“Along about this time an incident come off that I couldn’t get much light on.  A stranger come to town, an’ was seen with the preacher.  This stranger was a big man with an eye like blue ice, an’ a beard of gold.  He had money, an’ he ’peered a man of mystery, an’ the town went to buzzin’ when he disappeared about the same time as a young woman known to be mightily interested in the new preacher’s religion.  Then, presently, along comes a man from somewheres in Illinois, en’ he up an’ spots this preacher as a famous Mormon proselyter.  That riled Frank Erne as nothin’ ever before, an’ from rivals they come to be bitter enemies.  An’ it ended in Frank goin’ to the meetin’-house where Milly was listenin’, en’ before her en’ everybody else he called that preacher—­called him, well, almost as hard as Venters called Tull here sometime back.  An’ Frank followed up that call with a hosswhippin’, en’ he drove the proselyter out of town.

“People noticed, so ’twas said, that Milly’s sweet disposition changed.  Some said it was because she would soon become a mother, en’ others said she was pinin’ after the new religion.  An’ there was women who said right out that she was pinin’ after the Mormon.  Anyway, one mornin’ Frank rode in from one of his trips, to find Milly gone.  He had no real near neighbors—­livin’ a little out of town—­but those who was nearest said a wagon had gone by in the night, an’ they though it stopped at her door.  Well, tracks always tell, an’ there was the wagon tracks an’ hoss tracks an’ man tracks.  The news spread like wildfire that Milly had run off from her husband.  Everybody but Frank believed it an’ wasn’t slow in tellin’ why she run off.  Mother had always hated that strange streak of Milly’s, takin’ up with the new religion as she had, an’ she believed Milly ran off with the Mormon.  That hastened mother’s death, an’ she died unforgivin’.  Father wasn’t the kind to bow down under disgrace or misfortune but he had surpassin’ love for Milly, an’ the loss of her broke him.

“From the minute I heard of Milly’s disappearance I never believed she went off of her own free will.  I knew Milly, an’ I knew she couldn’t have done that.  I stayed at home awhile, tryin’ to make Frank Erne talk.  But if he knowed anythin’ then he wouldn’t tell it.  So I set out to find Milly.  An’ I tried to get on the trail of that proselyter.  I knew if I ever struck a town he’d visited that I’d get a trail.  I knew, too, that nothin’ short of hell would stop his proselytin’.  An’ I rode from town to town.  I had a blind faith that somethin’ was guidin’ me.  An’ as the weeks an’ months went by I growed into a strange sort of a man, I guess.  Anyway, people were afraid of me.  Two years after that, way over in a corner of Texas, I struck a town where my man had been.  He’d jest left.  People said he came to that town without a woman.  I back-trailed my man through Arkansas an’ Mississippi, an’ the old trail got hot again in Texas.  I found the town where he first went after leavin’ home.  An’ here I got track of Milly.  I found a cabin where she had given birth to her baby.  There was no way to tell whether she’d been kept a prisoner or not.  The feller who owned the place was a mean, silent sort of a skunk, an’ as I was leavin’ I jest took a chance an’ left my mark on him.  Then I went home again.