that all the time he needed to gain control
over any woman was half an hour alone with her--but of that later, if
at all.

"That was me that called you 'Virginia,'" said I. "I want to get into
the wagon to get things for breakfast--after you get up."

"I never thought of your calling me Virginia," she answered--and I had
no idea what was in her mind. I saw no reason why I shouldn't call her
by her first name. "Miss" Royall would have been my name for the wife of
a man named Royall. It was not until long afterward that I found out how
different my manners were from those to which she was accustomed.

I never thought of such a thing as varying from my course of conduct on
her account; and just as would have been the case if my outfit had been
a boat for which time and tide would not wait, I yoked up, after the
breakfast was done, and prepared to negotiate the miry crossing of the
creek and pull out for Monterey County, which I hoped to reach in time
to break some land and plant a small crop. We did not discuss the matter
of her going with me--I think we both took that for granted. She stood
on a little knoll while I was making ready to start, gazing westward,
and when the sound of cracking whips and the shouts of teamsters told of
the approach of movers from the East, even though we were some distance
off the trail, she crept into the wagon so as to be out of sight. She
had eaten little, and seemed weak and spent; and when we started, I
arranged the bed in the wagon for her to lie upon, just as I had done
for Doctor Bliven's woman, and she seemed to hide rather than anything
else as she crept into it. So on we went, the wagon jolting roughly at
times, and at times running smoothly enough as we reached dry roads worn
smooth by travel.

Sometimes as I looked back, I could see her face with the eyes fixed
upon me questioningly; and then she would ask me if I could see any one
coming toward us on the road ahead.

"Nobody," I would say; or, "A covered wagon going the wrong way," or
whatever I saw. "Don't be afraid," I would add; "stand on your rights.
This is a free country. You've got the right to go east or west with any
one you choose, and nobody can say anything against it. And you've got a
friend now, you know."

"Is anybody in sight?" she asked again, after a long silence.

I looked far ahead from the top of a swell in the prairie and then back.
I told her that there was no one ahead so far as I could see except