“Yes, Bessie,—the second wife. I’m the first.”
“Oh,” he said, comprehending, “you’re from Utah?”
“Not me,” she answered quickly, “I’m from Indiana. I’m no Mormon. He wasn’t neither till he married Bessie. He wanted her and he did it.”
Here she was suddenly interrupted by a weak whining cry from the bundle that one arm still curved about. She bent her head and drew back the covering, and Moreau saw a strange wizened face and a tiny, claw-like hand feeling feebly about. He had never seen a very young infant before and it seemed to him a weirdly hideous thing.
“Is it yours?” he said, amazed.
“Yes,” she answered, “it was born in the desert three weeks ago.”
Her tears were dry, and she bent over the feeble thing that squirmed weakly and made small, cat-like noises, with something in her attitude that changed her and made her still a woman who had a life above her miseries.
“Wouldn’t you like to go into the cabin?” said the man, feeling suddenly abashed by his ignorance of all pertaining to this infinitesimal bit of life. “You might want to wash it or put it to sleep or give it something to eat. There’s a basin and soap and—er—some flour and bacon in there.”
The woman responded to the invitation with a slight show of alacrity. She stumbled as she rose, and he took her arm and guided her. At the cabin door he left her and as he passed to the back where the rest of the party had gone, the baby’s feeble cry, weak, but insistent, followed him.
The emigrant, Bessie and Fletcher, had repaired to the brush shed where Moreau’s horses were stabled and had put the half-dead Spotty under its shelter. Here the exhausted beast had lain down. The trio had then betaken themselves to a bare spot on the shaded slope of the knoll and were eating ship’s biscuits and drinking whisky and water from a tin cup, that circulated from hand to hand. As Moreau approached he could hear his partner volubly expatiating on the barrenness of the stream-beds in the vicinity. The stranger was listening to him with a cogitating eye, his seamed, weather-worn face set in an expression of frowning attention. Her hunger appeased, Bessie had curled up on her side, and with her sunbonnet still on, had fallen into a deep, healthy sleep.