Meanwhile days passed and weeks in ever increasing labors. In the course of a certain week we were forced to leave three wagons behind, for there were no animals to draw them.
Oh, that was a land of misfortune and misery! In Nevada the desert became deeper, and our condition still worse, for disease fell upon us.
One morning people came to inform me that Smith was sick. I went to see what his trouble was, and saw with amazement that typhus had overthrown the old miner. So many climates are not changed with impunity; severe labor, in spite of short rests, makes itself felt, and the germs of disease are developed from hardship and toil. Lillian, whom Smith loved, as if she had been his own daughter, and whom he blessed on the day of our marriage, insisted on nursing him. I, weak man, trembled in my whole soul for her, but I could not forbid her to be a Christian. She sat over the sick man whole days and nights, together with Aunt Atkins and Aunt Grosvenor, who followed her example. On the second day, however, the old man lost consciousness, and on the eighth he died in Lillian’s arms. I buried him, shedding ardent tears over the remains of him who had been not only my assistant and right hand in everything, but a real father to Lillian and me. We hoped that after such a sacrifice God would take pity on us; but that was merely the beginning of our trials, for that very day another miner fell ill, and almost every day after that some one lay down in a wagon, and left it only when borne on our arms to a grave.
And thus we dragged along over the desert, and after us followed the pestilence, grasping new victims continually. In her turn Aunt Atkins fell ill, but, thanks to Lillian’s efforts, her sickness was conquered. The soul was dying in me every instant, and more than once, when Lillian was with the sick, and I somewhere on guard in front of the camp, alone in the darkness, I pressed my temples with my hands and knelt down in prayer to God. Obedient as a dog, I was whining for mercy on her without daring to say: “Let Thy will and not mine be done.” Sometimes in the night, when we were alone, I woke suddenly, for it seemed to me that the pestilence was pushing the canvas of my wagon aside and staring in, looking for Lillian. All the intervals when I was not with her, and they formed most of the time, were for me changed into one torture, under which I bent as a tree before a whirlwind. Lillian, however, had been equal to all toils and efforts so far. Though the strongest men fell, I saw her emaciated it is true, pale, and with marks of maternity increasingly definite on her forehead, but in health, and going from wagon to wagon. I dared not even ask if she were well; I only took her by the shoulders and pressed her long and long to my breast, and even had I wished to speak, something so oppressed me, that I could not have uttered a word.