; I don't want to
live in a cabin. Father and I have just been talking about it. Why
it's months and months off yet."

He did not answer. She had spoken this way to him before, wafting the
subject away with evasive words. After a pause he said slowly: "Why
need we wait so long?"

"We must. I'm not going to begin my married life the way the emigrant
women do. I want to live decently and be comfortable."

He broke a sprig off a sage bush and began to pluck it apart. She had
receded to her defenses and peeped nervously at him from behind them.

"Fort Bridger," he said, his eyes on the twig, "is a big place, a sort
of rendezvous for all kinds of people."

She stared at him, her face alert with apprehension, ready to dart into
her citadel and lower the drawbridge.

"Sometimes there are missionaries stopping there."

"Missionaries?" she exclaimed in a high key. "I hate missionaries!"

This was a surprising statement. David knew the doctor to be a
supporter and believer in the Indian missions, and had often heard his
daughter acquiesce in his opinions.

"Why do you hate them?"

"I don't know. There's another thing you want a reason for. It's
getting cold up here--let's go down by the fire."

She gathered herself together to rise, but he turned quickly upon her,
and his face, while it made her shrink, also arrested her. She had
come to dread that expression, persuasion hardened into desperate
pleading. It woke in her a shocked repugnance, as though something had
been revealed to her that she had no right to see. She felt shame for
him, that he must beg where a man should conquer and subdue.

"Wait a moment," he said. "Why can't one of those missionaries marry
us there?"

She had scrambled to her knees, and snatched at her skirt preparatory
to the jump to her feet.

"No," she said vehemently. "No. What's the matter with you all
talking about marriages and missionaries when we're in the middle of
the wilds?"

"Susan," he cried, catching at her dress, "just listen a moment. I
could take care of you then, take care of you properly. You'd be my
own, to look after and work for. It's seemed to me lately you loved me
enough. I wouldn't have suggested such a thing if you were as you were
in the beginning. But you seem to care now. You seem as if--as if--it
wouldn't be so hard for you to live with me and let me love you."

She jerked her skirt away and leaped to her feet crying again, "No,
Davi