At Beaver, five days’ journey south from Fillmore, we saw Lee again.  And again we saw hard-ridden horses tethered before the houses.  But we did not see Lee at Parowan.

Cedar City was the last settlement.  Laban, who had ridden on ahead, came back and reported to father.  His first news was significant.

“I seen that Lee skedaddling out as I rid in, Captain.  An’ there’s more men-folk an’ horses in Cedar City than the size of the place ’d warrant.”

But we had no trouble at the settlement.  Beyond refusing to sell us food, they left us to ourselves.  The women and children stayed in the houses, and though some of the men appeared in sight they did not, as on former occasions, enter our camp and taunt us.

It was at Cedar City that the Wainwright baby died.  I remember Mrs. Wainwright weeping and pleading with Laban to try to get some cow’s milk.

“It may save the baby’s life,” she said.  “And they’ve got cow’s milk.  I saw fresh cows with my own eyes.  Go on, please, Laban.  It won’t hurt you to try.  They can only refuse.  But they won’t.  Tell them it’s for a baby, a wee little baby.  Mormon women have mother’s hearts.  They couldn’t refuse a cup of milk for a wee little baby.”

And Laban tried.  But, as he told father afterward, he did not get to see any Mormon women.  He saw only the Mormon men, who turned him away.

This was the last Mormon outpost.  Beyond lay the vast desert, with, on the other side of it, the dream land, ay, the myth land, of California.  As our wagons rolled out of the place in the early morning I, sitting beside my father on the driver’s seat, saw Laban give expression to his feelings.  We had gone perhaps half a mile, and were topping a low rise that would sink Cedar City from view, when Laban turned his horse around, halted it, and stood up in the stirrups.  Where he had halted was a new-made grave, and I knew it for the Wainwright baby’s—­not the first of our graves since we had crossed the Wasatch mountains.

He was a weird figure of a man.  Aged and lean, long-faced, hollow-checked, with matted, sunburnt hair that fell below the shoulders of his buckskin shirt, his face was distorted with hatred and helpless rage.  Holding his long rifle in his bridle-hand, he shook his free fist at Cedar City.

“God’s curse on all of you!” he cried out.  “On your children, and on your babes unborn.  May drought destroy your crops.  May you eat sand seasoned with the venom of rattlesnakes.  May the sweet water of your springs turn to bitter alkali.  May . . .”

Here his words became indistinct as our wagons rattled on; but his heaving shoulders and brandishing fist attested that he had only begun to lay the curse.  That he expressed the general feeling in our train was evidenced by the many women who leaned from the wagons, thrusting out gaunt forearms and shaking bony, labour-malformed fists at the last of Mormondom.  A man, who walked in the sand and goaded the oxen of the wagon behind ours, laughed and waved his goad.  It was unusual, that laugh, for there had been no laughter in our train for many days.