Nothing could have replaced the affection which the village people had for her; no power could have made her happy as the pleasure her presence gave. As she went on down the street past the stores with their rude platform entrances, and the saloons where tired horses stood with bridles dragging, she was again assured of what was the bread and wine of life to her—that she was loved. Dirty boys playing in the ditch, clerks, teamsters, riders, loungers on the corners, ranchers on dusty horses, little girls running errands, and women hurrying to the stores all looked up at her coming with glad eyes.
Jane’s various calls and wandering steps at length led her to the Gentile quarter of the village. This was at the extreme southern end, and here some thirty Gentile families lived in huts and shacks and log-cabins and several dilapidated cottages. The fortunes of these inhabitants of Cottonwoods could be read in their abodes. Water they had in abundance, and therefore grass and fruit-trees and patches of alfalfa and vegetable gardens. Some of the men and boys had a few stray cattle, others obtained such intermittent employment as the Mormons reluctantly tendered them. But none of the families was prosperous, many were very poor, and some lived only by Jane Withersteen’s beneficence.
As it made Jane happy to go among her own people, so it saddened her to come in contact with these Gentiles. Yet that was not because she was unwelcome; here she was gratefully received by the women, passionately by the children. But poverty and idleness, with their attendant wretchedness and sorrow, always hurt her. That she could alleviate this distress more now than ever before proved the adage that it was an ill wind that blew nobody good. While her Mormon riders were in her employ she had found few Gentiles who would stay with her, and now she was able to find employment for all the men and boys. No little shock was it to have man after man tell her that he dare not accept her kind offer.
“It won’t do,” said one Carson, an intelligent man who had seen better days. “We’ve had our warning. Plain and to the point! Now there’s Judkins, he packs guns, and he can use them, and so can the daredevil boys he’s hired. But they’ve little responsibility. Can we risk having our homes burned in our absence?”
Jane felt the stretching and chilling of the skin of her face as the blood left it.
“Carson, you and the others rent these houses?” she asked.
“You ought to know, Miss Withersteen. Some of them are yours.”
“I know?... Carson, I never in my life took a day’s labor for rent or a yearling calf or a bunch of grass, let alone gold.”
“Bivens, your store-keeper, sees to that.”
“Look here, Carson,” went on Jane, hurriedly, and now her cheeks were burning. “You and Black and Willet pack your goods and move your families up to my cabins in the grove. They’re far more comfortable than these. Then go to work for me. And if aught happens to you there I’ll give you money—gold enough to leave Utah!”