FROM THE WEST TO THE WEST

Jean beheld a tall, sunburned young man.—[Page 185]

FROM THE WEST
TO THE WEST

Across the Plains to
Oregon

BY
ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY

With Frontispiece in Color

CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1905

Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1905

Published April 7, 1905

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

To
THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF OREGON
AND HER RISEN AND REMAINING PIONEERS
I affectionately Dedicate
This Book
ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY

PREFACE

Not from any desire for augmented fame, or for further notoriety than has long been mine (at least within the chosen bailiwick of my farthest and best beloved West), have I consented to indite these pages.

The events of pioneer life, which form the groundwork of this story, are woven into a composite whole by memory and imagination. But they are not personal, nor do they present the reader, except in a fragmentary and romantic sense, with the actual, individual lives of borderers I have known. The story, nevertheless, is true to life and border history; and, no matter what may be the fate of the book, the facts it delineates will never die.

Fifty years ago, as an illiterate, inexperienced settler, a busy, overworked child-mother and housewife, an impulse to write was born within me, inherited from my Scottish ancestry, which no lack of education or opportunity could allay. So I wrote a little book which I called “Captain Gray’s Company, or Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon.”

Measured by time and distance as now computed, that was ages ago. The iron horse and the telegraph had not crossed the Mississippi; the telephone and the electric light were not; and there were no cables under the sea.

Life’s twilight’s shadows are around me now. The good husband who shaped my destiny in childhood has passed to the skies; my beloved, beautiful, and only daughter has also risen; my faithful sons have founded homes and families of their own. Sitting alone in my deserted but not lonely home, I have yielded to a demand that for several years has been reaching me by person, post, and telephone, requesting the republication of my first little story, which passed rapidly through two editions, and for forty years has been out of print. In its stead I have written this historical novel.

Among the relics of the border times that abound in the rooms of the Oregon Historical Society may be seen an immigrant wagon, a battered ox-yoke, a clumsy, home-made hand-loom, an old-fashioned spinning-wheel, and a rusty Dutch oven. Such articles are valuable as relics, but they would not sell in paying quantities in this utilitarian age if duplicated and placed upon the market. Just so with “Captain Gray’s Company.” It accomplished its mission in its day and way. By its aid its struggling author stumbled forward to higher aims. Let it rest, and let the world go marching on.

A. S. D.

Portland, Oregon,
January 15, 1905.

CONTENTS

FROM THE
WEST TO THE WEST

I
A REMOVAL IS PLANNED

On the front veranda of a rectangular farmhouse, somewhat pretentious for its time and place, stood a woman in expectant attitude. The bleak wind of a spent March day played rudely with the straying ends of her bright, abundant red-brown hair, which she brushed frequently from her careworn face as she peered through the thickening shadows of approaching night. The ice-laden branches of a leafless locust swept the latticed corner behind which she had retreated for protection from the wind. A great white-and-yellow watch-dog crouched expectantly at her feet, whining and wagging his tail.

Indoors, the big living-room echoed with the laughter and prattle of many voices. At one end of a long table, littered with books and slates and dimly lighted by flickering tallow dips, sat the older children of the household, busy with their lessons for the morrow’s recitations. A big fire of maple logs roared on the hearth in harmony with the roaring of the wind outside.

“Yes, Rover, he’s coming,” exclaimed the watcher on the veranda, as the dog sprang to his feet with a noisy proclamation of welcome.

A shaggy-bearded horseman, muffled to the ears in a tawny fur coat, tossed his bridle to a stable-boy and, rushing up the icy steps, caught the gentle woman in his arms. “It’s all settled, mother. I’ve made terms with Lije. He’s to take my farm and pay me as he can. I’ve made a liberal discount for the keep of the old folks; and we’ll sell off the stock, the farming implements, the household stuff, and the sawmill, and be off in less than a month for the Territory of Oregon.”

Mrs. Ranger shrank and shivered. “Oregon is a long way off, John,” she said, nestling closer to his side and half suppressing a sob. “There’s the danger and the hardships of the journey to be considered, you know.”

“I will always protect you and the children under all circumstances, Annie. Can’t you trust me?”

“Haven’t I always trusted you, John? But—”

“What is it, Annie? Don’t be afraid to speak your mind.”

“I was thinking, dear,—you know we’ve always lived on the frontier, and civilization is just now beginning to catch up with us,—mightn’t it be better for us to stay here and enjoy it? Illinois is still a new country, you know. We’ve never had any advantages to speak of, and none of the children, nor I, have ever seen a railroad.”

“Don’t be foolish, Annie! We’ll take civilization with us wherever we go, railroads or no railroads.”

“But we’ll be compelled to leave our parents behind, John. They’re old and infirm now, and we’ll be going so far away that we’ll never see them again. At least, I sha’n’t.”

The husband cleared his throat, but did not reply. The wife continued her protest.

“Just think of the sorrow we’ll bring upon ’em in their closing days, dear! Then there’s that awful journey for us and the children through more than two thousand miles of unsettled country, among wild beasts and wilder Indians. Hadn’t we better let well-enough alone, and remain where we are comfortable?”

“A six months’ journey across the untracked continent, with ox teams and dead-ax wagons, won’t be a summer picnic; I’ll admit that. But the experience will come only one day at a time, and we can stand it. It will be like a whipping,—it will feel good when it is over and quits hurting.”

“You are well and strong, John, but you know I have never been like myself since that awful time when your brother Joe got into that trouble. It was at the time of Harry’s birth, you know. You didn’t mean to neglect me, dear, but you had to do it.”

“There, there, little wife!” placing his hand over her mouth. “Let the dead past bury its dead. Never mention Joe to me again. And never fear for a minute that you and the children won’t be taken care of.”

“I beg your pardon, John!” and the wife shrank back against the lattice and shivered. The protruding thorn of a naked locust bough scratched her cheek, and the red blood trickled down.

“I need your encouragement, in this time of all times, Annie. You mustn’t fail me now,” he said, speaking in an injured tone.

“Have I ever failed you yet, my husband?”

“I can’t say that you have, Annie. But you worry too much; you bore a fellow so. Just brace up; don’t anticipate trouble. It’ll come soon enough without your meeting it halfway. You ought to consider the welfare of the children.”

“Have I ever lived for myself, John?”

“No, no; but you fret too much. I suppose it’s a woman’s way, though, and I must stand it. There’s the chance of a lifetime before us, Annie.” He added after a pause, “The Oregon Donation Land Law that was passed by Congress nearly two years ago won’t be a law always. United States Senators in the farthest East are already urging its repeal. We’ve barely time, even by going now, to get in on the ground-floor. Then we’ll get, in our own right, to have and to hold, in fee simple, as the lawyers say, a big square mile of the finest land that ever rolled out o’ doors.”

“Will there be no mortgage to eat us up with interest, and no malaria to shake us to pieces, John? And will you keep the woodpile away from the front gate, and make an out-of-the-way lane for the cows, so they won’t come home at night through the front avenue?”

“There’ll be no mortgage and no malaria. One-half of the claim will belong to you absolutely; and you can order the improvements to suit yourself. Only think of it! A square mile o’ land is six hundred and forty acres, and six hundred and forty acres is a whole square mile! We wouldn’t be dealing justly by our children if we let the opportunity slip. We’ll get plenty o’ land to make a good-sized farm for every child on the plantation, and it won’t cost us a red cent to have and to hold it!”

“That was the plan our parents had in view when they came here from Kentucky, John. They wanted land for their children, you know. They wanted us all to settle close around ’em, and be the stay and comfort of their old age.” And Mrs. Ranger laughed hysterically.

“You shiver, Annie. You oughtn’t to be out in this bleak March wind. Let’s go inside.”

“I’m not minding the wind, dear. I was thinking of the way people’s plans so often miscarry. Children do their own thinking and planning nowadays, as they always did, regardless of what their parents wish. Look at us! We’re planning to leave your parents and mine, for good and all, after they’ve worn themselves out in our service; and we needn’t expect different treatment from our children when we get old and decrepit.”

“But I’ve already arranged for our parents’ keep with Lije and Mary,” said the husband, petulantly. “Didn’t I tell you so?”

“But suppose Lije fails in business; or suppose he gets the far Western fever too; or suppose he tires of his bargain and quits?”

A black cloud scudded away before the wind, uncovering the face of the moon. The silver light burst suddenly upon the pair.

“What’s the matter, Annie?” cried the husband, in alarm. “Are you sick?” Her upturned face was like ashes.

“No; it’s nothing. I was only thinking.”

They entered the house together, their brains busy with unuttered thoughts. The baby of less than a year extended her chubby hands to her father, and the older babies clamored for recognition in roistering glee.

“Take my coat and hat, Hal; and get my slippers, somebody. Don’t all jump at once! Gals, put down your books, and go to the kitchen and help your mother. Don’t sit around like so many cash boarders! You oughtn’t to let your mother do a stroke of work at anything.”

“You couldn’t help it unless you caged her, or bound her hand and foot,” answered Jean, who strongly resembled her father in disposition, voice, and speech. But the command was obeyed; and the pale-faced mother, escorted from the kitchen amid much laughter by Mary, Marjorie, and Jean, was soon seated before the roaring fire beside her husband, enjoying with him the frolics of the babies, and banishing for the nonce the subject which had so engrossed their thoughts outside. The delayed meal was soon steaming on the long table in the low, lean-to kitchen, and was despatched with avidity by the healthy and ravenous brood which constituted the good old-fashioned household of John Ranger and Annie Robinson, his wife.

“Children,” said Mrs. Ranger, as an interval of silence gave her a chance to be heard, “did you know your father had sold the farm?”

A thunderbolt from a clear sky would hardly have created greater astonishment. True, John Ranger had been talking “new country” ever since the older children could remember anything; the theme was an old story, invoking no comment. But now there was an ominous pause, followed with exclamations of mingled dissent and approval, to which the parents gave unrestricted liberty.

“I’m not going a single step; so there!” exclaimed Mary, a gentle girl of seventeen, who did not look her years, but who had a reason of her own for this unexpected avowal.

“My decision will depend on where we’re going,” cried Jean.

“Maybe your mother and I can be consulted,—just a little bit,” said the father, laughing.

“We’re going to Oregon; that’s what,” exclaimed Harry, who was as impulsive as he was noisy.

“How did you come to know so much?” asked Marjorie, the youngest of John Ranger’s “Three Graces,” as he was wont to style his trio of eldest daughters, who had persisted in coming into his household—much to his discomfort—before the advent of Harry, the fourth in his catalogue of seven, of whom only two were boys.

“I get my learning by studying o’ nights!” answered Hal, in playful allusion to his success as a sound sleeper, especially during study hours.

“Of course you don’t want to emigrate, Miss Mame,” cried Jean, “but you can’t help yourself, unless you run away and get married; and then you’ll have to help everybody else through the rest of your life and take what’s left for yourself,-if there’s anything left to take! At least, that is mother’s and Aunt Mary’s lot.”

“Jean speaks from the depths of long experience,” laughed Mary, blushing to the roots of her hair.

“I’m sick to death of this cold kitchen,” cried Jean, snapping her tea-towel in the frosty air of the unplastered lean-to. “Hurrah for Oregon! Hurrah for a warmer climate, and a snug cabin home among the evergreen trees!”

“Good for Jean!” exclaimed her father. “The weather’ll be so mild in Oregon we shall not need a tight kitchen.”

“Is Oregon a tight house?” asked three-year-old Bobbie, whose brief life had many a time been clouded by the complaints of his mother and sisters,—complaints such as are often heard to this day from women in the country homes of the frontier and middle West, where more than one-half of their waking hours are spent in the unfinished and uncomfortable kitchens peculiar to the slave era, in which—as almost any makeshift was considered “good enough for niggers”—the unfinished kitchen came to stay.

The vigorous barking of Rover announced the approach of visitors; and the circle around the fireside was enlarged, amid the clatter of moving chairs and tables, to make room for Elijah Robinson and his wife,—the former a brother of Annie Ranger, and the latter a sister of John. The meeting between the sisters-in-law was expectant, anxious, and embarrassing.

“How did you like the news?” asked Mrs. Robinson, after an awkward silence.

“How did you like it?” was the evasive reply, as the twain withdrew to a distant corner, where they could exchange confidences undisturbed.

“I haven’t had time to think it over yet,” said Mrs. Ranger. “My greatest trouble is about leaving our parents. It seems as if I could not bear to break the news to them.”

“Don’t worry, Annie; they know already. When Lije told his mother that John was going to Oregon, she fainted dead away. When she revived and sat up, she wanted to come right over to see you, in spite of the storm.”

“Just listen! How the wind does roar!”

“I don’t see how your mother can live without you, Annie. I tried very hard to persuade Lije to refuse to buy John’s farm; but he would have his way, as he always does. Of course, we’ll do all we can for the old folks, but Lije is heavily in debt again, with the ever-recurring interest staring us all in the face. John will want his money, with interest,—they all do,—and we know how rapidly it accumulates, from our own dearly bought experience, the result of poor Joe’s troubles!”

“I hope my dear father and mother won’t live very long,” sighed Mrs. Ranger. “If John would only let me make them a deed to my little ten-acre farm! But I can’t get him to talk about it.”

II
EARLY LIFE IN THE MIDDLE WEST

The surroundings of the budding daughters of the Ranger and Robinson families had thus far been limited, outside of their respective homes, to attendance at the district school on winter week-days when weather permitted, and on Sundays at the primitive church services held by itinerant clergymen in the same rude edifice.

Oh, that never-to-be-forgotten schoolhouse of the borderland and the olden time! Modelled everywhere after the same one-roomed, quadrangular pattern,—and often the only seat of learning yet to be seen in school districts of the far frontier,—the building in which the children of these chronicles received the rudimentary education which led to the future weal of most of them was built of logs unhewn, and roofed with “shakes” unshaven. One rough horizontal log was omitted from the western wall when the structure was raised by the men of the district, who purposely left the space for the admission of a long line of little window-panes above the rows of desks. A huge open fireplace occupied the whole northern end of the room; rude benches rocked on the uneven puncheon floor and creaked as the students turned upon them to face the long desks beneath the little window-panes, or to confront the centre of the room. The children’s feet generally swung to and fro in a sort of rhythmic consonance with the audible whispers in which they studied their lessons,—when not holding sly conversation, amid much suppressed giggling, with their neighbors at elbow, if the teacher’s back was turned.

The busy agricultural seasons of springtime and summer, and often extending far into the autumn, prevented the regular attendance at school of the older children of the district, who were usually employed early and late, indoors and out, with the ever-exacting labors of the farm.

Up to the time of the departure of the Ranger family for the Pacific coast and for a brief time thereafter, the most of the summer and all of the winter clothing worn in the country districts of the middle West was the product of the individual housewife’s skill in the use of the spinning-wheel, dye-kettle, and clumsy, home-made hand-loom.

But, few and far between as were the schoolhouses and schooldays of the border times, of which the present-day grandparent loves to boast, there was a rigorous course of primitive study then in vogue which justifies their boasting. Oh, that old-fashioned pedagogue! What resident of the border can fail to remember—if his early lot was cast anywhere west of the Alleghanies, at any time antedating the era of railroads—the austere piety and stately dignity of that mighty master of the rod and the rule, who never by any chance forgot to use the rod, lest by so doing he should spoil the child!

The terror of those days lingers now only as an amusing memory. The pain of which the rod and the rule were the instruments has long since lost its sting; but the sound morals inculcated by the teacher (whose example never strayed from his precept) have proved the ballast needed to hold a level head on many a pair of shoulders otherwise prone to push their way into forbidden places.

And the old-fashioned singing-school! How tenderly the memory of the time-dulled ear recalls the doubtful harmony of many youthful voices, as they ran the gamut in a jangling merry-go-round! Did any other musical entertainment ever equal it? Then, when the exercises were over, and the stars hung high and glittering above the frosty branches of the naked treetops, and the crisp white snow crunched musically beneath the feet of fancy-smitten swains, hurrying homeward with ruddy-visaged sweethearts on their pulsing arms, did any other joy ever equal the stolen kisses of the youthful lovers at the parting doorstep,—the one to return to the parental home with an exultant throbbing at his heart, and the other to creep noiselessly to her cold, dark bedroom to blush unseen over her first little secret from her mother.

And there is yet another memory.

Can anybody who has enjoyed it ever forget the school of metrical geography which sometimes alternated, on winter evenings, with the singing-school? What could have been more enchanting, or more instructive withal, than those exercises wherein the States and their capitals were chanted over and over to a sort of rhymeless rhythm, so often repeated that to this day the old-time student finds it only necessary to mention the name of any State then in the Union to call to mind the name of its capital. After the States and their capitals, the boundaries came next in order, chanted in the same rhythmic way, until the youngest pupil had conquered all the names by sound, and localities on the map by sight, of all the continents, islands, capes, promontories, peninsulas, mountains, kingdoms, republics, oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, harbors, and cities then known upon the planet.

In its season, beginning with the New Year, came the regular religious revival. No chronicles like these would be complete without its mention, since no rural life on the border exists without it. Much to the regret of doting parents who failed to get all their dear ones “saved”—especially the boys—before the sap began to run in the sugar maples, the revival season was sometimes cut short by the advent of an early spring. The meetings were then brought to a halt, notwithstanding the fervent prayers of the righteous, who in vain besought the Lord of the harvest to delay the necessary seed-time, so that the work of saving souls might not be interrupted by the sports and labors of the sugar camp, which called young people together for collecting fagots, rolling logs, and gathering and boiling down the sap.

Many were the matches made at these rural gatherings, as the lads and lasses sat together on frosty nights and replenished the open fires under the silent stars.

To depict one revival season is to give a general outline of all. The itinerant preacher was generally a young man and a bachelor. In his annual returns to the scenes of his emotional endeavors to save the unconverted, he would find that many had backslidden; and the first week was usually spent in getting those who had not “held out faithful” up to the mourners’ bench for re-conversion.

Agnostics, of whom John Ranger was an example, were many, who took a humorous or good-naturedly critical view of the situation. But the preacher’s efforts to arouse the emotional nature, especially of the women, began to bear fruit generally after the first week’s praying, singing, and exhorting; and the excitement, once begun, went on without interruption as long as temporal affairs permitted. The rankest infidel in the district kept open house, in his turn, for the preacher and exhorter; and once, when the schoolhouse was partly destroyed by fire, John Ranger permitted the meetings to be held in his house till the damage was repaired by the tax-payers of the district.

The kindly preacher who most frequently visited the Ranger district as a revivalist would not knowingly have given needless pain to a fly. But, when wrought up to great tension by religious frenzy, he seemed to find delight in holding the frightened penitent spellbound, while he led him to the very brink of perdition, where he would hang him suspended, mentally, as by a hair, over a liquid lake of fire and brimstone, with the blue blazes shooting, like tongues of forked lightning, beneath his writhing body; while overhead, looking on, sat his Heavenly Father, as a benignant and affectionate Deity, pictured to the speaker’s imagination, nevertheless, as waiting with scythe in hand to snip that hair.

“I can’t see a bit of logic in any of it!” exclaimed Jean Ranger, as she and Mary, accompanied by Hal, were returning home one night from such a meeting.

“God’s ways are not our ways,” sighed Mary, as she tripped over the frozen path under the denuded maple-trees, where night owls hooted and wild turkeys slept.

Harry laughed immoderately. “Jean, you’re right,” he exclaimed. “I’m going to get religion myself some day before I die, but I’ve got first to find a Heavenly Father who’s better’n I am. There’s no preacher on top o’ dirt can make me believe that the great Author of all Creation deserves the awful character they’re giving Him at the schoolhouse!”

“Don’t blaspheme, Hal. It’s wicked!” said Mary.

“I’m not blaspheming; I’m defending God!” retorted Hal.

“You used to be a sensible girl, Mame,” said Jean; “and you could then see the ridiculous side of all this excitement just as Hal and I now see it. But you’re in love with the preacher now, and that has turned your head.”

Jean was cold and sleepy and cross; but she did not mean to be unkind, and on reflection added, “Forgive me, sister dear. I was only in fun. I have no right to meddle with your love affairs or your religious feelings, and neither has Hal. S’pose we talk about maple sugar.”

Mary did not reply, but her thoughts went toward heaven in silent, self-satisfying prayer.

The Reverend Thomas Rogers—so he must be designated in these pages, because he yet lives—was the avowed suitor for the hand and heart of Mary Ranger; and the winsome girl, with whose prematurely aroused affections her parents had no patience,—and with reason, for she was but a child,—was the envy of all the older girls of the district, any one of whom, while censuring her for her folly in encouraging the poverty-stricken preacher’s suit, would gladly have found like favor in his eyes, if the opportunity had been given her.

But while romantic maidens were going into rhapsodies over their hero, and many of the dowager mothers echoed their sentiments, most of the unmarried men of the district remained aloof from his persuasions and unmoved by his fiery eloquence. But they took him out “sniping” one off-night in true schoolboy fashion; and while Mary Ranger dreamed of him in the seclusion of her snug chamber, the poor fellow stood half frozen at the end of a gulch, holding a bag to catch the snipes that never came.

“If I were not too poor in worldly goods to pay my way in your father’s train, I’d go to Oregon,” he said, a few nights after the “sniping” episode, as he walked homeward with Mary after coaxing Jean and Hal to keep the little episode a secret from their parents,—a promise they made after due hesitation, but with much sly chuckling, as they munched the red-and-white-striped sugar sticks with which they had been bribed.

III
MARRYING AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE

The destinies of the Ranger and Robinson families had been linked together by the double ties of affinity and consanguinity in the first third of the nineteenth century. Their broad and fertile lands, to which they held the original title-deeds direct from the government, bore the signature and seal of Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States; and their children and children’s children, though scattered now in the farthest West, from Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands to the Philippine Archipelago, treasure to this day among their most valued heirlooms the historic parchments. For these were signed by Old Hickory when the original West was bounded on its outermost verge by the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and when the new West, though discovered in the infancy of the century by Lewis and Clark (aided by Sacajawea, their one woman ally and pathfinder), was to the average American citizen an unknown country, quite as obscure to his understanding as was the Dark Continent of Africa in the days antedating Sir Samuel Baker, Oom Paul, and Cecil Rhodes.

The elder Rangers, who claimed Knickerbocker blood, and the Robinsons, who boasted of Scotch ancestry, though living in adjoining counties in Kentucky in their earlier years, had never met until, as if by accident,—if accident it might be called through which there seems to have been an original, interwoven design,—the fates of the two families became interlinked through their settlement upon adjoining lands, situated some fifty miles south of old Fort Dearborn, in the days when Chicago was a mosquito-beleaguered swamp, and Portland, Oregon, an unbroken forest of pointed firs.

There was a double wedding on the memorable day when John Ranger, Junior, and pretty Annie Robinson, the belle of Pleasant Prairie, linked their destinies together in marriage; and when, without previous notice to the assembled multitude or any other parties but their parents, the preacher, and the necessary legal authorities, Elijah Robinson and Mary Ranger took their allotted places beside their brother and sister, as candidates for matrimony, the festivities were doubled in interest and rejoicing.

“It seems but yesterday since our bonnie bairns were babes in arms,” said the elder Mrs. Robinson, as she advanced with Mrs. Ranger mère to give a tearful greeting to each newly wedded pair. And there was scarcely a dry eye in the assembled multitude when the mother’s voice arose in a shrill treble as she sang, in the ears of the startled listeners, from an old Scottish ballad the words,—

“An’ I can scarce believe it true,

So late thy life began,

The playful bairn I fondled then

Stands by me now, a man!”

Her voice, which at first was as clear as the tones of a silver bell, quavered at the close of the first stanza and then ceased altogether. But by this time old Mrs. Ranger had caught the spirit of the ballad, and though her voice was husky, she cleared her throat and added, in a low contralto, the impressive lines, paraphrased somewhat to suit the occasion,—

“Oh, fondly cherish her, dearie;

She is sae young and fair!

She hasna known a single cloud,

Nor felt a single care.

And if a cauld world’s storms should come,

Thy way to overcast,

Oh, ever stan’—thou art a man—

Between her an’ the blast!”

At the close of this stanza, Mrs. Ranger’s voice broke also; and the good circuit rider, parson of many a scattered flock, who had pronounced the double ceremony, caught the tune and, in a mellow barytone that rose upon the air like an inspired benediction, added most impressively another stanza:

“An’ may the God who reigns above

An’ sees ye a’ the while,

Look down upon your plighted troth

An’ bless ye wi’ His smile.”[1]

“It’s high time there was a little change o’ sentiment in all this!” cried a bachelor uncle, whose eyes were suspiciously red notwithstanding his affected gayety. “I move that we march in a solid phalanx on the victuals!”

The primitive cabin homes of the borderers of no Western settlement were large enough to hold the crowds that were invariably bidden to a neighborhood merrymaking. The ceremonies of this occasion, including a most sumptuous feast, were held on the sloping green beneath an overtopping elm, which, rising high above its fellows, made a noted landmark for a circumference of many miles.

People who live apart from markets, in fertile regions where the very forests drop richness, subsist literally on the fat of the land. Having no sale for their surplus products, they feast upon them in the most prodigal way. Although through gormandizing they beget malaria, not to say dyspepsia and rheumatic ails, they boast of “living well”; and the sympathy they bestow upon the city denizen who in his wanderings sometimes feasts at their hospitable boards, and praises without stint their prodigal display of viands, is often more sincere than wise.

The lands of the early settlers, with whom these chronicles have to deal, had been surrounded, as soon as possible after occupancy, with substantial rail fences, laid in zigzag fashion along dividing lines, marking the boundaries between neighbors who lived at peace with each other and with all the world. These fences, built to a sufficient height to discourage all attempts at trespass by man or beast, were securely staked at the corners, and weighted with heavy top rails, or “riders,” so stanchly placed that many miles of such enclosures remain to this day, long surviving the brawny hands that felled the trees and split the rails. In their mute eloquence they reveal the lasting qualities of the hardwood timber that abounded in the many and beautiful groves which flourished in the prairie States in the early part of the nineteenth century, when Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri comprised all that was generally known as the West.

Much of the primitive glory of these diversified landscapes departed long ago with the trees. The “Hook-and-Eye Dutch,” as the thrifty followers of ancient Ohm are called by their American neighbors (with whom they do not assimilate), are rapidly replacing the old-time maple and black walnut fences with the modern barbed-wire horror; they are selling off the historical rails, stakes and riders and all, to the equally thrifty and not a whit more sentimental timber-dealers of Chicago, Milwaukee, and Grand Rapids, to be manufactured into high-grade lumber, which is destined to find lodgment as costly furniture in the palatial homes, gilded churches, great club-houses, and mammoth modern hostelries that abound on the shores of Lake Michigan, Massachusetts Bay, Manhattan Island, and Long Island Sound. But no vandalism yet invented by man can wholly despoil the rolling lands of the middle West of their beauty, nor rob Mother Nature of her power to rehabilitate them with the living green of cultivated loveliness.

Original settlers of the border-lands had little time and less opportunity for the observation of the beautiful in art or nature. Their lives were spent in toil, which blunted many of the finer sensibilities of a more leisurely existence. The hardy huntsman who spent his only hours of relaxation in chasing the wild game, and the weary mother who scarcely ever left her wheel or loom and shuttle by the light of day, except to bake her brain before a great open fire while preparing food, or to nurse to sleep the future lawmakers of a coming world-round republic, were alike too busy to ponder deeply the far-reaching possibilities of the lives they led.

Such men of renown as Lincoln, Douglas, Baker, Grant, Logan, and Oglesby were evolved from environments similar to these, as were also the numerous adventurous borderers not known to fame (many of whom are yet living) who crossed the continent with ox teams, and whose patient and enduring wives nursed the future statesmen of a coming West in fear and trembling, as they protected their camps from the depredations of the wily Indian or the frenzy of the desert’s storms.

Rail-making in the middle West was long a diversion and an art. The destruction of the hardwood timber, which if spared till to-day would be almost priceless, could not have been prevented, even if this commercial fact had been foreseen. The urgent need of fuel, shelter, bridges, public buildings, and fences allowed no consideration for future values to intervene and save the trees.

In times of a temporary lull in a season’s activities, when, for a wonder, there were days together that the stroke of the woodman’s ax was not heard and the music of the cross-cut saw had ceased, the settler would take advantage of the interim to draw a bead with unerring aim upon the eye of a squirrel in a treetop, or bring down a wild turkey from its covert in the lower branches; or, if favored by a fall of virgin snow, it would be his delight to track the wild deer, and drag it home as a trophy of his marksmanship,—an earnest of the feast in which all his neighbors were invited to partake.

Then, too, there were the merrymakings of the border. What modern banquet can equal the festive board at which a genial hostess, in a homespun cotton or linsey-woolsey gown, presided over her own stuffed turkey, huge corn-pone, and wild paw-paw preserves? What array of glittering china, gleaming cut-glass, or burnished silver, can give the jaded appetite of the blasé reveller of to-day the enjoyment of a home-set table, laden with the best and sweetest “salt-rising” bread spread thick with golden butter, fresh from the old-fashioned churn? The freshest of meats and fish regularly graced the well-laden board, in localities where the modern chef was unknown, where ice-cream was unheard of, and terrapin sauce and lobster salad found no place. House-raisings, log-rollings, barn-raisings, quilting bees, weddings, christenings, and even funerals, were times of feasting, though these last were divested of the gayety, but not of the gossip, that at other times abounded; and the sympathetic aid of an entire neighborhood was always voluntarily extended to any house of mourning. There were few if any wage-earners, the accommodating method of exchanging work among neighbors being generally in vogue.

Such, in brief, were the daily customs of the early settlers of the middle West, whose children wandered still farther westward in the forties and fifties, carrying with them the habits in which they had been reared to the distant Territory afterwards known as the “Whole of Oregon,” which originally comprised the great Northwest Territory, where now flourish massive blocks of mighty States.

Prior to the time of the departure of the subjects of these chronicles for the goal of John Ranger’s ambition, but one unusual occurrence had marred the lives and prosperity of the rising generation of Rangers and Robinsons. To the progenitors of the two families the mutations of time had brought problems serious and difficult, not the least of which was the infirmity of advancing years. This they had made doubly annoying through having assigned to their children, when they themselves needed it most, everything of value which they had struggled to accumulate during their years of vigorous effort to raise and educate their families.

In the two households under review, all dependent upon the energies and bounty of the second generation of Rangers and Robinsons, there were besides the great-grandmother (a universal favorite) two sexagenarian bachelor uncles and two elderly spinsters, the latter remote cousins of uncertain age, uncertain health, and still more uncertain temper, who had long outlived their usefulness, after having missed, in their young and vigorous years, the duties and responsibilities that accompany the founding of families and homes of their own. It was little wonder that drones like these were out of place in the overcrowded households of their more provident kinspeople, to whom the modern “Home of the Friendless” was unknown. What plan to pursue in making necessary provision for these outside incumbents, even John Ranger, the optimistic leader of the related hosts, could not conjecture.

“We’ve fixed it,—Mame and I,” said Jean, one evening, after an anxious discussion of the question had been carried on with some warmth between the two family heads, in which no conclusion had been reached except a flat refusal on the part of Elijah Robinson to quadruple the quota of dependants in his own household.

“And how have you fixed it?” asked her father, who often called Jean his “Heart’s Delight.”

“Our bachelor uncles and cousins are just rusting out with irresponsibility!” she cried with characteristic Ranger vehemence. “They ought to have a home of their own and be compelled to take care of it. There’s that house and garden where you board and lodge the mill-hands. Why not give ’em that and let ’em keep boarders? The boarders, the four acres of ground, and the cow and garden ought to keep them in modest comfort. This would make them free and independent, as everybody ought to be.”

“But the boarding-house belongs with the farm. I’ve sold it to your uncle.”

“Then let Uncle Lije lease or sell it to them, share and share alike.”

“What is it worth?” asked Mary.

“Only about three hundred dollars, the way property sells now,” said her uncle.

“Then let ’em pay you rent. The place ought to support them and pay interest and taxes.”

“Yes,” cried Mary; “the old bachelor contingent, that worry you all so much because you keep ’em dependent on your bounty, can take care of themselves for twenty years to come, if you’ll only let ’em.”

“The proposition is worth considering, certainly,” said their father, smiling admiringly upon his daughters.

“And we’ll consider it, too,” said the uncle. “That much is settled.”

IV
OLD BLOOD AND NEW

“I can’t see why old folks like us will persist in living after we’ve outgrown our usefulness,” exclaimed Grandfather Ranger, one sloppy March evening, as he entered the little kitchen and placed a pail of foaming milk upon the clean white table. The severely cold weather had given way to a springtime thaw; but a wet snow had begun falling at sundown, and a soft, muddy liquid made dirty pools wherever his feet pressed the polished floor.

“You’re right, father; we’ve lived long enough,” sighed the feeble mother of many children, following her husband’s footprints with mop and broom.

“If you and John think you’ve lived long enough, what do you think of me?” cried the great-grandmother, who had passed her fourscore years and ten, but who still amply supported herself (if only she and the rest of the family had thought so) as she sat from early morning till late at night in her corner, knitting, always knitting.

“Never mind, grannie,” said her son, swallowing a lump that rose unbidden in his throat. “You’ve as good a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as any fellow that ever put his name to a Declaration of Independence! There’ll be room for you in the cosiest corner of this little house as long as there’s a corner for anybody. Don’t worry.”

“But this state of things isn’t just or fair!” exclaimed the wife, folding her last bit of mending and dropping back into her chair. “It seems to me that we, as parents, deserve a better fate in our old days than any set of bachelor hangers-on on earth, who’ve never had anybody but themselves to provide for. If Joseph would only come back, or the good Lord would let us know his fate, I could endure the rest.”

“There, there, mother! Not another word. Haven’t I forbidden the mention of his name?”

“But he was our darling, father. I can’t dismiss him from my thoughts as you say you can.”

“We must keep the grandchildren in ignorance of his existence, wife. It’s bad enough in all conscience for the stain of his misguided life to rest on older heads. We must forget our unfortunate son.”

“I can never forget my bonnie boy,—not even to obey you, father!”

The back door, which had been unintentionally left ajar, flew open, and Jean, who had for the first time in her life heard a word of complaint from her grandparents, or a word from them concerning her mysterious Uncle Joe, burst suddenly into the room and knelt at the feet of her grandmother, her whole frame convulsed with sobs.

“Forgive us, darlings, do!” she cried as soon as she could control her voice to speak. “You’ve borne so much sorrow, and we never knew it! We never meant to be thoughtless or unkind, but I see now how ungrateful we have been. We must have hurt your feelings often.”

“Don’t cry, Jean,” and the thin hand of the grandmother stroked the girl’s bright hair. “We don’t often repine at our lot. I am sorry you overheard a word.”

“But I am not sorry a single bit, grandma. We children have been thoughtless and impudent. I can see it all now. We didn’t ever mean to complain, though, about you, or grandpa, or you either, grannie dear. We only meant to draw the line at bachelor great-uncles and meddlesome second and third cousins, who ought to have provided themselves in their youth with homes of their own, as our parents did.”

“Do you think they can help themselves hereafter, Jean?”

“Why, of course! The feeling of self-dependence will make ’em young and strong again,—though they don’t deserve good treatment, for they ought to have had homes and families of their own in their youth, as you did.”

“It’s too late to lodge a complaint of that kind against them now, Jean,” said the grandmother, with a smile.

“Did you overhear all we were talking about?” asked the grandfather, his head bowed upon his cane.

“I am afraid I did, grandpa. I was cleaning the slush from my shoes, and I couldn’t help overhearing, though I hate eavesdroppers, on general principles. They never hear any good of themselves. But, say, grandpa, what about our Uncle Joe, whom I heard you denounce so bitterly? You haven’t said I mustn’t speak his name, you know.”

“Don’t talk about him, child, to us or anybody else. He’s an outlaw. Dismiss him from your thoughts, just as I have.”

“Your uncle may not be living now, Jean; if he is alive, I hope he’ll find a better friend than his father,” exclaimed the great-grandmother, speaking in a tone of reproach that surprised none more than herself.

“Tell me all about it, grand-daddie darling! Do! I know there’s a sad secret somewhere in the family. Something unusual must have happened a long time ago to bring us all under the ban of poverty. I have heard hints of it now and then all my life; and now I must hear the whole story. The schoolmaster will tell me if you don’t.”

“No, no, Jean,” exclaimed her grandfather, anxiously. “Don’t speak of family affairs outside. It is never seemly.”

“Neither is it seemly or just to keep members of the family in ignorance of family affairs when all the rest of the neighborhood knows all about ’em! We ought to know all, grandma darling. The reason children are so often unreasonable is that they don’t understand.”

“‘I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread,’” said the grandfather, his head still bowed low upon his staff and his white locks falling over his stooping shoulders. “Let us not repine, mother.”

“I am not repining, father, but I do feel so—so disappointed with the outcome of all our hard struggles that I can’t always be cheerful.”

“We’d just begun to get our heads above water when it happened, Jean,” said the old man. “We’d been making a new farm. You see, we’d manumitted our slaves before we left Kaintuck, and we had to begin with our bare hands in this new country and work our way from the ground up. We’d only got a part o’ the children raised when the older ones began to get it in their heads to get married. But our second son took to book-learning, and we sent him off to Tennessee to finish his schooling. That cost a pile o’ money. Then we had to set out the married ones. We’d got things going in tol’ble shape and was beginning to get on our feet again, when Joseph—”

“Do stop, husband. Don’t tell any more; please don’t,” cried the grandmother, nervously stroking the bright young head that nestled in her lap. “I cannot bear to hear it, though I thought I could.”

“Let him go on, grandmother dear! I don’t want to be driven to the schoolmaster for the information that I am bound to get someway. When I have grandchildren of my own, I’ll tell ’em everything they ought to know about the family, and then they won’t be teased by the school-children, as we are.”

“We had to mortgage the farm,” continued the grandfather; “and then there came a financial panic. The wild-cat banks of the country all went to pieces, and the bottom kind o’ fell out o’ things.”

“But why did you borrow money, grandpa? Why was it necessary to mortgage the farms?”

“We did it because we had to stand by Joe in his trouble.”

“What did you hear at school, darling?” asked the grandmother.

“Oh, nothing much. But one day Jim Danover got mad at me because I went head in the class; and he said I needn’t be puttin’ on airs, for everybody knew that my uncle had been hung.”

“Good Lord! has it come to that?” cried the great-grandmother, dropping her knitting to the floor and clasping her withered hands over her knees. “I’ve always told you that you’d better tell the older children about it yourself, John.”

“No, Jean; your uncle wasn’t hung,” said the old man; “but he got into trouble, and we all believe he is dead. He was the pride and joy of us all. He was so promising that we gave him all the education that ought to have been distributed evenly through the family.”

“But John and Mollie took a notion to get married young, and you know that ended their chances,” interposed the mother.

“Your uncle’s trouble would never have come upon him and us if he had stayed out o’ that college,” exclaimed the great-grandmother, who did not approve of the course the family had taken with Joseph at the beginning of his college days.

“That’s true, grannie,” replied the father; “but he ought to have kept out o’ the scrape, college or no college.”

“Do go on,” cried Jean.

“Your Uncle Joe got mixed up in a hazing frolic, or something o’ that sort,” resumed the grandfather. “One or two of the students got hurt, one of ’em so bad that he died,—or it was given out that he died,—and the blame fell on Joe. He declared he wasn’t guilty, but the college authorities had to fix the blame somewhere, though the case was uncertain. They never proved that the boy was dead, but we raised the money and bailed Joe out o’ jail. When the story was started that the fellow had died, Joe skipped his bail and left us all in a hole. That was what made and has kept us poor.”

“Did you never hear of the other man, grandpa?”

“Oh, yes; he turned up, but too late to do Joe or the rest of us any good.”

“Poor dear Uncle Joe!”

“You’d better say poor dear all the rest of us,” cried the great-grandmother, who had staked and lost her little all in the great calamity.

“But Uncle Joe was sinned against, grannie dear. How he must have suffered!”

“Them that’s sinned against are often greater sufferers than them that sins,” was the sad reply.

“When the bail was jumped, the hard times set in with all of us,” resumed the grandfather. “The banks, as I was saying, went broke, the interest on the mortgages piled up, and the notes fell due. The crops got the rust and the weevil, and everything else went wrong. You see, Jean, when a man starts down hill, everybody tries to give him a kick. The long and the short of it is that mother, here, and grannie and I have been the same as paupers for more than a dozen years.”

“I must be going, though you must first tell me how you two and dear old grannie are going to live when we are away in Oregon. Your way seems very uncertain,” said Jean.

“Your father has made some kind of a bargain for our support with your Uncle Lije. But he’s sort o’ visionary, and he never has much luck. If he loses the property, we can go to the poorhouse.”

“Are you to be allowed no stated sum to live on? Will you have no means of your own to gratify your individual wishes or tastes?”

“No, child; not a picayune.”

“What’s a picayune?”

“A six-and-a-quarter-cent piece.”

“I’m just as wise as I was before.”

“They’re wellnigh out o’ circulation nowadays, though I used to come across ’em frequently when I was sheriff,” said the old man.

Jean covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

“Don’t worry about us, dearie,” said the old man. “There is One above us who heareth even the young ravens when they cry. There is not a sparrow that falleth to the ground without His knowledge. Your Uncle Lije will move into the old homestead when you are all gone. Your father built this cottage for us when he assumed the mortgage, as you know. We won’t be entirely alone, but we’ll miss you all; and we’ll try to remember that we are of more value than many sparrows.”

“I’ve heard such talk as that all my life, grandpa. But I can’t help thinking that it would have been better to keep the ravens from having anything to cry about in the first place, and to save the sparrows from falling.”

“If none o’ God’s creatures ever had any hard experiences, they’d never know enough to enjoy their blessings, Jean. A child has to stumble and hurt itself many times before it learns to walk steady. We’ve all got to be purified and saved, as by fire, before we are fit to stand in the presence of the awful God.”

“The God I love and worship isn’t an awful God,” cried Jean. “I couldn’t love Him if He were awful. My earthly daddie whipped me once. No doubt I deserved the punishment, but I couldn’t love him for a whole month afterwards. And I’d have hated him for the rest of my life if I hadn’t deserved the whipping.”

“Didn’t it do you any good?”

Jean confronted her grandfather, her eyes flashing. “No, sir!” she cried. “I ought not to have been whipped, and I wasn’t a bit repentant after the punishment. I was sorry beforehand, though, and said so.”

“What was your offence, Jean?”

“I dropped a pan full of dishes and broke more than half o’ the lot. They fell to the floor with a crash, and scared me half to death.”

“Didn’t the whipping make you more careful afterwards?”.

“Not at all; it only made me mad and afraid and nervous, so I broke more dishes. But the next time it happened, I hid the broken pieces in the ash hopper, and when they were found, I saved myself a whipping by telling my first lie.”

“The Lord chasteneth whom He loveth, my child.”

“I once saw a mill-hand strike his wife,” retorted Jean, “and he said, as she rubbed her bruises, ‘I love you, Mollie. Take another kick!’ But I must go now. Be of good cheer. And remember, when I get to Oregon and get to making money, you shall have every cent that I can spare.”

V
SALLY O’DOWD

Great excitement prevailed in the rural neighborhood when it became generally known that John Ranger, Junior, had sold the farm and was preparing to dispose of his sawmill and all his personal belongings, with the intention of departing to the new and far-away West in an ox-wagon train with his family,—an undertaking that seemed to his friends as foolhardy as would have been an attempt to reach the North Pole with his wife and children in a balloon.

Of more than ordinary ability, enterprise, and daring, John Ranger had long been a man of note in his bailiwick. Twice he had represented his county in the State Legislative Assembly; but when the Old Line Whigs of his district offered to nominate him for Congress,—“No, gentlemen!” he exclaimed. “I started out early in life to assist my good wife in rearing and educating a big family of young Americans. I frankly admit that we’ve got a bigger job on hand than either of us imagined it would be when we made the bargain; but that doesn’t lessen our mutual responsibility. There is always a regiment, more or less, of unencumbered men in waiting in every locality, ready and willing to wear the toga of office; so, with thanks for the proffered honor, I must beg to be excused.”

But there was one office, that of justice of the peace, which he never refused, and to which he had been so often re-elected that the appellation of “Squire” had grown to belong to him as a matter of course. One room of the great barnlike farmhouse had long been set apart as his office; and many were the litigants who remained after office hours to be entertained at his hospitable board.

“It’s a lot of trouble, having so much extra company on account of your office being in the house,” his wife said at times; “but it’s better than having you away two-thirds of your time down town, so it is all right.”

“There’s a woman going round the corner to the office,” exclaimed Mary, one evening, just as her father had settled himself before the fire to enjoy a frolic with the little ones.

“It’s that grass widow, Sally O’Dowd,” said Mrs. Ranger.

“She’s booked for a solid hour,” snapped Marjorie, “and we’ll have to delay supper till nine o’clock.”

The Squire had barely time to reach his office by an inner passage and seat himself before the fire, when Mrs. O’Dowd—an oversized, plainly dressed, intelligent-looking woman, who was remarkably handsome, notwithstanding the expression of pain upon her face—entered the office and stood silent before the open fire.

“Well,” exclaimed the Squire, impatiently, motioning her to a chair, “what can I do for you now?”

“Oh, Squire!” she cried, ignoring the proffered chair and dropping on her knees at his feet, her wealth of rippling hair falling about her face and over her shapely shoulders like a deluge of gold, “I want you to take me with you to Oregon.”

“What! And leave your children to the care of others? I didn’t think that of you, Mrs. O’Dowd.”

“But what else can I do? You know the court has assigned the custody of all three of my babies to Sam.”

“Yes, Sally; but you can see them once in a while if you stay here.”

“The court gave them to Samuel and his mother absolutely, you know.”

“Yes, yes, child; and while in one way it is hard, if you look at it in a practical light, you will see that it was best for the children. You couldn’t keep them with you and go out as hired help in anybody’s kitchen; and you have no other means of support any more.”

“If I stay here, I cannot have even the poor privilege of caring for them, except when they’re sick. I must get entirely away from their vicinity, or lose my senses altogether.”

“I thought that was what was the matter when you married the fellow, Sally. You certainly had lost your senses then.”

“But love is blind, Squire—till it gets its eyes open; and then it is generally too late to see to any advantage. Little did my dear father think, when he made a will leaving his homestead, his bank account, and all his belongings to me, that he was reducing my dear mother and me to beggary.”

“But that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t married that worthless fellow, Sally.”

“But the if exists, Squire. I married the fellow. It was an awful blunder,—I’ll admit that. But it wasn’t a crime. It should have been no reason for robbing me. And yet this marriage was made the legal pretext for permitting the robbery. Oh, I was so glad when my dear mother died! I couldn’t have shed a tear at her grave if I’d been hung for my seeming heartlessness. Poor mother! I was made an unwilling party to a robbery that beggared her and myself. Then, when I could no longer endure the presence of the robber and his accomplice, and live, I was doubly, yes, trebly robbed, by being deprived of my children.”

The Squire cleared his throat and spoke huskily.

“That will was a sad mistake of your father’s, Sally. He should have left his property to your mother. It was wrong to put her means of livelihood in jeopardy by leaving all to you. He ought to have known you’d marry, and that the property would accrue to your husband.”

“But mother insisted that all should be left to me. She even waived her right of dower, in my interest—as she thought.”

“Well, Sally, you can’t say that I didn’t warn you.”

The woman laughed hysterically. “Much good that warning can do me now!” she cried, rising to her feet and unconsciously assuming a dramatic pose. “We hadn’t been married a week when he ordered my mother out of my house. And then he installed his own mother in my home, and expected me to be silent. Oh, I am so glad my dear mother is dead! I would rejoice if my poor, defrauded children were all dead also.”

The Squire cleared his throat again and leaned forward on his hands. “The law recognizes the husband and wife as one, and the husband as that one, Mrs. O’Dowd.”

“Yes, yes, I know that, to my bitter sorrow,” she said with a meaning smile, her white teeth shining through her parted lips and her eyes flashing. The woman sank upon the hearth, looking strangely white and calm.

John Ranger sighed helplessly. “I worked the underground railroad last night for all it was worth, in the interest of some runaway niggers,” he said under his breath; then audibly, “The laws of the land must be obeyed, my child.”

“The law is a fiend,” cried Jean, who had entered the room unobserved and had stood listening in the shadow of the chimney jamb. “I’ll never rest till this awful one-sided power is broken. You know yourself that it’s a monster, daddie. I know you know it, or you’d never help a run—”

He put his finger on his lips, and the girl changed the subject. The underground railroad was a forbidden topic in the Ranger household.

“Because Sally Danover knew no better than to become the wife of an unworthy man,—who knew what he was about, though she didn’t,—the law declares that all the benefits resulting from the fraudulent transaction must accrue to the villain in the case, and all the penalties must be borne by his victim. What would you do to such a fellow, daddie, if I should marry him?”

John Ranger did not answer, but gazed steadily into the fire, his brow contracted and his thoughts gloomy.

“Sally, cheer up!” cried Jean, shaking the woman by the shoulder. “Daddie’s a whole lot better man than he thinks he is. I’ve seen him tested. You’re as good as a nigger, if you are white, and he’ll help you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, my daughter. It’s a crime to break the law, and crime must be followed by fitting punishment.”

“If you get caught, you get punished,” cried Jean, laughing in her father’s face. “To break such a law would be an act of heroism for which I should be glad to be arrested and sent to jail! It would be an act of heroism beside which the defence of the Stars and Stripes would be cowardice!” she cried in a transport of fury.

“Come, Jean,” said her father, rising, “we must go to supper. Won’t you join us, Mrs. O’Dowd?”

“Food would choke me,” said the visitor, bowing herself out.

“Hang the luck!” said the Squire, as the door slammed behind her.

“What are you going to do to help the poor woman, John?” asked Mrs. Ranger, as the family sat at the belated meal.

“Ask Jean.”

“What do you know about the case, daughter?”

“She thinks she knows a lot,” interrupted her father. “She’d ’a’ made a plaguy good lawyer if she’d only been born a boy.”

“Who knew best what I ought to be,—you or God?” asked Jean, her eyes glowing like stars.

“I give it up,” replied her father, smiling.

“I was reading to-day,” said Mrs. Ranger, “of a man down East who lured his runaway wife back home by stealing the babies and then warning everybody through the papers, and by posters, not to trust or harbor her, under penalty of the law. The woman held out quite a spell, but cold and hunger got the better of her at last; and when the stolen children fell sick, she went back to her lawful protector and stayed till she died, as meek as any lamb.”

“Sally Danover won’t go back to Sam O’Dowd; she’ll die first,” cried Mary; “and I glory in her grit.”

“You haven’t answered my question, John,” said Mrs. Ranger. “What do you propose to do with Sally O’Dowd?”

“I s’pose I’ll have to take her to Oregon and let her take a new start. She says she must get away from here, or go insane.”

“I’d go crazy if I had to leave my children, John.”

“You can boast, Annie; you can afford to. But if you were in Sally’s shoes, you’d sing a different song.”

Mrs. Ranger shrugged her shoulders.

“I can’t see why women with good husbands and happy homes are so ready to censure less fortunate women for breaking bonds that are unbearable,” said her husband. “Women are women’s worst enemies.”

“Sam O’Dowd’s no woman,” exclaimed Jean. “There’s not a woman on top o’ dirt that’d treat any man as he’s treated Sally.”

“I guess it’s about an even stand-off,” rejoined her mother.

“No,” cried Jean. “The conditions are not equal. No woman has the power to turn her husband out of doors. Even if it is her own house, he is its lawful master. Women don’t stand any show at all compared with men.”

“Jean is going to-morrow to see Sam O’Dowd’s mother. She can make matters smooth for Sally if anybody can,” said the Squire.

“The sale of our effects is only two weeks off, John,” said his wife, when they were alone. “I want to reserve a few things that are sacred. There’s Baby Jamie’s cradle, that you made from the hollow section of that old gum-tree that stood in the back pasture. Do you remember how nicely I lined it with the back breadths of my wedding dress?”

“Could I forget it, Annie?”

“Then there’s my mother’s little old spinning-wheel. It was my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s. May I keep it for Mary?”

“It won’t pay to haul such things over the plains, Annie. Better let your mother keep ’em here till there’s a transcontinental railroad.”

“But that won’t come in my time, John.”

VI
THE BEGINNING OF A JOURNEY

The sale of Squire Ranger’s effects proceeded without unnecessary delay. The sawmill, the first portable structure of its kind ever seen west of the Wabash River, was eagerly purchased on credit by a waiting customer, and work at the mill went on without interruption. What a primitive affair it was! And how like a pygmy it seems as the resident on the North Pacific’s border recalls its littleness, and contrasts it with the mammoth mills of Oregon, the lower Columbia, and Puget Sound, which grasp in their giant arms the dead leviathans of the primeval forest, and set their teeth to work tearing to pieces the patient upbuilding of the ages gone!

The motive power of John Ranger’s sawmill consisted of about a dozen superannuated horses, some spavined, some ringboned, some wind-broken, all more or less disabled in some way; these were regularly harnessed, each in his turn, to a set of horizontal radiating shafts attached to a rotating centre, above which, on a little platform, stood the driver, with a whip.

“I know it’s wicked to kill the trees and cut them up into boards; it’s just as wicked as it is to kill pigs and cattle,” was Mary Ranger’s comment when she first beheld the frantic work of the raging saw, which, screaming like a demon, ate its way through hearts of oak and hickory, or tore the slabs from the sides of the black-walnut and sugar-maple patriarchs with ever unsated ferocity.

But this sawmill had long been a boon to the entire country, as was evidenced by the multiplication, since its advent, of framed houses, barns, bridges, schoolhouses, and churches, which suddenly sprang into vogue, not to mention the many miles of planked highways that rushed into fashion before the railroad era in the days when “good roads conventions” were unheard of.

Children born and reared in cities—subject, if of the tenant class, to frequent changes of habitation, or, if their homes are permanent, to frequent intervals of travel—can have little idea of the love which children of the country cherish for the farms and homes to which they are born, and in which their brief lives are spent. The very soil on which they have trodden is dear to them, and seems instinct with sentience. They make a boon companion of everything with which they come in contact, whether pertaining to the earth, the water, or the air. Their little gardens are familiar friends; the flowers of the wildwood are loving entities; the brook that sings in summer through the tangled grass and sleeps in winter under a bed of ice is always a communing spirit. The sighing winds chant rhythmic lullabies in the treetops, and the language of every insect, bird, and beast has, to them, a distinctive meaning. The blue heavens are their delight, and the passing clouds their friends. The sun, the moon, and the stars hold converse with them, and the changing seasons bring to them, each in its turn, peculiar joy.

But, dearly as they loved the old home and its surroundings, the Ranger children, who had never crossed the boundary of township number twelve, range three west, in which they were born, looked forward eagerly to the forthcoming journey. Once only had Mrs. Ranger ventured beyond the township limits since leaving the Kentucky home of her childhood; and that was many years before, when she went with her husband to the county seat to attach her mark to the fateful mortgage, upon which the accruing interest seemed always to be maturing at the time when she or the children were the most in need of books or shoes or clothing.

“I wasn’t allowed to learn to write in my childhood,” she falteringly explained to the notary, when, after affixing her mark, she watched him as he attached his seal to the document which was to be as a millstone about her neck forever after. “My father always thought that education was bad for girls,” she added. “He said if they knew how to write they’d be forging their husbands’ names and getting their money out of the bank. And he said, too, that if girls learned to write, they’d be sending love letters to the boys.”

“It’s never too late to learn,” was the notary’s reply. “If I were you, I would learn to write when the children learn. You can do it if you try.”

“I’d be glad to, if I could find the time; but it’s hard to learn anything for one’s own especial benefit with a baby always in one’s arms. When the children get big enough to learn to write, I’ll try, though.”

And she did; with such success that she never after signed her name with a cross.

“I’m glad we’ve got that mortgage off our hands at last, Annie,” said her husband as they counted up the somewhat disappointing returns after the sale of their personal effects was over.

“But you’re not morally free from it, John, or even legally so. If the purchaser should fail, the load would then revert to Lije, you know. Say, John, can’t I deed my little ten-acre farm to my father and mother? It never cost you anything. I took care of old man Eustis for six long years; and you know he gave the little farm to me as pay for my services, absolutely.”

“Haven’t I paid its taxes all along, Annie?”

“And have I earned nothing all this time, my husband?”

“Oh, yes, you’ve earned a living; and you’ve got it as you went along, haven’t you?”

Mrs. Ranger made no reply, but being silenced was not being convinced.

“Be patient,” said Jean, aside. “I’ll manage it.”

Several pairs of great brown-eyed oxen, with which the children had become familiar in their days of logging about the sawmill, were easily trained for the long journey; but others, untamed and terrified, as if pre-sensing the trials awaiting them through untracked deserts, submitted to the yoke only under the cruelest compulsion. New wagons, stanchly built and covered with white canvas hoods, stretched tightly over hickory bows, were ranged on the lawn, under the naked, creaking branches of the big elm-tree. Provisions, resembling in quantity the supplies for a small army, were carted to the front veranda, awaiting shipment down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to St. Louis, to be reshipped up the Missouri to the final point of loading into wagons for crossing the Great American Desert, as the Great Plains were then known.

Visitors, including friends and relatives from far and near, came to the dismantled house in great relays, and the business of Squire Ranger’s office as justice of the peace increased a dozen fold. All this commotion involved increasing labor for Mrs. Ranger, who faded visibly as she silently counted the intervening days before the hour of final separation from her sorrowing parents. If the Squire suffered at the thought of parting with anybody, he made no sign except to complain of a “pesky cold” that made his eyes water, which he attributed to the “beastly climate.”

“The spirit of adventure that inspires my husband to emigrate does not permit him to foresee danger,” was Mrs. Ranger’s ever-ready reply to the numerous prophets of evil who came to condole, but got only their labor for their pains. “I will not try to interfere with his plans. I started out as a bride to walk the road of life beside him, and I mean to do as I agreed.”

But the good wife grew thinner and whiter as the days sped on; and when at last the wagons were all ranged in line, with every yoke of oxen in place; when the last farewell had been spoken; when the last audible prayer had ascended heavenward, and the command to move on had been given,—she sank on her feather bed in the great family wagon and closed her eyes with a feeling of thankfulness akin to that of the sufferer from a fatal malady who realizes that his last hour has come.

“‘He giveth His beloved sleep,’” said Mary, softly, as she covered her mother with a heavy shawl.

It was now the first of April, a fitful, gray, and misty day. A soft breeze was stirring from the south, and straggling rays of sunlight struggled through occasional rifts in the straying clouds. The spring thaw had at last set in. The sticky soil adhered to the feet of man and beast, and clung in heavy masses to the wheels of wagons.

The dog, Rover, who had always willingly remained at home on watch during the family’s absence at church or elsewhere, had hidden himself at starting-time; but he was found waiting in the road when the party was several miles out on the way, and, when discovered, approached his master with drooping tail and piteous whine.

There were tears in the eyes of the strong man, of which he was not ashamed, as he dismounted from the back of Sukie, his favorite mare, and, stooping, patted the dog affectionately on the head.

“They didn’t fool ’oo, did ’ey, Rovie?” said Bobbie, as he hugged the dog, unmindful of his muddy coat.

“Come to me, Rover,” exclaimed Mrs. Ranger, who had been refreshed by her nap. The dog obeyed, and, wet and dirty as he was, attempted to hide himself among the baggage. But his hopes were blasted by a peremptory command from his master: “Go back home and stay with grandfather!” The poor brute jumped, whining, to the ground and affected to obey; but he reappeared a dozen miles farther on, at the Illinois River’s edge; and when the ferry-boat, which he was forbidden to enter, was out of reach of either command or missile, he sat on his haunches on the river-bank and howled dismally.

“Don’t you think a dog has a soul, daddie?” asked Jean, through her tears.

“How should I know, daughter?” was the husky response. “I’m not yet certain that a man has a soul.”

VII
SCOTTY’S FIRST ROMANCE

The home that was to be the abode of the Ranger family during the journey was an over-jutting wagon-box,—Harry called it a “hurricane deck,”—made to fit over the running gear of a substantial wagon, in which a dozen or more persons might be stowed away at night in crosswise fashion. It was named “the saloon” by the teamsters, in jocose recognition of its owner’s well-known teetotal habits, and was assigned to the women and children as their especial domicile.

“It will be your duty to keep a daily record of our journey, Jean.”

This was the first official order issued by Captain Ranger after he had been formally elected as commander of the expedition, and was given under the thickly falling snow, amid the bustle and confusion of making the first camp.

“What sort of a record?”

“A daily write-up of current events. Here is a brand-new blank-book I have bought for the purpose. And here’s a portable inkstand, with some lead pencils, a pocket knife, and a box of pens. I’ve selected you as scribe because you won the prize in that competitive contest over the doings of Bismarck.”

“But that was a different proposition, daddie.”

“It’s all in the same line, Jean. You have a record to preserve now. You must keep your credit good. Look to your laurels, and don’t forget!”

And Jean, partly from innate ambition, but chiefly because she was under orders from which she knew there could be no appeal, kept, through all the tedious journey, a diary, from which the chronicler of these pages proposes to cull such fragments as may fit into the narrative, without strict regard to chronology, though with due regard to facts.

“We made camp last night in the discomfort of a driving snowstorm,” wrote the scribe under date of April 2. “But in spite of our sorrow over our departure from home and loved ones, the most of us were jolly, and we made the best we could of the situation. To-night, after a day’s disagreeable wheeling through mud that freezes at night and thaws by day, making travel nasty, sticky, and tedious, we stopped for camp near an isolated farmhouse, where the goodwife is disheartened and sick, and the children are ragged, dirty, and frightened.

“The storm has abated, and the sky is clear. Our teamsters are kneeling on the ground around our mess-boxes, which are used for tables at mealtime, and stored in the ends of the wagons when we are moving ahead.”

“There, I can’t think of another word to write.” She closed the book with a bang.

For many minutes after gathering around the tables, all were too busy with the supper to make any attempt at conversation.

Beans and bacon, coffee and crackers, and great heaps of stewed fruits, were reinforced by mountains of steaming flapjacks, which Mary and Marjorie took turns at baking, their eyes watery from the smoke of the open fire, and their cheeks reddened by the wind.

“Wonder what’s become o’ Scotty,” said Captain Ranger, as he knelt in the absent teamster’s place at table and helped himself bountifully.

“He filled our water-buckets and was off like a shot,” said Hal. “He ought to show up at mealtime. Ah, there he comes.”

“Where’ve you been, Scotty?” asked the Captain. “Here’s plenty of room. Kneel, and give an account of yourself.”

“So you’re in love, eh, Scotty? and with that pretty widow in the next camp?”

The questioner was a tall, lanky teamster, answering to the appellation of Shorty.

“Never in love before,” said Scotty, as he swallowed his coffee with a gulp.

An uproarious laugh ran around the table.

“Her hair is like the flower o’ Scotia’s broom in springtime, and the sheen o’ her eyes is like Loch Achray!” exclaimed Scotty, as he passed his plate for a fresh relay of flapjacks.

“A love affair doesn’t spoil his appetite,” laughed Marjorie.

“I want you all to understand that no falling in love’ll be allowed on this journey,” said the Captain, dryly. “There’ll be time enough for that kind o’ nonsense after you get to Oregon and get settled.”

“Love, like death, has all seasons for its own, sir,” retorted Scotty, with a deferential bow.

“Women and war don’t go together,” replied his employer. “And you’ll find this journey is a good deal like war before you’re done with it.”

“Everything is fair in both love and war, sir.”

“Excuse me,” said a woman in black, with a low, mellow voice and blond complexion, who might have heard herself discussed if she had listened. The clatter around the table stopped instantly.

“We’re in a quandary, mamma and I,” she said, blushing. “Our matches are damp and won’t burn. I thought perhaps—”

A half-dozen men were on their feet in an instant, and half-a-dozen hands went suddenly into half-a-dozen pockets, while half-a-dozen blocks of matches were forthcoming in less than half a minute.

“Here are more than I need, gentlemen, and I thank you ever so much,” she said, taking the offer from Scotty; and, with a bow and a smile to all, she was gone.

“The red of her lips is like rubies, the white of her teeth is like pearls, and her voice is a symphony,” said Scotty, looking after her as she ran.

“Scotty’s attack is as sudden as it is serious,” laughed Lengthy, a short, stocky teamster, whose nickname was a ludicrous misfit.

“What freak o’ fate do you s’pose it was that brought that beauty out here on a journey like this?” asked Yank, a Southern-born teamster, whose accepted nickname was another palpable misnomer, and who dropped his r’s, like a negro preacher.

“I know!” cried Bobbie, his fingers dripping with molasses. “She came to meet Scotty.”

The laugh that followed disconcerted the child, who ran, abashed, to his mother in the family wagon.

“I thought,” exclaimed Sambo,—a gaunt Vermonter, who dropped his g’s as frequently as Yank dropped his r’s,—“I thought there’d be several ladies comin’ along, to keep us company.”

“Can you tell us why Mrs. O’Dowd didn’t join us?” asked Yank, turning deferentially to the Captain. “I thought we were to have the pleasure of one woman’s company,—I mean in addition to the ladies present, of course.”

Jean exchanged furtive glances with her father, who averted his face, and said: “That’s a conundrum, Yank. Ask me something easy.”

The next noticeable entry in Jean’s diary was made on the fifth of April, and was as follows:—

“The snow this morning is four inches deep. We camped last night in the mud and slush, in a narrow lane, after a hard day’s wheeling through the miry roads. Mother, dear woman, is weary and weak, but daddie got her a warm room in the farmhouse near us, where we children are allowed to go sometimes to thaw our marrow-bones by a pleasant fire.

“April 6. Cloudy to-day, with a threat of rain. But mother urges a forward movement, so Mary and Marjorie are packing the mess-boxes, and daddie says I must write up this horrid diary. There is nothing to write about. The country through which we are struggling is swampy, monotonous, muddy, and level. Cheap, rickety farmhouses are seen at intervals; the bridges are gone from most of the swollen streams; our way goes through narrow, muddy lanes, with crooked, tumble-down fences; and we see, every now and then, a discouraged-looking woman and a lot of half-clad children peeping through open doors, from the midst of a crowd of half-starved dogs. Daddie says these frontier people (and dogs) are the forerunners of all civilization; but I think they’re the embodiment of desolation and discouragement.

“April 7. The ague has broken out among our teamsters. We stopped to-night at a farmhouse, where suspicious women treated us like so many thieves. The whole family were barefoot, and lacked everything but numbers. Mother says that starvation has aroused their cupidity, and we mustn’t mind their suspicious airs. They had no feed for sale for the stock, and no supplies to sell for our table; but there were plenty of guns and dogs,—the latter a thieving lot,—from which we shall be glad to escape when we again see morning. Weather and roads no better.

“April 8. Mother quite ill again; but the skies are clear, and she insists on moving forward.

“April 11. No food for man or beast to be had for love or money. We must move onward, sick or well.

“April 12. A better-settled region. The scenery is often fine. Pussy-willows peep at us from marshy edges, and birds are singing in the budding treetops. Sick folks no better. Bought a liberal supply of corn for the stock, and a lot of butter, eggs, and chickens for the rest of us, so we have a feast in prospect. Camped on the edge of a pretty little village, on a nice green grass-plat. Daddie took us girls to a prayer-meeting. The good people eyed us askance. Evidently they thought us freaks. Certainly our slat sunbonnets and soiled linsey-woolsey dresses were not reassuring.”

The next day, at nightfall, the party reached Quincy, on the Mississippi, and camped on a flat bit of upland outside of the city’s limits, where many other wayfarers, like themselves, had halted and encamped.

“Did you notice Scotty?” asked Marjorie, approaching Jean, who sat on a wagon-tongue, trying to think of something out of the ordinary to jot in her journal.

“What’s he up to now?”

“He’s been preening his feathers like a turkey-gobbler for the last half-hour. Guess our pretty widow and her aristocratic mamma have caught up with our train. Just watch him! See how the ex-scientist, ex-statesman, ex-orator, and now ex-almost-anything is making a fool of himself!”

“All people, of both sexes, get a spell of the simples, sooner or later,” laughed Jean. “Daddie says that when the system is in the right condition to catch it, one gets it bad.”

“Guess I’ll ride out and look over the town a little, Annie,” said the Captain to his wife after the family had retired for the night. “I want to look out a little for our Scotty. He seems to need a guardian.”

Scotty, though a characteristic specimen of the educated Scotchman, was a loyal adherent of the institutions of his adopted country. He had been a member of the constitutional conventions of two border States, and was known as a writer and orator of no mean ability. But, like many another brilliant man, he had passed his fortieth year without acquiring a home, a family, or a competence. He was well versed in the “Rise and Fall of Republics,” and had travelled much in foreign lands,—themes of which he never tired. But he could never reduce ox-driving to a science.

Captain Ranger rode to the top of the bluffs, where he leisurely contemplated the scene. Lights reflected from town and river danced and gleamed, but barely made the darkness visible in the muddy streets. Church bells rang, steamers whistled, and longshoremen tugged at heavy loads. Powerful horses propelled great, clumsy freight-wagons through the unpaved streets. Foot passengers picked their way through slop and mud.

“Railroads will come here some day,” said the Captain to himself. “They will compete with the river traffic and cripple it. Other towns, like Chicago, will divert the trade, and there is no telling what the end will be. What a busy, bustling world it is, anyhow!”

“Halloa, Captain!”

“Well, I’m blanked if it isn’t Scotty!”

“I’ve been to call upon the widows we met in the beginning of our journey, sir, and I’ve been thinking it would be a handsome thing for you to do if you’d take them into our company, Captain Ranger.”

“We’ll see about it, Scotty; but I’m afraid you won’t earn your salt if I let them join us. I s’pose I’ll have to risk it, though.”

VIII
A BORDER INCIDENT

The public roads or thoroughfares through which the party floundered when crossing the sparsely settled counties of western Illinois, which had noticeably improved during the day or two of travel from the East toward Quincy, grew almost impassable on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River. Heavy freight-wagons, each bearing an immense load of merchandise, chiefly hides and furs from the Northwest Territory, had stirred the mud in the narrow lane to a seemingly inexhaustible depth; and the long spell of freezing by night, followed daily by the inevitable thaw, caused the many unbridged streams to overflow their banks and inundate the wide wastes of bottom land through which the ox teams were compelled to wander blindly, in continual danger of disaster. But the most disagreeable experiences resulted from the frequent snow-storms, which generally occurred at camping-time, accompanied by chilling winds and intermittent falls of rain or sleet, covering the earth with a glare of ice.

“When I get to heaven, I mean to ask Saint Peter to assign all cooks to high seats,” said Jean one evening, as, balancing a tray laden with tin cups and saucers, she paused above the heads of the men kneeling at the mess-boxes, and in apparent innocence upset a steaming cup upon the head of Yank.

“No harm done, I assure you, Miss Rangeah. Don’t mention it!” he said, affecting not to feel the burn at the back of his neck, whereat Jean grew repentant.

“Do you s’pose Saint Peter will pay any heed to the request of a slip of a girl like you?” asked Hal.

“I’ll not be a slip of a girl when I go through the gates o’ heaven, but a mature matron, famous and honored.”

“We are in a slave State now,” wrote Jean, under date of April 16; “and from my limited experience I am forced to conclude that slavery is more deteriorating in its effects upon the white people we meet than it is upon the blacks. The primitive cultivating of the soil we saw in central Illinois, where the white men do their own farming, was bad enough, God knows; but the shiftless, aimless, happy-go-lucky work of the Missouri ‘niggers,’ as they style themselves, is even worse. The white men we see at times are idle, pompous, and lazy. The white women are idle and apathetic; and the children are aimless and discouraged. Daddie says slavery is wrong, and no contingency can make it right; but I notice that he doesn’t propose any remedy.”

Prairie schooners were not known as “ships of the desert” then, for Joaquin Miller had not yet sought or acquired fame; and no Huntington or Holladay had made a transcontinental railway track, or tunnelled the sierras of the mighty West to open the way for the iron horse. Even the overland stage was an improvement as yet unknown; for Holladay had not yet established his relay stations, or sent his intrepid drivers out among the savages as heralds of approaching civilization.

“Daddy says humanity’s a hog,” was the leader in Jean’s next entry in her diary. “The weather continued so bad, mother was so wan and weak, and the stock were so nearly starved, that he decided to stop over for a day or two near a farmhouse and barnyard, where there seemed a chance to purchase food for man and beast. But we were glad to move on after a rather brief experience. The farmer doubled the price of his hay and grain every morning after ‘worship,’ reminding those of us who could not choose but hear his daily dole of advice to God, of Grandpa Ranger’s story of a planter and merchant he knew in his youth, of whom it was said that he would call his slaves to their devotions in the morning with a preamble like this: ‘Have you wet the leather? Have you sanded the sugar? Have you put meal in the pepper and chicory in the coffee? Have you watered the whiskey? Then come in to prayers!’”

The necessities of these farmers were born of isolation; and the opportunities for barter and dicker with passing emigrants stirred the acquisitive spirit within them into vigorous action. The prices of their hitherto unsalable commodities went up to unheard-of figures, increasing in geometrical progression. But Captain Ranger, having created a market in the remote country places in Illinois for supplies of coffee, tea, calico, and unbleached cotton cloth, had prepared himself at Quincy with such commodities, and was able to adjust his trade somewhat to the law of supply and demand.

Oh, those teamsters of the plains! No jollier crowd of brave, enduring, accommodating men ever cracked cruel whips over the backs of long-enduring oxen, or plodded more patiently than they beside the slowly moving wagons, as, wading often over shoe-tops through the muck and mire of the Missouri roads of early springtime, they jollied one another and cracked their whips and sang. Each misfit nickname was accepted as a joke, and none of the men inquired as to the origin of his peculiar cognomen. But Hal, being more inquisitive than they, asked troublesome questions of his sisters, who were in the secret.

“Better tell him, girls,” said their mother. “He’ll be in honor bound to keep the secret then. Won’t you, dear?”

“Jean did it,” said Marjorie.

“Then suppose you confess,” said Hal.

“It was this way,” she explained after a pause of mock seriousness. “The first night we were in camp, after we had washed the dishes, it occurred to me to write each teamster’s name and paste it to the bottom of his plate. I didn’t know the real name of one of ’em from Adam’s, so I wrote them down as Scotty, Limpy, Yank, Shorty, Sawed-off, and so on. We didn’t intend to perpetrate a misfit, but a joke, and we struck both. Scotty got the correct title, though it merely happened so. But you just watch ’em! Limpy’s as straight as an Indian; Sawed-off stands six feet two in his socks; Lengthy is no taller when he stands up than when he lies down; Yank is a characteristic slave-owner; and Sambo is an ingrained abolitionist!”

“We couldn’t have made such a lot o’ misfits if we had tried a week,” said Mary. “But the men all think Hal did it; so the suspicion doesn’t fall on us; and you get the credit for being somewhat of a wag, Mr. Hal.”

“It’s nothing new for men or boys to take the credit for what their sisters do,” said Jean, as Hal strode away, satisfied that in protecting his sisters from a piece of folly, by accepting it as his own, he was acting the part of a man. “Adam set the example; and where would Herschel have been if he hadn’t had a sister?”

“Adam might have been in a box if he couldn’t have had Eve,” laughed Marjorie; “for there would then have been nobody to raise Cain.”

“Or the Ranger family,” added Jean.

Several days of tedious, laborious travel brought the wanderers into an open, sparsely timbered, almost unsettled part of the State of Missouri. The snow and sleet gave way to brighter skies, the roads and sloughs were drying up, and the higher grounds were gradually arraying themselves in robes of green and gold.

“Here is vacant land, and lots of it,” said Mary, as she viewed the virgin prospect of a mighty settlement in undisguised admiration. “This is a beautiful world!” and she sighed deeply, her face toward the rising sun.

“Don’t look backward,” cried Jean. “Remember Lot’s wife.”

“There’s no use in trying to look backward,” urged Hal. “Dad will never halt till he lands us on the western shore of the continent, on the eastern hem of the Pacific Ocean. He says this country’s too old for him. The wild turkeys are all killed off, or scared out o’ sight; the deer and elk are gone for good; and the country’s played out.”

“Wait a few years, and there’ll be railroads gridironing this whole great valley of the Mississippi,” said Jean. “There’ll be towns and cities springing up in a hundred places. Farms and orchards and handsome country homes will cover these rolling prairies. The native groves will be more than quadrupled by cultivation, and schoolhouses and churches will spring into existence everywhere.”

“I wish you’d talk like this to your father! Won’t you, Jean?” asked Mrs. Ranger.

“You couldn’t hire him to live in a slave State!” cried Jean.

“The Reverend Thomas Rogers might manage to get this far on the way toward the setting sun without much money,” smiled Mrs. Ranger, meaningly. “The children favor our stopping here, on Missouri soil,” she added, as her husband joined the group. “Don’t you think the idea a good one, John?”

“What! And let the word go back among our people at home that we’d flunked? No! I’d die first, and then I wouldn’t do it,” exclaimed her husband, petulantly.

Mrs. Ranger burst into tears.

“There, there, Annie! Don’t worry. But don’t ask me to settle, with my children, in a slave State. Father left Kentucky when I was a boy to get away from slavery and its inevitable accompaniment of poor white trash. There is an irrepressible conflict between freedom and every form of involuntary servitude that exists under the sun. This nigger business will lead to a bloody war long before Uncle Sam is done with it, and I doubt if even war will settle it.”

“But Oregon may come into the Union as a slave State, John. You know that the extension of slavery is the chief theme that is agitating Congress now.”

“I’ll have a chance to fight the curse in Oregon, Annie. But it is a settled condition here. I’ll fight it to the bitter end, if I get a chance!” He strode away to look after the cattle and men.

“Dear, patient mother!” cried Jean, stroking her mother’s cheek tenderly. “Your head is as clear as a bell. But there’s a whole lot o’ common-sense in what daddie says, too. We’ll soon have settled weather; then you won’t mind travelling. We all think you’ll be well and strong as soon as we get settled in Oregon.”

“Maybe so, if I could only live to get there,” faltered the feeble woman. “But—”

“But what, mother?”

“Nothing. I was only thinking.”

Jean’s heart sank. “You must get to bed, mother dear,” she said lovingly.

The Ranger children, tired out with the fatigue and excitement of the day, were soon locked in the deep sleep of healthy youth and vigor. Not so Mrs. Ranger. The regular breathing of her sleeping loved ones soothed her nerves, but she seemed preternaturally awake.

A gentle breeze stirred the white wagon-hood overhead. Sukie, who was tethered near, neighed gently as Mrs. Ranger spoke her name, and came closer to be stroked.

“Is de Cap’n heah?” asked a dusky figure with a child on its hip, as it edged its way between the mare and the wagon-wheel.

“He’s out with the cattle at present. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Hide me, quick! De houn’s is aftah me, honey. I’ve jes’ waded de crick, and dey’ve lost de trail. Quick, missus; an’ I’ll sarve ye forever!”

The low baying of the bloodhounds proclaimed that they were again on the trail.

“Climb in here! Be quick!” exclaimed Mrs. Ranger, making room for the quaking fugitive. “I’ve never tried to sleep with a nigger and her baby, but I can stand it if I have to,” she said to herself, as the refugee took the place assigned to her.

“What in thunder are you up to now?” asked her husband when he looked in upon his wife and children in the morning and discovered the dusky intruder.

“Trying to help you to circumvent the institution you are so ready to fight, which, as you say, is wrong, and no contingency can make right,” replied his wife, her cheeks and eyes aglow with mingled satisfaction and excitement.

IX
THE CAPTAIN DEFENDS THE LAW

“Don’t you know it’s against the laws of your country to harbor a runaway nigger?” asked the Captain, in genuine alarm. “We’ll never get off o’ Missouri soil in this world if we’re caught hiding this wench and her pickaninny among our traps. She’s got to get away from here in a hurry.”

“So far as the laws go, I don’t care a rap, John. I, nor no other woman, ever took a hand in making any of ’em. And as for Missouri soil, it’s good enough for anybody. I’m quite enamored of it; and I feel perfectly willing to stay here as long as I live.”

“I don’t want to make no trouble for nobody, massa,” sobbed the fugitive, peeping from her covert like a beast at bay. “De missus done tuk keep o’ me ’dout ’siderin’ any consikenses. Didn’t ye, honey?”

“There was nothing else I could do,” said Mrs. Ranger, firmly, though her cheeks blanched with an unspoken fear.

“Dey was goin’ to sell me down Souf, an’ keep my coon for a body-servant for his own pappy’s new bride dat’s a-comin’ to de plantation nex’ week. Wusn’t dey, dawlin’?” holding aloft her mulatto offspring, who blinked at the rising sun. “’Fo’ God, massa, I won’t make a speck o’ trouble. I’ll jest keep a hidin’ till we git across de Missouri Ribbah. Take me ’long to Oregon, an’ ye won’t nebbah be sorry.”

“I’ve already agreed to take along one widow and her babies,” said the Captain, exchanging glances with Jean. “It doesn’t seem possible to add to the number.”

“Jes’ le’ me ride a hidin’ in a wagon till I get across de Missouri Ribbah, massa! I kin take keer o’ myself an’ my pickaninny too, if you’ll turn me loose among de Injuns.”

“It is the slaveholding, free American white man that the poor creature’s afraid of,” said Mrs. Ranger, with a bitter smile.

Again the deep baying of the bloodhounds betokened the finding of the trail.

“Climb back into the wagon, quick,” cried the Captain, “and take care that you keep out o’ sight! Deluge the wagon-wheel and all around it with water, gals. Don’t let the wench put her nose out, Annie. Hang the luck! When it comes to such a pass that a runaway wench would rather trust herself and her brat among the red savages of the plains than among her white owners in a free country, I get ashamed of a white man’s government. What’s the wench’s name?”

“She said it was Dugs.”

“The devil!”

“Don’t swear, John. She didn’t name herself.”

“And the name of the coon?”

“Geo’ge Washin’t’n, sah. I named him for de faddah o’ de kentry. He’s as han’some a coon as ebber had a white daddy. Ain’t ye, honey?” And the mother held him close. “Yo’s a flower o’ slavery, ain’t ye, dawlin’?” a hidden meaning in her voice.

Again the deep baying of the bloodhounds was heard. But they were taking the back trail. The fugitive laughed.

“De way we larn ’em dat trick is a niggah’s secret,” she said, as she again hid herself and child.

“My massa didn’t use to b’lieve in slavery, missus,” she said, as the baying of the dogs grew faint and distant. “When massa first ’herited his slaves, he used to tell us he’d set us free. But he got a habit o’ holdin’ on to us, an’ it jist growed on him. It was like de whiskey habit. It got fastened on him good an’ ha’d, and he didn’t talk ’bout manumittin’ us no mo’. He didn’t want to sell me, he said, but I was prope’ty, an’ times got bad, an’ he was ’bleeged to have money to pay his debts. His new wife’s ’spensive, awful, an’ he had to sell some o’ de niggahs. If he’d sol’ me an’ Geo’dy Wah too, I wouldn’t ’a’ runned away. But when he said he’d sell me, an’ keep my coon to be his new wife’s niggah, I couldn’t stan’ it nohow, so I scooted!” and the negress laughed heartily.

“Do you think you can hide her for a week, Annie? We’ll be across the Missouri River, by that time.”

“I’ll do my best, John. We’re running a terrible risk, though. Sometimes, when I think of the sins of this so-called free government, all committed in the name of Liberty, I long to turn rebel, and do my best to destroy it, root and branch.”

“I had a husban’ once, suh. But massa tuk a liken’ to me, so he sol’ him down Souf,” said the fugitive.

“And this baby?”

“Is my massa’s own coon. Massa wouldn’t ’a’ sol’ him nohow.”

“Be quick!” cried Jean, her breath hot with indignation. “Hide yourself! You mustn’t let the teamsters see you here. They’re coming in with the cattle now.”

“Gimme some quilts an’ blankets, honey. Dah! Hol’ ’em up, so! Now lemme make an Injun wickiup in one end o’ dis yah wagon. Geo’ge Washin’t’n ’ll be still as a lamb. Won’t ye, my putty ’ittle yallow coon?”

The baby, with its tawny skin, blue eyes, and blackish-brown, tangled curls, looked elfish as he nestled close to his mother’s breast and gazed affrighted into her turban-shaded eyes.

“Sh-sh-sh!” cried Jean; “the men are almost here. Keep close to your den and be very quiet.”

Day after day passed wearily along; but if the teamsters suspected aught, they made no sign. And day after day the teams wended their way westward without betraying the commission of this crime against the commonwealth of the great new State of Missouri and the free government of the United States of America, which it would have been base flattery to call a misdemeanor; as its perpetrators would have learned to their cost if they had been caught in the act.

“You don’t seem as happy as formerly,” said Captain Ranger to his wife at the close of a long and trying day. “If the risk we’re running by harboring that runaway nigger is making you uneasy, we can turn her out. A man’s first duty is to his own flesh and blood.”

“It isn’t that, John. The woman is no trouble; and her baby’s so afraid of bloodhounds that she keeps him as quiet as a mouse. I’m willing to risk my life to get them both away from their white owners and out into the Indians’ country, where they may have at least comparative freedom. I am not afraid.”

“Then what is the matter, dear?”

She toyed caressingly with his hair and beard, but said nothing. They were seated on a log by the roadside, and a laughing rivulet sprawled at their feet.

“Speak, Annie; don’t hesitate. I can hear your heart beat. What’s the matter?”

“You remember my little farm, John? It’s only ten acres, you know.”

“Yes; what of it?”

“You won’t be angry, John?”

“Of course not. What about it?”

“I want to deed the place over to my mother before we leave the State o’ Missouri.”

His manner changed instantly.

“I thought that matter was settled,” he said tersely. “Can’t you let me have a little peace?”

“I have held my peace as long as my conscience will let me, dear. You didn’t settle anything about it. You merely put me off, you know.”

“Well?”

A man can put a world of meaning into a monosyllable sometimes.

“I want you to let me deed that piece of property to my mother. If the deed were made to my father, and she should outlive him, she’d be only allowed to occupy it free from rent for one year after his death; but if it is made hers absolutely, and he should outlive her, he’ll be allowed to have a home and get his living off it as long as he lives. You see, it makes a difference whether it is a cow or an ox that is gored,” and she smiled grimly.

“The women are all getting their heads turned over the question of property,” said Captain Ranger to himself as he watched the rivulet playing at his feet.

“Jean’s been putting this into your head, Annie,” he said after a painful silence.

“The child has a strong sense of justice, inherited from you, John. You know she is wonderfully like you.”

“Yes, yes, Annie. I wish she had been a boy instead o’ Hal. She’d have made a rackin’ good lawyer.”

“I’ll admit that she advised me to urge you to make the deed, John.”

“Very well; we’ll see about it sometime, Annie” and he arose to go.

Mrs. Ranger’s heart sank.

“Why is it that men who are proverbially just and upright in their dealings with their fellow-men are so often derelict in duty where women, especially their own wives, are concerned?” she asked herself as she tottered by his side in silence.

The next morning found her unable to rise. A racking cough, which had disturbed her all through the night, was followed at daybreak by a burning fever. Her husband, who had slept like a top in an adjoining tent, was startled when he saw the ravages the night had left upon her pinched, white face.

“You caught cold last night, darling,” he said, as he prescribed a simple remedy. “You ought not to have been sitting out in the night air.”

“That didn’t hurt me, John.”

“Then it is the apprehension you suffer on account o’ that wench that is making you sick.”

“No, John; it isn’t that at all.”

“Then what is it?”

“Ask Jean. I have nothing more to say.”

But there was no time for further parleying. The breakfast was ready, and the hurry of preparation for departure was the theme of the hour.

“We reached camp in a pouring rain last night and pitched our tents, amid much discomfort, on the outskirts of the little town of St. Joseph,” wrote Jean on the morning of the fifth of May. “But I haven’t much time for you, my journal, for there are other things to claim attention,” and she shut the book with the usual impatient bang.

“Got any blank deeds along with you, daddie?” she asked, after it was announced that they were to be ready to break camp the next morning.

“Yes; why?”

“Because we must have that deed of Grandma Robinson’s all ready for mother to acknowledge before a notary in the morning, as we go through town on our way to the ferry.”

“Your mother isn’t able to attend to any business.”

“She isn’t able to put it off, daddie dear.”

“Very well; I’ll see about it.”

“But I want the blank form now, so I can have it all ready when we go through town. Mother has the original deed, and I can easily duplicate it. I’ll search for a blank among your papers, if you don’t object.”

“You have no idea how this little act of justice will help mother to regain her health,” said Mary. “She’s been haunted by a fear that you’d put it off till it would be too late.”

Captain Ranger did not reply; but his silence was considered as consent, and Jean hurried away to prepare the deed.

“I’ve been dreaming about an island somewhere in mid-ocean,” said Marjorie, “where women could hold their own earnings, just as men do in the United States; where they had full liberty to help the men to make the laws, for which they paid their full quota of taxes, just as the women do in Missouri and Illinois and, for aught I know, in Oregon.”

“I’ve paid the taxes on that ten-acre farm for a dozen years,” said her father.

“Yes, out of mother’s income from it,” retorted Marjorie. “It has always been rented, you know.”

The subject was dropped for the nonce, though John Ranger did not feel wholly at ease, he hardly realized why. But the next day, as the train was moving through the principal street on its way to the river-front, he stopped his team hard by a notary’s office and tenderly assisted his wife to alight. Here, with her thin and trembling fingers, Annie Ranger affixed her signature to her last earthly deed of conveyance, her eyes beaming with joy.

“Are you satisfied now?” asked her husband, as he lifted her to her seat in the wagon, where she watched Harry rushing away to the post-office with a big envelope containing the precious deed.

“Yes, dear; and I am so glad I didn’t have to make my mark! When I get to Oregon, I’ll manage somehow to earn the money to pay you what I owe on my taxes, John.”

“Don’t speak of that,” her husband exclaimed, feeling half ashamed of himself, for a reason he did not divine.

“Then you’ll never try to hold those old tax receipts as a lien on the property?”

“Nonsense, Annie! Do you think I’m a brute beast?”

“No, darling. I would to God all men were as good as you are, my own dear, precious husband.”

They were nearing the Missouri River now, and in the rush that ensued, the family had no opportunity for further exchange of confidences for many hours.

“Look!” cried Marjorie, after the last loaded wagon had been crowded on to the big ferry-boat, and they had started to a point several miles up the river to make a landing on the opposite bank. “There’s a posse of officers. They’re after Dugs, I know they are, ’cause they’ve got bloodhounds with ’em, and they’re signalling the boat to stop and come back.”

“She can’t do it,” said the captain of the ferry, after a hurried conference with the captain of the train, as he suspiciously thrust his closed hand into the breeches pocket over his hip.

“You can come out of hiding now, Sally O’Dowd,” exclaimed Captain Ranger, as soon as the last team was safely up the opposite bank.

“I thought it was Dugs they were after,” said Mary.

“So ’twas; and me too,” cried the grass widow, as she jumped to the ground, surrounded by her three children. “Sam O’Dowd was one o’ the posse. I saw him. He couldn’t have taken me; but he was after my babies.” She hugged her children, as she laughed and wept by turns in a transport of joy.

“Don’t cry, Sally,” said the Captain, coaxingly. “You’re in the Indian country, safe and sound.”

“Before Sam can get a requisition from the Governor of Illinois to reclaim your babies, and before the Governor o’ Missouri can give that party o’ slave-catchers the power to arrest Dugs and her coon, we’ll have you out under the protection of the Indians!” said Mrs. Ranger, with a meaning smile.

X
THE CAPTAIN MAKES A DISTINCTION

“I thought it was arranged that Sally was to join us at Quincy, on the Mississippi,” said Captain Ranger, after they were safely landed in the Indians’ territory.

“That was the agreement between Jean and myself,” interposed the frightened fugitive, still holding her babies close; “but I overheard a conversation at St. Louis that changed my plans. I was in hiding, down among the wharf-rats and niggers on the river-bank, in a cheap hash-house, half scow and half log cabin. The walls were thin, and I couldn’t sleep much, so I heard most everything that was going on, out o’ doors and in. And one night by the help of the good Lord I overheard a voice that I knew was Sam’s. He was telling a pal that he was hunting his runaway wife. He said she had stolen his babies, and he meant to get ’em, dead or alive.”

“I thought you’d led him off on an altogether different scent,” exclaimed Jean.

“So did I. But it appears that his mother got on the scent somehow, and betrayed me. I don’t know why she did it, for she was over-anxious to be rid of the children. But I suppose she was moved by an impulse of spite or revenge. I heard Sam say he’d overhaul us at Quincy, so I had good reason to change my route.”

“You had a close call, Mrs. O’Dowd!” exclaimed the Captain, earnestly. “I don’t know as he could have put me in limbo for harboring you, but he could have made it go hard with me for hiding the children. I hate a law-breaker; but what is a fellow to do in such a case?”

“God has been merciful to me, Squire. I felt all along that I would get away safe and sound.”

“Wouldn’t God have done a better job to have saved you in the first place?” asked the Captain, dryly.

“How did you get money to pay your travelling expenses?” asked Mary.

“I’ve a confession to make to you and Mrs. Ranger, Captain. Will you promise not to scold?”

“I’ll know better what to promise after I’ve learned the provocation. Don’t be afraid to tell the truth. Speak out. Don’t mind the gals.”

“I stole three hundred dollars—it was my own money—from Mother O’Dowd,” she whispered. “It didn’t seem so very wicked. She got my home without any equivalent, you know.”

“Oh, Sally! How could you?” asked Mrs. Ranger, her cheeks blanching.

“Do you think it was wicked to take my own money and my own children, when I had the opportunity?”

“It was a theft, certainly, under the law; and it is always wrong to steal,” retorted Mrs. Ranger.

“We must uphold the majesty of the law, if necessary, at the muzzle of our guns!” said the Captain, loftily.

“How about Dugs and her coon?” asked Jean, with a silvery laugh.

“That was different. Slavery, as I have often said before, is wrong, and no contingency can make it right.”

“You are making a distinction where there is no perceptible difference, except in the matter of complexion,” exclaimed Mrs. Ranger.

“Did Dugs, the slave, have money?” asked Mrs. O’Dowd.

“Dugs hasn’t taken me into her confidence,” said the Captain. “What in creation are we to do with you all?”

“There’ll be a way, John; don’t worry,” said his wife. “‘Trust in the Lord and do good, and verily thou shalt be fed.’”

“Do you know,” said Sally, turning to the Captain, “that the pretty little blonde in black, whom I see over yonder, is a jewel? I met her on the street this morning, on her way to the ferry, with her mother and her carriage and wagons and drivers. I was getting desperate with the fear that I couldn’t overtake you; and I knew there was no time to be lost. So I told her my story. I may have exaggerated somewhat, for I told her you had agreed to take me and the babies to Oregon. I said I had been detained (which was true) and I must overtake you before you crossed the river. She didn’t wait to ask a question, but bundled us all into her carriage without a word.”

“Didn’t I tell you you could trust my daddie?” asked Jean, aside. “He’s a whole lot better than he thinks he is.”

“Father thinks he is a stickler for the law,” said Mary, with a chuckle.

Indians came and went in great numbers around and into the company’s first night’s camp on the plains, sometimes growing insolent in their persistent demands for food and articles of clothing, but on the whole peaceable and friendly. Every man, woman, and child was under orders to give them no cause for offence, the Captain hoping, by example, to disarm hostility. But he soon learned that this liberal policy brought hordes of beggars; and the necessity of carefully guarding their freight was made apparent the next morning, when they found their breakfast supplies had been stolen, and with them the cooking utensils. The Captain found it necessary to send a messenger back to St. Joseph to purchase fresh supplies before they could go on.

The next day’s drive over the beautiful prairie was without unusual incident. The roads were good, the soil rich, and the undulating landscape perfect.

“Lengthy and Sawed-off are bringing in a buffalo,” cried Hal.

“We had one yesterday,” said Mrs. Ranger. “The game ought not to be slaughtered in this wasteful manner. You ought to stop it, John.”

“Men are still in a state of savagery,” replied her husband.

“The instinct to kill is as strong in us as it was in the days of Agamemnon,” said Scotty.

“Or the Cæsars,” exclaimed the little widow.

“We’ll need this meat for food before we get to Oregon,” said Mrs. Ranger, surveying the huge carcass of the fallen monarch thoughtfully. “We must cut the flesh into strips and dry it, Indian fashion, in the sun.”

“But we can’t stop to dry it, Annie,” exclaimed her husband.

“We needn’t stop, John. We can get the men to cut it into strips while in camp. Here is a ball of strong cord. We can string the strips of meat on the cord and festoon it along the outsides of the wagon covers.”

“A woman is a born provider,” exclaimed Scotty. “We men may take to ourselves the credit for the care of women and children, but we’d soon be on the road to starvation if it were not for the protecting care of the mother sex, to help us out.”

Mrs. Ranger, pleased with the praises of her family and the teamster, sank back on her pillows and slept fitfully.

“It pays a mother to rear a family of loyal children,” said Mrs. O’Dowd to Mrs. McAlpin, with whom she had become quite intimate. “I’d rather be an honored mother, like Mrs. Ranger, than be a Queen Elizabeth or a Madame de Staël.”

“I believe I’ll reconnoitre a little, Annie, if you don’t mind,” said the Captain, after the camp was still. “I’d like to study the lay o’ the land from the adjacent heights. You won’t miss me?”

“No, John. Or, I mean, I won’t mind it. You must learn, sooner or later, to depend upon yourself for company, my dear. And you’d better practise a little beforehand.”

“What do you mean, Annie?”

“Can’t you see that I’ll not be able to finish this journey, John?”

“Nonsense, Annie! Just be patient till we get to Oregon. I mean to build you a pretty room, away from the noise of the household, where you’ll enjoy the fruits of your labors. I’ve hired Dugs to be your body-servant during the remainder of your days.”

“I’ll change her name, John. I’ll have nobody around me that answers to the name of Dugs. It isn’t a good name for a dog.”

“What’ll you call her?”

“Susannah.”

“What if she objects?”

“She’s already agreed to the change, if it suits you and the girls.”

John Ranger laughed.

“So-long!” he cried, and galloped away to a point overlooking a bend in the river, where he loosened the reins and allowed the mare to nibble the tender herbage, which, tempted by the sunshine, was clothing the moist earth in a covering of grass and buttercups.

“O life,” he cried, “what a mystery you are! How puny, yet how mighty! The living rain comes down in silent majesty upon the sleeping earth; the living sunshine melts the ice and snow; and the living earth, awakening from her season of hibernation, answers back to rain and sun with a power of reproduction that defies the mighty law of gravitation, and sends outward and up toward the living sky the living vegetation that sustains the living man. O sky, all a-twinkle with your myriads of stars, how inscrutable you are in your infinitude! And how like a worm of the dust is man, who has no power to hold in the precious body of even the woman he loves the mystery of existence, of which Creation is the only master!”

Below him, so far away that it gleamed like a silver ribbon in the starlight, ran the muddy Missouri, carrying in its turbid waves the débris of the Mandan district, and bearing on its troubled breast the throng of river craft at whose little windows hundreds of lights were twinkling, like diamonds on parade. Beyond gleamed the moving steamers and their accompanying hosts of lesser boats, now nestling close to the water’s edge, and now climbing in irregular fashion toward the uplands at the town of St. Joseph; and, far beyond, his mental eyes beheld the homes of his own and his Annie’s beloved parents.

“I do wonder if it is really wrong for me to leave them in their old age, and take Annie away also,” he said to himself, half audibly, as he continued his gaze over the dim expanse of silence that surrounded him on every hand.

There was no answer. He gave Sukie the rein and bowed his head upon his hands, and wept. How long he remained alone, absorbed in the mingled emotions that possessed him, he did not know. He took no note of time, and Sukie moved leisurely over the plain, daintily cropping the tender grass.

“I was ambitious, selfish, and exacting,” he exclaimed at last, as a sharp gust of wind slapped him in the face. “Annie doesn’t complain; but she is fading from my sight. It is all my fault. If she could be happy, she would soon be well. I wonder if I ought not to take her back to her father and mother and her childhood’s home. Everybody would laugh; but what should I care? Are not the life and happiness of my wife worth more to me than all the world’s approval?” Then, after a long silence, he tightened the reins and said: “Come, Sukie; let’s go back to camp. Right or wrong, I must go ahead. I’ve burned my bridges behind me.”

As he expected, Scotty was found sitting in the midst of an audience at Mrs. McAlpin’s camp-fire. He was discoursing on his travels in Egypt, and had collected about him quite a crowd.

“The earth is old, very, very old,” the teamster was saying. He arose to make room for Captain Ranger, as he passed the reins to Jean, who, with Mary and Marjorie, had been an enraptured listener. “The comparative topography of Central America and northern Africa excites the liveliest speculation. When I was in Darien, I found many features among the ruins abounding in the jungles of the isthmus, strikingly similar to those one sees in the land of the Pyramids. True, the analogy is not always apparent, because the almost total absence of rain in Egypt is exchanged for an almost total lack of dry skies in Panama and Yucatan. Science scoffs at my assumptions, because I cannot prove them; but I’d bet a million if I had it, and wait for the fact to be proven—as it surely will be some day—that there was once a continuous continent between the homes of the early Pharaohs and those of a prehistoric people who inhabited the two Americas.”

“I’ve often reached a similar conclusion myself when visiting the prehistoric scenes of both hemispheres,” said Mrs. McAlpin. “Sometime, not so very remote in the history of the planet, there must have been a sudden and awful cataclysm, such as might result from a change in the inclination of the earth’s axis, of which history can as yet give no authentic account.”

“Then the fabled Atlantis may not be so much of a fable, after all,” exclaimed Mary.

“Do you suppose any of you know what you are talking about?” asked Captain Ranger.

“The world has scarcely yet begun to read the testimony of the air, the earth, the water, and the rocks,—especially of this Western Continent,” said Scotty, with a respectful bow to his captain.

“That’s true,” remarked Mrs. McAlpin, rising to end the interview. “Travel in any direction broadens and enlightens anybody who has eyes to see or ears to hear.”

“Or a soul to think,” echoed Jean.

“Say, Scotty, have you watered your steers?” asked Captain Ranger, in a sarcastic tone.

“By Jove! I forgot. Good-evening, ladies!” The teamster turned away, crestfallen.

“Excuse me, madam; I didn’t intend to be rude,” said the Captain, as he paused to say good-night; “but we’ve embarked on a journey in which theories must be set aside for duties sometimes,—that is, if we’re ever to see Oregon.”

XI
MRS. McALPIN SEEKS ADVICE

The next forenoon Captain Ranger rode up alongside the carriage of Mrs. McAlpin and her mother, in which Jean was posing as driver and guest, and said: “I hope I gave you no offence in speaking as I did to Mr. Burns last night.”

“No offence at all, Captain. Don’t mention it; you were simply discharging your duty. But”—and Mrs. McAlpin hesitated a little—“would you mind exchanging your mount with Jean for a little while? I am quite sure she will enjoy a canter on the back of Sukie, and I wish to counsel with you a little. I am sorry to impose upon your good nature.”

Mrs. Benson took little notice of the Captain or of her daughter, but leaned back on the cushions, apparently absorbed in a book.

“I want your candid opinion,” said Mrs. McAlpin. “Do you consider the marriage ceremony infallible? Is it an unpardonable sin to break it, except for a nameless reason? I have an object in asking this question that is not born of mere curiosity.”

“Nothing of human origin is infallible, madam; and, for aught I can see to the contrary, nothing is infallible anywhere.”

“Do you believe it is better to break a bad bargain than to keep it?”

“That depends upon circumstances.”

“Why do you evade my question?”

“Because I can’t see what you’re driving at.”

“Then I’ll come at once to the point. Suppose you had been born a woman?”

“That isn’t a supposable case.”

“But we’ll let it rest for the present as if it were. Suppose you were born to be a woman,—we’ll put it that way for the sake of illustration,—and suppose, while you were yet a child, you had been married to a man many years your senior—married just to please somebody else—in defiance of your own judgment or desires?”

“Millions of women are married in that way every year, madam. Look at India, at China, at Turkey, and at many modern homes, even in England and America! It would seem to be the exception and not the rule where women get the husbands of their choice. I know it is the fashion to pretend they do; for a woman has to become desperately weary of her bargain before she’ll own up honestly to a matrimonial mistake.”

“But suppose one of those women had been yourself; don’t you think if you had been so married in childhood, that you would have rebelled openly as soon as you reached the years of discretion?”

“Nonsense, Daphne!” interrupted Mrs. Benson. “You harp forever on a single string. Suppose you discuss the weather, for a change.”

“There are points on which my estimable mother and myself do not agree,” said the daughter, with a sad smile. “Don’t mind her, please. I have learned that you are a wise and just man, and I am in need of advice. What would you do if, although you had obeyed the letter of the human law, you knew in your own soul that your marriage was a sin?”

“Don’t talk like that in my presence, Daphne! I cannot bear it!” exclaimed her mother, petulantly.

“When I left the States I hoped to get away from everybody’s domestic troubles,” said the Captain, earnestly. “Please don’t tell me about yours—if you have any—unless it is in my power to assist you.”

They had reached a narrow and rocky grade, where careful driving was necessary to avoid disaster.

“We must turn aside here, ladies,” the Captain exclaimed suddenly, as he dexterously alighted and guided the horses by the bits to the only point of advantage in sight. “Cattle and horses ought never to be compelled to travel together. You can’t hurry a steer except in a stampede, and then Old Nick himself couldn’t stop him.”

“They remind me of more than one pair of mismated bipeds I have met,” said Mrs. McAlpin.

The Captain stood at the horses’ heads till the last of the jolting and complaining wagons had safely passed the perilous bit of roadway. Then, guiding the team back to the road, he resumed his seat in the carriage, his lips compressed like a trap.

“Don’t you think Mr. Burns is a wonderful man?” asked Mrs. McAlpin, in a desperate effort to rekindle a conversation.

“He’s a fellow of considerable genius in some ways, but a mighty poor ox-driver.”

“He reminds me of many a woman I have seen,” continued Mrs. McAlpin, “who has failed to get fitted into her proper niche. His mind isn’t fitted to his work. I have seen women chained by circumstances to the kitchen sink, the wash-tub, the churn-dash, and the ironing-board, who never could make a success of any one of these lines of effort, though they might have made excellent astronomers, first-class architects, capable lawyers, good preachers, capital teachers, or splendid financiers. It is a pity to spoil a natural statesman or stateswoman to make a poor ox-driver or an indifferent housekeeper.”

“You seem to take great interest in Scotty,” remarked the Captain.

“I do. We have travelled extensively through the same lands, though we had never met until our orbits chanced to coincide on this journey. He has a retentive memory, a wide experience, and a keen appreciation of the beautiful, both in nature and art, and so have I. He is as much out of place as an ox-driver as I should be in a cotton-field. He’s a perfect mine of information, though, about a lot of things.”

“Then why not take counsel of him, instead o’ me?”

“He would hardly be a disinterested adviser.”

“Ah, I see!”

Mrs. McAlpin blushed. “He has not spoken to me one word of love, Captain,—if that is what you mean. I am not an eligible party,” and the lady used her handkerchief to wipe away a tear. “I want your opinion about getting a divorce from a union that I detested long before I ever met Mr. Burns. It is unbearable now.”

“Hush, Daphne! Not another word,” interposed her mother. “Strangers have no right to an insight into our family affairs.”

“But I must speak to somebody. Stay, Captain!” laying her hand upon his arm as he was about to leave the carriage.

“Are you running away from your husband, madam?” he asked, resuming his seat.

“You guess correctly, sir.”

“I suspected it all along; but it was none of my business in the beginning, nor is it now. But I confess that it looks as if I were making it my business to conduct a caravan of grass widows to Oregon, judging from the present aspect of affairs.”

“To make a long story short,—for I see you are growing restless,—I was married in my callow childhood, married in obedience to my mother’s wish. She was a widow and poor; my suitor was accomplished and rich. If he’d been a sensible man he would have courted and married my mother, who adores him. But old men are such idiots! They’re always hunting young women, or children, for wives.”

“You’re complimentary.”

“Beg your pardon; present company is always excepted. They imagine that young and silly girls will make happy and contented wives,—when any person not overcome by vanity knows that no young man or young woman can be truly enamored of anybody that’s in the sere and yellow leaf. What would you think of a woman of mamma’s age, for instance, making love to a boy? And if such a boy should consent to marry her, who believes that he would be content with his bargain after his beard was grown?”

“Ask me something easy,” said the Captain.

“My father was a physician; and it was my childhood’s delight to study his books, attend his clinics, and make myself generally useful among his patients. I never dreamed of surrendering my person, my liberty, my will, and the absolute control of my individuality to the commands of any human being on earth except myself, till after the deed was done for me by another. No wonder I rebelled when I reached the years of maturity and discretion.”

“Mr. McAlpin was a good man and a gentleman, Captain Ranger,” interrupted Mrs. Benson.

“Yes, mamma; he was always ‘good.’ He never whipped his wife; he gave her everything that money could buy. There is no reason that the law can recognize for me to be dissatisfied. But I don’t belong primarily to myself, and I don’t like it. Mamma here, with her ideas of woman’s place in life, would have made him an excellent and happy wife.”

“He was always a gentleman, Daphne,” repeated her mother. “Don’t do him an injustice.”

“Yes; and I was his personal and private property. I was a beautiful animal, as he thought, to bedeck with his trinkets and show off his wealth; but I was nobody on my own account. I was simply his echo,—or supposed to be,—and nothing else.”

“Daphne, you forget that this carriage, these horses, our wagons and oxen, and the supplies for this journey are all the product of his bounty.”

“They are the product of my jewels, Captain. This outfit is mine; it was bought with my own heart’s blood! I owe nothing to Donald McAlpin.”

“Do you think you have dealt justly by your husband?” asked the Captain. There was reproof and impatience in his tone.

“I owe him nothing, sir. I am in the same line with Dugs,—a runaway chattel. That is all.”

“But Dugs, whose name now is Susannah, did not enter into her bargain voluntarily.”

“Neither did I. My mother made the bargain.”

“How did you escape, Mrs. McAlpin? And why did you undertake this journey?”

“Mr. McAlpin was called away to England last year, to inherit an additional estate. Mamma was too ill to go, so I stayed to nurse her. I had been his body vassal for four years, and was at last a woman grown. One taste of liberty was enough. I will never be his vassal again. I decided to make this very unusual journey to elude pursuit. He’d not think of searching for me outside of the United States or Canada; least of all in the Great American Desert, whither we are bound. I mean to lose myself for good and all in Oregon.”

“And so now you are seeking a divorce?”

“Yes, sir; that is, when I reach Oregon.”

“Thousands of other women have borne far worse conjugal conditions all their lives, and died, making no outward sign, Mrs. McAlpin. Men also have their full share of these afflictions, which they bear in silence to the bitter end.”

“That is their own affair, sir. If other people choose to wear a ball and chain through life, that is their privilege. I would not do their choosing for them if I could.”

“What course would you pursue if you had children?”

“Then I suppose I should be compelled to die with my feet in the stocks. Children might have diverted my mind and helped to save my sanity, though. I’ve prayed for them without ceasing, but in vain. I’m going to a remote country, a new country, where new environments make newer and more plastic conditions. The laws of men, one-sided as they are, will divorce me after seven years.”

“And what is Scotty going to do during all this time?”

“If he loves me as he thinks he does, he’ll wait. If it’s only a passing fancy, he’ll get over it in time. I will not permit his attentions now, nor until Donald McAlpin divorces me and gets another wife.”

Captain Ranger’s union with the gentle bride of his choice had been so natural, and their lives together had been so harmonious, despite their many cares and sorrows, that neither of them had ever harbored a thought of living apart from the other. Differences of opinion they had sometimes, and now and then a brief, angry dispute, but the end was always peace; and he remembered now, with a pang of self-reproach, that in all such encounters he, whether right or wrong, had invariably gained his point.

“You are my guiding star, my faithful wife,” he whispered, as he gently assisted her from the wagon after they had halted for the night. “Come with me, dear, and get some exercise, while Sally and Susannah help the other girls to get supper.”

“I don’t see why we mightn’t end our journey here, John,” said his wife, as they gazed abroad over the vast expanse of table-land that stretched away on every side, intersected here and there with streams, their courses marked by stately rows of cottonwood just bursting into leaf, their bases hedged with pussy-willows. “Here are land and wood and water as good as any we passed yesterday. This surely will be a rich and thickly settled country some day.”

“But it is all Indian country, my dear. I wish you would talk about something else.”

They returned to the camp in silence.

“I wish the girls were as tractable as you are, Annie,” he said an hour later, after having had a heated dispute with his daughters over some trifling disagreement. “They are as headstrong as mules.”

“Being girls, they take after you, John,” replied his wife, with a smile. “I’m afraid their husbands won’t find them as tractable as I have been.”

“Bring on more of your flapjacks and bacon, Miss Mary,” cried Scotty, as Mary poised a big pile of the steaming cakes over the heads of the hungry men who knelt at the mess-boxes.

“You seem to be regaining your lost appetite,” exclaimed Sawed-off. “Have you and the widder cried quits?”

“That’s our business,” was the curt reply.

It was late when Mary sought her mother’s couch for a brief visit that night. She was weeping silently, and her mother caressed her tenderly. “I know your heart is troubled, darling,” said Mrs. Ranger, “but do not be discouraged. Be of good cheer. Every cloud has a silver lining.” And Mary’s heart was comforted, though her reason could not tell her why.

XII
JEAN BECOMES A WITNESS

“How’s your journal getting on, Jean?” asked her father, one evening, after all was still in camp.

Mrs. Ranger had been unusually nervous and timid all day, and Susannah had been in constant attendance upon the wagon-bed full of little ones,—seven in all,—who had been more than usually unruly, fretful, and quarrelsome.

Jean looked ruefully at her father. “The pesky thing isn’t getting along at all!” she exclaimed. “There’s nothing to inspire one to write. There’s no grass for the cattle, no wood for the fires, and no comfort anywhere.”

“Then write up the facts. Don’t allow yourself to get morbid. Don’t be so listless and lackadaisical.”

It was now the twentieth of May; and under this date, in restive obedience to her father’s command, Jean began her entries again:—

“We came about eighteen miles to-day. And such a day! It has been drizzly, disagreeable, and cold from morning till night, with no cheery prospects ahead. We hear of an epidemic of measles having broken out on the road, endangering much life among children and such grown folks as didn’t have sense enough to get the disgusting disease before they left their mothers’ apron-strings. We passed several newly made graves by the roadside to-day,—a melancholy fact which interested mother deeply.

“Indians, for some reason, are keeping out of our sight. As we are right in the midst of the summer haunts of many tribes, we are shunned, possibly on account of the contagious diseases among the whites, which are said to kill off Indians as the Asiatic plague kills Europeans. Our company has escaped the epidemic so far; so there is one blessing for which we may be thankful.

“We forded a stream to-day, called the Little Sandy, in the midst of a driving rainstorm, and are now encamped in a deep, dry gulch; that is, we call it dry, because the water runs away nearly as fast as it falls. There is a fine spring on the hillside; and some green cottonwood which we found at the head of the gulch is being slowly coaxed into the semblance of a fire.

“May 21. The skies cleared this morning, and we have found some good grazing for the poor, half-famished stock. We haven’t travelled over a dozen miles, but we must stop and give the animals a feed. We have passed extensive beds of iron ore to-day, outcroppings of which are seen in every direction.

“May 22. We yoked up early this morning and came three miles, to the banks of the Big Sandy. The day is clear, but the roads are still muddy after the rain. The early morning was dark and foggy, the air was raw and cold, and the outlook was cheerless in the extreme. Some of the horses in a neighbor’s outfit stampeded, and it has taken nearly the whole day to recapture them.

“May 23. We hear rumors of Indian raids ahead of us, and mother is much alarmed. We must not stop for Sunday, but must hurry on to get past the danger-point. If the Indians knew how defenceless we really are, they would rout the camp before morning.

“The sluggish waters of the Big Sandy are swarming with larvæ. Daddie says it’s lucky they’re not mosquitoes yet; but the trains coming along a week hence will be terribly annoyed by the intruders, who are now unable to molest us.

“May 24. We are following the Little Blue,—a muddy stream about a hundred feet in width.

“May 25. We met to-day a long train of heavily loaded wagons coming from Fort Laramie with great mountains of buffalo robes. At this rate, the buffalo will all be killed off in a very few years. The frightened creatures are now so wild that it is next to impossible to get a shot at one of them; and the antelope are even more timid. Why is man such a destructive animal, I wonder?

“The men driving the freight-teams we met were a mixed-up lot of Indians, Spaniards, and French and Indian half-breeds. Their speech was to us an unintelligible jargon in everything but its profanity, which was English, straight. There was one white man in the crowd, or maybe two of them. They were on horseback, and kept aloof from the common herd. A peculiar apprehension overcame me as I gazed at one of these strangers. He was large, bronzed, and portly, and sat his horse like a centaur; or perhaps I should come nearer the truth if I said like an Englishman. My heart beat a strange tattoo as I watched him. Somehow, it seemed to me that he was in some way concerned with some of our company. I did not understand the feeling, but it wasn’t comfortable.”

“There, daddie!” she cried, exhibiting the written pages. “Don’t say I’m neglecting my journal now!”

The twilight had deepened. Below the camp ran a deep ravine, at the base of which a little brook sang merrily. Clumps of cottonwood, badly crippled by wayfarers’ axes, struggled for existence here and there. In her haste to reach the covert of the bushes unobserved, Jean ran diagonally over a settlement of prairie dogs, near which the campers had inadvertently pitched their tents. The Lilliputian municipality was evidently well disciplined, for at the sound of approaching footsteps the same sharp, staccato bark, of mingled warning and authority, that had for an instant startled the foremost team at camping-time, was heard, and every little rodent dropped instantly out of sight. Profound silence fell at once upon the little city, which had before been a bedlam of voices.

Jean reached the foot of the ravine and stopped to listen, her heart beating hard. “I am sure Sally made an appointment to meet somebody in this ravine to-night,” she said to herself, “and I’m just as sure she’ll need a friend. Women are such fools where men are concerned.” She heard the sound of human voices, and pressed her hand hard over her heart.

“I know you think you’re safe from arrest,” said a voice she knew to be Sally O’Dowd’s. “As your wife, I may not be able to give legal testimony that will send you to the gallows; but you’re not beyond the pale of lynch law.”

A mocking laugh was the only audible response.

“I haven’t even told the Squire,” resumed the woman’s voice. “Nobody knows about it but you and me and the unseen messengers of God.”

Again that mocking, brutal laugh, followed by oaths, with words of commingled anger and exultation. Jean held her breath.

“S’posing you could testify,—which you can’t, for that divorce is tied up on appeal,— my oath would be as binding as yours, Mrs. O’Dowd. And I would swear to God that it was you did the deed. It would be easy enough to make any court believe my story, for it was common talk that you rebelled all the time against such a litter of babies.”

“O God, have mercy!”

“Nobody saw me kill the brat but you, Sally. It would have been bad enough if the young ones had come one at a time, being only a year apart; but when it came to two pairs of twins inside o’ thirteen months, it was time to call a halt.”

“Are you never to have any mercy on me, Sam?”

“Come back to me as my lawful wife, and you’ll see. I’ll be easy enough to get along with if you’ll treat me right.”

The wife was struck dumb with astonishment.

“Come back to me, darling!” The mocking tone gave way to one of cooing tenderness. Jean saw his dusky figure through the shadows. “You see you’re in my power, Sally. Better make a virtue of necessity. You can coax the Squire to let me join his train. I will even be a teamster, if necessary, for your sake and the children’s.”

“What?” cried the woman, in sincere alarm. “Could I be your wife after I’ve seen you kill one of our children before my very eyes? No, no! Go your way, and let me go mine in peace. If you will leave me and the three surviving babies alone, I’ll never tell anybody about the murder. I swear it!”

Again that brutal laugh.

“Do your worst, Sally O’Dowd! You can’t prove that I killed the brat. You haven’t any witness.”

“I have the silent witness of my own conscience; and so have you, Sam O’Dowd. Do you think that I am such an idiot as to come out here to meet you alone?”

“She knows he’s a coward,” thought Jean, “and she’s bluffing.”

“Now see here, Sally! You love me; you know you do; you’ve told me so a thousand times.”

“I did love you once, Sam; but that was so long ago that it seems like a far-off dream. I despise, I loathe, I abhor you now!”

“Then this’ll settle it. I’ll go to the Squire and tell him we’ve buried the hatchet, and I’m going with you to Oregon. I don’t care a rap whether you hate me or not. But if you give me any trouble, I’ll swear that you did that killing.”

“Oh, help me, pitying Christ!” wailed the unhappy woman. “Is there, in all this world, no Canada to which a fugitive wife may flee, and no underground railroad by which to reach it?”.

Again arose that brutal laugh upon the air. The belated bird in the bushes cooed to its mate, and the prairie dogs chattered in the distance.

“Don’t be afraid of him, Sally,” cried a clear voice from the depths of the cottonwoods. “A tyrant is always a coward. I heard your confession, Sam O’Dowd; and as I am not your wife, I can be a witness.”

There was no more brutal laughter. A horse stood picketed and stamping at the head of the gulch, and the murderer hurried toward it with heavy strides. Jean listened with eager attention till he mounted and rode rapidly away.

“Are you still there, Sally?” she asked, as the hoof-beats died away in the distance.

“Yes, Jean; but where are you, and why are you here?”

“The Holy Spirit guided me, I reckon. I was just possessed to come. I didn’t know I was following you, or why I came; but I just did it ’cause I had to.”

“It was hazardous, Jean. He might have killed us both.”

“He’s too big a coward to kill a more formidable foe than his own baby. But you were an idiot to meet him out here, Sally.”

“He was with that freighters’ outfit, but on horseback. He came to me a few minutes before camping-time, when I was walking for exercise. I didn’t want a scene at camp, so I agreed to meet him out here alone, if he would keep out of sight.”

“You’re a bigger fool than Thompson’s colt, and he swam the river to get a drink,” said Jean. “But we mustn’t linger here. He may have a confederate.”

“Not he, Jean. He’s too suspicious to trust a confederate.”

“Let’s go back to camp, anyhow, Sally; mother will be missing us. But you needn’t be afraid of Sam again. I’ve settled his hash,” she said, as they hurried to the open. “Isn’t it a terrible thing to be married?” she added, as soon as she could speak again.

“No, Jean. Marriage under right conditions is the world’s greatest blessing. All enlightened men and women prefer to live in pairs, and make each other and their children as happy as possible. I admit that I made a big mistake when I married; but your mother didn’t, because your father is one of God’s noblemen. The fault isn’t in marriage, but in the couple, one or both of whom make the trouble, when there is trouble. But the conditions between husbands and wives are not equal. Law and usage make the husband and wife one, and the husband that one. Where both the parties to the compact are better than the law, it doesn’t pinch either one; but when a woman finds herself chained for life to a sordid, disagreeable, stingy, domineering man, the advantages of law and custom are all on his side. It is no wonder that trouble ensues in such cases.”

“But, young as I am, I have seen wives that could discount almost any man for meanness,” said Jean. “There are women, now and then, who take all the rights in the matrimonial category, and their husbands haven’t any rights at all.”

“Women sometimes inherit the strongest traits of their fathers; I admit that. And such women can outwit the very best husbands.”

“I’ve read of a woman,” said Jean, musingly, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton by name, who went before a legislative assembly in New York a few years ago, and secured the passage of a law enabling a married woman of that State to hold, in her own right, the property bequeathed to her by her father. And then, as if to prove that women are idiots, there were women in Albany who refused to associate with their financial savior any more. They said she had left her sphere. But never mind. The world is moving, and women are moving with it.”

The camp-fires had died to heaps of embers, the lights were out in the tents and wagons, and all except themselves were settled for the night.

“Don’t say anything to anybody about my meeting with Sam, will you, Jean?”

“Not unless he annoys you again. Then I’ll be ready to meet him with facts.”

“He might put your life in jeopardy, my dear.”

“Jeopardy nothin’!” cried Jean, adopting the slang of the road. “He’s too big a coward to put his neck in danger. But just you wait! I’ll live to see an end to one-sided laws and a one-sexed government. See if I don’t! And the men will fight our battle for us, too, as soon as they are wise enough.”

“If you don’t come across a matrimonial fate that’ll change your tune, my name isn’t Sally O’Dowd,” exclaimed her companion, as they drew near the camp.

“Your name isn’t O’Dowd, but Danover,” cried Jean. “You’re safe in making such a prophecy on such a basis.”

XIII
AN APPROACHING STORM

“We came eighteen miles to-day,” wrote Jean, under date of May 28, “and halted for the night opposite Grand Island, in the Platte River, where we find both wood and pasture. All day we floundered through the muddy roads, occasionally getting almost swamped in heavy and treacherous bogs, with ‘water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.’ I’m too tired to write, and too sleepy to think.”

On the evening of May 29 she added: “We started early, and reached Fort Kearney after eight miles of heavy wheeling, where we halted to write letters for the folks at home, and examine many things quaint and crude and curious. The old fort is weather-worn, and a general air of dilapidation pervades its very atmosphere. There are two substantial dwellings for the officers, though; and they (I mean the officers) keep up a show of military pomp, very amusing to us, but quite necessary to maintain in an Indian country, to hold the savage instinct in check. The officers were very gracious to daddie, and very kind and condescending to the rest of us. They made us a present of some mounted buffalo-horns, some elks’ antlers, and the stuffed head of a mountain sheep, all of which, mother says, we’ll be glad to leave at the roadside before the weary oxen haul them very far.

“A week ago a party passed us, going westward with a four-wheeled wagon, two yokes of discouraged oxen, two anxious-looking men, two dispirited women, and about fourteen snub-nosed, shaggy-headed children. On their wagon-cover was a sign, done in yellow ochre, which read: ‘Oregon or bust!’ To-day we met the same outfit coming back, and no description from my unpractised pen can do it justice. The party, doubtless from over-crowding, had quarrelled; and the two families had settled their dispute by dividing the wagon into two parts of two wheels each. On the divided and dilapidated cover of each cart were smeared in yellow ochre the words, ‘Busted, by thunder!’

“May 30. We forded the Platte to-day. It is a broad, lazy, milky sheet of silt-thickened water, with a quicksand bottom. It is about two miles wide at this season of the year at the ford, and is three feet deep.

“The day was as hot as a furnace, and the sunshine burned us like blisters of Spanish flies. Our wagon-beds were hoisted to the tops of their standards to keep them from taking water, and at a given signal from daddie, they were all plunged pell-mell into the quicksand, over which teams, drivers, wagons, and all were compelled to move quickly to avoid catastrophe.

“Poor dear mother suffered from constant nervous fear because of the quicksand and the danger that some of the children might be drowned. It took us two and a half hours to ford the stream; but we reached the opposite bank without accident, and camped near an old buffalo wallow, where we get clearer water than that of the Platte, but we are not allowed to drink it till it has been boiled. Cholera has broken out in the trains both before and behind us; and daddie lays our escape from attack thus far to drinking boiled water. We have no fuel but buffalo chips, and almost no grass for the poor stock. The game has disappeared altogether, and the fishes in the Platte don’t bite. But we have plenty of beans and bacon, coffee, flour, and dried apples; so we shall not starve.

“June 1. The day has been intensely hot. The stifling air shimmers, and the parched earth glitters as it bakes in the sun. The mud has changed to a fine, impalpable dust, and the loaded air is too oppressive to breathe, if it could be avoided. We passed a number of newly made graves during the day. We meet returning teams every day that have given up the journey as a bad job. Daddie often says he’d die before he’d retrace his tracks, and then he wouldn’t do it! We found at sundown, just as we were losing hope, a bountiful spring of clear, cold water, beside which we have halted for the night.

“June 3. Another insufferably hot day. But we encountered at nightfall a stiff west wind, which soon arose to a gale, in the teeth of which we with difficulty made camp and cooked our food. Heavy clouds blacken the sky as I write, and vivid flashes of sheet lightning, which blind us for a moment, are followed by thunder that startles and stuns.

“June 4. The storm passed to the south of us, on the other side of the Platte. But daddie has ordered the tents and wagons staked to the ground hereafter every night, as long as we are travelling in these treeless, unsheltered bottom-lands, as he says we would have been swept away en masse into the river if last night’s storm had squarely struck our camp.”

The hoods of the wagons, so white and clean at the outset, were now of an ashen hue, disfigured by spots of grease, and askew in many places from damage to their supporting arches of hickory bows. Heavy log-chains, for use in possible emergencies, dangled between axles, and the inevitable tar-bucket rode adjacent on a creaking hook, from which it hung suspended by a complaining iron bail.

“The incessant heat by day, followed by the chilly air of night, is perilous to health, John,” said Mrs. Ranger, one evening, as she lay wrapped in blankets in the big family wagon, watching the usual preparations for the evening meal.

He gazed into her pinched, white face with sudden apprehension.

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

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

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

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

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

“And I to gratify my daughter.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XIV
A CAMP IN CONSTERNATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where, Bobbie?” asked Marjorie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Is it indeed you, Daphne?”

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

“Call again, Rollin! Help is near.”

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

“Which way, Rollin? Where are you?”

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

“Is the storm over?”

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

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

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

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

“Daphne!”

“Rollin!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Never.”

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

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

“Bring water and more bandages, girls.”

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

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

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

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

“Where’s Rollin?”

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

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

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

“But Mr. Burns?”

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

XV
CHOLERA RAGES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you think he discovered me or mamma?”

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

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

“Did you know him?”

“May I trust you, Jean?”

“Why, certainly! What’s up?”

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

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

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

“That man is my husband!”

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

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

“Are you quite sure it was he?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I? What for?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her husband was instantly aroused.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why do you think so, Bobbie?”

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

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

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

XVI
JEAN’S VISIT BEYOND THE VEIL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mary!”

It was her next word of consciousness.

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

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

“Yes, Annie. John is here.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, child.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Didn’t she say anything, Jean?”

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