money enough they said. The doctor
had left seven thousand dollars in his chest, and David had three to
add to it. It would be ample to live on till the men could set to work
and earn a maintenance for them. No word was spoken of her marriage,
but it lay in the offing of their argument as the happy finale that the
long toil of the return journey and the combination of resources were
to prelude.

The thought of going back had never occurred to her, and shocked her
into abrupt refusal. It would be an impossible adaptation to outgrown
conditions. She could not conjure up the idea of herself refitted into
the broken frame of her girlhood. She told them she would go on, there
was nothing now to go back for. Their only course was to keep to the
original plan, emigrate to California and settle there. They returned
to the fire and told Courant. She could see him with eager gaze
listening. Then he smiled and, rising to his feet, sent a bold,
exultant glance through the darkness to her. She drew her shawl over
her head to shut it out, for she was afraid.

They rested now on the lip of the desert, gathering their forces for
the last lap of the march. There had been no abatement in the pressure
of their pace, and Courant had told them it must be kept up. He had
heard the story of the Donner party two years before, and the first of
September must see them across the Sierra. In the evenings he
conferred with Daddy John on these matters and kept a vigilant watch on
the animals upon whose condition the success of the journey depended.

David was not included in these consultations. Both men now realized
that he was useless when it came to the rigors of the trail. Of late
he had felt a physical and spiritual impairment, that showed in a
slighted observance of his share of the labor. He had never learned to
cord his pack, and day after day it turned under his horse's belly,
discharging its cargo on the ground. The men, growling with
irritation, finally took the work from him, not from any pitying
consideration, but to prevent further delay.

He was, in fact, coming to that Valley of Desolation where the body
faints and only the spirit's dauntlessness can keep it up and doing.
What dauntlessness his spirit once had was gone. He moved wearily,
automatically doing his work and doing it ill. The very movements of
his hands, slack and fumbling, were an exasperation to the other men,
setting their strength to a hercule