"I showed him. I made him take water. I 'laow I'm 'bout the best man with a six-shooter in these hyar parts." "Ketch up and stretch out," Captain Adams ordered, disregarding. "We've no more time for foolery." My eyes met My Lady's. She smiled a little ruefully, and I responded, shamed by the poor role I had borne. With that still jubilating lout to the fore, certainly I cut small figure. This night we made camp at Rawlins' Springs, some twelve miles on. The day's march had been, so to speak, rather pensive; for while there were the rough jokes and the talking back and forth, it seemed as though the scene of early morning lingered in our vista. The words of Montoyo had scored deeply, and the presence of our supernumerary laid a kind of incubus, like an omen of ill luck, upon us. Indeed the prophecies darkly uttered showed the current of thought. "It's a she Jonah we got. Sure a woman the likes o' her hain't no place in a freightin' outfit. We're off on the wrong fut," an Irishman declared to wagging of heads. "Faith, she's enough to set the saints above an' the saints below both by the ears." He paused to light his dudeen. "There'll be a Donnybrook Fair in Utah, if belike we don't have it along the way." "No Mormon'll need another wife if he takes her," laughed somebody else. "She'll be promised to Dan'l 'fore ever we cross the Wasatch." And they all in the group looked slyly at me. "Acts as if she'd been sealed to him already, he does." This had occurred at our nooning hour, amidst the dust and the heat, while the animals drooped and dozed and panted and in the scant shade of the hooded wagons we drank our coffee and crunched our hardtack. Throughout the morning My Lady had ridden upon the seat of Daniel's wagon, with him sometimes trudging beside, in pride of new ownership, cracking his whip, and again planted sidewise upon one of the wheel animals, facing backward to leer at her. Why I should now have especially detested him I would not admit to myself. At any rate the dislike dated before her arrival. That was one sop to conscience when I remembered that she was a wife. Friend Jenks must have read my thoughts, inasmuch as during the course of the afternoon he had uttered abruptly: "These Mormons don't exactly recognize Gentile marriages. Did you know that?" He flung me a look from beneath shaggy brows. "What?" I exclaimed. "How so?" "Meanin' to say that layin' on of hands by the Lord's an'inted is necessary to reel j'inin' in marriage." "But that's monstrous!" I stammered. "Dare say," said he. "It's the way white gospelers look at Injuns, ain't it? Anyhow, to convert her out of sin, as they'd call it, and put her over into the company of the saints wouldn't be no bad deal, by their kind o' thinkin'. It's been done before, I reckon. Jest thought I'd warn you. She's made her own bed and if it's a Mormon bed she's well quit of Montoyo, that's sartin. Did you ever see the beat of that young feller on the draw?"