ESTHER: A STORY OF THE OREGON TRAIL. [Illustration: [Logo]] LONDON: GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. WESTWARD. CHAPTER II. NATURE’S NOBLEMAN—WALTERMYER. CHAPTER III. THE APOSTLE. CHAPTER IV. CLAUDE AND ELLEN. CHAPTER V. THE PRISONER OF THE DACOTAHS. CHAPTER VI. WATER! CHAPTER VII. THE MORMON’S RIDE. CHAPTER VIII. PRAIRIE FIRE. CHAPTER IX. TRUE HEART. CHAPTER X. CANT—A STRUGGLE—A SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE. CHAPTER XI. PARTING—A LONELY RIDE—A NIGHT STORM IN THE MOUNTAINS. CHAPTER XII. LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS—AN UNEXPECTED GUIDE—REST. CHAPTER XIII. THE DACOTAH’S CAMP—LOVE’S TRIUMPH. CHAPTER XIV. WALTERMYER—A CHAMPION. CHAPTER XV. REVOLT—ALONE ON THE HEIGHTS—TRIAL. CHAPTER XVI. THE HOMEWARD TRAIL—THE STRANGE MEETING—FOEMEN. CHAPTER XVII. A DUEL IN THE WILDERNESS—A STARTLING REVELATION. CHAPTER XVIII. HOME. ESTHER: A STORY OF THE OREGON TRAIL. CHAPTER I. WESTWARD. Our every footstep treads upon a grave! The keel of the snowy-pinioned vessel but turns a fleecy furrow while plowing its way over the abodes of death. Earth is but one vast tomb, where sleep, side by side, commingling their dust, the king and peasant, the master and slave, the beautiful and the repulsive. Beneath the iron-clad feet of our swift steeds—beneath the thunder-rush and lightning speed of engines—beneath the quick, firm tread of business men, and beneath the gentle pressure of the daintily-slippered feet of lovely women, lie the mouldering form—the dust of stalwart men and the more delicate clay that was fashioned by the Master hand into childhood, girlhood, womanhood—beauty. We turn from scenes of busy life, and enter the deep forest, unthinking and careless that beneath our footsteps lie the mouldering bones of the war-painted warrior, beside his broken spear and stringless bow; and, in another place, the dusky forest-maiden, who once wreathed amid the dull blackness of her hair the gorgeously-tinted buds and blossoms of the God-cultured prairie. But so it is. The star that leads civilization westward shines sadly upon the graves of a people almost extinct—a people that have been hunted ruthlessly from their greenwood haunts till every year has seen their graves multiplying thicker and thicker in the wilderness. Then the Anglo-Saxon comes to plow it up and plant corn above the dead warriors, stooping now and then to pick up a stone arrow-head from his furrow, and examine it curiously, as if he did not know what soil his sacrilegious plow was upturning.