ginning, combined with the needs
of the trail, had given her a viewpoint where expediency counted for
more than altruism. She with two children and a helpless man would
have gone on and left anyone to his fate. She did not say this, but
Susan, with intelligence sharpened by a jealous passion, felt that
there was no need to defend her husband's action. As for the rest of
the world--deep in her heart she had already decided it should never
know.

"You couldn't have done anything else," said Bella. "I've learned that
when you're doing that sort of thing, you can't have the same feelings
you can back in the States, with everything handy and comfortable. You
can be fair, but you got to fight for your own. They got to come
first."

She had neither seen nor heard anything of David. No rumor of a man
held captive by the Indians had reached their train. She tried not to
let Susan see that she believed the worst. But her melancholy
headshake and murmured "Poor David--and him such a kind, whole-hearted
man" was as an obituary on the dead.

"Well," she said in pensive comment when Susan had got to the end of
her history, "you can't get through a journey like that without some
one coming to grief. It's not in human nature. But your father--that
grand man! And then the young feller that would have made you such a
good husband--" Susan moved warningly--"Not but what I'm sure you've
got as good a one as it is. And we've got to take what we can get in
this world," she added, spoiling it all by the philosophical acceptance
of what she evidently regarded as a make-shift adjusting to Nature's
needs.

When the men came back Glen had heard all about the gold in the river
and was athirst to get there. Work at his trade could wait, and,
anyway, he had been in Sacramento and found, while his services were in
demand on every side, the materials wherewith he was to help raise a
weatherproof city were not to be had. Men were content to live in
tents and cloth shacks until the day of lumber and sawmills dawned, and
why wait for this millennium when the river called from its golden
sands?

No one had news of David. Daddy John had questioned the captains of
two recently arrived convoys, but learned nothing. The men thought it
likely he was dead. They agreed as to the possibility of the Indian
abduction and his future reappearance. Such things had happened. But
it was too late now to do anything. No search party could be se