There was more feeling in this action than in anything that had passed between the trio during the afternoon. The two wives had been women who had mutually suffered. There were tears in Bessie’s eyes as she climbed to her place. The husband never turned his head in the direction of his first wife. But as he took the reins and prepared to start the team, he called: “Good by, Lucy.” He clucked at the horses, and the wagon moved forward amid a stir of red dust. The woman on the front seat drew her sunbonnet over her face. The man beside her looked neither to the right nor the left, but stared out over his newly-acquired team with an impassively set visage. His long whip curled out with a hiss, the spirited animals gave a forward bound, and the wagon went clattering and jolting down the trail. Moreau stood watching its canvas arch go swinging downward under the dark boughs of the pines and the flickering foliage of the aspens. He watched until a bend in the road hid it. Then he turned toward the cabin. Fletcher was standing behind him, surveying him with a cold and sardonic eye: “Well, you’ve done it!” “I guess I have.” “What the devil are you going to do with her?” “Don’t know.” “And the horses gone; nothin’ but that busted cayuse left!” They stood looking at each other, Fletcher angrily incredulous, Moreau smilingly deprecating and apologetic. As they stood thus, neither knowing what to say, the emigrant’s wife appeared at the doorway of the cabin. “I’ll get your supper now if it’s the right time,” she said timidly. CHAPTER III HE RIDES AWAY “Alas, my Lord, my life is not a thing Worthy your noble thoughts! ’Tis not a life, ’Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.” --BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. That night the two miners rolled themselves in their blankets and lay down on the expanse of slippery grass under the pine. Moreau did not sleep soon. The day’s incidents were the first interruption to the monotony of their uneventful summer. Now, the strong man, lying on his back, looking at the large white stars between the pine boughs, thought of what he had done with perplexity, but without regret. In the still peacefulness of the night he turned over in his mind what he should do when the woman grew stronger. Women were rare in the mining districts, and he knew that the emigrant wife could earn high wages as a servant either in Hangtown or the growing metropolis of Sacramento. The child might hamper her, but he could help her to take care of the child until she got fairly on her feet. He had nothing much to do with his “dust.” Strong and young and in California, that always meant money enough.