The girl's face paled as she opened the one she had felt sure would find her again, somewhere, somehow. It said:
DEAREST: I write to Molly Wingate, because and only because I know she still is Molly Wingate. It might be kinder to us both if I did not write at all but went my way and left it all to time and silence. I found I could not.
There will be no other woman, in all my life, for me. I cannot lay any vow on you. If I could, if I dared, I would say: "Wait for a year, while I pray for a year--and God help us both."
As you know, I now have taken your advice. Bridger and I are joined for the California adventure. If the gold is there, as Carson thinks, I may find more fortune than I have earned. More than I could earn you gave me--when I was young. That was two months ago. Now I am old.
Keep the news of the gold, if it can be kept, as long as you can. No doubt it will spread from other sources, but so far as I know--and thanks only to you--I am well ahead of any other adventurer from the East this season, and, as you know, winter soon will seal the trails against followers. Next year, 1849, will be the big rush, if it all does not flatten.
I can think of no one who can have shared our secret. Carson will be East by now, but he is a government man, and close of mouth with strangers. Bridger, I am sure--for the odd reason that he worships you--will tell no one else, especially since he shares profits with me, if I survive and succeed. One doubt only rests in my mind. At his post I talked with Bridger, and he told me he had a few other bits of gold that Carson had given him at Laramie. He looked for them but had lost them. He suspected his Indian women, but he knew nothing. Of course, it would be one chance in a thousand that any one would know the women had these things, and even so no one could tell where the gold came from, because not even the women would know that; not even Bridger does, exactly; not even I myself.
[pg 303]In general I am headed for the valley of the Sacramento. I shall work north. Why? Because that will be toward Oregon!
I write as though I expected to see you again, as though I had a right to expect or hope for that. It is only the dead young man, Will Banion, who unjustly and wrongly craves and calls out for the greatest of all fortune for a man--who unfairly and wrongly writes you now, when he ought to remember your word, to go to a land far from you, to forget you and to live down his past. Ah, if I could! Ah, if I did not love you!
But being perhaps about to die, away from you, the truth only must be between you and me. And the truth is I never shall forget you. The truth is I love you more than anything else and everything else in all the world.
If I were in other ways what the man of your choice should be, would this truth have any weight with you? I do not know and I dare not ask. Reason does tell me how selfish it would be to ask you to hold in your heart a memory and not a man. That is for me to do--to have a memory, and not you. But my memory never can content me.
[pg 304]It seems as though time had been invented so that, through all its æons, our feet might run in search, one for the other--to meet, where? Well, we did meet--for one instant in the uncounted ages, there on the prairie. Well, if ever you do see me again you shall say whether I have been, indeed, tried by fire, and whether it has left me clean--whether I am a man and not a memory.
That I perhaps have been a thief, stealing what never could be mine, is my great agony now. But I love you. Good-by.
WILLIAM HAYS BANION.
To MARGARET WINGATE,
Fort Hall, in Oregon.
For an hour Molly sat, and the sun sank. The light of the whole world died.
The other letter rested unopened until later, when she broke the seal and read by the light of a sagebrush fire, she frowned. Could it be that in the providence of God she once had been within one deliberate step of marrying Samuel Payson Woodhull?
MY DARLING MOLLY: This I hope finds you well after the hard journey from Bridger to Hall.
They call it Cruel to keep a Secret from a Woman. If so, I have been Cruel, though only in Poor pay for your Cruelty to me. I have had a Secret--and this is it: I have left for California from this Point and shall not go to Oregon. I have learned of Gold in the State of California, and have departed to that State in the hope of early Success in Achieving a Fortune. So far as I know, I am the First to have this news of Gold, unless a certain man whose name and thought I execrate has by his Usual dishonesty fallen on the same information. If so, we two may meet where none can Interfear.
[pg 305]I do not know how long I may be in California, but be Sure I go for but the one purpose of amassing a Fortune for the Woman I love. I never have given you Up and never shall. Your promise is mine and our Engagement never has been Broken, and the Mere fact that accident for the time Prevented our Nuptials by no means shall ever mean that we shall not find Happy Consumation of our most Cherished Desire at some later Time.
I confidently Hope to arrive in Oregon a rich man not later than one or two years from Now. Wait for me. I am mad without you and shall count the Minutes until then when I can take you in my Arms and Kiss you a thousand Times. Forgive me; I have not Heretofore told you of these Plans, but it was best not and it was for You. Indeed you are so much in my Thought, my Darling, that each and Everything I do is for You and You only.
No more at present then, but should Opportunity offer I shall get word to you addressed to Oregon City which your father said was his general Desstination, it being my own present purpose Ultimately to engage in the Practise of law either at that Point or the settlement of Portland which I understand is not far Below. With my Means, we should soon be Handsomely Settled.
[pg 306]May God guard you on the Way Thither and believe me, Darling, with more Love than I shall be ever able to Tell and a Thousand Kisses.
Your Affianced and Impatient Lover,
SAM'L. PAYSON WOODHULL.
The little sagebrush fire flared up brightly for an instant as Molly Wingate dropped one of her letters on the embers.
[pg 307]