degree as the amens came thicker and faster. When he had worked them
all up to a red-hot pitch, Will would start that awful snort of his
that always made us double up with giggles, and with a loud
cockle-doodle-doo! would bolt from the bed like a lightning flash and
make for the window.

So "preacher day," as Will always called it, became the torment of our
lives.

To tell the truth, Will always was teasing us, but if he crooked his
finger at us we would bawl. We bawled and squalled from morning till
night. Yet we fairly worshiped him, and cried harder when he went away
than when he was home.



CHAPTER VII. -- INDIAN ENCOUNTER AND SCHOOL-DAY INCIDENTS.

WILL was not long at home. The Mormons, who were settled in Utah,
rebelled when the government, objecting to the quality of justice meted
out by Brigham Young, sent a federal judge to the territory. Troops,
under the command of General Albert Sidney Johnston, were dispatched
to quell the insurrection, and Russell, Majors & Waddell contracted to
transport stores and beef cattle to the army massing against the Mormons
in the fall of 1857. The train was a large one, better prepared against
such an attack as routed the McCarthy brothers earlier in the summer;
yet its fate was the same.

Will was assigned to duty as "extra" under Lew Simpson, an experienced
wagon-master, and was subject to his orders only. There was the double