“She insists on seeing the marriage license, Mr. Doak,” began Jesse Wingate.  “As though we could have one!  As though she should care more for that than her parents!”

“Quite so,” rejoined the reverend man.  “That is something I have taken up with the happy groom.  I have with all the couples I have joined in wedlock on the trail.  Of course, being a lawyer, Mr. Woodhull knows that even if they stood before the meeting and acknowledged themselves man and wife it would be a lawful marriage before God and man.  Of course, also we all know that since we left the Missouri River we have been in unorganized territory, with no courts and no form of government, no society as we understand it at home.  Very well.  Shall loving hearts be kept asunder for those reasons?  Shall the natural course of life be thwarted until we get to Oregon?  Why, sir, that is absurd!  We do not even know much of the government of Oregon itself, except that it is provisional.”

The face of Molly Wingate appeared at the drawn curtains of her transient home.  She stepped from her wagon and came forward.  Beautiful, but not radiant, she was; cold and calm, but not blushing and uncertain.  Her wedding gown was all in white, true enough to tradition, though but of delaine, pressed new from its packing trunk by her mother’s hands.  Her bodice, long and deep in front and at back, was plain entirely, save for a treasure of lace from her mother’s trunk and her mother’s wedding long ago.  Her hands had no gloves, but white short-fingered mitts, also cherished remnants of days of schoolgirl belledom, did service.  Over white stockings, below the long and full-bodied skirt, showed the crossed bands of long elastic tapes tied in an ankle bow to hold in place her little slippers of black high-finished leather.  Had they seen her, all had said that Molly Wingate was the sweetest and the most richly clad bride of any on all the long, long trail across the land that had no law.  And all she lacked for her wedding costume was the bride’s bouquet, which her mother now held out to her, gathered with care that day of the mountain flowers—­blue harebells, forget-me-nots of varied blues and the blossom of the gentian, bold and blue in the sunlight, though at night infolded and abashed, its petals turning in and waiting for the sun again to warm them.

Molly Wingate, stout and stern, full bosomed, wet eyed, held out her one little present to her girl, her ewe lamb, whom she was now surrendering.  But no hand of the bride was extended for the bride’s bouquet.  The voice of the bride was not low and diffident, but high pitched, insistent.

“Provisional?  Provisional?  What is it you are saying, sir?  Are you asking me to be married in a provisional wedding?  Am I to give all I have provisionally?  Is my oath provisional, or his?”

“Now, now, my dear!” began the minister.

Her father broke out into a half-stifled oath.

“What do you mean?”