word to Jason Lee? His wife and infant son are lying dead at the mission."
Tears leaped to the eyes of Douglas. The calm, steady, apparently icy Douglas had a heart like a thermal spring, that responded to the touch of sorrow. "I will despatch a messenger," he said.
A solitary boat set out with the details of that saddest tragedy that comes to human life. The grief-stricken members of the mission consigned to the tomb the bride of Jason Lee. Under the fragrant firs where her bridal was, the mother was laid, with her babe on her bosom.
"I will send it on to Fort Hall," said Chief Factor Pambrun, when the despatch was laid in his hand at Walla Walla. At Fort Hall Ermatinger delegated Richardson, a famous American trapper, to overtake Lee on the plains. July, August, September the trapper chased an ever-receding shadow.
Far up on the Platte Jason Lee was dreaming of his wife. By the camp-fire at night he wrote in his journal the story of their courtship, but he heard no hoofbeats in the rear. It was late September, at the Shawnee mission on the Kansas River, when a sunburnt horseman reached the palisade. "Is Rev. Jason Lee here?"
"Yes," from the gatekeeper.
"I have a message."
Already Jason Lee was at the gate. He saw not the people around, he saw not Billy McKay looking up into his anxious face he saw only a horseman with a black-sealed packet. He took it, entered his room, and shut the door. God alone heard the cry and saw the heart-break in that rude room at the Shawnee mission on the Kansas River.
