Miss Dividends Part 22

"You know where this Bishop Kruger lives?"

"No, but I can easily find out."

"Very well. Will you take a note to him for me?"

"With pleasure!" he cries, as if glad she has given him a chance to do her service. So, sitting down, she writes a few lines hurriedly, and gives the epistle to Mr. Chauncey.

Half an hour afterward he returns, and knocks on her door. She is engaged with her maid, who has become frightened at being left behind the Livingston party, and says she wishes to return to New York.

Answering his summons, Erma asks anxiously, "Did you deliver it?"

"Yes; he was in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, but he read it, and said he would be down in the morning. He seemed to chuckle over it. I don't think I would trust your father's friend any too much," suggests the boy.

"Thank you," cries the girl, "for your advice and your kindness," and being desperately grateful for this one act of consideration shown to her this night, she says to him suddenly: "Good-bye. G.o.d bless you, Ferdie!" and gives him an impetuous kiss--the sweetest he has ever had in his life, though with it she leaves a tear upon his cheek.

Then she comes in and says with business-like directness to her faltering abigail, "You wish to leave me, Marie, here alone?"

"Yes, I am afraid. Mademoiselle will pardon me."

"Certainly. Here are your wages! Here is money for your ticket to New York. Now go."

"Mademoiselle will pardon me?"

"Yes, leave me," and Marie departing, Erma Travenion feels that she is indeed alone in a strange country, for she hears the noise of the Livingstons' trunks as they are packing them and getting ready to depart in a hurry that does not seem altogether flattering to her.

Early the next morning, the widow, Louise, Mr. Livingston, and Ferdie depart for Ogden, though the California train does not start from that town until the evening; they are so desperately anxious to shake the dust of Salt Lake City from their feet.

At the depot, Ferdie notices Bishop Kruger, who gazes at the party as they board the train, and approaching Mr. Chauncey, remarks, "I'll see Miss Ermie up at the hotel. She ain't going with ye, _sure_?" peering about with curious eyes, as if to be certain of this fact. Then the train runs out, bearing the Livingstons toward the Pacific Coast, and Bishop Kruger, about eight o'clock on this day, finds Miss Travenion waiting for him at the Townsend House.

The girl comes down into the parlor very simply dressed, but perhaps more beautiful than ever, to his pastoral eyes, for he remarks to himself, "Be Gos.h.!.+ She looks homelike and domestic."

"My father!" she says shortly. Then gazing round, she goes on impetuously: "He is not here--he feared to see me--he is ashamed!"

"What! that he's a Mormon?" yells Kruger, savagely. "A true man glories in that; so does your daddy. Perhaps some day you'll jine him."

"Hus.h.!.+" says Erma. "Don't speak of it," and she shudders. Then she asks, "Where's my father now?"

"In town! But I ain't told him you was here yit. I thought he might be----"

"Ashamed!" cries the girl, but suddenly pauses. Kruger's looks alarm her.

"If I thought as how R. H. Travenion was ashamed of the holy Church of our Latter-Day Saints, I'd cut him off root and branch in this world and the next," he says, the wild gleam of fanaticism coming into his deep eyes. "I swear it, by the Book of Mormon!" Erma knows this man means his words, for Lot Kruger is a fanatic, and believes in his creed and in Joseph Smith, as truly as the Dervish believes in Allah and Mahomet.

"Your daddy is in town," he goes on more calmly, "but I feared he might be fl.u.s.tered if he knew you had come upon him, as it were, in the night, and so I kept my mouth shut."

"Will you bring him to me now?"

"Yes, in an hour!"

So, Mr. Kruger departs on his errand, but shortly re-appears, and says, "We have missed him agin. Your daddy's left for Tintic on the stage this morning at eight o'clock."

"Very well," answers Miss Travenion shortly. "I'll go to Tintic also."

This suggestion pleases Bishop Kruger so much that he cries, "Right you are! Ye're true grit, Sissy! You'd better go down by private conveyance.

It'll be much more pleasant for ladies."

"Oh, I am alone now; my maid has left me," answers Miss Travenion; and this remark delights her auditor more than he would like her to guess.

He goes on happily, "It's only seventy-five or eighty or perhaps ninety miles from here. You can drive down in a day with a good, tough bronco-team, but still you had better take it slowly and stop over night at Milo Johnson's."

"Alone in a Mormon house?" shudders the girl.

"Oh, you'll be as safe thar as if you were in your bed on Fifth Avenue.

You can travel all over here, provided you do not hurt our feelings, as safe as if you was in Connecticut--more so--we don't have no burglars around here!" says Lot, rea.s.suringly.

Making inquiries at the hotel office, Miss Travenion finds that the Mormon bishop's advice has been good. Then, being provided at the hotel with a private team, she comes down at ten o'clock in the day, to depart for Tintic, and is surprised to see the attentive Kruger ready to a.s.sist her into the light wagon, which has a top to keep off dust and sun.

"You didn't expect any one to see you off!" he remarks. "But most every one here would do a heap for Bishop Tranyon's darter." Then he chuckles: "Ye're kind o' one o' us now!" and drives the iron into Erma's soul.

"Thank you. I suppose you mean it for a compliment," she says, attempting lightness, though her lip twitches. "But I am a little different still, to a Mormon girl!" and gets into the carriage before he can aid her.

"So you are! Ye're a prize-book picture," he mutters, looking at her till his eyes blink from some subtle pa.s.sion, for Miss Travenion is dressed in a cool, gray linen travelling costume, that fits her charming figure with a "riding habit" fit, till it reaches white cuffs and snowy collar, and a little foot, that in its French kid boot looks as if it had come out of a fas.h.i.+on plate. Thus attired, she makes a very breezy, attractive picture; though there is no one to enjoy it, save Kruger, for the heat, even on this October day, has driven loungers from the sidewalk.

Then turning from her, as she drives down the State road, this Mormon fanatic remarks: "Gee hoss! Don't this give the Church a pull upon the daddy, and Lot Kruger a hold upon the darter!" and so goes to a little building on South Temple Street devoted to the business affairs of the Latter-Day Saints.

Miss Travenion, raising a little sunshade over a face made beautiful by conflicting emotions, journeys down the State road, which leads towards the south--past the Utah Southern Railway, that is now being graded, and after a dusty seven hours' ride comes to the Point-of-the-Mountain. Here she is very hospitably entertained, and well treated, by one of the many wives of Milo Johnson, who lives at this place.

Then the next morning, so as to travel in the cool portion of the day, leaving almost at daylight, after a hot breakfast, and taking her lunch with her, she crosses the ford of the Jordan--the river that runs from the fresh lake of Utah to its salt inland sea. So coming to its western sh.o.r.e, she journeys along the banks of beautiful Utah Lake--placid as a mirror--leaving Ophir and Camp Floyd and Tooele far to her west.

To the east, across the limpid waters, she notes, buried in their orchards, the Mormon towns of Provo, Springfield, Payson, and Spanish Fork. Behind them the great Wahsatch range, and, further to the south, the great mountain that they call "Nebo," which rises snow-capped, dominating the scene.

About midway down the west side of the lake, she and the driver of the carriage eat their lunch. Then proceeding onward till almost at the upper end of this quiet water, she leaves its banks, and, after two or three miles of sage brush, enters a little canon, with a brawling stream running down it. Very shortly to her comes the odor of garlic and a.r.s.enic from the smelting works at Homansville, whose great furnaces she soon sees, giving out clouds of smoke.

Pa.s.sing these, three miles further up the valley she comes to Eureka.

Here, making inquiry at the store of Baxter & b.u.t.terfield, she is directed to the Zion's Co-operative Mining Inst.i.tution, whose works stand a mile or more beyond, towards Silver City.

So, in another half an hour Miss Travenion, turning from the main road and driving up a little spur of the mountain, past one or two dug-outs and miner's cabins, gets out of the wagon at the door of a house built of rough lumber, and says nervously to a man in high, muddy boots and blue s.h.i.+rt, greasy with candle drippings: "Is Bishop Tranyon in?"

"Yes, he is in the back room," and, pointing to the door, the miner goes off to his work.

She enters, and seated upon a wooden chair, looking over some accounts at a deal table, is the man they call Bishop Tranyon, and she says to him:--"FATHER!"

At her word, Ralph Travenion, once New York exquisite, now Mormon bishop, staggers up, trembles, and, gazing on her, cries: "Erma! my G.o.d!

YOU here?"

Then, forcing back some awful emotion, his voice grows tender as he says: "Why, this is a surprise, darling! You have travelled all the way from New York to see your father. G.o.d bless you, child of my heart!" and there are tears in his deep eyes, and he would approach her and put his arms about her, giving her a father's kiss.

But she starts from him, shudders, and gasps: "Don't dare to kiss me!"

"Why not?"