The dry evening wind rustled across the plains. It flapped the canvas of the wagons, the ancient Conestogas, the Pittsburgs and flatbeds, and swirled the dust of the milling horses and livestock, mingling it with the rising blue-gray smoke of cook fires. It ruffled the tops of the sage and buffalo grass, sweeping over the ground to where the girl stood on the slight rise, lifting the curling edges of her blue-black hair, making her narrow her eyes against its grit-laden breath.

Serena Walsh drew her faded shawl closer around her. The wind was from the mountains lying like a soft lavender cloud on the horizon. It was cool and fresh after the heat of the day, holding the feel of autumn in its ceaseless embrace despite the prairie daisies of summer that nodded about her blowing skirts. Soon, within two or three days more of travel, they would reach the mountains, reach the towering landmark called Pikes Peak, the Shining Mountain of the Spanish explorers who were the first white men to see it. At its base was a town, almost a city, filled with normal, happy people; religious people, yes, but not fanatics. There, please God, she would leave this plodding wagon train with its harsh-spoken men, its women with downcast eyes, and its children who never smiled.

Serena flung back her dark hair in a gesture of freedom. Her finely molded features were set in a look of defiance, and there was a determined expression in her blue-gray eyes. She was not a Mormon. She would not be a Mormon. Let them frown at her unbound hair and uncovered head, at her unseemly independence and solitary habits. Let them purse their lips at her bright-colored, close-fitting dresses. She did not care. It was true that her dresses hugged her a little too well; her shape had taken on added fullness in the years since her mother had made them for her as a girl of sixteen. It could not be helped. There had been no way to replace them. Three years. As incredible as it seemed, it had been only three years since she had known a home, a settled way of life. It seemed forever.

From the direction of the wagon train came a call, a shrill demand for attention. At the sound of her name, Serena turned her head a fraction. A woman stood with her hands on her hips, staring in Serena's direction. Even at that distance, Serena thought she could see the spiteful frown that twisted the woman's sallow, vindictive face. Elder Greer's second wife, Beatrice, considered it her duty to chasten the gentile creature her husband had foisted upon her, to recall her to a sense of a place as a woman. She could see no reason why Serena should be allowed to escape her portion of the tasks that had to be done before supper was ready for the men. Doubtless, in Beatrice's tainted view, Serena was making a deliberate spectacle of herself; certainly she had hinted as much often enough. Serena could not see how she could be blamed for the attention she attracted. It was only because she was so different from the drab, submissive women of the train that the men watched her from beneath the brims of their sober black hats. No idea of enticing them had ever come into her head, no matter what anyone said. Look at Elder Greer, pausing in his task of pouring out a meager ration of water for his saddle horse, shielding his gaze by a pretense of wiping sweat from his brow with a grimy rag. Even the leader of the train could not seem to become used to the sight of her. From all indications, the story of the temptress Jezebel and her bitter end seemed likely to crop up again in the elder's sermon tonight.

Beatrice called again, a goaded, strident shout. Serena gave a small sigh, pretending not to hear. As far as she was concerned, she had no duties to the Mormons, men or women. She had not asked to be one of the Greer party when her father and mother had died of typhoid three weeks out from Missouri. Indeed, she had flatly refused to accept that dubious hospitality. The elders, meeting in council, had ignored her objections. She needed protection, they said. She was not capable of seeing after her own livestock or driving a wagon. She must have someone older and more learned to tell her what she must do, to guide her steps toward righteous womanhood and shelter her immortal soul from evil. They had appointed Elder Greer, or rather, he had appointed himself, since he was the leader of the Saints. She was to join his "family," his aging, gray-haired wife of twenty years, Agatha, humble and soft-spoken; his second wife, Beatrice, with her mousy brown hair and round hazel eyes filled with fear and spite; and his third wife, Lessie, a simple girl with pale-blond, almost white hair, and washed-out blue eyes that held not a flicker of understanding though her body beneath her shapeless gray gown was ripe and yielding. Serena was a year or so younger than Lessie, of the same age as the elder's firstborn son. Despite her age, she was not treated as a child, but as one of the older women, a fact that made her more than a little nervous, especially when Elder Greer sought her out, bending his silver head over her, speaking to her in rich, unctuous tones of how her body and soul were in his keeping, touching her arm with his damp, insistent fingers. As soon as she accepted the tenets of the Mormon faith, he said, she would achieve a oneness with him and his family. She would lie safe in his bosom, sanctified by a holy union. All he had would be hers; all she had would be his. She would be pierced by the divine power of God in man, the flower of her maidenhood would be plucked in its early season, and he would rest at peace in the sweet temple of her womanly grace. In contrast to his fair words and reverent tone, the look in his eyes had been so searingly bestial that Serena had twisted from his grasp and run, leaving him rigid with anger behind her. From that day she had made her own cook fire, cleaned her own dishes, and slept in her own wagon with the canvas ends tightly tied shut.

Still, she was often forced to endure the elder's company as he rode along beside her wagon in the noonday heat, or commanded her presence at a sabbath gathering where he spoke long and with fulsome earnestness, laboring to make her accept the superiority of the Mormon creed. It did not serve, and as the weeks went by there was a growing mood of resentment against her among the Saints for her failure to recognize the honor that was being accorded her.

Serena, compelled by some demon of pride and perversity, had taken lately to doing those things she knew the elder and their wives would not like. Holding herself aloof, apart from the other women, was an example, though by no mean all. She had taken to loosening the collar of her dress when the sun was high, to unbuttoning her sleeves and rolling them well above her shapely elbows. Sometimes on an evening she would change into the silk gown that had belonged to her mother, put on her mother's satin slippers with their gilt heels, and sit on the wagon seat, leaning her forearms on her knees so that the firelight played over the creamy curves of her shoulders in the low-necked gown, revealing the shadowed valley between her breasts. Strange how the sly looks of the men and twitched skirts of the women could make of her shy and gentle mother's evening gown a garment of shame.

With her hair dressed high on her head, cascading in shining ringlets over her shoulders, Serena looked not unlike the miniature of her lovely French-Creole mother, painted when she had been a New Orleans belle. The difference was in the willful set of the mouth and in the eyes. Her mother's had been soft sherry brown, while Serena had inherited her smoky-blue peat-bog Irish color from her father. How odd to think that if Félicité Crèvecoeur had not fallen in love with a despised Irish laborer, a mere carpenter on her father's plantation acres, and married him in the teeth of her family's opposition, Serena would not be standing on the prairie at this moment. Sean Walsh, her father, unable to find the respect his soul craved or the wealth he felt his wife deserved, unwilling to stay in one place long enough to earn either, had made wanderers of the woman he loved and his only child. They never complained. Their stability had been in the man who had made of life a wry joke and sang to relieve the monotony of the miles they traveled.

Serena drew a deep breath against the pain of remembrance. They were gone, her mother and father. Her desolation went too deep for easy tears, something the Mormons did not understand or readily forgive, one more thing they held against her. Her father had thought to find all he longed for at the foot of the shining mountain called Pikes Peak, in the new gold-mining town of Cripple Creek. Gold, how it had drawn him, leading him to sell all they owned, pawn his wife's few remaining ornaments, even to beg from his formidable French-Creole in-laws. With his stake in hand he had set out for a new life, not caviling even at the necessity of joining this band of religious pilgrims when he found he did not have the resources to pay the rail fare for his wife and daughter across the dusty plains. How much better it would have been if he had waited, taken work over the summer to make up the difference. They would have arrived nearly as soon, and they would have avoided the contaminated water that had caused the death of himself and his wife. But no, Sean Walsh had been too impatient to stand the delay in setting out; he had ever to be moving.

Swift, noisy, relentlessly modern, the railroad rattled through the evening somewhere to the north of the Mormon wagon train. Serena could picture it in her mind, rumbling, swaying, trailing a dark cloud of smoke that swirled about the lamplighted windows. Aboard would be men and women laughing, eating, drinking, or making ready for the night. There would be merchants, bankers, and mine owners, men who had already made their fortunes in the silver boom towns of Colorado, returning to Denver or perhaps taking the spur to Colorado Springs, then on to Cripple Creek itself to add to their holdings. And with them would be their wives and daughters dressed in the latest fashions from New York and Paris, women petted and pampered and showered with a thousand small treasures.

At the thought of such swift, luxurious travel, Serena knew an onrush of restless impatience with the plodding progress of the wagon train. Little though she might relish the idea, she could not deny that she had something more of her father than his temper and his eyes. If there was any merit in his vision of wealth and respect to be had in Cripple Creek, then perhaps there was a fortune of some design there for his daughter as well.

The figure of a woman left the wagons in the growing dusk and started toward where Serena stood. Ungainly, stumbling on the uneven ground; it was Lessie, Elder Greer's third wife.

Watching her struggling progress, the pure lines of Serena's mouth tightened. Lessie was with child; it was monstrous of the others, particularly that shrew Beatrice, to send her on errands. It was not surprising, however; they all did so, down to the least child. Lessie, with her guileless eyes and vacant smile, was so accommodating, so easily browbeaten, that she was treated more as a servant than as a wife. More than once Serena had intervened in the woman's behalf, sending a demanding child, of which the elder counted eleven in his family, about his business or recommending that Beatrice haul her own water, fetch her own wood, or send one of her own whining brats to do it for her. This had endeared her to Lessie, but to no one else, least of all to Elder Greer. He did not allow bickering among his family, he said, but Serena was of the opinion that he did not like to see the contemptuous expression in her gray-blue eyes when she looked from him to the swollen body of his too biddable third wife.

"Serena? Come to the wagon, do, or you will miss your supper." There was an anxious look in Lessie's eyes, and she flung a quick look over her shoulders as she stood clutching her skirts.

"I'm not hungry, and even if I were, I still have biscuits left over from breakfast. You go on ahead without me, all of you. I don't need supper." Serena spoke quietly, her low voice a musical sound in the quiet.

"Please, Serena. Beatrice will be mad, mad at you, mad at me, because Elder Greer will ask for you, want to know where you are. Please, Serena."

For all her simplemindedness, there were times when Lessie was surprisingly acute. The elder would indeed ask for her. It was one of his rules that everyone in his family should gather for the evening prayer before meals whether they meant to eat or not, whether they were too ill to face food, were being punished by being sent supperless to bed, or, in Serena's case, were accustomed to eat alone. She, in particular, had always been singled out.

"There is no sense in it," Serena said with a lift of her shoulders. "I could as easily pray alone, especially here, away from everyone."

"Elder Greer could not see you praying. How would he know?"

"It's none of his business," Serena snapped. "Who does he think he is, God?"

"I don't know, Serena."

Seeing the frightened puzzlement in the girl's soft, faded blue eyes, Serena sighed. "Don't worry about it," she said. "I don't suppose it matters. Surely I can stand it for a few days more."

"Please, Serena, won't you come?"

"Yes, I will come for now," Serena said. Linking her arm through the other girl's to give her support, she turned toward the flickering orange cook fires that lit the night and the wagons.

Night drew in; the evening meal was done. The Mormon women dried their red, wet hands on their aprons, untied the strings, and laid them aside. Hair was brushed and tightly hidden beneath close-fitting bonnets, and shawls and blanket capes were brought out. The faces of the children were washed and their hair combed, that of the boys slicked back with water, that of the girls braided anew and tucked up under bonnets no different from their mothers'. Men reached for their coats and their Bibles. All began to make their way toward the center of the wagons, which were drawn into a circle, not so much in fear of an Indian attack, not in this year of 1893, as against the stray brave off the reservation who might be tempted to plunder. The day was at an end. It was meeting time.

Serena lifted her head from the book she was reading in the light of a small lamp. Through a slit in the closed end of the wagon canvas, she watched the Mormons gather. With a shake of her head, she returned to her book. An instant later, she jumped as the tailboard of her wagon creaked to an added weight. She looked up in time to see a hard hand whip aside the back flap. She pushed herself bolt upright, reaching for her dressing gown to cover her chemise and petticoats, all that she wore in the privacy of her wagon so near bedtime. There was no time to push her arms into the sleeves. She could only hold it over the swelling curves of her breasts as Elder Greer flung his leg over the tail of the wagon and stepped inside.

He stood surveying the interior, the few fine pieces of furniture, the trunks and exquisitely pieced quilts and coverlets, the cot, spread with the fine linen sheets that had been a part of Serena's mother's trousseau, where she sat. His gaze came to rest at last on Serena herself. His eyes traveled over the tumbled dark mass of her hair, devouring the soft texture of her skin, suffused with a blush like rose-tinted ivory in the lamplight, watching the quick rise and fall of her breasts beneath her pristine white underclothing. For an instant, his eyes, silvery, almost colorless in the dimness, met her wide gaze, then he looked quickly away.

He swallowed, his throat moving with the effort. "You do not go to the meeting?"

"No."

"You are not unwell?"

"I -- I have a headache," Serena answered. It was a good enough excuse, since it made little difference to her whether the elder believed it or not. The truth was, she felt herself unable to bear another lecture, another sermon.

"We will miss you, and I think you will regret not hearing the good counsel that would show you the way you must go, the road your feet must take."

"Perhaps tomorrow night."

"Yes, there is always tomorrow, and yet tonight I was going to speak again of the holy mission that we, the people of this wagon train, have undertaken. There will be great rejoicing when finally we reach Salt Lake City in Utah, the land of Zion found by Saint Brigham Young forty-six years ago. Not in nearly twenty years has any band attempted to duplicate his feat of traveling over a thousand miles across these plains and mountains to reach that promised land. How I long for you to be aware of the majesty of what we are doing in reliving the great hardships of this journey. How much I want you to become one of us so that you may feel yourself a part of it."

"You are -- kind to think of it, but I believe I must remain true to my own beliefs and the teachings of my parents."

"You are arrogant, lost in your foolish pride. You look down on my people."

Serena stiffened in alarm as he took a step toward her, his eyes coldly blazing. "No," she said, running her tongue over her dry lips. "No, I'm not. It's only that I must have the right to believe in my way, just as you believe in yours."

"You don't know what you are saying. You don't know what you are disdaining in your ignorance. One day you will regret the glorious future that you are denying yourself from sheer stubbornness. It is possible that you need more guidance, more of a sign. If you are too ignorant to take up the golden cup of divine salvation through Sainthood, then perhaps it should be forced upon you. I shall have to pray upon it."

"What -- what do you mean?" Serena inquired as coolly as she could manage. She did not like the trend of his words, still less did she like the glint of triumph she had seen rise in his eyes before he bowed his head in all piety.

"There is no time now. I must go to the meeting. We will talk of this another time, when I have meditated upon what I must do."

Swinging around, he left her, left the wagon flap dangling, swaying in the wind. It was a long time before Serena returned to her book, longer still before she blew out her lamp and slept.

She came awake abruptly. Alarm shivered along her nerves as she stared into the darkness. The canvas above her shivered in the wind, billowing, making the wagon creak. From far away came the mournful call of a coyote. A cow lowed from the animal enclosure, and closer by there came the sharp bark of a dog. Then, as she lay straining to hear, came the sound that had awakened Serena. It was the scrape of a footstep at the rear of her wagon.

Moving with silent caution, she sat up. She was not really disturbed. It might be no more than a restless sleeper, or someone moving beyond the wagons to relieve themselves in the darkness. Still, she was uneasy. There seemed something furtive about this sound so near her wagon. Her skin prickling with the chillness of the plains night, Serena pushed the long braid of her hair, worn plaited for sleeping, over her shoulder as she strained to hear.

The ceaseless wind brushed against the wagon, ruffling the canvas beside her. In the dim light lent by the three-quarter moon that brightened the encampment, she could make out the familiar shapes of things around her, the furniture, her father's chest of carpenter's tools, her mother's hidebound trunk, the open wooden box that held the iron pots and pans, the tin plates and cups and other utensils she used daily. The flap at the rear of the wagon shivered, then there came a low, muffled noise, the sound of the rope closing being slipped from its knot.

"Who is it? Who's there?"

Her low-voiced query hung in the air. There was no answer. The bed of the wagon shuddered to a sudden weight on the back frame. The shadow of a man loomed against the canvas.

"Who is there? Answer me or -- or I'll scream!"

"No, don't do that," came a whisper, hoarse, urgent, in reply. "Wait -- only wait a minute." The rear flap billowed and Elder Greer swung a leg over the tailboard to step inside.

"What do you want?" Serena's fear receded a fraction, and yet an unpleasant feeling remained in the pit of her stomach. The elder straightened, towering over her in the narrow confines of the wagon. "I've come to save you, my dear Serena."

"Save me?"

"Verily, to fold you to my bosom and keep you safe from harm and the wickedness of the gentile world. I want you for my wife, beautiful Serena. I have prayed over it, and the answer is plain. I mean to take you to me, to merge your body with mine in divine union."

As he spoke he moved closer, coming up against the side of the cot. Serena edged away from him, drawing her knees up, freeing them from the quilt that covered her. "I have told you I don't want to change my faith. I cannot believe as you do, or acknowledge your prophet."

"Yes, and it is a great sorrow to me. However, you are young and a female. You cannot know your own mind. You need guidance, and I am here to give it to you." There was a rough note in his low voice allied to a quaver, as of some violent feeling.

"Can't -- can't we talk about it tomorrow?" The danger in which she stood was not unknown to Serena. The elder's physical appetites were voracious. It was not unusual for him to summon one of his wives with a curt nod of his head and disappear with her into one of his several wagons of an evening. The creakings of the wooden vehicles, their peculiar movements on their rudimentary springs and locked wheels, had been the source of much snickering and whispered comments among his older children, some of whom swore to witnessing the ludicrous rites of conception when they were younger.

"Tomorrow?" The elder swallowed, an audible sound in the tense quiet. "Tomorrow will be too late!"

He fell on her, reaching, grasping for her soft flesh shining pale in the shadow-filled darkness. She twisted away with the sharp edge of a scream in her throat. His arms fastened around her hips, and for an instant his bearded face was pressed against her breasts. As he nuzzled blindly into their swelling fullness, Serena was assailed by the sweaty, animalistic odor of his body, and she pushed at him with the strength of shuddering revulsion, wrenching from his hold. That she would seriously resist him seemed to come as a surprise, for his grip slackened. In that instant Serena slid from the cot, scrambling to her feet.

With a bellow of rage, the elder surged after her, his work-hardened hands snatching at the fragile, much-washed batiste of her nightgown. The fabric gave at the sleeve, but he dragged her toward him so that she stumbled, swaying in his direction. Instantly he pulled her down across him, rolling to pin her beneath him on the floor. With a grunt of triumph, he flung a leg across her knees, pressing the hardened lump of his manhood and the firm bulge of his paunch against her. In horror she realized he wore nothing more than a pair of knee-length underdrawers. She wriggled in panting disgust as his fingers groped over her, finding her breast, squeezing the ripe softness. She gave a cry of mingled hurt and anger, and he hitched himself higher. His mouth, wet and foul in the bristling stiffness of his beard, slid over her cheeks, seeking for her mouth to silence her. Nausea rose on her tongue, and Serena arched her back, straining away from him. One hand was crushed underneath him, but with the other she struck out, catching him on the nose with her small hard fist. He bellowed in pain, then drew back, exclaiming with an incredulous oath as he felt the wetness of the blood that trickled from his nostrils.

For an instant Serena thought he was going to give up the struggle in his rage and chagrin that she did not welcome his advances. She was mistaken. Instead, he drew back his hand and slapped her, a stunning blow to the side of the face. As she gasped with shock, held immovable by the pain, his shaking hand fumbled at the neckline of her gown. He tore at the buttons, ripping them from their holes, exposing the mounds of her breasts to the cool night air, then rending the thin batiste to the hem.

That tearing sound seemed to slice through Serena's brain, cutting away the fear and the last lingering disbelief at this unspeakable thing that was happening to her. She heaved away from the touch of his damp, probing fingers, bringing her knees up. Her fingers curved into claws and she struck for his face with the swiftness of a snake, reaching for his eyes. As he jerked away from the tearing sharpness of her nails, she rolled free with the tatters of her gown swirling around her, hanging from her shoulders like a cape. On hands and knees, she lunged for the rear flap of the wagon. The elder scrabbled after her, catching one ankle. To keep from being pulled backward, she clutched at the nearest thing to hand, the side of the wooden cook box. With desperate strength, she managed to get her arm over the side, raising herself to one knee. But then the elder released her leg, grasping higher, lunging up behind her and jerking at the braid of her hair to twist her head back while he thrust himself against her, grinding his body against the softness of her hips.

As she was pushed forward over the side of the box, her flailing arm struck the side of a frying pan. She grasped the handle with both hands and swung backward, connecting with the side of the elder's head. He cursed and released her hair to wrench the heavy iron pan from her. With one arm clasped about her waist, he began to push at the waistband of his drawers.

In frantic haste, Serena flailed her arms around her, trying to find a hold, seeking purchase to wrench herself away from the clammy, musky hardness of the man pressed so sickeningly close. The need to call for help shafted through her mind, but there was no time, and with his arm cutting into her middle, no breath to waste on what might well be a useless exercise. The sound of a woman crying out in the night was not so unusual, after all. And then as the hunching elder pushed her farther forward, her outstretched fingers touched a wooden handle and closed around it.

Her weapon was too light for a knife. It was a fork, a three-tined fork. Her disappointment was like a sickness in her heart; still, she did not hesitate. With the last of her ebbing strength she jabbed the sharp steel tines into the arm that held her, slashing, tearing at the sweaty flesh.

Abruptly she was released. She drew a gasping breath and threw herself to one side, not quite avoiding a smacking swing of the elder's hand against the rounded curve of her hip. In swift, unthinking retaliation, she stabbed at his chest with her fork, and had the satisfaction of feeling it rake across his ribs. As he snatched at her hand with a mighty grunting groan, she threw herself back from him and surged up, leaping for the tailboard of the wagon.

She had one leg over the side when he grabbed her, his fingers closing around her arm. Setting her teeth, she plunged on over, trying to use her weight to break his hold, only catching at the canvas flap to prevent herself from falling at the last minute. He refused to let her get away from him, holding grimly to her arm.

The elder had forgotten his drawers slipping about his knees. He tripped and stumbled forward, pitching head first out of the wagon. They fell together in a tangled heap of naked flesh and lay stunned, staring up at the night sky.

A shrill scream shattered the night. It rose and fell with an edge of hysteria, full-throated in the grip of unreasoning fear laced with wrath. Serena, lying dazed with an intolerable weight across her chest and the sting of buffalo grass beneath her bare shoulders, heard it and turned her head. It was Beatrice who stood with her lashless eyes fastened on their nude, blood-smeared bodies, one hand clutching the flannel wrapper she wore over her nightgown and the other holding a lantern. From her narrow mouth issued that nerve-shattering screeching. Voices rose, a low babble of disturbed sound. Lamplight flared, casting a yellow-orange glow against the canvas of the wagons before men climbed down and came at a run.

Serena pushed at the man lying across her, trying to drag herself from under him. Winded, gasping for breath, Elder Greer pushed himself to one elbow, wheezing. He looked around him, then as if coming suddenly to his senses, he stiffened. A fierce look came into his eyes, and he swung his head toward Beatrice.

"Shut up that noise, woman," he growled, holding to his chest as he struggled to a standing position. As she obeyed with a gulp, he ordered, "Bring me my pants."

Beside him, Serena pulled herself to her feet, gathering the strips of her nightgown around herself with shaking hands, still clutching the fork in one fist. After one quick glance she averted her eyes from the sight of the blood that oozed in bright-red runnels down the elder's chest, threading through the sparse gray-brown hair. She turned her pale face toward the sound of people approaching, then as hot color rose to her hairline, she swung to seek the cover of her wagon, away from the startled stares of the men hurrying in their direction.

"No, no you don't," Elder Greer said, shooting out his hand to catch her wrist. He held to her with a hard grip while with the other hand he tugged his drawers up to cover his limp nakedness.

"Let me go," Serena breathed in supplication, trying to break the hold of his fingers that bit into her flesh. She could not. His strength seemed to grow as he clothed himself, as did the wild and maniacal look in his eyes.

"What is it, Brother Greer? What passes here?" The eager question was asked from a good distance. The eyes of the man who spoke, and those of the others crowding behind him, were on the shrinking white form of the girl at the elder's side. The light of the lantern Beatrice had left sitting on the ground gleamed through the thin and ragged material of her tattered nightgown, outlining the slender yet sweetly curved shape of her body with mysterious golden light.

"A piece of wantonness, that is what passes here," the elder replied, his voice rich, steady. "This woman pretended to illness in the night, calling out to me to succor her in her sickness. When I went in to her, she tempted me, tearing open her gown, displaying herself. When I told her to cover herself, she refused."

"No," Serena said, shock and dismay making her voice no more than a thread of sound. "It isn't so."

The elder's fingers tightened, stopping the flow of blood to her hand. "It is so. She offered herself to me for a price, spreading her thighs in invitation, and when I spurned her, she was so angered that she tried to do me an injury."

"With a fork, brother?" came a wondering inquiry as the elder indicated the marks on his chest.

"If a different weapon had come to her hand she might have killed me."

Serena shook her head in negation. She opened her lips to speak. At that moment Beatrice stepped from the shadows of the elder's wagon clutching her husband's linsey-woolsey pants to her bony chest. "Whore," she whispered, her face working as she stared with hatred at the slim figure of the girl. "Slut, to try a good man so. Jezebel! She-dog in heat!"

Her husband held out his hand for his pants, and with a look of seething malevolence for Serena, the woman passed them over.

The first man shifted his feet. "We cannot allow such behavior to pass unpunished, even if she is not one of us. She may be a danger to us all, both to our souls and bodies."

Beatrice, perhaps deliberately, perhaps otherwise, stepped in front of Serena, shielding her from the hot gaze of the men. Serena would have been grateful if the woman had not also curled the talons of her fingers around her arm to hold her while Elder Greer slipped into his pants.

"She is in my keeping," the elder said as he passed his suspenders over his shoulders and fastened them to his waistband. "I promise you she shall feel the weight of punishment until she reaches penitence. I shall personally ply the whip to her back, nay even to her naked skin."

Beatrice stiffened, flinging her head up. "You, my husband? Better to let her face open meeting and be judged as she deserves and punished according to what is meted out. You -- you are too good, too gentle to chastise her as she deserves."

The elder shot his wife a look of stern rebuke. "She is my responsibility. I am answerable for her sins."

"If that were so," Beatrice said slowly, "then you must need to feel the whip on your own back, my husband. No, let the slut stand before us all in her shame. It is a matter for all to decide, since her transgressions, if they continue, may affect all. She is a poison which must be dealt with swiftly and without mercy."

"Be silent, woman!" Elder Greer shouted, but it was too late.

"What she says has merit, brother," the first man said earnestly.

"Yes," said a second. "She has already affected your reason to the point where you went to her aid in the night without being properly dressed. How might she affect your judgment if you alone undertook the task of her chastisement?"

Staring from one to the other, Serena was aware of an undercurrent of meaning in their words that gave her an uneasy hope. "Nothing happened as Elder Greer has said. He is lying! You must believe me," she cried.

The men glanced at her and looked quickly away. "It may be best," the first said, "if we meet to get to the bottom of her exact crime."

"Crime? I have committed no crime!" For all the attention they paid her, Serena might as well not have spoken.

"Be silent, Whore of Babylon," Beatrice hissed, giving her a shake. "Isn't it enough that you have endangered my weak husband's immortal soul by your wicked ways, enticing him into your place of iniquity in hope of payment? Must you blacken his name also?"

Serena had thought Beatrice must realize she had not called out to Elder Greer pretending to be sick; how could she not know it, sleeping so close in the next wagon, as she did? She had thought that, knowing her husband had sought her out of his own will, Beatrice must know why. It was not so. The names she had called Serena, then, reflected not her jealousy, as Serena had thought, but her actual belief as to the truth of what had taken place. Unable to conceive of her husband's entering Serena's wagon without invitation, she was certain he had expected to find Serena complaisant. Why should that be, since Serena had repulsed him a number of times, unless for the sake of a reward? Marriage, because Serena so stoutly refused to change her religion and accommodate herself to Mormon ways, was out of the question. Monetary gain was left as the only explanation. Because Elder Greer hinted it was so, Beatrice actually considered her a fallen woman plying her most ancient of trades, and it appeared from the stern expressions of the gathered Saints that they were of the same incredible opinion.

This was the crime of which they were accusing her.