Far on the east the adventurous Gentile had first pushed out of the timber to the richly grassed prairies; then, later, on to the plains, scorched brown with their sparse grass, driving herds of cattle ahead, and stopping to make farms by the way. And now on the west, on the east, and on the north, the Lord had let them pitch their tents and build their cabins, where they would barter their lives for gold and flocks and furs and timber, for orchard fruits and the grains of the field. Little by little they had ventured toward the outer ramparts of Israel, their numbers increasing year by year, and the daring of their onslaughts against the desert and mountain wastes. With the rifle and the axe they had made Zion but a station on the great highway between the seas; a place where curious and irreverent Gentiles stopped to gaze in wonder at and perhaps to mock the Lord's chosen; a place that would become but one link in a chain of Gentile cities, that would be forced to conform to the meretricious customs of Gentile benightedness.

It had been a fine vengeance upon them for their sin; one not unworthy of Him who wrought it. It had come so insidiously, with such apparent naturalness, little by little—a settler here, a settler there; here an acre of gray desert charmed to yellow wheat; there a pouch of shining gold washed from the burning sands; another wagon-train with hopeful men and faithful women; a cabin, two cabins, a settlement, a schoolhouse, a land of unwalled villages,—and democracy; a wicked government of men set up in the very face and front of God-governed Israel.

At first they had come with ox-teams, but this was slow, and the big Kentucky mules brought them faster; then had come the great rolling Concord stages with their six horses; then the folly of an electric telegraph, so that instant communication might be had with far-off Babylon; and now the capstone in the arch of the Lord's vengeance,—a railway,—flashing its crowded coaches over the Saints' old trail in sixty easy hours,—a trail they had covered with their oxen in ninety days of hardship. The rock of their faith would now be riven, the veil of their temple rent, and their leaders corrupted.

Even of Brigham, the daring already told tales that promised this last thing should come to pass; how he was become fat-souled, grasping, and tricky, using his sacred office to enlarge his wealth, seizing the canons with their precious growths of wood, the life-giving waterways, and the herding-grounds; taking even from the tithing, of which he rendered no stewardship, and hiding away millions of the dollars for which the faithful had toiled themselves into desert graves. Truly, thought Joel Rae, that bloody day in the Meadows had been cunningly avenged.

One morning, a few weeks after he had reached home from the north, he received a call from Seth Wright.

"Here's a letter Brother Brigham wanted me to be sure and give you," said this good man. "He said he didn't know you was allowing to start back so soon, or he'd have seen you in person."

He took the letter and glanced at the superscription, written in Brigham's rather unformed but plain and very decided-looking hand.

"So you've been north, Brother Seth? What do you think of Israel there?"

The views of the Wild Ram of the Mountains partook in certain ways of his own discouragement.

"Zion has run to seed, Brother Rae; the rank weeds of Babylon is a-goin' to choke it out, root and branch! We ain't got no chance to live a pure and Godly life any longer, with railroads coming in, and Gentiles with their fancy contraptions. It weakens the spirit, and it plays the very hob with the women. Soon as they git up there now, and see them new styles from St. Looey or Chicago, they git downright daft. No more homespun for 'em, no more valley tan, no more parched corn for coffee, nor beet molasses nor unbolted flour. Oh, I know what I'm talkin' about."

The tone of the good man became as of one who remembers hurts put upon his own soul. He continued:

"You no sooner let a woman git out of the wagon there now than she's crazy for a pink nubia, and a shell breastpin, and a dress-pattern, and a whole bolt of factory and a set of chiny cups and saucers and some of this here perfumery soap. And that don't do 'em. Then they let out a yell for varnished rockin'-cheers with flowers painted all over 'em in different colours, and they tell you they got to have bristles carpet—bristles on it that long, prob'ly!" The injured man indicated a length of some eighteen or twenty inches.

"Of course all them grand things would please our feelings, but they take a woman's mind off of the Lord, and she neglects her work in the field, and then pretty soon the Lord gets mad and sics the Gentiles on to us again. But I made my women toe the mark mighty quick, I told 'em they could all have one day a week to work out, and make a little pin-money, hoein' potatoes or plantin' corn or some such business, and every cent they earned that way they could squander on this here pink-and-blue soap, if they was a mind to; but not a York shilling of my money could they have for such persuasions of Satan—not while we got plenty of soap-grease and wood-ashes to make lye of and a soap-kittle that cost four eighty-five, in the very Lord's stronghold. I dress my women comfortable and feed 'em well—not much variety but plenty of, and I've done right by 'em as a husband, and I tell 'em if they want to be led away now into the sinful path of worldliness, why, I ain't goin' to have any ruthers about it at all! But you be careful, Brother Rae, about turning your women loose in one of them ungodly stores up there. That reminds me, you had Prudence up to Conference, and I guess you don't know what that letter's about."

"Why, no; do you?"

"Well, Brother Brigham only let a word or two drop, but plain enough; he don't have to use many. He was a little mite afraid some one down here would cut in ahead of him."

Joel Rae had torn open the big blue envelope in a sudden fear, and now he read in Brigham's well-known script:—

"DEAR BROT. JOEL:—

"I was ancus to see more of your daughter, and would of kept her hear at my house if you had not hurried off. I will let you seal her to me when I come to Pine valle next, late this summer or after Oct. conference. If anything happens and I am to bisy will have you bring her hear. Tell her of this and what it will mean to her in the Lord's kingdom and do not let her company with gentiles or with any of the young brethren around there that might put Notions into her head. Try to due right and never faint in well duing, keep the faith of the gospel and I pray the Lord to bless you. BRIGHAM YOUNG."

The shrewd old face of the Bishop had wrinkled into a smile of quiet observation as the other read the letter. In relating the incident to the Entablature of Truth subsequently, he said of Joel Rae at the moment he looked up from this letter: "He'll never be whiter when he's dead! I see in a minute that the old man had him on the bark."

"You know what's in this, Brother Seth—you know that Brigham wants Prudence?" Joel Rae had asked, looking up from the letter, upon which both his hands had closed tightly.

"Well, I told you he dropped a word or two, jest by way of keeping off the Princes of Israel down here."

"I must go to Salt Lake at once and talk to him."

"Take her along; likely he'll marry her right off."

"But I can't—I couldn't—Brother Seth, I wish her not to marry him."

The Bishop stared blankly at him, his amazement freezing upon his lips, almost, the words he uttered.

"Not—want—her—to marry—Brother Brigham Young, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in all the world!"

"I must go up and talk to him at once."

"You won't talk him out of it. Brother Brigham has the habit of prevailing. Of course, he's closer than Dick's hat-band, but she'll have the best there is until he takes another."

"He may listen to reason—"

"Reason?—why, man, what more reason could he want,—with that splendid young critter before him, throwing back her head, and flashing her big, shiny eyes, and lifting her red lips over them little white teeth—reason enough for Brother Brigham—or for other people I could name!"

"But he wouldn't be so hard—taking her away from me—"

Something in the tones of this appeal seemed to touch even the heart of the Wild Ram of the Mountains, though it told of a suffering he could not understand.

"Brigham is very sot in his ways," he said, after a little, with a curious soft kindness in his voice,—"in fact, a sotter man I never knew!"

He drove off, leaving the other staring at the letter now crumpled in his hand. He also said, in his subsequent narrative to the Entablature of Truth: "You know I've always took Brother Rae for jest a natural born not, a shy little cuss that could be whiffed around by anything and everything, but when I drove off he had a plumb ornery fighting look in them deep-set eyes of his, and blame me if I didn't someway feel sorry for him,—he's that warped up, like an old water-soaked sycamore plank that gits laid out in the sun."

But this look of belligerence had quickly passed from the face of Joel Rae when the first heat of his resentment had cooled.

After that he merely suffered, torn by his reverence for Brigham, who represented on earth no less a power than the first person of the Trinity, and by the love for this child who held him to a past made beautiful by his love for her mother,—by a thousand youthful dreams and fancies and wayward hopes that he had kept fresh through all the years; torn between Brigham, whose word was as the word of God, and Prudence who was the living flower of her dead mother and all his dead hopes.

Could he persuade Brigham to leave her? The idea of refusing him, if he should persist, was not seriously to be thought of. For twenty-five years he, in common with the other Saints, had held Brigham's lightest command to be above all earthly law; to be indeed the revealed will of God. His kingship in things material no less than in things spiritual had been absolute, undisputed, undoubted—indeed, gloried in by the people as much as Brigham himself gloried when he declared it in and out of the tabernacle. Their blind obedience had been his by divine right, by virtue of his iron will, his matchless courage, his tireless spirit, and his understanding of their hearts and their needs, born of his common suffering with them. Nothing could be done without his sanction. No man could enter a business, or change his home from north to south, without first securing his approval; even the merchants who went east or west for goods must first report to him their wishes, to see if he had contrary orders for them! From the invitation list of a ball to the financing of a corporation, his word was law; in matters of marriage as well—no man daring even to seek a wife until the Prophet had approved his choice. The whole valley for five hundred miles was filled with his power as with another air that the Saints must breathe. In his oft-repeated own phrase, it was his God-given right to dictate all matters, "even to the ribbons a woman should wear, or the setting up of a stocking." And his people had not only submitted blindly to his rule, but had reverenced and even loved him for it.

Twenty-five years of such allegiance, preceded by a youth in which the same gospel of obedience was bred into his marrow—this was not to be thrown off by a mere heartache; not to be more than striven against, half-heartedly, in the first moment of anguish.

He thought of Brigham's home in the Lion House, the score or so of plain, elderly women, hard-working, simple-minded; the few favourites of his later years, women of sightlier exteriors; and he pictured the long dining-room, where, at three o'clock each afternoon, to the sound of a bell, these wives and half a hundred children marched in, while the Prophet sat benignantly at the head of the table and blessed the meal. He tried to fix Prudence in this picture, but at every effort he saw, not her, the shy, sweet woman, full of surprised tenderness, but a creature hardened, debased, devoid of charm, dehumanised, a brood-beast of the field.

And yet this was not rebellion. His mind was clear as to that. He could not refuse, even had refusal not been to incur the severest penalties both in this world and in the world to come. The habit of obedience was all-powerful.

Presently he saw Prudence coming across the fields in the late afternoon from the road that led to the canon. He watched her jealously until she drew near, then called her to him. In a few words he told her very gravely the honour that was to be done her.

When she fully understood, he noted that her mind seemed to attain an unusual clearness, her speech a new conciseness; that she was displaying a force of will he had never before suspected.

Her reply, in effect, was that she would not marry Brigham Young if all the angels in heaven came to entreat her; that the thought was not a pretty one; and that the matter might be considered settled at that very moment. "It's too silly to talk about," she concluded.

Almost fearfully he looked at her, yielding a little to her spirit of rebellion, yet trying not to yield; trying not to rejoice in the amused flash of her dark eyes and the decision of her tones. But then, as he looked, and as she still faced him, radiant in her confidence, he felt himself going with her—plunging into the tempting wave of apostasy.



CHAPTER XXXII.

A New Face in the Dream

In a settled despair the little bent man waited for the end. Already he felt himself an outcast from Israel. In spirit he had disobeyed the voice of Brigham, which was the voice of God; exulting sinfully in spite of himself in this rebellion. Praying to be bowed and bent and broken, to have all trace of the evil self within him burned out, he had now let that self rise up again to cry out a want. Praying that crosses might daily be added to his burden, he had now refused to take up one the bearing of which might have proved to Heaven the extinction of his last selfish desire. He had been put to the test, as he prayed to be, and he had failed miserably to meet it. And now he knew that even his life was waning with his faith.

During the year when he waited for the end of the world, he had been nerved to an unwonted vigour. Now he was weak and fit for no further combat. He waited, with an indifference that amazed him, for the day when he should openly defy Brigham, and have penalties heaped upon him.

First he would be ordered on a mission to some far corner of the world. It would mean that he must go alone, "without purse or scrip," leaving Prudence. He would refuse to go. Thereupon he would be sternly disfellowshiped. Then, having become an apostate, he would be a fair mark for many things, perhaps for simple persecution—perhaps for blood atonement. He had heard Brigham himself say in the tabernacle that he was ready to "unsheathe his bowie knife" and send apostates "to hell across lots."

He was ready to welcome that. It were easier to die now than to live; and, as for being cut off from his glory in the after-time, he had already forfeited that; would miss it even if he died in fellowship with Brigham and full of churchly honours; would miss it even if the power on high should forgive him,—for he himself, he knew, could not forgive his own sin. So it was little matter about his apostasy, and Prudence should be saved from a wifehood that, ever since he had pictured her in it, had seemed to him for the first time unspeakably bad.

They talked but little about it that day, after her first abrupt refusal. There was too much for each of them to think of. He was obliged to dwell upon the amazing fact that he must lie in hell until he could win his own forgiveness, regardless of what gentle pardoning might be his from God. This, to him, simple and obvious truth, was now his daily torture.

As for Prudence, she had to be alone to dream her dreams of a love that should be always single. Brigham's letter, far from disturbing these, had brought them a zest hitherto lacking. Neither the sacrilege of refusing him, its worldly unwisdom, nor its possible harm to the little bent man of sorrows, had as yet become apparent to her. Each day, when such duties as were hers in the house had been performed, she walked out to be alone,—always to Box Canon, that green-sided cleft in the mountain, with the brook lashing itself to a white fury over the boulders at the bottom. She would go up out of the hot valley into its cool freshness and its pleasant wood smells, and there, in the softened blue light of a pine-hung glade, she would rest, and let her fancy build what heaven-reaching towers it would. On some brown bed of pine-needles, or on a friendly gray boulder close by the water-side, where she could give her eyes to its flow and foam, and her ears to its music,—music like the muffled tinkling of little silver bells in the distance,—she would let herself go out to her dream with the joyous, reckless abandon of falling water.

It was commonly a dream of a youth in doublet and hose, a plumed cap, and a cloak of purple satin, who came in the moonlight to the balcony of his love, and sighed his passion in tones so moving that she thought an angel must have yielded—as did the girl in the balcony who had let down the scarf to him. She already knew how that girl's heart must have fluttered at the moment,—how she must have felt that the hands were mad, wicked, uncontrollable hands, no longer her own.

There was one place in the dream that she managed not without some ingenuity. It had to be made plain that the lover under the window did not come from a long, six-doored house, with a wife behind each door; that this girl, pale in the moonlight, with quickening heart and rebellious hands on the scarf, and arms that should open to him, was to be not only his first wife but his last; that he was never even to consider so much as the possibility of another, but was to cleave unto her, and to love her with a single heart for all the days of her life and his own.

There were various ways of bringing this circumstance forward. Usually she had Brigham march on at the head of his great family and counsel the youth to take more wives, in order that he should be exalted in the Kingdom. Whereupon the young man would fold his love in his arms and speak words of scorn, in the same thrilling manner that he spoke his other words, for any exaltation which they two could not share alone. Brigham, at the head of his wives, would then slink off, much abashed.

She had come naturally to see her own face as the face of this happily loved girl in the dream. She knew no face for the youth. There was none in Amalon; not Jarom Tanner, six feet three, who became a helpless, grinning child in her presence; nor Moroni Peterson, who became a solemn and ghastly imbecile; nor Ammaron Wright, son of the Bishop, who had opened the dance of the Young People's Auxiliary with prayer, and later tried to kiss her in a dark corner of the room. So the face of the other person in her dream remained of an unknown heavenly beauty.

And then one afternoon in early May a strange youth came singing down the canon; came while she mused by the brook-side in her best-loved dream. Long before she saw him, she heard his music, a young, clear, care-free voice ringing down from the trail that went over the mountains to Kanab and into Kimball Valley; one of the ways that led out to the world that she wondered about so much. It was a voice new to her, and the words of his ballad were also new. At first she heard them from afar:—

"There was a young lady came a-tripping along, And at each side a servant-O, And in each hand a glass of wine To drink with the Gypsy Davy-O.

"And will you fancy me, my dear, And will you be my Honey-O? I swear by the sword that hangs by my side You shall never want for money-O.

"Oh, yes, I will fancy you, kind sir, And I will be your Honey-O, If you swear by the sword that hangs by your side I shall never want for money-O."

The singer seemed to be making his way slowly. Far up the trail, she had one fleeting glimpse of a man on a horse, and then he was hid again in the twilight of the pines. But the music came nearer:—

"Then she put on her high-heeled shoes, All made of Spanish leather-O, And she put on her bonnie, bonnie brown, And they rode off together-O.

"Soon after that, her lord came home Inquiring for his lady-O, When some of the servants made this reply, She's a-gone with the Gypsy Davy-O.

"Then saddle me my milk-white steed, For the black is not so speedy-O, And I'll ride all night and I'll ride all day Till I overtake my lady-O."

She stood transfixed, something within her responding to the hidden singer, as she had once heard a closed piano sound to a voice that sang near it. Soon she could get broken glimpses of him as he wound down the trail, now turning around the end of a fallen tree, then passing behind a giant spruce, now leaning far back while the horse felt a way cautiously down some sharp little declivity. The impression was confused,—a glint of red, of blue, of the brown of the horse, a figure swaying loosely to the horse's movements, and then he was out of sight again around the big rock that had once fallen from high up on the side of the canon; but now, when he came from behind that, he would be squarely in front of her. This recalled and alarmed her. She began to pick a way over the boulders and across the trail that lay between her and the edge of the pines, hearing another verse of the song, almost at her ear:—

"He rode all night and he rode all day, Till he came to the far deep water-O, Then he stopped and a tear came a-trickling down his cheek, For there he saw his lady-O."

Before she could reach a shelter in the pines, while she was poised for the last step that would take her out of the trail, he was out from behind the rock, before her, almost upon her, reining his horse back upon its haunches,—then in another instant lifting off his broad-brimmed hat to her in a gracious sweep. It was the first time she had seen this simple office performed outside of the theatre.

She looked up at him, embarrassed, and stepped back across the narrow trail, her head down again, so that he was free to pass. But instead of passing, she became aware that he had dismounted.

When she looked up, he was busily engaged in adjusting something about his saddle, with an expression of deepest concern in his blue eyes. His hat was on the ground and his yellow hair glistened where the band had pressed it about his head.

"It's that latigo strap," he remarked, in a tone of some annoyance. "I've had to fix it every five miles since I left Kanab!" Then looking up at her with a friendly smile: "Dandy most stepped on you, I reckon."

The amazement of it was that, after her first flurry at the sound of his voice and his half-seen movements up the trail, it should now seem all so commonplace.

"Oh, no, I was well out of his way."

She started again to cross the trail, stepping quickly, with her eyes down, but again his voice came, less deliberate this time, and with words in something less than intelligible sequence.

"Excuse me, Miss—but—now how many miles to—what's the name of the nearest settlement—I suppose you live hereabouts?"

"What did you say?"

"I say is there any place where I could get to stop a day or so in Amalon?"

"Oh—I didn't understand—I think so; at least, my father sometimes—but there's Elder Wardle, he often takes in travellers."

"You say your father—"

"Not always—I don't know, I'm sure—" she looked doubtful.

"Oh, all right! I'll ask him,—if you'll show me his place."

"It's the first place on the left after you leave the canon—with the big peach orchard—I'm not going home just yet."

He stroked the muzzle of the horse.

"Oh, I'm in no hurry, I'm just looking over the country a little. Your father's name is—"

"Ask for Elder Rae—or one of his wives will say if they can keep you over night."

She caught something new in his glance, and felt the blood in her face.

"I must go now—you can find your way—I must go."

"Well, if you must go,"—he picked up his hat,—"but I'll see you again. You'll be coming home this evening, I reckon?"

"The first house on the left," she answered, and stepped once more across the trail and into the edge of the pines. She went with the same mien of importance that Tom Potwin wore on his endless errands; and with quite as little reason, too; for the direction in which she had started so earnestly would have led her, after a few steps, straight up a granite cliff a thousand feet high. As she entered the pines she heard him mount his horse and ride down the trail, and then the rest of his song came back to her:—

"Will you forsake your houses and lands, Will you forsake your baby-O? Will you forsake your own wedded lord To foller a Gypsy Davy-O?

"Yes, I'll forsake my houses and lands, Yes, I'll forsake my baby-O, For I am bewitched, and I know the reason why; It's a follering a Gypsy Davy-O.

"Last night I lay on a velvet couch Beside my lord and baby-O; To-night I shall lie on the cold, cold ground, In the arms of a Gypsy Davy-O.

"To-night I shall lie on the cold, cold ground, In the arms of a Gypsy Davy-O!"

When his voice died away and she knew he must be gone, she came out again to her nook beside the stream where, a moment before, her dream had filled her. But now, though nothing had happened beyond the riding by of a strange youth, the dream no longer sufficed. In place of the moonlit balcony was the figure of this young stranger swaying with his horse down between the hollowed shoulders of the Pine Mountains and reining up suddenly to sweep his broad hat low in front of her. She was surprised by the clearness with which she could recall the details of his appearance,—a boyish-looking fellow, with wide-open blue eyes and a sunbrowned face under his yellow hair, the smallest of moustaches, and a smile of such winning good-humour that it had seemed to force her own lips apart in answer.

Around the broad, gray hat had been a band of braided silver; when he stepped, the spurs on his high-heeled boots had jingled and clanked of silver; around his neck with a knot at the back and the corners flapping down on the front of his blue woollen shirt, had been a white-dotted handkerchief of scarlet silk; and about his waist was knotted a long scarf of the same colour; dogskin "chapps" he had worn, fronted with the thick yellowish hair outside; his saddle-bags, back of the saddle, showing the same fur; his saddle had been of stamped Spanish leather with a silver capping on the horn and on the circle of the cantle; and on the right of the saddle she had seen the coils of a lariat of plaited horsehair.

The picture of him stayed in her mind, the sturdy young figure,—rather loose-jointed but with an easy grace of movement,—and the engaging naturalness of his manner. But after all nothing had happened save the passing of a stranger, and she must go alone back to her dream. Yet now the dream might change; a strange youth might come riding out of the east, sitting a sorrel horse with a star and a white hind ankle, a long rangy neck and strong quarters; and he—the youth—would wear a broad, gray hat, with a band of silver filigree, a scarlet kerchief at his throat, a scarlet sash at his waist, and yellow dogskin "chapps."

Still, she thought, he could hardly have a place in the dream. The real youth of the dream had been of an unearthly beauty, with a rose-leaf complexion and lustrous curls massed above a brow of marble. The stranger had not been of an unearthly beauty. To be sure, he was very good to look at, with his wide-open blue eyes and his yellow hair, and he had appeared uncommonly fresh and clean about the mouth when he smiled at her. But she could not picture him sighing the right words of love under a balcony in the moonlight. He had looked to be too intensely business-like.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

The Gentile Invasion

When she came across the fields late in the afternoon, the strange youth's horse was picketed where the bunch-grass grew high, and the young man himself talked with her father by the corral bars. She had never realised how old her father was, how weak, and small, and bent, until she saw him beside this erect young fellow. Her heart went out to the older man with a new sympathy as she saw his feebleness so sharply in relief against the well-blooded, hard-muscled vigour of the younger. When she would have passed them, her father called to her.

"Prudence, this is Mr. Ruel Follett. He will stay with us to-night."

The sombrero was off again and she felt the blue eyes seeking hers, though she could not look up from the ground when she had given her little bow. She heard him say:

"I already met your daughter, sir, at the mouth of the canon."

She went on toward the house, hearing them resume their talk, the stranger saying, "That horse can sure carry all the weight you want to put on him and step away good; he'll do it right at both ends, too—Dandy will—and he's got a mighty tasty lope."

Later she brought him a towel when he had washed himself in the tin basin on the bench outside the house. He had doffed the "chapps" and hung them on a peg, the scarlet kerchief was also off, his shirt was open at the neck, and soap and water had played freely over his head. He took the towel from her with a sputtering, "Thank you," and with a pair of muscular, brown hands proceeded to scour himself dry until the yellow hair stood about him as a halo—without, however, in the least suggesting the angelic or even saintly: for his face, from the friction inflamed to a high degree, was now a mass of red with two inquiring spots of blue near the upper edge. But then the clean mouth opened in its frank smile, and her own dark lashes had to fall upon her cheeks until she turned away.

At supper and afterwards Mr. Follett talked freely of himself, or seemed to. He was from the high plains and the short-grass country, wherever that might be—to the east and south she gathered. He had grown up in that country, working for his father, who had been an overland freighter, until the day the railroad tracks were joined at Promontory. He, himself, had watched the gold and silver spikes driven into the tie of California mahogany two years before; and then, though they still kept a few wagon trains moving to the mining camps north and south of the railroad, they had looked for other occupations.

Now their attention was chiefly devoted to mines and cattle. There were great times ahead in the cattle business. His father remembered when they had killed cattle for their hides and tallow, leaving the meat to the coyotes. But now, each spring, a dozen men, like himself, under a herd boss, would drive five thousand head to Leavenworth, putting them through ten or twelve miles a day over the Abiline trail, keeping them fat and getting good prices for them. There was plenty of room for the business. "Over yonder across the hills," as Mr. Follett put it. There was a herding ground four hundred miles wide, east and west, and a thousand miles north and south, covered with buffalo grass, especially toward the north, that made good stock feed the year around. He himself had, in winter, followed a herd that drifted from Montana to Texas; and in summer he had twice ranged from Corpus Christi to Deadwood.

Down in the Panhandle they were getting control of a ranch that would cover five thousand square miles. Some day they would have every one of its three million acres enclosed with a stout wire fence. It would be a big ranch, bigger than the whole state of Connecticut—bigger than Delaware and Rhode Island "lumped together", he had been told. Here they would have the "C lazy C" brand on probably a hundred and fifty thousand head of cattle. He thought the business would settle down to this conservative basis with the loose ends of it pulled together; with closer attention paid to branding, for one thing; branding the calves, so they would no longer have to rope a full-grown steer, and tie it with a scarf such as he wore about his waist.

But they were also working some placer claims up around Helena, and developing a quartz prospect over at Carson City. And the freighting was by no means "played out." He, himself, had driven a six-mule team with one line over the Santa Fe trail, and might have to do it again. The resources of the West were not exhausted, whatever they might say. A man with a head on him would be able to make a good living there for some years to come.

Both father and daughter found him an agreeable young man in spite of his being an alien from the Commonwealth of Israel. He remained with them three days looking over the country about Amalon, talking with its people and making himself at least not an object of suspicion and aversion, as the casual Gentile was apt to be. Prudence found herself usually at ease with him; he was so wholly likable and unassuming. Yet at times he seemed strangely mature and reserved to her, so that she was just a little awed.

He told her in their evenings many wonder-tales of that outside world where the wicked Gentiles lived; of populous cities on the western edge of it, and of vast throngs that crowded the interior clear over to the Atlantic Ocean. She had never realised before what a small handful of people the Lord had set His hand to save, and what vast numbers He had made with hearts that should be hardened to the glorious articles of the new covenant.

The wastefulness of it rather appalled her. Out of the world with its myriad millions, only the few thousand in this valley of the mountains had proved worthy of exaltation. And this young man was doubtless a fair sample of them,—happy, unthinking, earning perdition by mere carelessness. If only there were a way to save them—if only there were a way to save even this one—but she hardly dared speak to him of her religion.

When he left he told them he was making a little trip through the settlements to the north, possibly as far as Cedar City. He did not know how long he would be gone, but if nothing prevented he might be back that way. He shook hands with them both at parting, and though he spoke so vaguely about a return, his eyes seemed to tell Prudence that he would like very much to come. He had talked freely about everything but the precise nature of his errand in the valley.

In her walks to the canon she thought much of him when he had gone. She could not put his face into the dream because he was too real and immanent. He and the dream would not blend, even though she had decided that his fresh-cheeked, clear-eyed face, with its clean smile and the yellow hair above it was almost better to look at than the face of the youth in the play. It was not so impalpable; it satisfied. So she mused about them alternately, the dream and the Gentile,—taking perhaps a warmer interest in the latter for his aliveness, for the grasp of his hand at parting, which she, with astonishment, had felt her own hand cordially returning.

Her father talked much of the young man. In his prophetic eye this fearless, vigorous young stranger was the incarnate spirit of that Gentile invasion to which the Lord had condemned them for their sins. He had come, resourceful, determined, talking of mighty enterprises, of cattle, and gold, and wheat, of wagon-trains, and railroad,—an eloquent forerunner of the Gentile hordes that should come west upon the shoulders of Israel, and surround, assimilate, and reduce them, until they should lose all their powers and gifts and become a mere sect among sects, their name, perhaps, a hissing and a scorn. He foresaw the invasion of which this self-poised, vital youth of three or four and twenty was a sapper; and he knew it was a just punishment from on high for the innocent blood they had shed. Yet now he viewed it rather impersonally, for he felt curiously disconnected from the affairs of the Church and the world.

He no longer preached on the Sabbath, giving his ill-health as an excuse. In truth he felt it would not be honest since, in his secret heart, he was now an apostate. But with his works of healing he busied himself more than ever, and in this he seemed to have gained new power. Weak as he was physically, gray-haired, bloodless, fragile, with what seemed to be all of his remaining life burning in his deep-set eyes, he yet laid his hands upon the sick with a success so marked that his fame spread and he was sent for to rebuke plagues and fevers from as far away as Beaver.

For two weeks they heard nothing of the wandering Gentile, and Prudence had begun to wonder if she would ever see him again; also to wonder why an uncertainty in the matter should seem to be of importance.

But one evening early in June they saw him walking up in the dusk, the light sombrero, the scarlet kerchief against the blue woollen shirt, the holster with its heavy Colt's revolver at either hip, the easy moving figure, and the strong, yet boyish face.

He greeted them pleasantly, though, the girl thought, with some restraint. She could not hear it in his words, but she felt it in his manner, something suppressed and deeply hidden. They asked where his horse was and he replied with a curious air of embarrassment:—

"Well, you see, I may be obliged to stop around here a quite some while, so I put up with this man Wardle—not wanting to impose upon you all—and thanking you very kindly, and not wishing to intrude—so I just came to say 'howdy' to you."

They expressed regret that he had not returned to them, Joel Rae urging him to reconsider; but he declined politely, showing a desire to talk of other things.

They sat outside in the warm early evening, the young man and Prudence near each other at one side of the door, while Joel Rae resumed his chair a dozen feet the other side and lapsed into silence. The two young people fell easily into talk as on the other evenings they had spent there. Yet presently she was again aware, as in the moment of his greeting, that he laboured under some constraint. He was uneasy and shifted his chair several times until at length it was so placed that he could look beyond her to where her father had tilted his own chair against the house and sat huddled with his chin on his breast. He talked absently, too, at first, of many things and without sequence; and when he looked at her, there was something back of his eyes, plain even in the dusk, that she had not seen there before. He was no longer the ingenuous youth who had come to them from off the Kanab trail.

In a little while, however, this uneasiness seemed to vanish and he was speaking naturally again, telling of his life on the plains with a boyish enthusiasm; first of the cattle drives, of the stampede of a herd by night, when the Indians would ride rapidly by in the dark, dragging a buffalo-robe over the ground at the end of a lariat, sending the frightened steers off in a mad gallop that made the earth tremble. They would have to ride out at full speed in the black night, over ground treacherous with prairie-dog holes, to head and turn the herd of frenzied cattle, and by riding around and around them many times get them at last into a circle and so hold them until they became quiet again. Often this was not until sunrise, even with the lullabys they sang "to put them to sleep."

Then he spoke of adventures with the Indians while freighting over the Santa Fe trail, and of what a fine man his father, Ezra Calkins, was. It was the first time he had mentioned the name and her ear caught it at once.

"Your father's name is Calkins?"

"Yes—I'm only an adopted son."

Unconsciously she had been letting her voice fall low, making their chat more confidential. She awoke to this now and to the fact that he had done the same, by noting that he raised his voice at this time with a casual glance past her to where her father sat.

"Yes—you see my own father and mother were killed when I was eight years old, and the people that murdered them tried to kill me too, but I was a spry little tike and give them the slip. It was a bad country, and I like to have died, only there was a band of Navajos out trading ponies, and one morning, after I'd been alone all night, they picked me up and took care of me. I was pretty near gone, what with being scared and everything, but they nursed me careful. They took me away off to the south and kept me about a year, and then one time they took me with them when they worked up north on a buffalo hunt. It was at Walnut Creek on the big bend of the Arkansas that they met Ezra Calkins coming along with one of his trains and he bought me of those Navajos. I remember he gave fifty silver dollars for me to the chief. Well, when I told him all that I could remember about myself—of course the people that did the killing scared a good deal of it out of me—he took me to Kansas City where he lived, and went to law and made me his son, because he'd lost a boy about my age. And so that's how we have different names, he telling me I'd ought to keep mine instead of taking his."

She was excited by the tale, which he had told almost in one breath, and now she was eager to question, looking over to see if her father would not also be interested; but the latter gave no sign.

"You poor little boy, among those wretched Indians! But why were your father and mother killed? Did the Indians do it?"

"No, not Indians that did it—and I never did know why they killed them—they that did do it."

"But how queer! Don't you know who it was?"

Before answering, he paused to take one of the long revolvers from its holster, laying it across his lap, his right hand still grasping it.

"It was tiring my leg where it was," he explained. "I'll just rest myself by holding it here. I've practised a good smart bit with these pistols against the time when I'd meet some of them that did it—that killed my father and mother and lots of others, and little children, too."

"How terrible! And it wasn't Indians?"

"No—I told you that already—it wasn't Indians."

"Don't you know who it was?"

"Oh, yes, I know all of them I want to know. The fact is, up there at Cedar City I met some people that got confidential with me one day, and told me a lot of their names. There was Mr. Barney Carter and Mr. Sam Woods, and they talked right freely about some folks. I found out what I was wanting to know, being that they were drinking men."

He had moved slightly as he spoke and she glanced at the revolver still held along his knee.

"Isn't that dangerous—seems to me it's pointed almost toward father."

"Oh, not a bit dangerous, and it rests me to hold it there. You see it was hereabouts this thing happened. In fact, I came down here looking for a big man, and a little girl that I remembered, whose father and mother were killed at the same time mine was. This little girl was about three or four, I reckon, and she was taken by one of the murderers. He seemed like an awful big man to me. By the way, that's mean whiskey your Bishop sells on the sly up at Cedar City. Why, it's worse than Taos lightning. Well, this Barney Carter and Mr. Sam Woods, they would drink it all right, but they said one drink made a man ugly and two made him so downright bad that he'd just as lief tear his wife's best bonnet to pieces as not. But they seemed to like me pretty well, and they drank a lot of this whiskey that the Bishop sold me, and then they got talking pretty freely about old times. I gathered that this man that took the little girl is a pretty big man around here. Of course I wasn't expecting anything like that; I thought naturally he'd be a low-down sort to have been mixed up in a thing like that."

He spoke his next words very slowly, with little pauses.

"But I found out what his name was—it was—"

He stopped, for there had been an indistinct sound from where her father sat, now in the gloom of the evening. She called to him:

"Did you speak, father?"

There was no reply or movement from the figure in the chair, and Follett resumed:

"I guess he was just asleep and dreaming about something. Well, anyway—I—I found out afterwards by telling it before him, that Mr. Barney Carter and his drunken friend had given me his name right, though I could hardly believe it before."

"What an awful, awful thing! What wickedness there is in the world!"

"Oh, a tolerable lot," he assented.

He had been all animation and eagerness in the telling of the story, but had now become curiously silent and listless; so that, although she was eager with many questions about what he had said, she did not ask them, waiting to see if he would not talk again. But instead of talking, he stayed silent and presently began to fidget in his chair. At last he said, "If you'll excuse us, Miss Prudence, your pa and I have got a little business matter to talk over—to-night. I guess we can go down here by the corral and do it."

But she arose quickly and bade him good night. "I hope I shall see you to-morrow," she said.

She bent over to kiss her father as she went in, and when she had done so, warned him that he must not sit in the night air.

"Why your face is actually wet with a cold sweat. You ought to come in at once."

"After a very little, dear. Go to bed now—and always be a good girl!"

"And you've grown so hoarse sitting here."

"In a little while,—always be a good girl!"

She went in with a parting admonition: "Remember your cough—good night!"

When she had gone neither man stirred for the space of a minute. The little man, huddled in his seat, had not changed his position; he still sat with his chair tilted back against the house, his chin on his breast.

The other had remained standing where the girl left him, the revolver in his hand. After the minute of silence he crossed over and stood in front of the seated man.

"Come," he said, gruffly, "where do you want to go?"



CHAPTER XXXIV.

How the Avenger Bungled His Vengeance

At last he stood up, slowly, unsteadily, grasping Follett by the arm for support. He spoke almost in a whisper.

"Come back here first—to talk—then I'll go with you."

He entered the house, the young man following close, suspicious, narrowly watchful.

"No fooling now,—feel the end of that gun in your back?" The other made no reply. Inside the door he took a candle from the box against the wall and lighted it.

"Don't think I'm trying anything—come here."

They went on, the little bent man ahead, holding the candle well up. His room was at the far end of the long house. When they reached it, he closed the door and fixed the candle on the table in some of its own grease. Then he pointed Follett to the one stool in the little cell-like room, and threw himself face down on the bed.

Follett, still standing, waited for him to speak. After a moment's silence he grew impatient.

"Come, come! What would you be saying if you were talking? I can't wait here all night."

But the little man on the bed was still silent, nor did he stir, and after another wait Follett broke out again.

"If you want to talk, talk, I tell you. If you don't want to, I can say all I have to say, quick."

Then the other turned himself over on the bed and half sat up, leaning on his elbow.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting, but you see I'm so weak"—the strained little smile came to his face—"and tremble so, there's so much to think of—do you hear those women scream—there! did you hear that?—but of course not. Now—wait just a moment—have you come to kill me?"

"You and those two other hellions—the two that took me and that boy out that night to bury us."

"Did you think of the consequences?"

"I reckoned you'd be called paid for, any time any one come gunning for you. I didn't think there'd be any consequences."

"Hereafter, I mean; to your soul. What a pity you didn't wait a little longer! Those other two are already punished."

"Don't lie to me now?"

The little smile lighted his face again.

"I have a load of sin on me—but I don't think I ever did lie to any one—I guess I never was tempted—"

"Oh, you've acted lies enough."



"You're right—that's so. But I'm telling you truth now—those two men had both been in the Meadows that day and it killed them. One went crazy and ran off into the desert. They found his bones. The other shot himself a few years ago. Those of us that live are already in hell—"

He sat up, now, animated for the moment.

"—in hell right here, I tell you. I'd have welcomed you, or any other man that would kill me, any time this fifteen years. I'd have gone out to meet you. Do you think I like to hear the women scream? Do you think I'm not crazed myself by this thing—right back of me here, now—crawling, bleeding, breathing on me—trying to come here in front where I must see it? Don't you see God has known how to punish me worse than you could, just by keeping me alive and sane? Oh, man! you don't know how I've longed for that bullet of yours, right here through the temples where the cries sound worst. I didn't dare to do it myself—I was afraid I'd make my punishment worse if I tried to shirk; but I used to hope you would come as you said you would. I wonder I didn't know you at once."

He put his hands to his head and fell back again on the pillow, with a little moan.

"Well, it ain't strange I didn't know you. I was looking for a big man. You seemed as big as a house to me that day. I forgot that I'd grown up and you might be small. When those fellows got tight up there and let on like it was you that some folks hinted had took a child and kept it out of that muss, I couldn't hardly believe it; and everybody seeming to regard you so highly. And I couldn't believe this big girl was little Prue Girnway that I remembered. It seemed like you two would have to be a great big man and a little bit of a baby girl with yellow hair; and now I find you're—say, Mister, honestly, you're such a poor, broke-down, little coot it seems a'most like a shame to put a bullet through you, in spite of all your doings!"

The little man sat up again, with new animation in his eyes,—the same eager boyishness that he had somehow kept through all his years.

"Don't!" he exclaimed, earnestly. "Let me beg you, don't kill me! For your own sake—not for mine. I'm a poor, meatless husk. I'll die soon at best, and I'm already in a hell you can't make any hotter. Let me do you this service; let me persuade you not to kill me. Have you ever killed a man?"

"No, not yet; I've allowed to a couple of times, but it's never come just that way."

"You ought to thank God. Don't ever. You'll be in hell as sure as you do,—a hell right here that you must carry inside of you forever—that even God can't take out of you. Listen—it's a great secret, worth millions. If you're so bad you can't forgive yourself, you have to suffer hell-fire no matter how much the Lord forgives you. It sounds queer, but there's the limit to His power. He's made us so nearly in His image that we have to win our own forgiveness; why, you can see yourself, it had to be that way; there would have been no dignity to a soul that could swallow all its own wickedness so long as the Lord could. God has given us to know good and evil for ourselves—and we have to take the consequences. Look at me. I suffer day and night, and always must. God has forgiven me, but I can't forgive myself, for my own sin and my people's sin,—for my preaching was one of the things that led them into that meadow. I know that Christ died for us, but that can't put out this fire that I have to build in my own soul. I tell you a man is like an angel, he can be good or bad; he has a power for heaven but the same power for hell—"

"See here, I don't know anything about all this hell-talk, but I do know—"

"I tell you death is the very last thing I have left to look forward to, but if you kill me it will be your own undoing. You will never get me out of your eyes or your ears, poor wreck as I am—so feeble. You can see what my punishment has been. A little while ago I was young, and strong, and proud like you, fearing nothing and wanting everything, but something was wrong. I was climbing up as I thought, and then all at once I saw I had been climbing down—down into a pit I never could get out of. You will be there if you kill me." He sank back on the bed again.

Follett slowly put the revolver into its holster and sat down on the low stool.

"I don't know anything about all this hell-talk, but I see I can't kill you—you're such a poor, miserable cuss. And I thought you were a big strong man, handy with a gun and all that, and like as not I'd have to make a quick draw on you when the time come. And now look at you! Why, Mister, I'm doggoned if I ain't almost sorry for you! You sure have been getting your deservance good and plenty. Say, what in God's name did you all do such a hellish thing for, anyway?"

"We had been persecuted, hunted, and driven, our Prophet murdered, our women and children butchered, and another army was on the way."

"Well, that was because you were such an ornery lot, always setting yourself up against the government wherever you went, and acting scandalous—"

"We did as the Lord directed us—"

"Oh, shucks!"

"And then we thought the time had come to stand up for our rights; that the Lord meant us to be free and independent."

"Secesh, eh?" Follett was amused. "You handful of Mormons—Uncle Sam could have licked you with both hands tied behind him. Why, you crazy fool, he'd have spit on you and drowned every last one of you, old Brigham Young and all. Fighting the United States! A few dozen women-butchers going to do what the whole South couldn't! Well, I am danged."

He mused over it, and for awhile neither spoke.

"And the nearest you ever got to it was cutting up a lot of women and children after you'd cheated the men into giving up their guns!"

The other groaned.

"There now, that's right—don't you see that hurts worse than killing?"

"But I certainly wish I could have got those other two that took us off into the sage-brush that night. I didn't guess what for, but the first thing I knew the other boy was scratching, and kicking, and hollering, and like to have wriggled away, so the cuss that was with me ran up to help. Then I heard little John making kind of a squeally noise in his throat like he was being choked, and that was all I wanted. I legged it into the sage-brush. I heard them swearing and coming after me, and ran harder, and, what saved me, I tripped and fell down and hurt myself, so I lay still and they lost track of me. I was scared, I promise you that; but after they got off a ways I worked in the other direction by spells till I got to a little wady, and by sunup they weren't in sight any longer. When I saw the Indians coming along I wasn't a bit scared. I knew they weren't Mormons."

"I used to pray that you might come back and kill me."

"I used to wish I would grow faster so I could. I was always laying out to do it."

"But see how I've been punished. Look at me—I'm fifty. I ought to be in my prime. See how I've been burnt out."

"But look here, Mister, what about this girl? Do you think you've been doing right by keeping her here?"

"No, no! it was a wrong as great as the other."

"Why, they're even passing remarks about her mother, those that don't know where you got her,—saying it was some one you never married, because the book shows your first wife was this one-handed woman here."

"I know, I know it. I meant to let her go back at first, but she took hold of me, and her father and mother were both dead."

"She's got a grandfather and grandmother, alive and hearty, back at Springfield."

"She is all that has kept me alive these last years."

"She's got to go back to her people now. She'll want to bad enough when she knows about this."

"About this? Surely you won't tell her—"

"Look here now, why not? What do you expect?"

"But she loves me—she does—and she's all I've got. Man, man! don't pile it all on me just at the last."

He was off the bed and on his knees before Follett.

"Don't put it all on me. I've rounded up my back to the rest of it, but keep this off; please, please don't. Let her always think I'm not bad. Give me that one thing out of all the world."

He tried to reach the young man's hand, but was pushed roughly away.

"Don't do that—get up—stop, I tell you. That ain't any way to do. There now! Lie down again. What do you want? I'm not going to leave that ain't any way to do. There now! Lie down again. What do you want? I'm not going to leave that girl with you nor with your infernal Church. You understand that."

"Yes, yes, I know it. It was right that you should be the one to come and take her away. The Lord's vengeance was well thought out. Oh, how much more he can make us suffer than you could with your clumsy killings! She must go, but wait—not yet—not yet. Oh, my God! I couldn't stand it to see her go. It would cut into my heart and leave me to bleed to death. No, no, no—don't! Please don't! Don't pile it all on me at the last. The end has come anyway. Don't do that—don't, don't!"

"There, there, be still now." There was a rough sort of soothing in Follett's voice, and they were both silent a moment. Then the young man went on:

"But what do you expect? Suppose everything was left to you, Mister. Come now, you're trying to talk fair. Suppose I leave it to you—only you know you can't keep her."

"Yes, it can't be, but let her stay a little while; let me see her a few times more; let me know she doesn't think I'm bad; and promise never to tell her all of it. Let her always think I was a good man. Do promise me that. I'd do it for you, Follett. It won't hurt you. Let her think I was a good man."

"How long do you want her to stay here?—a week, ten days?"

"It will kill me when she goes!"

"Oh, well, two weeks?"

"That's good of you; you're kinder at your age than I was—I shall die when she goes."

"Well, I wouldn't want to live if I were you."

"Just a little longer, knowing that she cares for me. I've never been free to have the love of a woman the way you will some day, though I've hungered and sickened for it—for a woman who would understand and be close. But this girl has been the soul of it some way. See here, Follett, let her stay this summer, or until I'm dead. That can't be a long time. I've felt the end coming for a year now. Let her stay, believing in me. Let me know to the last that I'm the only man who has been in her heart, who has won her confidence and her love. Oh, I mean fair. You stay with us yourself and watch. Come—but look there, look, man!"

"Well,—what?"

"That candle is going out,—we'll be in the dark"—he grasped the other's arm—"in the dark, and now I'm afraid again. Don't leave me here! It would be an awful death to die. Here's that thing now on the bed behind me. It's trying to get around in front where I'll have to see it—get another candle. No—don't leave me,—this one will go out while you're gone." All his strength went into the grip on Follett's arm. The candle was sputtering in its pool of grease.

"There, it's gone—now don't, don't leave me. It's trying to crawl over me—I smell the blood—"

"Well—lie down there—it serves you right. There—stop it—I'll stay with you."

Until dawn Follett sat by the bunk, submitting his arm to the other's frenzied grip. From time to time he somewhat awkwardly uttered little words that were meant to be soothing, as he would have done to a frightened child.

When morning brought the gray light into the little room, the haunted man fell into a doze, and Follett, gently unclasping the hands from his arm, arose and went softly out. He was cramped from sitting still so long, and chilled, and his arm hurt where the other had gripped it. He pulled back the blue woollen sleeve and saw above his wrist livid marks where the nails had sunk into his flesh.

Then out of the room back of him came a sharp cry, as from one who had awakened from a dream of terror. He stepped to the door again and looked in.

"There now—don't be scared any more. The daylight has come; it's all right—all right—go to sleep now—"

He stood listening until the man he had come to kill was again quiet. Then he went outside and over to the creek back of the willows to bathe in the fresh running water.



CHAPTER XXXV.

Ruel Follett's Way of Business

By the time the women were stirring that morning, Follett galloped up on his horse. Prudence saw him from the doorway as he turned in from the main road, sitting his saddle with apparent carelessness, his arms loose from the shoulders, shifting lightly with the horse's motion, as one who had made the center of gravity his slave. It was a style of riding that would have made a scandal in any riding-school; but it seemed to be well calculated for the quick halts, sudden swerves, and acute angles affected by the yearling steer in his moments of excitement.

He dismounted, glowing from his bath in the icy water of the creek and from the headlong gallop up from Beil Wardle's corral.

"Good morning, Miss Prudence."

"Good morning, Mr. Follett. Will you take breakfast with us directly?"

"Yes, and it can't be too directly for me. I'm wolfish. Miss Prudence, your pa and me had some talk last night, and I'm going to bunk in with you all for awhile, till I get some business fixed up."

She smiled with unaffected gladness, and he noticed that her fresh morning colour was like that of the little wild roses he had lately brushed the dew from along the creek.

"We shall be glad to have you."

"It's right kind of you; I'm proud to hear you say so." He had taken off the saddle with its gay coloured Navajo blanket, and the bridle of plaited rawhide with its conchos and its silver bit. Now he rubbed the back of his horse where the saddle had been, ending with a slap that sent the beast off with head down and glad heels in the air.

"There now, Dandy! don't bury your ribs too deep under that new grass."

"My father will be glad to have you and Dandy stay a long time."

He looked at her quickly, and then away before he spoke. It was a look that she thought seemed to say more than the words that followed it.

"Well, the fact is, Miss Prudence, I don't just know how long I'll have to be in these parts. I got some particular kind of business that's lasting longer than I thought it would. I reckon it's one of those jobs where you have to let it work itself out while you sit still and watch. Sometimes you get business on hand that seems to know more about itself than you do."

"That's funny."

"Yes, it's like when they first sent me out on the range. They were cutting out steers from a big bunch, and they put me on a little blue roan to hold the cut. Well, cattle hate to leave the bunch, so those they cut out would start to run back, and I had to head and turn them. I did it so well I was surprised at myself. No sooner did a steer head back than I had the spurs in and was after it, and I'd always get it stopped. I certainly did think I was doing it high, wide, and handsome, like you might say; only once or twice I noticed that the pony stopped short when the steer did without my pulling him up, as if he'd seen the stop before I did. And then pretty soon after, a yearling that was just the—excuse me—that was awful spry at dodging, led me a chase, the pony stopped stiff-legged when the steer did, and while I was leaning one way he was off after the steer the other way so quick that I just naturally slid off. I watched him head and turn that steer all by himself, and then I learned something. It seemed like he went to sleep when I got on him. But after that I didn't pay any attention to the cattle. I let him keep the whole lookout, and all I did was to set in the saddle. He was a wise old cow-pony. He taught me a lot about chasing steers. He was always after one the minute it left the cut, and he'd know just the second it was going to stop and turn; he'd never go a foot farther than the steer did, and he'd turn back just as quick. I knew he knew I was green, but I thought the other men didn't, so I just set quiet and played off like I was doing it all, when I wasn't really doing a thing but holding on. He was old, and they didn't use him much except when they wanted a rope-horse around the corral. And he'd made a lifelong study of steers. He knew them from horns to tail, and by saying nothing and looking wise I thought I'd get the credit of being smart myself. It's kind of that way now. I'm holding tight and looking wise about some business that I ain't what you could call up in."

He carried the saddle and bridle into the house, and she followed him. They found Lorena annoyed by the indisposition of her husband.

"Dear me suz! Here's your pa bed-fast again. He's had a bad night and won't open the door to let me tell him if he needs anything. He says he won't even take spoon victuals, and he won't get up, and his chest don't hurt him so that ain't it, and I never was any hand to be nattering around a body, but he hadn't ought to go without his food like he does, when the Father himself has a tabernacle of flesh like you or me—though the Holy Ghost has not—and it's probably mountain fever again, so I'll make some composition tea and he's just got to take it. Of course I never had no revelations from the Lord and never did I claim to have, but you don't need the Holy Ghost coming upon you to tell you the plain doings of common sense."

Whatever the nature of Mr. Follett's business, his confidence in the soundness of his attitude toward it was perfect. He showed no sign of abstraction or anxiety; no sign of aught but a desire to live agreeably in the present,—a present that included Prudence. When the early breakfast was over they went out about the place, through the peach-orchard and the vineyard still dewy, lingering in the shade of a plum-tree, finding all matters to be of interest. For a time they watched and laughed at the two calves through the bars of the corral, cavorting feebly on stiffened legs while the bereaved mothers cast languishing glances at them from outside, conscious that their milk was being basely diverted from the rightful heirs. They picked many blossoms and talked of many things. There was no idle moment from early morning until high noon; and yet, though they were very busy, they achieved absolutely nothing.

In the afternoon Prudence donned her own sombrero, and they went to the canon to fish. From a clump of the yellowish green willows that fringed the stream, Follett cut a slender wand. To this he fixed a line and a tiny hook that he had carried in his hat, and for the rest of the distance to the canon's mouth he collected such grasshoppers as lingered too long in his shadow. Entering the canon, they followed up the stream, clambering over broken rocks, skirting huge boulders, and turning aside to go around a gorge that narrowed the torrent and flung it down in a little cascade.

Here and there Follett would flicker his hook over the surface of a shaded pool, poise it at the foot of a ripple, skim it across an eddy, cast it under a shelf of rock or dangle it in some promising nook by the willow roots, shielding himself meanwhile as best he could; here behind a boulder, there bending a willow in front of him, again lying flat on the bank, taking care to keep even his shadow off the stream and to go silently.

From where she followed, Prudence would see the surface of the water break with a curling gleam of gold, which would give way to a bubbling splash; then she would see the willow rod bend, see it vibrate and thrill and tremble, the point working slowly over the bank. Then perhaps the rod would suddenly straighten out for a few seconds only to bend again, slowly, gently, but mercilessly. Or perhaps the point continued to come in until it was well over the bank and the end of the line close by. Then after a frantic splashing on the margin of the stream the conquered trout would be gasping on the bank, a thing of shivering gleams of blended brown and gold and pink. At first she pitied the fish and regretted the cruelty of man, but Follett had other views.

"Why," he said, "a trout is the crudest beast there is. Look at it trying to swallow this poor little hopper that it thought tumbled into the water by accident. It just loves to eat its stuff alive. And it isn't particular. It would just as lief eat its own children. Now you take that one there, and say he was ten thousand times as big as he is, and you were coming along here and your foot slipped and Mr. Trout was lying behind this rock here—hungry. Say! What a mouthful you'd make, pink dress and all—he'd have you swallowed in a second, and then he'd sneak back behind the rock there, wiping his mouth, and hoping your little sister or somebody would be along in a minute and fall in too."

"Ugh!—Why, what horrible little monsters! Let me catch one."

And so she fished under his direction. They lurked together in the shadows of rocks, while he showed her how to flicker the bait in the current, here holding her hand on the rod, again supporting her while she leaned out to cast around a boulder, each feeling the other's breathless caution and looking deep into each other's eyes through seconds of tense silence.

Such as they were, these were the only results of the lesson; results that left them in easy friendliness toward each other. For the fish were not deceived by her. He would point out some pool where very probably a hungry trout was lying in wait with his head to the current, and she would try to skim the lure over it. More than once she saw the fish dart toward it, but never did she quite convince them. Oftener she saw them flit up-stream in fright, like flashes of gray lightning. Yet at length she felt she had learned all that could be taught of the art, and that further failure would mean merely a lack of appetite or spirit in the fish. So she went on alone, while Follett stopped to clean the dozen trout he had caught.

While she was in sight he watched her, the figure bending lithe as the rod she held, moving lightly, now a long, now a short step, half kneeling to throw the bait into an eddy; then off again with determined strides to the next likely pool. When he could no longer see her, he fell to work on his fish, scouring their slime off in the dry sand.

When she returned, she found him on his back, his hat off, his arms flung out above his head, fast asleep. She sat near by on a smooth rock at the water's edge and waited—without impatience, for this was the first time she had been free to look at him quite as she wished to. She studied him closely now. He seemed to her like some young power of that far strange eastern land. She thought of something she had heard him say about Dandy: "He's game and fearless and almighty prompt,—but he's kind and gentle too." She was pleased to think it described the master as well as the horse. And she was glad they had been such fine playmates the whole day long. When the shadow moved off his face and left it in the slanting rays of the sun, she broke off a spruce bough and propped it against the rock to shield him.

And then she sighed, for they could be playmates only in forgetfulness. He was a Gentile, and by that token wicked and lost; unless—and in that moment she flushed, feeling the warmth of a high purpose.

She would save him. He was worth saving, from his crown of yellow hair to the high heels of his Mexican boots. Strong, clean, gentle, and—she hesitated for a word—interesting—he must be brought into the Kingdom, and she would do it. She looked up again and met his wide-open eyes.

They both laughed. "I sat up with your pa last night," he said, ashamed of having slept. "We had some business to palaver about."

He had tied the fish into a bundle with aspen leaves and damp moss around them, and now they went back down the stream. In the flush of her new role as missionary she allowed herself to feel a secret motherly tenderness for his immortal soul, letting him help her by hand or arm over places where she knew she could have gone much better alone.

Back at the house they were met by the little bent man, who had tossed upon his bed all day in the fires of his hell. He looked searchingly at them to be sure that Follett had kept his secret. Then, relieved by the frank glance of Prudence, he fell to musing on the two, so young, so fresh, so joyous in the world and in each other, seeing them side by side with those little half-felt, timidly implied, or unconsciously expressed confidences of boy and girl; sensing the memory of his own lost youth's aroma, his youth that had slipped off unrecked in the haze of his dreams of glory. For this he felt very tenderly toward them, wishing that they were brother and sister and his own.

That evening, while they sat out of doors, she said, very resolutely:

"I'm going to teach Mr. Follett some truth tomorrow from the Book of Mormon. He says he has never been baptised in any church."

Follett looked interested and cordial, but her father failed to display the enthusiasm she had expected, and seemed even a little embarrassed.

"You mean well, daughter, but don't be discouraged if he is slow to take our truth. Perhaps he has a kind of his own as good as ours. A woman I knew once said to me,' Going to heaven is like going to mill; if your wheat is good the miller will never ask how you came.'"

"But, Father, suppose you get to mill and have only chaff?"

"That is the same answer I made, dear. I wish I hadn't."

Later, when Prudence had gone, the two men made their beds by the fire in the big room. Follett was awakened twice by the other putting wood on the fire; and twice more by his pitiful pleading with something at his back not to come in front of him.



CHAPTER XXXVI.

The Mission to a Deserving Gentile

Not daunted by her father's strange lack of enthusiasm, Prudence arose with the thought of her self-imposed mission strong upon her. Nor was she in any degree cooled from it by a sight of the lost sheep striding up from the creek, the first level sunrays touching his tousled yellow hair, his face glowing, breathing his full of the wine-like air, and joyously showing in every move his faultless attunement with all outside himself. The frank simplicity of his greeting, his careless unenlightenment of his own wretched spiritual state, thrilled her like an electric shock with a strange new pity for him. She prayed on the spot for power to send him into the waters of baptism. When the day had begun, she lost no time in opening up the truth to him.

If the young man was at all amazed by the utter wholeness of her conviction that she was stooping from an immense height to pluck him from the burning, he succeeded in hiding it. He assumed with her at once that she was saved, that he was in the way of being lost, and that his behooving was to listen to her meekly. Her very evident alarm for his lost condition, her earnest desire to save him, were what he felt moved to dwell upon, rather than a certain spiritual condescension which he could not wholly ignore.

After some general counsel, in the morning, she took out her old, dog-eared "Book of Mormon," a first edition, printed at Palmyra, New York, in 1830, "By Joseph Smith, Jr., Author and Proprietor," and led the not unworthy Gentile again to the canon. There in her favourite nook of pines beside the stream, she would share with him as much of the Lord's truth as his darkened mind could be made conscious of.

When at last she was seated on the brown carpet under the pines, her back to a mighty boulder, the sacred record in her lap, and the Gentile prone at her feet, she found it no easy task to begin. First he must be brought to repent of his sins. She began to wonder what his sins could be, and from that drifted into an idle survey of his profile, the line of his throat as his head lay back on the ground, and the strong brown hand, veined and corded, that curled in repose on his breast. She checked herself in this; for it could be profitable neither to her soul nor to his.

"I'll teach you about the Book of Mormon first," she ventured.

"I'd like to hear it," said Follett, cheerfully.

"Of course you don't know anything about it."

"It isn't my fault, though. I've been unfortunate in my bringing up, that's all." He turned on his side and leaned upon his elbow so he could look at her.

"You see, I've been brought up to believe that Mormons were about as bad as Mexicans. And Mexicans are so mean that even coyotes won't touch them. Down at the big bend on the Santa Fe Trail they shot a Mexican, old Jesus Bavispee, for running off cattle. He was pretty well dried out to begin with, but the coyotes wouldn't have a thing to do with him, and so he just dried up into a mummy. They propped him up by the ford there, and when the cowboys went by they would roll a cigarette and light it and fix it in his mouth. Then they'd pat him on the head and tell him what a good old boy he was—star bueno—the only good Mexican above ground—and his face would be grinning all the time, as if it tickled him. When they find a Mexican rustling cattle they always leave him there, and they used to tell me that the Mormons were just as bad and ought to be fixed that way too."

"I think that was horrible!"

"Of course it was. They were bigoted. But I'm not. I know right well there must be good Mexicans alive, though I never saw one, and I suppose of course there must be—"

"Oh, you're worse than I thought!" she cried. "Come now, do try. I want you to be made better, for my sake." She looked at him with real pleading in her eyes. He dropped back to the ground with a thrill of searching religious fervour.

"Go on," he said, feelingly. "I'm ready for anything. I have kind of a good feeling running through me already. I do believe you'll be a powerful lot of benefit to me."

"You must have faith," she answered, intent on the book. "Now I'll tell you some things first."

Had the Gentile been attentive he might have learned that the Book of Mormon is an inspired record of equal authority with the Jewish Scriptures, containing the revelations of Jehovah to his Israel of the western world as the Bible his revelations to Israel in the Orient,—the veritable "stick of Joseph," that was to be one with "the stick of Judah;" that the angel Moroni, a messenger from the presence of God, appeared to Joseph Smith, clad in robes of light, and told him where were hid the plates of gold on which were graven this fulness of the everlasting gospel; how that Joseph, after a few years of preparation, was let to take these sacred plates from the hill of Cumorah; also an instrument called the Urim and Thummim, consisting of two stones set in a silver bow and made fast to a breast-plate, this having been prepared by the hands of God for use in translating the record on the plates; how Joseph, seated behind a curtain and looking through the Urim and Thummim at the characters on the plates, had seen their English equivalents over them, and dictated these to his amanuensis on the other side of the curtain.

He might have learned that when the book was thus translated, the angel Moroni had reclaimed the golden plates and the Urim and Thummim, leaving the sacred deposit of doctrine to be given to the world by Joseph Smith; that the Saviour had subsequently appeared to Joseph; also Peter, James, and John, who laid hands upon him, ordained him, gave him the Holy Ghost, authorised him to baptise for the remission of sins, and to organise the Kingdom of God on earth.

"Do you understand so far?" she asked.

"It's fine!" he answered, fervently. "I feel kind of a glow coming over me already."

She looked at him closely, with a quick suspicion, but found his profile uninforming; at least of anything needful at the moment.

"Remember you must have faith," she admonished him, "if you are to win your inheritance; and not question or doubt or find fault, or—or make fun of anything. It says right here on the title-page, 'And now if there be faults, it be the mistake of men; wherefore condemn not the things of God that ye may be found spotless at the judgment seat of Christ.' There now, remember!"

"Who's finding fault or making fun?" he asked, in tones that seemed to be pained.

"Now I think I'd better read you some verses. I don't know just where to begin."

"Something about that Urim and Thingamajig," he suggested.

"Urim and Thummim," she corrected—"now listen."

Again, had the Gentile remained attentive, he might have learned how the Western Hemisphere was first peopled by the family of one Jared, who, after the confusion of tongues at Babel, set out for the new land; how they grew and multiplied, but waxed sinful, and finally exterminated one another in fierce battles, in one of which two million men were slain.

At this the fallen one sat up.

"'And it came to pass that when they had all fallen by the sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with loss of blood. And it came to pass when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword and rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz. And it came to pass, after he had smote off the head of Shiz, that Shiz raised up on his hands and fell; and after he had struggled for breath he died.'"

The Gentile was animated now.

"Say, that Shiz was all right,—raised up on his hands and struggled for breath after his head was cut off!"

Hereupon she perceived that his interest was become purely carnal. So she refused to read of any more battles, though he urged her warmly to do it. She returned to the expedition of Jared, while the lost sheep fell resignedly on his back again.

"'And the Lord said, Go to work and build after the manner of barges which ye have hitherto built. And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did go to work, and also his brethren, and built barges after the manner which they had built, after the instructions of the Lord. And they were small, and they were light upon the water, like unto the lightness of a fowl upon the water; and they were built like unto a manner that they were exceeding tight, even that they would hold water like unto a dish; and the bottom thereof was tight like unto a dish, and the ends thereof were peaked; and the top thereof was tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof was the length of a tree; and the door thereof when it was shut was tight like unto a dish. And it came to pass that the brother of Jared cried unto the Lord, saying—'"

She forgot him a little time, in the reading, until it occurred to her that he was singularly quiet. She glanced up, and was horrified to see that he slept. The trials of Jared's brother in building the boats that were about the length of a tree, combined with his broken rest of the night before, had lured him into the dark valley of slumber where his soul could not lave in the waters of truth. But something in the sleeping face softened her, and she smiled, waiting for him to awaken. He was still only a waymark to the kingdom of folly, but she had made a beginning, and she would persevere. He must be saved into the household of faith. And indeed it was shameful that such as he should depend for their salvation upon a chance meeting with an unskilled girl like herself. She wondered somewhat indignantly how any able-bodied Saint could rest in the valley while this man's like were dying in sin for want of the word. As her eye swept the sleeping figure, she was even conscious of a little wicked resentment against the great plan itself, which could under any circumstances decree such as he to perdition.

He opened his eyes after awhile to ask her why she had stopped reading, and when she told him, he declared brazenly that he had merely closed his eyes to shut out everything but her words.

"I heard everything," he insisted, again raised upon his elbows. "' It was built like unto a dish, and the length was about as long as a tree—'"

"What was?"

"The Urim and Thummim."

When he saw that she was really distressed, he tried to cheer her.

"Now don't be discouraged," he said, as they started home in the late afternoon. "You can't expect to get me roped and hog-tied the very first day. There's lots of time, and you'll have to keep at it. When I was a kid learning to throw a rope, I used to practise on the skull of a steer that was nailed to a post. At first it didn't look like I could ever do it. I'd forget to let the rope loose from my left hand, or I wouldn't make the loop line out flat around my head, or she'd switch off to one side, or something. But at last I'd get over the horns every time. Then I learned to do it running past the post; and after that I'd go down around the corral and practise on some quiet old heifer, and so on. The only thing is—never give up."

"But what good does it do if you won't pay attention?"

"Oh, well, I can't learn a new religion all at once. It's like riding a new saddle. You put one on and 'drag the cinches up and lash them, and you think it's going to be fine, and you don't see why it isn't. But you find out that you have to ride it a little at a time and break it in. Now, you take a fresh start with me to-morrow."

"Of course I'm going to try."

"And it isn't as if I was regular out-and-out sinful. My adopted father, Ezra Calkins, he's a good man. But, now I think of it, I don't know what church he ever did belong to. He'll go to any of 'em,—don't make any difference which,—Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Catholic; he says he can get all he's looking for out of any of 'em, and he kind of likes to change off now and then. But he's a good man. He won't hire any one that cusses too bad or is hard on animals, and he won't even let the freighters work on Sunday. He brought me up not to drink or gamble, or go round with low folks and all like that, and not to swear except when you're driving cattle and have to. 'Keep clean inside and out,' he says, 'and then you're safe,' he says. 'Then tie up to some good church for company, if you want to, not thinking bad of the others, just because you didn't happen to join them. Or it don't hurt any to graze a little on all the ranges,' he says. And he sent me to public school and brought me up pretty well, so you can see I'm not plumb wicked. Now after you get me coming, I may be easier than you think."

She resolved to pray for some special gift to meet his needs. If he were not really sinful, there was all the more reason why he should be saved into the Kingdom. The sun went below the western rim of the valley as they walked, and the cooling air was full of the fresh summer scents from field and garden and orchard.

Down the road behind them, a half-hour later, swung the tall, loose-jointed figure of Seth Wright, his homespun coat across his arm, his bearskin cap in his hand, his heated brow raised to the cooling breeze. His ruffle of neck whiskers, virtuously white, looked in the dying sunlight quite as if a halo he had worn was dropped under his chin. A little past the Rae place he met Joel returning from the village.

"Evening, Brother Rae! You ain't looking right tol'lable."

"It's true, Brother Seth. I've thought lately that I'm standing in the end of my days."

"Peart up, peart up, man! Look at me,—sixty-eight years come December, never an ache nor a pain, and got all my own teeth. Take another wife. That keeps a man young if he's got jedgment." He glanced back toward the Rae house.

"And I want to speak to you special about something—this young dandy Gentile you're harbouring. Course it's none of my business, but I wouldn't want one of my girls companying with a Gentile—off up in that canon with him, at that—fishing one day, reading a book the next, walking clost together,—and specially not when Brigham had spoke for her. Oh, I know what I'm talking about! I had my mallet and frow up there two days now, just beyond the lower dry-fork, splitting out shakes for my new addition, and I seen 'em with my own eyes. You know what young folks is, Elder. That reminds me—I'm going to seal up that sandy-haired daughter of Bishop Tanner's next week some time; soon as we get the roof on the new part. But I thought I'd speak to you about this—a word to the wise!"

The Wild Ram of the Mountains passed on, whistling a lively air. The little bent man went with slow, troubled steps to his own home. He did know the way of young people, and he felt that he was beginning to know the way of God. Each day one wall or another of his prison house moved a little in upon him. In the end it would crush. He had given up everything but Prudence; and now, for his wicked clinging to her, she was to be taken from him; if not by Brigham, then by this Gentile, who would of course love her, and who, if he could not make her love him, would be tempted to alienate her by exposing the crime of the man she believed to be her father. The walls were closing about him. When he reached the house, they were sitting on the bench outside.

"Sometimes," Follett was saying, "you can't tell at first whether a thing is right or wrong. You have to take a long squint, like when you're in the woods on a path that ain't been used much lately and has got blind. Put your face right close down to it and you can't see a sign of a trail; it's the same as the ground both sides, covered with leaves the same way and not a footprint or anything. But you stand up and look along it for fifty feet, and there she is so plain you couldn't miss it. Isn't that so, Mr. Rae?"

Prudence went in, and her father beckoned him a little way from the door.

"You're sure you will never tell her anything about—anything, until I'm gone?—You promised me, you know."

"Well, didn't I promise you?"

"Not under any circumstances?"

"You don't keep back anything about 'circumstances' when you make a promise," retorted Mr. Follett.



CHAPTER XXXVII.

The Gentile Issues an Ultimatum

June went; July came and went. It was a hot summer below, where the valley widens to let in Amalon; but up in the little-sunned aisle of Box Canon it was always cool. There the pines are straight and reach their heads far into the sky, each a many-wired harp to the winds that come down from the high divide. Their music is never still; now a low, ominous rush, soft but mighty, swelling as it nears, the rush of a winged host, rising swiftly to one fearsome crescendo until the listener cowers instinctively as if under the tread of many feet; then dying away to mutter threats in the distance, and to come again more fiercely; or, it may be, to come with a gentler sweep, as if pacified, even yearning, for the moment. Or, again, the same wind will play quieter airs through the green boughs, a chamber-music of silken rustlings, of feathered fans just stirring, of whisperings, and the sighs of a woman.

It is cool beneath these pines, and pleasant on the couches of brown needles that have fallen through all the years. Here, in the softened light, amid the resinous pungence of the cones and the green boughs, where the wind above played an endless, solemn accompaniment to the careless song of the stream below, the maiden Saint tried to save into the Kingdom a youthful Gentile of whom she discovered almost daily some fresh reason why he should not be lost. The reasons had become so many that they were now heavy upon her. And yet, while the youth submitted meekly to her ministry, appearing even to crave it, he was undeniably either dense or stubborn—in either case of defective spirituality.