“You want that other man, thief and dishonest as he is?”

“By God! yes!  I want his rifles and him too.  Women, children and all, the whole of us, will die if that thief doesn’t come inside of another twenty-four hours.”

Wingate flung out his arms, walked away, hands clasped behind his back.  He met Woodhull.

“Sam, what shall we do?” he demanded.  “You’re sort of in charge now.  You’ve been a soldier, and we haven’t had much of that.”

“There are fifteen hundred or two thousand of them,” said Woodhull slowly—­“a hundred and fifty of us that can fight.  Ten to one, and they mean no quarter.”

“But what shall we do?”

“What can we but lie close and hold the wagons?”

“And wait?”

“Yes.”

“Which means only the Missouri men!”

“There’s no one else.  We don’t know that they’re alive.  We don’t know that they will come.”

“But one thing I do know”—­his dark face gathered in a scowl—­“if he doesn’t come it will not be because he was not asked!  That fellow carried a letter from Molly to him.  I know that.  Well, what do you-all think of me?  What’s my standing in all this?  If I’ve not been shamed and humiliated, how can a man be?  And what am I to expect?”

“If we get through, if Molly lives, you mean?”

“Yes.  I don’t quit what I want.  I’ll never give her up.  You give me leave to try again?  Things may change.  She may consider the wrong she’s done me, an honest man.  It’s his hanging around all the time, keeping in her mind.  And now we’ve sent for him—­and so has she!”

They walked apart, Wingate to his wagon.

“How is she?” he asked of his wife, nodding to Molly’s wagon.

“Better some ways, but low,” replied his stout helpmate, herself haggard, dark circles of fatigue about her eyes.  “She won’t eat, even with the fever down.  If we was back home where we could get things!  Jess, what made us start for Oregon?”

“What made us leave Kentucky for Indiana, and Indiana for Illinois?  I don’t know.  God help us now!”

“It’s bad, Jesse.”

“Yes, it’s bad.”  Suddenly he took his wife’s face in his hands and kissed her quietly.  “Kiss Little Molly for me,” he said.  “I wish—­I wish—­”

“I wish them other wagons’d come,” said Molly Wingate.  “Then we’d see!”

CHAPTER XXXII

THE FIGHT AT THE FORD

Jackson, wounded and weary as he was, drove his crippled horse so hard all the night through that by dawn he had covered almost fifty miles, and was in sight of the long line of wagons, crawling like a serpent down the slopes west of the South Pass, a cloud of bitter alkali dust hanging like a blanket over them.  No part of the way had been more cheerless than this gray, bare expanse of more than a hundred miles, and none offered less invitation for a bivouac.  But now both man and horse were well-nigh spent.