hild!" said she. "Don't you mind. We'll always have a
home for you, your paw and me."

The girl shook her head.

"I sometimes think I'd better teach school and live alone."

"And leave your parents?"

"How can I look my father in the face every day, knowing what he feels
about me? Just now he accuses me of ruining Sam Woodhull's life--driving
him away, out of the train. But what could I do? Marry him, after all? I
can't--I can't! I'm glad he's gone, but I don't know why he went."

"In my belief you haven't heard or seen the last of Sam Woodhull yet,"
mused her mother. "Sometimes a man gets sort of peeved--wants to marry a
girl that jilts him more'n if she hadn't. And you certainly jilted him
at the church door, if there'd been any church there. It was an awful
thing, Molly. I don't know as I see how Sam stood it long as he did."

"Haven't I paid for it, mother?"

"Why, yes, one way of speaking. But that ain't the way men are going to
call theirselves paid. Until he's married, a man's powerful set on
having a woman. If he don't, he thinks he ain't paid, it don't scarcely
make no difference what the woman does. No, I don't reckon he'll forget.
About Will Banion--"

"Don't let's mention him, mother. I'm trying to forget him."

"Yes? Where do you reckon he is now--how far ahead?"

"I don't know. I can't guess."

The color on her cheek caught her mother's gaze.

"Gee-whoa-haw! Git along Buck and Star!" commanded the buxom dame to the
swaying ox team that now followed the road with no real need of
guidance. They took up the heat and burden of the desert.

CHAPTER XXXVI

TWO LOVE LETTERS

"The families are coming--again the families!" It was again the cry of
the passing fur post, looking eastward at the caravan of the west-bound
plows; much the same here at old Fort Hall, on the Snake River, as it
was at Laramie on the North Platte, or Bridger on the waters tributary
to the Green.

The company clerks who looked out over the sandy plain saw miles away a
dust cloud which meant but one thing. In time they saw the Wingate train
come on, slowly, steadily, and deploy for encampment a mile away. The
dusty wagons, their double covers stained, mildewed, torn, were
scattered where each found the grass good. Then they saw scores of the
emigrants, women as well as men, hastening into the post.

It was now past midsummer, around the middle of the month of August, and
the Wingate wagons had covered some twelve h