Chapter XLIII: Jean Is Happy—and Another Person 307 (4)

“Don’t be afraid of the cholera, dear,” he said tenderly. “I understand the nature of the epidemic, and I don’t fear it at all. Cholera is a filth disease, and we are guarding against it at every point. Your blood is pure, darling. There’s nothing the matter with you but a little debility, the result of past years of overwork. Time and rest and change of climate will cure all that. No uncooked food or unboiled water is used by any of us, and no cold victuals are allowed to be eaten after long exposure to this pernicious, cholera-laden air. You can’t get the germs of cholera unless you eat or drink them.”

That Captain Ranger should have thus imbibed the germ theory of cholera long in advance of its discovery by medical schools, is only another proof that there is nothing new under the sun. A newer system of medical treatment than that of the Allopathic School, styled the Eclectic by its founders, had come into vogue before his departure from the States.

Many different decoctions of fiery liquid, of which capsicum was supposed to be the base,—conspicuous among them a compound called “Number Six,”—proved efficacious in effecting many cures in the early stages of cholera; and the contents of Captain Ranger’s medicine chest were in steady demand long after his supplies for general distribution had been exhausted.

* * * * *

“Can you imagine what this wild-goose chase of ours is for?” asked Mrs. Benson.

“I undertook it to gratify my good husband,” was Mrs. Ranger’s prompt reply.

“And I to gratify my daughter.”

“Excuse me, ladies; but I came along to please myself,” interposed Mrs. O’Dowd.

“I, too, came to please myself,” cried Jean; “that is, I made a virtue of necessity, and compelled myself to be pleased. There are two things that mother says we must never fret about: one is what we can, and the other what we cannot, help. Every human being belongs primarily to himself or herself, and to satisfy one’s self is sure to please somebody.”

“But a married couple belong, secondarily, at least, to each other,” said Mrs. Ranger. “No couple can pull in double and single harness at the same time.”

“Some day,” said Mrs. Benson, “it will become the fashion to read your journal, Jean; and then the dear public will both praise and pity our unsophisticated Captain, who led these hapless emigrants out on these plains to die.”

“That’s so, Mrs. Benson,” exclaimed Jean; “and they won’t see that it’s all a part of the eternal programme. Evolution is the order of nature, and one generation of human beings is a very small fraction of the race at large.”

“Haven’t you gossiped long enough, mamma?” asked Mrs. McAlpin, petulantly. “Your supper is ready and waiting. What has detained you so long?”

“I was listening to the chat of the Ranger family. They are an uncommon lot; very clever and original.”

“Yes, mamma; they talk like oracles. A little brusque and unpolished, but that will be outgrown in time. You’re looking splendid, mamma! The society of your neighbors is a tonic. You must take it often.”

“I wish we might all stop here, Daphne.”

“We’ve no more right to these lands of the Indians than we have to—”

“Oregon,” interrupted her mother. “Oregon was Indian territory originally.”

Jean approached with a plate of hot cakes, saying: “I fell to thinking so deeply over the problems we had been talking about that I forgot what I was doing, and baked too many cakes. They’re sweet and light, and we hope you’ll like them.”

“Thank you ever so much, Miss Jean!” said Mrs. McAlpin. “I congratulate you with all my heart upon the way you cheer your mother, my dear. You are a jewel of the first water!”

“We all try to keep mother in good spirits,” replied Jean. “Dear soul! she’s weak and nervous; and what seem trifles to us often appear like mountains to her. Never can I forget, to my dying day, the look of terror that came into her gentle eyes when we were crossing the Platte that day in the quicksands. The raised wagon-bed had tilted, for some cause. I suppose the weight of so many of us was not evenly distributed; and we should all have been pitched into the water if it had not been that dear mother hustled us to the other side. She forgot her own danger in her effort to save the children, giving her orders like a sea captain in a storm. Each of us grabbed a baby,—Susannah’s coon fell to my lot,—and we clung like death to the upper edge of the wagon-bed till the danger was over, and the great lopsided thing settled back to its place.

“But I must go now. Daddie’s calling me to write up that pestilent old journal!”

* * * * *

On the evening of the 4th of June, the train had its first encounter with a blizzard.

Captain Ranger, seeing the approach of the storm, as did the cattle and horses, ordered a sudden halt a little way from the banks of the Platte. The day, like a number of its predecessors, had been oppressively hot; but about five o’clock a sudden squall came up, though not without premonitory warning in the way of a calm so dead that not a blade of grass was quivering. The wagon-hoods flapped idly, like sails becalmed in the tropics. Suddenly the air grew icy cold, bringing at first a moment of relief to suffocating man and beast.

“Gather your buffalo chips in a hurry,” exclaimed the Captain, addressing the girls. “Get ’em under cover in the tents, under the wagon-beds; anywhere so they’ll keep dry. Turn out the stock in a jiffy, boys. Head ’em away from the river. Drive ’em up yonder gulch. Be on the alert, everybody!”

XIV

_A CAMP IN CONSTERNATION_

“Stake down the wagons,” was the next order. “Don’t stop to pitch any more tents. Don’t try to kindle any fires.”

Scarcely had the orders been obeyed before a darkness as black as Erebus had settled upon the camp like a gigantic pall. It was a peculiar darkness, permeated by an ominous, silent, intangible, vibrating, appalling Something! A silence that could be felt was in the air. The oxen in the gulch bellowed in terror; the horses neighed. The stillness of the air was oppressive, portentous, awful. The women clasped the children in close embrace. The children clung to their protectors in silent terror. All hands save the teamsters, who were out with the stock at the mouth of the ravine, where they were stationed to guard the animals against stampede, crouched under the wagons in the Cimmerian blackness. Anon, a blinding flash of sheet lightning, followed by others and yet others in bewildering succession, awoke a rolling, roaring, reverberating cannonade of thunder. Guided by the flashes of lightning, the frightened men left the cattle to their fate and, returning to the camp, took refuge under the wagons. Hailstones as big as hens’ eggs fell by hundreds of tons, displacing the awful silence with a cannonade like unto the heaviest artillery of a great army in battle.

The wind blew a terrific gale. The chained wagons rocked like cradles. Several heavy vehicles in a neighboring train, not being chained to the ground, as the Ranger wagons had been, were upset and their contents ruined by the hail and rain. Others were blown bodily into the river. Luckily no lives were lost. The cattle and horses, pelted by the hail till their bodies were bruised and bleeding, huddled together at the head of the gulch for mutual protection.

The storm lasted less than twenty minutes, and ceased as suddenly as it began. The black clouds soared away to the northward, leaving a blue starlit sky overhead, and underfoot a mass of hail and mud. The Platte, having caught the full fury of a cloud-burst a few miles above the camp, rose rapidly, threatening the frightened refugees in the wagons with a new danger. But the shallow banks were high enough to confine the mad rush of muddy water within an inch or two of the top, thus averting the horror of a flood which, had it come, would have completed the havoc of the storm.

The lightning, as though weary of its display of power, retreated to the distant hills, and played at hide-and-seek on the horizon’s edge, while Heaven’s Gatling guns answered each pyrotechnic display with a distant, growling, intermittent roar.

Mrs. McAlpin’s carriage was a total wreck; but her wagons remained intact, and she and her mother escaped to them in safety.

The morning revealed a scene of desolation. The earth in all directions as far as the eye could see had been torn into gulleys by the mad rush of falling hail and rain, each seeking its level in frantic haste. Hailstones lay in heaps, some soiled by contact with the liquid mud, some as clean and white as freshly fallen snow.

The contents of Mrs. McAlpin’s carriage were entirely gone. Nothing remained of the vehicle but one of its wheels and some shreds of its cover, which were found half buried in the mud. Of the harness, nothing was left but a bridle bit, in which was lodged a woman’s glove, and near it the remains of a palm-leaf fan.

“We should all be thankful that no lives were lost,” said Mrs. Ranger, who was looking on while Sally O’Dowd and Susannah assisted her daughters, who, with Mrs. Benson and Mrs. McAlpin, were exposing the wet and dilapidated paraphernalia of the camp to the hot rays of the morning sun.

“But we’d have a heap mo’ to thank Gahd fo’, missus, if He’d hel’ off dat stawm,” exclaimed Susannah, with a characteristic “yah! yah! yah!”

At eleven o’clock the order was given to bring in the stock, and prepare to move on, when it was discovered that Scotty was missing.

“We s’posed he was helpin’ Mrs. McAlpin’s men, as he generally does, to get her things to rights, so we didn’t bother our heads about him,” said Sawed-off, who was Scotty’s partner of the whip and yoke. “I’ve been doing the most of his share of the work ever since we’ve been on the road.”

Scotty was nowhere to be found. An organized search was begun at once, and all thought of moving on was abandoned till the Captain should learn his fate. The cattle and horses were turned out on the range for another badly needed half-holiday. Through all the remainder of the day the anxious quest continued. Mrs. McAlpin was as pale as death. Her sombre weeds, worn for no known reason, formed a fitting frame for her pinched and anxious face and bright, abundant hair. Her mother was visibly agitated. Mrs. Ranger lay on her feather bed all through the trying afternoon, her eyes closed and her lips moving as if in prayer.

“Night again, and no Scotty!” exclaimed Captain Ranger, his voice husky with feeling. As no trace of the man had been discovered, the organized search was called off.

“Scotty’s death was one of the freaks of the flood,” said Hal.

“None of you ever did Scotty justice,” exclaimed Mary, as she descended upon the party with a heaped plate of their staple food.

“That’s what,” echoed Jean, as she brought on the beans and bacon.

“Scotty knew more in a minute than half of us can ever learn,” cried Marjorie, with whom he was a favorite.

“Yes,” said the Captain, dryly. “He’s a genius, Scotty is! He’ll turn up presently. Doubtless he’s off somewhere studying a new stratum of storm-clouds. He has killed two of my leaders already by making them start the whole load while his mind was on the incomprehensible and unknowable in nature. But I’ll wager he knows enough to look out for himself in a crisis.”

“He was a whole mine of information about other things, if he didn’t know much about driving oxen,” sobbed Jean.

“He isn’t dead!” exclaimed Mrs. McAlpin. “I mean to continue the search myself to-night.”

“You’ll get caught by a panther!” cried Bobbie. “I haven’t seen ’em, but I know they’re there!”

“Where, Bobbie?” asked Marjorie.

“Up in the gulch. I can see ’em with my eyes shut!” and the child, not understanding the laugh that followed at his expense, hastened to the wagon where his mother lay, to receive the consolation that never failed him.

* * * * *

“It won’t be against the laws of God or man for me to love Rollin if he is dead,” said Mrs. McAlpin to herself, as she crept shivering from her retreat in her wagon to the ground. Throwing a shawl over her head, she hastened out in the direction in which Scotty was hurrying when she had last seen him. The cattle, quite satisfied from the unusual effects of a day’s rest and a full meal, chewed their cuds quietly, or lay asleep in the best sheltered spots they could command, breathing heavily. She wandered fearlessly among them, calling frequently for the lost man, but received no response save an occasional “moo” from an awakened cow, or a friendly neigh from Sukie, who was tethered near.

The morning star rose in the clear blue of the bending sky as her search went on, and she knew that the long June day was breaking. Flowers of every hue, newly born from the convulsions of the recent storm, smiled at her in their dewy fragrance; and in the branches of a crippled cottonwood a robin began his matin song. A meadow lark, disturbed in its languorous wooing by the lone watcher’s footsteps, soared upward in the crystal ether, sending back, when out of her sight, a swelling note of triumph, prolonged, triumphant, sweet.

“Rollin! Rollin Burns!” she called, repeating the name in every note of the scale.

At length a long, low moan startled her. She listened eagerly for a moment, and repeated her call. Whence had come that moan? There was no repetition of the sound. She spoke again, calling the name in a higher key.

Another moan—it might have been an echo from the canyon’s walls—came, more distinct than the first, but the echoing gulch gave no indication of its location.

“Call again, Rollin! It is I,—your own Daphne!”

“Is it indeed you, Daphne?”

She pinched herself to see if she was really awake. She had never heard her Christian name spoken by Burns before. The name sounded strangely sweet in the breaking twilight, and in spite of her apprehension and uncertainty her soul was glad.

“Call again, Rollin! Help is near.”

“Come this way, Daphne! I am in a cave, almost under your feet. A bowlder that I stepped upon rolled over, loosened by the storm, and let me through into the bowels of the earth. My leg is broken. I must have been unconscious. I have swooned or slept, or both. Be careful how you tread. There are badgers in this hole, and I have heard rattlesnakes.”

“Which way, Rollin? Where are you?”

The sound of his voice seemed to come from beneath her feet.

“Is the storm over?”

“Yes, long ago. It’s been over for thirty-six hours. But I can’t locate you.”

“Here, I tell you! Under this rock. If it had fallen directly on me, I should have been a goner. For God’s sake, be careful, or you’ll break your own dear neck! Don’t get excited. Run for help, and don’t stir up the rattlesnakes.”

The injured man had fallen at first by the turning of the rock, as he had stated, giving his leg a twist that broke it, and, by the turning of his body in falling farther, had overturned the bowlder again, and thus was held a prisoner.

Mrs. McAlpin peered into a narrow aperture through which the coming daylight had entered. Their eyes met.

“Daphne!”

“Rollin!”

“So near and yet so far!” cried the prisoner, as he struggled to free himself. A spasm of pain overspread his face, and a dew, like the death damp, settled on his hair and forehead.

“O God! he has fainted again!” she cried, running with all her might and screaming for help.

“What in thunder is the matter now?” exclaimed Captain Ranger, as he emerged, half dressed, from his tent.

“I’ve found Rollin! He’s imprisoned in a cave, with a broken leg! Fetch spades and a mattock to dig away the dirt from the rock! Be quick!” cried Mrs. McAlpin, leading the way.

Nobody heard the robins sing, or paused to enjoy the triumphant melody of the lark.

Scotty was still in a merciful swoon. Very carefully the men loosened the rock from its hold on his legs, and with their united strength rolled it away from the mouth of the cave.

“It’s damned lucky you are, old boy!” cried Yank, as the crippled man regained consciousness. “That rock would have crushed you to pulp if the walls of the cave hadn’t saved you.”

“A miss would have been as good as a mile!” replied Scotty, as he fainted again.

“Who’s going to set these bones?” asked Sawed-off. “It’s a bad fracture, compound and nasty. There’s no severed artery, though, which is lucky, or he’d ’a’ bled to death. Captain Ranger, did you ever set a broken bone?”

“Never.”

“I’ll do it,” exclaimed Mrs. McAlpin. “Cut away his boot. Bring a cot from the camp. Bring some adhesive plaster. Captain, can you make some splints? Stay! I’ll cut away the boot. There! Steady! Slow! If we can set the bones before he recovers consciousness, so much the better.”

The cot with its unconscious burden was carried to the side of the widow’s wagon.

“Bring water and more bandages, girls.”

“Where did you get your skill?” asked the Captain, as Mrs. McAlpin felt cautiously for the broken bones and deftly snapped them into place.

“It isn’t a very bad fracture,” she said, unheeding the question, as she held the bones together while the orders for splints and bandages were being obeyed.

“Some water, quick, and some brandy!” she said in a firm voice, though her cheeks were blanching. She held stoutly to her work till the limb was securely encased in the proper supports. But when her patient recovered consciousness and looked inquiringly into her eyes, she fell, fainting, into the Captain’s arms, and was carried to his family wagon, her eyelids twitching and her muscles limp. When she recovered, she found herself reclining in the wagon beside Mrs. Ranger, who was gently chafing her face and hands.

“All this has been too much for you, dearie,” said the good woman.

“Where’s Rollin?”

“In your mother’s wagon. We have rigged him up a swinging bed, and Mrs. Benson will see that he wants for nothing. You are to ride here, in the big wagon, with me.”

“You have no room for me in here. You and I, and Mary and Jean, and Marjorie and Bobbie, and Sadie and the baby and Sally, and the three little O’Dowds, and Susannah and George Washington can’t all ride and sleep in this narrow space. We’d offend the open-air ordinances of heaven.”

“It is all arranged, my dear; don’t worry. Our overflow has gone to another wagon. We’ll have plenty of room.”

“But Mr. Burns?”

“Your good mother has taken entire charge of him. She is behaving as beautifully in this crisis as you are, my dear.”

XV

_CHOLERA RAGES_

“Cholera is epidemic everywhere along the road,” wrote Jean in her diary on the 8th of June. “Our company is not yet attacked, but our dear mother is seriously alarmed. She counts all the graves we pass during the day, and sums them up at night for us to think about. Some days there is a formidable aggregate.”

The fame of Mrs. McAlpin’s skill as a physician and surgeon, and of Captain Ranger’s marvellous medicine-chest, grew rapidly in the front and rear of the Ranger train as the epidemic spread.

“It is lamentable to note the lack of forethought in many people,” Captain Ranger would say, as he dealt out his supplies of “Number Six,” podophyllin and capsicum, which grew alarmingly scant as the demand increased, and his patience was sorely tried. But he never refused aid to any who applied for it; and the “woman doctor,” who because of her proficiency was considered little else than a witch, was scarcely given time to eat or sleep.

“How do you keep your company from catching the cholera?” asked the anxious father of a numerous family, most of whom had fallen victims to the scourge.

“Common-sense should teach us to allow no uncooked or stale food to be eaten, and no surface or unboiled water to be drunk. Let all companies be broken into small trains, and keep as far apart from each other as possible. Rest a while in the heat of every noonday. Don’t be afraid of the Indians, or of anything or anybody else. The greatest enemy of mankind is fear.”

But in spite of both his precept and his example, the cholera continued its ravages; and Captain Ranger, to avoid contact with the epidemic, and, if possible, relieve Mrs. Ranger’s mind of apprehension, changed his course from the main travelled road, and turned off to the north by west, leaving the multitude to their fate.

“The other trains can follow if they choose, and we can’t help it,” he said to his wife; “but I must get my family away from the crowd, as the best way to save us all from the nasty epidemic.”

“Isn’t there danger of getting lost, John, or of getting captured by the Indians?” asked Mrs. Ranger, as the teams were headed for the Black Hills,—a long, undulating line, which looked in the shimmering distance like low banks of dense fog.

“My compass will point the way, Annie. The Indians will give us no trouble if we treat them kindly. They’re a plaguy sight more afraid of us than we have any reason to be of them.”

Mrs. Ranger, blessed with full confidence in her husband’s ability to accomplish whatsoever he undertook, leaned back on her pillows and guarded the children from danger, as was her wont.

On June 15, Jean made another entry in her much-neglected journal, as follows:—

“We have travelled all day between and over and around, and then back again, among low ranges of the Black Hills. The scenery is grand beyond description, and the road we are making as we go along, for others to follow if they are wise, is good. Lilliputian forests of prickly pears spread in all directions, and are very troublesome. Their thorns, barbed, and sharp as needle-points, are in a degree poisonous. We laugh together over our frequent encounters with the little pests, though our poor wounded feet refuse to be comforted. But we are missing the long lines of moving wagons, before and behind us, swaying and jolting over the dusty roads we’ve left to the southward, and we are glad to be alone, or as nearly so as our big company will permit. The streams we cross at intervals are clear, and the water is sweet and cold.

“Mother seems in better health and spirits since we have removed her from the constant sight of so much suffering and death.

“Dear, patient, faithful, loving mother! Will her true history, and that of the thousands like her, who are heroically enduring the dangers and hardships of this long, long journey, be ever given to the world, I wonder?”

Near nightfall, on their second day’s journey away from the main thoroughfare, they encountered a long freight-train, in charge of fur-traders, the second thus met since their travels began. Every wagon was heavily loaded with buffalo robes which had been prepared for market by the tedious, patient labor of Indian women. As the wives and slaves of English, French, Spanish, and Canadian hunters and traders, these women followed the fates of their grumbling and often cruel lords and masters through the vicissitudes of a precarious existence, with which nevertheless they seemed strangely content.

The leader or captain of the freighters’ outfit was a tall, bronzed, and handsome Scotchman, whose nationality was betrayed at a glance. Captain Ranger bargained with him for a big, handsomely dressed buffalo robe, paying therefor in dried apples and potatoes.

“Our men are getting scurvy from the lack of fruit and vegetables,” the leader said, as the exchange was concluded. “When they are in camp the squaws keep them supplied with berries, camas, and wapatoes. But they can’t bring the women out on a trip like this, away from the scenes of their labors.”

“Here’s a present for you, Annie,” said Captain Ranger, bringing a soft, heavy, furry robe to his wife, and spreading it over her much-prized feather bed. “It will help you to bear the rough jolting over the rocky roads.”

“Thanks, darling. You are very kind and thoughtful, but I shall not need it long.”

“Oh, yes, you will, Annie! We’ve passed the cholera belt. The sun rides higher every day; and I’m sure you’ll soon be all right.”

* * * * *

“Did you notice that big handsome Scotchman who seemed to be the boss of that freighters’ outfit?” asked Mrs. McAlpin, addressing Jean, and emerging from her hiding-place in one of the wagons after the outfit had passed out of sight and hearing and the Ranger company had encamped.

“Yes, Mrs. McAlpin. He seemed master of the situation.”

“Do you think he discovered me or mamma?”

“I didn’t think to notice whether he saw either of you or not.”

“I kept out of his sight, and made mamma do likewise.”

“Did you know him?”

“May I trust you, Jean?”

“Why, certainly! What’s up?”

“I need you, Jeanie; I need a friend with a level head.”

Mrs. McAlpin’s face was gray, like ashes, and her aspect of fear was startling.

“What under heaven is the matter?” asked Jean.

“That man is my husband!”

“Then I congratulate you. Daddie was much pleased with him. But I thought your husband was a man of leisure, travelling in Europe, or Asia, or among the ruins of Central America. You told me he was an archæologist. Did you expect to find him here on these plains?”

“No, Jean, or I should not have been here myself. Only think of it! I started on this journey on purpose to hide myself away from him for good and all. He had gone to England a year ago to claim a vast estate, and I planned to leave Chicago for this wild-goose chase on purpose to avoid him. I had no idea he’d ever think of taking up a business like freighting in a fur company. But there is no way to foresee the acts of a man who has more money than he knows what to do with. I suppose he grew weary of the Old World.” Mrs. McAlpin sighed.

“Are you quite sure it was he?”

“It could not have been anybody else. I’d know that voice if I heard it in Kamchatka. And I saw him, too. I cannot be mistaken.”

“And you are determined not to live as his wife any more?”

“I simply cannot, will not, live a lie any longer.”

“Why do you tell me about this, Mrs. McAlpin? I’m nothing but an inexperienced girl.”

“But you have more discretion than most grown-up people.”

“That’s ’cause I’ve never been in love, I guess. They say that all people when in love are fools.”

“I want you to go with me to meet that man to-night, Jean.”

“I? What for?”

“I’m going to talk it out; and I’ll need a witness.”

“Absurd! You remind me of a moth around a candle. Does your mother know about this?”

“No. I let her think an Indian was wanting me for a wife, and she remained hidden till the freighters had gone. The rest was easy. She is mortally afraid of Indians.”

“I can’t imagine why you desire an interview with a man you are trying to avoid. How did you arrange a meeting?”

“I sent him a note by Hal, who thinks I want to buy a buffalo robe like your mother’s.”

“To be plain with you, Mrs. McAlpin, you’re a fool.”

“I know it. But I confess to you that I want to see him so I can defy him.”

“If you want sensible advice, go to daddie.”

“I don’t want anybody’s advice. I just want you to accompany me, and keep hidden so as to be close at hand during the interview. He has no idea that he is going to meet Daphne Benson.”

As Jean had been forbidden by her father to continue her rides in Mrs. McAlpin’s company, she did not feel satisfied with herself during this stolen interview.

“Then you didn’t let your husband know it was you who wanted to see him?”

“Of course not. What do you take me for?”

“I’ll certainly take you for one of the silliest women on earth if you don’t give up this interview.”

“I believe, after all, that you’re right, Jeanie. But I thought, if I met him unexpectedly out here in these wilds and put him upon his honor, he would never try to trouble me again. I have something very important to say to him.”

“Then wait till we get to Oregon. We must go back to camp at once. It is time all honest folks were at home in bed.”

They found Mrs. Ranger sitting alone on a wagon-tongue, shivering in the sharp night air.

“I’m very ill, my daughter,” she said; “dangerously so. I’ve been watching and waiting for you the past half-hour. Where have you been?”

“She’s been pommelling a little common-sense into my addled noddle,” said Mrs. McAlpin.

“I’ve been taking a little walk with Mrs. McAlpin, mother dear, that’s all. But what’s the matter, mother? Where’s daddie?”

“Asleep, poor man. I don’t want him disturbed. Get me the bottle of ‘Number Six.’ There!” taking a draught of the fiery liquid. “I’ll soon be better. Go to bed.”

Jean never could forgive herself for not sounding an alarm. During the remainder of the short summer night Mrs. Ranger wrestled with her fate, suffering and unattended. The heavy breathing of the weary oxen as they slept, or the low chewing of their cuds in the silence, the occasional hoot of an owl, or the sharp scream of a belated eagle, the sighing of the wind in the juniper-trees, and the acute pangs of her suffering body occupied her half conscious thoughts as she patiently awaited the dawn, which broke at last, spreading over earth and sky the radiance of approaching sunrise.

“John dear, come quickly; I’m very sick, and I believe I’m dying!” cried the lone sufferer at last.

Her husband was instantly aroused.

“Why didn’t you call me long ago, darling?” he asked, crawling from beneath a tent and rubbing his eyes to accustom them to the light. A deadly fear blanched his cheeks as his wife fell back in convulsions in his arms.

She opened her eyes after a prolonged spasm of pain and gave him a look of melting tenderness.

“Make the biggest tent ready, boys!” he called, holding her close. “Fetch the feather bed and the buffalo robe. Get hot water, Sally. Get everything, everybody,” he exclaimed, carrying her in his arms and pacing excitedly to and fro.

“Oh, why did I bring you out here into this wilderness?” he sobbed, as he laid her on the bed and chafed her stiffening fingers. “Only live, and the remainder of your days shall be as free from care as a bird’s!”

“But I shall not live, John,” she whispered during a brief lucid interval, her eyes beaming with love and devotion. “Or, rather, I shall not die, but awake into newness of life. This body is worn out, but that is all. The life that animates it will never die, though I am going away.”

No effort that circumstances permitted was spared to retain the vital spark. Not a man, woman, or child in the company would have hesitated at any possible sacrifice to keep her spirit within the body, or to give her ease and comfort in passing to the land of souls.

The afternoon was wellnigh spent when she grew easier. A prolonged interval of consciousness followed.

“Where’s Bobbie?” she asked in a whisper.

“Here, mother!” cried the child, who had been a dazed and silent watcher all the day.

“Bless his little life!” she whispered with a look of unutterable love.

“Come, Bobbie dear,” said Jean, “let’s go out and see if we can’t find heaven, where God is. Mother is going there to live with the angels. Let’s see if there’ll be any room for us.”

“There’ll be room for me, Jeanie; there’ll have to be, for I’m going to die before long.”

“Why do you think so, Bobbie?”

“Cos I just am. I dreamed I went to heaven. It was a tight house, too, like Oregon, or Texas.”

“You mustn’t think you’re going to die, Bobbie.”

“There isn’t any surely death,” said the child. “It is just going to heaven.”

XVI

_JEAN’S VISIT BEYOND THE VEIL_

To the surprise of her sorrowing loved ones, Mrs. Ranger rallied before sundown, after a stupor of several hours, her eyes bright and her faculties wonderfully clear.

“It seems hard to leave you alone in this wilderness, John,” she said in a low whisper, while feebly clasping her husband’s hand.

The sun’s expiring rays fell upon the open tent, illuminating her angelic face, settling like an aureole upon her bright brown hair, and causing her eyes to glow like stars. “I’m not afraid of death, dear. I am not even afraid to leave you alone with the children in the wilderness, for I know you’ll do your duty. But I am sorry to leave all the burden for you to carry alone. There is One who heareth even the young ravens when they cry. Trust in Him, dearest. He doeth all things well.”

“How can I give you up?” cried the distracted husband, stroking her pale cheeks and forehead tenderly.

“You won’t be giving me up, John. God will let me come to you sometimes to bless and comfort you. I know He will; for He is good, and His mercy endureth forever. I couldn’t leave you to go far away if I tried, dear, and I’ll never try. Do try to be a Christian, John.”

“I’ve always been a Christian, according to my lights, my darling; and God Himself can’t keep me away from you in heaven,—if there is a God and a heaven,” he added under his breath, unable, even in that trying hour, to lay aside his doubts.

“God is just, and He will give you the benefit of every honest doubt, John.”

“But He ought to let me keep you, darling; I need you, oh, I need you!”

“All is well, my husband. I am safe, and so are you, in the Everlasting Arms. Call the children; I must be going. Don’t you hear the angels sing?”

The children were aroused, but she had relapsed into unconsciousness, and it was fully an hour before her reason again returned.

“Mother,” she said once, while her mind was wandering, “did you get my deed? Are you snugly settled in the little house? I tried very hard to provide for your and father’s welfare in your last days, and—” Her concluding words were inaudible.

“Yes, darling, your parents are provided for; there is no doubt about it,” cried her husband, as she awoke again to semi-consciousness. And if ever a man experienced a thrill of supreme satisfaction in the midst of a grave sorrow, that man was Captain John Ranger, of the overland wagon train.

“Mary!”

It was her next word of consciousness.

“Come close, dear; and Jean, and Marjorie, and Harry. The light has faded, and I cannot see you, darlings. But be good. Obey your father. Take good care of Bobbie, Sadie, and Baby Annie. God bless—” The sentence was not finished.

There was another prolonged convulsion. Her husband released her hand and closed her eyes, believing all was over. But while they all waited, silent and awe-stricken, as if expecting a resolute move from some one, she opened her eyes again and whispered, “John!”

“Yes, Annie. John is here.”

For an instant she beamed upon him with a look of unutterable love. Then, as if attracted by a familiar voice, she turned her gaze toward the only space in the tent where no one was standing.

“Yes,” she cried in clear, ringing tones; and her brightening eyes grew strangely full of eager expectation. “I’m coming! Tell grannie I’ll be ready for her when she comes to heaven!”

“Leave me alone with my dead!” said the bereaved husband, as he cleared the tent of other occupants and threw himself upon the ground beside the still and cold and irresponsive body. No longer animated by the invisible power that for forty years had thrilled it with the mystery of being, it lay with closed eyes and folded hands beneath its drapings of white, upon the heavy, furry buffalo robe, placed beneath the inanimate form by the husband’s loving hands.

Through all the years of John Ranger’s sturdy manhood, that self-denying life had been his, devoted with all its tenderness to his interests and those of the sweet pledges of their love, for whose sake he must now live on, alone.

* * * * *

Months after, when the remnant of the Ranger family had reached the land “where rolls the Oregon,” a letter came to the bereaved husband and father, by way of the Isthmus of Panama, bringing tidings of the dear great-grandmother’s transition; and John Ranger, still an agnostic, awaiting the proofs of immortality that had never come to his physical senses in such a manner as to be recognized, wandered out alone among the whispering firs, and cried in bitterness of spirit: “Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?”

* * * * *

“I ought to have known better than to bring you out here to die in the wilderness, Annie darling!” cried the grief-stricken husband, caressing the attenuated fingers that lay stiff and cold upon the pulseless breast. “You would never have undertaken the journey but to gratify me; and the end is here! If you had positively refused to come, that might have settled it. But I knew your wishes, and disregarded them; so all the blame is mine. If I had always taken counsel of you, my better self, as I ought to have done, I should not now have been left with our precious little ones in these wild fastnesses, in danger of I know not what.”

“Daddie!” cried an anxious voice, “may I come in?”

He heard, but did not answer. Jean opened the door of the tent, and knelt beside the still, white form of her mother.

“Couldn’t you sleep, my daughter?” asked her father, reaching across the shrouded figure of his dead and tenderly caressing her tear-wet face.

“No, daddie; at least, not any more. I’ve had one short nap. When I woke and heard you moaning, I thought maybe you’d be glad to have me come in. I want to tell you my dream. May I, daddie dear, for mother’s sake?”

“Yes, child.”

“I dreamed that I was all alone in a great park. I have never seen anything half so beautiful when awake, so I can’t tell you what it was like. But there were flowers and trees and fountains, and birds of paradise that sang heavenly songs. It seemed that I could understand the language of every bird and butterfly and tree and flower. The birds did not seem the least bit afraid of me; and the memory of their music is sweet in my ears now.

“I don’t know how I got across, but before I had time to think about it, I found myself on the opposite side of a broad and shining river, as clear as crystal and as blue as the sky. On the water, which I could see through to a wonderful depth, were countless living things, reflecting all the colors of the rainbow, and many more,—all swimming, as if without effort, among the rarest foliage and flowers. Everything seemed alive,—that is, sentient, if that’s the proper word,—and acted as if it knew me, and was glad I had come.

“The park I had first entered was even prettier at a distance than it had been at closer range. The river-bank, which was covered with grass that looked like pea-green velvet spangled with diamonds, was furnished in spots with vine-embowered seats. To sit or step upon them did not crush the vines; and I noticed that after they had yielded to pressure, they would rebound at its removal, like a rubber ball,—only, unlike the rubber, they seemed to have a consciousness all their own. The bending green of the trees was like emeralds, and their leaves shone like satin. The hearts of the flowers glowed like balls of living fire; and when I plucked a spray, there was left no broken stem to show what I had done. I was too happy to think, and I closed my eyes in absolute peace.

“Suddenly a brilliant light permeated everything; the river looked like melted silver, and the park glowed so brightly that I tried to shield my eyes with my hand. But my hand was almost transparent, and I could see everything as well when my eyes were closed as open. As I sat, quietly inbreathing the wonderful beauty of it all, filled with a happiness that I cannot express in words, there came to me, not audibly, but yet as if spoken by somebody, the words of the last Sunday-school lesson I had learned in the little log schoolhouse in the Illinois woods: ‘And there shall be no night there!’

“‘Am I in heaven?’ I tried to ask aloud; but my words gave forth no audible sound. And though I heard nothing in the way we hear sounds, a reply reached my senses instantly. I heard it through and through me, though not a word was spoken. Do you want to hear the rest of it, daddie dear?”

“Yes, child. Go on.” His eager gaze betrayed his soul-hunger. He buried his face in his hands. “I am listening, Jean.”

“Then I will go on. In a little while I found myself floating, but I wasn’t the least bit afraid; I just trusted. Pretty soon I became conscious that somebody was guiding me along. I did not stir; I hardly breathed. I was too happy to move, lest I should break the spell and find that I was only dreaming.

“Suddenly I found myself seated in a wonderful chair. It was clear, like crystal, but white, like ivory. It was beautifully carved, and the figures seemed instinct with life. They yielded readily beneath my weight,—though I was not conscious of any weight,—and they always returned to their proper shape when relieved of pressure. The crystal river rippled at my feet. The beautiful park spread everywhere. A bird of paradise alighted on a bough over my head and shook its plumage in the air, exhaling a perfume that was like that of the tuberose.

“And now comes the part that you will most like to hear. As I sat, I heard, or rather felt, a sound, as of a gentle wind. A white arm, thinly covered with a filmy, lustrous lace, stole gently around my neck, and mother glided down beside me into the chair. Her eyes were as blue as the heavens and as bright as the morning star.

“I wasn’t the least bit surprised or startled. I did not care to speak, nor did I expect her to utter a word. I did not want the heavenly silence broken. I pressed her hand, which was as soft as down, and pink and white, like a sea-shell. She put her finger to her lips, as if in token of silence.

“Suddenly a light, different from any I had yet seen, surrounded us. We looked upward, and a form like unto the Son of Man stood before us. He was transparent, and as radiant as the sun. We lost ourselves in the light of His presence, as the stars lose themselves in the light of the sun. He did not speak an audible word; but as He outspread His hands above our heads, I turned to gaze at mother, whose raiment was as sheer as the finest gauze. It was all edged with luminous lace; and the sheen on her hair was like spun gold, glistening in the sunshine.”

“Didn’t she say anything, Jean?”

This man, who had all his life refused to listen to any story which could not be verified by physical law, had lost himself in the strange recital. Jean looked as one transfigured. She resumed her story.

“Mother said: ‘You must go back to your duties, Jean.’ Her arms were about my neck, and her shining draperies floated around us like a mist with the sun shining on it. ‘You have a long and weary road before you, Jean,’ she said, speaking silently, but in words that could be felt. ‘The experiences you will encounter will all be good for your development, my dear,’ she added, still inaudibly. ‘The time will come when you will realize, no matter what befalls you, that every lesson in life is necessary for your development. You are in the arms of the Infinite One, whose kingdom is within you, and who doeth all things well. Go back to your dear father, Jean. Tell him I am not dead. Tell Mary, Marjorie, Harry, and all the rest—’ Just then I felt a sudden sensation, as of floating downward, toward the earth.

“A cow lowed as I stirred myself in the wagon, and I remembered that you had tied Flossie to a wheel to keep her from straying from camp. Bells tinkled on the hillsides, the wind whistled in the trees, and I sat up, wide awake. I heard you moaning, daddie, and my heart went out to you with a longing that I cannot describe. I could not rest till I had told you all. What do you suppose it means?”

“I can only say, like one of old, ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.’ Leave me now, daughter. You are weary and must sleep.”

XVII

_FATHER AND DAUGHTER_

Jean passed out silently into the night, and pausing a moment, looked up to the silent stars, and whispered: “‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handywork.’”

How long she stood meditating she never realized. The tethered cow lowed again,—a plaintive, beseeching wail, that seemed almost human. She was mourning for her slain calf, poor thing,—a calf left by the roadside at its birth. It had been mercifully killed by Captain Ranger’s order, that it might escape the hardships of a sure but lingering death in following its ill-fated mother.

The cow’s udder was distended and feverish. Jean, as mindful of the practical affairs of life as of its mysteries, knelt upon the ground, and, with the skill of much practice in the art of milking, relieved the poor bereft mother of her pain.

“Poor Flossie!” she said, as the patient animal drew a sigh of relief. “Poor Flossie! It seemed cruel to deprive you of your baby. And they did it, too, before your very eyes! You must be thirsty, Flossie; you’re so feverish,” she said, as she brought the grateful animal a pail of clear, cold water.

Jean crept shivering into bed between her sleeping sisters, where she tried in vain to lie awake, to live over again the vivid experiences of her dream.

“Was it a dream?” she asked herself as she cuddled close among the blankets. “Who knows what dreams are, anyhow? And is there anybody on the earth who can understand, define, or fathom the mystery of sleep?” In a few minutes she was fast asleep, and when she awoke it was morning.

“There are, there must be, other senses finer and more acute than our five physical ones,” she thought, as she crept from her bed, refreshed and wide awake.

The stars had paled, and the clear gray of the early dawn lit up the crests of the abounding hills.

* * * * *

The simple preparations for the funeral rites were made in silence. Men and women moved mechanically about the camp. The very cattle seemed to understand.

No casket was procurable, but every man in camp was ready to do all in his power to supply the need. Junipers of goodly size abounded in the neighboring woods. From two of these, felled for the purpose, thick puncheons were hewn to form a crude but stanch enclosure for the good woman’s final home. A grave was made, with hard labor, in the abounding sandstone, and the women lined its vault and edges with flattened boughs of evergreen, thus making an ideal resting-place for the still, white form, as beautiful in death as it had been in youth.

There was no prayer or sermon. The simple rites were about to close when Mary whispered to her father: “I have heard mother say she wanted us all to sing when they should be laying her away.” And the three eldest daughters of the peaceful dead and the storm-rent living sang with tremulous but not unmusical tones:—

“Oh, heaven is nearer than mortals think,
When they look with trembling dread
At the misty future that stretches on
From the silent home of the dead.

“’Tis no lone isle in a boundless main;
No brilliant but distant shore,
Where the loving ones who are called away
Must go to return no more.

“No, heaven is near us; the mighty veil
Of mortality blinds the eye,
That we see not the glorious angel bands,
On the shores of eternity.

“I know, when the silver cord is loosed,
When the veil is rent away,
Not long and dark shall the passage be
To the realms of endless day.”

John Ranger looked upward with bared brow and streaming eyes, and in his heart a flickering hope was born.

The Reverend Thomas Rogers, with all his fervent eloquence and well grounded belief in the very orthodox scheme of salvation which he had so constantly preached, had never shaken his doubts as did the plaintive promises of that simple, impressive hymn.

His devoted wife, strong in her faith in the efficacy of prayer, had long ceased to speak to him of her religious convictions, for which his ready logic and quaint ridicule suggested no answer. At such times, consoling herself with the command of her Master, she would enter into her closet, shut the door, and pray for him and their children in secret, with never a doubt that sometime, someway, her prayers would be answered openly. And who shall say that her faith was not at last rewarded, in a way she least expected, through that plaintive song, through which, being dead, she had yet spoken?

After the burial, the remainder of the day was spent in the silent performance of the many accumulated duties of the camp. There was no time for the luxury of grief. The women and girls washed, ironed, cooked, did the dishes, mended wearing apparel, sewed up rents in wagon-covers and tents, and gathered heaps of wild flowers, with which they adorned the fresh mound of earth that none of them expected ever to see again.

* * * * *

The men were not idle. A broken ox-yoke needed mending. Wagon-tires were reset. Such heavy articles as could be dispensed with were discarded.

Jamie’s cradle, for which Mrs. Ranger had begged a place in their effects, and her grandmother’s spinning-wheel, which she had stored in one of the wagons, were among the articles ordered to be thrown away.

“Your mother will not miss them now,” said Captain Ranger, huskily.

“It is a shame to disregard our dear mother’s wishes, now that she cannot speak for herself,” said Mary, in a whisper, aside to Jean.

“I know it; and I’ve already made a bargain with Mrs. McAlpin to store them in one of her wagons. Daddie will thank us for it sometime.”

Sadly and silently the work went on; for the living had to be cared for, and nothing more could be done for the dead.

When evening came Jean sought her journal, climbed to the rim of the little natural amphitheatre overlooking the sparkling spring of icy water near her mother’s last resting-place, and read in the last space she had left blank, in her father’s bold chirography, some lines of a poem which he had quoted from memory:—

“’Twas midnight, and he sat alone,
The husband of the dead.
That day the dark dust had been thrown
Above her buried head.

“Her orphaned children round him slept,
But in their sleep would moan;
In bitterness of soul he wept.
He was alone—alone.

“The world is full of life and light,
But, ah, no light for me!
My little world, once warm and bright,
Is cheerless as the sea.

“Where is her sweet and kindly face?
Where is her cordial tone?
I gaze upon her resting-place
And feel that I’m alone.