As Joshua Peniman and his two older sons stood looking down upon the dead man, the delicate-featured, high-browed, thoughtful face of a scholar, upon the hands, smooth, white, tapering, with well-kept nails and soft palms, the body worn and thin almost to emaciation, the waxen cheeks hollow and sunken under the blue-rimmed eyes, a strange sense of awe and wonder passed over them.
What was this man—this delicate, scholarly-appearing individual with his soft hands and emaciated body—doing in an emigrant wagon crossing the trackless plains?
Who was the woman who was with him—that young, beautiful, delicately-clad and delicately nurtured woman, whose sobs and moans they could hear from the other side of the wagon?
As these questions forced themselves through the mind of Joshua Peniman the woman came rushing around the end of the wagon and cast herself down beside the body.
"Lee, Lee, Lee!" she shrieked. "Oh, he is not dead, he is not dead! Surely God could not be so cruel as to take him from me! Oh, Lee, my husband, my own, my only love!"
Her voice had risen into a high, wailing cry. Suddenly from the rear end of the wagon from which they had taken the dead man a head appeared.
To the startled eyes of the boys who first saw it it seemed the most beautiful head and face they had ever seen.
It was a small head, fine and delicate, set like a flower on a little swan-like throat, and covered with short curls of sunny gold. Beneath the shining halo of curls a face looked out, pitifully small and frightened, with great terrified violet eyes, a quivering rose-bud mouth, and a skin as fair and delicate as the petals of a flower.
"Father—Mother!" cried a quivering, childish voice, "oh, what is the matter? what has happened? what are you crying so for, Mother?" Then, as the terrified violet eyes caught sight of the body, she leaped to the ground and threw herself upon it with a cry that Joe could never forget.
The children who had gathered about stood transfixed, but Hannah Peniman moved swiftly to the child and took her in her arms.