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Show THE MORMON LION But we did not ride south. Chilcott first took a wide circuit eastwards to the mines. There he bought and sold three or four placers, always paying in notes and selling for gold. He was the laughing-stock of the camps, for he went about as if half crazed, buying at high piices and selling at a reduction. Finally, when he had paid out the last of his notes, he suddenly discovered that we ought to be hastening back to Utah. He also professed doubts as to the wisdom of continuing our absurd masquerade. I was only too glad to be rid of the foppish piratical display. We rode south, on mule back, dressed as miners. The &old that he had gathered was modestly hidden from view in a sack of flour on one of the pack mules that bore our outfit of miners' picks and shovels. At San Bernardino we found Waller waiting for us with a heavr, freight wagon loaded with our cases of " hardware. ' Not until we were a week's travel east of the Mohave, on our plodding return across the desert, did I Jearn from an exultant remark by Waller that our entire expedition had been financed with bogus money. As the little rascal expressed it, we had spoiled the Egyptians and " milked the Gentiles " to the tune of over twenty thousand dollars in gold and property. Everything had been paid for in the counterfeit treasury notes. My companions took for granted that I had long before become aware of the truth. I did not disabuse them of the idea, but affected the same cool indifference as Chilcott. I could not force myself to imitate the exultance of the cackling Waller. CHAPTER XVII MASTER AND MAN LONG before we came in sight of Salt Lake City my Impatience and anxiety had become a burning fever that kept me tossing on my hard earth bed at night and sickened me with longmg by day. It seemed as If we would never reach our journey's end. We had left the Great Basin lying chill and bleak in the grip of winter. We returned, to find the valleys, all the way from the Mountain Meadows northward to the Great Lake, green with the full verdure of May. The blossoms of the peach trees in the settlement orchards made my heart ache. Lucy's cheeks were no less exquisite in colouring- or had been. At American Fork, unable longer to endure our slow progress, I proposed as casually as I could, to mount one of our mules and ride ahead to the city. Chilcott not only assented to this, but, what was far less agreeable, decided to accompany me. As our extra mules were somewhat lagged by our morning's JOurney, he hired two wiry Indian ponies. They earned us all the way to Salt Lake City in a little over four hours' time. Had it not been for my feverish impatience and dread, I must have cned out with delight as our tireless pomes bore us on a lope into the wide streets of the citY.. Down every gutter was flowing a crystalclear nil of water, and overhead the double rows of shade trees stretched o~t their boughs in full foliage ; while almost every resident lot was beautiful with the fragrant blossoms of peach and apple and pear trees, of apricots and cherries and late plums. >6! |