ed her, for she had not guessed where he was leading her, and
now saw herself not only shorn of her dignity but shorn of her woman's
prerogative of being able to experience a mad and unreasonable passion.

"You're a liar," she burst out before she knew what words were coming.

"Then you think you could?" he asked without the slightest show of
surprise at her violence, apparently only curious.

"Don't I?" she cried, ready to proclaim that she would follow David to
destruction and death.

"I don't know," he answered. "I've been wondering."

"What business have you got to wonder about me?"

"None--but," he leaned toward her, "you can't stop me doing that,
little lady; that's one of the things you _can't_ control."

For a moment they eyed each other, glance held glance in a smoldering
challenge. The quizzical patronage had gone from his, the gleam of a
subdued defiance taken its place. Hers was defiant too, but it was
openly so, a surface thing that she had raised like a defense in haste
and tremor to hide weakness.

David moved in his blanket, yawned and threw out a languid hand. She
leaped to her feet and ran to him.

"David, are you better?" she cried, kneeling beside him. "Are you
better, dear?"

He opened his eyes, blinking, saw the beloved face, and smiled.

"All right," he said sleepily. "I was only tired."

She lifted one of the limp hands and pressed it to her cheek.

"I've been so worried about you," she purred. "I couldn't put my mind
on anything else. I haven't known what I was saying, I've been so
worried."

CHAPTER VI

South Pass, that had been pictured in their thoughts as a cleft between
snow-crusted summits, was a wide, gentle incline with low hills sweeping
up on either side. From here the waters ran westward, following the sun.
Pacific Spring seeped into the ground in an oasis of green whence
whispering threads felt their way into the tawny silence and subdued by
its weight lost heart and sank into the unrecording earth.

Here they found the New York Company and a Mormon train filling up their
water casks and growing neighborly in talk of Sublette's cut off and the
route by the Big and Little Sandy. A man was a man even if he was a
Mormon, and in a country so intent on its own destiny, so rapt in the
calm of contemplation, he took his place as a human unit on whom his
creed hung like an unnoticed tag.

They filled their casks, visited in the two camps, and then moved on