The big whips could be heard plainly, cracking like rifle-shots, and shortly came the creaking and hollow rumbling of the wagons and the cries of the teamsters to their six-mule teams. There were shouts and calls, s.n.a.t.c.hes of song from along the line, then the rattling of harness, and in a cloud of dust the train was beside them, the teamsters sitting with rounded shoulders up under the bowed covers of the big wagons.
A hail came from the rear of the train, and a bronzed and bearded man in a leather jacket cantered up on a small pony.
"h.e.l.lo there, Rool! I"m whoopin" glad to see you!"
He turned to the driver of the foremost wagon.
"All right, boys! We"ll make a layby for noon."
Follett shook hands with him heartily, and turned to Prudence.
"This is my wife, Lew. Prudence, this is Lew Steffins, our wagon-master."
"Shoo, now!--you young cub--married? Well, I"m right glad to see Mrs.
Rool Follett--and bless your heart, little girl!"
"Did you stop back there at the settlement?"
"Yes; and they said you"d hit the pike about dark last night, to chase a crazy man. I told them I"d be back with the whackers if I didn"t find you. I was afraid some trouble was on, and here you"re only married to the sweetest thing that ever--why, she"s been crying! Anything wrong?"
"No; never mind now, anyway. We"re going on with you, Lew."
"Bully proud to have you. There"s that third wagon--"
"Could I ride in that?" asked the girl, looking at the big lumbering conveyance doubtfully.
"It carried six thousands pounds of freight to Los Angeles, little woman," answered Steffins, promptly, "and I wouldn"t guess you to heft over one twenty-eight or thirty at the outside. I"ll have the box filled in with spruce boughs and a lot of nice bunch-gra.s.s, and put some comforts over that, and you"ll be all snug and tidy. You won"t starve, either, not while there"s meat running."
"And say, Lew, she"s got some stuff back at that place. Let the extra hand ride back with a packjack and bring it on. She"ll tell him what to get."
"Sure! Tom Callahan can go."
"And give us some grub, Lew. I"ve hardly had a bite since yesterday morning."
An hour later, when the train was nearly ready to start, Follett took his wife to the top of the ridge and showed her, a little way below them, the cedar at the foot of the sandstone ledge. He stayed back, thinking she would wish to be there alone. But when she stood by the new grave she looked up and beckoned to him.
"I wanted you by me," she said, as he reached her side. "I never knew how much he was to me. He wasn"t big and strong like other men, but now I see that he was very dear and more than I suspected. He was so quiet and always so kind--I don"t remember that he was ever stern with me once. And though he suffered from some great sorrow and from sickness, he never complained. He wouldn"t even admit he was sick, and he always tried to smile in that little way he had, so gentle. Poor sorry little father!--and yesterday not one of them would be his friend. It broke my heart to see him there so wistful when they turned their backs on him.
Poor little man! And see, here"s another grave all grown around with sage and the stones worn smooth; but there"s the cross he spoke of. It must be some one that he wanted to lie beside. Poor little sorry father!
Oh, you will have to be so much to me!"
The train was under way again. In the box of the big wagon, on a springy couch of spruce boughs and long bunch-gra.s.s, Prudence lay at rest, hurt by her grief, yet soothed by her love, her thoughts in a whirl about her.
Follett, mounted on Dandy, rode beside her wagon.
"Better get some sleep yourself, Rool," urged Steffins.
"Can"t, Lew. I ain"t sleepy. I"m too busy thinking about things, and I have to watch out for my little girl there. You can"t tell what these cusses might do."
"There"s thirty of us watching out for her now, young fellow."
"There"ll be thirty-one till we get out of this neighbourhood, Lew."
He lifted up the wagon-cover softly a little later; and found that she slept. As they rode on, Steffins questioned him.
"Did you make that surround you was going to make, Rool?"
"No, Lew, I couldn"t. Two of them was already under, and, honest, I couldn"t have got the other one any more than you could have shot your kid that day he up-ended the gravy-dish in your lap."
"h.e.l.l!"
"That"s right! I hope I never have to kill any one, Lew, no matter _how_ much I got a right to. I reckon it always leaves uneasy feelings in a man"s mind."
Eight days later a tall, bronzed young man with yellow hair and quick blue eyes, in what an observant British tourist noted in his journal as "the not unpicturesque garb of a border-ruffian," helped a dazed but very pretty young woman on to the rear platform of the Pullman car attached to the east-bound overland express at Ogden.
As they lingered on the platform before the train started they were hailed and loudly cheered, averred the journal of this same Briton, "by a crowd of the outlaw"s companions, at least a score and a half of most disreputable-looking wretches, unshaven, roughly dressed, heavily booted, slouch-hatted (they swung their hats in a drunken frenzy), and to this rough ovation the girl, though seemingly a person of some decency, waved her handkerchief and smiled repeatedly, though her face had seemed to be sad and there were tears in her eyes at that very moment."
At this response from the girl, the journal went on to say, the ruffians had redoubled their drunken pandemonium. And as the train pulled away, to the observant tourist"s marked relief, the young outlaw on the platform had waved his own hat and shouted as a last message to one "Lew," that he "must not let Dandy get gandered up," nor forget "to tie him to gra.s.s."
Later, as the train shrieked its way through Echo Canon, the observant tourist, with his double-visored plaid cap well over his face, pretending to sleep, overheard the same person across the aisle say to the girl:--
"Now we"re on our own property at last. For the next sixty hours we"ll be riding across our own front yard--and there aren"t any keys and pa.s.swords and grips here, either--just a plain Almighty G.o.d with no nonsense about Him."
Whereupon had been later added to the journal a note to the effect that Americans are not only quite as p.r.o.ne to vaunt and brag and tell big stories as other explorers had a.s.serted, but that in the West they were ready blasphemers.
Yet the couple minded not the observant tourist, and continued to enlarge and complicate his views of American life to the very bank of the Missouri. Unwittingly, however, for they knew him not nor saw him nor heard him, being occupied with the matter of themselves.
"You"ll have to back me up when we get to Springfield," he said to her one late afternoon, when they neared the end of their exciting journey.
"I"ve heard that old Grandpa Corson is mighty peppery. He might take you away from me."
Her eyes came in from the brown rolling of the plain outside to light him with their love; and then, the lamps having not yet been lighted, the head of grace nestled suddenly on its pillow of brawn with only a little tremulous sigh of security for answer.
This brought his arm quickly about her in a protecting clasp, plainly in the sidelong gaze of the now scandalised but not less observant tourist.
THE END.