read the Bible at her plenty. Um-m,"
mused he. "I don't put much stock in that yarn you bring me. There's a
nigger in the wood-pile, but he ain't black. What you goin' to do about
it?"

"Nothing. It's not my concern. Now if Daniel will mind his affairs I'll
continue to mind mine."

"Wall, Zion's a long way off yet," quoth friend Jenks. "I don't look to
see you or she get there--nor Dan'l either."

He being stubborn, I let him have the last word; did not seek to develop
his views. But his contentious harping shadowed like an omen.

CHAPTER XVI

I DO THE DEED

We had camped well beyond a last bunch of the red-shirted graders, so that
the thread of a trail wended before, lonely, sand-obscured, leading
apparently nowhere, through this desert devoid of human life. Line stakes
of the surveyors denoted the grade; but the surveyors' work was done,
here. Rush orders from headquarters had sent them all westward still, to
set their final stakes across other deserts and across the mountains,
clear to Ogden at the north end of the Salt Lake itself.

Seemingly we had cut loose and were more than ever a world to ourselves.
The country had grown sterile beneath ordinary, if possible; and our
thoughts and talk would have been sterile also were it not for that one
recurrent topic which kept them quick. In these journeyings men seize upon
little things and magnify them; discuss and rediscuss a phase until
launched maybe as an empty joke it returns freighted with tragedy.

However, now that once My Lady had eliminated herself from my field I did
not see but that Daniel and I might taper off into at least an armed
neutrality. If he continued to nag me, it would be wholly of his own free
will. He had no grievance.

Then in case that I did kill him--if kill him I must (and that eventuality
hung over me like the sword of Damocles) I should be not ashamed to tell
even my mother. In this I took what small comfort I might.

I had not spoken at length with Mrs. Montoyo for several days. We had
exchanged merely civil greetings. To-day I did not see her during the
march; did not attempt to see her--did not so much as curiously glance her
way, being content to let well enough alone, although aware that my care
might be misinterpreted as a token of fear. But as to proving the case
against me, Daniel was at liberty to experiment with the status in quo.

Toward evening we climbed a second wide, flat divide. We were leaving the
Red