Miss Dividends: A Novel

by Archibald Clavering Gunter

At this the girl gives two awful gasps; one—"Deserted by the man I once thought loved me!"—the other—"Betrayed by my father."

And the two men leaving her, she sinks down, dumb with despair. After a moment their footsteps pass down the trail.

In a few minutes, thought and movement coming to their victim, she rises, and staggering to the door to make some wild effort to fly, is met by her father, who whispers to her: "Forgive me!"

"Promising me to the degradation of the Mormon Church. How can I forgive that?" Then she sighs, "How could my father do this?"

"For both our lives!" he whispers. "Kruger has gone to Salt Lake. I have a certain plan for our escape;" and would put his arms about her and soothe her.

But the girl bursts from him, sobbing wildly. And he bends over her, trying to comfort her, and sobbing also: "It was for both our lives! Erma, darling, could you not see it? Don't you know that I would die for you!" Then he mutters, "It would have been a pity if, for a few words, we had lost our opportunity to—defeat this Mormon rustic—we, whose intellects have been sharpened in the outside world. What is pride against success? Be a woman of sense as well as of emotions. Pardon me using diplomacy in my extremity. Aid me to carry out my plan!"

And she remembering that this man is her father and has, up to the present time, treated her as the daughter of his pride and love, queries, "How? What plan?" then mutters despairingly: "What matter; you have given him your oath."

"Pish! By my hope of the Mormon Heaven," he jeers; then whispers in a voice whose earnestness compels attention: "Kruger has gone to Salt Lake to tell them of my submission. To-morrow morning you leave, without me, for Salt Lake City; with you shall go my stock in the Utah Central Railroad. When there, express that stock to my order at San Francisco, by Wells, Fargo & Co., taking their receipt for the same by certificate numbers and valuing it at five hundred thousand dollars. I'll risk W. F. & Co. standing the Mormon Church off for half a million, for I'll pay no more tithing to Brigham Young." And he grinds his teeth, thinking of what he has already paid.

"But I may be cut off on the road!" falters Erma.

"No, there is no chance of that," he answers; next cries: "Good God! you don't think I would put peril on you! Listen how I have guarded you." Then he hastily explains that she is to travel via Tooele, which will prevent any chance of Kruger's meeting her as he returns from his errand—for Lot always comes to Tintic by the shorter Lake road; that two Gentile miners, whom Ralph can trust, will guard her to Salt Lake City; that Kruger, on his return to Eureka, will find them both gone, and will try to follow his, Travenion's, track, for he will, of course, imagine they have fled together; that he will be sure to follow him, for Bishop R. H. Tranyon can be easily tracked, being well known all over the Territory, having time and again preached at Conference to Mormons who have come to the Tabernacle from the south and the north, the east and the west. "In finding me he will think to find you—so you at least will be safe," chuckles Ralph. Then he says earnestly: "As soon as you are in Salt Lake, take the train to Ogden, and then the U. P. Railroad, and get to New York as quickly as you can. There I will meet you!"