Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/65

 ing vigorous beard that covered his whole breast. In the wagon rode his wife and the four children which she had borne him in five years. Guiding the oxen with a long pole, he walked beside the cart much as Abraham in the glory of his strength walked beside his flocks, erect and beautiful and full of dignity. In his eyes there was a burning light and on his arm he carried a great Bible fastened and locked with brass clasps.

Beneath the ox-cart swung a crate filled with shivering fowls and behind it walked a cow, a black he-goat and two milking she-goats. He had come from the Mormon settlement where a little while before he had been publicly cast out for immoral practices. Behind him in the colony he left two wives and three other children. The wife who slept in the covered wagon with the nursing child in her arms was his first wife, a woman called Maria Trent, two years older than himself and the daughter of a fur trader of St. Louis. The youngest child was a male child who had already been baptized by his father in the waters of the Mississippi with the name of Uriah.

On the outskirts of a shabby village the wanderer halted his wagon, unyoked the oxen and set about building a fire, and in a little while a dozen early morning risers wandering out from the village gathered about to stare at him. Of these he took no notice either by word or glance, but went on filling an iron pot with water and oatmeal. This he hung over the fire. Then he turned toward the wagon and called out "Maria!" and a pale, sickly woman with reddish hair opened the canvas and climbed