“It’s ourselves!” said Molly.  “It’s the Fata Morgana—­but how marvelous!  Who could believe it?”

Indeed, the mirage had taken that rare and extraordinary form.  The mirage of their own caravan, rising, was reflected, mirrored, by some freak of the desert sun and air, upon the fine sand blown in the air at a distance from the train.  It was, indeed, themselves they saw, not knowing it, in a vast primordial mirror of the desert gods.  Nor did the discovery of the truth lessen the feeling of discomfort, of apprehension.  The laughter was at best uneasy until at last a turn in the trail, a shift in the wizardry of the heat waves, broke up the ghostly caravan and sent it, figure by figure, vehicle by vehicle, into the unknown whence it had come.

“This country!” exclaimed Molly Wingate’s mother.  “It scares me!  If Oregon’s like this—­”

“It isn’t, mother.  It is rich and green, with rains.  There are great trees, many mountains, beautiful rivers where we are going, and there are fields of grain.  There are—­why, there are homes!”

The sudden pathos of her voice drew her mother’s frowning gaze.

“There, there, child!” said she.  “Don’t you mind.  We’ll always have a home for you, your paw and me.”

The girl shook her head.

“I sometimes think I’d better teach school and live alone.”

“And leave your parents?”

“How can I look my father in the face every day, knowing what he feels about me?  Just now he accuses me of ruining Sam Woodhull’s life—­driving him away, out of the train.  But what could I do?  Marry him, after all?  I can’t—­I can’t!  I’m glad he’s gone, but I don’t know why he went.”

“In my belief you haven’t heard or seen the last of Sam Woodhull yet,” mused her mother.  “Sometimes a man gets sort of peeved—­wants to marry a girl that jilts him more’n if she hadn’t.  And you certainly jilted him at the church door, if there’d been any church there.  It was an awful thing, Molly.  I don’t know as I see how Sam stood it long as he did.”

“Haven’t I paid for it, mother?”

“Why, yes, one way of speaking.  But that ain’t the way men are going to call theirselves paid.  Until he’s married, a man’s powerful set on having a woman.  If he don’t, he thinks he ain’t paid, it don’t scarcely make no difference what the woman does.  No, I don’t reckon he’ll forget.  About Will Banion—­”

“Don’t let’s mention him, mother.  I’m trying to forget him.”

“Yes?  Where do you reckon he is now—­how far ahead?”

“I don’t know.  I can’t guess.”

The color on her cheek caught her mother’s gaze.

“Gee-whoa-haw!  Git along Buck and Star!” commanded the buxom dame to the swaying ox team that now followed the road with no real need of guidance.  They took up the heat and burden of the desert.

CHAPTER XXXVI

TWO LOVE LETTERS