Chapter XLIII: Jean Is Happy—and Another Person 307 (3)

“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.