"You do love me, Mescal?"
"I--I couldn't help it."
There was a pause, tense with feeling.
"Mescal, tell me--about your being pledged," he said, at last.
"I gave him my promise because there was nothing else to do. I was
pledged to--to him in the church at White Sage. It can't be changed.
I've got to marry--Father Naab's eldest son."
"Eldest son?" echoed Jack, suddenly mindful of the implication. "Why!
that's Snap Naab. Ah! I begin to see light. That--Mescal--"
"I hate him."
"You hate him and you're pledged to marry him! . . . God! Mescal, I'd
utterly forgotten Snap Naab already has a wife."
"You've also forgotten that we're Mormons."
"Are you a Mormon?" he queried bluntly.
"I've been raised as one."
"That's not an answer. Are you one? Do you believe any man under God's
sky ought to have more than one wife at a time?"
"No. But I've been taught that it gave woman greater glory in heaven.
There have been men here before you, men who talked to me, and I doubted
before I ever saw you. And afterward--I knew."
"Would not Father Naab release you?"
"Release me? Why, he would have taken me as a wife for himself but for
Mother Mary.
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