Weeks passed by, and one blistering hot day, while the train was dragging along beyond the stream, Little Sandy, Mrs. Pratt died. The train was ordered to halt while men and women held a council near the dusty, covered wagon in which lay the remains of the young mother. Nothing could be done except what always had been done when one of such a company dies, where there is no cemetery except the broad bosom of Mother Earth and no person within reach fitted to conduct funeral rites. Therefore, while the train stood still, as stop the engines of the ocean steamer while the body of the dead is consigned to the sea, the sympathetic emigrants circled around the hastily dug grave by the roadside in the desert, while the body from which the spirit had taken its flight hardly an hour before, was lowered into its solitary tomb. Then again the line moved slowly on the long drive toward the ford of the Big Sandy, before reaching which no water would be found, and there they camped. Huldah had been a stranger to the Pratt family until they were brought together on this pilgrimage across the plains, and now the day after the burial, the train was expected to reach the forks of the road at Green River, and Huldah, with her parents and other friends, was to proceed on the Oregon trail, while Mr. Pratt was to continue under the protection of Scofield's train along the new Mormon trail. Pratt was heart-broken. Huldah was sympathetic and helpful to the last moment. A new light began to dawn upon Pratt, and a new emotion rose within him. If anything was to be done in response to this newborn inspiration it must be done quickly. During the hours of the only evening whose shadows fell after the burial, and before the expected separation, Pratt and Huldah were engaged in earnest converse. This brief courtship was concluded by summoning the Thompson family and Mr. and Mrs. Scofield to a midnight conference on the bank of the Big Sandy. The Thompsons finally yielded to the inevitable, and the definite approval of all members of the little party was given to the plans proposed. The morrow was to be a day of unusual activity with the emigrants because of transfers of loads and teams to be made on dividing the train, and hence the night after the burial presented the last opportunity to solve the delicate problem then before the little group which had convened. It must be now and forever or never.