ow that. Well, what do you-all
think of me? What's my standing in all this? If I've not been shamed and
humiliated, how can a man be? And what am I to expect?"

"If we get through, if Molly lives, you mean?"

"Yes. I don't quit what I want. I'll never give her up. You give me
leave to try again? Things may change. She may consider the wrong she's
done me, an honest man. It's his hanging around all the time, keeping in
her mind. And now we've sent for him--and so has she!"

They walked apart, Wingate to his wagon.

"How is she?" he asked of his wife, nodding to Molly's wagon.

"Better some ways, but low," replied his stout helpmate, herself
haggard, dark circles of fatigue about her eyes. "She won't eat, even
with the fever down. If we was back home where we could get things!
Jess, what made us start for Oregon?"

"What made us leave Kentucky for Indiana, and Indiana for Illinois? I
don't know. God help us now!"

"It's bad, Jesse."

"Yes, it's bad." Suddenly he took his wife's face in his hands and
kissed her quietly. "Kiss Little Molly for me," he said. "I wish--I
wish--"

"I wish them other wagons'd come," said Molly Wingate. "Then we'd see!"

CHAPTER XXXII

THE FIGHT AT THE FORD

Jackson, wounded and weary as he was, drove his crippled horse so hard
all the night through that by dawn he had covered almost fifty miles,
and was in sight of the long line of wagons, crawling like a serpent
down the slopes west of the South Pass, a cloud of bitter alkali dust
hanging like a blanket over them. No part of the way had been more
cheerless than this gray, bare expanse of more than a hundred miles, and
none offered less invitation for a bivouac. But now both man and horse
were well-nigh spent.

Knowing that he would be reached within an hour or so at best, Jackson
used the last energies of his horse in riding back and forth at right
angles across the trail, the Plains sign of "Come to me!" He hoped it
would be seen. He flung himself down across the road, in the dust, his
bridle tied to his wrist. His horse, now nearly gone, lay down beside
him, nor ever rose again. And here, in the time a gallop could bring
them up, Banion and three of his men found them, one dead, the other
little better.

"Bill! Bill!"

The voice of Banion was anxious as he lightly shook the shoulder of the
prone man, half afraid that he, too, had died. Stupid in sleep, the
scout sprang up, rifle in hand.

"Who's thar?"

"Hold,