"Is excellent!" interrupts Ralph, tapping the tin air-pipe with his hand. "This is a natural draught—not enough for twenty or thirty men working down here unless the fan is in operation, but lots for two or three. See how brightly my candles burn!" Then he says sharply, "We've no time to lose. Pioche George will be getting impatient up-stairs. Hold a candle for me, my darling!"
With a pick-axe he has brought down with him, he exhumes from underneath the fourth set of timbers a small iron box, strongly secured by padlock, and giving it with its key to Erma, says: "Do as I have directed with this. It is the Utah Central stock."
Then, for the parting is coming, she falters: "Father, when will you join me?"
"As soon as you are surely safe and out of this accursed Territory, and Kruger has disappeared, pursuing me with his Mormon bloodhounds."
A second after, he bursts out, as if a great relief has come upon him, from throwing off the bonds that have held him so long: "Oh, how I have scoffed them in my heart, as I have preached their religious bosh at Conference and ward meeting, all these years. Won't this be a great story to tell in the Unity Club, New York, to my old chums, De Punster and Van Beekman, Travis and Larry Jerry, and the rest of the boys? How they will shriek at Ralph Travenion, the swell, having been a Mormon! Won't the champagne flow to my plural marriages? Egad! it's worth while to take these risks, to have such a royal story to tell!"
"Hush!" cries his daughter, sternly. "Remember the poor women you are deserting." A moment after she says more slowly, "They must be provided for as soon as you are safe."
"Oh, they will have plenty," answers Ralph. Then he bursts out again, "I leave too much behind. When I think of what I have paid, year by year, as tithing to the infernal Mormon Church, I curse it. But they are tricked at the last. I'll sell the control of their pet railroad out of their hands. Hang them, I could dance for joy!"
With these words, the old beau skips with a waltz step to the bottom of the incline. Then they ascend, the rope aiding their steps, and the pitch not being very steep, to the outer air, and the time has come to say farewell.
Pointing to a white-topped wagon at the bottom of the hill, Travenion says: "Quick! Give your father a kiss, and pray for his safety."
The girl answers: "One hundred!" and throws herself into his arms, and murmuring: "You are the only man who ever loved me—the only one! Mormon that you have been—polygamist that you are—you are the only one who's left to me!"