ulse. He took it, and
feeling it relinquished to his with trust and confidence, swore that
never again would he disturb her, never demand of her till she was
ready to give.

CHAPTER VIII

Fort Bridger was like a giant magnet perpetually revolving and sweeping
the western half of the country with its rays. They wheeled from the
west across the north over the east and down to the south. Ox teams,
prairie schooners, pack trains, horsemen came to it from the barren
lands that guarded the gates of California, from the tumultuous rivers
and fragrant forests of the Oregon country, from the trapper's paths
and the thin, icy streams of the Rockies, from the plains where the
Platte sung round its sand bars, from the sun-drenched Spanish deserts.
All roads led to it, and down each one came the slow coil of the long
trains and the pacing files of mounted men. Under its walls they
rested and repaired their waste, ere they took the trail again intent
on the nation's work of conquest.

The fort's centripetal attraction had caught the doctor's party, and
was drawing it to the focus. They reckoned the days on their fingers
and pressed forward with a feverish hurry. They were like wayworn
mariners who sight the lights of a port. Dead desires, revived, blew
into a glow extinguished vanities. They looked at each other, and for
the first time realized how ragged and unkempt they were, then dragged
out best clothes from the bottom of their chests and hung their
looking-glasses to the limbs of trees. They were coming to the surface
after a period of submersion.

Susan fastened her mirror to the twig on an alder trunk and ransacked
her store of finery. It yielded up a new red merino bodice, and the
occasion was great enough to warrant breaking into her reserve of
hairpins. Then she experimented with her hair, parted and rolled it in
the form that had been the fashion in that long dead past--was it
twenty years ago?--when she had been a girl in Rochester. She
inspected her reflected image with a fearful curiosity, as if expecting
to find gray hairs and wrinkles. It was pleasant to see that she
looked the same--a trifle thinner may be. And as she noted that her
cheeks were not as roundly curved, the fullness of her throat had
melted to a more muscular, less creased and creamy firmness, she felt a
glow of satisfaction. For in those distant days--twenty-five years ago
it must be--she had worried because she was a little _