"To make a fortune it was!" he cries. "I wandered about the Mississippi for a year. At the end of that time, I was poorer than when I left New York. St. Louis and Chicago did not seem to me a quick enough opportunity. I came further West. I had a wild hope of making money in furs, in some stage line, as Indian trader, but found no chance, and so, in pursuit of one will-o'-the-wisp and another, I journeyed on until I found myself in Salt Lake City. Here I saw a fortune for a man of ability. The Transcontinental Telegraph Company was building its line. A contract to supply them with telegraph poles, properly handled, would make me rich. But it could be so handled only by a Mormon, and I joined the Church of Latter-Day Saints,—a stern sect, who will have no wavering disciples, no half-way apostates in its ranks. By that contract I made a considerable sum. Then the building of the Union Pacific Railway came, and by it I made a fortune, because I was a Mormon."
"A Gentile might also have succeeded," suggests his daughter.
"Impossible! As a Mormon, and only as a Mormon, I could hire thousands of Mormon laborers at one dollar and fifty cents per day,—and pay them by store orders on Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution, who liquidated them in goods at, practically, fifty cents on the dollar. Mormon labor cost me seventy-five cents per day against Gentile labor at three or four dollars; as a Latter-Day Saint I could command the cheap article. That is why I joined the Mormon Church—for your fortune and your happiness."
"Was it for my happiness that you accepted their infamous creed for the degradation of my sex—that you entered into plural marriage—that you are now surrounded by children of polygamy?" asks the girl, a bitter sarcasm dominating her voice.
"That was to save my life!"
"To save your life? What nonsense!"
"Hush! Listen to me!" and Ralph Travenion speaks very low, as if he almost feared the walls would hear him. "A year after I had joined it, it was spoken unto me by the President that the Church doubted my sincerity because I had not entered into polygamy. To be doubted in those days,—in 1865 and '66,—meant the atonement of blood, such as was carried out on Almon, Babbitt and the Parrishes—it meant being cut off 'below the ears.' Had I died here then, my fortune would have never been accumulated for you. You would not now have a million to give you prestige,—to give you power,—to make you reign beauty as you are. You would not now be called Miss Dividends," and the old man would put his arms about his daughter to caress her, and take her to his heart—for her loveliness has made him, her father, very proud.
But Erma cries to him hoarsely, "What kind of a dividend have you given me? The dividend of shame! Society shudders and turns from me. The Livingstons have already done so."
To this he answers, "My God, what do you mean?" sinking upon a candle-box that does duty as a chair in this uncouth department.
"I mean this," cries Erma, "that when they discovered that I was the daughter of a Mormon, that I had little illegitimate half-brothers and sisters, they fled from me as if I were tainted and left me to the kindness of Bishop Kruger."