[pg 108]
As for Banion and Molly, they sat it out in the light wagon, the girl wrapped in blankets, Banion much of the time out in the storm, swinging on the ropes to keep the wagon from overturning. He had no apparent fear. His calm assuaged her own new terrors. In spite of her bitter arraignment, she was glad that he was here, though he hardly spoke to her at all.
"Look!" he exclaimed at last, drawing back the flap of the wagon cover. "Look at the rainbow!"
Over the cloud banks of the rain-wet sky there indeed now was flung the bow of promise. But this titanic land did all things gigantically. This was no mere prismatic arch bridging the clouds. The colors all were there, yes, and of an unspeakable brilliance and individual distinctness in the scale; but they lay like a vast painted mist, a mural of some celestial artist flung en masse against the curtain of the night. The entire clouded sky, miles on untold miles, was afire. All the opals of the universe were melted and cast into a tremendous picture painted by the Great Spirit of the Plains.
"Oh, wonderful!" exclaimed the girl. "It might be the celestial city in the desert, promised by the Mormon prophet!"
"It may be so to them. May it be so to us. Blessed be the name of the Lord God of Hosts!" said Will Banion.
[pg 109]
She looked at him suddenly, strangely. What sort of man was he, after all, so full of strange contradictions--a savage, a criminal, yet reverent and devout?
"Come," he said, "we can get back now, and you must go. They will think you are lost."