

“Finish your meal,” he said, and with that he quitted the room.

“He’s a right friendly old party,” was the Missourian’s comment. “I reckon, Jim, it wouldn’t take much to plant me heah. I might even get a revelation to take the young wife of some old Mormon saint.”

On leaving the house, Ephriam found himself in the midst of a score or more of armed and mounted men who were riding in from the trail; but without giving heed to these he hurried to the side of the carriage, which held a solitary occupant; a florid-faced, good-looking man of perhaps fifty, who, in spite of a certain physical coarseness, was a not unimpressive figure. He was carefully, even fastidiously dressed, while his whole air was that of one who placed a high opinion upon himself.

To him Ephriam presented himself, but for the moment he was entirely ignored. The florid-faced man looked on beyond him, and through the open door of the ranch house, where the two men and the child could be seen, and inspected them narrowly. One of the horsemen seemed equally interested in Raymond’s guests; for he had ridden up close to the single window that lighted the room and peered in. Now he turned, making a slight gesture which the occupant of the carriage acknowledged by an almost imperceptible movement of the head; then he said to Raymond:

“Friends of yours, brother Ephriam?” and his short under lip and heavy chin quivered with some secret emotion.

“They are emigrants, Brother Brigham,” answered Ephriam quickly.

“Still they might be friends of yours, Brother Ephriam,” returned the other significantly, but he held out his hand frankly and cordially.

This matter of the emigrants was a sore point with Raymond. He had given such broken spirits as passed his way what comfort he could; and this, he knew, was a thing that lay heavy against him, since the thrifty Saints saw a special Providence in the coming of the gold-seekers who could be made to pay handsomely in a variety of ways.

Brother Brigham stepped from his carriage, and beckoning Ephriam to follow him, led the way out of hearing of the others.

“The Lord has greatly prospered you; not amongst our people have I seen such fields as yours,” and Young placed his hand on the older man’s shoulder; there was real kindness and real regard in this involuntary gesture, and in the genial warmth of his companion’s mood, Raymond seemed to expand and glow.

His memory harked back to their recent exodus, when the church had been removed over a thousand miles through an unmaped country full of dangers and difficulties. Like Moses of old, this man had led his people—men and women and children; destitute, poor, and illy prepared to meet the hardships of such a journey; yet, almost without a murmur, they had abandoned a land they knew, for a land they did not know, and had followed him. His unyielding determination had inspired them all; it alone had made that journey possible. Without him there could have been nothing but ruin and failure; they had seen the graves grow up by the trail, marking the course they had come; they had reached Salt Lake, their stores spent, their strength shattered by the sufferings they had undergone, to find their land of promise a desert; new and strange and terrible; death by starvation stared them in the face; but Young had been equal to that hour, and to their need. He silenced all their murmurs; he brought order out of impending discord; he plead, commanded, threatened, prophesied; while, with a restless and determined energy he set them to work. They had strengthened, and their desert had become a land of plenty. This was all so recent that Ephriam’s wonder of it never failed him; surely this man had his gifts from God. Young spoke abruptly.

“Who is that child?” he demanded.

In a few words Ephriam told the little he knew of Benny’s history. The other’s cold, grey eyes never left his face. Once or twice he nodded slightly, as if Ephriam’s words were confirming facts with which he was already acquainted.

“And he says it was the Indians! Brother Ephriam, they must be looked to.”

“But that seems to be a matter where there may be some doubt,” said Ephriam.

“Ah!” and Young turned on him quickly.

“The men who found him say that the horses of the murderers were, many of them shod.”

Young shrugged his shoulders.

“The boy should know better than they. I am surprised, Brother Ephriam, that you should give any credit to their crazy tales.” He spoke in a hard, rasping voice, and Raymond was aware, that for some reason which he did not understand, it was distasteful to Young that there should be any doubts entertained on this point.

“What are you going to do with him?” Young demanded, after a moment’s silence. The old man looked blank.

“It rests with them, not me. I suppose they will try to find his kin.”

“Yes, but where, Brother Ephriam?”

“In Benson, wherever that is,” and Raymond looked puzzled. He added: “It will not be difficult to learn. I think—”

But Young cut him short.

“Brother Ephriam, don’t think. The boy’s father is dead; his friends are dead; what more do you want to know?”

Ephriam hesitated; he seemed about to speak, but was silent. There was a long pause. Young looked at him with his uncertain grey eyes, narrowed to a slit. Here was a good man, a man of scruples and convictions, and evidently capable of a most unsaintly stubbornness, in whom it would be neither wise nor expedient to fully confide. At last he said:

“It is best for the child that he should remain here with you, Brother Ephriam. Those men can do nothing for him.”

“Yet they may not wish to give him up,” interposed Raymond quickly. Young smiled.

“They may have to. And you, Brother Ephriam, must round up your shoulders to bear this burden.”

“I am willing enough to take the child, if—”

“You can’t make terms with me. There are no ifs to obedience. Either you do as I wish, or you don’t,” said Young, coldly. “This is a matter that has more to it than you can know now. It is not safe for those men to leave here with the child, no good can come of it to them. Do you understand, Brother Ephriam? You will be placing them in great danger. Now are you willing to do that?” There was a sinister significance to what he said beyond the mere meaning of his words that was not lost on the old man. Young continued. “Try them; tell them you are willing that the child should remain with you until such time as he can be sent back to the States. Satisfy them in what manner you choose, but keep the child; and, Brother Ephriam, advise them to remain silent concerning these foolish suspicions of their’s. No good can come from talking of them,” and Young turned abruptly from him.

Raymond followed Young to his carriage; he meditated rebellion; but, in spite of this transient feeling of hostility to the other’s commands, he knew that he would accept the responsibility he was seeking to fasten upon him. It would end in his keeping the child, through fear that a greater wrong might come of it if he did not.

These thoughts occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else; and it was only later that he sought for an explanation for Young’s interest in the matter, and this explanation was destined to come from a most unexpected source.

Moody and preoccupied, he watched Young and his bodyguard disappear down the trail. He was recalled by hearing the Missourian’s drawling voice at his elbow.

“Well, elder, the boy was so tuckered out he plumb fell-asleep at table, and the lady she toted him off to bed; she allowed she knowed what he needed.”

“Were you going on to-day?” asked Ephriam quickly.

“Yes, but the lady’s got the start of us; she’s got the kid,” said the Missourian. It was plain he approved of the lady.

“What shall you do with him?” demanded Ephriam.

“Doggone if I know!” said the Missourian rather helplessly. “Send him back to the States, I reckon, as soon as we can.”

“Then you’d better leave him here with me.”

“We certainly are obliged to you,” cried the Missourian.

“But look here,” it was Jim who spoke. “What about them five men? If it was redskins, it was all right; but if it wasn’t redskins, who the hell was it?” He glanced from one to the other.

“I reckon you got folks down in Salt Lake who’ll make it their business to have a look at that trail?” said the Missourian.

“It is better that you say nothing of your suspicions,” said Ephriam.

The Missourian turned on Raymond swiftly, and pushing back the brim of his hat looked him squarely in the face.

“I’m a talking man, neighbour,” said he in his slow drawl. “I done a heap of talking in my time, and I allow to keep right on giving people the advantage of my opinions. I don’t fancy being advised to keep my mouth shut about this.”

“You misunderstand me,” answered Ephriam quietly. “If it becomes known that there is reason to doubt the Indians were solely responsible for the killing of those men, it will make talk; and, supposing the guilty parties are in camp near the city—and many strangers are in camp there—we may have to look far for them when we want them.”

“That sounds a whole lot better,” said the Missourian. “Well, we’ll tuck along into town, and we leave the boy with you to send back to the States.”

Ephriam led the way to the log stables. He wanted to see the last of these two men, before he repented of the part he was playing. They seemed simple, kindly fellows, who would have dealt fairly by the boy.

The Missourian wrung his hand with fervour at parting.

“You let us out easy, yet it ain’t really fitting we should carry him on to California,” he said.

Ephriam stood by the corral as they rode away.

“They are honest fellows,” he muttered at last, and then he realized that he was staring at a stretch of empty road, they had passed from sight down the trail.

He went slowly back to the house. His daughter met him at the door.

“Why, have they gone?” she said in surprise.

“Yes—”

“But the boy, father?”

“He is to stay with us until I can send him to the States,” he told her. She saw nothing unusual in what he had done; since this kindness, for such it seemed to her, was wholly characteristic of him.

“That’s just like you, father; you are always taking trouble for other people.”

“Am I? I didn’t know.” He smiled at her. “Do you mind?” he added.

“No; poor little fellow. He fell asleep at the table, and I carried him up-stairs and put him to bed.”

Ephriam chuckled softly.

“I guess you’re every bit as bad as I,” he said.

He seated himself on a bench by the ranch door, and fell to considering the child’s story, seeking to fix some explanation to it, that would account for Young’s interest in him.

Inside the house the girl came and went. Lost in thought the old man did not note the passing of time, and it was only when his daughter appeared in the doorway to tell him that supper was on the table, that he roused from his long revery, but with the problem as far as ever from solution.

“Bless me, it’s almost candle-light,” he cried. “Where’s the boy?”

“He’s still asleep.”

“Then we’ll let him be,” he said. But after they had eaten, he stole up-stairs where he found Benny still resting quietly.

“He’s sleeping yet, but I’ll go see him again before I go to bed,” he told his daughter when he rejoined her in the room below. But when, two hours later, he mounted to Benny’s room, he found him wide awake and sitting up in bed. Seeing Ephriam he smiled in friendly recognition, and sank back on the pillow.

“You’ve had a long sleep, Benny,” said the old man. He seated himself on a low stool beside the bed, placing his candle on the floor at his feet. “Are you hungry?” he added.

“No, not a bit,” said Benny.

“Benny, you’re sure it was the Indians that killed your father?”

Benny instantly sat erect again.

“Did they tell you to ask me that?” he demanded, with keen suspicion.

“They? Who do you mean, child?”

“The men.”

“No. They have gone; you are to stay here with me.”

Benny smiled, then his face fell.

“But they’ll come back for me,” he said.

“No, you’ll probably never see either of them again; they are going on to California.”

“And I’m to stay here with you?” he asked.

“Yes—”

“For always?” he demanded eagerly.

“Yes, as long as you like.”

“I shall like that—always,” he declared, with an air of settled conviction.

“Could you understand what the Indians said to you, Benny?” asked Ephriam.

“Oh, yes.”

“They spoke as I am speaking?”

Again the child nodded. Ephriam looked sorely puzzled.

“Hadn’t you better tell me the truth, Benny?”

“But I am telling you the truth; and if I told you any different they would kill me.”

“Who, child? The Indians?”

“Yes.”

“Why were you afraid of those two men?”

“Because they know,” said the boy promptly.

“Know what?”

“Know all about it, where my pop was killed and Mr. Landray and his brother, they know all about it—”

A light broke on Ephriam.

“Oh, I see, and you think they were with the Indians?”

Benny nodded, and answered a whispered yes to this.

“Perhaps you had better not tell any one what you have told me, Benny; but some of them were Indians?”

“Some,” said Benny, still in a whisper.

Ephriam turned away.

“Wait!” cried the child. “I got something to give you.” And from about his neck he unfastened a string to which was attached a small buckskin bay. “He gave me that,” he said, extending the bag to Ephriam.

“Who, Benny? Your father?”

“No, Mr. Landray. He said I was to give it to some white man who’d know what to do with it. You must send it to Benson.”

“And do you know where Benson is, Benny?” asked Ephriam.

“No. I’ve forgotten. He told me, and he told me I mustn’t forget, but I have. It was where my pop came from long ago when he was a little boy like me.”

Ephriam moved to the door, and the child stretched out his small limbs with a keen sense of physical comfort; an instant later he was fast asleep.

When Ephriam returned to the room below, he placed the candle on the table, drew up a chair, seated himself and opened the bag. He found that it contained nothing but papers which concerned themselves wholly with dry business details. All he gathered from his perusal of them was that they had belonged to a certain Stephen Landray.

He saw that the papers were of no actual value, and feeling convinced of this fact he was conscious of an immense sense of relief; he could withhold them, and no one would suffer because of his act.

He wondered if this Landray had been in any way involved in what he, in common with all Mormons, was wont to style the persecution of the church; for he believed just as other Mormons believed, that those inveterate enemies of the Saints who had dipped their hands in the blood of that chosen people, were doomed to a swift and terrible punishment. Such a theory satisfactorily explained Young’s interest in Benny; for might it not have its origin in a wise benevolence; a wish to lift from him the guilt that had come to him as a birthright?

This was so comforting a thought that he dwelt long upon it. Suddenly, however, he was startled by hearing a sound at the outer door; it was as if some one had struck it sharply, and then a heavy object seemed to fall against it.

He hid the papers in the pocket of his coat, and snatching up the candle, hurried into the adjoining room. Midway of it he paused to listen. It might have been his fancy, but coming from beyond the closed and barred door he thought he could distinguish the sound of whispering voices.

He unfastened the door and threw it open, and in the circle of light cast by his candle he saw a tall figure swaying loosely just beyond the threshold, while off in the distance he caught the clatter of hoofs growing less and less audible as if several mounted men were riding rapidly away.

The swaying figure moaned.

“Who is it?” demanded Ephriam.

The man attempted to answer him, but the words he would have spoken failed him; he staggered toward the door and half fell into the room. The light shone full in his face.

“My God, Tom!” cried the old man.

Tom Raymond groaned again, and collapsed into a chair.

“Licker,” he gasped. “Bring me licker—”

When this was brought him and he had drunk of it, it seemed to give him strength.

“How are you, father?” he said, with a ghastly attempt at a smile.

“What has happened to you, Tom?” asked his father.

“I been shot. Oh, I got bored pretty,” he groaned. “But I’m a heap better than I was—-where you going?”

“To call your sister.”

“You needn’t. Plenty of time to see her in the morning. Give me another pull at that,” nodding toward the bottle which Ephriam still held in his hand.

“How did it happen, Tom?”

“Indians,” said Tom, speaking with difficulty. “I been in the army back at Fort Laramie, but I’m on the mend now.”

“But how did you get here in this condition?” demanded Ephriam.

“Friends brought me—was almost well, but coming in I got a fall from my horse, and my wound opened; had to lay by in camp on the Weber for a week,” he explained between gasps.

His father got him into his own room, where he propped him up on the edge of the bed and silently rendered him what aid he could in removing his clothes. Almost the first thing the wounded man did was to take from about his waist a heavy belt that gave out a metallic sound as it slipped from his weak fingers and fell to the floor.

“Pick it up, father, and shove it under my pillow. It’s my savings,” he said, with a sickly nervous grin.

Once in bed, fatigue and great bodily weakness together with the generous stimulant he had taken, caused him to fall at once into a troubled doze.

Ephriam drew up a chair and seated himself at his son’s bedside. Tom had been gone for over a year, and their parting had not been a friendly one; but his present anxiety made him forget all this. Tom seemed very ill to him, as he lay there pale and haggard in the light of the single candle, and though he slept he was neither silent nor motionless; he moved restlessly, with strange mutterings and chokings.

Ephriam could see the bloody, dirty bandages that swathed his right shoulder, where the collar of his shirt had been cut away, and he wondered how serious the wound was.

Suddenly he started. The name of Landray was on Tom’s lips. Then the wounded man woke with a start, and seeing a look on his father’s face which he did not understand, demanded:

“What am I saying, father?”

“Nothing, Tom, nothing,” said the old man brokenly. “Humph!” said Tom, and turning his face to the wall, slept again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

BENSON was not mistaken. He had achieved a permanent place in Virginia Landray’s regard. She had definitely accepted him, and in the exact degree in which he had wished he might be accepted. She came to rely on him as she relied on no one else; his words, his opinions, always on the one momentous subject of Stephen’s return, had weight with her. He took her such maps as he could find, and together they followed the course of the gold-seekers. He dilated upon the possible obstacles and difficulties they had encountered, while making light of the dangers. Whatever could account for their silence he dwelt upon and exaggerated; and this in spite of his own growing conviction that Stephen Landray and his companions had gone to their death in that rush across the plains.

“What if she never hears from him?” he asked himself this over and over, not coldly and without calculation, but as one who might be brought face to face with an altered condition.

Virginia was young and beautiful; there would be no dearth of suitors if she were widowed. Yet, could she be made to realize, that for her, Stephen Landray and Stephen Landray’s love had ceased to be, in all but memory? There was something horrible and unnatural in the thought that for her, life might cease to have any special meaning beyond passive endurance. If she had been less beautiful; less radiantly youthful; if a casual if compassionate interest had been possible where she was concerned; he might have found something in the nature of compensation in this conception of his as to what her devotion would be; now he saw it only as an unmitigated tragedy. Yet he ended by glorifying her for those very qualities that made him despair most.

He contrasted her with Anna, for whom he was feeling nothing but contempt; a contempt, however, that was not unmixed with pity, for he realized the impermanency of her emotions; she had adjusted herself to a cheerful acceptance of the situation; they would hear from their adventurers in the spring; it was folly to expect letters now that winter had set in, and she was not going to mope.

Benson was constantly irritated by her requests for money; and when he finally refused to yield to them out of simple justice to Virginia, whose interests he felt were threatened by her extravagance, she quietly worsted him by gaining Virginia’s sanction to her demands.

It was in vain that he remonstrated with the latter. She listened patiently enough to his explanation, but with an apathy that included all worldly concerns.

He was exasperated and annoyed, since the situation promised to present certain very tangible difficulties. The mill had been a dubious enterprise in the hands of Paxon, the new man. In January he was to have made his second payment, but was unable to do so, and turned back the mill. The brothers had directed that this money be used to take up their note to Mr. Stark; and Benson took up the note himself.

He showed the note to Anna the very next time she came to the office, hoping it would prove an impressive argument in favour of greater economy; but was much chagrined to find that she regarded the matter as settled, now that the note had passed out of Mr. Stark’s hands into his.

“But, my dear Mrs. Landray,” he urged, “suppose anything should happen; suppose I should die suddenly; the note would be found among my papers—it might be very inconvenient, you know.”

“But you are not going to die, Mr. Benson,” said Anna cheerfully. “I have just been remarking how well you look,” and she rose reluctantly to go.

“We never know,” said the lawyer, rising with evident alacrity. He followed her to the door. Anna sighed and frowned.

“If only Bush were here, I shouldn’t have to bother you; I can manage Bush, but I don’t seem able to do so very much with you, Mr. Benson. I wonder why it is?” she turned to him smilingly.

“I am fortified by the necessities of the case,” he said.

“You are a very determined character; I don’t wonder people have such confidence in you,” she hoped this flattery might move him, but the lawyer merely bowed. “Can’t we mortgage something? Bush and Stephen were always doing that.”

“They were almost too successful, Mrs. Landray,” said Benson.

“Well, I shall see Virginia,” and Anna sighed again.

“I shall see Virginia, too,” muttered the lawyer, after Anna had taken her leave of him. “The little idiot cares for nothing but money!” and he turned back into his office again.

The house Benson occupied was on the north side of the public square. It was a two story frame structure having an ungenerous porch across the front. Everything about it spoke for a depressing utility, a meagre sufficiency. Its walls were mere husks which enclosed large barren rooms, which successfully resisted all attempts at adornment. A narrow strip of turf separated the house from the sidewalk, this was divided by a gravel walk which led from the gate to the front door; the edges of this path were bordered by whitewashed stones the size of a man’s two fists.

Since his father’s death, Benson had used the large double parlours as offices; a side door from the rear room, over which his modest sign was displayed, opened on Water Street; and by this door his clients came and went in steadily increasing numbers.

He had few pleasant memories of his boyhood to attach him to the place. His mother had died when he was a child; and his father, who had his own ideas about the rearing of children, had made his up-bringing stern and rigorous; he yet recalled the latter with greater awe than affection; indeed, a certain fear of the old pioneer had followed him into manhood.

He still remembered vividly his first trial; how glancing up from his brief, he had found his father’s dark restless eyes fixed upon him; their coldly critical glance had filled him with something very like terror; and when he had spoken his voice faltered, and he had seen the shaven lips curl contemptuously; afterward, his father had said with that frank unsparing candour of his, “I suppose you can’t help it that you are a fool, Jacob;” then he had added, “I always thought you took after your mother’s folks; none of them ever amounted to much that I heard tell of.” But he had lived to reconsider this hasty judgment; he had seen his son grow steadily in men’s esteem.

Old Jacob Benson had been a very rich man, his opportunities considered. The big brick warehouses on Front Street had been his, and for years he had been the principal merchant in the town.

On coming into this property, young Jacob had disposed of the store; and he was content to collect his rents from the warehouses without any speculative interest in the grain and produce they housed. He was studious and ambitious. He might have done many things with the fortune that was his, but he had preferred to remain in Benson where the very men who had distrusted his father, the men who had reason to remember him as hard and close, Had every liking for the son.

When Anna took her leave of him, the lawyer turned to his desk. He had scarcely settled himself at his work again, when a carriage drew up at the curb. Sam West was on the box, and Benson hurried into the street and was just in time to open the carriage door for Virginia.

“I have wanted to see you for several days, Mr. Benson,” she said.

“Is anything wrong? What can I do?” He had led the way into the office; now he found a chair for her.

“There is something you can do,” said Virginia, seating herself.

“What, Mrs. Landray?”

She put out her gloved hand and rested it lightly on his arm.

“It’s the one thing,” she said, smiling sadly. “I want your advice now; for later I shall want your help. It will soon be spring again, the Ohio will be open, the ice gone—”

“Yes, it can’t be long now until you hear,” he prompted encouragingly. .

“But I am not going to wait to hear,” she said slowly.

“Not going to wait to hear?” he repeated, vaguely disquieted by her words and manner.

“No. I am going West to find Stephen.”

“Impossible, Mrs. Landray!” he burst out; but she checked him by a gesture, a gesture that imposed silence while it banished his objections as trivial.

“I have waited. I can wait no longer. I must know.” Her look had become one of settled determination.

“But, Mrs. Landray, pray hear me—”

“I know you will wish to dissuade me; so will Anna, and Jane, and what you will say will be prompted only by kindness; but it will be of no use, Mr. Benson. Don’t you understand I shall never be satisfied unless this is done? I must hear again—even if the message is from the dead.” Her voice faltered, but she went bravely on after an instant’s silence. “It is quite useless to reason with me; for this is not a matter that can be reached by reason.”

There was a long pause. Benson saw that while she was in her present mood there was nothing he could say in opposition to this plan of hers that would have any weight with her.

“I know Anna and Jane will think it foolish, so I came here to win you to my purpose first.”

“I fear you can’t do that, Mrs. Landray,” and he smiled doubtfully.

“It will be possible to find the money, will it not?” And Benson regretted that Anna’s extravagance had made it necessary for him to exaggerate the difficulties of raising money. He felt a sudden guilty pang that he had imposed this further burden on Virginia; he hastened to reassure her.

“I did not mean in that way,” he said.

“How, then, Mr. Benson? No—I want you to say just what you think. If you are to help me with the others you must think and believe with me.”

“But you cannot go alone, Mrs. Landray.”

She smiled superior. She was already prepared for this objection.

“No, of course not. I shall join some party. Other women have gone. In the spring other women will be going again; I will join some such party.”

He seated himself in a chair at her side.

“I know you will listen to me, even if you had rather not hear what I am going to say; but have you really considered the difficulties, the hardships, the actual dangers?” he asked.

“They are nothing, compared with what I am suffering now,” she said simply. He hurried on.

“If you will only wait, you may hear from him. Indeed you must make up your mind to wait until the river opens; you cannot start until then. I beg of you wait just a little longer; pray don’t misunderstand me, I am not going to oppose any project you may have set your heart upon; that would be quite without my province.”

“Then you really think I should go—”

“No, Mrs. Landray, I can scarcely conceive—you will pardon me for saying it—a more ill-advised undertaking; but I think you will see it this way, too, when I have pointed out some of the difficulties.”

Virginia’s face fell.

“I will do anything to help you,” he went on warmly. “But how can your quest prove conclusive? You will be a member of some party whose whole interest will be to cross the plains as quickly as possible. They will not want to stop to prosecute such a search; and do you realize the magnitude of such a task? You will have to cross hundreds of miles of desert, and explore a region that will some day be divided into seven or eight States larger than Ohio.”

“Men can be hired to go where I can not,” said Virginia reluctantly. Then she drew herself up imperiously, “I have thought of all you say, Mr. Benson, and in spite of obstacles the means of success will not be lacking, I am sure of that.”

There was a long silence. Benson rose and paced the floor. Virginia watched him gravely.

“It will be possible for you to raise sufficient money?” she asked at last. “I shall need a large sum.”

“I beg your pardon—oh, yes,” when she had repeated her question. Benson paused in his rapid walk.

“I suppose you know how absolutely helpless you will be,” he said. “How dependent on mere chance kindness, on mercenary interest, Mrs. Landray? I appreciate your heroism—it is beautiful—believe me I am not unmindful of that; but it is altogether impractical. If any one goes, a man must go. A man who will be superior to chance kindness or purchased interest, who can conduct the search himself from beginning to end, and who will not have to trust any one.”

“But where could I find such a man?”

The lawyer’s face flushed.

“Would you trust me, Mrs. Landray?”

“You—Mr. Benson?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” rising and going quickly to his side. “You are not serious, you could not go; so many people need you here!”

“They can very well get along without me,” he said shortly.

She searched his face eagerly; there was a faint wistful smile on her lips. It was plain she was uncertain as to how she might take his words.

“I am quite in earnest, Mrs. Landray,” he said. “You could trust me.”

“Oh, yes—implicitly.”

A swift sense of joy came to him. He was about to do a very foolish thing; but the fact that it would be for her, dignified the folly; it became desirable, a privilege.

“But can you go?” doubtfully.

“Why not?” and he laughed boyishly. “What’s to keep me if I wish to go? However, you must understand that I am making a promise that future events will probably render void; so you need not thank me, since I can’t think I’ll have the opportunity to earn your thanks.”

“But I do thank you!”

“And you agree to my going if it’s necessary?” he questioned eagerly.

She looked at him doubtingly.

“I wonder when you speak so confidently of my hearing from Stephen in the spring, how much is conviction, how much kindness—the wish to put from me till the last moment a terrible, hopeless knowledge?”

His glance wavered under the intensity of the look she fixed upon him; he could not meet her eyes.

“I know you mean to be very kind, Mr. Benson. Your friendship has been my greatest comfort, and now you will make this sacrifice; I fear I am very selfish in allowing it, but don’t you understand? This is the last, the only thing I can do; after this, there is nothing—nothing—everything will have ended for me; and so, in my extremity, I am willing to let you go for me.”

“Don’t say that, Mrs. Landray!” he cried. “Nothing really ends; in some form or another the thing we cherish lives on.”

“But what will be left for me?” she asked simply; and he was silent.

It was all so recent, but later when time should have done its merciful work, some peace of mind would surely come to her; he could not believe that this tragedy could be wholly tragic.

“When I go,” he said gently, “I shall want you to believe that I shall leave nothing undone that devotion and singleness of purpose can suggest, or money accomplish. But we must wait a little longer; you will be patient, Mrs. Landray?”

“Haven’t I been patient?” and she raised her sad eyes to his. “I only wonder how I have lived through the winter. Can you conceive anything more awful—some one you love, who is all in all to you; and for that person to take his living, breathing presence out of your life, and never to hear, never to know, only to wonder; to go on from fear to fear—”

“Yes,” he cried generously. “God knows, you have been patient, Mrs. Landray; but I only ask you to wait until we shall have had time to hear; until the river and western travel opens. Then if you do not hear from him, I will start at once. We will end this suspense. The more I think of it, the more it seems the reasonable thing to do.”

And now that he was determined to make this journey for her, he glowed with a generous enthusiasm. If Stephen Landray still lived he would bring to her the tidings, and would find it in his heart to rejoice with her.

“But I wonder if it is right of me to allow you to do this,” and her face was troubled. “Perhaps my first idea, to go myself, was best.”

“No, Mrs. Landray, you will wait here until I bring you word of him. Your idea was beautiful and devoted, but the very fact that you are a woman would stand in your way. So if any one goes, I must go. You can trust to my devotion, my friendship, where you could not trust another whose interest you had merely purchased. I shall go single hearted to find him; that will be my sole purpose.”

He felt exalted by the sacrifice to which he was committed. He wished it might be greater; then it would be the more worthy of her.

“I can only think of him as ill, with some terrible illness, or—or—” and speech failed her.

“I know,” he said softly.

“I wish you could know all you have been to me; the comfort you have given. I don’t mean now, I mean since that night when you brought me the letter.” She rose as she spoke and gathered her wraps about her.

“It is nothing—nothing,” he assured her, as he walked with her to her carriage.

“I will be patient,” she said as she bade him good-bye. “And though you will not hear of it, I am aware of the sacrifice you will be making for his sake.”

“For his sake,” repeated Benson slowly, as the carriage rolled away; and he turned back in the twilight that had fallen, and reentered the house.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I WONDER if she will never understand!” Benson asked himself, as he stood by the window and watched the carriage roll across the square and disappear down Main Street.

With the twilight, silence had fallen also; not that the town ever expressed itself with any accumulated volume of sound, but the score of teams that had stood hitched by the curb all day while their owners traded or gossiped, were now seeking the lonely country roads that led toward home.

In the half light, Benson saw vaguely outlined, the court-house, the jail, two newspaper offices, four dry-goods stores, one grocery, two saloons, and the tavern; the mere externals of middle West civilization at the end of the first half of the nineteenth century. Along the fences, in the gutters, and beneath the sheltering eaves of the houses, were dirty patches of melting snow and ice; mud and slush filled the street, and over all, between the changing grey clouds, the rising moon sent a faint uncertain radiance.

The winter was almost at an end. If he went West it must be soon. He sought to recall all that had been said, and all that he, carried away by the stress of his own emotions—his pity, and his love, had promised Virginia.

“And people call me shrewd and capable! Well, one thing, it will never profit me,” he mused sadly. “She will never forget him. She’s the sort of woman who doesn’t forget; I must bear that in mind.” The conviction had come to him slowly and reluctantly that Stephen Landray and his brother and their companions had perished; for this was the only theory that could explain their silence. It had been either the Indians or the cholera; and the entire party must have been destroyed or they would have heard from the survivers. The wealth of the train, and the money Stephen and his brother had in their possession, might have induced dishonesty; but he was unwilling to believe that either Walsh, or Dunlevy, or Bingham, could have been guilty of the crime of silence if anything had happened to the brothers; of Rogers he felt he knew nothing.

“Stephen’s dead; of course, he’s dead.” Then his memory reverted to her gratitude when he had told her he would go, and his heart leaped again with a swift intoxicating sense of joy. Yes, he would go for her gladly—and perhaps—

The office door opened, and the lawyer turning quickly from the window confronted a muffled figure.

“Are you quite alone, Jake?” and the voice was strangely familiar.

“Quite,” said the lawyer. “But who the dickens are you?”

The man laughed, and pulling off his cap, smoothed his hair and turned down the collar of his ulster; and Benson had the uncertain pleasure of gazing on Captain Gibb’s flushed and florid face.

“Well, how are you, Jake?” said that worthy, easily.

“What has brought you back?” demanded the lawyer with some sternness.

“Some damn bad roads, and hard travel,” said the captain; he moved a step nearer and half extended his hand.

“There,” said Benson scornfully, “I don’t need to shake hands with you.”

“Not if you feel that way about it, you don’t;” and the captain laughed shortly, but he added, “Oh, come now, Jake, don’t you be so high and mighty.”

He went to the fireplace and threw on a fresh log; the fire leaped up and its light filled the room. Benson gazed at him with some interest.

“That’s better,” said Gibbs cheerfully. “We can see to talk now.”

“What do you want, Gibbs? What brings you skulking back?”

“You’re making it very difficult for me to keep my temper, Jake,” said the captain blandly. “I didn’t skulk. Can’t you guess why I am here?”

“No.”

“Oh, try again, Jake, you didn’t half try.”

“I am too indifferent to try,” retorted Benson. “You deserve—”

“Never mind what I deserve,” interposed the captain with a touch of sullenness.

“I was merely going to observe in a general way, that a coat of tar and feathers would not be unappropriate; and Tucker had a good many friends who probably think the same.”

The captain shifted his position before the fire, but his face turned a trifle pale.

“I came here to see about my wife’s property.”

“Your wife? I didn’t know you had a wife.”

“Well I have,” doggedly. “It’s a damn funny thing you can’t understand who I mean when I say my wife.”

“Then you have married her?”

Gibbs hitched his chin higher at this.

“I’m a man of honour,” he said briefly.

“Oh, are you!” retorted the lawyer contemptuously.

“Are you prepared to dispute it?” demanded Gibbs truculently. “It’s hardly worth disputing,” said Benson. “But you haven’t told me why you’ve come to see me.”

“Haven’t I? Well, I hardly thought that would be necessary,” said the captain smilingly. In the main he was a cheerful person, and his resentments were for the most part short lived. “You were Tucker’s lawyer, weren’t you?”

“Oh, I see!” and the two men looked at each other in silence for a moment; then Benson spoke again.

“You say you have married Mrs. Tucker; I’ll take your word for that when you produce the proofs.”

Captain Gibbs again laughed shortly, and took a large leather pocket-book from an inner pocket of his coat, and from one of its many compartments drew forth a folded slip of paper.

“Here they are,” he said.

Benson with great deliberation lighted a taper at the fire, and then the candles on the mantel; then he took the folded slip of paper from Gibbs and leisurely examined it.

“The lady’s to be congratulated,” he observed sarcastically. “Thanks,” said the captain sententiously. “I am not mistaken, am I, in supposing that you were Mr. Tucker’s lawyer at the time of his death?”

“No.”

“Did he leave a will?”

“He did.”

“As—as Mrs. Tucker’s husband, have you any objection to telling me how he disposed of his property; and its extent?”

“Not the least in the world.”

There was another pause. The captain was waiting for Benson to go on; but Benson was silent.

“To whom was the property left?” Gibbs questioned.

“To your wife.” Benson suddenly handed back the paper the captain had given him. “Here, take this, I don’t want it,” he said.

“How much did he leave?” inquired Gibbs, with illy-concealed eagerness.

“About fifteen thousand dollars.”

“You don’t say! And it all goes to her?”

“Yes.”

Gibbs moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.

“I didn’t know the old fellow was so well off,” he said at last.

Benson shrugged his shoulders. The sordidness of the whole affair disgusted him.

“You don’t ask any questions about her—I mean Mrs. Gibbs.”

“I am not curious.”

“Oh, come, she’s a relative of yours, and the very last thing she said to me was, ‘Tell Jake I am quite happy."’

But Benson seemed quite untouched by this mark of affection.

“Naturally you’ll take an interest in her affairs.”

“Naturally I’ll take in them no interest at all,” said Benson with much deliberation.

“A very uncousinly attitude on your part; and one to be deplored,” responded the captain, smiling and unabashed.

“Where is Mrs. Tucker?” asked Benson.

“Mrs. Gibbs,” corrected the captain reproachfully.

“Mrs. Gibbs, then—where is she?”

“She is in St. Louis,” said the captain. “We didn’t know of Tucker’s death until a month ago. Lucky we heard of it when we did, for if we hadn’t, we should have been on our way to California as soon as the season opened; this will change our plans. There is no use going to California for what we can get nearer at hand, and with much less trouble; and it won’t come amiss; your cousin is altogether lacking in Benson thrift.”

“She is not a Benson.”

“Well, that’s so, too,” admitted the captain.

He stared into the fire in silence for a moment; a smile hovered about the comers of his mouth. He was thinking of this windfall, old Tucker’s money, as he squinted and blinked at the dancing flames. At last he roused from his revery; a sigh of deep content burst from his swelling chest.

“I suppose it will be best for her to dispose of the property here?” he said.

The lawyer nodded slightly. Gibbs laughed.

“Oh, come now, Jake, wherever he is, Tuckers all right; God Almighty makes it up to the losers, I’m Christian enough to think that; so you’d better thaw out and take stock with the living. I’m happy clean through! I’d be an infernal cheat to pretend otherwise.”

“What do you wish me to do?” asked Benson coldly.

“Oh, come nearer to the fire, or your words will freeze to your lips. Let out a tuck in your morals, man; be human; be glad with me!”

“What do you wish me to do?” repeated Benson sternly.

“Wishing don’t seem to do any good,” said the captain plaintively. “In enlightened society, to be the father of a baby, to be elected to a public office, or to inherit money—means whisky.”

“Not here,” said Benson shortly.

“So I discover,” said the captain. “The customs of refined society are in abeyance here. Next time I come, I’ll bring a jug.”

“If there is a next time,” said Benson angrily. “That poor old man you led to his death was my friend—”

“You needn’t rub that in,” said Gibbs, his cheeks paling. “Do you suppose I’d have let him drown if I’d known what was going on? I didn’t know it until months afterward. Don’t speak of that again, I won’t have it!”

The two men glared at each other, but Gibbs was the first to recover his temper; the ruddy tint came back to his cheeks.

“Well, since we can’t drink, suppose we talk about the tavern and distillery. Do you think you can find a purchaser for them?” he asked.

“Yes.”

The captain spread his coat tails before the fire and beamed on Benson. He seemed in no haste to take his leave.

“I don’t admire your manners, Jake, but I do respect your business ability. I suppose some correspondence will be necessary with Mrs. Gibbs touching these matters?”

“Yes.”

“Then,” said the captain, “I’d better get back to St. Louis. I’ll have to ask you to look out for her interests here. I don’t bear malice. I put it all down to youth and inexperience. One of these days you’ll master the great moral truth that there ain’t any good in what’s fun for you, and that there ain’t any fun in what’s good for you. I’ve cut my cloth accordingly.” He mused in silence for a moment, and then asked suddenly, “What do you hear from the Landrays?”

“We hear nothing,” said Benson briefly.

“That’s odd,” and the captain fell silent again.

“Have Mrs. Gibbs inform me of her wishes,” said Benson, desiring to be rid of his caller.

“Oh, yes, but hold on, I was thinking about the Landrays. I didn’t tell you, did I, that before we heard of Tucker’s death, we’d gone up to St. Joseph; while there I fell in with a trapper in the employ of the American Fur Company—a French Canadian named LaTour—he had some fine beaver skins that Mrs. Gibbs was anxious I should buy for her; well, I didn’t buy them, funds were too low; but I did make one purchase of him, and you’ll never guess what it was! It was a sheath-knife with Stephen Landray’s name cut in the horn handle.”

And now Benson was deeply interested; he forgot all about his righteous contempt for the captain, in his eagerness to learn more.

“Did you ask the trapper how he came by the knife?” he demanded.

“Naturally. LaTour said he had lost his own knife, and had bought this one of a Mormon freighter he met in the mountains near Salt Lake.”

“But did you learn how the knife came to be in possession of this Mormon?” asked Benson.

“Why, no. LaTour asked him no questions. I suppose Stephen must have lost the knife; it probably dropped out of its sheath, you know.”

“I dare say;” and Benson turned this over in his mind; he felt that it was a matter to be carefully thought out. For one thing, it meant that his search need not begin east of Salt Lake, and this was a very important point. He was grateful to Gibbs; and his manner became almost friendly.

“How long do you expect to remain here?” he asked.

Gibbs laughed uneasily.

“I left the stage at Columbus and hired a man to drive me over,” he explained. “I guess I’d better go back there the first thing in the morning. You were unkind enough to suggest tar and feathers; the hint wasn’t wasted.”

“Perhaps I was a little severe, Gibbs,” said Benson grudgingly. “But you know she is my cousin.”

“I’m delighted at the connection,” and the captain bowed.

“Well, what are you going to do?” asked Benson.

“I was going to one of the taverns; but I guess that’s hardly safe. Oh, I’ll put in the night somehow.”

Benson hesitated a moment, and then he said:

“You’d better have supper with me, and spend the night here. I’ll drive you back about day. You’ll run no risk.” And he led the way into the dining-room, while his guest followed him with a hangdog look on his face. This unexpected kindness effected him more deeply than all Benson’s previous contempt; and the man’s heart was touched.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

BENSON began his preparations for the journey West with some reluctance, and it was well into May before he felt he could even fix on a date for his departure; but one morning Sam West brought him a brief note from Virginia that made him repent the weeks he had wasted.

She feared he was finding his promise impossible of fulfillment. Would he not forget that he had ever made such a promise, and tell her what steps it would be necessary to take to raise money sufficient for her to make the journey.

This note resulted in immediate action on Benson’s part. He saw Judge Bradly and told him he expected to leave for California the first of the following week; then he drove at once to the farm to inform Virginia of his decision.

When he reached the farm he found Virginia and Jane, with Jane’s baby, seated under an old apple-tree that grew by the corner of the house. He had tied his horse in the lane by the bars; and as he crossed the yard toward them Virginia advanced to meet him.

“You received my note?” she asked, as they shook hands.

“Yes, and your doubt of me was not unmerited. I must have seemed horribly dilatory to you; but my plans are all made; I shall start this day week. I can understand that to you I have seemed to go forward very slowly in this matter.”

“Did I seem very impatient?” asked Virginia humbly; but he saw there were depths of suffering back of the light his words had kindled in her eyes; and his conscience troubled him not a little that he had withheld the comfort his departure on this mission of his, would have given her.

“Not in the least, I am fully alive to your anxiety; your patience has been greater than I expected,” he assured her.

“I fear I am too willing to let you go; but I shall never forget, Mr. Benson—never, as long as I live!” and she raised her beautiful face to his with a look of gratitude that went beyond mere words.

“I am ashamed,” he burst out generously, “to have let anything detain me.”

“It has been my terrible anxiety that has made the days so slow in passing. Won’t you come and see Jane and the baby?—why, you have never seen the baby, Mr. Benson!” with a poor attempt at gaiety.

But a pall was upon the three. Jane greeted him with a pathetic gentleness of manner that was meant to take the place of the words she dared not speak. He turned from her only to meet Virginia’s laboured cheerfulness; and he was troubled and ill at ease; yet he made a tolerable success of maintaining that air of judicial composure in which he usually took refuge when he came near to suffering. He even made certain tentative and austere attempts at playfulness with the baby; and then he drifted into small talk which he felt to be as leaden as it was small. When at last he rose to take his leave he said to Mrs. Walsh:

“I hope I shall come back with good news for you,” and he held out his hand in farewell. His words brought them sharply back to the actualities. Jane looked up quickly from the sewing which her small hands now clutched despairingly.

“Good-bye!” and then a low cry broke from her. “You will bring them back?” and her tears began to fall.

“I shall try,” he said gravely. “But we must all be hopeful.” Then he looked into Virginia’s serious eyes, and caught the tremor of her lips; and was silent. What right had he to speak his senseless platitudes; he who was on the outside of all this sorrow?

He turned away; Virginia followed him, and they moved in silence across the lawn. It was Virginia who spoke first.

“You will write me as each stage of your journey is finished; won’t you, Mr. Benson? And you will leave nothing undone? You will not come back until you know?” She dwelt upon the last word with almost tragic insistence. Her wistful glance searched his face. “Forgive me, I know I have no right to question it, but you will not rest content until you have exhausted every source from which knowledge may be gleaned? Days and weeks, even months, will not count with you?”

“Neither weeks nor months shall count with me. I shall do all that money and devotion can do. I shall not turn back until I know,” he said simply.

“I am sure of it, Mr. Benson; and I thank you again and again!”

“I shall go direct to Fort Laramie,” he said. “We know they have reached there in safety; from there on I shall ransack the country for news of them. I may be able to send you letters after I leave Fort Laramie; I will if I meet any parties of returning emigrants. At any rate you will hear from me when I reach Salt Lake. If I find they passed through Salt Lake, I shall push on to the coast, and pursue my search in the various mining camps; at least, this is the plan I have decided upon; but when I get West, I may find it advisable to take a somewhat different course; but you will understand.”

“I shall know you are doing all any one can do, Mr. Benson.”

“The arrangement I have made with Judge Bradly admits of an indefinite absence on my part. I shall not be hurried; I shall take my time, and leave nothing undone that holds the shadow of a hope. You will need money before I return, and you are to go to the judge for that; your affairs are temporarily in his hands. There is just one thing I beg of you; don’t let your sister take advantage of your kindness in money matters. Bush provided for her, and there is absolutely no reason why you should make sacrifices, or continue those you have already made.”

“I will remember.”

“I am glad to hear you say that. I hate injustice, I hate to see you the victim of it.”

“Have I been? It has all seemed so unimportant; but perhaps I have done wrong. I shall remember all you have said to me.”

“I wish you would,” he said. “And another matter, you have not told Mrs. Walsh just how matters stand with her, about that brother-in-law of hers?”

Virginia shook her head.

“I haven’t had the courage.”

Benson gave a sigh of relief.

“I am glad you haven’t. Well, let her go to the judge, too, he understands; it will be all right.”

“You are very generous,-Mr. Benson.”

He reddened at this.

“Oh, no, it’s not that. What I may do is nothing to what you are doing; and I still reproach myself with that.”

“But you needn’t. It has given me something to do, something to think of.”

They had reached the lane. He vaulted lightly over the low bars, and from the other side held out his hand.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Landray; I shall be very busy until I go, and unless you need me, it is doubtful if I find time to come out here again.”

“How shall you go?” she asked.

“By stage to Portsmouth.”

“And when?”

“This day week.”

There was a pause; then Virginia said slowly.

“I shall miss you, Mr. Benson. I begin to understand how dependent your kindness has made me.”

“You are to go to the judge for everything, you know?” he said. “Advice, and all that. You’ll find him very kind.”

“Yes—but I do not think he can take your place.”

An unexpected joy shone in Benson’s face.

Virginia’s glance sought the wooded heights of Landray’s Hill. There she had seen the last of Stephen Landray. Now a long line of freight wagons was just disappearing about the turn in the road where months before she had caught the flutter of his handkerchief. She pressed her hand to her heart. What had she been thinking of, why had she let him go? Even then she might have stopped him; it was not too late—but she had let him go. She rested her arms on the bars, while uncontrollable sobs shook her.

Benson watched her, white-faced and miserable, and with a bitter sense of the futility of words. A puff of wind showered the bowed head with the petals of the apple blossoms, which caught among the masses of her hair. For a moment Benson looked with all the hunger of his love in his eyes; and then he turned away.

He had begun to unfasten his horse when a hand was placed upon his arm, and Virginia was smiling on him through her tears.

“If I am not to see you again, I want to thank you once more for what you are doing for us.”

“It is nothing,” he assured her. “Please don’t think of it.”

“But I do, I must, perhaps I am very cruel and heartless to allow you to go. If it was dangerous for them, it is equally dangerous for you. Suppose something should happen to you—I should have this to reproach myself with to the end of my days.”

“But nothing will happen to me!” and he laughed confidently, but she regarded him with questioning gravity. It occurred to her that he was very young, and that perhaps she had taken advantage of this quality of youth, and generous enthusiasm. She felt a pang of remorse at the thought.

“Please don’t worry about me, Mrs. Landray,” he said. “Or I shall be quite desperate,” but he was too sane to misinterpret her interest; he accepted it at its full value; his vanity added nothing to it. But the next moment she had forgotten him.

“You will not neglect to write?” she repeated anxiously.

He understood the change, and, oddly enough was relieved by it.

“No, Mrs. Landray, you shall hear from me as often as you could wish.”

He held out his hand again.

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

She stood watching him as he rode down the lane; and she was still watching him when he turned from the lane into the road.

Benson was as good as his word. Just one week later he left by stage for Columbus. From there he went to Portsmouth, still by stage, where he took a fast river packet for St. Louis. Arrived at St. Louis he first established himself at a hotel and then hunted up Gibbs, whom he finally located in a dingy room over a grocery store. A sign announced it to be a “Printing Office,” and when he had mounted a long, and exceedingly steep flight of stairs, he found himself in a small room, furnished with a desk, two chairs, and a dictionary; while in a larger room that opened off from it were presses and tables. In the far corner of the larger room he descried an inky youth who was busy setting type; to him Benson made his presence known.

“You want the colonel? Well, I’ll have him here in no time.” And he stuck his head out of the open window at his elbow, and called to some one in the street below.

“Hi, there! Just step round to the licker store in the next block and ask Colonel Gibbs to step this way! Gentleman wants to see him! It’s right handy for him,” he explained to the lawyer.

“So it’s Colonel Gibbs?” said the latter smiling.

“Yes, sir, Colonel Gibbs.”

“Since when?” asked Benson.

The youth seemed to regard this as an excellent joke.

“I reckon he was born that way,” he answered facetiously.

Here they were interrupted by a vociferous protest from the street, and the youth again stuck his head out of the window.

“You say he ain’t there? Did you look for him good?” he demanded being assured on this point he requested the person in the street to go over to James’s drug store. “I shouldn’t wonder if he ain’t playing checkers there,” he added.

This quest proved successful, for two minutes later the captain, wearing an air of cheerful and contented prosperity, bustled into the room.

“Bless me! Is it you, Jake?” he cried in astonishment, on seeing whom his visitor was.

Benson’s greeting was curt but civil.

“Where are you stopping?” asked Gibbs. “And what are you doing here, anyhow? Not that it is any of my business, for it ain’t.”

Benson briefly explained the nature of the mission that was taking him West, and as he did so, the captain rubbed the tip of his nose with his forefinger, regarding him the while with a growing wonder.

“Have a drink?” he demanded, when the lawyer had finished.

“No.”

“Signed the pledge?”

“No.”

“Oh! Joined the Infant Bands of Hope?”

Benson smiled at this sally, and the captain laughed.

“So you’re going to find Stephen Landray?” he said, suddenly checking his mirth. “Considering the size of your contract, you take it easy enough, but I guess you don’t know what you’re in for.”

“Have you still that knife, Gibbs?”

“Yes, it’s in my desk here.”

“I’d like to look at it if you have no objection.”

“Not the least in the world,” and he produced it from the disorder of a pigeonhole. Benson took it and examined it.

“I wish you’d give me this,” he said.

“Want it for yourself?”

Benson shook his head.

“Well, present it to her as coming from me, will you?”

“Certainly,” and Benson slipped the blade back into the sheath, and the sheath into his pocket. Gibbs watched him with a smile that constantly widened.

“So you are going across the plains to look for Stephen Landray?” he observed drily.

“Yes.”

“Interested in finding any of the others of the party?” asked the captain.

“I am as much interested in the others as I am in him,” said Benson quickly.

“Oh, no you ain’t, you don’t give more than a casual damn about the others. I can tell you why you’re going—no—you don’t want me to? Well, I’ll tell you anyhow; she asked you to.” He shook his finger playfully in Benson’s face. “Oh, fie—fie, my dear young friend, and you would have me think your motive purely disinterested.”

Benson shrugged his shoulders, and said rather sternly:

“I’m sorry you find it difficult to believe in my disinterestedness.”

The captain closed one eye, he was in a most jocular mood.

“Not for a beautifully sane character like you, Jake; there’s a lake down in Georgia that’s six miles across and four inches deep, but you ain’t like that lake; there’s a good deal of your father in you. It will come out one of these days, and when it does you will take the skin right off of people’s backs, and you will do it without a pang.”

“Thanks,” said Benson.

“Don’t mention it,” retorted the captain airily. “It ain’t worth while. I can’t let you claim all the virtues, something’s due fallen humanity.”

“I have disposed of the tavern for Julia.” The lawyer was willing to change the subject.

“First the man of sentiment, now the man of affairs.” And Gibbs beamed upon him. “How much will it fetch?”

“Four thousand dollars. I have brought the papers for Julia to sign.”

The captain beamed upon him afresh.

“That’s good; but before I forget it I want to tell you a thing or two that may be of use to you. You don’t quite like me yet, but you’ll like me better when you know me better, and meantime I am going to serve you in several ways, all touching this mission of yours. I happen to know a trader who is outfitting for Fort Bridger; I am going to introduce you to him and you can cross the plains with him. My advice is that you begin your search at Salt Lake; that knife was purchased of a freighter who was coming out, so Stephen must have reached Salt Lake, or some point near there. If he passed through the city he must have had dealings with the Mormons; you may find some one who will remember him.”

“Yes,” said Benson, “you are working it out just about as I worked it out. I am glad to have your opinion,” he concluded frankly.

“Now we’ll go to the house and see Julia,” said Gibbs. “It isn’t far, and then I’ll take you to the tavern where the trader I spoke of is stopping; that’s not far either.”

To Benson, this meeting with his cousin was an embarrassing ordeal, for she received him with an effusive cordiality that was quite unexpected, and to which he found it next to impossible to respond, but Gibbs came at once to his rescue. He fell to explaining the purpose that had brought him West, and with a secret relish and a significance of manner that made Benson’s cheeks redden with anger. Mrs. Gibbs, however, was, fortunately, quite oblivious to his meaning, and his studied reiteration of Stephen Landray’s name conveyed no idea to her; she evidently accepted her cousin’s mission at its face value, a fact which only added to the captain’s amusement. When Gibbs finally subsided, Benson quickly concluded his business, and announced that he was ready to go in search of the trader.

“Rodney, my dear,” explained the captain.

“Such a nice man, Jacob; I’ll go, too, and ask him to take the best of care of you,” said Mrs. Gibbs.

Benson entered a feeble protest; he was mainly concerned in wishing to escape from this rascally pair, but the captain cut his protest short by saying:

“Then hurry into your bonnet, Julia, for Jake’s got no time to spare.”

And presently they emerged upon the street, accompanied by Mrs. Gibbs, resplendent as to dress, and affectionately leaning on the captain’s arm, the very picture of wifely devotion. The moral squalor of the pair moved Benson to a disgust so deep that he found it necessary to cloak his sense of outraged decency in a lofty silence.

They found Rodney lodged at a small tavern near the outskirts of the city. To him Gibbs explained the case, and introduced Benson, and the black browed trader professed himself as delighted at the prospect of the latter’s company.

“When do you start?” asked Benson.

“At daybreak to-morrow,” answered Rodney.

“You’ll need a horse and arms,” said Gibbs. “We’ll go buy them now, and you’d better arrange to sleep here to-night.”

“Indeed, he’ll do nothing of the kind,” expostulated Mrs. Gibbs.

“My dear, I’m thinking only of his comfort,” said the captain meekly. “He’ll spend the evening with us.” And to this the helpless Benson yielded a reluctant assent, but he saw an end to the civilities they were thrusting upon him; this fact alone made the situation tolerable.

Gibbs was a real help, however; he knew the proprietor of a stockyard who had for sale just such a horse as Benson would require, and to this man’s place of business the three now repaired, where the captain drove a sharp bargain, and secured what afterward proved to be a most serviceable animal; next he selected a saddle and a rifle and two pistols, and then he relinquished Benson to Mrs. Gibbs, who shopped industriously in half a dozen stores in his interest, and with such vigour and decision that at the end of two hours she had accumulated what her husband declared to be an entirely adequate outfit. By way of a gift, Julia added a case of needles and thread and the captain, not to be outdone, a drinking flask, and the purchases were bundled up and a negro dispatched with them to the tavern, there to await Benson’s arrival.

While this questionable pair had been exerting themselves in his behalf, Benson’s righteous disapproval of them had slowly dissipated itself. There was something bohemian and reckless about them, a suggestion of easy improvidence, a joyous freedom from responsibility, that was new to him. The captain, swaggering much, his hat cocked well over one ear, and with manfully swelling chest under a vivid velvet vest, twirled a light walking-stick with happy nonchalance. He was assertive and noisy, perhaps, but eminently good-natured. Benson smiled and wondered. Evidently the next best thing to having a good conscience was to have no conscience at all. And Julia, with her fine eyes and clear skin, a handsome, dashing figure, cousined him with a confiding affection that quite disarmed him; he couldn’t approve, but they seemed happy and well satisfied with each other; and he allowed them to bear him back to their home in triumph.

It was quite late when he reached the tavern, whither the captain had insisted on accompanying him, and as they shook hands cordially at parting, the latter said:

“I’ll see you in the morning, Jake, so I won’t say good-bye now.”

“I wish you wouldn’t bother, Gibbs, it will be very early, you know.”

“I shan’t mind that, Jake. I’m going to see you off.”

Before Benson went to bed that night he wrote to Virginia, and arranged his purchases, stowing them away in the canvas packs he had bought for that purpose; then he undressed and stretched himself out on the bed.

It was barely dawn, and he seemed to have slept but an hour or so, when he heard Rodney pounding on his door, bidding him be stirring. He dressed by candle-light, and hurried downstairs, where he found the trader and his two Mexican packers already at breakfast.

In the inn yard their horses were being saddled and the heavy packs with which the trader’s mules were to be freighted were ready to be strapped to the backs of the animals.

When they had finished their breakfast, Benson followed Rodney into the yard. As he swung himself into the saddle the lawyer felt he was about to turn his back on the decorous, and, as he would have expressed it, the civilized life of the East, and he gave a last thought to his clients, and hoped the judge would do his best by them.

But he had no sooner left the yard than he dismounted hastily, for there, hurrying up the street, was the captain and Mrs. Gibbs.

“She would come, Jake!” panted the captain. “I told her you wouldn’t expect it, but she would come!”

“It was very kind of you,” said Benson, “but I don’t know that I deserved it.”

“Law!” cried Mrs. Gibbs briskly. “Do you think I’d let you go off like this without seeing the last of you?” and she bestowed a vigorous embrace upon him.

“I fear I’m keeping them waiting,” said Benson. “Good-bye, Gibbs—good-bye, Julia—God bless you both! I shall see you when I return. Good-bye.” He kissed Mrs. Gibbs, shook hands warmly with the captain, and mounted his horse again.

Now that he was really going, and the parting over with, Mrs. Gibbs wept copiously, while the captain endeavoured to console her.

As he rode away after Rodney, Benson looked back more than once, and saw them move slowly off up the street, arm in arm; the captain with expanding chest and twirling cane, and Mrs. Gibbs still plying her handkerchief; and this was the last he saw of them in many a long day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

BENSON arrived in Salt Lake City in August. After three days of unsuccessful investigation he sought an interview with Governor Young, at his office. He was ushered into a plain, businesslike room, where he saw a large man with a handsome, florid face, seated before a desk littered with papers. He rose instantly as the lawyer entered the room.

“Mr. Benson?” he said inquiringly.

“Yes—this is Governor Young?” he was rather at a loss to know how to address this dignitary, whose peculiar functions were about evenly divided between the religious and civil; this ex-painter and glazier who, to some thousands of his fellows was a god in his own right, as well as prophet and ruler; who ran mills, and sold cordwood, or dealt in groceries; and who, in the midst of these activities found time to balk and insult a weak, vacillating Government at Washington, and drive its representatives out of the State he had founded in the desert, when they chanced to fall under his displeasure, as they were sure to do if they attempted to enforce the law they had been sent thither to uphold.

Standing there, square and broad, full personed and vital, with his ruddy cheeks and square chin, he looked the man he was; capable, magnetic, determined, and not too weakly scrupulous, perhaps not scrupulous at all.

Each devoted a moment to the scrutiny of the other.

“Well, sir, how can I be of use to you?” asked Young.

“I hardly know that you can be,” said Benson. “It’s a chance, and I fear a remote one; still, I am very grateful to you for granting me this audience.”

“Have a seat,” said the governor.

“I am not intruding on your time?”

“Not in the least. Now, sir?”

When they had seated themselves. “I have come from Ohio,” explained Benson, “and on what, I begin to fear, is a hopeless quest.” And as briefly as possible he told his story. Once or twice he fancied that Young started, or it might have been that he merely moved in his chair; but he paid him the compliment of the closest attention and his interest did not relax until Benson had concluded his narrative.

Then he asked sharply: “What reason have you to suppose that I can help you?” and he watched the effect of this question, but Benson met his glance quite frankly as he answered:

“None. But it is my hope that you can, that you may be willing to exert yourself in my behalf.”

“But how?” demanded Young.

“That I hardly know,” said Benson reluctantly. “Unless you can aid me to find the freighter from whom Stephen Landray’s knife was purchased.”

“A great many of our people are engaged in transporting supplies and colonists across the plains.”

“Perhaps you will suggest a more direct method; I confess I am finding myself rather at a loss in the matter.”

“I suppose you are aware that your friends might have been stricken with the cholera, for instance; or the Indians may have killed them; or they may have gone astray on the plains and so lost their lives; or they may have been made prisoners by the Indians, may even now be prisoners? Or,” continued Young, “for reasons of their own they may wish you to think something of this sort has happened, and at this moment be alive and well in California.”

“That,” said Benson, “is quite impossible. If they are alive their families would have heard from them.”

“Their families? Men sometimes forget,” and the governor’s short upper lip curled unpleasantly.

“Some men might, not these.”

“Had they much money with them?”

“Yes, a large sum,” and he added, seeing the drift of Young’s mind, “but only a small part of what they might have brought. The leaders of the party were men of ample means.”

“Then something must have happened to them; men don’t abandon money.”

Benson ignored this; but it occurred to him that Young was probably speaking now in his worldly capacity, and that his worldly views were very worldly indeed; the views of one who neither trusted nor respected men.

“I will tell you what I will do,” said Young. “If they got as far as Salt Lake they must have had business dealings with some of our people. I can have inquiries made, if you will furnish me with a description of these men.”

“I have already been to the stores and shops,” said Benson.

“I will extend the inquiries beyond the city. Meantime I’ve a man here who may be of use to you,” said Young after a moment’s thought.

He called to the clerk in the outer office, but before the latter answered the summons, he changed his mind.

“I’ll fetch him myself,” he said, and left the room.

He was gone, perhaps, ten minutes, and then returned, accompanied by a heavy set man of not especially prepossessing appearance, who wore goggles and blinked through them at Benson with weak eyes.

“Mr. Benson, this is Brother Hickman,” said the governor, by way of introduction. “Now, Mr. Benson, kindly tell Brother Hickman what you have just told me.”

And Benson went through the narrative a second time.

When he had finished, Young turned to Hickman:

“Mr. Benson has already spent three days here, but so far he has learned nothing. It just occurs to me, Mr. Benson, that our people, while they would not, of course, really deceive you, still might be reluctant to answer your questions frankly.”

“But why?” asked Benson in some surprise.

“They have learned caution. They might be suspicious of you for one thing; this is why I advise you to secure Brother Hickman’s help. They all know him, and know he would not mix in any affair that would bring them into trouble.”

“But I can’t understand why they should be suspicious of me!” urged Benson.

“Then it’s evident you know nothing of the Latter Day Saints,” said Young.

“Very little,” admitted Benson.

“We’ve been accused of crimes; and we’ve been lied about until a stranger from the States has to prove himself before we accept him for what he seems. You have come to me frankly, not like some of these Gentiles who sneak in here to make trouble. Why, sir, they even quarrel among themselves and take their troubles into our courts; get justice, and then go away and swear they have been robbed; or, they come here without a dollar, and live on our charity, and then go away and vilify us.” He seemed to be lashing himself into a rage at the memory of these wrongs, real or imaginary. “But it hasn’t ended with these scoundrels that turn up here to make discord, the wrong has gone further; the Government at Washington has used us shamefully; it’s trampled the constitution under foot in its dealings with us; it’s ridden recklessly over all law to persecute and drive this people; and now they talk about sending troops here. You may as well tell me you can make hell into a powder-house as tell me you can let an army in here and have peace!” He rushed on with his grievances. “If I have forty wives, they do not know it; neither did I ask any judge for them. I live above law, and so do this people. Before we left Nauvoo, not less than two United States senators came to receive a pledge from us that we would leave the United States; and then, while we were doing our best to quit their borders, the poor degraded cusses sent a requisition for five hundred men to go and fight their battles in Mexico. That was President Polk; and he will welter in hell for it, with old Zachary Taylor; and that’s where the present administration will soon be if they don’t repent and let us alone!”

He paused, and Benson made haste to assure him of his entire sympathy. In spite of his coarseness the lawyer realized that Young spoke as one who had suffered oppression; or else he joined with an aggressive, quarrelsome disposition, the happy faculty of believing always in the justice of his cause, and that he was as firmly fixed in the right, as his enemies were hopelessly involved in the wrong.

A pause succeeded, and the governor came back to the matter in hand.

“When I think of our wrongs, Mr. Benson, I lose my temper; but they are nothing to you; what do you think, Hickman? What would you advise?”

Hickman turned to Benson and said:

“We can look about here, and try and learn if the party got this far.”

“Would it be possible to continue my investigation among the Indian tribes?” asked Benson.

“Oh, it ain’t them,” said Hickman. “They’ll steal an ox to eat, maybe; but they wouldn’t attack a well-armed party of whites. If it was the Indians, it was them back on the plains, you may be certain of that.”

“If it was the Indians—” broke in Young, “it’s my business to know it. I’m Indian agent here; and if they are up to any such deviltries I’ll sweat repentance out of them!” and he looked ugly.

Benson rose from his chair.

“Thank you,” he said to Young gratefully. “With your help I may be able to learn something. At any rate you shall hear from me in a day or so.”

A week elapsed, and Benson sorrowfully confessed that so far as his purpose was concerned, he was not one whit wiser than when he arrived at Salt Lake City.

Each day, Mr. Hickman, at the handsome figure he had fixed upon as a reasonable remuneration for the benefits he would confer, bore him company in his search; at first displaying a sardonic humour which his employer wholly failed to enjoy; later this changed to a sneering petulance, for the lawyer’s persistency was of a kind he had scarcely bargained on. Yet, in the end, Benson’s determination provoked him to a grudging admiration to which he gave expression in characteristic speech.

“You certainly ain’t much of a quitter, sir,” he said. “What’s your next move going to be? For I reckon there’s a next move coming.”

“Several next moves,” said Benson, slightly nettled by the man’s manner.

“Well, we’ll take ‘em one at a time. What comes first?” Hickman asked grinning.

“The Indian tribes in the mountains,” answered Benson with quiet determination.

“That will be just like chasing thistle down,” and Hickman’s grin widened.

“Then I’ll chase it!” said Benson shortly.

“And never come up with it.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Even if you manage to locate the different camps, you don’t suppose, do you, that any redskin will own up he’s had a hand in doing away with your friends? And if you venture in among them, what’s to hinder them from serving you some trick?”

“That’s a risk I shall have to take.”

“I guess you’ll find it’s more than a risk—”

“Of course, if you prefer not to accompany me—” began Benson.

“Oh, I ain’t afraid. It would take right smart to scare Bill Hickman, and Brigham’s appointed me to see that no harm comes to you.”

“Has he? That’s very kind of him.”

“Oh, I reckon he’s got his reasons,” said Hickman coolly,

“And you carry out his wishes?”

“I take counsel.”

“What’s that?” inquired Benson.

“It’s principally doing what I’m told. That’s why you can count on me, young man, no matter what you do.”

“I suppose it will be necessary to secure the services of an interpreter and guides; do you know where I can find a man who is acquainted among the various tribes?”

“I’ll have to think that over for a spell.”

But the very next day Hickman arrived early at the hotel and informed Benson that Young wished to see him.

They found him in his office, but not alone. With him was a tall, gaunt fellow, whose deeply-lined face, in spite of its sunburn, showed an unwholesome pallor.

The president shook hands cordially with Benson, and motioned him to a chair.

“As the result of a curious set of circumstances, I have news of your friends at last, Mr. Benson; but you must prepare to hear the worst,” said he, and he turned to the stranger. “Come here, Raymond, and tell your story,” and Raymond, who had been standing apart, now joined the little group by the president’s desk, and dropped into the chair Young indicated.

“How do you do, sir.” He addressed himself to Benson, and his manner suggested a kindly sympathy that was not lost on the lawyer.

“Brother Brigham tells me you’re looking for Stephen Landray and his brother? I guess I can tell you as much as any man alive about them, for I was with ‘em—”

“They are dead, then?” said Benson abruptly. He was very white of face, and his voice was almost a whisper.

Raymond nodded a single emphatic inclination of the head. He cleared his throat, and went on in his soft, slow speech:

“I was with ‘em when the redskins put ‘em out of business. It was a snug clean up, and it was only by God Almighty’s mercy that I fetched myself off.” He turned back the collar of his shirt as he spoke, and Benson saw an ugly scar. Raymond laid his finger on this. “You can see how near they came to fixing me.” he said.

“But how is it that you were with them?” asked Benson.

“I joined the party this side of Fort Laramie. You see, I was a friend of Basil Landray’s. I’d known him a right smart while. I was coming in toward the valley and I knew a cut off round by way of the Chugwater that they was keen to try. That was their mistake. If they’d stuck to the emigrant road, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Yes?” said Benson.

“They was mighty agreeable men,” said Raymond, in accents of sincere sorrow. He gave Benson a shy, furtive glance. “And you’ve come all the way out here to learn what happened to ‘em? Well, I reckon their friends was real distressed, not hearing from ‘em.”

“But tell me the particulars,” said Benson breathlessly.

“It was a war party of Indians from the plains.”

“What did I tell you? I knew it wa’n’. diggers,” said Hickman. “Diggers? No, I guess not. It was a regular war party; and they showed up when we was within five days of the valley here, but I reckon they’d been following us for right smart of a spell, just waiting for a chance to take us when we wa’n’. looking for it. We stood ‘em off for two days and a night; but by then they’d pretty well used us up. Rogers and the kid was dead; Basil was wounded so he couldn’t use his rifle; not counting me, and Steve, and Bush, they was about the best we had back of the wagons; the others didn’t count for much; well, the morning of the third day we just couldn’t hold the redskins off. I reckon there was close on to two hundred in that war party. Two hours after sun-up there was just me, and Steve, and Bush left. Walsh was dead, and Bingham was dead, and Dunlevy had been shot through the hips, and was out of it, along with Basil. Our three guns couldn’t keep ‘em off, and they swarmed in through the wagons. I saw ‘em kill Bush, and then they made an end of Steve, but I hadn’t as much as a scratch on me yet, and I threw down my gun thinking I’d take chances; and that’s where I was smart. At first some of ‘em wanted to kill me then and there; but others was in the notion to take me back with the tribe, which was what I’d counted on. And this was what they decided to do with me. Those who’d been so keen to kill me, found Basil, and Dunlevy, and killed them instead; and that comforted ‘em some. Anyhow, after they had robbed the wagons of what they wanted and burnt what they didn’t want, we started back into the hills, I watching for a chance to give ‘em the slip. Well, the chance come. I got off with a good hoss and a good gun, and this hole in my neck.”

“And how long ago was this?” asked Benson.

“The fight? A year ago, just. I was with the Indians for pretty near a month, and I was almost two months in getting home. I was fixed so bad I daren’t travel and this here wound kept opening on me; she opened three times and I had to lay by and let her heal up. And when I did get home I was sick; I am only getting round now,” he added with plaintive pity for himself. “I’m that weak, if you was to shake your finger at me I’d be ready to set down and cry. I been back there, though—I went back this spring. You see I only knowed their names, I’d never heard any of ‘em say where they’d come from, except Rogers; I remembered to have heard him say he’d lived in Texas where he’d fit the Mexicans, but I knowed the others wa’n’. from Texas.”

“And what did you find?” asked Benson.

“Well, as far as I could see, everything was as the Indians had left it; but there was nothing to tell me what I wanted to know.”

He had told this monumental lie of his without the flicker of an eyelid; and with a touch of sorrow and gentle melancholy that had endeared him to the lawyer. Now Young joined in the conversation.

“You see, Mr. Benson, I had heard of this fight of Brother Raymond’s, at least I’d heard he’d been attacked by a party of Indians; but yesterday Brother Raymond’s father, who is an elder in the church, was here to get his instructions, as I was sending him into the southern part of the state to establish a settlement, and we got to talking of Brother Thomas; and he told me the particulars of the fight.”

At this Brother Thomas favoured the governor with a shy smile.

“Father hated powerful to go,” he said, “but he reckoned it was the Lord’s business you was sending him on, Brother Brigham; and he knuckled under.”

Benson felt stupefied and crushed by what he had just heard; he thought of Virginia with infinite pity. He turned to Young.

“I want to see where this massacre took place,” he said. “I think my clients would expect this of me. Now, how many days will it take.”

“Raymond will be better able to tell you that than I,” said Young.

“How many days will it take, Mr. Raymond?” asked Benson.

“Five days to go there, and you’ll have to come back to Salt Lake if you want to catch up with a party going East.”

“Can I secure your services as a guide?” asked the lawyer.

“Me? No, I guess not—” said Raymond quickly; but Young interrupted him.

“Certainly, Raymond will go with you, Mr Benson,” he said.

“Look here, Brother Brigham, you never said I’d have to go,” objected Raymond. “I got business of my own to attend to.”

“If Mr. Raymond is unwilling—” began Benson.

“Oh, he’s willing enough,” said Young, rather grimly. “You’d better take Hickman, too.”

“He won’t need me if he’s got Bill,” said Raymond doggedly.

“Yes he will. Understand you’ll be paid, well paid. Mr. Benson expects to be fair and liberal with you.”

“I don’t want his money,” muttered Raymond sullenly.

Hickman, who had seemed vastly amused by something in the situation that was not patent to Benson, now slapped Raymond on the back.

“Oh, come!” he cried. “You want anybody’s money; that’s your kind, Tom Raymond. You needn’t be scared about the Indians, they’re all in my contract.”

And in spite of Raymond’s reluctance to take part in Benson’s quest, he led his pack-mule when Hickman and the lawyer rode out of the city at dawn the next morning.

“I am sorry that he seems to be going with us against his inclination,” said Benson. He was disposed to have a greater liking for Raymond than Hickman had been able to inspire him with, and he thought he understood the former’s objection to being of the party, and liked him none the less for it.

For two days they followed the emigrant trail eastward; but on the third they left it and struck off into the mountains. Raymond led them unerringly, but his sullen temper endured.

The fifth day they made their longest march, and it was dark when they went into camp.

“To-morrow I’ll show you what you’ve come to see,” said Raymond, as he drew his blankets about him, and stretched himself on the ground preparatory to sleep. Yet the following morning, after they had eaten their breakfast, he still lingered by the camp-fire, and it was only after much urging on the part of Hickman that he took himself off to bring up the horses, but he returned with only two of them.

“Where’s your horse and the pack-mule?” demanded Hickman angrily.

“I shan’t need ‘em to-day,” answered Raymond.

“Why not?”

“This is the place, do you see that hill off yonder? I reckon you’ll find what you’re looking for there.”

“We’ll go there then—at once,” said Benson, drawing in his breath quickly.

Raymond fell back a step at his words.

“You and Bill go. I been there before. I’m not going again. You’ll see where I buried ‘em, where the banks of a wash are heaved in. You and Bill go look.”

Hickman exploded in a burst of laughter at this.

“Well, now,” he said, and repeated, “well, now—why damn your soul to hell, I got chickens at home with more heart. What are you afraid of, Tom Raymond?”

“I ain’t saying I’m afraid,” but his face was ghastly.

“No, by thunder! you ain’t saying it, you don’t need to. What do you expect to see anyhow? Ghosts?”

“Shut up, Bill.”

The hill Raymond had indicated was, perhaps two miles distant from their camp, and in a little less than half an hour they had reached its summit.

“It’s easy to see what happened here,” said Hickman, glancing about him. He moved away, circling the top of the hill, while Benson examined the charred wood and rusted iron work that littered the ground. He was thus engaged when Hickman called to him.

“Come here; I’ve found the spot,” he said, and the lawyer hastened to his side.

He was standing on the edge of a gully the rains had cut in one of the slopes of the hill.

“See,” he said, “there’s where Tom Raymond heaved in the bank. The Indians are keen to kill, but they’re damn slow to bury. I wa’n’. none too sure that Raymond had been back here, but this settles it.”

Near-by was a broken and rusted shovel, and a pick with a charred handle. Benson examined the shovel narrowly, and on the iron that secured the wooden handle he found a name stamped on the metal; scraping off the rust with the blade of his knife he was able to decipher the name, “Bendy.” It had been made at the Bendy shops in Benson.

Hickman pointed to the ditch.

“Are you going to see what Tom’s covered up there?”

“No, God forbid!” cried Benson.

“We’d better ride back to camp then, if you’re ready. I wouldn’t put it past Tom to quit us.”

“Then suppose you go and make sure that he doesn’t,” said Benson. “I’m not ready to go yet, but I’ll join you there presently.”

“What’s going to keep you?” asked Hickman curiously.

“I wish to mark the spot,” Benson explained, and for an hour or more after the Mormon left him he toiled at this task, and by the end of that time had raised a rude pyramid of loose stones; then he mounted his horse and gazed about him for the last time.

He looked at the bleaching animal bones; at the circle on the bare earth where the fire had been; then his glance wandered over the plain; level, solitary, devoid of life. Miles distant on either hand the barren sands yielded to the barren rocks, and the rocks rose to the eternal snows. Off to the west, in the full glory of the August sun, was their camp of the night before. It was hidden by a strip of timber, and out of this timber a single thin ribbon of blue smoke ascended from the wasting embers of their fire.

And here the end had come to Stephen Landray and his companions; on this hill, in this solitude. Here, in the shelter of their wagons they had fought and fallen. He almost saw the savages on their galloping ponies, as they swept nearer and nearer, and then the end—swift, brutal, sufficient.

Suddenly there came to him a quick, shocking sense of joy.

“God forgive me!” he muttered, aghast at the feeling. “God forgive me! I mustn’t think of it—yet; I’m only sorry for him; only sorry for her. I must keep myself out of this!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ON his return to Salt Lake, Benson wrote to Virginia. This letter he intended to carry to St. Louis to post, where he expected to wait for a few days; but his pen faltered, and more than once he left his chair to pace his dimly-lighted room. He wished to spare her, but he wished her to know that Stephen Landray was dead. Yet, when he had finished his letter he felt the result to be pitiful enough, with its poor attempt at consolation; and his face showed pale and haggard in the faint light of the sputtering candle on the table before him. At last, impressed by the utter inadequacy of his commonplaces, he abandoned the idea of writing Virginia then, and wrote Judge Bradly instead.

From St. Louis Benson went to Portsmouth by boat; at Portsmouth he stowed himself away inside the coach in which he was to complete his journey. He found himself seated opposite a tall, dark man of unmistakably clerical aspect who was swathed in shawls and travelling blankets beyond any need that the weather occasioned. The other occupant of the coach, there were but the two beside himself, was a little brown man, with shrewd, squinting eyes, a grizzled beard, and closely-cropped bullet-head. He wore wide, bell-mouthed trousers, and a short jacket with large bone buttons; at his neck was carelessly knotted a flaming kerchief; while perched upon his head was a small canvas cap of strange pattern.

Benson regarded this person with frank wonder; a wonder the man himself seemed both to understand and enjoy, for his shrewd eyes twinkled with amusement.

“Hullo, young fellow!” he said chuckling. “I bet you never seen anything like me before; now did you? It worries you some, don’t it?” Benson drew back with a muttered apology.

“No offence!” cried the man good-naturedly. “You’re welcome to guess my breed, but you’ll never hit it. I’m a sailor.”

“So I imagined,” said Benson.

“Hold on, not so fast!” interposed the man quickly. “That’s only part of it; I’m an uncommon kind of sailor; I reckon the only sailor Styles Cross Roads way up beyond Marietta ever turned out, or ever will. None of your lake or river lunk-heads, but a true sea-faring man, Ohio born and Ohio bred, and from Styles Cross Roads, which it’s a combination that’s hard to beat.”

“It must be,” and Benson smiled indulgently.

“The other gentleman knowed me the minute he clapped eyes on me. He flirted me a look that told me that plain as words.”

But the third occupant of the coach was not to be drawn into the conversation. He neither smiled nor spoke, nor showed that he heard what was said.

“Kick him in the shins,” advised the sea-faring man from Styles Cross Roads in a hoarse whisper. “Maybe he’s hard of hearing.”

Benson shook his head in dissuasion of such a course; however, the sailor appeared to abandon the idea with so much reluctance, that the lawyer said pleasantly, wishing to change the current of his thought:

“So you’re from Styles Cross Roads?”

“Have you ever heard of the place before?” demanded the sailor.

“I think I have,” said Benson, not quite truthfully.

“Well, I guess it ain’t much of a place, it warn’t when I left it. This is how it happened,” he continued, squinting hard at Benson. “A good while back, I guess long enough before you was born, young man, old Captain Whipple built a schooner at Marietta, and took her down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. I shipped with him as cook’s boy. At New Orleans he picked up a cargo of cotton for England, all but me of the crew going home by up river flat boats. In England we got a cargo for St. Petersburg, Russia; but when we reached there, the port officers seized the schooner; they said the papers were forged, that there warn’t no such port as Marietta. The captain swore his papers were legal, and that Marietta was a port of clearance. ‘You’re a most awful liar,’ said the Russian officer, with his tongue in his cheek. ‘You’re a benighted foreigner,’ said the captain, ‘or else you’d have heard of Marietta, which it’s in the State of Ohio.’ ‘Where’s that?’ said the Russian. ‘Well, I’m damned,’ said the captain, ‘never heard of Ohio? Never heard of Marietta, Ohio?’ ‘Never,’ said the Russian. ‘Extraordinary!’ says the captain. ‘And I pity you, for that’s where I come from. Fetch me a map of the United States of America, and you can tell your grandchildren when you get to having them, that you’ve looked on the finest country God Almighty ever dared leave out of doors over night!’ So they fetched him a map of America, and he found the mouth of the Mississippi, and Coursed up it with his thumb to the mouth of the Ohio, and up that to the mouth of the Muskingum. ‘And there you have it!’ said the captain. ‘That’s Marietta—Marietta, Ohio, and my Port of clearance.’.rdquo; The seafaring man from Styles Cross Roads chuckled softly. “That was my first voyage; and there’s thirty years between my leaving and my going back; but when I came ashore at New Orleans off my last voyage, I made up my mind I’d make a clean run home.”

Thus happily launched on what might be termed a flood of narrative, he imparted to Benson a variety of information touching the countries and places he had visited. From time to time he even attempted conversation with the dark man opposite; but the latter’s manner rebuked such advances, and he ended by confining his remarks to the lawyer, whose courtesy was unfailing.

The miles grew up behind them, the stage stopping now and again to change horses. There was dinner and supper; and they came to a stand at last in front of the tavern where they were to pass the night.

Drawn up in the dusty road before it, were a score or more of great freight wagons. From strange pens came the lowing of cattle; the bleat of sheep. Indoors the bar was thronged with teamsters and drovers, Some of these men Benson knew, and they had known Stephen and Bushrod Landray, and he stopped to shake hands with them, and to answer their eager questions.

He was up betimes the next day, and was soon swinging forward again on the last stage of his journey. His two companions of the day before still kept him company; the sea-faring man from Styles Cross Roads, as communicative as ever, the other reserved and silent. But about midmorning the latter turned abruptly to Benson to say:

“I observe, sir,” and his manner was precise and formal, “I observe, sir, that you appear to have come some distance. If I mistake not I saw you on the boat up from Cincinnati? May I be so bold as to ask if you are going much further?”

“No, fortunately; I am almost at my journey’s end. Benson is my destination,” answered the lawyer.

“Oh, indeed? That is my destination, also.”

Benson inclined his head. There was a long silence. The coach stopped at a wayside tavern; and the sailor, after shaking Benson warmly by the hand, left it, to finish his journey across the State by other means.

The dark man watched the rolling figure of the sea-faring man, as he disappeared through the tavern door, then he cleared his throat.

“I understood you to say you were going on to Benson?” said he, resuming the conversation where he had previously abandoned it.

“Yes, it is my home.”

“Perhaps you are acquainted with my brother, Mr. Stillman, the Baptist clergyman?”

“Oh, very well, and you are Dr. Stillman?”

As he spoke, the lawyer glanced curiously at his companion, for Dr. Stillman was famous.

“May I ask your name?” said the doctor.

“Benson; you probably knew my father.”

The doctor gave him a wintry smile. He felt that his purposes separated him from the busy bustling world; its trafficking laity he had found, rarely paused that it might understand his motives, and he had long since ceased to look for sympathy from men occupied with their own concerns. It was the emotional sex which seemed to understand him best.

“You have been engaged in missionary work in India?” said Benson.

“In Burmah, yes; I have only recently returned to America, and have spent the summer lecturing. Now I am going to my brother’s for a short stay.”

Benson was aware that the man had a certain curious distinction. His eyes, dark and deep set under narrow brows, were piercing and compelling; they could burn, too, with a wonderful light, just as his reserve could drop before the wealth of his own emotions, emotions that he could make others feel poignantly, while they yet seemed oddly foreign to the man himself.

“Do you expect to return to Burmah?” asked Benson.

“My absence is only temporary. My labours are not finished there yet; indeed they are only just begun.” With an absorbed air, he continued. “Events made it seem advisable for me to temporarily abandon my work, for only recently I suffered a most serious bereavement in the death of my wife.”

“I regret exceedingly to hear it,” said Benson civilly.

“From the first, when she joined me in the East, where I had preceded her, I doubted if she could endure the climate.”

Benson ventured the opinion that such being the case, he would have abandoned so unpromising a field; but Dr. Stillman merely smiled in a superior way which the lawyer found singularly exasperating.

“Personal considerations should never be allowed to clash with one’s manifest duty,” he said.

In truth, he had never spared himself; and he exacted of others quite as much as he gave himself.

“Not if one can always be sure of the manifest duty,” said Benson.

“I was sure.”

“You were fortunate,” said the lawyer drily.

There succeeded a long pause which continued for many a mile. Dr. Stillman gave himself up to his own thoughts; and Benson fixed his glance on scenes beyond the coach window; as the day waned, these became more and more familiar, and just at nightfall they began the descent of Landray Hill.

Benson’s heart was beating fast. There, off to the right, he saw through the branches of the bare maples and chestnuts, and the dead, dry foliage of the oaks and beeches, the light he was looking for; while out of the shadow back of it grew the huge bulk of the old stone mill.

They clattered noisily through the covered bridge and up Main Street, to come to a stop before the tavern. Dr. Stillman folded his blankets in a compact bundle; and drawing the folds of the vast dolman-like garment which he wore, closer about him, stepped from the stage. Benson quickly followed him.

The doctor was welcomed by his brother; an amiable little man who all but wept over him as he embraced him with fervid enthusiasm in the region of the thighs.

“My dear John! My dear, dear John!” the little man kept repeating. “You’re home again! There have been many changes, but it’s still home.” Then he espied Benson. “Why, God bless me, Jacob, and so you are back, too! Shocking news you bring, my dear boy. My heart bleeds for those poor ladies! But we are all in His hands, it’s His Providence, the mystery of His Ways;” and he wrung the lawyer’s hand feelingly. “This is my brother; you have heard of him!”

“We have met,” said Benson.

“Oh, yes, to be sure, to be sure! Well, good-night, Jacob; I’m glad we have you safe back.” And he turned hurriedly away in pursuit of his brother who was striding off across the square, and in the wrong direction from that in which he should have gone.

Benson watched the two out of sight; the tall missionary, and the portly little man, who, holding him fast by the arm, puffed and panted at his side in a vain endeavour to keep pace with his long strides; then he crossed the square in the direction of his own home.

Benson saw Virginia the next day.

There was a touch of weariness in her manner when she greeted him, and the shadow had deepened in her eyes; but aside from this there was no change; her beauty was as rare and wonderful as ever. He drank it in by stealth; and the recollection of those months he had passed without the potent spell of her presence dropped from him in a twinkling; yet because of this, he seemed to have lost ground in his absence. He had lived beyond his unspoken devotion. He had toiled and laboured for her as one only toils and labours for the one they love; and he recognized that he had returned to less than he expected. Would he never get beyond this irksome regard, in which he felt he was held, because of the affection she supposed him to have had for Stephen Landray?

“You received my letter from St. Louis?” he said, scarcely knowing where to begin the conversation.

“Yes, days ago, Mr. Benson.”

“At first I was quite unable to satisfy myself with a letter, I found it was easier to write Judge Bradly; it was less difficult to write you then, knowing you would be in a manner familiar with all that I had learned.”

“I understood perfectly.”

Her composure was beyond what he had anticipated, and he was grateful for the restraint she put upon herself.

“I want you to tell me all!” she went on. “All you did, and all you found. I am trying to understand it. Do you know, that in spite of the conviction I have had since last winter that he was lost to me, I am still unprepared for the positive word you bring. It is all new each time I think of it; and I think of nothing else! You are sure—sure? There is no doubt in your mind?”

Her glance searched his face beseechingly.

“You mustn’t ask me to give you any false hope,” he said with grave kindness.

“If I could only go back to the doubt. Even to that; for this is so much worse. This leaves me nothing!”

Very gently Benson began, starting with the recovery of Stephen’s knife from Gibbs, and his trip across the plains.

She did not speak until he had quite finished; then she said in the long pause that followed:

“And you think—you think there is no hope?”

“None,” he said gravely.

With a sudden eloquent gesture she pressed her hands to her heart.

“I can’t quite realize it yet,” she faltered; for how could he be dead when her love was all alive, when it had undergone no change? She was weighing each point; she would have given much to have believed there was yet hope; but since this could not be, she tried to believe death had been swift and merciful to the man she loved; and the man who loved her was so far forgotten, that afterward she suffered more than one accusing pang when she recalled how inadequate the expressions of her gratitude had been, measured by the weeks and months he had devoted to her service.

Benson seemed to divine that there was a question she wished to ask, but lacked the courage; and he proceeded to answer it in his own direct way.

“When I returned to Salt Lake I made arrangements to have a block of granite cut to mark the spot. I suppose it has been conveyed to the mountains before this. I should have waited to see it in place only I feared the winter might set in and prevent my return to the States until spring; I dared not risk that.”

“You have seen Anna?” she suddenly asked.

He understood; she wished to be alone. He realized this with a quick sense of disappointment. He rose reluctantly from his chair.

“Really I might have gone there first. Where is Mrs. Walsh?” he asked.

“She is with Anna. We fear to leave her alone. It seems she never for one moment lost hope, or had any other belief than that they would come back safe and well.”

“And are you alone here?” he said.

“Yes, for the present.”

“I should think you needed Mrs. Walsh rather more than she does,” he commented with some little brusqueness.

“You must go to her at once when you return to town. I am sure she will feel it if you do not,” urged Virginia.

He drove straight to Anna’s. There in the darkened parlour he waited impatiently for a full half hour before she made her appearance. When she at last entered the room, she greeted him with such lack of warmth, that he instantly felt that here he was held in positive disfavour.

“I heard last night that you were home, and I have been expecting you all the morning,” she said resentfully. “Have you seen Virginia?”

“Yes.”

She frowned slightly.

His lips parted in a faintly cynical smile.

“I suppose Virginia told you that I had been utterly prostrated since the cruel news came?”

“Yes,” said Benson. “But I heard last night of your condition; I drove out to the farm first. I knew Mrs. Landray would be able to tell me if it would be advisable for you to see me.”

She looked at him with lurking suspicion; but he met her glance frankly, and she was half convinced of his sincerity.

“I am sorry I kept you waiting,” she said relenting.

“I was so distressed to hear that you were not well,” he murmured. “You must let me come again when you are stronger,” he urged. “I don’t think you are in a condition now to hear what I have done; you must be spared that until you are more yourself.”

“But I shall never be that!” cried Anna, with a choking sob. And at this touch of real feeling, he regretted that he had stooped to play a part.

When a little later Benson went back to his office he found Judge Bradly waiting for him.

“You have seen them?” questioned the judge. “My dear Jacob, it must have been a trying experience.”

Benson nodded, and slipped into a chair before his desk. The judge watching him, shook his head with settled melancholy of manner.

“When I made their loss known to them Bushrod’s wife fainted, Jake, keeled over at the first word; and when she came to, her grief was most heartrending. Her sister-in-law’s composure was remarkable; while Mrs. Walsh showed much emotion—a nice little thing, Jacob; did I understand you to say quite penniless?”

“Yes.”

“Too bad, too bad! wholly incapable, I should say, of meeting the situation by herself. You are convinced in your own mind that Stephen and Bush and the others are dead?”

“Yes,” said Benson shortly.

“Shocking! Shocking!” said the judge, holding up his hands in horror.

“Have you seen either of the ladies since you took the word to them?” asked Benson.

For some reason the judge coloured slightly.

“I think, indeed, I am quite sure, that I have seen Mrs. Bushrod Landray, being close by—you understand,” he paused, and looked hard at Benson.

Benson shot the judge a covert glance.

“A most estimable lady,” continued the latter warmly. “I trust Bush left her well provided for?”

“He did,” said Benson.

“I am relieved to hear it. I had feared that the boys were badly involved. It’s a great misfortune for a young and handsome lady to be left as she has been left,” concluded the judge, smiling blandly.

“Yes,” agreed Benson, “it is;” but now he turned on the judge with a quickened interest. The expression on his face was half quizzical, half cynical.

“Do you suppose she will marry again?” asked the judge with studied indifference.

“How should I know?” demanded Benson sharply.

“I did not know but that you might have formed some opinion,” ventured the judge with a slightly embarrassed air.

He became silent. He settled his stock, and took his tall hat from the table at his elbow, and Benson fell to pulling over the papers on his desk.

“When you are ready, Jake, to look into what I have done in your absence—” remarked the judge, about to take his leave.

“In a day or two. I have had a pretty long holiday, you know.”

“Well, whenever you are ready,” said the judge, quitting the room.

Benson turned frowning to the papers on his desk.