Years later, after Fort Laramie was taken over by the Government, Bordeaux as sutler sold much flour and bacon to men hurrying down the South Fork to the early Colorado diggings.  Meantime in his cups he often had told the mythical tale of the Gros Ventre woman—­long after California, Idaho, Nevada, Montana were all afire.  But one of his halfbreed children very presently had commandeered the tin cup and its contents, so that to this day no man knows whether the child swallowed the nugget or threw it into the Laramie River or the Platte River or the sagebrush.  Some depose that an emigrant bought it of the baby; but no one knows.

What all men do know is that gold does not die; nay, nor the news of it.  And this news now, like a multiplying germ, was in the wagon train that had started out for Oregon.

As for Molly, she asked no questions at all about the lost nugget, but hurried to her own bed, supperless, pale and weeping.  She told her father nothing of the nature of her meeting with Will Banion, then nor at any time for many weeks.

“Molly, come here, I want to talk to you.”

Wingate beckoned to his daughter the second morning after Banion’s visit.

The order for the advance was given.  The men had brought in the cattle and the yoking up was well forward.  The rattle of pots and pans was dying down.  Dogs had taken their places on flank or at the wagon rear, women were climbing up to the seats, children clinging to pieces of dried meat.  The train was waiting for the word.

The girl followed him calmly, high-headed.

“Molly, see here,” he began.  “We’re all ready to move on.  I don’t know where Will Banion went, but I want you to know, as I told him, that he can’t travel in our train.”

“He’ll not ask to, father.  He’s promised to stick to his own men.”

“He’s left you at last!  That’s good.  Now I want you to drop him from your thoughts.  Hear that, and heed it.  I tell you once more, you’re not treating Sam Woodhull right.”

She made him no answer.

“You’re still young, Molly,” he went on.  “Once you’re settled you’ll find Oregon all right.  Time you were marrying.  You’ll be twenty and an old maid first thing you know.  Sam will make you a good husband.  Heed what I say.”

But she did not heed, though she made no reply to him.  Her eye, “scornful, threatening and young,” looked yonder where she knew her lover was; not was it in her soul ever to return from following after him.  The name of her intended husband left her cold as ice.

“Roll out!  Roll out!  Ro-o-o-ll ou-t!”

The call went down the line once more.  The pistolry of the wagon whips made answer, the drone of the drivers rose as the sore-necked oxen bowed their heads again, with less strength even for the lightened loads.