r as a famous Mormon proselyter. That riled Frank Erne
as nothin' ever before, an' from rivals they come to be bitter enemies.
An' it ended in Frank goin' to the meetin'-house where Milly
was listenin', en' before her en' everybody else he called that
preacher--called him, well, almost as hard as Venters called Tull here
sometime back. An' Frank followed up that call with a hosswhippin', en'
he drove the proselyter out of town.

"People noticed, so 'twas said, that Milly's sweet disposition changed.
Some said it was because she would soon become a mother, en' others
said she was pinin' after the new religion. An' there was women who
said right out that she was pinin' after the Mormon. Anyway, one mornin'
Frank rode in from one of his trips, to find Milly gone. He had no real
near neighbors--livin' a little out of town--but those who was nearest
said a wagon had gone by in the night, an' they though it stopped at her
door. Well, tracks always tell, an' there was the wagon tracks an' hoss
tracks an' man tracks. The news spread like wildfire that Milly had run
off from her husband. Everybody but Frank believed it an' wasn't slow in
tellin' why she run off. Mother had always hated that strange streak of
Milly's, takin' up with the new religion as she had, an' she believed
Milly ran off with the Mormon. That hastened mother's death, an' she
died unforgivin'. Father wasn't the kind to bow down under disgrace or
misfortune but he had surpassin' love for Milly, an' the loss of her
broke him.

"From the minute I heard of Milly's disappearance I never believed she
went off of her own free will. I knew Milly, an' I knew she couldn't
have done that. I stayed at home awhile, tryin' to make Frank Erne talk.
But if he knowed anythin' then he wouldn't tell it. So I set out to find
Milly. An' I tried to get on the trail of that proselyter. I knew if I
ever struck a town he'd visited that I'd get a trail. I knew, too, that
nothin' short of hell would stop his proselytin'. An' I rode from town
to town. I had a blind faith that somethin' was guidin' me. An' as the
weeks an' months went by I growed into a strange sort of a man, I guess.
Anyway, people were afraid of me. Two years after that, way over in a
corner of Texas, I struck a town where my man had been. He'd jest left.
People said he came to that town without a woman. I back-trailed my man
through Arkansas an' Mississippi, an' the old trail got hot again in
Texas. I found the town w