None the less we must travel.  We had been absent now from civilization some three weeks, and must have been given up long since.  Our party must have passed far to the westward, and by this time our story was known at Laramie and elsewhere.  Parties were no doubt in search of us at that time.  But where should these search in that wilderness of the unknown Plains.  How should it be known that we were almost within touch of the great highway of the West, now again thronging with wagon trains?  By force of these strange circumstances which I have related we were utterly gone, blotted out; our old world no longer existed for us, nor we for it.

As I argued to myself again and again, the laws and customs of that forgotten world no longer belonged to us.  We must build laws again, laws for the good of the greatest number.  I can promise, who have been in place to know, that in one month’s time civilization shall utterly fade away from the human heart, that a new state of life shall within that space enforce itself, so close lies the savage in us always to the skin.  This vast scheme of organized selfishness, which is called civilization, shall within three weeks be forgot and found useless, be rescinded as a contract between remaining units of society.  This vast fabric of waste and ruin known as wealth shall be swept away at a breath within one month.  Then shall endure only the great things of life.  Above those shall stand two things—­a woman and a man.  Without these society is not, these two, a woman and a man.

So I would sit at night, nodding under the stars, and vaguely dreaming of these matters, and things came to me sweetly, things unknown in our ignorance and evil of mind, as we live in what we call civilization.  They would become clear underneath the stars; and then the dawn would come, and she would come and sit by me, looking out over the Plains at the shimmering pictures.  “What do you see?” she would ask of me.

“I see the ruins of that dome known as the capitol of our nation,” I said to her, “where they make laws.  See, it is in ruins, and what I see beyond is better.”

“Then what more do you see,” she would ask.

“I see the ruins of tall buildings of brick and iron, prisons where souls are racked, and deeds of evil are done, and iron sunk into human hearts, and vice and crime, and oppression and wrong of life and love are wrought.  These are in ruins, and what I see beyond is better.”  Humoring me, she would ask that I would tell her further what I saw.

“I see the ruins of tall spires, where the truth was offered by bold assertion.  I see the ruins of religion, corrupt because done for gain.

“I see houses also, much crowded, where much traffic and bartering and evil was done, much sale of flesh and blood and love and happiness, ruin, unhappiness.  And what I see now is far better than all that.”

“And then—­” she whispered faintly, her hand upon my sleeve, and looking out with me over the Plains, where the mirage was wavering.