a number of years the kind-hearted little professor looked steadfastly out of the window during examinations in geology, and turned a resolute deaf ear to the rustling of leaves as the despairing student manipulated a cleverly concealed volume. For a number of years he came home at four o'clock in the afternoon, and feverishly corrected blue books until six, in order to ransom from professional duties the whole of the precious evening. For a number of years he consulted authorities in German and other difficult languages, and waxed ever more enthusiastic over the new theory of erosions. During the interim the baby learned to walk, and Prue's belief in its father strengthened, if such a thing were possible. In time the professor and his wife grew to be quite old. He looked every bit of his thirty, and she was an aged dowager of twenty-five. Little Miss Prue was just two and a half.
One day, early in the spring, the professor was called to the door of his class-room to receive a telegram. He read it quietly, then dismissed his class, and went home.
"Prue," said he to his wife, "my father has just died. I must go up there at once, for he was all I had left in the world, and it is not seemly that I should be from his side."
You can see from his manner of speech that the professor had by now read a great many bookish books.
"We will go together," replied Prue.
So they put away mortality in the old Puritan fashion, standing wistful, but tearless, hand in hand, on the hither side of grief; for though in perspective the figure of the old New Englander loomed with a certain gloomy and ascetic grandeur, in the daily contact he had always held himself sternly and straitly in fear of God. For him the twin lamps of Science and Love had burned but darkly.
Adoniram Welch found himself sole heir of a few thousands and the old home.
On the way back to the college town, they planned the Western trip. The professor was to resign his chair at once. He and Mrs. Prue and little Miss Prue would travel by rail to Kansas or Iowa, there to join one of the wagon-trains which now, in the height of the first great gold excitement, continually braved savage warfare and brute thirst to gain the dark shadows of the hills.
During the next three weeks, Prue was a busy woman. The professor resigned, becoming thereby only "the doctor"; had an explanatory interview with the president of the college, and gave himself over to a series of delightful potterings. He pottered about among his belongings, and personally superintended just how everything was not stowed away. He pottered about among the faculty, to the members of which he talked mysteriously with ill-concealed exultation, for the theory was also a secret. He lovingly packed his books and papers and a small portion of his clothes, all of which Prue had to hunt out and repack. Altogether, he had a delightful, absent-minded time, seeing in the actual world no further than the end of his nose, but in the visionary world of his most technical hopes far beyond the farthest star.
But Prue had a New England village to answer; she had the family's belongings to take care of—no great task in itself; she had little Miss Prue to oversee. Grave men who were professors of astronomy, or Greek antiquities, or Hebrew, and who, therefore, knew all about it, told her, in language of whose correctness Addison would have been proud, that the aborigines of the American plains were bloodthirsty in the extreme. Fluttering women detailed anecdotes of sudden death at the hands of Indians. One and all bade her good-by with the firm conviction, openly expressed, that she would never return; upon which all whom weeping became wept, while others displayed their best handkerchiefs as a sort of defiant substitute for more open emotion. Prue saw the little town fade into distance with mingled feelings, of which terror was the predominant, until her husband explained to her, by the aid of an airy little octavo which he had stuffed into an inadequate bag, that Professor Nincomb's theory of glacial action was not only false, but would be conclusively proved to be so by the new theory of erosion. At this she brightened. Prue owned to a vague impression that glacial action had something to do with the North Pole, so the argument per se had little weight with her. But Prue was a New Englander, and devout in the New England fashion, and she settled back on Divine Providence with great thankfulness. She argued that no scheme of things could dispense ruthlessly with so wonderful an affair as the theory of erosions. Therefore the scheme of things would take care of the only possessor of the theory. Indians lost their terrors, she and little Miss Prue fell asleep together, leaving the doctor still poring excitedly over the octavo of Professor Nincomb.
Their first serious difficulties were encountered at Three Rivers. Of course, in the circumstances, the mild little doctor quite failed in his attempts to secure transportation. How should he, a scientist, know or care anything about gold excitements? The hustle confused him, the crowd stunned him, the fierce self-reliance and lack of consideration of these rough men alarmed him.
He came back to the board hotel very much discouraged. "There is not a conveyance of any sort to be found," he informed Mrs. Prue, "and there is great difficulty in estimating the precise duration of the present state of affairs. It may continue into next summer; or so, at least, I was informed by a very estimable person."
That was unbearable. Think of little Miss Prue being required, in the third year of her diminutive life, to face the heat of the plains in midsummer! Think of the cost of living a twelvemonth in such a place as Three Rivers! Prue put on her hat and went out into the turbulent camp. Until that moment she had deemed it wisest to remain in her room.
She was greeted only with respect. Men paused and looked after her. You see, Prue had such grave, calm eyes, that looked straight at you with so much confidence; and such a sensitive, serious mouth, that argued such a capacity for making up quiet opinions of people—and acting on them—that you were always very much inclined to take off your hat, even if you were Tony Quinn and middling drunk. It was not ten minutes before she had corroborated the doctor's bad news; but she had also heard incidentally of Billy Knapp, Alfred, and Buckley. The hotel-keeper pointed out the latter—that quiet man with the brown beard. Prue went straight to him and stated her case.
In the statement she laid great stress on the importance of the dip of strata. If the doctor did not get to work before long, he would be unable to finish his explorations before his means had become exhausted. Prue waxed quite technical. She used a number of long words and a few long phrases, hoping thus to awe the calm and contemplative individual in front of her.
Buckley did not comprehend the reasons. He did comprehend the unutterable eloquence of the eyes, for though her logic went for naught with the scout, it succeeded nevertheless in impressing Prue herself, in bringing more vividly before her the importance of it all. She clasped her hands, and tears choked her. When she had finished, Jim said gravely that she should go.
IV
ALFRED USES HIS SIX-SHOOTER
Michaïl Lafond merely spread the news, and made it a subject of discussion. In his statements he said nothing of his own grievance, nor did he suggest a plan. He knew that this was not a case for violence, nor did he care that it should become such. His actions always depended very much on how an impulse hit his queerly constructed nature. In the present instance he might either resolve to get even with Billy Knapp by means of personal vengeance, or his anger might take the direction of a cold, set determination to get through the plains journey in spite of the scout's prohibition. That the latter, rather than the former course happened to appeal to him, was purely a matter of chance. So, though he said little to the direct point, the plan finally adopted in secret by a choice few had a good deal of his desire mingled in its substance.
The quiescence of the camp astonished and puzzled the three scouts. They had expected an
