ur
arrival the night before.

Again it was long hours of parching heat and biting dust, sage-brush and
sand, and a land accursed. No dwellings of men, neither cattle nor
fences, nor any sign of human kind, did we encounter all that day; and at
night we made our wagon-circle beside an empty stream, in the damp sand
of which we dug many holes that filled slowly with water seepage.

Our subsequent journey is always a broken experience to me. We made camp
so many times, always with the wagons drawn in circle, that to my child
mind a weary long time passed after Nephi. But always, strong upon all
of us, was that sense of drifting to an impending and certain doom.

We averaged about fifteen miles a day. I know, for my father had said it
was sixty miles to Fillmore, the next Mormon settlement, and we made
three camps on the way. This meant four days of travel. From Nephi to
the last camp of which I have any memory we must have taken two weeks or
a little less.

At Fillmore the inhabitants were hostile, as all had been since Salt
Lake. They laughed at us when we tried to buy food, and were not above
taunting us with being Missourians.

When we entered the place, hitched before the largest house of the dozen
houses that composed the settlement were two saddle-horses, dusty,
streaked with sweat, and drooping. The old man I have mentioned, the one
with long, sunburnt hair and buckskin shirt and who seemed a sort of aide
or lieutenant to father, rode close to our wagon and indicated the jaded
saddle-animals with a cock of his head.

"Not sparin' horseflesh, Captain," he muttered in a low voice. "An' what
in the name of Sam Hill are they hard-riding for if it ain't for us?"

But my father had already noted the condition of the two animals, and my
eager eyes had seen him. And I had seen his eyes flash, his lips
tighten, and haggard lines form for a moment on his dusty face. That was
all. But I put two and two together, and knew that the two tired saddle-
horses were just one more added touch of ominousness to the situation.

"I guess they're keeping an eye on us, Laban," was my father's sole
comment.

It was at Fillmore that I saw a man that I was to see again. He was a
tall, broad-shouldered man, well on in middle age, with all the evidence
of good health and immense strength--strength not alone of body but of
will. Unlike most men I was accustomed to about me, he was
smooth-shaven. Several days' growth of b