At Fillmore the inhabitants were hostile, as all had been since Salt Lake.  They laughed at us when we tried to buy food, and were not above taunting us with being Missourians.

When we entered the place, hitched before the largest house of the dozen houses that composed the settlement were two saddle-horses, dusty, streaked with sweat, and drooping.  The old man I have mentioned, the one with long, sunburnt hair and buckskin shirt and who seemed a sort of aide or lieutenant to father, rode close to our wagon and indicated the jaded saddle-animals with a cock of his head.

“Not sparin’ horseflesh, Captain,” he muttered in a low voice.  “An’ what in the name of Sam Hill are they hard-riding for if it ain’t for us?”

But my father had already noted the condition of the two animals, and my eager eyes had seen him.  And I had seen his eyes flash, his lips tighten, and haggard lines form for a moment on his dusty face.  That was all.  But I put two and two together, and knew that the two tired saddle-horses were just one more added touch of ominousness to the situation.

“I guess they’re keeping an eye on us, Laban,” was my father’s sole comment.

It was at Fillmore that I saw a man that I was to see again.  He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, well on in middle age, with all the evidence of good health and immense strength—­strength not alone of body but of will.  Unlike most men I was accustomed to about me, he was smooth-shaven.  Several days’ growth of beard showed that he was already well-grayed.  His mouth was unusually wide, with thin lips tightly compressed as if he had lost many of his front teeth.  His nose was large, square, and thick.  So was his face square, wide between the cheekbones, underhung with massive jaws, and topped with a broad, intelligent forehead.  And the eyes, rather small, a little more than the width of an eye apart, were the bluest blue I had ever seen.

It was at the flour-mill at Fillmore that I first saw this man.  Father, with several of our company, had gone there to try to buy flour, and I, disobeying my mother in my curiosity to see more of our enemies, had tagged along unperceived.  This man was one of four or five who stood in a group with the miller during the interview.

“You seen that smooth-faced old cuss?” Laban said to father, after we had got outside and were returning to camp.

Father nodded.

“Well, that’s Lee,” Laban continued.  “I seen’m in Salt Lake.  He’s a regular son-of-a-gun.  Got nineteen wives and fifty children, they all say.  An’ he’s rank crazy on religion.  Now, what’s he followin’ us up for through this God-forsaken country?”

Our weary, doomed drifting went on.  The little settlements, wherever water and soil permitted, were from twenty to fifty miles apart.  Between stretched the barrenness of sand and alkali and drought.  And at every settlement our peaceful attempts to buy food were vain.  They denied us harshly, and wanted to know who of us had sold them food when we drove them from Missouri.  It was useless on our part to tell them we were from Arkansas.  From Arkansas we truly were, but they insisted on our being Missourians.