Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/73

 his life he was surrounded from time to time by complete mystery. At the end of the nine years he appeared in Saint Louis, where he married Maria Trent and began his long career as a religious experimenter and itinerant preacher.

For thirty years from the day the Mormons cast him out Cyrus Spragg and his ever-increasing family wandered the frontier country, appearing now here, now there, bringing with him excitement and romance and ecstasy where otherwise there was only poverty and work. As he grew older and more certain of himself, a kind of conscious glory came to envelop him, so that at times his journeying took on the aspect of a royal progress. Villages came to await his coming. Twice there were scandals that became known. Once in Mississippi he was forced to flee before the threats of an outraged husband across the border into Tennessee, leaving his family and his ox-cart to follow him. And each year the tired pretty woman who was his wife bore him another child until at length there were thirteen.

They were strong children, full of vitality, who thrived on the abundant food given by those to whom Cyrus Spragg had brought the light. He had other children, beyond all doubt—children like that of the plump yellow-haired woman who had disappeared seeking the Prophet. They were scattered throughout the borders of the Middle West. There were thirteen by his wife and three by the two deserted Mormon wives and countless others