To rise after a shivery night, into the crisp dawn which once or twice glinted upon a film of ice formed in the water buckets; to herd the stiffened animals and place them convenient; to swallow our hot coffee and our pork and beans, and flapjacks when the cooks were in the humor; to hook the teams to the wagons and break corral, and amidst cracking of lashes stretch out into column, then to lurch and groan onward, at snail's pace, through the constantly increasing day until soon we also were wrung and parched by a relentless heat succeeding the frosty night. The sleeping beauties of the realm were ever farther removed. In the distances they awaited, luring with promise of magic-invested azure battlements, languid reds and yellows like tapestry, and patches of liquid blue and dazzling snowy white, canopied by a soft, luxurious sky. But when we arrived, near spent, the battlements were only isolated sandstone outcrops inhabited by rattlesnakes, the reds and yellows were sun-baked soil as hard, the liquid blue was poisonous, stagnant sinks, the snow patches were soda and bitter alkali, the luxurious sky was the same old white-hot dome, reflecting the blazing sun upon the fuming earth. Then at sunset we made corral; against theft, when near the grade; against Indians and pillage when out from the grade, with the animals under herd guard. There were fires, there was singing at the Mormon camp, there was the heavy sleep beneath blanket and buffalo robe, through the biting chill of a breezeless night, the ground a welcomed bed, the stars vigilant from horizon to horizon, the wolves stalking and bickering like avid ghouls. So we dulled to the falsity of the desert and the drudgery of the trail; and as the grading camps became less frequent the men grew riper for any diversion. That My Lady and Daniel and I were to furnish it seemed to be generally accepted. Here were the time-old elements: two men, one woman--elements so constituted that in other situation they might have brought comedy but upon such a trail must and should pronounce for tragedy, at least for true melodrama. Besides, I was expected to uphold the honor of our Gentile mess along with my own honor. That was demanded; ever offered in cajolery to encourage my pistol practice. I was, in short, "elected," by an obsession equal to a conviction; and what with her insistently obtruded as a bonus I never was permitted to lose sight of the ghastly prize of skill added to merit. At first the matter had disturbed and horrified me mightily, to the extent that I anticipated evading the issue while preparing against it. Surely this was the current of a prankish dream. And dreams I had--frightfully tumultuous dreams, of red anger and redder blood, sometimes my own blood, sometimes another's; dreams from which I awakened drenched in cold nightmare sweat.