"Yes, I must tell you—everything." But his face lighted as Follett interrupted him.

"You tell her," said Follett, doggedly, "how you saved her that day and kept her like your own and brought her up to be a good woman—that's what you tell her." The gratitude in the little man's eyes had grown with each word.

"Yes, yes, dear, I have loved you like my own little child, but your father and mother were killed here that day—and I found you and loved you—such a dear, forlorn little girl—will you hate me now?" he broke off anxiously. She had both his hands in her own.

"But why, how could I hate you? You are my dear little sorry father—all I've known. I shall always love you."

"That will be good to take with me," he said, smiling again. "It's all I've got to take—it's all I've had since the day I found you. You are good," he said, turning to Follett.

"Oh, shucks!" answered Follett.

A smile of rare contentment played over the little man's face.

In the silence that followed, the funeral-drum came booming in upon them over the ridge, and once they saw an Indian from the encampment standing on top of the hill to look down at their fire. Then the little man spoke again.

"You will go with him," he said to Prudence. "He will take you out of here and back to your mother's people."

"She's going to marry me," said Follett. The little man smiled at this.

"It is right—the Gentile has come to take you away. The Lord is cunning in His vengeance. I felt it must be so when I saw you together."

After this he was so quiet for a time that they thought he was sleeping. But presently he grew restless again, and said to Follett:—

"I want you to have me buried here. Up there to the north, three hundred yards from here on the right, is a dwarf cedar standing alone. Straight over the ridge from that and half-way down the other side is another cedar growing at the foot of a ledge. Below that ledge is a grave. There are stones piled flat, and a cross cut in the one toward the cedar. Make a grave beside that one, and put me in it—just as I am. Remember that—uncoffined. It must be that way, remember. There's a little book here in this pocket. Let it stay with me—but surely uncoffined, remember, as—as the rest of them were."

"But, father, why talk so? You are going home with us."

"There, dear, it's all right, and you'll feel kind about me always when you remember me?"

"Don't,—don't talk so."

"If that beating would only stay out of my brain—the thing is crawling behind me again! Oh, no, not yet—not yet! Say this with me, dear:—

"_'The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.

"'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.'_"

She said the psalm with him, and he grew quiet again.

"You will go away with your husband, and go at once—" He sat up suddenly from where he had been lying, the light of a new design in his eyes.

"Come,—you will need protection now—I must marry you at once. Surely that will be an office acceptable in the sight of God. And you will remember me better for it—and kinder. Come, Prudence; come, Ruel!"

"But, father, you are sick, and so weak—let us wait."

"It will give me such joy to do it—and this is the last."

She looked at Follett questioningly, but gave him her hand silently when he arose from the ground where he had been sitting.

"He'd like it, and it's what we want,—all simple," he said.

In the light of the fire they stood with hands joined, and the little man, too, got to his feet, helping himself up by the cairn against which he had been leaning.

Then, with the unceasing beats of the funeral-drum in their ears, he made them man and wife.

"Do you, Ruel, take Prudence by the right hand to receive her unto yourself to be your lawful and wedded wife, and you to be her lawful and wedded husband for time and eternity—"

Thus far he had followed the formula of his Church, but now he departed from it with something like defiance coming up in his voice.

"—with a covenant and promise on your part that you will cleave to her and to none other, so help you God, taking never another wife in spite of promise or threat of any priesthood whatsoever, cleaving unto her and her alone with singleness of heart?"

When they had made their responses, and while the drum was beating upon his heart, he pronounced them man and wife, sealing upon them "the blessings of the holy resurrection, with power to come forth in the morning clothed with glory and immortality."

When he had spoken the final words of the ceremony, he seemed to lose himself from weakness, reaching out his hands for support. They helped him down on to the saddle-blanket that Follett had brought, and the latter now went for more wood.

When he came back they were again reciting the psalm that had seemed to quiet the sufferer.

"'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.'"

Follett spread the other saddle-blanket over him. He lay on his side, his face to the fire, one moment saying over the words of the psalm, but the next listening in abject terror to something the others could not hear.

"I wonder you don't hear their screams," he said, in one of these moments; "but their blood is not upon you." Then, after a little:—

"See, it is growing light over there. Now they will soon be here. They will know where I had to come, and they will have a spade." He seemed to be fainting in his last weakness.

Another hour they sat silently beside him. Slowly the dark over the eastern hill lightened to a gray. Then the gray paled until a flush of pink was there, and they could see about them in the chill of the morning.

Then came a silence that startled them all. The drum had stopped, and the night-long vibrations ceased from their ears.

They looked toward the little man with relief, for the drumming had tortured him. But his breathing was shallow and irregular now, and from time to time they could hear a rattle in his throat. His eyes, when he opened them, were looking far off. He was turning restlessly and muttering again. She took his hands and found them cold and moist.

"His fever must have broken," she said, hopefully. The little man opened his eyes to look up at her, and spoke, though absently, and not as if he saw her.

"They will have a spade with them when they come, never fear. And the spot must not be forgotten—three hundred yards north to the dwarf cedar, then straight over the ridge and half-way down, to the other cedar below the sandstone—and uncoffined, with the book here in this pocket where I have it. 'Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.'"

He started up in terror of something that seemed to be behind him, but fell back, and a moment later was rambling off through some sermon of the bygone year.

"Sometimes, brethren, it has seemed to my inner soul that Christ came not alone to reveal God to man, but to reveal man to God; taking on that human form to reconcile the Father to our sins. Sometimes I have thought He might so well have done this that God would view our sins as we view the faults of our well-loved little children—loving us through all—perhaps touched—even more amused than offended, at our childish stumblings in these blind, twisted paths of right and wrong; knowing at the last He should save the least of us who have been most awkward. But, oh, brethren! beware of the sin for which you cannot win forgiveness from that other God, that spirit of the true Father, fixed forever in the breast of each of you."

The light was coming swiftly. Already their fire had paled, and the embers, but a little before glowing red, seemed now to be only white ashes.

From over the ridge back of them, whence had come the notes of the funeral-drum, an Indian now slouched toward them, drawn by curiosity; stopping to look, then advancing, to stop again.

At length he stood close by them, silent, gazing. Then, as if understanding, he spoke to Follett.

"Big sick—go get big medicine! Then you give chitcup!"

He ran swiftly back, disappearing over the ridge.

The sick man was now delirious again, muttering disjointed texts and bits of old sermons with which the Lute of the Holy Ghost, young and ardent, had once thrilled the Saints.

"'For without shedding of blood there shall be no remission'—'but where are now your prophets which prophesied unto you, saying the King of Babylon shall not come against you nor against this land'—'But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.' That is where the stain was,—the bloody stain that held the leaves together—but I tore them apart and read,—"

The Indian who had come to them first now appeared again over the ridge, and with him another. The second was accoutered lavishly with a girdle of brilliant feathers, anklets of shell, and bracelets of silver, his face barred by alternating streaks of vermilion and yellow, a lank braid of his black hair hanging either side of his face, and on his head the horns and painted skull of a buffalo. In one hand was a wand of red-dyed wood with a beaded and quilled amulet at the end. The other down by his side held something they did not at first notice.

The little man was growing weaker each moment, but still muttered as he turned restlessly on the blanket.

"'And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.'" His quick ear detecting the light step of the approaching Indians, he sat up and grasped Follett's arm.

"What do they want? Let no one come now. Death is here and I am going out to meet it—I am glad to go—so tired!"

Follett, looking up at the two Indians now standing awkwardly by them, said, in a low tone, with a wave of his free arm:

"Vamose!"

"Big medicine!" grunted the Indian who had first come to them, pointing to his companion. In an instant this other was before the sick man, chanting and making passes with his wand.

Then, before Follett could rise, the Indian's other hand came up, and they saw, slowly waved before the staring eyes of the little man, a long mass of yellow hair that writhed and ran in little gleaming waves as if it lived. It was tied about the wrist of the Indian with strips of scarlet flannel—tied below a broad silver bracelet that glittered from the bronzed arm.

The face of the sick man had a moment before been tranquil, almost smiling; but now his eyes followed the hair with something of fascination in them. Then a shade of terror darkened the peaceful look, like the shadow of a cloud hurried by the wind over a fair green garden.

But with its passing there came again into his eyes the light of sanity. He gazed at the hair, breathless, still in wonder; and then very slowly there grew over his face the look of an unearthly peace, so that they who were by him deferred the putting aside of the Indian. With eyes wide open, full of a calm they could not understand, he looked and smiled, his wan face flushing again in that last time. Then, reaching suddenly out, his long white fingers tangled themselves feebly in the golden skein, and with a little loving uplift of the eyes he drew it to his breast. A few seconds he held it so, with an eagerness that told of some sweet and mighty relief come to his soul,—some illumination of grace that had seemed to be struck by the first sunrays from that hair into his wondering eyes.

Slowly, then, the little smile faded,—the wistful light of it dying for the last time. The tired head fell suddenly back and the wan lids closed over lifeless eyes.

Still the hand clutched the hair to the quiet heart, the yellow strands curling peacefully through the dead fingers as if in forgiveness. From the look of rest on the still face it was as if, in his years of service and sacrifice, the little man had learned how to forgive his own sin in the flash of those last heart-beats when his soul had rushed out to welcome Death.

Prudence had arisen before the end came and was standing in front of the Indian to motion him away. Follett was glad she did not see the eyes glaze nor the head drop. He leaned forward and gently loosed the limp fingers from the yellow tangle. Then he sprang quickly up and put his arm about Prudence. The two Indians backed off in some dismay. The one who had first come to them spoke again.

"Big medicine! You give some chitcup?"

"No—no! Got no chitcup! Vamose!"

They turned silently and trotted back over the ridge.

"Come, sit here close by the fire, dear—no, around this side. It's all over now."

"Oh! Oh! My poor, sorry little father—he was so good to me!" She threw herself on the ground, sobbing.

Follett spread a saddle-blanket over the huddled figure at the foot of the cross. Then he went back to take her in his arms and give her such comfort as he could.



CHAPTER XLIII.

The Gentile Carries off his Spoil

Half an hour later they heard the sound of voices and wheels. Follett looked up and saw a light wagon with four men in it driving into the Meadows from the south. The driver was Seth Wright; the man beside him he knew to be Bishop Snow, the one they called the Entablature of Truth. The two others he had seen in Amalon, but he did not know their names.

He got up and went forward when the wagon stopped, leaning casually on the wheel.

"He's already dead, but you can help me bury him as soon as I get my wife out of the way around that oak-brush—I see you've brought along a spade."

The men in the wagon looked at each other, and then climbed slowly out.

"Now who could 'a' left that there spade in the wagon?" began the Wild Ram of the Mountains, a look of perplexity clouding his ingenuous face.

The Entablature of Truth was less disposed for idle talk.

"Who did you say you'd get out of the way, young man?"

"My wife, Mrs. Ruel Follett."

"Meaning Prudence Rae?"

"Meaning her that was Prudence Rae."

"Oh!"

The ruddy-faced Bishop scanned the horizon with a dreamy, speculative eye, turning at length to his companions.

"We better get to this burying," he said.

"Wait a minute," said Follett.

They saw him go to Prudence, raise her from the ground, put a saddle-blanket over his arm, and lead her slowly up the road around a turn that took them beyond a clump of the oak-brush.

"It won't do!" said Wright, with a meaning glance at the Entablature of Truth, quite as if he had divined his thought.

"I'd like to know why not?" retorted this good man, aggressively.

"Because times has changed; this ain't '57."

"It'll almost do itself," insisted Snow. "What say, Glines?" and he turned to one of the others.

"Looks all right," answered the man addressed. "By heck! but that's a purty saddle he carries!"

"What say, Taggart?"

"For God's sake, no, Bishop! No—I got enough dead faces looking at me now from this place. I'm ha'nted into hell a'ready, like he said he was yisterday. By God! I sometimes a'most think I'll have my ears busted and my eyes put out to git away from the bloody things!"

"Ho! Scared, are you? Well, I'll do it myself. You don't need to help."

"Better let well enough alone, Brother Warren!" interposed Wright.

"But it ain't well enough! Think of that girl going to a low cuss of a Gentile when Brigham wants her. Why, think of letting such a critter get away, even if Brigham didn't want her!"

"You know they got Brother Brigham under indictment for murder now, account of that Aiken party."

"What of it? He'll get off."

"That he will, but it's because he's Brigham. You ain't. You're just a south country Bishop. Don't you know he'd throw you to the Gentile courts as a sop quicker'n a wink if he got a chance,—just like he'll do with old John D. Lee the minute George A. peters out so the chain will be broke between Lee and Brigham?"

"And maybe this cuss has got friends," suggested Glines.

"Who'd know but the girl?" Snow insisted. "And Brother Brigham would fix her all right. Is the household of faith to be spoiled?"

"Well, they got a railroad running through it now," said Wright, "and a telegraph, and a lot of soldiers. So don't you count on me, Brother Snow, at any stage of it now or afterwards. I got a pretty sizable family that would hate to lose me. Look out! Here he comes."

Follett now came up, speaking in a cheerful manner that nevertheless chilled even the enthusiasm of the good Bishop Snow.

"Now, gentlemen, just by way of friendly advice to you,—like as not I'll be stepping in front of some of you in the next hour. But it isn't going to worry me any, and I'll tell you why. I'd feel awful sad for you all if anything was to happen to me,—if the Injuns got me, or I was took bad with a chill, or a jack-rabbit crept up and bit me to death, or anything. You see, there's a train of twenty-five big J. Murphy wagons will be along here over the San Bernardino trail. They are coming out of their way, almost any time now, on purpose to pick me up. Fact is, my ears have been pricking up all morning to hear the old bull-whips crack. There were thirty-one men in the train when they went down, and there may be more coming back. It's a train of Ezra Calkins, my adopted father. You see, they know I've been here on special business, and I sent word the other day I was about due to finish it, and they wasn't to go through coming back without me. Well, that bull outfit will stop for me—and they'll get me or get pay for me. That's their orders. And it isn't a train of women and babies, either. They're such an outrageous rough lot, quick-tempered and all like that, that they wouldn't believe the truth that I had an accident—not if you swore it on a stack of Mormon Bibles topped off by the life of Joe Smith. They'd go right out and make Amalon look like a whole cavayard of razor-hoofed buffaloes had raced back and forth over it. And the rest of the two thousand men on Ezra Calkins's pay-roll would come hanging around pestering you all with Winchesters. They'd make you scratch gravel, sure!

"Now let's get to work. I see you'll be awful careful and tender with me. I'll bet I don't get even a sprained ankle. You folks get him, and I'll show you where he said the place was."

Two hours later Follett came running back to where Prudence lay on the saddle-blanket in the warm morning sun.

"The wagon-train is coming—hear the whips? Now, look here, why don't we go right on with it, in one of the big wagons? They're coming back light, and we can have a J. Murphy that is bigger than a whole lot of houses in this country. You don't want to go back there, do you?"

She shook her head.

"No, it would hurt me to see it now. I should be expecting to see him at every turn. Oh, I couldn't stand that—poor sorry little father!"

"Well, then, leave it all; leave the place to the women, and good riddance, and come off with me. I'll send one of the boys back with a pack-mule for any plunder you want to bring away, and you needn't ever see the place again."

She nestled in his arms, feeling in her grief the comfort of his tenderness.

"Yes, take me away now."

The big whips could be heard plainly, cracking like rifle-shots, and shortly came the creaking and hollow rumbling of the wagons and the cries of the teamsters to their six-mule teams. There were shouts and calls, snatches of song from along the line, then the rattling of harness, and in a cloud of dust the train was beside them, the teamsters sitting with rounded shoulders up under the bowed covers of the big wagons.

A hail came from the rear of the train, and a bronzed and bearded man in a leather jacket cantered up on a small pony.

"Hello there, Rool! I'm whoopin' glad to see you!"

He turned to the driver of the foremost wagon.

"All right, boys! We'll make a layby for noon."

Follett shook hands with him heartily, and turned to Prudence.

"This is my wife, Lew. Prudence, this is Lew Steffins, our wagon-master."

"Shoo, now!—you young cub—married? Well, I'm right glad to see Mrs. Rool Follett—and bless your heart, little girl!"

"Did you stop back there at the settlement?"

"Yes; and they said you'd hit the pike about dark last night, to chase a crazy man. I told them I'd be back with the whackers if I didn't find you. I was afraid some trouble was on, and here you're only married to the sweetest thing that ever—why, she's been crying! Anything wrong?"

"No; never mind now, anyway. We're going on with you, Lew."

"Bully proud to have you. There's that third wagon—"

"Could I ride in that?" asked the girl, looking at the big lumbering conveyance doubtfully.

"It carried six thousands pounds of freight to Los Angeles, little woman," answered Steffins, promptly, "and I wouldn't guess you to heft over one twenty-eight or thirty at the outside. I'll have the box filled in with spruce boughs and a lot of nice bunch-grass, and put some comforts over that, and you'll be all snug and tidy. You won't starve, either, not while there's meat running."

"And say, Lew, she's got some stuff back at that place. Let the extra hand ride back with a packjack and bring it on. She'll tell him what to get."

"Sure! Tom Callahan can go."

"And give us some grub, Lew. I've hardly had a bite since yesterday morning."

An hour later, when the train was nearly ready to start, Follett took his wife to the top of the ridge and showed her, a little way below them, the cedar at the foot of the sandstone ledge. He stayed back, thinking she would wish to be there alone. But when she stood by the new grave she looked up and beckoned to him.

"I wanted you by me," she said, as he reached her side. "I never knew how much he was to me. He wasn't big and strong like other men, but now I see that he was very dear and more than I suspected. He was so quiet and always so kind—I don't remember that he was ever stern with me once. And though he suffered from some great sorrow and from sickness, he never complained. He wouldn't even admit he was sick, and he always tried to smile in that little way he had, so gentle. Poor sorry little father!—and yesterday not one of them would be his friend. It broke my heart to see him there so wistful when they turned their backs on him. Poor little man! And see, here's another grave all grown around with sage and the stones worn smooth; but there's the cross he spoke of. It must be some one that he wanted to lie beside. Poor little sorry father! Oh, you will have to be so much to me!"

The train was under way again. In the box of the big wagon, on a springy couch of spruce boughs and long bunch-grass, Prudence lay at rest, hurt by her grief, yet soothed by her love, her thoughts in a whirl about her.

Follett, mounted on Dandy, rode beside her wagon.

"Better get some sleep yourself, Rool," urged Steffins.

"Can't, Lew. I ain't sleepy. I'm too busy thinking about things, and I have to watch out for my little girl there. You can't tell what these cusses might do."

"There's thirty of us watching out for her now, young fellow."

"There'll be thirty-one till we get out of this neighbourhood, Lew."

He lifted up the wagon-cover softly a little later; and found that she slept. As they rode on, Steffins questioned him.

"Did you make that surround you was going to make, Rool?"

"No, Lew, I couldn't. Two of them was already under, and, honest, I couldn't have got the other one any more than you could have shot your kid that day he up-ended the gravy-dish in your lap."

"Hell!"

"That's right! I hope I never have to kill any one, Lew, no matter how much I got a right to. I reckon it always leaves uneasy feelings in a man's mind."

* * * * *

Eight days later a tall, bronzed young man with yellow hair and quick blue eyes, in what an observant British tourist noted in his journal as "the not unpicturesque garb of a border-ruffian," helped a dazed but very pretty young woman on to the rear platform of the Pullman car attached to the east-bound overland express at Ogden.

As they lingered on the platform before the train started they were hailed and loudly cheered, averred the journal of this same Briton, "by a crowd of the outlaw's companions, at least a score and a half of most disreputable-looking wretches, unshaven, roughly dressed, heavily booted, slouch-hatted (they swung their hats in a drunken frenzy), and to this rough ovation the girl, though seemingly a person of some decency, waved her handkerchief and smiled repeatedly, though her face had seemed to be sad and there were tears in her eyes at that very moment."

At this response from the girl, the journal went on to say, the ruffians had redoubled their drunken pandemonium. And as the train pulled away, to the observant tourist's marked relief, the young outlaw on the platform had waved his own hat and shouted as a last message to one "Lew," that he "must not let Dandy get gandered up," nor forget "to tie him to grass."

Later, as the train shrieked its way through Echo Canon, the observant tourist, with his double-visored plaid cap well over his face, pretending to sleep, overheard the same person across the aisle say to the girl:—

"Now we're on our own property at last. For the next sixty hours we'll be riding across our own front yard—and there aren't any keys and passwords and grips here, either—just a plain Almighty God with no nonsense about Him."

Whereupon had been later added to the journal a note to the effect that Americans are not only quite as prone to vaunt and brag and tell big stories as other explorers had asserted, but that in the West they were ready blasphemers.

Yet the couple minded not the observant tourist, and continued to enlarge and complicate his views of American life to the very bank of the Missouri. Unwittingly, however, for they knew him not nor saw him nor heard him, being occupied with the matter of themselves.

"You'll have to back me up when we get to Springfield," he said to her one late afternoon, when they neared the end of their exciting journey. "I've heard that old Grandpa Corson is mighty peppery. He might take you away from me."

Her eyes came in from the brown rolling of the plain outside to light him with their love; and then, the lamps having not yet been lighted, the head of grace nestled suddenly on its pillow of brawn with only a little tremulous sigh of security for answer.

This brought his arm quickly about her in a protecting clasp, plainly in the sidelong gaze of the now scandalised but not less observant tourist.



THE END.