ybody who denied it. Only when her mental vision--pressed on by some
inward urge of obscure self-distrust--carried her forward to that future
with David in the cabin in California, something in her shrank and
failed. Her thought leaped back as from an abhorrent contact, and her
body, caught by some mysterious internal qualm, felt limp and faintly
sickened.

She dwelt even more persistently on Courant's hatefulness, impressed upon
herself his faults. He was hard and she had seen him brutal, a man
without feeling, as he had shown when the Mormon boy died, a harsh and
remorseless leader urging them on, grudging them even their seventh day
rest, deaf to their protests, lashing them forward with contempt of their
weakness. This was above and apart from his manner to her. That she
tried to feel was a small, personal matter, but, nevertheless, it stung,
did not cease to sting, and left an unhealed sore to rankle in her pride.
He did not care to hide that he held her cheaply, as a useless futile
thing. Once she had heard him say to Daddy John, "It's the women in the
train that make the trouble. They're always in the way." And she was
the only woman. She would like to see him conquered, beaten, some of his
heady confidence stricken out of him, and when he was humbled have stood
by and smiled at his humiliation.

So she passed over the empty land under the empty sky, a particle of
matter carrying its problem with it.

It was late afternoon when they encamped by the Big Sandy. The march had
been distressful, bitter in their mouths with the clinging clouds of
powdered alkali, their heads bowed under the glaring ball of the sun.
All day the circling rim of sky line had weaved up and down, undulating
in the uncertainty of the mirage, the sage had blotted into indistinct
seas that swam before their strained vision. When the river cleft showed
in black tracings across the distance, they stiffened and took heart,
coolness and water were ahead. It was all they had hope or desire for
just then. At the edge of the clay bluff, they dipped and poured down a
corrugated gully, the dust sizzling beneath the braked wheels, the
animals, the smell of water in their nostrils, past control. The impetus
of the descent carried them into the chill, purling current. Man and
beast plunged in, laved in it, drank it, and then lay by it resting,
spent and inert.

They camped where a grove of alders twinkled in answer to the swift,
telegra