Part 6

“You had a close call, Mrs. O’Dowd!” exclaimed the Captain, earnestly. “I don’t know as he could have put me in limbo for harboring you, but he could have made it go hard with me for hiding the children. I hate a law-breaker; but what is a fellow to do in such a case?”

“God has been merciful to me, Squire. I felt all along that I would get away safe and sound.”

“Wouldn’t God have done a better job to have saved you in the first place?” asked the Captain, dryly.

“How did you get money to pay your travelling expenses?” asked Mary.

“I’ve a confession to make to you and Mrs. Ranger, Captain. Will you promise not to scold?”

“I’ll know better what to promise after I’ve learned the provocation. Don’t be afraid to tell the truth. Speak out. Don’t mind the gals.”

“I stole three hundred dollars—it was my own money—from Mother O’Dowd,” she whispered. “It didn’t seem so very wicked. She got my home without any equivalent, you know.”

“Oh, Sally! How could you?” asked Mrs. Ranger, her cheeks blanching.

“Do you think it was wicked to take my own money and my own children, when I had the opportunity?”

“It was a theft, certainly, under the law; and it is always wrong to steal,” retorted Mrs. Ranger.

“We must uphold the majesty of the law, if necessary, at the muzzle of our guns!” said the Captain, loftily.

“How about Dugs and her coon?” asked Jean, with a silvery laugh.

“That was different. Slavery, as I have often said before, is wrong, and no contingency can make it right.”

“You are making a distinction where there is no perceptible difference, except in the matter of complexion,” exclaimed Mrs. Ranger.

“Did Dugs, the slave, have money?” asked Mrs. O’Dowd.

“Dugs hasn’t taken me into her confidence,” said the Captain. “What in creation are we to do with you all?”

“There’ll be a way, John; don’t worry,” said his wife. “‘Trust in the Lord and do good, and verily thou shalt be fed.’”

“Do you know,” said Sally, turning to the Captain, “that the pretty little blonde in black, whom I see over yonder, is a jewel? I met her on the street this morning, on her way to the ferry, with her mother and her carriage and wagons and drivers. I was getting desperate with the fear that I couldn’t overtake you; and I knew there was no time to be lost. So I told her my story. I may have exaggerated somewhat, for I told her you had agreed to take me and the babies to Oregon. I said I had been detained (which was true) and I must overtake you before you crossed the river. She didn’t wait to ask a question, but bundled us all into her carriage without a word.”

“Didn’t I tell you you could trust my daddie?” asked Jean, aside. “He’s a whole lot better than he thinks he is.”

“Father thinks he is a stickler for the law,” said Mary, with a chuckle.

* * * * *

Indians came and went in great numbers around and into the company’s first night’s camp on the plains, sometimes growing insolent in their persistent demands for food and articles of clothing, but on the whole peaceable and friendly. Every man, woman, and child was under orders to give them no cause for offence, the Captain hoping, by example, to disarm hostility. But he soon learned that this liberal policy brought hordes of beggars; and the necessity of carefully guarding their freight was made apparent the next morning, when they found their breakfast supplies had been stolen, and with them the cooking utensils. The Captain found it necessary to send a messenger back to St. Joseph to purchase fresh supplies before they could go on.

The next day’s drive over the beautiful prairie was without unusual incident. The roads were good, the soil rich, and the undulating landscape perfect.

“Lengthy and Sawed-off are bringing in a buffalo,” cried Hal.

“We had one yesterday,” said Mrs. Ranger. “The game ought not to be slaughtered in this wasteful manner. You ought to stop it, John.”

“Men are still in a state of savagery,” replied her husband.

“The instinct to kill is as strong in us as it was in the days of Agamemnon,” said Scotty.

“Or the Cæsars,” exclaimed the little widow.

“We’ll need this meat for food before we get to Oregon,” said Mrs. Ranger, surveying the huge carcass of the fallen monarch thoughtfully. “We must cut the flesh into strips and dry it, Indian fashion, in the sun.”

“But we can’t stop to dry it, Annie,” exclaimed her husband.

“We needn’t stop, John. We can get the men to cut it into strips while in camp. Here is a ball of strong cord. We can string the strips of meat on the cord and festoon it along the outsides of the wagon covers.”

“A woman is a born provider,” exclaimed Scotty. “We men may take to ourselves the credit for the care of women and children, but we’d soon be on the road to starvation if it were not for the protecting care of the mother sex, to help us out.”

Mrs. Ranger, pleased with the praises of her family and the teamster, sank back on her pillows and slept fitfully.

“It pays a mother to rear a family of loyal children,” said Mrs. O’Dowd to Mrs. McAlpin, with whom she had become quite intimate. “I’d rather be an honored mother, like Mrs. Ranger, than be a Queen Elizabeth or a Madame de Staël.”

* * * * *

“I believe I’ll reconnoitre a little, Annie, if you don’t mind,” said the Captain, after the camp was still. “I’d like to study the lay o’ the land from the adjacent heights. You won’t miss me?”

“No, John. Or, I mean, I won’t mind it. You must learn, sooner or later, to depend upon yourself for company, my dear. And you’d better practise a little beforehand.”

“What do you mean, Annie?”

“Can’t you see that I’ll not be able to finish this journey, John?”

“Nonsense, Annie! Just be patient till we get to Oregon. I mean to build you a pretty room, away from the noise of the household, where you’ll enjoy the fruits of your labors. I’ve hired Dugs to be your body-servant during the remainder of your days.”

“I’ll change her name, John. I’ll have nobody around me that answers to the name of Dugs. It isn’t a good name for a dog.”

“What’ll you call her?”

“Susannah.”

“What if she objects?”

“She’s already agreed to the change, if it suits you and the girls.”

John Ranger laughed.

“So-long!” he cried, and galloped away to a point overlooking a bend in the river, where he loosened the reins and allowed the mare to nibble the tender herbage, which, tempted by the sunshine, was clothing the moist earth in a covering of grass and buttercups.

“O life,” he cried, “what a mystery you are! How puny, yet how mighty! The living rain comes down in silent majesty upon the sleeping earth; the living sunshine melts the ice and snow; and the living earth, awakening from her season of hibernation, answers back to rain and sun with a power of reproduction that defies the mighty law of gravitation, and sends outward and up toward the living sky the living vegetation that sustains the living man. O sky, all a-twinkle with your myriads of stars, how inscrutable you are in your infinitude! And how like a worm of the dust is man, who has no power to hold in the precious body of even the woman he loves the mystery of existence, of which Creation is the only master!”

Below him, so far away that it gleamed like a silver ribbon in the starlight, ran the muddy Missouri, carrying in its turbid waves the _débris_ of the Mandan district, and bearing on its troubled breast the throng of river craft at whose little windows hundreds of lights were twinkling, like diamonds on parade. Beyond gleamed the moving steamers and their accompanying hosts of lesser boats, now nestling close to the water’s edge, and now climbing in irregular fashion toward the uplands at the town of St. Joseph; and, far beyond, his mental eyes beheld the homes of his own and his Annie’s beloved parents.

“I do wonder if it is really wrong for me to leave them in their old age, and take Annie away also,” he said to himself, half audibly, as he continued his gaze over the dim expanse of silence that surrounded him on every hand.

There was no answer. He gave Sukie the rein and bowed his head upon his hands, and wept. How long he remained alone, absorbed in the mingled emotions that possessed him, he did not know. He took no note of time, and Sukie moved leisurely over the plain, daintily cropping the tender grass.

“I was ambitious, selfish, and exacting,” he exclaimed at last, as a sharp gust of wind slapped him in the face. “Annie doesn’t complain; but she is fading from my sight. It is all my fault. If she could be happy, she would soon be well. I wonder if I ought not to take her back to her father and mother and her childhood’s home. Everybody would laugh; but what should I care? Are not the life and happiness of my wife worth more to me than all the world’s approval?” Then, after a long silence, he tightened the reins and said: “Come, Sukie; let’s go back to camp. Right or wrong, I must go ahead. I’ve burned my bridges behind me.”

As he expected, Scotty was found sitting in the midst of an audience at Mrs. McAlpin’s camp-fire. He was discoursing on his travels in Egypt, and had collected about him quite a crowd.

“The earth is old, very, very old,” the teamster was saying. He arose to make room for Captain Ranger, as he passed the reins to Jean, who, with Mary and Marjorie, had been an enraptured listener. “The comparative topography of Central America and northern Africa excites the liveliest speculation. When I was in Darien, I found many features among the ruins abounding in the jungles of the isthmus, strikingly similar to those one sees in the land of the Pyramids. True, the analogy is not always apparent, because the almost total absence of rain in Egypt is exchanged for an almost total lack of dry skies in Panama and Yucatan. Science scoffs at my assumptions, because I cannot prove them; but I’d bet a million if I had it, and wait for the fact to be proven—as it surely will be some day—that there was once a continuous continent between the homes of the early Pharaohs and those of a prehistoric people who inhabited the two Americas.”

“I’ve often reached a similar conclusion myself when visiting the prehistoric scenes of both hemispheres,” said Mrs. McAlpin. “Sometime, not so very remote in the history of the planet, there must have been a sudden and awful cataclysm, such as might result from a change in the inclination of the earth’s axis, of which history can as yet give no authentic account.”

“Then the fabled Atlantis may not be so much of a fable, after all,” exclaimed Mary.

“Do you suppose any of you know what you are talking about?” asked Captain Ranger.

“The world has scarcely yet begun to read the testimony of the air, the earth, the water, and the rocks,—especially of this Western Continent,” said Scotty, with a respectful bow to his captain.

“That’s true,” remarked Mrs. McAlpin, rising to end the interview. “Travel in any direction broadens and enlightens anybody who has eyes to see or ears to hear.”

“Or a soul to think,” echoed Jean.

“Say, Scotty, have you watered your steers?” asked Captain Ranger, in a sarcastic tone.

“By Jove! I forgot. Good-evening, ladies!” The teamster turned away, crestfallen.

“Excuse me, madam; I didn’t intend to be rude,” said the Captain, as he paused to say good-night; “but we’ve embarked on a journey in which theories must be set aside for duties sometimes,—that is, if we’re ever to see Oregon.”

XI

_MRS. McALPIN SEEKS ADVICE_

The next forenoon Captain Ranger rode up alongside the carriage of Mrs. McAlpin and her mother, in which Jean was posing as driver and guest, and said: “I hope I gave you no offence in speaking as I did to Mr. Burns last night.”

“No offence at all, Captain. Don’t mention it; you were simply discharging your duty. But”—and Mrs. McAlpin hesitated a little—“would you mind exchanging your mount with Jean for a little while? I am quite sure she will enjoy a canter on the back of Sukie, and I wish to counsel with you a little. I am sorry to impose upon your good nature.”

Mrs. Benson took little notice of the Captain or of her daughter, but leaned back on the cushions, apparently absorbed in a book.

“I want your candid opinion,” said Mrs. McAlpin. “Do you consider the marriage ceremony infallible? Is it an unpardonable sin to break it, except for a nameless reason? I have an object in asking this question that is not born of mere curiosity.”

“Nothing of human origin is infallible, madam; and, for aught I can see to the contrary, nothing is infallible anywhere.”

“Do you believe it is better to break a bad bargain than to keep it?”

“That depends upon circumstances.”

“Why do you evade my question?”

“Because I can’t see what you’re driving at.”

“Then I’ll come at once to the point. Suppose you had been born a woman?”

“That isn’t a supposable case.”

“But we’ll let it rest for the present as if it were. Suppose you were born to be a woman,—we’ll put it that way for the sake of illustration,—and suppose, while you were yet a child, you had been married to a man many years your senior—married just to please somebody else—in defiance of your own judgment or desires?”

“Millions of women are married in that way every year, madam. Look at India, at China, at Turkey, and at many modern homes, even in England and America! It would seem to be the exception and not the rule where women get the husbands of their choice. I know it is the fashion to pretend they do; for a woman has to become desperately weary of her bargain before she’ll own up honestly to a matrimonial mistake.”

“But suppose one of those women had been yourself; don’t you think if you had been so married in childhood, that you would have rebelled openly as soon as you reached the years of discretion?”

“Nonsense, Daphne!” interrupted Mrs. Benson. “You harp forever on a single string. Suppose you discuss the weather, for a change.”

“There are points on which my estimable mother and myself do not agree,” said the daughter, with a sad smile. “Don’t mind her, please. I have learned that you are a wise and just man, and I am in need of advice. What would you do if, although you had obeyed the letter of the human law, you knew in your own soul that your marriage was a sin?”

“Don’t talk like that in my presence, Daphne! I cannot bear it!” exclaimed her mother, petulantly.

“When I left the States I hoped to get away from everybody’s domestic troubles,” said the Captain, earnestly. “Please don’t tell me about yours—if you have any—unless it is in my power to assist you.”

They had reached a narrow and rocky grade, where careful driving was necessary to avoid disaster.

“We must turn aside here, ladies,” the Captain exclaimed suddenly, as he dexterously alighted and guided the horses by the bits to the only point of advantage in sight. “Cattle and horses ought never to be compelled to travel together. You can’t hurry a steer except in a stampede, and then Old Nick himself couldn’t stop him.”

“They remind me of more than one pair of mismated bipeds I have met,” said Mrs. McAlpin.

The Captain stood at the horses’ heads till the last of the jolting and complaining wagons had safely passed the perilous bit of roadway. Then, guiding the team back to the road, he resumed his seat in the carriage, his lips compressed like a trap.

“Don’t you think Mr. Burns is a wonderful man?” asked Mrs. McAlpin, in a desperate effort to rekindle a conversation.

“He’s a fellow of considerable genius in some ways, but a mighty poor ox-driver.”

“He reminds me of many a woman I have seen,” continued Mrs. McAlpin, “who has failed to get fitted into her proper niche. His mind isn’t fitted to his work. I have seen women chained by circumstances to the kitchen sink, the wash-tub, the churn-dash, and the ironing-board, who never could make a success of any one of these lines of effort, though they might have made excellent astronomers, first-class architects, capable lawyers, good preachers, capital teachers, or splendid financiers. It is a pity to spoil a natural statesman or stateswoman to make a poor ox-driver or an indifferent housekeeper.”

“You seem to take great interest in Scotty,” remarked the Captain.

“I do. We have travelled extensively through the same lands, though we had never met until our orbits chanced to coincide on this journey. He has a retentive memory, a wide experience, and a keen appreciation of the beautiful, both in nature and art, and so have I. He is as much out of place as an ox-driver as I should be in a cotton-field. He’s a perfect mine of information, though, about a lot of things.”

“Then why not take counsel of him, instead o’ me?”

“He would hardly be a disinterested adviser.”

“Ah, I see!”

Mrs. McAlpin blushed. “He has not spoken to me one word of love, Captain,—if that is what you mean. I am not an eligible party,” and the lady used her handkerchief to wipe away a tear. “I want your opinion about getting a divorce from a union that I detested long before I ever met Mr. Burns. It is unbearable now.”

“Hush, Daphne! Not another word,” interposed her mother. “Strangers have no right to an insight into our family affairs.”

“But I must speak to somebody. Stay, Captain!” laying her hand upon his arm as he was about to leave the carriage.

“Are you running away from your husband, madam?” he asked, resuming his seat.

“You guess correctly, sir.”

“I suspected it all along; but it was none of my business in the beginning, nor is it now. But I confess that it looks as if I were making it my business to conduct a caravan of grass widows to Oregon, judging from the present aspect of affairs.”

“To make a long story short,—for I see you are growing restless,—I was married in my callow childhood, married in obedience to my mother’s wish. She was a widow and poor; my suitor was accomplished and rich. If he’d been a sensible man he would have courted and married my mother, who adores him. But old men are such idiots! They’re always hunting young women, or children, for wives.”

“You’re complimentary.”

“Beg your pardon; present company is always excepted. They imagine that young and silly girls will make happy and contented wives,—when any person not overcome by vanity knows that no young man or young woman can be truly enamored of anybody that’s in the sere and yellow leaf. What would you think of a woman of mamma’s age, for instance, making love to a boy? And if such a boy should consent to marry her, who believes that he would be content with his bargain after his beard was grown?”

“Ask me something easy,” said the Captain.

“My father was a physician; and it was my childhood’s delight to study his books, attend his clinics, and make myself generally useful among his patients. I never dreamed of surrendering my person, my liberty, my will, and the absolute control of my individuality to the commands of any human being on earth except myself, till after the deed was done for me by another. No wonder I rebelled when I reached the years of maturity and discretion.”

“Mr. McAlpin was a good man and a gentleman, Captain Ranger,” interrupted Mrs. Benson.

“Yes, mamma; he was always ‘good.’ He never whipped his wife; he gave her everything that money could buy. There is no reason that the law can recognize for me to be dissatisfied. But I don’t belong primarily to myself, and I don’t like it. Mamma here, with her ideas of woman’s place in life, would have made him an excellent and happy wife.”

“He was always a gentleman, Daphne,” repeated her mother. “Don’t do him an injustice.”

“Yes; and I was his personal and private property. I was a beautiful animal, as he thought, to bedeck with his trinkets and show off his wealth; but I was nobody on my own account. I was simply his echo,—or supposed to be,—and nothing else.”

“Daphne, you forget that this carriage, these horses, our wagons and oxen, and the supplies for this journey are all the product of his bounty.”

“They are the product of my jewels, Captain. This outfit is mine; it was bought with my own heart’s blood! I owe nothing to Donald McAlpin.”

“Do you think you have dealt justly by your husband?” asked the Captain. There was reproof and impatience in his tone.

“I owe him nothing, sir. I am in the same line with Dugs,—a runaway chattel. That is all.”

“But Dugs, whose name now is Susannah, did not enter into her bargain voluntarily.”

“Neither did I. My mother made the bargain.”

“How did you escape, Mrs. McAlpin? And why did you undertake this journey?”

“Mr. McAlpin was called away to England last year, to inherit an additional estate. Mamma was too ill to go, so I stayed to nurse her. I had been his body vassal for four years, and was at last a woman grown. One taste of liberty was enough. I will never be his vassal again. I decided to make this very unusual journey to elude pursuit. He’d not think of searching for me outside of the United States or Canada; least of all in the Great American Desert, whither we are bound. I mean to lose myself for good and all in Oregon.”

“And so now you are seeking a divorce?”

“Yes, sir; that is, when I reach Oregon.”

“Thousands of other women have borne far worse conjugal conditions all their lives, and died, making no outward sign, Mrs. McAlpin. Men also have their full share of these afflictions, which they bear in silence to the bitter end.”

“That is their own affair, sir. If other people choose to wear a ball and chain through life, that is their privilege. I would not do their choosing for them if I could.”

“What course would you pursue if you had children?”

“Then I suppose I should be compelled to die with my feet in the stocks. Children might have diverted my mind and helped to save my sanity, though. I’ve prayed for them without ceasing, but in vain. I’m going to a remote country, a new country, where new environments make newer and more plastic conditions. The laws of men, one-sided as they are, will divorce me after seven years.”

“And what is Scotty going to do during all this time?”

“If he loves me as he thinks he does, he’ll wait. If it’s only a passing fancy, he’ll get over it in time. I will not permit his attentions now, nor until Donald McAlpin divorces me and gets another wife.”

* * * * *