The camps had sunk to silence, the women and children asleep. He skirted their tents, bending his course to where he saw the hood of his own wagon and the shadowy forms of Julia and her mates. The fire still burned bright and on its farther side he could make out the figures of Susan and Courant seated on the ground. They were quiet, the girl sitting with her feet tucked under her, idly throwing scraps of sage on the blaze. He was about to hail Courant when he saw him suddenly drop to a reclining posture beside her, draw himself along the earth and curl about her, his elbow on the ground, his head propped on a sustaining hand. With the other he reached forward, caught Susan's and drawing it toward him pressed it against his cheek. Daddy John watched the sacrilegious act with starting eyes. He would have burst in upon them had he not seen the girl's shy smile, and her body gently droop forward till her lips rested on the mountain man's. When she drew back the old servant came forward into the light. Its reflection hid his pallor, but his heart was thumping like a hammer and his throat was dry, for suddenly he understood. At his step Susan drew away from her companion and looked at the advancing shape with eyes darkly soft as those of an antelope.

"Where have you been?" she said. "You were a long time away."

"In the mud house," said Daddy John.

"Did you find anyone interesting there?"

"Yes. When I was talkin' with him I didn't know he was so powerful interestin', but sence I come out o' there I've decided he was."

They both looked at him without much show of curiosity, merely, he guessed, that they might not look at each other and reveal their secret.

"What was he?" asked Courant.

"A clergyman."

This time they both started, the girl into sudden erectness, then held her head down as if in shame. For a sickened moment, he thought she was afraid to look at her lover for fear of seeing refusal in his face. Courant leaned near her and laid his hand on hers.

"If there's a clergyman here we can be married," he said quietly.

She drew her hand away and with its fellow covered her face. Courant looked across the fire and said:

"Go and get him, Daddy John. He can do the reading over us now."

END OF PART IV

PART V

The Promised Land

CHAPTER I

In the light of a clear September sun they stood and looked down on it - the Promised Land.

For days they had been creeping up through defiles in the mountain wall, crawling along ledges with murmurous seas of pine below and the snow lying crisp in the hollows. On the western slope the great bulwark dropped from granite heights to wooded ridges along the spines of which the road wound. Through breaks in the pine's close ranks they saw blue, vaporous distances, and on the far side of aerial chasms the swell of other mountains, clothed to their summits, shape undulating beyond shape.

Then on this bright September afternoon a sun-filled pallor of empty space shone between the tree trunks, and they had hurried to the summit of a knoll and seen it spread beneath them - California!