Mrs.
Wainwright weeping and pleading with Laban to try to get some cow's milk.

"It may save the baby's life," she said. "And they've got cow's milk. I
saw fresh cows with my own eyes. Go on, please, Laban. It won't hurt
you to try. They can only refuse. But they won't. Tell them it's for a
baby, a wee little baby. Mormon women have mother's hearts. They
couldn't refuse a cup of milk for a wee little baby."

And Laban tried. But, as he told father afterward, he did not get to see
any Mormon women. He saw only the Mormon men, who turned him away.

This was the last Mormon outpost. Beyond lay the vast desert, with, on
the other side of it, the dream land, ay, the myth land, of California.
As our wagons rolled out of the place in the early morning I, sitting
beside my father on the driver's seat, saw Laban give expression to his
feelings. We had gone perhaps half a mile, and were topping a low rise
that would sink Cedar City from view, when Laban turned his horse around,
halted it, and stood up in the stirrups. Where he had halted was a new-
made grave, and I knew it for the Wainwright baby's--not the first of our
graves since we had crossed the Wasatch mountains.

He was a weird figure of a man. Aged and lean, long-faced,
hollow-checked, with matted, sunburnt hair that fell below the shoulders
of his buckskin shirt, his face was distorted with hatred and helpless
rage. Holding his long rifle in his bridle-hand, he shook his free fist
at Cedar City.

"God's curse on all of you!" he cried out. "On your children, and on
your babes unborn. May drought destroy your crops. May you eat sand
seasoned with the venom of rattlesnakes. May the sweet water of your
springs turn to bitter alkali. May . . ."

Here his words became indistinct as our wagons rattled on; but his
heaving shoulders and brandishing fist attested that he had only begun to
lay the curse. That he expressed the general feeling in our train was
evidenced by the many women who leaned from the wagons, thrusting out
gaunt forearms and shaking bony, labour-malformed fists at the last of
Mormondom. A man, who walked in the sand and goaded the oxen of the
wagon behind ours, laughed and waved his goad. It was unusual, that
laugh, for there had been no laughter in our train for many days.

"Give 'm hell, Laban," he encouraged. "Them's my sentiments."

And as our train rolled on I continued to look back at Laban, standing in
his stirrups by