tobacco with his long sharp bowie-knife, "jest
afore sundown."

"He's not desarted. Josh was too honourable
to make tracks, that way," said the rider,
confidently.

"Desarted! Not he. But that's what'll have
to be put in the report—leastways, missin',"
said Seth.

The rider looked Seth in the face, and drew
his forefinger, with a meaning look, slowly
across his own throat. Seth nodded.

"Least said, safest," said Seth, looking
dubiously at me.

"Colonel's safe. You may speak afore him,
same as myself, boys!" cried the mail-bag rider,
who had come with me; "do ye mean them
bloodthirsty Mormons—?"

"Whist, Jem! Whew! You'll get all our
throats cut," cried the oldest man, starting up
in great alarm; "there may be one of the brutes
within earshot." He looked through the window,
and opened the door, to satisfy himself that no
eavesdroppers were near.

"I forgot," apologised Jem; " but about Josh
Hudson?"

"I'm afeard," answered Seth, in a voice
dropped almost to a whisper, "that he's gone
for good. Josh was troubled about his sister,
Nell Hudson, that jined the Mormons last
winter, up in Illinoy, and was coaxed off, and is
here, somewhere."

"Ah," said the listener, "I heerd as much."

"It's my belief," continued Seth, "that Josh
got on this station a purpose to seek the gal
out, and get her to go home to the old folks and
the Church she were bred in. Mormons won't
stand that."

"Ah!" said the guide Jem again.

"So, in short, Seth and me some think, we
do," said the oldest of the group, "that Josh
has been at his scoutin' onst too often, and met
'shanpip.'"

"Shanpip!" I repeated; "what is that?"

The man eyed me curiously. "Never heerd
of 'Shanpip brethren,' then, harn't ye, mister?
So much the best for you. P'raps you've
heerd tell of Danites?"

I had heard, vaguely and obscurely, of that
spiritual police of Mormondom, of those fierce
zealots who obey their Prophet blindly.

"Then you have reason to fear that your
comrade is—"

"Is lyin' under the salt mud of one o' them
briny pools nigh to hand," interrupted the man,
"and not alone, nouther. Theer's been a many
missin', that never went back to settlements nor
on to Californey. And theer they'll lie hid, I
reckon, till the Day of Judgment, when Great
Salt Lake shall give up its dead, like the rest
of the airth and waters."

I asked if an appeal could not be made to the
Mormon elders themselves?

"'Twouldn't answer, colonel. Suppose I goes
to-morrow to Brigham's own house, or Kimball's,
or any of their big men—elders, or angels, or
high priests, or what not—and asks after Josh
Hudson. Brigham's very mealy-mouthed, afraid
the man's run away; what could be expected
from a benighted Gentile, and that; gives
his own account of it in preachment next Sabbath.
P'raps one of 'em gives me a glass of wine or a
julep, and mebbe it disagrees with me, and I
die of it. You may stare, but didn't the States
treasurer die that way, arter takin' refreshment at
Angel Badger's house? And a pretty angel he be.
P'raps I don't drink under a Mormon roof, and
then, mebbe, I walk home late, and lose my way,
or some other accident happens me—true as
death, mister, on'y last week, as I passed Big
Lick, I saw a dead woman's face looking up at
me, all white and still, at bottom, of the salt
pool."

Thus far the elder man had spoken, but now
Seth, who had evinced great uneasiness, jumped
up with an oath, and cautiously opened the door.
No one was listening.

"Tell'ee what," said Seth, "we'd best keep
this discoorse close, till we're outside the territory.
They're that sharp, Mormons, blessed if
I don't think they're all ear. And if they get's
a notion what we're sayin', the colonel won't
never see New York, and I shan't never happen
home to Montgomery agin. Indian Walker and
his pesky Utahs mostly got a knack of
tomahawking them as Mormons don't much like.
And mebbe we'd meet other Indians, with
blankets and red paint on their faces, jest like
the real Utahs, and pretty sharp knives in their
belts."

"Seth's right," said my former guide; "we
don't want to set up any chaps to paint Injun
on our account, as Angel Brown and Young
Harris and the Danites did, when Martha
Styles and Rachel Willis chose to go home to
Illinoy—so, colonel, you get a snooze, and Seth,
you needn't hurry about saddlin'—we've rode
awful quick."

I was not sorry when day-dawn found me,
after a hard gallop by moonlight, approaching
the confines of the Mormon territory. The
rest of the journey was unmarked by adventure.
Hardships there were, but no great perils. We
traversed a route on which the bleached bones
of many horses and mules lay white and ghastly,
and on which many a low turfen mound marked
the last resting-place of an emigrant, or his wife
or child, never to reach the Promised Land of
Hope.

But provisions were more plentiful now, and
water more regularly stored and easy of access,
than when the expelled Mormons made their
famous march across the desert, marking the
untrodden route with graves. We narrowly
escaped being smothered in the snow, in passing
the outlet in the Rocky Mountains, and this
was our last semblance of peril.

Previous to this, it had been my sad duty to
tell old Amos Grindrod, whom I found at the
Round Pond Station, of his son's death, and to
commit to his care the bit of ensanguined ribbon
that was to be returned to poor Shem's
sweetheart. The old man tried to bear the
tidings with the stoicism of those Indians
among whom he had passed much of his life,