As this horror is taking place inside the earth, Miss Travenion and her two escorts on its surface are speeding over the snow towards Tooele.
The consideration and respect with which she is treated by these two rough-and-ready fighters of many a desperate mining battle is almost oppressive: they are so exceedingly polite.
Every time he addresses her, Patsey Bolivar takes off his hat. Chancing in one of his remarks to use the word "infernal" (which is a very mild expression for this gentleman), Pioche George suavely suggests: "Don't ye mind Patsey's high-flown remarks, miss. I've told him if he uses any stronger expression than a plain 'damn' in yer presence, that I'll perforate him."
"Would you rob me of one of my guards?" gasps the girl.
"No," replies George. "Patsey an' I have arranged that any discussion between us shall take place after we've seen ye safe through—as we will; though I reckon we've more to fear from snow than anything else on this trip, for it seems as if a blizzard was a-blowin' up."
So Miss Travenion journeys on, Patsey sitting on the front seat and driving, and Pioche George, who is beside him, turning round to her and regaling Erma with anecdotes of his frontier experience, some of which are amusing, and nearly all of them horrible.
About two hours after, Kruger also drives furiously out of Eureka, but does not travel the same route as the young lady he is in pursuit of—going up through Homansville towards Salt Lake City—the most direct route—but, strange to say, leaving it, and taking the road to his right, which leads on to Goshen, then Payson and Provo, for he intends to go up the Provo Cañon to Heber City, having some curious affidavits to make that he dare only indulge in before a Mormon judge. From this place he will journey rapidly as horseflesh can take him to Park City, and then to Echo Station on the Union Pacific Railway, which is also in the Territory of Utah, and subject to the domination of its judges.
He expects to encounter Miss Travenion at that point, though the snow that delays her on her trip will hinder him a great deal more, going up Provo Cañon and over the divide to Heber City. But he is a sturdy old Mormon, and though it means an all-night drive—part of the way, perhaps, in a sleigh—he does not care much for the storm, for he has a plot in his head that makes him rub his hands and chuckle, even when the wind blows the fiercest and the snow drifts the strongest.
Shortly after he has turned from the main road to Salt Lake, a wagon coming down from that city carries Harry Lawrence, who is very happy, and Ferdinand Chauncey, who is very tired: for they have made an all-night drive, and had they been five minutes earlier, would have encountered Kruger, to his astonishment, and, perhaps, to theirs.
As they come up to the cañon leading to Homansville, Harry cries: "Ferdie, in half an hour I'll see her!" then mutters: "My Heaven! what a monster of ingratitude she must think me now!"
"Oh, I'll fix that for you, easy enough!" says Ferdie confidently. "I'll tell her how you've been wandering all over California after us, thinking she was in our party. I think my word will carry you through."
Curiously enough, this is the fact. Lawrence, full of hope, has reached San Francisco, to find the Livingston party is not there. They have gone to Belmont to spend a few days, the clerk at the Grand Hotel informs him, at the house of Mr. Ralston, the banker; a gentleman who, at this time, was pouring out hospitality with a lavish hand to prominent visitors to California.
Not having an invitation, Harry is compelled to remain, and await their return, but they come not. After a week or two, he discovers that they have gone straight from Belmont to the Yosemite, which is a long trip, as there are few railroads in the State at this time.
Notwithstanding this, he follows them, and after four days of staging and rough riding, finds he has missed them entirely; for now he cannot discover where they have gone, on leaving the valley of the cataracts. As a matter of fact, they have journeyed to Southern California, and have spent a couple of weeks at the great cattle ranch of Mr. Beale, near the Tejon Pass.
So, after a fruitless visit to the Big Trees, Lawrence concludes to return to San Francisco, knowing that the Livingston party must ultimately find their way there, before they return to the East.
In this place, which was just beginning to get excited over the great mining boom in the Belcher and Crown Point, which three years afterwards gave way to the still greater one of the Consolidated Virginia and California, in which many fortunes were won, and more fine ones were lost, he passes two anxious weeks.
Being known to several mining men, and receiving telegram from Garter that the first one hundred thousand dollars had been paid upon his mine by the English company, and he can draw on him for fifty thousand dollars at sight, he goes to driving away thoughts of his errant sweetheart, by taking flyers in the securities of the San Francisco Stock Board, and one afternoon, purchasing a couple of hundred shares of "Belcher" at about fifty—its ruling price in the market at that time—he pays for them, and puts them in his pocket, hoping to sell them on the morrow at a few dollars a share advance, and strolls up to the Grand Hotel, for that is where the Livingstons have stopped before, and will probably stay on their return to San Francisco. Therefore he makes it his headquarters.
Here he is delighted to find Mr. Ferdinand Chauncey playing billiards.
"By Jove, Harry! What are you doing here?" cries this young gentleman, who has become very familiar with the man who has saved his life.
"Hunting for you," replies Lawrence, returning Ferdie's warm grip very cordially.
"Ah, you've come to tell us the news, I suppose," laughs Mr. Chauncey. Then he amazes Lawrence with the query: "How is she?"
"Who?"
"Erma Travenion, of course—how is she getting along with her many step-mammas?"
"What do you mean?" ejaculates Harry, thinking Mr. Chauncey has gone daft.
"I mean what I say. Innocence won't do. Has old Tranyon given you his mine as well as his daughter? Ollie and his mother quarrel every day over his desertion of the heiress. The widow says that she and Louise won't be able to live on their income now, and Oliver has turned sullen, and says if they can't, Louise can go into a Protestant nunnery. So that young lady is in despair."
"What the dickens do you mean?" gasps Harry. Then he says: "Are you crazy?" and looking into Ferdie's face, and seeing sanity there, suddenly seizes him, leads him apart, and commands: "Tell me what you're driving at!"
Then Mr. Chauncey, guessing from Lawrence's manner that he does not know what has happened, tells him what took place in Salt Lake the evening before their departure, to which Harry listens with staring eyes.
As Ferdie closes, he suddenly breaks out: "Now I understand!—Tranyon's deed to me—it was that angel's doing!" Then mutters: "My God! She'll think me a monster of ingratitude! A prig, like that scalliwag up-stairs;" he turns up his thumb towards where Mr. Livingston is supposed to be.
To this Mr. Chauncey says nothing, though his eyes have grown very large.
After a second's thought, Lawrence continues very earnestly: "You say I saved your life. May I ask you a favor in return?"
"Anything!" cries Ferdie.
"Very well! You can explain this matter to Erma Travenion, so that she will know that I followed her for love, all over California, and did not desert her for pride, because she was the daughter of a Mormon, in Utah. Will you come with me, and make that explanation?"
"Yes—when?"
"Now! The train leaves in an hour."
"I will," cries Ferdie. "I only want fifteen minutes to pack my trunk and explain my sudden departure to the Livingstons."
Which he does, and the two make their exit from San Francisco on the afternoon train, and two days afterwards find themselves in Salt Lake City, where Ferdinand would like to lay over for a night, but Lawrence says, "No rest while she thinks me ungrateful!"
Despite some demur on the part of Mr. Chauncey, he puts him into a light wagon, and the two drive all night so as to make Eureka in the morning, which they do, some two hours after Mr. Kruger has left it.
At the hotel, seeing neither Tranyon nor his daughter, Lawrence drags Ferdie, who is very tired, with him up the trail to the office of Zion's Co-operative Mine, and says: "You go in, my young diplomat, and tell her; I'll wait down here out of the way."
Which he does; but a few minutes after Chauncey comes back and reports: "There's no one there!"
"Nobody?"
"Not a living soul!"
Lawrence investigating this and finding it true, they return to the hotel again; but to Harry's anxious inquiries, no one can give him any information of the whereabouts this day of Bishop Tranyon or his daughter till, after two hours' search, some one suggests: "They may be up at the mine."
"They're not working that now?" says Harry.
"No, but I saw the bishop and his daughter go that way very early this morning."
This information is enough for the impetuous Lawrence, and he again drags Mr. Chauncey up the trail with him, past the office; and one hundred yards beyond they come to the dump of the Zion's Co-operative Mine, but the place seems deserted.
"I expect, with your usual luck," suggests Ferdie, "the bishop and his daughter have gone back to Salt Lake City, and we have missed them on the way. Miss Erma seems a pretty hard butterfly for you to track."
But Lawrence suddenly interrupts him, whispering: "Listen! There's some one in the mine. Perhaps they're down below."
"What makes you think that?"
"I hear them."
"I don't."
"But I do! Right through this air-pipe," cries Harry, and he springs to it, and disconnecting the fan from it, puts his ear to it. A moment afterwards he exclaims: "There's somebody in trouble down there!" and the next moment, disregarding the danger of foul air, is well on his way down the incline.
Three minutes after, he re-appears, and says: "There's been an accident of some kind. Cars have broken loose and are smashed down there at the bottom, and boulders and loose rock are piled up, cutting off somebody. He's alive yet! I heard him moaning."
Then he suddenly whispers, growing very pale: "My God—if it is she!" Lovers are always fearful. Next he cries: "Run, Ferdie, up to the Mineral Hill—it's only three hundred feet from here—tell them to send down half a dozen miners like lightning!"
And Chauncey flying on his errand, a sudden idea coming into Lawrence's mind, he steps to the air-pipe, and using it as a speaking-tube, shouts down: "Halloo there! Who are you? Are you too much injured to speak?"
And listening, there comes up to him from the depths faintly, through the tube: "I'm uninjured, but am bound and helpless."
"Who are you?"
"R. H. Tranyon."
To this, Harry suddenly screams back: "Your daughter!—for God's sake, tell me where she is!"
"Why should I tell you that?"
"Because I'm Harry Lawrence!"
And through the tube comes faintly up to him: "Thank God! You are here to save her!"
"From what? My Heaven! From what?" shrieks Lawrence down the tube.
"From Lot Kruger, bishop in the Mormon Church, who has buried me here—who is now pursuing her!"
"Good God! For what?"
"To marry her!"
"Don't fear for that!" cries Harry. Then he grinds out between his clenched teeth: "The accursed polygamist'll be dead before that happens!" A second after he shouts down: "Give me the particulars," and gets them up the tube. Finally he says: "How long have you been there?"
"I can't tell. It seems days. I was buried here on December 1st, early in the morning."
"Why," cries Harry, joyfully: "it's December 1st now. You haven't been there five hours." Then he goes on: "Kruger's only four hours ahead of me. You rest quietly. The miners will have you out in two or three hours. You make up your mind your daughter's safe, if it's in human power! She might die, but never marry Kruger."
Here Ferdie, coming back with some miners, is very much astonished to hear Lawrence say hurriedly to him: "Get the men down that incline. Remove the rocks and get Tranyon out!"
"And you," cries Chauncey, "where are you going?" for Harry has already turned to leave the dump pile.
"To save his daughter!" And before the last word is out of his mouth, Lawrence is speeding down the trail to Eureka, where in twenty minutes he gets a fresh team, and driving through the storm, which has now become blinding, and through the night, which comes on too soon, and being compelled to go very slowly, for the snow is drifting heavily, he makes Salt Lake City early in the morning.
Going straight to the Townsend House, Harry says to the clerk: "Don't make any mistake this time, young man, in your information. Miss Travenion is here?"
"No, not here!"
"Good Heavens!"
"She was here last night," says the clerk, with a grin, "but drove away, five minutes ago, to catch the train for Ogden," and is astonished at the hurried "Thank you" he gets, as Lawrence runs out to his wagon again.
Clapping a ten dollar bill into the sleepy driver's hands, Harry cries: "That'll wake you up! Utah Central depot like lightning!"
He gets there just in time to board the train as it runs out of the station, to make connection with the Union Pacific that will leave Ogden this morning.
She is not in his car, but Harry looks into the next one, and seeing the young lady asleep, mutters: "She is tired also. I'll not wake her," then suddenly thinks: "By George! How shall I begin the business? She must despise me now!" and wishes he had brought Ferdie with him; though he laughs to himself: "I suppose it would have killed that future Harvard athlete—two nights' steady driving and no rest between!"
Sitting down to think over this matter, and being overcome with weariness himself, sleep comes upon Harry also, and he doesn't wake even after the train has arrived at Ogden, till he is roused by the brakeman. Looking about him, he gives a start. Miss Travenion has disappeared.
Muttering to himself: "I'm a faithful guardian—I keep my word to her father well! I have a very sharp eye out on my sweetheart!" he runs across to the Union depot, and is relieved to see that the young lady is in the office of Wells, Fargo & Co., expressing a package.
This has come about in this way: Erma Travenion had arrived safely in Salt Lake City at ten o'clock on the night before. Wells, Fargo & Co. being of course closed, she could not deposit the Utah Central stock that night.
Knowing that speed is vital to her, and that she must have money for her trip East, she drives to the house of Mr. Bussey, the banker, and he very kindly rushes about town for her and gleans up from friends of his sufficient for her trip East, charging her for same on her letter of credit.
Asking his advice about an express package that she wishes to send—though Erma doesn't state its contents—he says: "Take it with you, my child, to Ogden. At that time, before the Union Pacific train leaves, Wells, Fargo & Co. will be open. Express it from there. Their receipt will be just as good in Ogden as in Salt Lake City."
This she is doing while Lawrence is looking at her. Her appearance makes him sigh. Not that she isn't as beautiful as when he last saw her, for she is more lovely, only so much more ethereal. Her eyes are too brilliant, and there is a little apprehension in them, and a few lines of pain on her face, some of which, Harry has a wild hope, are perhaps caused by him; though he grieves over them just the same.
As she comes out of Wells, Fargo's, having finished her business with the express company—which has taken some five minutes, the transaction being a heavy one, and the receipt very formal—Lawrence, with rapture in his heart, and love in his eye, approaches to speak to his divinity, and to his intense chagrin, gets the very neatest kind of a cut. The girl looks him straight in the face—with haughty eyes that never flinch, though there is no recognition in them.
So passing on her way, she buys her tickets, and makes arrangements for her sleeping-car.
This catastrophe has been brought about as follows: While standing waiting for the receipt from Wells, Fargo & Co., Erma has caught the conversation of two men who are standing just outside its door.
One of them says: "Who is she?" for Miss Travenion's beauty has attracted his attention.
The other, a mining man who has seen her with the bishop in Eureka, answers: "Tranyon the boss Mormon's daughter."
"Impossible!"
"Fact, I assure you," laughs the second man. "From the airs she puts on, you'd think she was a New York or St. Louis belle. But I believe she's booked for the seventh wife of old Kruger. These Mormon girls have no brains! I guess readin', writin', an' 'rithmetic's about the extent of her education."
This decidedly slurring description of the belle of Newport's last season makes the girl think every one despises her; and seeing Lawrence, and remembering his desertion, she sighs: "He despises me also—but he shall never show it to me—never!" And so passes him as if she had never seen him.
Striving to eat, but finding she has no appetite, Erma goes almost timidly to the train, where she has engaged a stateroom, for she thinks the whole world is talking about her father and herself, in about the same language she has heard, and shrinks from public gaze and public scoff. She is happy to get to the privacy of her stateroom unnoticed—which is not difficult, every one about the station being excited and busy.
The snow is still falling heavily on the tracks, and the Central Pacific is behind time. Finally, getting a telegram that the train on the more western road has been detained by snow on the Sierra Nevada and Pequop Mountains, and is ten hours late, the Union Pacific pulls out of the station, one hour behind its time.
Just then the privacy of Miss Travenion's stateroom is invaded by Buck Powers, on his business tour through the train.
He says in resonant voice: "How are you off for peanuts? They're the only fruit that's in season now."
"I don't wish any," she replies, quietly.
"Won't you have some candy, or chewing gum? You look as if you needed somethin'."
Seeing this is declined by a shake of the head, he suggests: "That fire must have given you the blues, like it did me."
"What do you mean?" asks Erma, a little startled.
"Why," cries Buck, "don't you know it's been burnt down six weeks? There ain't no Chicago, but it made the highest old fire the world has ever seen."
"Oh, that's what you're referring to!" murmurs the young lady, who in her own troubles has failed to remember the destruction of the great Western city. Then she astounds the news-agent by adding, "I had forgotten that it was burnt."
"You—had—forgotten—the Chicago fire! Great Scott! You'd do for a museum!" he gasps. Then he says interrogatively: "You remember me, Buck Powers, don't you?"
She answers: "Yes, very well,—you're the news-boy who was injured by accident on the train. Captain Lawrence saved you."
"Well, I'm relieved that you ain't forgot everything!" he returns, and a moment after leers at her and says: "The Cap's on the train. I reckoned when I saw you he wouldn't be very far away," and goes off whistling merrily, though he leaves a sad heart behind him.
As for Lawrence, for one moment he has savagely thought, "She is safe on this Union Pacific train. Why should I follow her, to get more cuts?" But the next second he remembers: "She does not know,—she thinks me worse than Livingston, for he is only a prig to her, while I seem an ingrate. She practically gave me fortune. Shall I desert her for a snub that she thinks I deserve? Never!"
After a little, joy comes to him again; he remembers: "Her father said 'Thank God!' when he heard my name. She told him of me six weeks ago. She shall think of me again!"
So he has bought tickets for the East, and boarded the train, which is now running up Weber Cañon rather slowly, as the grade is quite heavy, and the snow-drifts are multiplying and piling up on the road at a great rate.
An hour afterwards, going into the smoking-car, to kill time by a cigar, Harry looks out of the window, and they are at Echo.
As the train begins to move again he suddenly starts and mutters: "By George! I did right to come! Heison her track!"
For just as the train is pulling out of this station, he sees dashing down the old stage road from Park City a sleigh drawn by two horses, in which four men are gesticulating for the conductor to hold up. But that official, who is standing near Lawrence, says grimly: "What! Pull the check line for Mormon mossbacks who'll get off at the next station, when the train is two hours late and snow-drifts ahead—not much!" And the train rolls on, followed by some very savage curses from the men in the sleigh.
One of these, Harry notes, is Kruger, and he chuckles to himself: "Left behind! He won't overtake us this side of Chicago! However, it's just as well I'm on board!"
An hour after they pass the Utah line, and come into Evanston two and a half hours late. Here they take dinner, and meet the train from the East that left Green River in the morning. This reports very heavy snows on Aspen Hill.
Lawrence, however, makes no attempt at further communication with Miss Travenion, reflecting savagely: "Perhaps before this trip is over, Miss Haughty may need my aid, and call on me, and then I'll explain."
So they pass up the valley of the Bear, the storm getting wilder, and the snow deeper, as they pull up the heavy grades, and it is night before they reach Aspen, though they have two strong locomotives dragging them.
Then they come to the Aspen Y, which is the top of the divide, and from which there is a down grade running almost to Green River.
But this part of the road is a difficult one to get over. Two locomotives are not considered too much for its grade when there is no snow on the track; now they can just handle the train, the track being slippery, and the snow-drifts heavy and increasing.
It is usual to make a flying switch at this point—one engine detaching itself from the train and entering the Y; leaving one locomotive, which is amply sufficient under ordinary circumstances, to take care of a train on the steep down grade, which begins at this place.
To-night the two locomotives should both remain attached to the train, and pull it entirely over the divide together—the helping engine being compelled, of course, to go on as far as the next station, Piedmont.
But the conductor, being a man of routine, does it in his ordinary summer way, by the flying switch, and sends the helping locomotive away. This giving its warning toot, uncouples from the second engine, runs ahead of it, and making a switch into the Y, is ready for its return to Evanston.
But the single locomotive now attached to the train has not steam to carry it over the divide; its wheels gradually revolve more slowly, the efforts of the great iron beast become more and more labored, and finally the train comes to a dead standstill, fifty yards from where the grade commences to descend.
Then, when too late, the other locomotive comes back and goes to its assistance; but the train has stopped—the drifts gradually closing in round the wheels—and now both locomotives cannot move what they could have together carried certainly over the mountain.
Though the attempt is made again and again, the train is stalled, and the snow comes down faster and faster and drifts deeper and deeper. Fortunately, the failure of the Central Pacific to connect, has produced a very light passenger list. Harry notices there are only three in his sleeper—a consumptive, going to Colorado, and a lady tourist and her child, a boy of about ten, who have been seeing Salt Lake City.
On the Pullman occupied by Miss Travenion there is only one other traveller—a young girl who is being forwarded to an Eastern school by Gentile parents connected with the Union Pacific Railway, in Ogden.
These, however, after a little, set up a wail. It is for supper, which the conductor grimly informs them is waiting for them at Green River, ninety miles away.
Then comes the triumph of Chicago business methods, and Buck Powers, issuing from the baggage car, cries dominantly: "PIES!! Beefsteak pies!—Mutton pies!—Dried-apple pies! PIES!!"
Going to him, Lawrence says anxiously: "Have you looked after her?"
"Do you think I'd let Miss Beauty starve?" utters the boy in stern reproach. "I have provisioned her stateroom for two days. She's got three beefsteak pies, two mutton hash pasties, two pork turnovers, and six assorted jam and fruit tarts, as well as a dozen apples. I have done my duty to her, though you haven't. You've left her alone all to-day—you ain't been near to jolly her up. She needs chinning, she does. I have had to step into your shoes and comfort her!"
"Oh, you have, have you?" returns Harry. "Thank you!"
"Well, I'm right glad you're grateful!" remarks Buck. "More so, perhaps, than she is, for when I asked her if she'd seen Brother Brigham at Salt Lake, and how she thought she'd like to be a Mormon—I always ask these questions of tourists coming from Salt Lake—she rose up, a kind of mixture of the Statue of Liberty and my old schoolmarm in Indianie, and said, 'Please continue your business tour at once!' So I got a move on, quick. The next time I passed by, her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying. I don't think you've been doing your duty, Cap!"
With this the boy goes on his way, leaving Lawrence rather elated at his information, for he shrewdly guesses that if Miss Travenion is in any very great trouble, she is more likely to call upon him than any one else to help her out of it. Knowing that she is well provisioned and taken care of, some hour or two after this, he having nothing else to do, goes to bed, something the other passengers have already done.
Next morning, looking out of the car window, Harry finds the snow deeper than ever, and still falling, and the train stalled more hopelessly than ever at the Aspen Y, now known on railroad maps as Tapioca.
Getting dressed, Lawrence negotiates with Buck Powers for another pie for breakfast.
That worthy informs him that "provisions has riz" during the night. "There ain't enough for another round," he says. "If you weren't the Cap I should charge you double."
"Then we shall all be hungry soon—unless relief comes?" asks Harry, as he briskly attacks a pork turn-over, for the crisp, snowy air produces a mountain appetite.
"All but her," remarks Buck. "She's fixed as I told you!"
Thinking he will see what chance there is of immediate relief from their present predicament, Lawrence lights a cigar, and steps off the train into a snow-drift. A hasty examination shows there is no chance of the train being moved, until it is shovelled out by hand, though he is pleased to note that the sun has come out, shining brightly, and the snow has ceased falling for the present.
A moment after, he gives an exclamation of delight, for the view is a very beautiful one.
To the south, standing out against the horizon, and looking much nearer than they are, stand the Uintah Mountains, dark blue at their base line with pine forests, and white with eternal snow on their peaks. From them, right to his feet, an unbroken tableland of one solid mass of white. Midway between these mountains and himself, runs the Utah line, and somehow—though the idea hardly forms itself in his mind—he would sooner, on account of the young lady he is protecting, it were further away, especially when he remembers that it is but very little over twenty miles by the railroad over which they have come, from the boundaries of the Mormon Territory. He doesn't think long of this, as he gets interested in watching the movements of the locomotives.
These are now both switched on the Y and are moving about slowly, with a view of keeping themselves what is technically called "alive"—that is, their steam up, sufficient to give them power of motion. Every now and again one is run off the Y and down the main track towards Green River and the east, keeping that portion of the road open, as far as the mouth of a long snow shed, which begins a little way from where Harry stands, and disappears in the distance towards Piedmont.
Towards the east and north he can see a long distance, as the descent is quite rapid to the big plateaus that run to Green River, but there is nothing given to his eye save snow—snow everywhere.
A moment after, the conductor comes tramping through the drifts, and knowing Captain Lawrence by reputation, stops to speak to him.
"I presume," says Harry, "you wired our situation to Evanston last night."
"Of course, and a nice tramp I had of it to the telegraph station. It's over a mile back, and the drifts made it seem five. Every one from here to Ogden, along the track, by this time knows our position."
"I suppose they'll be sending up a relief train soon."
"I hardly think so, before to-morrow," replies the conductor. "They have got all they can take care of, down below at Evanston, just at present. In fact, I imagine we've not seen the worst of it."
And this is a shrewd prediction, because, though he doesn't know it, this is just the beginning of the great snow blockade of '71 and '72, on the Union Pacific Railway, when some trains were delayed for thirty days between Ogden and Omaha—the usual time being less than three.
"Fortunately, we've not got a heavy train to move," remarks Lawrence, who is anxious to look on the best side of everything.
"And, thank God! no great amount of passengers," replies the conductor. "Otherwise there would have been a howl for grub before now. We've only got two outside those on the sleepers, and one is a woman, and the other a little girl, the daughter of the engineer of the helping locomotive. He's got her in his arms now, as he stands by his engine. Come over and see what he thinks," adds the autocrat of the train, as he trudges off through the snow towards one of the locomotives on the Y.
Harry has taken a step to follow him, when he suddenly pauses.
He is just outside Miss Travenion's Pullman car, and now, through a window that is slightly open, comes the voice of his divinity, who is seated at one of the organs those cars sometimes had in those days.
Curiously enough, the girl whom Buck had reported as having the blues last night, is singing the brightest and merriest of ditties this morning.
"By George! It must be because she has plenty to eat," cogitates Lawrence, lighting another cigar on the question.
But a few minutes after, in his own car, Mr. Powers chancing to come along, he gets some information which he thinks elucidates the matter.
"She's kind o' joyous in there, ain't she, Cap?" says Buck, with a grin. "An' I reckon I did it!"
"How?"
"Well, this morning, even over her breakfast, which was a long way ahead of any one else's on the train, she didn't have no appetite, and seemed in the dumps; whereupon, I suggested that I had hinted to you that she'd kind o' like company probably."
"You infernal—!" cries Lawrence, fire coming into his eye.
"If you take hold o' me, Cap, I won't tell you the rest!" remarks the boy, retreating a little before Harry's anger. Then he goes on: "She took it something like you—she got red in the face and said: 'Please don't mention the matter!' quite haughty. Whereupon I thought I'd guessed the p'int, and suggested: 'You an' the Cap must have been havin' a smash-up in California!' And then she got real anxious and nervous, and cried out at me: 'In California!—what do you mean?' So I told her how I'd seen you at Ogden, four or five days after her party left for California, and that I'd told you she'd gone West, and you took the journey, I reckoned, to catch up to her."
"And she—" says Lawrence, eagerly.
"Oh, she kept on questioning, and the more I told her, the better pleased she looked, and since then she has been quite chirpy, so I reckon I produced her high spirits."
"God bless you, Buck!" cries Harry, slapping the boy on the shoulder, and the astonished Arab of the railway moves off with a five-dollar greenback in his hand, wondering what made the Cap so liberal.
As for Lawrence, it has suddenly occurred to him that Buck Powers has given Miss Travenion the exact information he had taken Ferdie from California to tell her.
A moment's cogitation and he says to himself: "She was wounded because I hadn't come to Tintic after her. I'll chance a walk through the car, and see if the darling'll cut me again."
Acting on this impulse, he gets off the train, and walks to the forward end of her car, Miss Travenion's stateroom being at its rear.
"I'll give her the length of the car to meditate upon me," he thinks.
As he enters the main portion of the Pullman, her stateroom door is open, and as he comes down the aisle, Erma rises. He knows she has seen him—something in her face tells him that.
Then intense surprise falls upon him:—the young lady steps out with extended hand, and says brightly: "So you have discovered I was on the trainat last? I had been expecting a visit from you all yesterday."
At this tremendous but most feminine prevarication, Lawrence fairly gasps. A second after, he discovers the wonderful tact displayed in it, which calls for an explanation from him, and does not require one from her.
However, he is too awfully happy to stand on little points, and seizing the taper fingers of the young lady, and giving her tact for tact, and prevarication for prevarication, remarks: "You most certainly would have, Miss Travenion, but I only discovered that you were on board this morning, from Buck Powers."
"Why," cries Erma, "I saw you at—" She checks herself suddenly, biting her lips a little, and then goes on: "We've been near each other a whole day, and have not spoken."
"That's a great pity! But we'll make up for lost time, now!" answers Lawrence, gallantly. Then he suggests: "What did you breakfast on?"
"Pies!"
"So did I—our tastes are similar," he laughs, for there is something in the radiant face looking into his that makes him think this snow blockade, privations and all, is the very nicest thing that has come into his life.
A moment after, for he is too earnest for any more light comedy fencing, he comes to the point with masculine abruptness, remarking: "Mr. Powers told you—God bless him!—that I have been in California?"
"Yes."
"I got this little note"—he produces her card with the "I have seen my father. Good-bye" sentence on it—"in Salt Lake City, and presumed you had gone to California with the Livingstons. I was then poor. Four days afterwards, I suddenly found myself astounded and rich. I did not ask how it came—I was too anxious to make use of my money. I thought a tour of 'the Golden State' would please me."
Then he goes on hurriedly and tells her of his wanderings in pursuit of the Livingston party, and his unexpected interview with Ferdie at the Grand Hotel, omitting, however, his journey to Tintic and his rescue of her father, as he doesn't wish to alarm or make Erma think she is under obligation to him.
"Ah!" falters the girl, very pale, and turning her face away from him. "Then you know—I'm the daughter of Tranyon—the Mormon bishop?"
"Yes," he cries; "that is what brought me from California in such a hurry; I wanted to thank you for giving me what I would probably have never got without you—a fortune."
"Oh! it was gratitude," murmurs the young lady, "that brought you from California?" A moment after she coldly says: "That sentiment need not actuate you. I simply induced my father to do you justice," and from now on is very icy; for Erma Travenion demands the love, not the gratitude, of this young gentleman beside her.
This sudden change in his divinity astounds Lawrence, who has not been a student of woman's ways. Inadvertently he puts himself right again, for he suddenly says: "Did I know that I had anything to be grateful to you for, when I wandered about California seeking you—six weeks?"
"Oh!" cries the young lady, "that wasbeforeyou knew my father was R. H. Tranyon, the Mormon bishop?" This last quite haughtily, for she has grown fearfully sensitive on this point since the conversation of the two mining gentlemen in Ogden.
"But," remarks Lawrence, "I know thatnow." Then, growing desperate, he blurts out: "Shall I tell you why I went to California?" and his voice grows very tender.
But the girl, suddenly rising, says with a curious mixture of haughtiness and humility, perhaps shame: "To whom do you wish to tell your tale?—Erma Travenion, of New York, or to Miss Tranyon, who has been called a Mormon 'gal,' and who is reported to be booked as the seventh wife of Bishop Kruger of Kammas Prairie?" Then she cries mockingly, almost savagely, "Which are you talking to?"
"To the girl I love!" cries Lawrence.
"O-oh!"
"To the girl I'd make my wife if she were the daughter of Beelzebub, and booked for the seventh consort of Satan!"
"O-o-o-oh!" With this sigh Erma sinks on the seat again; a moment after she suddenly smiles and murmurs: "Don't make my pedigree worse than it is!"
"Would you like to hear the tale I took with me to California, and have carried ever since in my heart?" says Harry, bending over this young lady, whose face is hiding its blushes, turned towards the car window, upon whose frosted panes her white finger is making figures.
"Y-e-s!"
Then he tells her how he has loved her since the night he first saw her at Delmonico's, and mutters: "Give me your answer!"
"My answer;" murmurs Erma, turning a face to him that is half hope, half uncertainty, all love, "if I were what I was that evening in New York, would be——"
"Yes!" he cries, and has his hasty frontier arm half round the fairy waist of last summer's Newport belle; for there is something in her lovely eyes that many men have looked for, but no one has ever seen till now.
But she rises and falters, "Wait!"
"How long?"
"Wait till I know you're sure you will never feel ashamed of the Mormon's daughter! Oh!—oh! can't you wait one min—!" For Harry has not waited, and the girl's last word as it issues from her rosy mouth is smothered by an audacious black moustache that she can parry no longer. And perchance those lovely coral lips return his betrothal kiss—a very little:—at least Harry thinks so. A moment after he knows it; for Erma Travenion, though very hard to win, having given her hand does not hesitate to make her sweetheart very sure he has also her heart.
Into this Elysium, Buck Powers, who has been one of its architects, breaks with news-boy rapidity. The girl passenger is in the other car gossiping with the lady tourist, and Harry and Erma have forgotten there are other people in this world. Entering rapidly, the banging car door, and an excited and astounded "Gee whiz!" calls the lady and gentleman from heaven to earth.
"What do you want here?" cries Lawrence, and he pounces upon the flying Buck and leads him to the forward compartment, while Erma suddenly discovers that the outside landscape is a thing of most immediate interest.
"I—I didn't mean to run in on you, Cap," gasps the fleeing Buck. Then he smiles on Harry suddenly and grins: "Have you made a through connection at last? Are you switched on the main track now?"
"Stop your infernal conundrums!" laughs Harry. "Take a five-dollar greenback and go away, and don't you tell a living soul that Miss Travenion is going to be Mrs. Lawrence!"
"I'll take a five-dollar greenback," answers the boy, "because you're the luckiest man I ever seed, and it's business. But I've got somethin' to tell your young lady!"
"Very well," answers Harry, and leads Buck back to Erma's side. Here the youth remarks with a snicker that brings blushes upon Miss Travenion, "I hear as how the Cap has just been elected president of the road!" A moment after he continues: "I come to tell you the grub's all out. Somehow, since they got an idea that they might run short, our passengers has eaten so as to make 'em run short. I haven't had a pie to sell for four hours, and there's a little gal, the daughter of the engineer of the helper, has got hungry and is screaming for food——"
"Screaming for food?" cries Erma. "Thank you, Buck, for telling me," and the next minute she is in her stateroom.
"Gracious! you'll be short yourself," expostulates Buck as she returns. "You ain't carrying grub to a giantess!" for she has a beef pie, three fruit tarts, and a couple of apples.
"Perhaps the child's father is hungry also," replies Miss Travenion, who seems very benevolent this afternoon.
"Very well!" says Mr. Powers, "I'll bring the engineer, only don't stint yourself!" and goes on his errand.
A minute after, Erma and Harry are on the platform and the man of the throttle-valve comes to them, carrying his little daughter, who looks pale, and has hungry eyes. Seeing her bounty, the engineer cries, "God bless you, miss." Then he mutters, "You'll rob yourself."
"Oh, I've more left," answers Miss Travenion; "besides, she needs it," for the child has already gone to work ravenously on the fruit tarts.
"God bless you, just the same," cries the engineer. "Thank the lady, Susie."
But Susie, looking at her benefactress, forgets gratitude in admiration, and babbles, "Beau'ful, beau'ful," extending a fruity hand and putting up two lips embellished with jam.
"Don't, she'll spoil your dress," says the father. But Erma has her already in her arms, giving the little one a kiss, and playing with her and doing some small things to make her happy.
And doing small things for the baby does great things for herself, though she does not know it, for it gains the engineer's heart.
The man wipes a grimy eye with a more grimy sleeve, and mutters, "I was afraid my little one would get sick from starving, and she's all that's left me of her mother, who's buried in Green River—God bless your kind heart and beautiful face, miss!" and so going away, spreads the news of the beautiful girl's bounty through the train.
But this brings requests from other hungry ones to Miss Travenion, who has a little that they will eat—if she will give it them.
Consequently, about five in the afternoon Lawrence, who does not know of this raid on his beloved's commissariat, and is in the smoking-car pondering over the problem whether the knowledge of the awful death to which Kruger had doomed and from which he had rescued her father, will not make Erma too anxious and too nervous about Ralph Travenion's further fate, finds himself disturbed by Mr. Powers.
The boy comes hurriedly to him and says: "She ain't got nothin' to eat, and she's hungry."
"What do you mean?" cries Harry. "Didn't you say that you had provisioned her for two days?"
"Yes! but she's given it all away to the women in the way-cars."
"No relief train yet?"
"No, an' I don't see any chance of one."
"Very well," remarks Lawrence, putting on his overcoat, "I'll see what I can do."
He steps out of the car, and the best he can think of is to tramp to the telegraph station, and see if there is anything left there. It is over a mile and a half, but a beaten track has been pretty well made in the snow by the brakemen and conductor on some of their visits to that point, so he gets there in a little over half an hour.
Here, the conductor is talking to the telegraph operator, and they seem to be excited over something.
"What's the matter?" asks Harry.
"Nothing, only the line's down between here and Evanston!" says the operator. "It was working twenty minutes ago, but I can't get the Evanston or any other Western office now."
"What was the last news from there?"
"Bad!" replies the man. "They can't get a locomotive or relief train to us till to-morrow. They'll have to pick and shovel their way through a lot of drifts."
"Meantime we have nothing to eat!" grumbles the captain.
"Oh," remarks the conductor, "they telegraphed me this morning that they would send up provisions in sleighs. Some teamsters will bring them up. They ought to be due here to-night. They can make the eighteen miles, I reckon, in nine hours."
"There is no danger of a train coming from the other way to bring more hungry people?" asks Lawrence earnestly.
"Oh, no!" answers the operator. "That's all fixed. I heard Evanston telegraph Green River this morning, for all passenger trains bound west to be held at that point—they can feed them there—and all freight to be stopped at Bridger."
"You are sure?"
"Certain!—the order was from Hilliard, the train dispatcher of this division. There's only one passenger train side-tracked at Granger, and a freight switched off at Carter and another at Bridger, between us and Green River."
"Very well!" says Lawrence. "Have you got anything to eat?"
"You're welcome to the best I can do, Cap," replies the man of the wire, who knows Harry by sight, as most of the employees of the road do. But the best that Lawrence can obtain for his sweetheart is some pork and beans, and some bread made of middlings. These he wraps up in an old newspaper—nothing else being handy—and turns to go, but pauses a moment, and says: "Haven't you got any tea, or coffee, or something of that kind?"
"Tea," cries the operator. "I can accommodate you!"
So, laden with a small package of this ladies' delight, the Captain leaves the log cabin, which is the only house at Aspen, and does duty as a telegraph office, and trudging back through the snow, brings comfort and happiness to Erma, who has grown so hungry in the chill night air that she has almost repented of her generosity.
Buck Powers accommodates her with boiling water, and the Captain would leave her to her meal, but she suddenly stops him and cries: "What have you had to eat?"
"Oh, don't mind me," says Harry.
"But I do—you have tramped through the snow for my comfort; Besides, I must take care of you—because——"
"Why?"
"Oh, well, you know "—a big blush—"what I told you to-day! If you remember—take tea with me!"
"With pleasure, if you put it on that ground!" laughs Harry, who is desperately hungry, and when he has fallen to, forgets himself, and eats a good deal more than his share, though they both enjoy the meal.
But just at this moment there is a cry outside, and a faint hurrah from the negro porter inside.
It is the arrival of the teamsters, who have come, bringing with them comfort and provisions, and everybody is now in the land of plenty, though it is a very rough plenty.
Looking at them, Lawrence wonders why so many men have come with the relief sleighs; but is told they brought them along to help the teams through the drifts.
So they pass a very happy evening—the young lady singing a song or two for her swain, more beautifully, he thinks, than any prima donna, and saying good-night to him afterwards so tenderly that Lawrence, coming to his own car, astonishes the negro porter by giving him five dollars for making up his bed in the stateroom which is unoccupied, and more roomy than a section.
A moment after he murmurs to himself: "Can it be? Is it possible?"—and then cries, "Good gracious! the engagement ring—and no jeweller in sight!"
And so he goes to bed, to be awakened by a voice in the night that changes confidence into doubt, and makes joy into sorrow.
Harry has hardly been in bed an hour when there is a rap on the door of his stateroom.
"Hang you!" he cries, thinking it is the negro porter. "I've left my boots outside. What are you waking me up for at this time of night?"
"'Ssh! don't talk so loud, Cap! Let me in!"
And opening the door, Mr. Powers makes his appearance, his eyes, in the moonlight that is streaming in, large, luminous, and excited.
He gasps: "Cap—come—an' save your girl!"
As Buck speaks, Lawrence is out of bed. "Quick!" he says.
"You know in my baggage car I hear most of what's goin' on. Them teamsters that came here with the grub are camping in there to-night. I heard them talking. They're Mormons!"
"Ah!"
"Buck Mormons from Echo and Heber, and that way. One of them said to the other, 'The bishop will be along soon. The orders is, we're none of us to make a move, but to have the sleighs ready to start out quick, and one fixed with furs in it and blankets, to keep the girl warm.'"
"What makes you think they meant Miss Travenion?"
"They described her."
"Did you hear the name of the bishop?"
"Yes," answers Buck. "It was the cuss who came West with you and her!"
"Kruger!—Hush! Speak lower! Whisper to me!"
"I am a-whisperin'!" says the boy. "It's the lowest I've got. I've spoilt my voice hollerin' as news-agent, an' I can't bring it down!"
"Are the Mormon teamsters armed?"
"They ain't Mormon teamers. Some of them is disguised. I heard one of them call another 'Constable,' and the other chinned him as 'Sheriff.' Hadn't we better tell the conductor?"
"No," says Lawrence, shortly, for he remembers the conductor is a routine man—and, of course, of no use in such an emergency.
A moment after, he says quietly to the boy: "Miss Travenion was very good to you, Buck. Will you help me save her?"
"That's what I come for.".
"It may be a life and death matter."
"That's what I come for."
"Very well," replies Harry. "You go quietly about the train—they won't notice you—and find out what you can, and come and report to me, in Miss Travenion's car. I am going there."
"All right."
As Buck turns to obey his orders, Lawrence suddenly whispers: "No matter what happens, don't let any one of that gang learn I am on the train."
"I understand!"
Then the captain asks suddenly, "How many of them?"
"Twelve!"
"Good God!"
As Buck goes on his errand, Lawrence, looking carefully about to see he is not observed, slips from his car into that of Miss Travenion, which is quiet, save for a loud snoring from the gentlemen's smoking compartment, which indicates that the Ethiopian porter is making a very comfortable night of it.
A lamp, partially turned up, illuminates faintly the rear of the car. He taps lightly on Miss Travenion's door. No answer! His heart sinks; she may be already carried away from him.
Then he raps more loudly, and her voice tells him she is as yet safe.
"Who is it?" asks the girl.
"I—Harry Lawrence!"
"Is anything the matter?"
"Yes! I must see you in two minutes!"
"Impossible—I am not dressed."
"You must dress in two minutes. Throw on a wrapper or shawl."
"Oh, mercy! What is it?"
"Dress!"
"Very well!—Good gracious! where's my slippers?" This last a nervous aside.
Then the noise from inside Miss Travenion's stateroom indicates she is obeying him with a vigor that shows he has impressed her.
Within the time specified she has opened her door, and stepped out to him, draped in some warm woollen wrapper, which clings about her lithe, graceful figure; and the moonlight shining through the car window gets into her unbound hair, and makes it very soft and golden.
She says hastily, but pathetically, "Now, tell me!"
"Can you be very brave?"
"Yes! Try me!"
Looking in her eyes, he knows she can be.
"Very well," he whispers, "sit down. To-day, fearing to alarm you, I did not tell you all I knew in regard to your father; but it is necessary now that you understand everything about Kruger, the Mormon bishop."
"Why, he's two hundred miles away."
"In a few minutes he will be here."
"Oh, mercy!" The girl leans against her lover, and he can feel her heart throb and pulse with apprehension. His arm goes round her waist, and seems to give her confidence, as he tells her the whole story of her father's blood atonement, from which he saved him. And she gasps: "You are not deceiving me—my father is not dead?"
"He's as safe as you are!"
"Thank God!"
"Perhaps safer!" Then he tells her of the revelation Buck Powers has made him this night.
"Ah!" Erma cries; "Kruger is coming to force me to give up that Utah Central stock."
"For more!"
"What more?"
"To force you to be his seventh wife."
But she says very quietly: "There is no fear of that. I can always die at the last."
"I know you candie; but for my sake you mustlive!" cries Lawrence. Then he says grimly: "If there's any dying to-night, Kruger does it!"
"Ah! that may mean your life. For my sake you must live! I've—I've only been happy for a day." And her tender arms go around him, as she sobs over him, calling him her darling, her betrothed, her future husband, and many other wild terms of endearment she might not use, did she not feel this night might take him from her.
A moment after she cries: "He is not here yet—let us fly!"
"Fly, where?" asks Lawrence. "Through those snow-drifts, over those uninhabited plains? In half an hour we should be overtaken. If not, by morning we should be dead."
"Then, how will you save me?"
"All I know is that I will save you! But to do it, you must follow my instructions. Twelve men I shall not resist openly—except at the last. Give me your receipt from Wells, Fargo, for that stock."
She steps into the stateroom, and a moment after hands it to him.
"Now," he says, "listen to me! Each word I utter is important. When Kruger comes, you must be in your stateroom, asleep. Nothing must betray to him that you expect or fear his coming! Nothing must inform him that you know of his crime against your father; and, above all, nothing must suggest to him that I am on your train. Our one great hope is, that he does not know I'm here, and may be—just a little careless! Remember, you have nothing to fear as long as I live!"
But Buck Powers breaks in on them at this moment, and mutters: "Cap, Kruger's here! He's talkin' with the men over there!"
"On which side of the cars? Can he see me if I leave them this way?"
"No!"
"You're going?" says the girl. And putting her arms round his neck, nestles to him, and murmurs: "Remember, your life is my life!"
And so he leaves her, and steps cautiously out, and crouching in shadow of the cars, and looking over the white plateaus of drifted snow, he thinks:
"Fly, where? Fight—how? Impossible!" Then of a sudden the snow disappears, and he remembers a hot spring day in '64, in Arkansas, when he and his Iowa boys did what was deemed impossible in war—artillery holding woodland and brush copse against infantry. He sees his cannoneers—boys with fresh young faces and fair hair, just from Western prairies and green fields—fall and die, as the musketry flashes all about them, and singing bullets bring death to them, but still stand and scourge that undergrowth and timber shelter with grape and case shot, till the gray infantry slowly draws back; until the Yankee lumberman has built up a dam like those that float timber down Maine rivers, and so saved the Federal fleet, and thus saved the Federal army.
He mutters: "I did the impossible then for my country; I can do the impossible nowfor my love."
And from that moment Harry Lawrence has the one great quality that makes success possible in all desperate undertakings—confidence!
Even as he looks, hope comes, for he sees the glow of one of the locomotives on the Y, and knows that its fires are still banked—it has a little steam; and he remembers, the line is clear of trains to Green River.
Then he whispers suddenly to Buck, who says: "I understand!" and goes cautiously away, while Lawrence struggles through the snow-drifts to the helping locomotive, the one nearest the switch that leads to the main track running to the East.
The engineer, who is a careful man, and has a pride in his machine, is still with his engine, and Harry is delighted to see he is the one whose heart Erma has won by kindness to his child.
"I was rubbing her up a little, Cap," he says. "I want to be sure she's all ready for to-morrow's work."
"Is she ready forto-night'swork?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," answers Lawrence, who has looked the man over, and concludes it is better to lie to him than to argue with him, "that there are road agents on the train."
For a moment the man looks at him in unbelief, then there is a little noise and commotion about the sleepers, and he cries: "My God! my child!"
"Your child is safe. Buck is bringing her over!" says Harry, pointing at the figure of the boy, half leading, half carrying the little girl through the snow. "Any way," he goes on, "they would have done nothing to her; it's the other one they want, the heiress!"
"What! that beautiful girl that kept my little one from starving? We must save her!" cries the engineer, getting hold of his own darling from Buck, who has come up.
"We will!" whispers Lawrence. "Those road agents will only trouble her and Wells, Fargo & Co.'s express. The express must take care of itself—we'll take care of the girl!"
"But how?"
"By running her down to safety on your locomotive!"
"Great goodness! I never thought of that!" replies the man of the throttle-valve.
A moment after, he says: "I haven't got coal to reach further than Granger."
"That'll do! Get up steam as fast as you can, but don't let anybody see you're at work on your locomotive."
With these words, Lawrence goes into consultation with the engineer and Mr. Powers as to the details of the transaction.
It is arranged that Harry is to do the work of the fireman, who is on the train, and whom they dare not take the risk of arousing; Buck is to turn the switch to put the locomotive on the main track, and to board them as they pass him, which they will do very quietly.
Leaving the engineer quietly making his preparations, Lawrence walks cautiously across, not towards Miss Travenion's car, but towards the sleeper behind it—the one he occupies.
From that he cautiously approaches the other, looks in, and finds it empty of all save Miss Travenion, who has apparently hurriedly dressed, and is seated, confronted by two men, who evidently have her in their keeping, as one says: "Don't be scared; we'll take good care of you, even if you have been tryin' to rob the Mormon Church!"
Catching these words in the outer darkness of the rear compartment, Lawrence knows that Kruger has already had his say, and for some reason left the girl. Harry is glad of this, for feeling the revolver in his belt, he fears he might have killed the Mormon, which would probably not have saved either himself or his sweetheart.
In this he is doubtless right. For while he has been holding conference with the engineer, Kruger, followed by four or five of his satellites, and accompanied by the conductor, who is expostulating with him, has entered the car.
"Now, ye keep quiet!" he says to that official. "We've got a warrant for this young lady, for assistin' her daddy to run away with half a million dollars' worth of Utah Central stock. There's the documents, sworn to by the sheriff of Heber City, Utah, before a Probate Judge."
"A Utah judge has got no jurisdiction in Wyoming," answers the conductor.
"No! But this is made returnable," says Lot, "before the United States District Judge, and Wyoming's part of his district, and that gives us authority. Don't step in the way of the law, young man. Besides"—here he looks round at his following, and remarks: "We're goin' to execute this warrant any way, an' ye ain't got the power to stop us! I've sized ye up, an' ye've got two nigger porters, two brakesmen, an' yerself. We've twelve men armed with Winchesters, an' we've got the drop on yer train-hands, mail agent, an' Wells, Fargo's messenger, for they're surrounded and cut off from ye. Now the sheriff's goin' to serve his papers."
At this moment, the negro porter, who has just awakened, flies out of the car shrieking: "For de Lord! Road agents!"
"Ye see how much good he'd do ye!" guffaws Kruger to the conductor. "Now," he continues, "ye step back an' let me do my business polite!"
"Not unless you agree to report with the young lady at Evanston, before you take her into Utah," says the dethroned autocrat of the train.
"That we will do, certain!" replies Lot, with a wink to the sheriff. "Now ye wake her up."
Thus commanded, the conductor raps upon Miss Travenion's stateroom door, and to her inquiries, asks her to dress herself, stating there are some gentlemen on business, who must see her at once.
"Very well! Let them wait!" answers the young lady quietly, though there is a tremor in her voice.
She keeps them waiting so long that one of the men mutters: "The gal must be rigging herself out for a dance," and Lot himself knocks on her stateroom door, saying, "Miss Ermie, come out quick! It's Kruger, yer daddy's friend, who's talkin' to ye."
"You here?" she cries through the door. "What has happened to my father, that you come to me?"
And he says: "The sheriff here has got a little business with ye. Yer daddy has disappeared."
"A—ah!" And it's all she can do to keep from bursting out and upbraiding him, telling him what she knows, and so ruining the chance Lawrence is preparing for her.
"Yes, yer daddy has gone, and the Utah Central stock that belonged to the Mormon Church has gone with him, an' the sheriff here thinks it's in yer possession, and has sworn out a warrant agin ye, an' is here to execute it. An' I come along with him to make it as light for ye, as possible. He thought ye'd got clean away from him, but heerd the train was stopped here by snow, an' so he come on to get ye. But before he takes ye, I want to tell ye a few little things. Come out!"
Then hearing the noise of the moving bolt in Erma's door, Kruger says to the men with him: "Just step back a leetle into the smoking-room, while I talk to the girl."
"All right, bishop!" answers the sheriff, who seems entirely under Lot's domination.
The men withdraw as Erma comes out and stands before Bishop Kruger, her beauty perhaps at this moment appealing to him more than it ever did—for excitement has added a lustre to her eye, and she seems so helpless, and so much in his power.
He mutters, his eyes blinking a little at the radiance that is before him: "Now, Ermie, ye can make everything quite easy for yerself!"
"Indeed—how?" She tries very hard to conceal it, but some scorn will get into her voice.
"By givin' up the stock quiet!"
"Ah! then you will let me go?"
"Oh, no! The sheriff wouldn't do that; but when he takes ye back to Utah, I'll go bail for ye, an' I'll take ye down to my home in Kammas Prairie, where ye'll be nice an' comfortable, an' I'll look after ye."
"You are always very good to me," says the girl with a sneer, though he doesn't detect it, and replies: "Yes, I'll be better to ye than ye know!"
And she, trying to act her part, to prevent any suspicion in his mind, thanks him with so much apparent heartiness that the old satyr loses his head, and chuckles: "Now, that's the right kind o' talk. Now yer lookin' beautiful as one o' the angels of Zion. I've been havin' my eye on ye, an' I'm goin' to exalt ye, an' take ye into my family."
"Take me into your family—as adaughter?"
"No, as awife, for I love ye!"
And looking to her like an ogre, he would advance to her, whispering: "By this kiss of peace, I take ye into my family!"
But she has forgotten to act now, and scorn is in her eye, hatred in her voice, and loathing in her shudder. She says hoarsely: "Back!don't dare to sully me by the touch of your finger! I loathe you as I do your iniquitous church!"
"Ye blasphemer!" he cries. "This is the second time. I'll be hard on ye now, an' bring ye down from yer high horse. Where's that stock of the Utah Central?"
"Find it!" jeers Erma.
"I will!" he answers, "and then I'll make ye sorry ye turned yer nose up at Lot Kruger!"
Raising his voice, he shouts: "Sheriff, come in an' take yer prisoner, an' make a search of her baggage! She's got the stolen goods with her, I reckon!"
A second later the girl is placed under arrest.
But a quick though thorough search of the baggage she has with her, shows that the Utah Central stock, that Kruger knows the Mormon Church must have, is not in her possession.