Chapter XLIII: Jean Is Happy—and Another Person 307 (6)

“Elmer Edson is not dead, but Annie Ranger is!” he said hoarsely. “We had to leave her precious dust in the ground away back yonder in the Black Hills. We started together on this terrible journey, hoping to escape the consequences of that awful mortgage with which you left us in the lurch. She had denied herself many comforts and all the luxuries of life for a dozen years to feed the ever-eating cankerworm of interest. No, Joe, you didn’t kill Edson; but through my efforts to help you out of a trouble in which you should never have been entangled, you became accessory to the lingering death of my wife.”

“Don’t reproach me, John! I loved Annie like a sister. I did indeed. She was a sister to me from the day she became your wife. You don’t or won’t see how it grieves me to hear of her death.”

“Why didn’t you write to us, like a man?”

The brother had risen to his feet, and was pacing nervously to and fro, whittling aimlessly on a bit of sagebrush.

“I was afraid to write. There was a price upon my head, as you have no need to be informed.”

“Yes, Joe; and to pay the interest on that price was the bane of my existence for a dozen years. But you can write now. Our dear mother—God bless her!—would forget all the terrible past if she could hold you in her arms once more. It is your duty to return at once, and settle, as well as you can, for the trouble you have caused. You ought at least to lift that accursed mortgage from the farm, and let Lije Robinson and Sister Mary and our parents spend the remainder of their lives in peace. You are a free man, and can go where you please.”

“But I am not a free man, John. Even with that horrible load off my shoulders, I still am bound, hand and foot.”

“Are you married, Joe?”

“Yes, John. You see, when a fellow is in hiding among the Indians, with a price set upon his head, and is therefore afraid to go home, he’s nothing but a fugitive from justice; he expects to spend his life there, and never see the face of another white woman; and when there are scores of pretty Indian girls in sight—”

John Ranger jumped to his feet, his fists clinched and his eyes glaring.

“You don’t mean to tell me that my brother is married to—to a—squaw?”

There was ineffable scorn in his tone and manner. It was now Joe’s turn to sink upon the ground and bury his face in his hands. When he again looked at his brother, there was an expression of age and anguish upon his face which had not been there before.

“I am the husband of an Indian woman, and the father of seven half-breed children,” he said with the air of a guilty man on trial for his life. “But there are extenuating circumstances, John. My wife was no common squaw. If you care for me at all, you will not apply that epithet to the mother of my children. She was the daughter of a Mandan chief, who had large dealings with the Hudson Bay Company, and who sent her to England to be educated. You’d hardly think it to see her now, though; for the Indian women fall back into aboriginal customs when they leave the haunts of civilization to return to their people and take up life, especially as mothers, among their own kind and kin. At least, that is what Wahnetta did.”

John Ranger groaned. “My God! has it come to this?” he cried, looking the picture of despair.

“If you had been in my place, you would have married her yourself, John. Nobody has a right to judge another; for no one knows what he will do till he is tried.”

“Don’t you regret the marriage, Joe?”

“It is too late for regrets. The deed is done, and I cannot get away from my fate. Shall we part as friends and brothers? Or is there an impassable gulf between us?”

There was an unspoken appeal in his tone, far stronger than words, which John Ranger remembered for many a day. But he refused his brother’s proffered hand, and said hoarsely, as he sprang to his feet: “Don’t, at your peril, let anybody know that you are my brother!”

He wheeled upon his heel and was gone.

XXII

_THE SQUAW MAN_

Captain Ranger overtook his train at a late hour, still nursing his towering wrath. His face was livid, and his breathing stertorous. Snatching the ox-whip from the hands of Jean and frightening the discouraged cattle into the semblance of an attempt at hurry by the cruel vehemence with which he belabored their lash-beflecked hides, he urged them forward, never once relaxing his attacks with the whip till he had rushed them over the uneven road and rocks for six or seven miles.

“Daddie is in a terrible tantrum over something very unusual,” said Jean. “Do you know what is the matter?” she asked aside, addressing Sally O’Dowd.

“No, Jean; unless he had some hot words with that post-trader. I know he thought ten dollars a hundred for flour was robbery. And think of a dollar a pound for dried peaches!”

“Daddie’s not idiot enough to work himself into a fever over a trifle like that,” answered Jean. “But suppose he has been thrown into a passion by anybody, the poor half-sick and half-famished oxen ought not to be punished for it. He reminds me of an old Kentucky slave-owner who got so mad because one of his sons failed to pass his first exams at West Point that he went out, as soon as he heard about it, and cruelly whipped a nigger.” And falling back to the family team, beside which Hal was trudging, whip in hand, striving to keep the jaded cattle close behind his father’s oxen, she dropped hastily on one knee on the wagon-tongue and climbed nimbly to a seat.

“That trader is still sitting by the roadside,” she cried to Sally, who was trudging through the sand. “He’s digging the earth with a jack-knife or dirk, or some other sharp implement, and seems quite as savage and out of humor as daddie. Wonder what daddie said to him.”

One by one the wagons passed the solitary trader, who had climbed to a low ledge of rocks, where he sat as silent as the sun. His knife had fallen to the ground and lay glittering at his feet. His broad sombrero shaded his face.

The sudden rebound from the great happiness that had been his when first informed that he was not a murderer and an outlaw, to the abject position of a spurned and degraded “squaw man” seemed more than he could bear. “I am not a murderer, though, and that’s some comfort,” he moaned. “But I am still a Pariah,—an outcast from my own people. What will my dear mother think of me when John acquaints her with the facts? What will my father say or do?”

It is well that Mother Nature, in her wisdom and mercy, has provided a limit to human suffering, else everybody in this world would at times become insane.

Cicadas gave forth their rasping notes in the dry grass, and a colony of prairie dogs played hide-and-seek over the uneven streets above an underground settlement hard by. A badger peeped cautiously from the mouth of his sagebrush-guarded den, and a rattlesnake crawled unnoticed past his feet.

“I don’t blame John for being disappointed and angry,” he said aloud, “but I am amazed at his lack of charity. If he could have seen and known Wahnetta as I did, at the time of our marriage, he would have been pleased with my choice. But it is too late now. Her girlish grace and beauty are gone, and one could hardly distinguish her from any of the other pappoose-burdened, camas-digging squaws that abound in spots in the land of the Latter-Day Saints. I might send her back, with the children, to the remnant of her tribe among the Bad Lands, but the act would be infamous. No, Joseph Ranger; you must take your medicine.”

He thought of his joyous exultation at the time he had won the accomplished and graceful Indian princess, whom half-a-dozen distinguished braves and as many handsome white traders had sought in marriage; of her trusting preference for him; of their joyous honeymoon; and of the herd of beautiful horses with which he had purchased her for his chosen bride, thus making her a slave. He winced as he thought of the legal status of his wife and children.

He blushed with shame as he thought of her loyalty to him through all the years of her transformation from a lithe and pretty maiden of sixteen, whom every man admired, to the shapeless and slovenly specimen of her people, of whom he was now ashamed. He thought bitterly yet lovingly of the numerous children she had borne him uncomplainingly, while wandering from place to place in quest of roots and berries to save them from starvation in their early married years, when game would be scarce and his fickle fortunes had vanished for months at a stretch.

He remembered with what loving pride he had named his first two children John and Annie, in honor of the brother and sister for whom his heart had so often hungered. “And the end is this!” he cried, noting with a start that the sun was down. “Why did I name them John and Annie? I might have known better. I was a fool. And yet why should they be spurned on account of their Indian blood? If, instead of marrying Wahnetta, I had refused to make her my lawful wife, would my white relations have spurned me now?”

His childhood days passed and repassed before his mental vision like a panorama.

His family had been proud of him. What sacrifices they had made to send him to college, and with what base ingratitude he had repaid their loyalty and love! He had worse than wasted his opportunities, he thought, as he gazed abroad over the mighty landscape, bounded on the one hand by the wide basin of the receded and still slowly receding waters of Great Salt Lake, and on the other by the Rocky Mountains,—so near that they obstructed his vision, though he well knew their extent and majesty. “This won’t do!” cried the wretched man, as he started homeward, reeling like a drunken man.

“Papa!” cried a childish voice. “Do hurry home! We are so hungry! Where have you been for so long?”

“All right, Johnnie; I’m coming. Papa forgot.”

* * * * *

In a large military tent, or annex, at the rear end of the trader’s tent sat Wahnetta, his wife. He shuddered at the thought. And yet why should he? Was she not as good as he? Had all her years of faithful servitude counted for nothing?

A meal of boiled buffalo meat and vegetables, with bread, coffee, butter, and eggs, was waiting on a table of rough boards resting on trestles, and covered with an oilcloth that had once been white.

In one corner, beside a big sheet-iron cook-stove, sat, or rather crouched, the woman whom he had made his wife. She was not yet thirty years of age, but all traces of her girlish youth and beauty of face and figure were gone. Her dress, a cheap and garish print, was open at the neck and arms, and hung in slovenly folds about her fat form and moccasined feet.

“Why in thunder don’t you keep yourself and the young ones clean and dressed up?” asked her husband, as he dropped into his seat at table. “You keep yourself like a Digger squaw!”

“I should belie the customs of my people if I aped the airs of white folks when I must live like an Indian, Joseph Addicks!” said the woman, in well-modulated English, as she arose and approached the table, coffee-pot in hand.

“I loathe and abhor the very sight of you!” he exclaimed with a savage glare.

“You didn’t talk like that when I was young and pretty, Joseph! If you had tried it once, you would not have had a chance to repeat it then. Perhaps,” she added bitterly, a moment later, as she filled his plate, “perhaps I could have retained my charms if you had taken me back to London and kept me within the pale of civilization in which I was educated. You said before you married me that you would take me back to Canada, where you said your people lived, who would be glad to welcome me. How well you have kept your promise let these surroundings answer. I married you believing that your people would be my people, and your God my God. And,” looking around her, “this is the result!”

The sleeves of her gaudy dress were rolled back above the elbows, exposing her fat yet muscular arms, not over-clean; and the dingy pipe she had been smoking protruded from the open bosom of her gown.

“Where have you been during all this busy afternoon, Joseph?” she asked, still standing.

“To hell!”

“Your missionaries have taught me that people only go to hell from choice, Joseph; that is, if there is any worse hell anywhere than we are in all the time,—which I love the Great Spirit too well to believe. It seems to me we are compelled to take the punishment we bring upon ourselves here and now.”

“You haven’t any right to think, you loathsome, disgusting—”

“Stop, Joseph Addicks! This is, you say, a white man’s country now. Will you prove it by behaving yourself like a gentleman? I didn’t live for four years in a white man’s country for nothing.”

He arose and left the table without a word. His wife had seen him in moods like this before.

“Come, John; come, Annie; take your seats at table. You must be half famished.”

Four or five smaller children as dusky as herself were playing on the earthen floor; and, leaning helplessly against a pyramid of flour sacks, lashed in Indian style to its birchen cradle, was a pappoose of three months, defencelessly enduring an attack of mosquitoes on its face and eyes.

“My father was a fool for sending me to college,” thought Joseph Ranger, who, like many others that go wrong, was ready to blame everything and everybody except himself. “The university should have stopped that hazing before it began, so I couldn’t have had that fracas.”

“Why didn’t you eat your dinner, Joseph?” asked his wife, after she had fed the children.

“Because I hate this accursed life too heartily to have any appetite for food.”

“Haven’t I always urged you to go with us back to civilization, Joseph?”

“With you for a wife? You don’t know what you are talking about.”

Then—but it was not the first time since Wahnetta had become his property by purchase—he fired himself up with the vile whiskey his company held in stock, and, taking advantage of the English common law, at that time an acknowledged authority in every State and Territory in the Union, he provided himself with a stick, no thicker than his thumb, and beat Wahnetta, his wife, long and brutally.

* * * * *

Captain Ranger had allowed his anger to cool before the sun went down. To his credit be it spoken, he was very much ashamed of himself. “I was like an enraged, unreasoning animal,” he exclaimed aloud. “I might at least have repulsed Joe with kindness. I will write to my father and mother and tell them that my brother who was lost is alive and is found. But I’ll say nothing about the domestic side of his history. It would only grieve them all, and they couldn’t help matters. It is none of my business, anyhow.”

But he could not sleep. The memory of his and Joseph’s boyhood days reproached him, and he thought lovingly, in spite of himself, of the younger brother of whom he had been so proud. Many incidents of their childhood, long forgotten, passed before him with startling vividness.

“Joe saved my life once,” he said, half audibly. “I would have been drowned as sure as fate, when I broke through the ice that day, if he hadn’t saved me at the risk of his own life. Dear boy! I’ll saddle Sukie and go back to see him in the morning.” With this resolution settled in his mind, he fell asleep; but his sleep was fitful. Sometimes the sad, sweet face of his gentle Annie would bend over him, awakening him with a start. A conviction settled more and more strongly upon his mind that he had cruelly wronged his brother, and he would be allowed no rest till he should atone.

Once, long before morning, he saw himself face to face with a raging buffalo bull. It was without eyes, and gazed at him through sightless sockets, and shook its formidable head at him with as much certainty of aim as though its thick and darkened skull were ablaze with light. The beast held the only vantage-ground,—an open plain,—and at his back rose a sheer and inaccessible mountain, up which there was no chance of escape.

XXIII

_THE SQUAW ASSERTS HER RIGHTS_

The morning found the post-trader with a raging headache. For several minutes after awakening to consciousness he remained motionless, not realizing time or place.

“Oh, mother! my head, my head!” he exclaimed, as he locked his fingers above his throbbing temples. Never before since his marriage had he uttered a cry of pain without bringing Wahnetta to his side. Now no one noticed his groaning. He raised himself upon his elbow and gazed through the open door of his sleeping apartment upon the broad and dusty plain. The sun was already an hour high. Numerous campers had struck their tents, and the teams were moving toward the farther West. He turned his gaze within the tent and regarded Wahnetta with a look and feeling of disgust. She had prepared his breakfast while he slept, and had fed their ravenous brood,—all save the baby in its Indian basket, which was whining pitifully as it blinked its eyes in a helpless attempt to drive away the flies.

“Why don’t you keep your young one quiet?” roared her husband, savagely.

“I’ve been doing the best I could,” said the woman, meekly. “I’ve gotten all the children settled outside in the shade, studying their lessons, except this poor little pappoose, and I’ll ’tend to his wants as soon as I have disposed of the worst baby in the lot,—and that’s you.”

“What in thunder has come over you, woman?”

“Nothing.”

“Have you had breakfast?”

“Food would choke me, Joseph Addicks! See what you did last night!” She threw back her heavy mass of torn and tangled hair, exposing an ugly bruise on her temple. “If it were not for these children, I’d leave you and strike out for myself. But as I cannot get away from them, I will stay by them, as many a woman in all countries is obliged to do under like circumstances till she either dies or can run away. But I tell you right here and now that I will never take another blow from you or any other man.”

“I’d like to see you help yourself.”

“I’ll help myself by laying you dead at my feet! No man who respects himself will marry a woman not his equal, or if she is of an inferior race. I didn’t know this when I was a foolish young girl, but I understand it now. In marrying an Indian girl you did not elevate her one atom, but you degraded us both. I now tell you to your teeth that I hate you, and you can’t help it.”

“I never would have married you if I had known that I was not an outlaw. I thought myself a murderer till yesterday. I know better now. I am sorry I beat you, though. I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been in a drunken frenzy. I’m in a better temper this morning; but oh, my head, my head!”

“Let it ache! So does mine, but I can’t lie abed and groan. I am compelled to look after the family’s needs, sick or well.”

Then, womanlike, though the poor little pappoose fretted pitifully in its Indian basket, his wife brought cold water and towels and bathed his throbbing forehead.

“I’m better now,” he said, as his temples cooled. “Will you forgive me for beating you last night, Wahnetta?”

She looked at him in astonishment. Never before, though he had often bestowed indignities upon her that he would not have inflicted upon a favorite dog or horse, had he addressed her thus, or shown any sign of repentance.

“If I had kept my promise, Wahnetta, as I should have done, I would have taken you as a bride to London or Montreal and replaced you in the world of civilization, in which you were educated by your fond, mistaken father. But I couldn’t do it, because of my daily dread of the hangman’s rope. I do not wonder that you despise me. I did not realize that I had become that thing that every self-respecting man of the West abhors,—a ‘squaw-man’!”

“Don’t you dare to say ‘squaw’ to me, Joseph Addicks! It is an epithet no white man uses except in contempt. When we were married I was your equal in education, your superior in personal appearance, and your match in ambition. I now see that I was far ahead of you in moral character, for I was never a fugitive from what the world calls justice. But why didn’t you confide all this to me long ago?”

He laughed derisively. “I knew the treacherous Indian nature too well, woman; and I wouldn’t trust you now if it were in your power to betray me; but there is nothing now to betray.”

“And I am no longer afraid of you, Joseph Addicks.”

“My name is not Addicks. My brother passed through here yesterday. His name is John Ranger, and I am his long-lost brother, Joseph. He is taking his family to the Territory of Oregon.”

He arose finally and made a tolerable breakfast, she, for the first time since their marriage, taking her seat at the table beside him as he ate.

“If you’d keep yourself clean and tidy, like a self-respecting white woman, you wouldn’t appear so—so Injuny, and I wouldn’t be so very much ashamed of you. I’m sick to death of this bondage, Wahnetta. I, too, was a young and unsophisticated fool when we were married. What will you take to let me out of it honorably? I want to do everything I can to atone; but something must be done. I will not longer endure this mode of existence.”

“I have an idea, Joseph. My inheritance from my father arrived several days ago. I hadn’t thought of claiming it for myself, but I will now. Give me a letter of credit for the whole of it, with an outfit for travelling, and I will go, with the children, to a village on the Willamette River called Portland, in the Territory of Oregon. You know Dr. McLoughlin well, and so do I. There’s a convent in Portland, where I can place the girls, and a brothers’ school near by for the boys. I’ll get a boarding-place, not too far away, for myself and the little tots that are too young to be in school. I will soon recruit if I can get a chance to rest up and dress myself as the white women in my position do. You won’t know me in three months after I have had a chance to live in keeping with my station.”

She paused, panting because of her own audacity. Never before had she ventured to give utterance to so long a speech in his presence. He saw a ray of hope and pursued it eagerly.

“I have a good wagon, and a fine four-mule team that is idle,” he said musingly. “I guess we can manage to make the change.”

“What will you do, Joseph? Can you stay here when we are gone?”

“I shouldn’t think you’d care to consider me after all that’s happened, Wahnetta.”

“You cannot give me back my heart, my husband. I can never be happy without you. But, savagely as I spoke a while ago, my heart is full of love for you, and the thought of leaving you alone in this God-forsaken wilderness brings back all the tenderness of the past.”

“I can take care of myself, I reckon.”

“Of course; if I can take care of myself and seven children, you ought to be able to get along alone, or hire somebody to help you,” she exclaimed, straightening her shoulders, and revealing long-lost or hidden traces of her girlhood’s beauty in the light of an awakening hope. “I know the tendency of my race, or any other, to hark back to primitive conditions under adverse circumstances. The time has now come when the children must have the social and educational advantages of a higher civilization, or they’ll be Indians to the end of the chapter. As you will not permit me to take them to the East, I am glad that I can take them to the farthest West.”

“How soon can you be ready to start?”

“To-morrow, or as soon as the team is ready. We’ll pose as Indians till we get to Oregon. We can camp in the Portland woods till an outfit of clothing can be prepared in which you wouldn’t be ashamed to see your wife and children appear before kings.”

The next morning early, while the Ranger team was yet in camp, and its Captain was not yet awake, an Indian woman, with an unkempt swarm of dusky children, passed him on their westward way, unrecognized.

* * * * *

“Daddie’s in a raging fever!” cried Jean, arousing the Little Doctor.

“We’ll fetch him out all right,” said the doctor, as the frightened children shivered around the fire in the crisp morning air, silent and awe-stricken. “I saw an Indian ‘sweat-house’ near the river-bank after we had encamped last night. We’ll fumigate it, and give your father a thorough steaming, children. Don’t be frightened. He’s caught the mountain fever. Luckily, I have on hand a lot of crude brimstone. I gathered it near Hell Gate.”

“But we mustn’t use the sweat-house without the consent of the Indians,” said Scotty. “Yonder comes a lot of them on horseback now. I’ll see them and make terms.”

The terms having been arranged satisfactorily, the Little Doctor proceeded to make preparations for the reception of her patient.

When the inner surface of the dugout had reached a white heat, the fire was permitted to die, and the place was cleansed of coals and ashes. It was then tested by a thermometer; and when cooled to the proper temperature, the Captain, now almost incoherent from fever, was wrapped in blankets and placed, feet foremost, within its depths, where he lay with his head enveloped with cold, wet towels, leaving only a small aperture at the mouth of the “infernal pit,” as he called it, for air. Thus situated, and perspiring at every pore, he fell asleep.

A delicious, restful languor followed his awakening, and he was aroused, against his protest, to be removed by willing attendants to a closed tent, where he was packed in cold, wet sheets, and left to rest for another hour or more.

“His heart has good action, and he’ll come out all right; but we can’t break camp to-day,” said the Little Doctor.

By evening the Captain found his fever conquered. But he was not strong enough to ride back to his brother’s trading-post for the amicable interview he had planned; so, like most of our “ships that pass in the night,” his opportunity was gone; and as time wore on, his good resolutions vanished also.

The long-drawn monotony of the journey caused the entries in her journal to become exceedingly monotonous to Jean, who often neglected a duty she would have highly prized had she been able to foresee the value of the record she was making under constant protest.

On the tenth of July she wrote as follows: “We are now in Utah Territory, which is the first organized part of Uncle Sam’s dominions we have set foot upon since leaving the Missouri River. Our hunters to-day killed an antelope and a brace of ‘fool’ hens, or sage-chickens, which our half-famished crowd cooked and ate with relish.

“What a way we human animals have of preying upon the brute creation, as we falsely name the mild-eyed entities which we must slay and eat that we may live! I have no heart to write. I can only think of the beautiful eyes of that antelope we have killed and eaten, and of the sage-hens that were not enough afraid of a boot that Yank threw at them to get out of his way. And we called them ‘fools’ because they trusted us, who, as compared to them, are knaves.”

After crossing the Rocky Mountains through a huge and devious gap[2] by ascents and descents so gradual that nothing but the changing trend of the water-currents marked the point or points of demarcation, the train reached a height overlooking the valley of the Great Salt Lake,—the “Promised Land” of the Latter-Day Saints, who even in that early day had made it, in many spots, to blossom as the rose.

The almost intolerable heat of midday was followed at night by cold and marrow-piercing winds, making both day and night uncomfortable.

“No wonder the immigrants are ill, Mr. Burns,” said Mrs. McAlpin, one evening, when, as she could not politely avoid him, she sought to control the conversation. “Nothing saves any of us but the snow-laden air from these grand old mountains. I have stood on the Himalayas, where the Mahatmas are said to hold sway, I have beheld the shimmering beauty of Egyptian skies, I have floated among the silent wonders of the Dead Sea; but the majestic beauty of these Rocky Mountains transcends them all.”

“I’ve just left a family of Mormons, where there is a bishop ill with the fever. The faithful were trying to cure him by the ridiculous custom of laying on of hands,” said Burns, who had sought her company, hoping to “talk it out.”

“Not necessarily ridiculous,” answered the lady. “If a faithful Catholic crowd can change a little vial of mummy-dry blood into liquid form in answer to faith and prayer, why can’t an equally faithful Mormon crowd heal the sick through the same power of concentration, which is only another name for faith?” and the Little Doctor hurried away.

XXIV

_A MORMON WOMAN_

Newly created Mormon settlements came occasionally into view, the long, low, ashy-white adobe houses of the Latter-Day Saints proclaiming, by the front doors to be counted in their dwellings, the number of wives each patriarch possessed.

One cold, blustering evening a lone woman, middle-aged, swarthy, sinewy, and tall, came into the camp afoot. A bundle of bedding strapped to her back gave her an uncanny appearance as she shrank into the shadows. A reticule of generous dimensions depended from her neck in front and reached below her waist-line, containing her little stock of clothing and provisions.

“I am making my way to the Northern Oregon country,” she said, meaning the great expanse of territory which at that time embraced the present States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, with a large slice of the present State of Montana included. “President Young saw I was going crazy,” she added, throwing aside her reticence after being warmed and fed. “I wasn’t the least mite dangerous to have around, as I wasn’t violent; but I cried and took on so, after I had to give my husband away in marriage to another woman, that I scared the hull church into a fear that I’d upset polygamy. So President Young said I might have a permit to leave the country.”

“Do you mind telling us all about it?” asked Sally O’Dowd.

“It can all be summed up in one word,—polygamy,” she exclaimed, glancing furtively around. “Are there any Mormons about?”

“No, madam,” said the Captain. “The boss of this combination is a pagan, and he wouldn’t hurt a Christian. You have no cause to be afraid. But you’d better not tell us any secrets. The proper way to keep a secret is to keep it to one’s self, unless you want to keep it going.”

“I am a Mormon, good and true,” she began again, rising to her feet and spreading her thin hands to the blaze; “but when my husband went into polygamy, which it was his Christian duty to do, according to the Scripture (and I’m not blaming him), the Devil got the upper hand of me, and I couldn’t stand it. You see, they made me go to the Endowment House and give my own husband away in marriage to another woman; and that, too, after we had stood together at the altar, in the little church in my father’s parish, ever so long before, and swore before God and a score of witnesses that we would forsake all others and keep ourselves only to each other as long as we both should live. Polygamy may be all right for people who haven’t made such vows; but I know it was not right for us. What do you think, Mr. Captain?”

“I think that women have had their hearts cultivated at the expense of their heads quite long enough,” was his emphatic response.

“I thought the Mormons didn’t compel any woman to give her husband away in marriage against her will,” said Jean.

The woman uttered a sharp, rasping, staccato laugh that betokened incipient insanity.

“There are other ways to kill a dog besides choking him to death on butter!” she cried, throwing her arms wildly about, and casting grotesque shadows upon those sitting behind her. “They told me that as a good Mormon I was bound to obey the mandates of the Church; that my eternal salvation, and my husband’s also, depended upon obedience. And they said it so often, and prayed over me so long and hard, that at last I said I’d do it. Then they held me to my promise. But my heart would beat, and the world would move; so in spite of what I did in the Endowment House, I would go about and tell my woes to everybody that would listen. And I was getting to be a scandal in Zion, so that by-and-by, when a lot of Gentiles got to making a fuss about it,—they made it hot for polygamy through my story,—the elders took it up. But they couldn’t tie my tongue, for the Devil had hold of it, and he just kept it wagging. The cases of Abraham and Jacob and David didn’t fit my case at all, for they hadn’t made any such vows.”

The woman, as if suddenly recollecting herself, stopped speaking, and glared at her awe-stricken listeners with an insane gleam in her fiery eyes.

“Oh, my head, my head!” she cried, clasping her hands tightly over her temples. “The Devil has caught me again!”

“You’d better not talk any more to-night,” said the Little Doctor, soothingly. “And you cannot go on till morning. I’ll make a warm, snug bed for you in one of the wagons. After you’ve had a sound sleep and a good breakfast, you can go on your way refreshed.”

“But I’ve got to talk it out. You’re like all the rest! You want me to be quiet, when the rocks and stones would cry out against me if I did!”

“You’ll take a drink of our ‘Number Six,’ won’t you?” asked the Little Doctor. “Here it is. I’ve mixed and sweetened it for you.”

She grasped the decoction and gulped it eagerly.

“Thanks,” she said, returning the cup. “I must be going now. I’ve stayed too long already. The Danites will be after me. Do you think any of them are in hearing now? President Young put me under their surveillance before they’d let me start. He put his hands on my head and blessed me, too. Talk about your popes! Why, Brigham Young can discount a ten-acre field full of Apostolic successors, and be the father of a whole regiment of American progeny in the bargain. I know you think I’m crazy, but there’s plenty of method in my madness. I’m not half as crazy as I act and talk.”

“Will the Danites protect you till you reach the end of your journey?” asked Jean. “Are you sure?”

“Not if they catch me among Gentiles. President Young took precautions to prevent me from talking to outsiders, he thought. I mustn’t be seen here. But I must tell you before I go that his blessing came direct from God. It filled my very marrow-bones with light. It was like phosphorus in the dark, or diamonds in the sunlight. I felt like a bird! No man can do these things that President Young is doing unless God be with him.”

“Do you believe that Brigham Young is really inspired of God?” asked Mary, incredulously.

“It is by their fruits that we know them, miss. Zion has been greatly blessed under the ministrations and guidance of President Young.”

“Then why do you wish to escape from his kingdom?” asked Marjorie.

“Because I was not good enough to endure polygamy; I was too great a sinner. I couldn’t obey the gospel and keep my senses.”

“Did the thought never strike you that the fault might be in the gospel, instead of your heart or head?” asked Hal.

“The High and Holy One of Israel cannot err,” she replied, shaking her head, and again waving her long arms to and fro in the smoky air. “There are disbelievers in this camp, and I cannot tarry. May Heaven guide and protect you all, and bring you into the holy faith of the Latter-Day Saints! O blessed Lord, direct these souls into Thy kingdom before it is everlastingly too late!”

She waved her arms over their heads once more, and turning suddenly, vanished like a deer into the darkness.

“That poor misguided creature has the spirit of a martyr,” said Captain Ranger, after a painful silence.

“It is a good deal easier for some folks to preach than to practise,” exclaimed Sally O’Dowd.

“There are kernels of truth in all ’ologies,” said Scotty.

“As a man thinketh, so is he,” exclaimed Mary.

“She is striving to save her immortal soul. All religions have their origin in human selfishness,” remarked the Captain, dryly.

“Better say they originate in human needs,” replied Jean; “but selfishness is universal, all the same.”

“Yes. Selfishness is a necessary attribute of human existence,” said the Little Doctor, punching the dying fire into a blaze. “Don’t you think so, Mr. Burns?”

“I quite agree with you, madam. Selfishness belongs to human environment, and is as much a part of us as hunger, thirst, love, or ambition. Nothing is made in vain.”

“Not even sin?” asked Mary.

“Not even sin!” echoed Jean. “This would have been a very useless world if there had been no wrongs to set right in it, and no suffering to relieve. Nobody could appreciate heat if it were not for cold, or light if there were no darkness. Hunger compels us to search for food; thirst seeks satisfaction in drink, and ambition in the search for personal advancement. It often unconsciously assists the weak by its efforts, when it intends to help nothing but the personal selfishness that inspires it. Everything, both good and evil, is a part of the eternal programme.”

“Where did you imbibe such ideas as you often express on this subject?” asked her father, a great pride in her springing afresh in his heart.

“From the stars, I guess, or from the angels. Or maybe they were born within me. I never could reconcile myself to the generally accepted idea of gratitude. To thank God for blessings we enjoy that are not accessible to others, to me is nothing else but blasphemy.”

“Then you cannot say with the poet,—

“‘Some hae meat, and canna eat,
And some would eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit!’”

said Mrs. Benson, who had been looking on in silence.

“Indeed I can’t!” exclaimed Jean. “But we’ve all heard just such prayers and praises through all our lives.”

“Nobody in normal health has any right to be thankful for anything unless he earns it,” said the Captain; “and then he has nobody to thank but himself.”

“He ought to be thankful for health, at least,” suggested Marjorie.

“If you’d follow your logic to its natural sequence, Captain, my occupation would be gone,” laughed the Little Doctor. “It is as unnatural and unscientific to be sick as to be hungry; therefore there should be no doctors.”

“I can see no analogy between your conclusions and my observations,” said the Captain.

“I can,” cried Jean.

“Every error under the sun is mixed with good, or it couldn’t exist at all,” said Scotty. “But the truth remains that the Universe with all that it contains exemplifies the Divine Idea. God IS.

“‘All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose _mother_ Nature is, and God the soul.’

“You see, I’ve altered the thought a little, Mrs. McAlpin; but I look to the shade of Pope for pardon. If he were with us to-day, he would doubtless accept my amendment. We can’t know much about the mystery we call God. It makes little difference to the humanity of the various nations of the earth, all of whom must worship the Divine Idea, whether it be called Vishnu, Chrishna, Isis, Allah, Jehovah—”

“These learned disquisitions over things unknown make me very weary,” yawned Jean.

“And border on blasphemy,” added Mary.

“We had better go to bed,” exclaimed the Captain, rising. “These questions have taken a wide range, and we’ve all followed that poor Mormon devotee beyond her depth and our own.”

“But such discussions relieve the monotony of travel and sometimes lead to independent thought,” said Lengthy, who had sat squat upon his heels and haunches, a silent listener.

“God be with our Mormon sister,” said Scotty, rising and adjusting his crutches. “Let us hope for her a safe journey to some friendly spot where polygamy ceases from troubling, and the saints are at rest!”

“That’s from the Bible,” cried Hal.

“Nobody can conceive of a better method of expressing an idea than that modelled after the language of the Bible,” was the ready retort. “If I were as pronounced an agnostic as our Captain pretends to be, which I am not, I’d read my Bible daily, if for no other reason than to improve my vocabulary. Read it, Hal; study its precepts; imitate its language; revere its antiquity; emulate the example of its good men; shun the sins of its Davids and Solomons; fill your mind with the wisdom of its Isaiahs and Deborahs; and, above all, obey its Ten Commandments and follow the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule.”

“I’ll see spooks to-night!” cried Jean.

* * * * *

As these chronicles will have no further dealings with the Mormon refugee, it is well to add, in closing the incident, that twenty years after the episode had passed and was almost forgotten, some of the members of the long disbanded Ranger train, who were passing through eastern Oregon, on their way to the mines of northern Idaho, found her keeping a “Travellers’ Rest” in the bunchgrass country, where, as cook, chambermaid, waiter, and general scullion, she was supporting her repentant consort, who dutifully received the cash given by her guests in exchange for such food for man and beast as her unique hostelry afforded.

XXV

_JEAN LOSES HER WAY_

A stanch but frail-looking ferry-boat waited to carry the Ranger train across Green River.

Jean, who, after her mother’s death, had developed a strong propensity for daily hours of solitude, looked longingly at the desolate scenery while her father’s train was awaiting its turn at the ferry, and, noting the great table-rock that still overlooks the river, climbed unaided to its top, where she became so deeply absorbed in contemplating the wild, weird character of the scenery about her that she did not see that the afternoon was waning, until the sun was down.

“The Psalmist wondered at the mystery of the heavens, but I marvel at the mysteries of earth,” she said. “Tell me, ye rugged rocks, and you, ye waters of the desert, the secret of existence, if you can. Am I alone with Thee, O God? Or are these rough-ribbed rocks, like me, instinct with life?”

“You’d better hurry, young lady, or you’ll miss the last trip of the ferry-boat for the night,” cried a voice that seemed to come from beneath her feet. Thoroughly frightened, she hastened to retrace her steps. How she regained the river-bank she could never recollect; but when she stood panting at the water’s edge, and beheld through the gloaming the last of her father’s wagons ascending the opposite steep, it was past the twilight hour, and one by one the stars came out amid the circling blue of the bending sky. The roar of the waters was deafening.

“Can I do anything for you, miss?”

It was the same voice that had reached her from beneath the rock. She looked up and beheld a tall, sunburned young man, bowing and lifting a broad sombrero, who seemed as much embarrassed over the novel situation as herself.

“I am glad to see the face of a white man, sir. I was frightened half out of my senses till I saw you.”

“And are you not frightened now?”

“Yes, a little bit. There are too many Indians stalking about to allow me to feel exactly comfortable. But I shall rely upon you for protection, sir.”

“I suppose other trains will be along presently. They will encamp on this side of the river for the night, so you will have company.”

“We are away ahead of the other trains, sir. We took a cut-off in the mountains.”

“But you are afraid of the Indians?”

“No, sir; not now, because—” She stopped as she looked into his kindly face and caught the amused gleam of a pair of piercing eyes.

“Because—why?”

“Because you talk and act like a gentleman, sir. I am not afraid of a gentleman.” She paused again, surprised at her own composure. Her eyes fell, and a deep flush overspread her features, as the thought flashed through her mind that she was utterly in the power of this stranger.

“Can you ferry me across the river to-night, sir? My daddie will pay you well for your trouble.”

“I could not attempt it. We never risk running the ferry after sundown. Guess we can make you comfortable on this side till morning.”

“But there is no house where I can stop, and I haven’t any money. But that’s nothing new for girls. They never have money.”

“Oh, yes, they do, often. In the old country, where I came from, girls often inherit money; and some of them own very large estates.”

“But only by courtesy, sir.”

He smiled at her frank simplicity. “You are sure of a safe night’s lodging and a speedy return to the custody of the man you call daddie. What ever possessed you to bestow upon him such a name?”

“It was merely a notion, and is peculiar to myself in our family. But, sir, what ever shall I do? Daddie will be frightened out of his wits; and so will Mame and Marjorie and Hal!” and Jean began to weep convulsively.

“There, there, don’t cry! There is nothing to be afraid of. I have a home in the bank yonder. It isn’t a palace,—only a cave, or dugout, in the side of the rock,—but it is clean and dry and warm. You’ll be as securely protected there as in your father’s camp. I could do no better, under the circumstances, for my mother or my Queen.”

“Are you English, sir?”

“I am proud to answer, Yes.”

“You don’t look like the subject of a woman ruler.”

“Why not?”

“Because you seem like a sovereign in your own right.”

“So I am, in America.”

“I mean to be a sovereign American, myself, some day.”

He laughed and shook his head.

“I hope you are never going to become one of those discontented women whom I’ve heard of in America, who are engaged in a perpetual quarrel with their Creator because they were not born men.”

“Have you seen such women in America, sir?”

“No; but I have read some newspapers that made the charge.”

“Do you believe everything that you read in the papers? Daddie don’t.”

“I can’t say that I do.”

“God understands what He is about when He creates a girl, sir; and God didn’t create us to be the vassals of anybody. All we ask is a chance to do our best in everything, ourselves being the judges as to what that best shall be.”

“How old are you?”

“Almost sixteen.”

“You act with the charm of a child, but you talk like a grown-up woman. Are all the girls of your family equally clever?”

“God never made two trees, or even two leaves of a tree, exactly alike. You couldn’t expect two persons to be alike.”

The stranger, conscious of a peculiar interest in this new and original character, felt a tumultuous sensation in the region of his heart.

“I am hungry, sir. But as I haven’t any money, I must ask you to trust me till to-morrow.”

He was leading her toward his dugout as they talked, or rather as he listened. He had a school-day remembrance of a pair of brown eyes like Jean’s. He had worshipped those eyes from a distance, for their possessor was a nobleman’s daughter with whom he had never exchanged sentiments, and she had never bestowed a thought upon him. And here was this artless, untaught, but wonderfully intelligent maiden, in a travel-soiled blue calico dress, and sunbonnet to match, who seemed to him possessed of potentialities so far in advance of any promise ever given by the object of his earlier dreams that he spurned the thought of comparing the two as he dwelt upon her words. His heart continued its wild tattoo, and he felt as if walking on air.

“Here! This way, Siwash,” he called to his Indian servant, as he paused in front of his lodgings and tendered her a seat outside. “As you see, I have company. Get up the very best meal the place affords. This guest and I are to dine together.”

The Indian grunted assent; and the simple meal of pemmican, black coffee, army biscuit, and baked beans fresh from the covering of hot ashes in which they had been smothered till done to a turn, which formed the ferryman’s usual bill of fare, was supplemented by a dessert of tea-cakes and preserved ginger, the whole arranged on a small table covered with a white oilcloth and furnished with tin dishes and steel cutlery.

“I trust you will excuse the accompaniments of a higher civilization, little miss. You will find the fare plain but palatable.”

“It is fine,” cried Jean, as she ate with the zest that a life in the open air alone can give. “Nobody need ask for better.”

“Will you favor me with your past history?” asked her host, after the repast was finished.

“There isn’t much to tell, sir. My daddie got the farthest West fever a good while ago; but he never sold out his farm and sawmill till last March. Then he got ready, and we started across the continent. God saw that the journey was too hard for my dear mother, so He took her to heaven from the Black Hills. And now, sir, will you tell me about yourself? Were you born in London?”

“Why do you think I was born in London?”

“Because you remind me of my great-grandmother. She was born in London. We call her Grannie.”

The Indian servant had heaped some fagots of sagewood upon the hearth, filling the little room with a pungent and not unpleasant odor, and diffusing a delightful warmth and glow through the air, to which the light of a pair of candles gave an eerie charm.

“To be plain with you, I grew weary of life at college, so I ran away and went to sea. I was a headstrong boy, and gave my mother a whole lot of trouble.”

He ceased speaking and bowed his head upon his hands, his elbows upon the table. Jean saw that his fingers were long and shapely, his head was large and well-balanced, and his abundant hair was brown and bright and slightly curled.

“Were you never sorry, sir?”

“Having put my hand to the plough, or rather helm, I couldn’t afford to turn back—or at least I thought I couldn’t—till I had made my fortune.”

“Did you make your fortune, sir?”