Ezra wanted to hear her story, and she told him everything from the beginning to the end. When she came to the end and told him of Madame’s visit, he shivered and said it must have been delirium, he bade her think no more of it and never speak of it again. His mind started back from the thoughts such a story raised up before him. He was afraid, and looked away from the abyss, terrified at what lay but half hidden there.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CONCLUSION.
Madame left Perfection City alone and unattended. No one knew that she was going, and no one knew whither she went. Her spirit, however, still hovered over the city of her founding and made itself most potently felt. She sold all her rights in the place, and since these included the land, horses, and implements, as well as most of the houses, the Pioneers awoke in early winter to find themselves homeless and houseless, cast upon the bleak world again. In a tempest of indignation, Sister Mary Winkle and her husband departed out of the place, and after them the Carpenters. The going of the Wrights was highly characteristic. They had managed to save a waggon and a pair of horses out of the general wreck, along with a few of the most primitive household necessaries. These, with his wife and daughter, Brother Wright packed into his waggon and started for Union Mills. At the store there he bought a rifle, a bowie-knife, and a plentiful supply of ammunition. He came out of the store looking like a buccaneer ready equipped for Central America. Mary Winkle raised her hands in speechless horror.
“I say, pa, be yer goin’ to be a jay-hawker?” asked Willette, grinning with delight.
Wright got into the waggon in grim silence.
“What are you going to be?” asked Sister Mary recovering her speech at last.
“I’m going to be a man, Mrs. Wright, and not a blamed fool any longer. Guess I’ll pre-empt some land near the Cherokee Reservation, and stick to it and get the fruits of my toil, anyhow.”
“Your principles——” stammered his wife.
“Damn principles, Mrs. Wright. I’ve had about enough of them. Common sense is what I want, and so do you. I guess a spell of that will come handy now.”
Thus they journeyed out of sight, but a legend came floating back from near the Cherokee lands that at a difficult ford Wright was attacked by a couple of robbers, whereupon he took up that new rifle of his and fired so uncommonly straight that one man fell into the river, and the other ran away.