Listening to Keaton’s tale, he had dimly seen the caravan of hunted creatures crawl past him over the fading green of the prairie; the wagons with their bowed white covers; a heavy cart, jolting, creaking, lumbering mysteriously along, a sick driver hidden somewhere back under its makeshift cover of torn counterpanes; a battered carriage, reminiscent of past luxury, drawn by oxen; more wagons, some without covers; a two-wheeled cart, designed in the ingenuity of desperation, laden with meal-sacks, a bundle of bedding, a sleeping child, and drawn by a little dry-dugged heifer; then more wagons with stooping figures trudging doggedly beside them, here a man, there a woman leading a child.  He saw them as shapes floating by in a dream, blurred and inconsequent.  But between himself and the train, more clearly outlined to his gaze, he saw the worn face of his father tossed on the cold, dark waters, being swept down by the stream, the weak old hands clutching for some support in the muddy current, the white head with the chin held up sinking lower at each failure, then at last going under, gulping, to leave a little row of bubbles down the stream.

In a craze of rage and grief he turned toward the river, when he heard the sharp voice of the Bishop calling him back.

“It ain’t any use, Joel.”

“Couldn’t we find his body?”

“Not a chance in a thousand.  It was carried down by the current.  It would mean days and mebbe weeks.  Besides, we need you here.  Here’s your duty.  Sakes alive!  If we only had about twenty minutes with them cusses like it was in the old days!  When you’re ready to be a Son of Dan you’ll know what I mean.  But never mind, we’ll see the day yet when Israel will be the head and not the tail.”

“My mother?  Has any one told her?”

“Wal, now, I’m right sorry about that, but it got out before you come over.  Tarlton McKenny’s boy, Nephi, rowed over in a skiff and brought the news, and some of the women went and tattled it to your ma.  I guess it upset her considerable.  You go up and see her.”

He ran forward toward the head of the train, hearing as he went words of sympathy hurried to him by those he passed.  Mounting the wagon, he climbed over the seat to where his mother lay.  She seemed to sleep in spite of the jolting.  The driver called back to him: 

“She took on terrible for a spell, Brother Rae.  She’s only jest now got herself pacified.”

He put his hand on her forehead and found it burning.  She stirred and moaned and muttered disjointed sentences.  He heard his father’s name, his sister’s, and his own, and he knew she was delirious.  He eased her bed as well as he could, and made a place for himself beside her where he could sit and take one of the pale, thin hands between his own and try to endow her with some of his abundant life.  He stayed by her until their camping-place was reached.

Once for a moment she opened her eyes with what seemed to him a more than normal clearness and understanding and memory in them.  Though she looked at him long without speaking, she seemed to say all there was to say, so that the brief span was full of anguish for him.  He sighed with relief when the consciousness faded again from her look, and she fell to babbling once more of some long gone day in her girlhood.