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The Lions of the Lord: A Tale of the Old West

by Harry Leon Wilson · English · Gutenberg #11534 · 701,271 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Lions of the Lord: A Tale of the Old West

Author: Harry Leon Wilson


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #11534]
                Most recently updated: December 25, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11534

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, David Wilson and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIONS OF THE LORD: A TALE OF THE OLD WEST ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, David Wilson and PG Distributed Proofreaders






[Frontispiece:
  LIFTING OFF HIS BROAD-BRIMMED HAT TO HER IN A GRACIOUS SWEEP]




                          THE
                     LIONS OF THE
                         LORD


                A Tale of the Old West

                 By HARRY LEON WILSON

               Author of "The Spenders"


           Illustrated by ROSE CECIL O'NEILL



                 Published June, 1903




                      TO MY WIFE




FOREWORD


In the days of '49 seven trails led from our Western frontier into the
Wonderland that lay far out under the setting sun and called to the
restless. Each of the seven had been blazed mile by mile through the
mighty romance of an empire's founding. Some of them for long stretches
are now overgrown by the herbage of the plain; some have faded back into
the desert they lined; and more than one has been shod with steel. But
along them all flit and brood the memory-ghosts of old, rich-coloured
days. To the shout of teamster, the yell of savage, the creaking of
tented ox-cart, and the rattle of the swifter mail-coach, there go dim
shapes of those who had thrilled to that call of the West;--strong,
brave men with the far look in their eyes, with those magic rude tools
of the pioneer, the rifle and the axe; women, too, equally heroic, of a
stock, fearless, ready, and staunch, bearing their sons and daughters in
fortitude; raising them to fear God, to love their country,--and to
labour. From the edge of our Republic these valiant ones toiled into the
dump of prairie and mountain to live the raw new days and weld them to
our history; to win fertile acres from the wilderness and charm the
desert to blossoming. And the time of these days and these people, with
their tragedies and their comedies, was a time of epic splendour;--more
vital with the stuff and colour of life, I think, than any since the
stubborn gray earth out there was made to yield its treasure.

Of these seven historic highways the one richest in story is the old
Salt Lake Trail: this because at its western end was woven a romance
within a romance;--a drama of human passions, of love and hate, of high
faith and low, of the beautiful and the ugly, of truth and lies; yet
with certain fine fidelities under it all; a drama so close-knit, so
amazingly true, that one who had lightly designed to make a tale there
was dismayed by fact. So much more thrilling was it than any fiction he
might have imagined, so more than human had been the cunning of the
Master Dramatist, that the little make-believe he was pondering seemed
clumsy and poor, and he turned from it to try to tell what had really
been.

In this story, then, the things that are strangest have most of truth.
The make-believe is hardly more than a cement to join the queerly
wrought stones of fact that were found ready. For, if the writer has now
and again had to divine certain things that did not show,--yet must have
been,--surely these are not less than truth. One of these deductions is
the Lute of the Holy Ghost who came in the end to be the Little Man of
Sorrows: who loved a woman, a child, and his God, but sinned through
pride of soul;--whose life, indeed, was a poem of sin and retribution.
Yet not less true was he than the Lion of the Lord, the Archer of
Paradise, the Wild Ram of the Mountains, or the gaunt, gray woman whom
hurt love had crazed. For even now, as the tale is done, comes a dry
little note in the daily press telling how such a one actually did the
other day a certain brave, great thing it had seemed the imagined one
must be driven to do. Only he and I, perhaps, will be conscious of the
struggle back of that which was printed; but at least we two shall know
that the Little Man of Sorrows is true, even though the cross where he
fled to say his last prayer in the body has long since fallen and its
bars crumbled to desert dust.

Yet there are others still living in a certain valley of the mountains
who will know why the soul-proud youth came to bend under invisible
burdens, and why he feared, as an angel of vengeance, that early cowboy
with the yellow hair, who came singing down from the high divide into
Amalon where a girl was waiting in her dream of a single love; others
who, to this day, will do not more than whisper with averted faces of
the crime that brought a curse upon the land; who still live in terror
of shapes that shuffle furtively behind them, fumbling sometimes at
their shoulders with weak hands, striving ever to come in front and turn
upon them. But these will know only one side of the Little Man of
Sorrows who was first the Lute of the Holy Ghost in the Poet's roster of
titles: since they have lacked his courage to try the great issue with
their God.

New York City, May 1st, 1903.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I.       THE DEAD CITY

II.      THE WILD RAM OF THE MOUNTAINS

III.     THE LUTE OF THE HOLY GHOST BREAKS HIS FAST

IV.      A FAIR APOSTATE

V.       GILES RAE BEAUTIFIES HIS INHERITANCE

VI.      THE LUTE OF THE HOLY GHOST IS FURTHER CHASTENED

VII.     SOME INNER MYSTERIES ARE EXPOUNDED

VIII.    A REVELATION FROM THE LORD AND A TOAST FROM BRIGHAM

IX.      INTO THE WILDERNESS

X.       THE PROMISED LAND

XI.      ANOTHER MIRACLE AND A TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS

XII.     A FIGHT FOR LIFE

XIII.    JOEL RAE IS TREATED FOR PRIDE OF SOUL

XIV.     HOW THE SAINTS WERE BROUGHT TO REPENTANCE

XV.      HOW THE SOULS OF APOSTATES WERE SAVED

XVI.     THE ORDER FROM HEADQUARTERS

XVII.    THE MEADOW SHAMBLES

XVIII.   IN THE DARK OF THE AFTERMATH

XIX.     THE HOST OF ISRAEL GOES FORTH TO BATTLE

XX.      HOW THE LION OF THE LORD ROARED SOFT

XXI.     THE BLOOD ON THE PAGE

XXII.    THE PICTURE IN THE SKY

XXIII.   THE SINNER CHASTENS HIMSELF

XXIV.    THE COMING OF THE WOMAN-CHILD

XXV.     THE ENTABLATURE OF TRUTH MAKES A DISCOVERY AT AMALON

XXVI.    HOW THE RED CAME BACK TO THE BLOOD TO BE A SNARE

XXVII.   A NEW CROSS TAKEN UP AND AN OLD ENEMY FORGIVEN

XXVIII.  JUST BEFORE THE END OF THE WORLD

XXIX.    THE WILD RAM OF THE MOUNTAINS OFFERS TO BECOME A SAVIOUR ON
           MOUNT ZION

XXX.     HOW THE WORLD DID NOT COME TO AN END

XXXI.    THE LION OF THE LORD SENDS AN ORDER

XXXII.   A NEW FACE IN THE DREAM

XXXIII.  THE GENTILE INVASION

XXXIV.   HOW THE AVENGER BUNGLED HIS VENGEANCE

XXXV.    RUEL FOLLETT'S WAY OF BUSINESS

XXXVI.   THE MISSION TO A DESERVING GENTILE

XXXVII.  THE GENTILE ISSUES AN ULTIMATUM

XXXVIII. THE MISSION SERVICE IN BOX CANON IS SUSPENDED

XXXIX.   A REVELATION CONCERNING THE TRUE ORDER OF MARRIAGE

XL.      A PROCESSION, A PURSUIT, AND A CAPTURE

XLI.     THE RISE AND FALL OF A BENT LITTLE PROPHET

XLII.    THE LITTLE BENT MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS

XLIII.   THE GENTILE CARRIES OFF HIS SPOIL




ILLUSTRATIONS


Lifting off his broad-brimmed hat to her in a gracious sweep

"Her goal is Zion, not Babylon, sir--remember _that_!"

"_I'm_ the one will have to be caught"

"But you're not my really papa!"

Full of zest for the measure as any youth

"Oh, Man ... how I've longed for that bullet of yours!"




THE LIONS OF THE LORD




CHAPTER I.


_The Dead City_

The city without life lay handsomely along a river in the early sunlight
of a September morning. Death had seemingly not been long upon it, nor
had it made any scar. No breach or rent or disorder or sign of violence
could be seen. The long, shaded streets breathed the still airs of utter
peace and quiet. From the half-circle around which the broad river bent
its moody current, the neat houses, set in cool, green gardens, were
terraced up the high hill, and from the summit of this a stately marble
temple, glittering of newness, towered far above them in placid
benediction.

Mile after mile the streets lay silent, along the river-front, up to the
hilltop, and beyond into the level; no sound nor motion nor sign of life
throughout their length. And when they had run their length, and the
outlying fields were reached, there, too, was the same brooding spell as
the land stretched away in the hush and haze. The yellow grain,
heavy-headed with richness, lay beaten down and rotting, for there were
no reapers. The city, it seemed, had died calmly, painlessly, drowsily,
as if overcome by sleep.

From a skiff in mid-river, a young man rowing toward the dead city
rested on his oars and looked over his shoulder to the temple on the
hilltop. There was something very boyish in the reverent eagerness with
which his dark eyes rested upon the pile, tracing the splendid lines
from its broad, gray base to its lofty spire, radiant with white and
gold. As he looked long and intently, the colour of new life flushed
into a face that was pinched and drawn. With fresh resolution, he bent
again to his oars, noting with a quick eye that the current had carried
him far down-stream while he stopped to look upon the holy edifice.

Landing presently at the wharf, he was stunned by the hush of the
streets. This was not like the city of twenty thousand people he had
left three months before. In blank bewilderment he stood, turning to
each quarter for some solution of the mystery. Perceiving at length that
there was really no life either way along the river, he started
wonderingly up a street that led from the waterside,--a street which,
when he had last walked it, was quickening with the rush of a mighty
commerce.

Soon his expression of wonder was darkened by a shade of anxiety. There
was an unnerving quality in the trance-like stillness; and the mystery
of it pricked him to forebodings. He was now passing empty workshops,
hesitating at door after door with ever-mounting alarm. Then he began to
call, but the sound of his voice served only to aggravate the silence.

Growing bolder, he tried some of the doors and found them to yield,
letting him into a kind of smothered, troubled quietness even more
oppressive than that outside. He passed an empty ropewalk, the hemp
strewn untidily about, as if the workers had left hurriedly. He peered
curiously at idle looms and deserted spinning-wheels--deserted
apparently but the instant before he came. It seemed as if the people
were fled maliciously just in front, to leave him in this fearfullest of
all solitudes. He wondered if he did not hear their quick, furtive
steps, and see the vanishing shadows of them.

He entered a carpenter's shop. On the bench was an unfinished door, a
plane left where it had been shoved half the length of its edge, the
fresh pine shaving still curling over the side. He left with an uncanny
feeling that the carpenter, breathing softly, had watched him from some
hiding-place, and would now come stealthily out to push his plane again.

He turned into a baker's shop and saw freshly chopped kindling piled
against the oven, and dough actually on the kneading-tray. In a tanner's
vat he found fresh bark. In a blacksmith's shop he entered next the
fire was out, but there was coal heaped beside the forge, with the
ladling-pool and the crooked water-horn, and on the anvil was a
horseshoe that had cooled before it was finished.

With something akin to terror, he now turned from this street of shops
into one of those with the pleasant dwellings, eager to find something
alive, even a dog to bark an alarm. He entered one of the gardens,
clicking the gate-latch loudly after him, but no one challenged. He drew
a drink from the well with its loud-rattling chain and clumsy,
water-sodden bucket, but no one called. At the door of the house he
whistled, stamped, pounded, and at last flung it open with all the noise
he could make. Still his hungry ears fed on nothing but sinister echoes,
the barren husks of his own clamour. There was no curt voice of a man,
no quick, questioning tread of a woman. There were dead white ashes on
the hearth, and the silence was grimly kept by the dumb household gods.

His nervousness increased. So vividly did his memory people the streets
and shops and houses that the air was vibrant with sound,--low-toned
conversations, shouts, calls, laughter, the voices of children, the
creaking of wagons, pounding hammers, the clangour of many works; yet
all muffled away from him, as if coming from some phantom-land. His
eyes, too, were kept darting from side to side by vague forms that
flitted privily near by, around corners, behind him, lurking always a
little beyond his eyes, turn them quickly as he would. Now, facing the
street, he shouted, again and again, from sheer nervousness; but the
echoes came back alone.

He recalled a favourite day-dream of boyhood,--a dream in which he
became the sole person in the world, wandering with royal liberty
through strange cities, with no voice to chide or forbid, free to choose
and partake, as would a prince, of all the wonders and delights that
boyhood can picture; his own master and the master of all the marvels
and treasures of earth. This was like the dream come true; but it
distressed him. It was necessary to find the people at once. He had a
feeling that his instant duty was to break some malign spell that lay
upon the place--or upon himself. For one of them was surely bewitched.

Out he strode to the middle of the street, between two rows of yellowing
maples, and there he shouted again and still more loudly to evoke some
shape or sound of life, sending a full, high, ringing call up the empty
thoroughfare. Between the shouts he scanned the near-by houses intently.

At last, half-way up the next block, even as his lungs filled for
another peal, he thought his eyes caught for a short half-second the
mere thin shadow of a skulking figure. It had seemed to pass through a
grape arbour that all but shielded from the street a house slightly more
pretentious than its neighbours. He ran toward the spot, calling as he
went. But when he had vaulted over the low fence, run across the garden
and around the end of the arbour, dense with the green leaves and
clusters of purple grapes, the space in front of the house was bare. If
more than a trick-phantom of his eye had been there, it had vanished.

He stood gazing blankly at the front door of the house. Was it fancy
that he had heard it shut a second before he came? that his nerves still
responded to the shock of its closing? He had already imagined so many
noises of the kind, so many misty shapes fleeing before him with little
soft rustlings, so many whispers at his back and hushed cries behind the
closed doors. Yet this door had seemed to shut more tangibly, with a
warmer promise of life. He went quickly up the three wooden steps,
turned the knob, and pushed it open--very softly this time. No one
appeared. But, as he stood on the threshold, while the pupils of his
eyes dilated to the gloom of the hall into which he looked, his ears
seemed to detect somewhere in the house a muffled footfall and the sound
of another door closed softly.

He stepped inside and called. There was no answer, but above his head a
board creaked. He started up the stairs in front of him, and, as he did
so, he seemed to hear cautious steps across a bare floor above. He
stopped climbing; the steps ceased. He started up, and the steps came
again. He knew now they came from a room at the head of the stairs. He
bounded up the remaining steps and pushed open the door with a loud
"Halloo!"

The room was empty. Yet across it there was the indefinable trail of a
presence,--an odour, a vibration, he knew not what,--and where a bar of
sunlight cut the gloom under a half-raised curtain, he saw the motes in
the air all astir. Opposite the door he had opened was another, leading,
apparently, to a room at the back of the house. From behind it, he could
have sworn came the sounds of a stealthily moved body and softened
breathing. A presence, unseen but felt, was all about. Not without
effort did he conquer the impulse to look behind him at every breath.

Determined to be no longer eluded, he crossed the room on tiptoe and
gently tried the opposite door. It was locked. As he leaned against it,
almost in a terror of suspense, he knew he heard again those little
seemings of a presence a door's thickness away. He did not hesitate.
Still holding the turned knob in his hand, he quickly crouched back and
brought his flexed shoulder heavily against the door. It flew open with
a breaking sound, and, with a little gasp of triumph, he was in the room
to confront its unknown occupant.

To his dismay, he saw no one. He peered in bewilderment to the farther
side of the room, where light struggled dimly in at the sides of a
curtained window. There was no sound, and yet he could acutely feel that
presence; insistently his nerves tingled the warning of another's
nearness. Leaning forward, still peering to sound the dim corners of the
room, he called out again.

Then, from behind the door he had opened, a staggering blow was dealt
him, and, before he could recover, or had done more than blindly crook
one arm protectingly before his face, he was borne heavily to the floor,
writhing in a grasp that centered all its crushing power about his
throat.




CHAPTER II.


_The Wild Ram of the Mountains_

Slight though his figure was, it was lithe and active and well-muscled,
and he knew as they struggled that his assailant was possessed of no
greater advantage than had lain in his point of attack. In strength,
apparently, they were well-matched. Twice they rolled over on the
carpeted floor, and then, despite the big, bony hands pressing about his
throat, he turned his burden under him, and all but loosened the killing
clutch. This brought them close to the window, but again he was swiftly
drawn underneath. Then, as he felt his head must burst and his senses
were failing from the deadly grip at his throat, his feet caught in the
folds of the heavy curtain, and brought it down upon them in a cloud of
dust.

As the light flooded in, he saw the truth, even before his now panting
and sneezing antagonist did. Releasing the pressure from his throat with
a sudden access of strength born of the new knowledge, he managed to
gasp, though thickly and with pain, as they still strove:

"Seth Wright--wait--let go--wait, Seth--I'm Joel--Joel Rae!"

He managed it with difficulty.

"Joel Rae--Rae--Rae--don't you see?"

He felt the other's tension relax. With many a panting, puffing "Hey!"
and "What's that now?" he was loosed, and drew himself up into a chair
by the saving window. His assailant, a hale, genial-faced man of forty,
sat on the floor where the revelation of his victim's identity had
overtaken him. He was breathing hard and feeling tenderly of his neck.
This was ruffled ornamentally by a style of whisker much in vogue at the
time. It had proved, however, but an inferior defense against the
onslaught of the younger man in his frantic efforts to save his own
neck.

They looked at each other in panting amazement, until the older man
recovered his breath, and spoke:

"Gosh and all beeswax! The Wild Ram of the Mountains a-settin' on the
Lute of the Holy Ghost's stomach a-chokin' him to death. My sakes! I'm
a-pantin' like a tuckered hound--a-thinkin' he was a cussed milishy
mobocrat come to spoil his household!"

The younger man was now able to speak, albeit his breathing was still
heavy and the marks of the struggle plain upon him.

"What does it mean, Brother Wright--all this? Where are the Saints we
left here--why is the city deserted--and why this--this?"

He shook back the thick, brown hair that fell to his shoulders,
tenderly rubbed the livid fingerprints at his throat, and readjusted the
collar of his blue flannel shirt.

"Thought you was a milishy man, I tell you, from the careless way you
hollered--one of Brockman's devils come back a-snoopin', and I didn't
crave trouble, but when I saw the Lord appeared to reely want me to cope
with the powers of darkness, why, I jest gritted into you for the
consolation of Israel. You'd 'a' got your come-uppance, too, if you'd
'a' been a mobber. You was nigh a-ceasin' to breathe, Joel Rae. In
another minute I wouldn't 'a' give the ashes of a rye-straw for your
part in the tree of life!"

"Yes, yes, man, but go back a little. Where are our people, the sick,
the old, and the poor, that we had to leave till now? Tell me, quick."

The older man sprang up, the late struggle driven from his mind, his
face scowling. He turned upon his questioner.

"Does my fury swell up in me? No wonder! And you hain't guessed why?
Well, them pitiful remnant of Saints, the sick, the old, the poor,
waitin' to be helped yender to winter quarters, has been throwed out
into that there slough acrost the river, six hundred and forty of 'em."

"When we were keeping faith by going?"

"What does a mobocrat care for faith-keepin'? Have you brought back the
wagons?"

"Yes; they'll reach the other side to-night. I came ahead and made the
lower crossing. I've seen nothing and heard nothing. Go on--tell
me--talk, man!"

"Talk?--yes, I'll talk! We've had mobs and the very scum of hell to boil
over here. This is Saturday, the 19th, ain't it? Well, Brockman marched
against this stronghold of Israel jest a week ago, with eight hundred
men. They had cannons and demanded surrender. We was a scant two hundred
fightin' men, and the only artillery we had was what we made ourselves.
We broke up an old steamboat shaft and bored out the pieces so's they'd
take a six-pound shot--but we wasn't goin' to give up. We'd learned our
lesson about mobocrat milishies. Well, Brockman, when he got our defy,
sent out his Warsaw riflemen as flankers on the right and left, put the
Lima Guards to our front with one cannon, and marched his main body
through that corn-field and orchard to the south of here to the city
lines. Then we had it hot. Brockman shot away all his cannon-balls--he
had sixty-one--and drew back while he sent to Quincy for more. He'd
killed three of our men. Sunday and Monday we swopped a few shots. And
then Tuesday, along comes a committee of a hundred to negotiate peace.
Well, Wednesday evening they signed terms, spite of all I could do.
_I'd_ 'a' fought till the white crows come a-cawin', but the rest of 'em
wasn't so het up with the Holy Ghost, I reckon. Anyway, they signed. The
terms wasn't reely set till Thursday morning, but we knew they would be,
and so all Wednesday night we was movin' acrost the river, and it kept
up all next day,--day before yesterday. You'd ought to 'a' been here
then; you wouldn't wonder at my comin' down on you like a thousand of
brick jest now, takin' you for a mobocrat. You'd 'a' seen families druv
right out of their homes, with no horses, tents, money, nor a day's
provisions,--jest a little foolish household stuff they could carry in
their hands,--sick men and women carried on beds, mothers luggin' babies
and leadin' children. My sakes! but I did want to run some bullets and
fill my old horn with powder for the consolation of Israel! They're
lyin' out over there in the slough now, as many as ain't gone to glory.
It made me jest plumb murderous!"

The younger man uttered a sharp cry of anguish. "What, oh, what has been
our sin, that we must be proved again? Why have we got to be chastened?"

"Then Brockman's force marched in Thursday afternoon, and hell was let
loose. His devils have plundered the town, thrown out the bedridden that
jest couldn't move, thrown their goods out after 'em, burned, murdered,
tore up. You come up from the river, and you ain't seen that yet--they
ain't touched the lower part of town--and now they're bunkin' in the
temple, defacin' it, defilin' it,--that place we built to be a house of
rest for the Lord when he cometh again. They drove me acrost the river
yesterday, and promised to shoot me if I dast show myself again. I
sneaked over in a skiff last night and got here to get my two pistols
and some money and trinkets we'd hid out. I was goin' to cross again
to-night and wait for you and the wagons."

"My God! and this is the nineteenth century in a land of liberty!"

"State of Illinois, U.S.A., September 19, 1846--but what of that? We're
the Lord's chosen, and over yender is a generation of vipers warned to
flee from the wrath to come. But they won't flee, and so we're outcasts
for the present, driven forth like snakes. The best American blood is in
our veins. We're Plymouth Rock stock, the best New England graft; the
fathers of nine tenths of us was at Bunker Hill or Valley Forge or
Yorktown, but what of that, I ask you?"

The speaker became oratorical as his rage grew.

"What did Matty Van Buren say to Sidney Rigdon and Elias Higbee when
they laid our cause before him at Washington after our Missouri
persecutions--when the wicked hatred of them Missourians had as a besom
of fire swept before it into exile the whipped and plundered Saints of
Jackson County? Well, he said: 'Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can
do nothing for you.' That's what a President of the United States said
to descendants of _Mayflower_ crossers who'd been foully dealt with, and
been druv from their substance and their homes, their wheat burned in
the stack and in the shock, and themselves butchered or put into the
wilderness. And now the Lord's word to this people is to gether out
again."

The younger man had listened in deep dejection.

"Yes, it's to be the old story. I saw it coming. The Lord is proving us
again. But surely this will be the last. He will not again put us
through fire and blood."

He paused, and for a moment his quick brown eyes looked far away.

"And yet, do you know, Bishop, I've thought that he might mean us to
save ourselves against this Gentile persecution. Sometimes I find it
hard to control myself."

The Bishop grinned appreciatively.

"So I heer'd. The Lute of the Holy Ghost got too rambunctious back in
the States on the subject of our wrongs. And so they called you back
from your mission?"

"They said I must learn to school myself; that I might hurt the cause by
my ill-tempered zeal--and yet I brought in many--"

"I don't blame you. I got in trouble the first and only mission I went
on, and the first time I preached, at that. When I said, 'Joseph was
ordained by Peter, James, and John,' a drunken wag in the audience got
up and called me a damned liar. I started for him. I never reached him,
but I reached the end of my mission right there. The Twelve decided I
was usefuller here at home. They said I hadn't got enough of the Lord's
humility for outside work. That was why they put me at the head of--that
little organisation I wanted you to join last spring. And it's done good
work, too. You'll join now fast enough, I guess. You begin to see the
need of such doin's. I can give you the oath any time."

"No, Bishop, I didn't mean that kind of resistance. It sounded too
practical for me; I'm still satisfied to be the Lute of the Holy Ghost."

"You can be a Son of Dan, too."

"Not yet, not yet. We must still be a little meek in the face of
Heaven."

"You're in a mighty poor place to practise meekness. What'd you cross
the river for, anyway?"

"Why, for father and mother, of course. They must be safe at Green
Plains. Can I get out there without trouble?"

The Bishop sneered.

"Be meek, will you? Well, mosey out to Green Plains and begin there.
It's a _burned_ plains you'll find, and Lima and Morley all the same,
and Bear Creek. The mobbers started out from Warsaw, and burned all in
their way, Morley first, then Green Plains, Bear Creek, and Lima. They'd
set fire to the houses and drive the folks in ahead. They killed Ed
Durfee at Morley for talkin' back to 'em."

"But father and mother, surely--"

"Your pa and ma was druv in here with the rest, like cattle to the
slaughter."

"You don't mean to say they're over there on the river bank?"

"Now, they are a kind of a mystery about that--why they wa'n't throwed
out with the rest. Your ma's sick abed--she ain't ever been peart since
the night your pa's house was fired and they had to walk in--but that
ain't the reason they wa'n't throwed out. They put out others sicker.
They flung families where every one was sick out into that slough. I
guess what's left of 'em wouldn't be a supper-spell for a bunch of
long-billed mosquitoes. But one of them milishy captains was certainly
partial to your folks for some reason. They was let to stay in Phin
Daggin's house till you come."

"And Prudence--the Corsons--Miss Prudence Corson?"

"Oh, ho! So she's the one, is she? Now that reminds me, mebbe I can
guess the cute of that captain's partiality. That girl's been kind of
lookin' after your pa and ma, and that same milishy captain's been kind
of lookin' after the girl. She got him to let her folks go to
Springfield."

"But that's the wrong way."

"Well, now, I don't want to spleen, but I never did believe Vince Corson
was anything more'n a hickory Saint--and there's been a lot of talk--but
you get yours from the girl. If I ain't been misled, she's got some
ready for you."

"Bishop, will there be a way for us to get into the temple, for her to
be sealed to me? I've looked forward to that, you know. It would be hard
to miss it."

"The mob's got the temple, even if you got the girl. There's a verse
writ in charcoal on the portal:--

  "'Large house, tall steeple,
    Silly priests, deluded people.'

"That's how it is for the temple, and the mob's bunked there. But the
girl may have changed her mind, too."

The young man's expression became wistful and gentle, yet serenely sure.

"I guess you never knew Prudence at all well," he said. "But come, can't
we go to them? Isn't Phin Daggin's house near?"

"You may git there all right. But I don't want _my_ part taken out of
the tree of life jest yet. I ain't aimin' to show myself none. Hark!"

From outside came the measured, swinging tramp of men.

"Come see how the Lord is proving us--and step light."

They tiptoed through the other rooms to the front of the house.

"There's a peek-hole I made this morning--take it. I'll make me one
here. Don't move the curtain."

They put their eyes to the holes and were still. The quick, rhythmic,
scuffling tread of feet drew nearer, and a company of armed men marched
by with bayonets fixed. The captain, a handsome, soldierly young fellow,
glanced keenly from right to left at the houses along the line of march.

"We're all right," said the Bishop, in low tones. "The cusses have been
here once--unless they happened to see us. They're startin' in now down
on the flat to make sure no poor sick critter is left in bed in any of
them houses. Now's your chance if you want to git up to Daggin's. Go out
the back way, follow up the alleys, and go in at the back when you git
there. But remember, 'Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the
path that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall
backward!' In Clay County we had to eat up the last mule from the tips
of his ears to the end of the fly-whipper. Now we got to pass through
the pinches again. We can't stand it for ever."

"The spirit may move us against it, Brother Seth."

"I wish to hell it would!" replied the Bishop.




CHAPTER III.


_The Lute of the Holy Ghost Breaks His Fast_

In his cautious approach to the Daggin house, he came upon her
unawares--a slight, slender, shapely thing of pink and golden flame, as
she poised where the sun came full upon her. One hand clutched her
flowing blue skirts snugly about her ankles; the other opened coaxingly
to a kitten crouched to spring on the limb of an apple-tree above her.
The head was thrown back, the vivid lips were parted, and he heard her
laugh low to herself. Near by was a towering rose-bush, from which she
had broken the last red rose, large, full, and lush, its petals already
loosened. Now she wrenched away a handful of these, and flung them
upward at the watchful kitten. The scarlet flecks drifted back around
her and upon her. Like little red butterflies hovering in golden
sunlight, they lodged in her many-braided yellow hair, or fluttered down
the long curls that hung in front of her ears. She laughed again under
the caressing shower. Then she tore away the remaining petals and tossed
them up with an elf-like daintiness, not at the crouched and expectant
kitten this time, but so that the whole red rain floated tenderly down
upon her upturned face and into the folds of the white kerchief crossed
upon her breast. She waited for the last feathery petal. Her hidden
lover saw it lodge in the little hollow at the base of her bare, curved
throat. He could hold no longer.

Stepping from the covert that had shielded him, he called softly to her.

"Prudence--Prue!"

She had reached again for the kitten, but at the sound of his low,
vigorous note, she turned quickly toward him, colouring with a glow that
spread from the corner of the crossed kerchief up to the yellow hair
above her brow. She answered with quick breaths.

"Joel--Joel--Joel!"

She laughed aloud, clapping her small hands, and he ran to her--over
beds of marigolds, heartsease, and lady's-slippers, through a row of
drowsy-looking, heavy-headed dahlias, and past other withering flowers,
all but choked out by the rank garden growths of late summer. Then his
arms opened and seemed to swallow the leaping little figure, though his
kisses fell with hardly more weight upon the yielded face than had the
rose-petals a moment since, so tenderly mindful was his ardour. She
submitted, a little as the pampered kitten had before submitted to her
own pettings.

"You dear old sobersides, you--how gaunt and careworn you look, and how
hungry, and what wild eyes you have to frighten one with! At first I
thought you were a crazy man."

He held her face up to his eager eyes, having no words to say, overcome
by the joy that surged through him like a mighty rush of waters. In the
moment's glorious certainty he rested until she stirred nervously under
his devouring look, and spoke.

"Come, kiss me now and let me go."

He kissed her eyes so that she shut them; then he kissed her
lips--long--letting her go at last, grudgingly, fearfully, unsatisfied.

"You scare me when you look that way. You mustn't be so fierce."

"I told him he didn't know you."

"Who didn't know me, sir?"

"A man who said I wasn't sure of you."

"So you _are_ sure of me, are you, Mr. Preacherman? Is it because we've
been sweethearts since so long? But remember you've been much away. I've
seen you--let me count--but one little time of two weeks in three years.
You _would_ go on that horrid mission."

"Is not religion made up of obedience, let life or death come?"

"Is there no room for loving one's sweetheart in it?"

"One must obey, and I am a better man for having denied myself and gone.
I can love you better. I have been taught to think of others. I was sent
to open up the gospel in the Eastern States because I had been endowed
with almost the open vision. It was my call to help in the setting up of
the Messiah's latter-day kingdom. Besides, we may never question the
commands of the holy priesthood, even if our wicked hearts rebel in
secret."

"If you had questioned the right person sharply enough, you might have
had an answer as to why you were sent."

"What do you mean? How could I have questioned? How could I have
rebelled against the stepping-stone of my exaltation?"

His face relaxed a little, and he concluded almost quizzically:

"Was not Satan hurled from high heaven for resisting authority?"

She pouted, caught him by the lapels of his coat and prettily tried to
shake him.

"There--horrid!--you're preaching again. Please remember you're not on
mission now. Indeed, sir, you were called back for being too--too--why,
do you know, even old Elder Munsel, 'Fire-brand Munsel,' they call him,
said you were too fanatical."

His face grew serious.

"I'm glad to be called back to you, at any rate,--and yet, think of all
those poor benighted infidels who believe there are no longer
revelations nor prophecies nor gifts nor healings nor speaking with
tongues,--this miserable generation so blind in these last days when the
time of God's wrath is at hand. Oh, I burn in my heart for them, night
after night, suffering for the tortures that must come upon
them--thrice direful because they have rejected the message of Moroni
and trampled upon the priesthood of high heaven, butchering the Saints
of the Most High, and hunting the prophets of God like Ahab of old."

"Oh, dear, please stop it! You sound like swearing!" Her two hands were
closing her ears in a pretty pretense.

He seemed hardly to hear her, but went on excitedly:

"Yet I have done what man could do. I am never done doing. I would
gladly give my body to be burned a thousand times if it would avail to
save them into the Kingdom. I have preached the word tirelessly--
fanatically, they say--but only as it burned in my bones. I have told
them of visions, dreams, revelations, miracles, and all the mercies of
this last dispensation. And I have prayed and fasted. Just now coming
from winter quarters, when I could not preach, I held twelve fasts and
twelve vigils. You will say it has weakened me, but it has weakened only
the bonds that the flesh puts upon the spirit. Even so, I fell short of
my vision--my tabernacle of flesh must have been too much profaned,
though how I cannot dream--believe me, I have kept myself as high and
clean as I knew. Yet there was promise. For only last night at the river
bank, the spirit came partially upon me. I was taken with a faintness,
and I heard above my head a sound like the rustling of silken robes,
and the spirit of God hovered over me, so that I could feel its
radiance. All in good time, then, it shall dwell within me, so that I
may know a way to save the worthy."

He grasped her wrist and bent eagerly forward, with the same wild look
in his eyes that had before disquieted her.

"Mark what I say now--I shall do great works for this generation; I am
strangely favoured of God; I have felt the spirit quicken wondrously
within me, and I know the Lord works not in vain; what great wonder of
grace I shall do, what miracle of salvation, I know not, but remember,
it shall be transcendent; tell it to no one, but I know in my inner
secret heart it shall be a greater work than man hath yet done."

He stopped and drew himself up, shaking his head, as if to shrug off the
spell of his own feeling.

"Now, now! stop it at once, and come to the house. I've been tending
your father and mother, and I'm going to tend you. What you need
directly is food. Your look may be holy, but I prefer full cheeks. Not
another word until you have eaten every crumb I put before you."

With an air of captor, daintily fierce, she led him toward the house and
up to the door, which she pushed open before him.

"Come softly, your mother may be still asleep--no, your father is
talking--listen!"

A querulous voice, rough with strong feeling, came from the inner room.

"Here, I tell you, is the prophecy of Joseph to prove it, away back in
1832: 'Verily thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly
come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will
terminate in the death and misery of many souls. The days will come that
war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at that place; for
behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern
States, and the Southern States will call on other nations, even the
nation of Great Britain, as it is called.' Now will you doubt again,
mother? For persecuting the Saints of the most high God, this republic
shall be dashed to pieces like a potter's vessel. But we shall be safe.
The Lord will gather Israel home to the chambers of the mountains
against the day of wrath that is coming on the Gentile world. For all
flesh hath corrupted itself on the face of the earth, but the Saints
shall possess a purified land, upon which there shall be no curse when
the Lord cometh. Then shall the heavens open--"

He broke off, for the girl came leading in the son, who, as soon as he
saw the white-haired old man with his open book, sitting beside the
wasted woman on the bed, flew to them with a glad cry.

They embraced him and smoothed and patted him, tremulously, feebly, with
broken thanks for his safe return. The mother at last fell back upon her
pillow, her eyes shining with the joy of a great relief, while the
father was seized with a fit of coughing that cruelly racked his gaunt
frame and left him weak but smiling.

The girl had been placing food upon the table.

"Come, Joel," she urged, "you must eat--we have all breakfasted, so you
must sit alone, but we shall watch you."

She pushed him into the chair and filled his plate, in spite of his
protests.

"Not another word until you have eaten it all."

"The very sight of it is enough. I am not hungry."

But she coaxed and commanded, with her hands upon his shoulders, and he
let himself be persuaded to taste the bread and meat. After a few
mouthfuls, taken with obvious disrelish, she detected the awakening
fervour of a famished man, and knew she would have to urge no more.

As the son ate, the girl busied herself at the mother's pillow, while
the father talked and ruminated by intervals,--a text, a word of cheer
to the wasted mother, incidents of old days, memories of early revivals.
In 1828, he had hailed Dylkes, the "Leatherwood God," as the real
Messiah. Then he had been successively a Freewill Baptist, a
Winebrennerian, a Universalist, a Disciple, and finally an eloquent and
moving preacher in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now
he was a wild-eyed old dreamer with a high, narrow forehead depressed at
the temples, enfeebled, living much in the past. Once his voice would be
low, as if he spoke only to himself; again it would rise in warning to
an evil generation.

"The end of the world is at hand, laddie," he began, after looking
fondly at his son for a time. "Joseph said there are those now living
who shall not taste of death till Jesus comes. And then, oh, then--the
great white day! There is strong delusion among the wicked in the day in
which we live, but the seed of Abraham, the royal seed, the blessed seed
of the Lord, shall be told off to its separate glory. The Lord will
spread the curtains of Zion and gather it out to the fat valleys of
Ephraim, and there, with resurrected bodies it shall possess the
purified earth. I shall be away for a time before then, laddie--and the
dear mother here. Our crowns have been earned and will not long be
withheld. But you will be there for the glory of it, and who more
deserves it?"

"I pray to be made worthy of the exaltation, Father."

"You are, laddie. The word and the light came to me when I preached
another faith--for the spirit of Thomas Campbell had aforetime moved
me--but you, laddie, you have been bred in the word and the truth. The
Lord, as a mark of his favour, has kept you from the contamination of
doubters, infidels, heretics, and apostates. You have been educated
under the care of the priesthood, close here in Nauvoo the Beautiful,
and who could more deserve the fulness of thrones, dominions, and of
power--who of all those whose number the after-time shall unfold?"

He turned appealingly to the mother, whose fevered eyes rested fondly
upon her boy as she nodded confirmation of the words.

"Did he not march all the way from Kirtland to Missouri with us in
'34--the youngest soldier in the whole army of Zion? How old,
laddie?--twelve, was it?--so he marched a hundred miles for every one of
his little years--and so valiant--none more so--begging us to hasten and
give battle so he could fight upon the Lord's side. Twelve hundred miles
he walked to put back in their homes the persecuted Saints of Jackson
County. But, ah! There he saw liberty strangled in her sanctuary. Do you
mind, laddie, how in '38 we were driven by the mob from Jackson across
the river into Clay County? how they ran off our cattle, stole our
grain? how your poor old mother's mother died from exposure that night
in the rain and sleet? how we lived on mast and corn, the winter, in
tents and a few dugouts and rickety huts--we who had the keys of St.
Peter and the gifts of the apostolic age? Do you mind the sackings and
burnings at Adam-Ondi-Ahman? Do you mind the wife of Joseph's brother,
Don Carlos, she that was made by the soldiers to wade Grand River with
two helpless babes in her arms? They would not even let her warm
herself, before she started, at the flames of her own hut they had
fired. And, laddie, you mind Haun's mill. Ah, the bloody day!--you were
there, and one other, the sister, happy, beautiful as her in the Song of
Songs, when the brutes came--"

"Don't, father--stop there--you are making my throat shut against the
food."

"Then you came to Far West in time to see Joseph and his brethren sold
to the mobocrats by that devil's traitor, Hinkle,--you saw the fleeing
Saints forced to leave their all, hunted out of Missouri into
Illinois--their houses burned, the cattle stolen, their wives and
daughters--"

"Don't, father! Be quiet again. You and mother must be fit for our
journey, as fit as we younger folk."

He glanced fondly across the table, where the girl had leaned her chin
in her hands to watch him, speculatively. She avoided his eyes.

"Yes, yes," assented the old man, "and you know of our persecutions
here--how we had to finish the temple with our arms by our sides, even
as the faithful finished the walls of Jerusalem--and how we were driven
out by night--"

"Quiet, father!"

"Yes, yes. Ah, this gathering out! How far shall we go, laddie?"

"Four hundred miles to winter quarters. From there no one yet knows,--a
thousand, maybe two thousand."

"Aye, to the Rockies or beyond, even to the Pacific. Joseph prophesied
it--where we shall be left in peace until the great day."

The young man glanced quickly up.

"Or have time to grow mighty, if we should not be let alone. Surely this
is the last time the Lord would have us meek under the mob."

"Ho, ho! As you were twelve years ago, trudging by my side, valiant to
fight if the Lord but wills it! But have no fear, boy. This time we go
far beyond all that may tempt the spoiler. We go into the desert, where
no humans are but the wretched red Lamanites; no beasts but the wild
ones of four feet to hunger for our flesh; no verdure, no nourishment to
sustain us save the manna from on high,--a region of unknown perils and
unnamed deserts. Truly we make the supreme test. I do not overcolour it.
Prudence, hand me yonder scrap-book, there on the secretary. Here I
shall read you the words of no less a one than Senator Daniel Webster on
the floor of the Senate but a few months agone. He spoke on the proposal
to fix a mail-route from Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia River in
that far-off land. Hear this great man who knows whereof he speaks. He
is very bitter. 'What do we want with this vast, worthless area--this
region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and
whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie-dogs? To what use could we
ever hope to put these great deserts or those endless mountain ranges,
impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snows? What can
we ever hope to do with that Western coast, a coast of three thousand
miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbour on it. Mr.
President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place
the Pacific Coast one inch nearer to Boston than it now is!'"

The girl had been making little impatient flights about the room, as if
awaiting an opportunity to interrupt the old man's harangue, but even as
she paused to speak, he began again:

"There, laddie, do you hear him?--arid deserts, shifting sand, snow and
ice, wild beasts and wilder men--that is where Israel of the last days
shall be hidden to wait for the second coming of God's Christ. There,
having received our washings and anointings in the temple of God on
earth, we shall wait unmolested, and spread the curtains of Zion in due
circumspection. And what a migration to be recorded in another sacred
history ages hence! Surely the blood of our martyred Prophet hath not
smoked to heaven in vain. Where is there a parallel to this hegira? They
from Egypt went from a heathen land, a land of idolatry, to a fertile
home chosen for them by the Lord. But we go from a fair, smiling land of
plenty and pretended Christianity into the burning desert. They have
driven us to the edge; now they drive us in. But God works his way among
the peoples of earth, and we are strong. Who knows but that we shall in
our march throw up a highway of holiness to the rising generation? So
let us round up our backs to the burden!"

"Amen!" replied the young man fervently, as he rose from the table.

"And now we must be about our preparations for the journey. The time is
short--who is that?"

He sprang to the door. Outside, quick steps were heard approaching. The
girl, who had risen in some confusion, stood blushing and embarrassed
before him. The mother rose feebly on her elbow to reassure him.

"'Tis Captain Girnway, laddie. Have no alarm--he has befriended us. But
for him we should have been put out two days ago, without shelter and
without care. He let us be housed here until you should come."

There was a knock at the door, but Joel stood with his back to it. The
words of Seth Wright were running roughshod through his mind. He looked
sharply at Prudence.

"A mobocrat--our enemy--and you have taken favours from him--a minion of
the devil?--shame!"

The girl looked up.

"He was kind; you don't realise that he has probably saved their lives.
Indeed, you must let him in and thank him."

"Not I!"

The mother interposed hurriedly.

"Yes, yes, laddie! You know not how high-handed they have been. They
expelled all but us, and some they have maltreated shamefully. This one
has been kind to us. Open the door."

"I dare not face him--I may not contain myself!"

The knock was repeated more loudly. The girl went up to him and put her
hands on his shoulders to draw him away.

"Be reasonable," she pleaded, in low tones, "and above all, be polite to
him."

She put him gently aside and drew back the door. On the threshold smiled
the young captain he had watched from the window that morning, marching
at the head of his company. His cap was doffed, and his left hand rested
easily on the hilt of his sword. He stepped inside as one sure of his
welcome.

"Good morning, Miss Prudence, good morning, Mr. Rae, good morning,
madam--good morning--"

He looked questioningly at the stranger. Prudence stepped forward.

"This is Joel Rae, Captain Girnway."

They bowed, somewhat stiffly. Each was dark. Each had a face to attract
women. But the captain was at peace with the world, neatly uniformed,
well-fed, clean-shaven, smiling, pleasant to look upon, while the other
was unshaven, hollow-cheeked, gaunt, roughly dressed, a thing that had
been hunted and was now under ban. Each was at once sensible of the
contrast between them, and each was at once affected by it: the captain
to a greater jauntiness, a more effusive affability; the other to a
stonier sternness.

"I am glad to know you have come, Mr. Rae. Your people have worried a
little, owing to the unfortunate circumstances in which they have been
placed."

"I--I am obliged to you, sir, in their behalf, for your kindness to my
father and mother and to Miss Corson here."

"You are a thousand times welcome, sir. Can you tell me when you will
wish to cross the river?"

"At the very earliest moment that God and the mob will let us. To-morrow
morning, I hope."

"This has not been agreeable to me, believe me--"

"Far less so to us, you may be sure; but we shall be content again when
we can get away from all your whiggery, democratism, devilism, mobism!"

He spoke with rising tones, and the other flushed noticeably about the
temples.

"Have your wagons ready to-morrow morning, then, Mr. Rae--at eight? Very
well, I shall see that you are protected to the ferry. There has been so
much of that tone of talk, sir, that some of our men have resented it."

He turned pleasantly to Prudence.

"And you, Miss Prudence, you will be leaving Nauvoo for Springfield, I
suppose. As you go by Carthage, I shall wish to escort you that far
myself, to make sure of your safety."

The lover turned fiercely, seizing the girl's wrist and drawing her
toward him before she could answer.

"Her goal is Zion, not Babylon, sir--remember _that_!"

She stepped hastily between them.

"We will talk of that to-morrow, Captain," she said, quickly, and added,
"You may leave us now for we have much to do here in making ready for
the start."

"Until to-morrow morning, then, at eight."

He bowed low over the hand she gave him, gracefully saluted the others,
and was gone.

[Illustration: "HER GOAL IS ZION, NOT BABYLON, SIR--REMEMBER _THAT_!"]




CHAPTER IV.


_A Fair Apostate_

She stood flushed and quick-breathing when the door had shut, he bending
toward her with dark inquiry in his eyes. Before she spoke, he divined
that under her nervousness some resolution lay stubbornly fixed.

"Let us speak alone," she said, in a low voice. Then, to the old people,
"Joel and I will go into the garden awhile to talk. Be patient."

"Not for long, dear; our eyes are aching for him."

"Only a little while," and she smiled back at them. She went ahead
through the door by which they had first entered, and out into the
garden at the back of the house. He remembered, as he followed her, that
since he had arrived that morning she had always been leading him,
directing him as if to a certain end, with the air of meaning presently
to say something of moment to him.

They went past the rose-bush near which she had stood when he first saw
her, and down a walk through borders of marigolds. She picked one of
the flowers and fixed it in his coat.

"You are much too savage--you need a posy to soften you. There! Now come
to this seat."

She led him to a rustic double chair under the heavily fruited boughs of
an apple-tree, and made him sit down. She began with a vivacious
playfulness, poorly assumed, to hide her real feeling.

"Now, sobersides, it must end--this foolishness of yours--"

She stopped, waiting for some question of his to help her. But he said
nothing, though she could feel the burning of his eyes upon her.

"This superstitious folly, you know," she blurted out, looking up at him
in sudden desperation.

"Tell me what you mean--you must know I'm impatient."

She essayed to be playful again, pouting her dimpled face near to his
that he might kiss her. But he did not seem to see. He only waited.

"Well--this religion--this Mormonism--"

She shot one swift look at him, then went on quickly.

"My people have left the church, and--I--too--they found things in
Joseph Smith's teachings that seemed bad to them. They went to
Springfield. I would have gone, too, but I told them I wanted first to
see you and--and see if you would not come with us--at least for awhile,
not taking the poor old father and mother through all that wretchedness.
They consented to let me stay with your parents on condition that
Captain Girnway would protect them and me. He--he--is very kind--and had
known us since last winter and had seen me--us--several times. I hadn't
the heart to tell your father; he was so set on going to the new Zion,
but you _will_ come, won't you?"

"Wait a moment!" He put a hand upon her arm as if to arrest her speech.
"You daze me. Let me think." She looked up at him, wondering at his
face, for it showed strength and bitterness and gentleness all in one
look--and he was suffering. She put her hand upon his, from an instinct
of pity. The touch recalled him.

"Now--for the beginning." He spoke with aroused energy, a little wistful
smile softening the strain of his face. "You were wise to give me food,
else I couldn't have solved this mystery. To the beginning, then: You,
Prudence Corson, betrothed to me these three years and more; you have
been buried in the waters of baptism and had your washings and
anointings in the temple of the most high God. Is it not so? Your eyes
were anointed that they might be quick to see, your ears that they might
be apt at hearing, your mouth that you might with wisdom speak the words
of eternal life, and your feet that they might be swift to run in the
ways of the Lord. You accepted thereby the truth that the angel of God
had delivered to Joseph Smith the sealing keys of power. You accepted
the glorious articles of the new covenant. You were about to be sealed
up to me for time and eternity. Now--I am lost--what is it?--your
father and mother have left the church, and because of what?"

"Because of bad things, because of this doctrine they practise--this
wickedness of spiritual wives, plural wives. Think of it, Joel--that if
I were your wife you might take another."

"I need not think of it. Surely you know my love. You know I could not
do that. Indeed I have heard at last that this doctrine so long gossiped
of is a true one. But I have been away and am not yet learned in its
mysteries. But this much I do know--and it is the very corner-stone of
my life: Peter, James, and John ordained Joseph Smith here on this
earth, and Joseph ordained the twelve. All other churches have been
established by the wisdom or folly of man. Ours is the only one on earth
established by direct revelation from God. It has a priesthood, and that
priesthood is a power we must reverence and obey, no matter what may be
its commands. When the truth is taught me of this doctrine you speak of,
I shall see it to be right for those to whom it is ordained. And
meantime, outside of my own little life--my love for you, which would be
always single--I can't measure the revealed will of God with my little
moral foot-rule. Joseph was endowed with the open vision. He saw God
face to face and heard His voice. Can the standards of society in its
present corruption measure and pass upon the revelations of so
white-souled a man?"

"I believe he was not white-souled," she replied, in a kind, animated
way, as one who was bent upon saving him from error. "I told you I knew
why you were sent away on mission. It was because you were my accepted
lover--and your white-souled Joseph Smith wanted me for himself."

"I can't believe it--you couldn't know such a thing"--his faith made a
brave rally--"but even so, if he sought you, why, the more honour to
you--and to me, if you still clung to me."

"Listen. I was afraid to tell you before--ashamed--but I told my people.
It's three years ago. I was seventeen. It was just after we had become
engaged. My people were then strong in the faith, as you know. One
morning after you had left for the East, Brigham Young and Heber Kimball
came to our house for me. They said the Prophet had long known me by
sight, and wished to talk with me. Would I go with them to visit him and
he would bless and counsel me? Of course I was flattered. I put on my
prettiest frock and fetchingest bonnet and set off with them, after
mamma had said yes. On the way they kept asking me if I was willing to
do all the Prophet required. I said I was sure of it, thinking they
meant to be good and worshipful. Then they would ask if I was ready to
take counsel, and they said, 'Many things are revealed unto us in these
last days that the world would scoff at,' but that it had been given to
them to know all the mysteries of the Kingdom. Then they said, 'You
will see Joseph and he will tell you what you are to do.'"

He was listening with a serious, confident eagerness, as if he knew she
could say nothing to dim the Prophet's lustre.

"When we reached the building where Joseph's store was, they led me
up-stairs to a small room and sent down to the store for the Prophet.
When he came up they introduced me and left me alone in the little room
with him. Their actions had seemed queer to me, but I remembered that
this man had talked face to face with God, so I tried to feel better.
But all at once he stood before me and asked me to be his wife. Think of
it! I was so frightened! I dared not say no, he looked at me so--I can't
tell you how; but I said it would not be lawful. He said, 'Yes,
Prudence, I have had a revelation from God that it is lawful and right
for a man to have as many wives as he wants--for as it was in the days
of Abraham, so it shall be in these days. Accept me and I shall take you
straight to the celestial Kingdom. Brother Brigham will marry us here,
right now, and you can go home to-night and keep it secret from your
parents if you like.' Then I said, 'But I am betrothed to Joel Rae, the
son of Giles Rae, who is away on mission.' 'I know that,' he said--'I
sent him away, and anyway you will be safer to marry me. You will then
be absolutely sure of your celestial reward, for in the next world, you
know, I am to have powers, thrones, and dominions, while Brother Joel
is very young and has not been tried in the Kingdom. He may fall away
and then you would be lost.'"

The man in him now was struggling with his faith, and he seemed about to
interrupt her, but she went on excitedly.

"I said I would not want to do anything of the kind without
deliberation. He urged me to have it over, trying to kiss me, and saying
he knew it would be right before God; that if there was any sin in it he
would take it upon himself. He said, 'You know I have the keys of the
Kingdom, and whatever I bind on earth is bound in heaven. Come,' he
said, 'nothing ventured, nothing gained. Let me call Brother Brigham to
seal us, and you shall be a star in my crown for ever.'

"Then I broke down and cried, for I was so afraid, and he put his arms
around me, but I pushed away, and after awhile I coaxed him to give me
until the next Sabbath to think it over, promising on my life to say not
one word to any person. I never let him see me alone again, you may be
sure, and at last when other awful tales were told about him here, of
wickedness and his drunkenness--he told in the pulpit that he had been
drunk, and that he did it to keep them from worshipping him as a God--I
saw he was a bad, common man, and I told my people everything, and soon
my father was denounced for an apostate. Now, sir, what do you say?"

When she finished he was silent for a time. Then he spoke, very gently,
but with undaunted firmness.

"Prudence, dearest, I have told you that this doctrine is new to me. I
do not yet know its justification. But that I shall see it to be
sanctified after they have taught me, this I know as certainly as I know
that Joseph Smith dug up the golden plates of Mormon and Moroni on the
hill of Cumorah when the angel of the Lord moved him. It will be
sanctified for those who choose it, I mean. You know I could never
choose it for myself. But as for others, I must not question. I know
only too well that eternal salvation for me depends upon my accepting
manfully and unquestioningly the authority of the temple priesthood."

"But I know Joseph was not a good man--and they tell such absurd stories
about the miracles the Elders pretend to work."

"I believe with all my heart Joseph was good; but even if not--we have
never pretended that he was anything more than a prophet of God. And was
not Moses a murderer when God called him to be a prophet? And as for
miracles, all religions have them--why not ours? Your people were
Methodists before Joseph baptised them. Didn't Wesley work miracles?
Didn't a cloud temper the sun in answer to his prayer? Wasn't his horse
cured of a lameness by his faith? Didn't he lay hands upon the blind
Catholic girl so that she saw plainly when her eyes rested upon the New
Testament and became blind again when she took up the mass book? Are
those stories absurd? My father himself saw Joseph cast a devil out of
Newell Knight."

"And this awful journey into a horrid desert. Why must you go? Surely
there are other ways of salvation." She hesitated a moment. "I have been
told that going to heaven is like going to mill. If your wheat is good,
the miller will never ask which way you came."

"Child, child, some one has tampered with you."

She retorted quickly.

"He did not tamper, he has never sought to--he was all kindness."

She stopped, her short upper lip holding its incautious mate a prisoner.
She blushed furiously under the sudden blaze of his eyes.

"So it's true, what Seth Wright hinted at? To think that you, of all
people--my sweetheart--gone over--won over by a cursed mobocrat--a fiend
with the blood of our people wet on his hands! Listen, Prue; I'm going
into the desert. Even though you beg me to stay, you must have
known--perhaps you hoped--that I would go. There are many reasons why I
must. For one, there are six hundred and forty poor hunted wretches over
there on the river bank, sick, cold, wet, starving, but enduring it all
to the death for their faith in Joseph Smith. They could have kept their
comfortable homes here and their substance, simply by renouncing
him--they are all voluntary exiles--they have only to say 'I do not
believe Joseph Smith was a prophet of God,' and these same Gentiles
will receive them with open arms, give them clothing, food, and shelter,
put them again in possession of their own. But they are lying out over
there, fever-stricken, starving, chilled, all because they will not deny
their faith. Shall I be a craven, then, who have scarcely ever wanted
for food or shelter, and probably shall not? Of course you don't love me
or you couldn't ask me to do that. Those faithful wretched ones are
waiting over there for me to guide them on toward a spot that will
probably be still more desolate. They could find their way, almost, by
the trail of graves we left last spring, but they need my strength and
my spirit, and I am going. I am going, too, for my own salvation. I
would suffer anything for you, but by going I may save us both. Listen,
child; God is going to make a short work on earth. We shall both see the
end of this reign of sin. It is well if you take wheat to the mill, but
what if you fetch the miller chaff instead?"

She made a little protesting move with her hands, and would have spoken,
but he was not done.

"Now, listen further. You heard my father tell how I have seen this
people driven and persecuted since I was a boy. That, if nothing else,
would take me away from these accursed States and their mobs. Hatred of
them has been bred into my marrow. I know them for the most part to be
unregenerate and doomed, but even if it were otherwise--if they had the
true light--none the less would I be glad to go, because of what they
have done to us and to me and to mine. Oh, in the night I hear such
cries of butchered mothers with their babes, and see the flames of the
little cabins--hear the shots and the ribaldry and the cursings. My
father spoke to you of Haun's mill,--that massacre back in Missouri.
That was eight years ago. I was a boy of sixteen and my sister was a
year older. She had been left in my care while father and mother went on
to Far West. You have seen the portrait of her that mother has. You know
how delicately flower-like her beauty was, how like a lily, with a
purity and an innocence to disarm any villainy. Thirty families had
halted at the mill the day before, the mob checking their advance at
that point. All was quiet until about four in the afternoon. We were
camped on either side of Shoal Creek. Children were playing freely about
while their mothers and fathers worked at the little affairs of a
pilgrimage like that. Most of them had then been three months on the
road, enduring incredible hardships for the sake of their religion--for
him you believe to be a bad, common man. But they felt secure now
because one of the militia captains, officious like your captain here,
had given them assurance the day before that they would be protected
from all harm. I was helping Brother Joseph Young to repair his wagon
when I glanced up to the opposite side of Shoal Creek and saw a large
company of armed and mounted men coming toward our peaceful group at
full speed. One of our number, seeing that they were many and that we
were unarmed, ran out and cried, 'Peace!' but they came upon us and
fired their volley. Men, women, and little children fell under it. Those
surviving fled to the blacksmith's shop for shelter--huddling inside
like frightened sheep. But there were wide cracks between the logs, and
up to these the mob went, putting their guns through to do their work at
leisure. Then the plundering began--plundering and worse."

He stopped, trembling, and she put out her hand to him in sympathy. When
he had regained control of himself, he continued.

"At the first volley I had hurried sister to a place of concealment in
the underbrush, and she, hearing them search for the survivors after the
shooting was over, thought we were discovered, and sprang up to run
further. One of them saw her and shot. She fell half-fainting with a
bullet through her arm, and then half a dozen of them gathered quickly
about her. I ran to them, screaming and striking out with my fists, but
the devil was in them, and she, poor blossom, lay there helpless,
calling 'Boy, boy, boy!' as she had always called me since we were
babies together. Must I tell you the rest?--must I tell you--how those
devils--"

"Don't, don't! Oh, _no_!"

"I thought I must die! They held me there--"

He had gripped one of her wrists until she cried out in pain and he
released it.

"But the sight must have given me a man's strength, for my struggles
became so troublesome that one of them--I have always been grateful for
it--clubbed his musket and dealt me a blow that left me senseless. It
was dark when I came to, but I lay there until morning, unable to do
more than crawl. When the light came I found the poor little sister
there near where they had dragged us both, and she was _alive_. Can you
realise how awful that was--that she had lived through it? God be
thanked, she died before the day was out.

"After that the other mutilated bodies, the plundered wagons, all seemed
less horrible to me. My heart had been seared over. They had killed
twenty of the Saints, and the most of them we hurried to throw into a
well, fearful that the soldiers of Governor Boggs would come back at any
moment to strip and hack them. O God! and now you have gone over to one
of them!"

"Joel,--dear, _dear_ Joel!--indeed I pity and sympathise--and care
for--but I cannot go--even after all you say. And don't you see it will
always be so! My father says the priesthood will always be in trouble if
it sets itself above the United States. Dear Joel, I can't go, indeed I
_can't_ go!"

He spoke more softly now.

"Thank God I don't realise it yet--I mean, that we must part. You tell
me so and I hear you and my mind knows, but my heart hasn't sensed it
yet--I can feel it now going stupidly along singing its old happy song
of hope and gladness, while all this is going on here outside. But soon
the big hurt will come. Oh, Prue--Prue, girl!--can't you think what it
will mean to me? Don't you know how I shall sicken for the sight of you,
and my ears will listen for you! Prudence, Prue, darling--yet I must not
be womanish! I have a big work to do. I have known it with a new
clearness since that radiance rested above my head last night. The truth
burns in me like a fire. Your going can't take that from me. It must be
I was not meant to have you. With you perhaps I could not have had a
heart single to God's work. He permitted me to love you so I could be
tried and proved."

He looked at her fondly, and she could see striving and trembling in his
eyes a great desire to crush her in his arms, yet he fought it down, and
continued more calmly.

"But indeed I must be favoured more than common, to deserve that so
great a hurt be put upon me, and I shall not be found wanting. I shall
never wed any woman but you, though, dear. If not you, never any other."

He stood up.

"I must go in to them now. There must be work to do against the start
to-morrow."

"Joel!"

"May the Lord deafen my ears to you, darling!" and squaring his
shoulders resolutely away from her, he left her on the seat and went in.

The old man looked up from his Bible as his son entered.

"It's sore sad, laddie, we can't have the temple for your sealing-vows."

"Prudence will not be sealed to me, father." He spoke dazedly, as if
another like the morning's blow had been dealt him. "I--I am already
sealed to the Spirit for time and eternity."

"Was it Prudence's doings?" asked his mother, quickly.

"Yes; she has left the church with her people."

The long-faced, narrow-browed old man raised one hand solemnly.

"Then let her be banished from Israel and not numbered in the books of
the offspring of Abraham! And let her be delivered over to the
buffetings of Satan in the flesh!"




CHAPTER V.


_Giles Rae Beautifies His Inheritance_

By eight o'clock the next morning, out under a cloudy sky, the Raes were
ready and eager for their start to the new Jerusalem. Even the sick
woman's face wore a kind of soft and faded radiance in the excitement of
going. On her mattress, she had been tenderly installed in one of the
two covered wagons that carried their household goods. The wagon in
which she lay was to be taken across the river by Seth Wright,--for the
moment no Wild Ram of the Mountains, but a soft-cooing dove of peace.
Permission had been granted him by Brockman to recross the river on some
needful errands; and, having once proved the extreme sensitiveness, not
to say irritability, of those in temporary command, he was now resolved
to give as little eclat as possible to certain superior aspects of his
own sanctity. He spoke low and deferentially, and his mien was that of a
modest, retiring man who secretly thought ill of himself.

He mounted the wagon in which the sick woman lay, sat well back under
the bowed cover, clucked low to the horses, and drove off toward the
ferry. If discreet behaviour on his part could ensure it there would be
no conflict provoked with superior numbers; with numbers, moreover,
composed of violent-tempered and unprincipled persecutors who were
already acting with but the merest shadow of legal authority.

On the seat of the second wagon, whip in hand, was perched Giles Rae,
his coat buttoned warmly to the chin. He was slight and feeble to the
eye, yet he had been fired to new life by the certainty that now they
were to leave the territory of the persecuting Gentiles for a land to be
the Saints' very own. His son stood at the wheel, giving him final
directions. At the gate was Prudence Corson, gowned for travel, reticule
in hand, her prettiness shadowed, under the scoop of her bonnet, the toe
of one trim little boot meditatively rolling a pebble over the ground.

"Drive slowly, Daddy. Likely I shall overtake you before you reach the
ferry. I want but a word yet with Prudence; though"--he glanced over at
the bowed head of the girl--"no matter if I linger a little, since
Brother Seth will cross first and we must wait until the boat comes
back. Some of our people will be at the ferry to look after you,--and be
careful to have no words with any of the mob--no matter what insult they
may offer. You're feeling strong, aren't you?"

"Ay, laddie, that I am! Strong as an ox! The very thought of being free
out of this Babylon has exalted me in spirit and body. Think of it, boy!
Soon we shall be even beyond the limits of the United States--in a
foreign land out there to the west, where these bloodthirsty ones can no
longer reach us. Thank God they're like all snakes--they can't jump
beyond their own length!"

He leaned out of the wagon to shake a bloodless, trembling fist toward
the temple where the soldiers had made their barracks.

"Now let great and grievous judgments, desolations, by famine, sword,
and pestilence come upon you, generation of vipers!"

He cracked the whip, the horses took their load at his cheery call, and
as the wagon rolled away they heard him singing:--

  "Lo, the Gentile chain is broken!
   Freedom's banner waves on high!"

They watched him until the wagon swung around into the street that fell
away to the ferry. Then they faced each other, and he stepped to her
side as she leaned lightly on the gate.

"Prue, dear," he said, softly, "it's going hard with me. God must indeed
have a great work reserved for me to try me with such a sacrifice--so
much pain where I could least endure it. I prayed all the night to be
kept firm, for there are two ways open--one right and one wrong; but I
cannot sell my soul so early. That's why I wanted to say the last
good-bye out here. I was afraid to say it in there--I am so weak for
you, Prue--I ache so for you in all this trouble--why, if I could feel
your hands in my hair, I'd laugh at it all--I'm so _weak_ for you,
dearest."

She tossed her yellow head ever so slightly, and turned the scoop of her
bonnet a little away from his pain-lighted face.

"I am not complimented, though--you care more for your religion than for
me."

He looked at her hungrily.

"No, you are wrong there--I don't separate you at all--I couldn't--you
and my religion are one--but, if I must, I can love you in spirit as I
worship my God in spirit--"

"If it will satisfy you, very well!"

"My reward will come--I shall do a great work, I shall have a Witness
from the sky. Who am I that I should have thought to win a crown without
taking up a cross?"

"I am sorry for you."

"Oh, Prue, there must be a way to save the souls of such as you, even in
their blindness. Would God make a flower like you, only to let it be
lost? There must be a way. I shall pray until I force it from the secret
heavens."

"My soul will be very well, sir!" she retorted, with a distinct trace of
asperity. "I am not a heathen, I'd thank you to remember--and when I'm a
wife I shall be my husband's only wife--"

He winced in acutest pain.

"You have no right to taunt me so. Else you can't know what you have
meant to me. Oh, you were all the world, child--you, of your own dear
self--you would have been all the wives in the world to me--there are
many, many of you, and all in a heavenly one--"

"Oh, forgive me, dearest," she cried, and put out a little gloved hand
to comfort him. "I know, I know--all the sweetness and goodness of your
love, believe me. See, I have kept always by me the little Bible you
gave me on my birthday--I have treasured it, and I know it has made me a
better girl, because it makes me always think of your goodness--but I
couldn't have gone there, Joel--and it does seem as if you need not have
gone--and that marrying is so odious--"

"You shall see how little you had to fear of that doctrine which God has
seen fit to reveal to these good men. I tell you now, Prue, I shall wed
no woman but you. Nor am I giving you up. Don't think it. I am doing my
duty and trusting God to bring you to me. I know He will do it--I tell
you there is the spirit of some strange, awful strength in me, which
tells me to ask what I will and it shall be given--to seek to do
anything, how great or hard soever, and a giant's, a god's strength will
rest in me. And so I know you will come. You will always think of me
so,--waiting for you--somehow, somewhere. Every day you must think it,
at any idle moment when I come to your mind; every night when you waken
in the dark and silence, you must think, 'Wherever he is, he is waiting
for me, perhaps awake as I am now, praying, with a power that will
surely draw me.' You will come somehow. Perhaps, when I reach winter
quarters, you will have changed your mind. One never knows how God may
fashion these little providences. But He will bring you safe to me out
of that Gentile perdition. Remember, child, God has set his hand in
these last days to save the human family from the ruins of the fall, and
some way, He alone knows how, you will come to me and find me waiting."

"As if you needed to wait for me when I am here now ready for you,
willing to be taken!"

"Don't, don't, dear! There are two of me now, and one can't stand the
pain. There is a man in me, sworn to do a man's work like a man, and
duty to God and the priesthood has big chains around his heart dragging
it across the river. But, low, now--there is a little, forlorn boy in
me, too--a poor, crying, whimpering, babyish little boy, who dreamed of
you and longed for you and was promised you, and who will never get well
of losing you. Oh, I know it well enough--his tears will never dry, his
heart will always have a big hurt in it--and your face will always be so
fresh and clear in it!"

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down into the face under
the bonnet.

"Let me make sure I shall lose no look of you, from little tilted chin,
and lips of scarlet thread, and little teeth like grains of rice, and
eyes into which I used to wander and wonder so far--"

She looked past him and stepped back.

"Captain Girnway is coming for me--yonder, away down the street. He
takes me to Carthage."

His face hardened as he looked over his shoulder.

"I shall never wed any woman but you. Can you feel as deeply as that?
Will you wed no man but me?"

She fluttered the cherry ribbons on the bonnet and fixed a stray curl in
front of one ear.

"Have you a right to ask that? I might wait a time for you to come
back--to your senses and to me, but--"

"Good-bye, darling!".

"What, will you go that way--not kiss me? He is still two blocks away."

"I am so weak for you, sweet--the little boy in me is crying for you,
but he must not have what he wants. What he wants would leave his heart
rebellious and not perfect with the Lord. It's best not," he continued,
with an effort at a smile and in a steadier tone. "It would mean so much
to me--oh, so very much to me--and so very little to you--and that's no
real kiss. I'd rather remember none of that kind--and don't think I was
churlish--it's only because the little boy--I will go after my father
now, and God bless you!"

He turned away. A few paces on he met Captain Girnway, jaunty, debonair,
smiling, handsome in his brass-buttoned uniform of the Carthage Grays.

"I have just left the ferry, Mr. Rae. The wagon with your mother has
gone over. The other had not yet come down. Some of the men appear to be
a little rough this morning. Your people are apt to provoke them by
being too outspoken, but I left special orders for the good treatment of
yourself and outfit."

With a half-smothered "thank you," he passed on, not trusting himself to
say more to one who was not only the enemy of his people, but bent,
seemingly, on deluding a young woman to the loss of her soul. He heard
their voices in cheerful greeting, but did not turn back. With eyes to
the front and shoulders squared he kept stiffly on his way through the
silent, deserted streets to the ferry.

Fifteen minutes' walk brought him to the now busy waterside. The ferry,
a flat boat propelled by long oars, was landing when he came into view,
and he saw his father's wagon driven on. He sped down the hill, pushed
through the crowd of soldiers standing about, and hurried forward on the
boat to let the old man know he had come. But on the seat was another
than his father. He recognised the man, and called to him.

"What are you doing there, Brother Keaton? Where's my father?"

The man had shrunk back under the wagon-cover, having seemingly been
frightened by the soldiers.

"I've taken your father's place, Brother Rae."

"Did he cross with Brother Wright?"

"Yes--he--" The man hesitated. Then came an interruption from the
shore.

"Come, clear the gangway there so we can load! Here are some more of the
damned rats we've hunted out of their holes!"

The speaker made a half-playful lunge with his bayonet at a gaunt,
yellow-faced spectre of a man who staggered on to the boat with a child
in his arms wrapped in a tattered blue quilt. A gust of the chilly wind
picked his shapeless, loose-fitting hat off as he leaped to avoid the
bayonet-point, and his head was seen to be shaven. The crowd on the bank
laughed loud at his clumsiness and at his grotesque head. Joel Rae ran
to help him forward on the boat.

"Thank you, Brother--I'm just up from the fever-bed--they shaved my head
for it--and so I lost my hat--thank you--here we shall be warm if only
the sun comes out."

Joel went back to help on others who came, a feeble, bedraggled dozen or
so that had clung despairingly to their only shelter until they were
driven out.

"You can stay here in safety, you know, if you renounce Joseph Smith and
his works--they will give you food and shelter." He repeated it to each
little group of the dispirited wretches as they staggered past him, but
they replied staunchly by word or look, and one man, in the throes of a
chill, swung his cap and uttered a feeble "Hurrah for the new Zion!"

When they were all on with their meagre belongings, he called again to
the man in the wagon.

"Brother Keaton, my father went across, did he?"

Several of the men on shore answered him.

"Yes"--"Old white-whiskered death's-head went over the river"--"Over
here"--"A sassy old codger he was"--"He got his needings, too"--"Got his
needings--"

They cast off the line and the oars began to dip.

"And you'll get your needings, too, if you come back, remember that!
That's the last of you, and we'll have no more vermin like you. Now see
what old Joe Smith, the white-hat prophet, can do for you in the Indian
territory!"

He stood at the stern of the boat, shivering as he looked at the
current, swift, cold, and gray under the sunless sky. He feared some
indignity had been offered to his father. They had looked at one another
queerly when they answered his questions. He went forward to the wagon
again.

"Brother Keaton, you're sure my father is all right?"

"I am sure he's all right, Brother Rae."

Content with this, at last, he watched the farther flat shore of the
Mississippi, with its low fringe of green along the edge, where they
were to land and be at last out of the mob's reach. He repeated his
father's words: "Thank God, they're like all snakes; they can't jump
beyond their own length."

The confusion of landing and the preparations for an immediate start
drove for the time all other thoughts from his mind. It had been
determined to get the little band at once out of the marshy spot where
the camp had been made. The teams were soon hitched, the wagons loaded,
and the train ready to move. He surveyed it, a hundred poor wagons, many
of them without cover, loaded to the full with such nondescript
belongings as a house-dwelling people, suddenly put out on the open
road, would hurriedly snatch as they fled. And the people made his heart
ache, even to the deadening of his own sorrow, as he noted their
wobegoneness. For these were the sick, the infirm, the poor, the
inefficient, who had been unable for one reason or another to migrate
with the main body of the Saints earlier in the season. Many of them
were now racked by fever from sleeping on the damp ground. These bade
fair not to outlast some of the lumbering carts that threatened at every
rough spot to jolt apart.

Yet the line bravely formed to the order of Seth Wright as captain, and
the march began. Looking back, he saw peaceful Nauvoo, its houses and
gardens, softened by the cloudy sky and the autumn haze, clustering
under the shelter of their temple spire,--their temple and their houses,
of which they were now despoiled by a mob's fury. Ahead he saw the road
to the West, a hard road, as he knew,--one he could not hope they should
cross without leaving more graves by the way; but Zion was at the end.

The wagons and carts creaked and strained and rattled under their
swaying loads, and the line gradually defined itself along the road from
the confused jumble at the camp. He remembered his father again now, and
hurried forward to assure himself that all was right. As he overtook
along the way the stumbling ones obliged to walk, he tried to cheer
them.

"Only a short march to-day, brothers. Our camp is at Sugar Creek, nine
miles--so take your time this first day."

Near the head of the train were his own two wagons, and beside the first
walked Seth Wright and Keaton, in low, earnest converse. As he came up
to them the Bishop spoke.

"I got Wes' and Alec Gregg to drive awhile so we could stretch our
legs." But then came a quick change of tone, as they halted by the road.

"Joel, there's no use beatin' about the bush--them devils at the ferry
jest now drowned your pa."

He went cold all over. Keaton, looking sympathetic but frightened, spoke
next.

"You ought to thank me, Brother Rae, for not telling you on the other
side, when you asked me. I knew better. Because, why? Because I knew
you'd fly off the handle and get yourself killed, and then your ma'd be
left all alone, that's why, now--and prob'ly they'd 'a' wound up by
dumping the whole passle of us bag and baggage into the stream. And it
wa'n't any use, your father bein' dead and gone."

The Bishop took up the burden, slapping him cordially on the back.

"Come, come,--hearten up, now! Your pa's been made a martyr--he's
beautified his inheritance in Zion--whinin' won't do no good."

He drew himself up with a shrug, as if to throw off an invisible burden,
and answered, calmly:

"I'm not whining, Bishop. Perhaps you were right not to tell me over
there, Keaton. I'd have made trouble for you all." He smiled painfully
in his effort to control himself. "Were you there, Bishop?"

"No, I'd already gone acrost. Keaton here saw it."

Keaton took up the tale.

"I was there when the old gentleman drove down singing, 'Lo, the Gentile
chain is broken.' He was awful chipper. Then one of 'em called him old
Father Time, and he answered back. I disremember what, but, any way, one
word fired another until they was cussin' Giles Rae up hill and down
dale, and instead of keepin' his head shet like he had ought to have
done, he was prophesyin' curses, desolations, famines, and pestilences
on 'em all, and callin' 'em enemies of Christ. He was sassy--I can't
deny that--and that's where he wa'n't wise. Some of the mobocrats was
drunk and some was mad; they was all in their high-heeled boots one way
or another, and he enraged 'em more. So he says, finally, 'The Jews
fell,' he says, 'because they wouldn't receive their Messiah, the
Shiloh, the Saviour. They wet their hands,' he says, 'in the best blood
that had flowed through the lineage of Judah, and they had to pay the
cost. And so will you cowards of Illinois,' he says, 'have to pay the
penalty for sheddin' the blood of Joseph Smith, the best blood that has
flowed since the Lord's Christ,' he says. 'The wrath of God,' he says,
'will abide upon you.' The old gentleman was a powerful denouncer when
he was in the spirit of it--"

"Come, come, Keaton, hurry, for God's sake--get on!"

"And he made 'em so mad, a-settin' up there so peart and brave before
'em, givin' 'em as good as they sent--givin' 'em hell right to their
faces, you might say, that at last they made for him, some of them that
you could see had been puttin' a new faucet into the cider barrel. I saw
they meant to do him a mischief--but Lord! what could I do against
fifty, being then in the midst of a chill? Well, they drug him off the
seat, and said, 'Now, you old rat, own up that Holy Joe was a danged
fraud;' or something like that. But he was that sanctified and
stubborn--' Better to suffer stripes for the testimony of Christ,' he
says, 'than to fall by the sin of denial!' Then they drug him to the
bank, one on each side, and says, 'We baptise you in the holy name of
Brockman,' and in they dumped him--backwards, mind you! I saw then they
was in a slippery place where it was deep and the current awful strong.
But they hauled him out, and says again, 'Do you renounce Holy Joe Smith
and all his works?' The poor old fellow couldn't talk a word for the
chill, but he shook his head like sixty--as stubborn as you'd wish. So
they said, 'Damn you! here's another, then. We baptise you in the name
of James K. Polk, President of the United States!' and in they threw him
again. Whether they done it on purpose or not, I wouldn't like to say,
but that time his coat collar slipped out of their hands and down he
went. He came up ten feet down-stream and quite a ways out, and they
hooted at him. I seen him come up once after that, and then they see he
couldn't swim a stroke, but little they cared. And I never saw him
again. I jest took hold of the team and drove it on the boat, scared to
death for what you'd do when you come,--so I kept still and they kept
still. But remember, it's only another debt the blood of the Gentiles
will have to pay--"

"Either here on earth or in hell," said the Bishop.

"And the soul of your poor pa is now warm and dry and happy in the
presence of his Lord God."




CHAPTER VI.


_The Lute of the Holy Ghost Is Further Chastened_

Listening to Keaton's tale, he had dimly seen the caravan of hunted
creatures crawl past him over the fading green of the prairie; the
wagons with their bowed white covers; a heavy cart, jolting, creaking,
lumbering mysteriously along, a sick driver hidden somewhere back under
its makeshift cover of torn counterpanes; a battered carriage,
reminiscent of past luxury, drawn by oxen; more wagons, some without
covers; a two-wheeled cart, designed in the ingenuity of desperation,
laden with meal-sacks, a bundle of bedding, a sleeping child, and drawn
by a little dry-dugged heifer; then more wagons with stooping figures
trudging doggedly beside them, here a man, there a woman leading a
child. He saw them as shapes floating by in a dream, blurred and
inconsequent. But between himself and the train, more clearly outlined
to his gaze, he saw the worn face of his father tossed on the cold, dark
waters, being swept down by the stream, the weak old hands clutching for
some support in the muddy current, the white head with the chin held up
sinking lower at each failure, then at last going under, gulping, to
leave a little row of bubbles down the stream.

In a craze of rage and grief he turned toward the river, when he heard
the sharp voice of the Bishop calling him back.

"It ain't any use, Joel."

"Couldn't we find his body?"

"Not a chance in a thousand. It was carried down by the current. It
would mean days and mebbe weeks. Besides, we need you here. Here's your
duty. Sakes alive! If we only had about twenty minutes with them cusses
like it was in the old days! When you're ready to be a Son of Dan you'll
know what I mean. But never mind, we'll see the day yet when Israel will
be the head and not the tail."

"My mother? Has any one told her?"

"Wal, now, I'm right sorry about that, but it got out before you come
over. Tarlton McKenny's boy, Nephi, rowed over in a skiff and brought
the news, and some of the women went and tattled it to your ma. I guess
it upset her considerable. You go up and see her."

He ran forward toward the head of the train, hearing as he went words of
sympathy hurried to him by those he passed. Mounting the wagon, he
climbed over the seat to where his mother lay. She seemed to sleep in
spite of the jolting. The driver called back to him:

"She took on terrible for a spell, Brother Rae. She's only jest now got
herself pacified."

He put his hand on her forehead and found it burning. She stirred and
moaned and muttered disjointed sentences. He heard his father's name,
his sister's, and his own, and he knew she was delirious. He eased her
bed as well as he could, and made a place for himself beside her where
he could sit and take one of the pale, thin hands between his own and
try to endow her with some of his abundant life. He stayed by her until
their camping-place was reached.

Once for a moment she opened her eyes with what seemed to him a more
than normal clearness and understanding and memory in them. Though she
looked at him long without speaking, she seemed to say all there was to
say, so that the brief span was full of anguish for him. He sighed with
relief when the consciousness faded again from her look, and she fell to
babbling once more of some long gone day in her girlhood.

When the wagon halted he was called outside by the driver, who wished
instructions regarding the camp to be made. A few moments later he was
back, and raised the side of the wagon cover to let in the light. The
look on her face alarmed him. It seemed to tell unmistakably that the
great change was near. Already she looked moribund. An irregular gasping
for breath, an occasional delirious mutter, were the only signs of life.
She was too weak to show restlessness. Her pinched and faded face was
covered with tiny cold beads. The pupils of her eyes were strangely
dilated, and the eyes themselves were glazed. There was no pulse at her
wrist, and from her heart only the faintest beating could be heard. In
quick terror he called to a boy working at a wagon near by.

"Go for Bishop Wright and tell him to bring that apothecary with him."

The two came up briskly a few moments later, and he stood aside for them
in an agony of suspense. The Bishop turned toward him after a long look
into the wagon.

"She's gone to be with your pa, Joel. You can't do anything--only
remember they're both happy now for bein' together."

It made little stir in the busy encampment. There had been other deaths
while they lay out on the marshy river flats. Others of the sorry band
were now sick unto death, and many more would die on the long march
across the Iowa prairie, dropping out one by one of fever, starvation,
exposure. He stood helpless in this chaos of woe, shut up within
himself, knowing not where to turn.

Some women came presently from the other wagons to prepare the body for
burial. He watched them dumbly, from a maze of incredulity, feeling that
some wretched pretense was being acted before him.

The Bishop and Keaton came up. They brought with them the makeshift
coffin. They had cut a log, split it, and stripped off its bark in two
half-cylinders. They led him to the other side of the wagon, out of
sight. Then they placed the strips of bark around the body, bound them
with hickory withes, and over the rough surface the women made a little
show of black cloth.

For the burial they could do no more than consign the body to one of the
waves in the great billowy land sea about them. They had no tombstone,
nor were there even rocks to make a simple cairn. He saw them bury her,
and thought there was little to choose between hers and the grave of his
father, whose body was being now carried noiselessly down in the bed of
the river. The general locality would be kept by landmarks, by the
bearing of valley bends, headlands, or the fork and angles of constant
streams. But the spot itself would in a few weeks be lost.

When the last office had been performed, the prayer said, a psalm sung,
and the black dirt thrown in, they waited by him in sympathy. His
feeling was that they had done a monstrous thing; that the mother he had
known was somewhere alive and well. He stood a moment so, watching the
sun sink below the far rim of the prairie while the white moon swung
into sight in the east. Then the Bishop led him gently by the arm to his
own camp.

There cheer abounded. They had a huge camp-fire tended by the Bishop's
numerous children. Near by was a smaller fire over which the good man's
four wives, able-bodied, glowing, and cordial, cooked the supper. In
little ways they sought to lighten his sorrow or to put his mind away
from it. To this end the Bishop contributed by pouring him drink from a
large brown jug.

"Not that I approve of it, boy, but it'll hearten you,--some of the best
peach brandy I ever sniffed. I got it at the still-house last week for
use in time of trouble,--and this here time is _it_."

He drank the fiery stuff from the gourd in which it was given him, and
choked until they brought him water. But presently the warmth stole
along his cold, dead nerves so that he became intensely alive from head
to foot, and strangely exalted. And when they offered him food he ate
eagerly and talked. It seemed to him there had been a thousand matters
that he had long wished to speak of; matters of moment in which he felt
deeply; yet on which he had strangely neglected to touch till now.

He talked long with the Bishop when the women had climbed into their
wagon for the night. He amazed that good man by asking him if the Lord
would not be pleased to have them, now, as they were, go back to Nauvoo
and descend upon the Gentiles to smite them. The Bishop counselled him
to have patience.

"What could we do how with these few old fusees and cheap arms that we
managed to smuggle across--to say nothing of half of us being down
sick?"

"But we are Israel, and surely Israel's God--"

"The Lord had His chance the other day if He'd wanted it, when they
took the town. No, Joel, He means us to gether out and become strong
enough to beat 'em in our own might. But you _wait_; our day will come,
and all the more credit to us then for doin' it ourselves. Then we'll
consecrate the herds and flocks of the Gentile and his store and basket,
his gold and silver, and his myrrh and frankincense. But for the
present--well, we got to be politic and kind of modest about such
doin's. The big Fan, the Sons of Dan, done good work in Missouri and
better in Nauvoo, and it'll do still better where we're goin'. But we
must be patient. Only next time we'll get to work quicker. If the
Gentiles had been seen to quicker in Nauvoo, Joseph would be with us
now. We learned our lesson there. Now the Lord has unfurled a Standard
of Zion for the gathering of Israel, and this time we'll fix the
Gentiles early."

"Amen! Brother Seth."

A look of deep hatred had clouded the older man's face as he spoke. He
continued.

"Let the wrath of God abide upon 'em, and remember that we're bein'
tried and proved for a purpose. And we got to be more practical. You
been too theoretical yourself and too high-flyin' in your notions. The
Kingdom ain't to be set up on earth by faith alone. The Lord has got to
have _works_, like I told you about the other day."

"You were right, Bishop, I need to be more practical. The olive-branch
and not the sword would Ephraim extend to Japheth, but if--"

"If Japheth don't toe the mark the Lord's will must be worked upon
him."

"So be it, Brother Seth! I am ready now to be a Son of Dan."

The Bishop rose from in front of their fire and looked about. No one was
near. Here and there a fire blazed, and the embers of many more could be
seen dying out in the distance. The nearest camp was that of the
fever-stricken man who had fled on to the boat that morning with his
child in his arms. They could see his shaven head in the firelight, and
a woman hovering over him as he lay on the ground with a tattered quilt
fixed over him in lieu of a tent. From another group came the strains of
an accordion and the chorus of a hymn.

"That's right," said the Bishop. "I knew you'd come to it. I saw that
long ago. Brother Brigham saw it, too. We knew you could be relied on.
You want the oath, do you?"

"Yes, yes, Brother Seth. I was ready for it this morning when they told
me about father."

"Hold up your right hand and repeat after me:

"'In the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I do covenant and agree
to support the first Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, in all things right or wrong; I will faithfully guard
them and report to them the acts of all men as far as in my power lies;
I will assist in executing all the decrees of the first President,
Patriarch, or President of the Twelve, and I will cause all who speak
evil of the Presidency or Heads of the Church to die the death of
dissenters or apostates, unless they speedily confess and repent, for
pestilence, persecution, and death shall follow the enemies of Zion. I
will be a swift herald of salvation and messenger of peace to the
Saints, and I will never make known the secret purposes of this Society
called the Sons of Dan, my life being the forfeiture in a fire of
burning tar and brimstone. So help me God and keep me steadfast.'"

He repeated the words without hesitation, with fervour in his voice, and
the light of a holy and implacable zeal in his face.

"Now I'll give you the blessing, too. Wait till I get my bottle of oil."

He stepped to the nearest wagon, felt under the cover, and came back
with a small bottle in his hand.

"Stand jest here--so--now!"

They stood at the edge of the wavering firelight, and he put his hand on
the other's head.

"'In the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and by the authority of
the Holy Priesthood, the first President, Patriarch, and High Priest of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, representing the first,
second, and third Gods in Heaven, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I do
now anoint you with holy consecrated oil, and by the imposition of my
hands do ordain and set you apart for the holy calling whereunto you are
called; that you may consecrate the riches of the Gentiles to the House
of Israel, bring swift destruction upon apostate sinners, and execute
the decrees of Heaven without fear of what man can do with you. So mote
it be. Amen.'

"There, boy, if I ain't mistaken, that's the best work for Zion that I
done for some time. Now be off to your rest!"

"Good night, Bishop, and thank you for being kind to me! The Church Poet
called me the Lute of the Holy Ghost, but I feel to-night, that I must
be another Lion of the Lord. Good night!"

He went out of the firelight and stumbled through the dark to his own
wagons. But when he came to them he could not stop. Under all the
exhilaration he had been conscious of the great pain within him, drugged
for the moment, but never wholly stifled. Now the stimulus of the drink
had gone, and the pain had awakened to be his master.

He went past the wagons and out on to the prairie that stretched away, a
sea of silvery gray in the moonlight. As he walked, the whole stupendous
load of sorrow settled upon him. His breath caught and his eyes burned
with the tears that lay behind them. He walked faster to flee from it,
but it came upon him more heavily until it made a breaking load,--the
loss of his sister by worse than death, his father and mother driven out
at night and their home burned, his father killed by a mob whose aim had
lacked even the dignity of the murderer's--for they had seemingly
intended but a brutal piece of horse-play; his mother dead from
exposure due to Gentile persecutions; the girl he had loved taken from
him by Gentile persuasions. If only she had been left him so that now he
could put his head down upon her shoulder, slight as that shoulder was,
and feel the supreme soothing of a woman's touch; if only the hurts had
not all come at once! The pain sickened him. He was far out on the
prairie now, away from the sleeping encampment, and he threw himself
down to give way to his grief. Almost silently he wept, yet with sobs
that choked him and cramped him from head to foot. He called to his
mother and to his father and to the sister who had gone before them,
crying their names over and over in the night. But under all his sorrow
he felt as great a rage against the Gentile nation that had driven them
into the wilderness.

When the spasm of grief had passed, he still lay there a long time. Then
becoming chilled he walked again over the prairie, watching the moon go
down and darkness come to make the stars brighter, and then the day show
gray in the east. And as he walked against his sorrow, the burden of his
thought came to be: "God has tried me more than most men; therefore he
expects more of me; and my reward shall be greater. New visions shall be
given to me, and a new power, and this poor, hunted, plundered remnant
of Israel shall find me their staff. Much has been taken from me, but
much will be given unto me."

And under this ran a minor strain born of the rage that still burned
within him:

"But, oh, the day of wrath that shall dawn on yonder Gentiles!"

So did he chasten himself through the night; and when the morning came
he took his place in the train, strangely exalted by this new sense of
the singular favour that was to be conferred upon him.

For seven weeks the little caravan crept over the prairies of Iowa, and
day after day his conviction strengthened that he had been chosen for
large works. In this fervour he cheered the sick and the weak of the
party by picturing for them a great day to come when the Lord should
exalt the valleys of humility and abase the mountains of Gentile pride;
when the Saints should have their reward, and retribution should descend
upon the wicked nation they were leaving behind. Scourges, afflictions,
and depredations by fire, famine, and the tyrant's hand he besought them
to regard as marks of Heaven's especial favour.

The company came to look upon him as its cloud by day and its pillar of
fire by night. Old women--mothers in Israel--lavished attentions upon
him as a motherless boy; young women smiled at him with soft pity, and
were meek and hushed when he spoke. And the men believed that the things
he told them concerning their great day to come were true revelations
from God. They did not hesitate to agree with the good Bishop Wright,
who declared in words of pointed admiration, "When that young man gets
all het up with the Holy Ghost, the Angel of the Lord jest _has_ to give
down!"




CHAPTER VII.


_Some Inner Mysteries Are Expounded_

The hosts of Israel had been forced to tarry for the winter on the banks
of the Missouri. A few were on the east side at Council Bluffs on the
land of the Pottawattamie Indians. Across the river on the land of the
Omahas the greater part of the force had settled at what was known as
Winter Quarters. Here in huts of logs, turf, and other primitive
materials, their town had been laid out with streets and byways, a large
council-house, a mill, a stockade, and blockhouses. The Indians had
received them with great friendliness, feeling with them a common cause
of grievance, since the heavy hand of the Gentile had pushed them also
to this bleak frontier.

To this settlement early in November came the last train from Nauvoo,
its members wearied and wasted by the long march, but staunch in their
faith and with hope undimmed. It was told in after years how there had
leaped from the van of this train a very earnest young man, who had at
once sought an audience with Brigham Young and certain other members of
the Twelve who had chanced to be present at the train's arrival; and
how, being closeted with these, he had eagerly inquired if it might not
be the will of the Lord that they should go no farther into the
wilderness, but stand their ground and give battle to the Gentiles
forthwith. He made the proposal as one who had a flawless faith that the
God of Battles would be with them, and he appeared to believe that
something might be done that very day to force the matter to an issue.
When he had made his proposal, he waited in a modest attitude to hear
their views of it. To his chagrin, all but two of those who had listened
laughed. One of these two, Bishop Snow,--a man of holy aspect whom the
Church Poet had felicitously entitled the Entablature of Truth,--had
looked at him searchingly, then put his hand upon his own head and
shaken it hopelessly to the others.

The other who had not laughed was Brigham himself. For to this great man
had been given the gift to look upon men and to know in one slow sweep
of his wonderful eyes all their strength and all their weakness. He had
listened with close attention to the remarkable plan suggested by this
fiery young zealot, and he studied him now with a gaze that was kind. A
noticeable result of this attitude of Brigham's was that those who had
laughed became more or less awkwardly silent, while the Entablature of
Truth, in the midst of his pantomime, froze into amazement.

"We'd better consider that a little," said Brigham, finally. "You can
talk it over with me tonight. But first you go get your stuff unloaded
and get kind of settled. There's a cabin just beyond my two up the
street here that you can move into." He put his large hand kindly on the
other's shoulder. "Now run and get fixed and come to my house for supper
along about dark."

Somewhat cooled by the laughter of the others, but flattered by this
consideration from the Prophet, the young man had gone thoughtfully out
to his wagons and driven on to the cabin indicated.

"I _did_ think he was plumb crazy," said Bishop Snow, doubtfully, as if
the reasons for changing his mind were even yet less than compelling.

"He _ain't_ crazy," said Brigham. "All that's the matter with him, he's
got more faith than the whole pack of us put together. You just remember
he ain't like us. We was all converted after we got our second teeth,
while he's had it from the cradle up. He's the first one we've caught
young. He's what the priesthood can turn out when they get a full swing
with the rising generation. We got to remember that. We old birds had to
learn to crow in middle life. These young ones will crow stronger;
they'll out-crow us. But all the better for that. They'll be mighty
brash at first, but all they need is to be held in a little, and then
they'll be a power in the Kingdom."

"Well, of course you're right, Brother Brigham, but that boy certainly
needs a check-rein and a curb-bit right now," said Snow.

"He'll have his needings," answered Brigham, shortly, and the informal
council dispersed.

Brigham talked to him late that night, advancing many cogent reasons why
it should be unwise to make war at once upon the nation of Gentiles to
the east. Of these reasons the one that had greatest weight with his
listener was the assurance that such a course would not at present be
pleasing in the sight of God. To others, touching upon the matter of
superior forces they might have to contend with, he was loftily
inattentive.

Having made this much clear, Brigham went on in his fatherly way to
impress him anew with the sinfulness of all temporal governments outside
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Again he learned from
the lips of authority that any people presuming to govern themselves by
laws of their own making and officers of their own appointing, are in
wicked rebellion against the Kingdom of God; that for seventeen hundred
years the nations of the Western Hemisphere have been destitute of this
Kingdom and destitute of all legal government; and that the Lord was now
about to rend all earthly governments, to cast down thrones, overthrow
nations, and make a way for the establishment of the everlasting
Kingdom, to which all others would have to yield, or be prostrated never
more to rise. Thus was the rebuff of the afternoon gracefully atoned
for.

From matters of civil government the talk ranged to affairs domestic.

"Tell me," said the young man, "the truth of this new order of celestial
marriage." And Brigham had become animated at once.

"Yes," he said, "when the family organisation was revealed from Heaven,
and Joseph began on the right and the left to add to his family, oh,
dear, what a quaking there was in Israel! But there it was, plain
enough. When you have received your endowments, keys, blessings, all the
tokens, signs, and every preparatory ordinance that can be given to a
man for his entrance through the celestial gate, then you can see it."

He gazed a moment into the fire of hickory logs before which they sat,
and then went on, more confidentially:

"Now you take that promise to Abraham--'Lift up your eyes and behold the
stars. So shall thy seed be as numberless as the stars. Go to the
seashore and look at the sand, and behold the smallness of the particles
thereof'--I am giving you the gist of the Lord's words, you
understand--'and then realise that your seed shall be as numberless as
those sands.' Now think for a minute how many particles there are, say
in a cubit foot of sand--about one thousand million particles. Think of
that! In eight thousand years, if the inhabitants of earth increased one
trillion a century, three cubic yards of sand would still contain more
particles than there would be people on the whole globe. Yet there you
got the promise of the Lord in black and white. Now how was Abraham to
manage to get a foundation laid for this mighty kingdom? Was he to get
it all through one wife? Don't you see how ridiculous that is? Sarah saw
it, and Sarah knew that unless seed was raised to Abraham he would come
short of his glory. So what did Sarah do? She gave Abraham a certain
woman whose name was Hagar, and by her a seed was to be raised up unto
him. And was that all? No. We read of his wife Keturah, and also of a
plurality of wives which he had in the sight and favour of God, and from
whom he raised up many sons. There, then, was a foundation laid for the
fulfilment of that grand promise concerning his seed."

He peered again into the fire, and added, by way of clenching his
argument: "I guess it would have been rather slow-going, if the Lord had
confined Abraham to one wife, like some of these narrow, contracted
nations of modern Christianity. You see, they don't know that a man's
posterity in this world is to constitute his glory and kingdom and
dominion in the world to come, and they don't know, either, that there
are thousands of choice spirits in the spirit world waiting to
tabernacle in the flesh. Of course, there are lots of these things that
you ain't ready to hear yet, but now you know that polygamy is necessary
for our exaltation to the fulness of the Lord's glory in the eternal
world, and after you study it you'll like the doctrine. I do; I can
swallow it without greasing _my_ mouth!"

He prayed that night to be made "holy as Thy servant Brigham is holy;
to hear Thy voice as he hears it; to be made as wise as he, as true as
he, even as another Lion of the Lord, so that I may be a rod and staff
and comforter to these buffeted children of Thine."

His prayer also touched on one of the matters of their talk. "But, O
Lord, teach me to be content without thrones and dominion in Thy Kingdom
if to gain these I must have many wives. Teach me to abase myself, to be
a servant, a lowly sweeper in the temple of the Most High, for I would
rather be lowly with her I love than exalted to any place whatsoever
with many. Keep in my sinful heart the face of her who has left me to
dwell among the Gentiles, whose hair is melted gold, whose eyes are
azure deep as the sky, and whose arms once opened warm for me. Guard her
especially, O Lord, while she must company with Gentiles, for she is not
wonted to their wiles; and in Thine own good time bring her head
unharmed to its home on Thy servant's breast."

He fasted often, that winter, waiting and watching for his great
Witness--something that should testify to his mortal eyes the direct
favour of Heaven. He fasted and kept vigils and studied the mysteries;
for now he was among the favoured to whom light had been given in
abundance--men at whose feet he was eager to sit. He learned of baptism
for the dead; of the Godship of Adam, and his plurality of wives; of the
laws of adoption and the process by which the Saints were to people,
and be Gods to, earths yet formless.

There was much work out of doors to be done, and of this he performed
his share, working side by side with the tireless Brigham. But there
were late afternoons and long evenings in which he sat with the Prophet
to his great advantage. For, strangely enough, the two men, so unlike,
were drawn closely together--Brigham Young, the broad-headed,
square-chinned buttress of physical vitality, the full-blooded,
clarion-voiced Lion of the Lord, self-contained, watchful, radiating the
power that men feel and obey without knowing why, and Joel Rae, of the
long, narrow, delicately featured face, sensitive, nervous, glowing with
a spiritual zeal, the Lute of the Holy Ghost, whose veins ran fire
instead of blood. One born to command, to domineer; the other to
believe, to worship, and to obey. For the younger man it was a winter of
limitless aspiration and chastening discipline. In spite of the great
sorrows that weighed upon him, the sudden sweeping away of those he had
held most dear and the blasting of his love hopes, he remembered it
through all the eventful years that followed as a time of strange
happiness. Memories of it came gratefully to him even on the awful day
when at last his Witness came; when, as he lay fainting in the desert,
driven thence by his sin, the heavens unfolded and a vision was
vouchsafed him;--when the foundations of his world were shattered, the
tables of the law destroyed, and but one little feather saved to his
famished soul from the wings of the dove of truth. After all these
years, the memory of this winter was a spot of joy that never failed to
glow when he recalled it.

At night he went to his bunk in the little straw-roofed hut and fell
asleep to the howling of the wolves, his mind cradled in the thought of
his mission. He had a part in the great work of bringing into harmony
the labours of the prophets and apostles of all ages. In due time, by
the especial favour of Heaven, he would be wrapped in a sea of vision,
shown an eternity of knowledge, and be intrusted with singular powers.
And he was content to wait out the days in which he must school,
chasten, and prove himself.

"You have built me up," he confided to Brigham, one day. "I feel to
rejoice in my strength." And Brigham was highly pleased.

"That's good, Brother Joel. The host of Israel will soon be on the move,
and I shouldn't wonder if the Lord had a great work for you. I can see
places where you'll be just the tool he needs. I mistrust we sha'n't
have everything peaceful even now. The priest in the pulpit is thorning
the politician against us, gouging him from underneath--he'd never dare
do it openly, for our Elders could crimson his face with shame--and the
minions of the mob may be after us again. If they do, I can see where
you will be a tower of strength in your own way."

"It's all of my life, Brother Brigham."

"I believe it. I guess the time has come to make you an Elder."

And so on a late winter afternoon in the quiet of the Council-House,
Joel Rae was ordained an Elder after the order of Melchisedek; with
power to preach and administer in all the ordinances of the Church, to
lay on hands, to confirm all baptised persons, to anoint the afflicted
with oil, and to seal upon them the blessings of health.

In his hard, narrow bed that night, where the cold came through the
unchinked logs and the wind brought him the wailing of the wolves, he
prayed that he might not be too much elated by this extraordinary
distinction.




CHAPTER VIII.


_A Revelation from the Lord and a Toast from Brigham_

From his little one-roomed cabin, dark, smoky, littered with hay, old
blankets, and skins, he heard excited voices outside, one early morning
in January. He opened the door and found a group of men discussing a
miracle that had been wrought overnight. The Lord had spoken to Brigham
and word had come to Zion to move toward the west.

He hurried over to Brigham's house and by that good man was shown the
word of the Lord as it had been written down from his lips. With
emotions of reverential awe he read the inspired document.

"The Word and Will of the Lord Concerning the Camp of Israel in its
Journeyings to the West." Such was its title.

"Let all the people," it began, "of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, be organised into companies with a covenant and a
promise to keep all the statutes of the Lord our God.

"Let the companies be organised with captains of hundreds and captains
of fifties and captains of tens, with a President and Counsellor at
their head under the direction of the Twelve Apostles.

"Let each company provide itself with all the teams, wagons, provisions,
and all other necessaries for the journey.

"Let every man use all of his influence and property to remove this
people to the place where the Lord shall locate a stake of Zion, and let
them share equally in taking the poor, the widows, and the fatherless,
so that their cries come not up into the ears of the Lord against His
people.

"And if ye do this with a pure heart, with all faithfulness, ye shall be
blessed in your flocks and in your herds and in your fields and in your
families. For I am the Lord your God, even the God of your fathers, the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob. I am He who led the children of
Israel out of the land of Egypt, and my arm is stretched out in these
last days to save my people of Israel.

"Fear not thine enemies, for they are in my hands, and I will do my
pleasure with them.

"My people must be tried in all things, that they may be worthy to
receive the glory that I have in store for them, even the glory of Zion;
and he that will not receive chastisement is not worthy of my Kingdom.
So no more at present. Amen and Amen!"

This was what he had longed for each winter night when he had seen the
sun go down,--the word of the Lord to follow that sun on over the rim
into the pathless wilderness, infested by savage tribes and ravenous
beasts, abounding in terrors unknown. There was an adventure worth while
in the sight of God. It had never ceased to thrill him since he first
heard it broached,--the mad plan of a handful of persecuted believers,
setting out from civilisation to found Zion in the wilderness,--to go
forth a thousand miles from Christendom with nothing but stout arms and
a very living faith in the God of Israel, and in Joseph Smith as his
prophet, meeting death in famine, plagues, and fevers, freezing in the
snows of the mountains, thirsting to death on the burning deserts, being
devoured by ravening beasts or tortured to death by the sinful
Lamanites; but persisting through it all with dauntless courage to a
final triumph so glorious that the very Gods would be compelled to
applaud the spectacle of their devoted heroism.

And now he was face to face with the awful, the glorious, the divinely
ordained fact. It was like standing before the Throne of Grace itself.
Out over that western skyline was a spot, now hidden and defended by all
the powers of Satan, where the Ten Tribes would be restored, where Zion
would be rebuilt, where Christ would reign personally on earth a
thousand years, and from whence the earth would be renewed and receive
again its paradisiac glory. The thought overwhelmed.

"If we could only start at once!" he said to Bishop Wright, who had
read the revelation with him. But the canny Bishop's religious zeal was
henceforth to be tempered by the wisdom of the children of darkness.

"No more travelling in this kind of a time for the Saints," the Bishop
replied. "We got our full of that when we first left Nauvoo. We had to
scrape snow from the ground and set up tents when it was fifteen or
twenty below zero, and nine children born one night in that weather. Of
course it was better than staying at Nauvoo to be shot; but no one is
going to shoot us here, so here we'll tarry till grass grows and water
runs."

"But there was a chance to show devotion, Brother Seth. Think how
precious it must have been in the sight of the Lord."

"Well, the Lord knows we're devoted now, so we'll wait till it fairs up.
We'll have Zion built in good time and a good gospel fence built around
it, elk-high and bull-tight, like we used to say in Missouri. But it's a
long ways over yender, and while I ain't ever had any revelations
myself, I'm pretty sure the Lord means to have me toler'bly well fed,
and my back kept bone-dry on the way. And we got to have fat horses and
fat cattle, not these bony critters with no juice in 'em. Did you hear
what Brother Heber got off the other day? He butchered a beef and was
sawing it up when Brother Brigham passed by. 'Looks hard, Brother
Heber,' says Brother Brigham. 'Hard, Brother Brigham? Why, I've had to
grease the saw to make it work!' Yes, sir, had to grease his saw to
make it work through that bony old heifer. Now we already passed through
enough pinches not to go out lookin' for 'em any more. Why, I tell you,
young man, if I knew any place where the pinches was at, you'd see me
comin' the other way like a bat out of hell!"

And so the ardent young Elder was compelled to curb his spirit until the
time when grass should grow and water run. Yet he was not alone in
feeling this impatience for the start. Through all the settlement had
thrilled a response to the Lord's word as revealed to his servant
Brigham. The God of Israel was to be with them on the march, and old and
young were alike impatient.

Early in April the life began to stir more briskly in the great camp
that sprawled along either side of the swollen, muddy river. From dawn
to dark each day the hills echoed with the noise of many works, the
streets were alive with men and women going and coming on endless
errands, and with excited children playing at games inspired by the
occasion. Wagons were mended and loaded with provisions and tools, oxen
shod, ox-bows renewed, guns put in order, bullets moulded, and the
thousand details perfected of a migration so hazardous. They were busy,
noisy, excited, happy days.

At last, in the middle of April, the signs were seen to be right. Grass
grew and water ran, and their part, allotted by the Lord, was to brave
the dangers of that forbidding land that lay under the western sun.
Then came a day of farewells and merry-making. In the afternoon, the day
being mild and sunny, there was a dance in the bowery,--a great arbour
made of poles and brush and wattling. Here, where the ground had been
trodden firm, the age and maturity as well as the youth and beauty of
Israel gathered in such poor festal array as they had been able to save
from their ravaged stores.

The Twelve Apostles led off in a double cotillion, to the moving strains
of a violin and horn, the lively jingle of a string of sleigh-bells, and
the genial snoring of a tambourine. Then came dextrous displays in the
dances of our forbears, who followed the fiddle to the Fox-chase Inn or
Garden of Gray's Ferry. There were French Fours, Copenhagen jigs,
Virginia reels,--spirited figures blithely stepped. And the grave-faced,
square-jawed Elders seemed as eager as the unthinking youths and maidens
to throw off for the moment the burden of their cares.

From midday until the April sun dipped below the sharp skyline of the
Omaha hills, the modest revel endured. Then silence was called by a
grim-faced, hard-voiced Elder, who announced:

"The Lute of the Holy Ghost will now say a word of farewell from our
pioneers to those who must stay behind."

He stood before them erect, brave, confident; and the fire of his faith
warmed his voice into their hearts.

"Children of Israel, we are going into the wilderness to lay the
foundations of a temple to the most high God, so that when his Son, our
elder Brother, shall come on earth again, He may have a place where He
can lay His head and spend, not only a night or a day, but rest until He
can say, 'I am satisfied!'--a place, too, where you can obtain the
ordinances of salvation for yourselves, your living, and your dead. Let
your prayers go with us. We have been thrust out of Babylon, but to our
eternal salvation. We care no more for persecution than for the whistle
of the north wind, the croaking of the crane that flies over our heads,
or the crackling of thorns under a pot. True, some of our dearest, our
best-loved, have dropped by the way; they have fallen asleep, but what
of that?--and who cares? It is as well to live as to die, or to die as
to live--as well to sleep as to be awake. It is all one. They have only
gone a little before us; and we shall soon strike hands with them across
those poor, mean, empty graves back there on the forlorn prairies of
Iowa. For you must let me clench this God's truth into your minds; that
you stand now in your last lot, in the end of your days when the Son of
Man cometh again. Afflictions shall be sent to humble and to prove you,
but oh! stand fast to your teachings so that not one of you may be lost.
May sinners in Zion become afraid henceforth, and fearfulness surprise
the hypocrite from this hour! And now may the favour and blessing of
God be manifest upon you while we are absent from one another!"

When the fervent amens had died away they sang the farewell hymn:--

  "Thrones shall totter, Babel fall,
   Satan reign no more at all;

  "Saints shall gain the victory,
   Truth prevail o'er land and sea;

  "Gentile tyrants sink to hell;
   Now's the day of Israel."

The words of the young Elder were felt to be highly consoling; but a
toast given by Brigham that night was longer talked of. It was at a
farewell party at the house of Bishop Wright. On the hay-covered floor
of the banquet-room, amid the lights of many candles hung from the
ceiling and about the walls in their candelabra of hollowed turnips, the
great man had been pleased to prophesy blessings profusely upon the
assembled guests.

"I am awful proud," he began, "of the way the Lord has favoured us. I am
proud all the time of his Elders, his servants, and his handmaids. And
when they do well I am prouder still. I don't know but I'll get so proud
that I'll be four or five times prouder than I am now. As I once said to
Sidney Rigdon, our boat is an old snag boat and has never been out of
Snag-harbour. But it will root up the snags, run them down, split them,
and scatter them to the four quarters. Our ship is the old ship of
Zion; and nothing that runs foul of her can withstand her shock and
fury."

Then had followed the toast, which was long remembered for its dauntless
spirit.

"Here's wishing that all the mobocrats of the nineteenth century were in
the middle of the sea, in a stone canoe, with an iron paddle; that a
shark would swallow the canoe, and the shark be thrust into the
nethermost part of hell, with the door locked, the key lost, and a blind
man looking for it!"




CHAPTER IX.


_Into the Wilderness_

Onto the West at last to build the house of God in the mountains. On to
what Daniel Webster had lately styled "a region of savages and wild
beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus
and prairie-dogs."

The little band of pioneers chosen to break a way for the main body of
the Saints consisted of a hundred and forty-three men, three women, and
two children. They were to travel in seventy-three wagons, drawn by
horses and oxen. They knew not where they were to stop, but they were
men of eager initiative, fearless and determined; and their consolation
was that, while their exodus into the desert meant hardship and grievous
suffering, it also promised them freedom from Gentile interference. It
was not a fat land into which they were venturing; but at least it was a
land without a past, lying clean as it came from the hand of its maker,
where they could be free to worship God without fearing the narrow
judgment of the frivolous. Instructed in the sacred mysteries revealed
to Joseph Smith through the magic light of the Urim and Thummim, and
sustained by the divine message engraved on the golden plates he had dug
up from the hill of Cumorah, they were now ready to feel their way
across the continent and blaze a trail to the new Jerusalem.

They went in military style with due precautions against surprise by the
Lamanites--the wretched red remnant of Abraham's seed--that swarmed on
every side.

Brigham Young was lieutenant-general; Stephen Markham was colonel; the
redoubtable John Pack was first major, and Shadrach Roundy, second.
There were two captains of hundreds and fourteen captains of tens. The
orders of the lieutenant-general required each man to walk constantly
beside his wagon, leaving it only by his officer's commands. To make the
force compact, the wagons were to move two abreast where they could.
Every man was to keep his weapons loaded. If the gun was a caplock, the
cap was to be taken off and a piece of leather put on to exclude
moisture and dirt; if a flintlock, the filling was to be taken out and
the pan filled with tow or cotton.

Their march was not only cautious but orderly. At five A.M. the bugle
sounded for rising, two hours being allowed for prayers and breakfast.
At night each man had to retire to his wagon for prayer at eight-thirty,
and to rest at nine. If they camped by a river they drew the wagons into
a semicircle with the river at its base. Other times the wagons made a
circle, a fore-wheel of one touching a rear wheel of the next, thus
providing a corral for the stock. In such manner was the wisdom of the
Lord concerning this hegira supplemented in detail by the worldly
forethought of his servant Brigham.

They started along the north bank of the Platte River under the
auspicious shine of an April sun. A better route was along the south
bank where grass was more plentiful and the Indians less troublesome.
But along the south bank parties of migrating Gentiles might also be
met, and these sons of perdition were to be avoided at any cost--"at
least for the present," said Brigham, in tones of sage significance.

And so for two hundred miles they broke a new way over the plains, to be
known years after as "the old Mormon trail," to be broadened later by
the gold-seekers of forty-nine, and still later to be shod with steel,
when the miracle of a railway was worked in the desert.

To Joel Rae, Elder after the order of Melchisedek, unsullied product of
the temple priesthood, it was a time of wondrous soul-growth. In that
mysterious realm of pathless deserts, of illimitable prairies and
boundless plains, of nameless rivers and colossal hills, a land of
dreams, of romance, of marvellous adventure, he felt strange powers
growing within him. It seemed that in such a place the one who opened
his soul to heaven must become endowed with all those singular gifts he
had longed for. He looked confidently forward to the time when they
should regard him as a man who could work miracles.

At the head of Grand Island they came to vast herds of buffalo--restless
brown seas of humped, shaggy backs and fiercely lowered heads. In their
first efforts to slay these they shot them full in the forehead, and
were dismayed to find that their bullets rebounded harmlessly. They
solved the mystery later, discovering the hide on the skull of a dead
bull to be an inch thick and covered with a mat of gnarled hair in
itself almost a shield against bullets. Joel Rae, with the divine right
of youth, drew for them from this circumstance an instructive parallel.

So was the head of their own church protected against Gentile shafts by
the hide of righteousness and the matted hair of faith.

The Indians killed buffalo by riding close and striking them with an
arrow at the base of the spine; whereupon the beast would fall
paralysed, to be hamstrung at leisure. Only by some such infernal
strategy, the young Elder assured them, could the Gentiles ever
henceforth cast them down.

For many days their way lay through these herds of buffalo--herds so
far-reaching that none could count their numbers or even see their
farther line, lost in the distance over the swell of the plains. Often
their way was barred until a herd would pass, making the earth tremble,
and with a noise like muffled thunder. They waited gladly, feeling that
these were obstacles on the way to Zion.

Thus far it had been a land of moderate plenty, one in which they were,
at least, not compelled to look to Heaven for manna. Besides the buffalo
which the hunters learned to kill, they found deer, antelope, great
flocks of geese and splendid bronzed wild turkeys. Even the truculent
grizzly came to be numbered among their trophies.

Day after day marched the bearded host,--farmers with ploughs, mechanics
with tools, builders, craftsmen, woodsmen, all the needed factors of a
colony, led by the greatest coloniser of modern times, their one great
aim being to make ready some spot in the wilderness for the second
advent of the Messiah. All about them was the prairie, its long grass
gently billowed by the spring breeze. On the far right, blue in the
haze, was a continuous range of lofty bluffs. On the left the waters of
the Platte, muddied by the spring freshets, flowed over beds of
quicksand between groves of cottonwood that pleasantly fringed its
banks. The hard labour and the constant care demanded by the dangers
that surrounded them prevented any from feeling the monotony of the
landscape.

Besides the regular trials of the march there were wagons to be "snaked"
across the streams, tires to be reset and yokes to be mended at each
"lay-by," strayed stock to be hunted, and a thousand contingencies
sufficient to drive from their minds all but the one thought that they
had been thrown forth from a Christian land for the offence of
worshipping God according to the dictates of their own consciences.

Joel Rae, walking beside his wagon, meditated chiefly upon the manner in
which his Witness would first manifest itself. The wonder came, in a
way, while he thus meditated. Late one afternoon the scouts thrown in
advance came hurrying back to report a large band of Indians strung out
in battle array a few miles ahead. The wagons were at once formed five
abreast, their one cannon was wheeled to the front, and the company
advanced in close formation. Perceiving these aggressive manoeuvres, the
Indians seemed to change their plan and, instead of coming on to attack,
were seen to be setting fire to the prairie.

The result might well have been disastrous, as the wind was blowing
toward the train. Joel Rae saw it; saw that the time had come for a
miracle if the little company of Saints was to be saved a serious
rebuff. He quickly entered his wagon and began to pray. He prayed that
the Lord might avert this calamity and permit the handful of faithful
ones to proceed in peace to fashion His temple on earth.

When he began to pray there had been outside a woful confusion of
sounds,--scared and plunging horses, bellowing oxen, excited men
shouting to the stock and to one another, the barking of dogs and the
rattling of the wagons. Through this din he prayed, scarcely hearing his
own voice, yet feeling within himself the faith that he knew must
prevail. And then as he prayed he became conscious that these noises
had subsided to a wonderful silence. A moment this lasted, and then he
heard it broken by a mighty shout of gladness, followed by excited calls
from one man to another.

He looked out in calm certainty to observe in what manner the Lord had
consented to answer his petition. He saw that the wind had veered and,
even as he looked, large drops of rain came pounding musically upon his
wagon-cover. Far in front of them a long, low line of flame was crawling
to the west, while above it lurid clouds of smoke rolled away from them.
In another moment the full force of the shower was upon them from a sky
that half an hour before had been cloudless. Far off to the right
scurried the Indians, their feathery figures lying low upon the backs of
their small ponies. His heart swelled within him, and he fell again to
his knees with many earnest words of thanksgiving for the intercession.

They at once made camp for the night, and by Brigham's fire later in the
evening Joel Rae confided the truth of his miracle to that good man,
taking care not to utter the words with any delight or pride in himself.
He considered that Brigham was unduly surprised by the occurrence;
almost displeased in fact; showing a tendency to attribute the day's
good fortune to phenomena wholly natural. Although the miracle had
seemed to him a small, simple thing, he now felt a little ashamed of his
performance. He was pleased to note, however, that Brigham became more
gracious to him after a short period of reflection. He praised him
indeed for the merit which he seemed to have gained in the Lord's sight;
taking occasion to remind him, however, that he, Brigham, had meant to
produce the same effects by a prayer of his own in due time to save the
train from destruction; that he had chosen to wait, however, in order to
try the faith of the Saints.

"As a matter of fact, Brother Joel," he concluded, "I don't know as
there is any limit to the power with which the Lord has blessed me. I
tell you I feel equal to any miracle--even to raising the dead, I
sometimes think--I feel that fired up with the Holy Ghost!"

"I am sure you will do even that, Brother Brigham." And the young man's
eyes swam with mingled gratitude and admiration. He resolved in his
wagon that night, that when the time came for another miracle, he would
not selfishly usurp the honour of performing it. He would not again
forestall the able Brigham.

By the first of June they had wormed their way over five hundred miles
of plain to the trading post of Fort Laramie. Here they were at last
forced to cross the Platte and to take up their march along the Oregon
trail. They were now in the land of alkaline deserts, of sage-brush and
greasewood, of sad, bleak, deadly stretches; a land where the favour of
Heaven might have to be called upon if they were to survive. Yet it was
a land not without inspiration,--a land of immense distances, of long,
dim perspectives, and of dreamy visions in the far, vague haze. In such
a land, thought Joel Rae, the spirit of the Lord must draw closer to the
children of earth. In such a land no miracle should be too difficult.
And so it came that he was presently enabled to put in Brigham's way the
opportunity of performing a work of mercy which he himself would have
been glad to do, but for the fear of affronting the Prophet.

A band of mounted Sioux had met them one day with friendly advances and
stopped to trade. Among the gaudy warriors Joel Rae's attention was
called to a boy who had lost an arm. He made inquiries, and found him to
be the son of the chief. The chief himself made it plain to Joel that
the young man had lost his arm ten moons before in a combat with a
grizzly bear. Whereupon the young Elder cordially bade the chief bring
his crippled son to their own great chief, who would, by the gracious
power of God, miraculously restore the missing member.

A few moments later the three were before Brigham, who was standing by
his wagon; Joel Rae, glowing with a glad and confident serenity; the
tawny chief with his sable braids falling each side of his painted face,
gay in his head-dress of dyed eagle plumes, his buckskin shirt jewelled
with blue beads and elk's teeth, warlike with his bow and steel-pointed
arrows; and the young man, but little less ornate than his splendid
father, stoical, yet scarce able to subdue the flash of hope in his
eyes as he looked up to the great white chief.

Brigham looked at them questioningly. Joel announced their errand.

"It's a rare opportunity, Brother Brigham, to bring light to these
wretched Lamanites. This boy had his arm torn off a year ago in a fight
with a grizzly. You know you told me that day I brought the rain-storm
that you could well-nigh raise the dead, so this will be easy for you."

Brigham still looked puzzled, so the young man added with a flash of
enthusiasm: "Restore this poor creature's arm and the noise of the
miracle will go all through these tribes;" he paused expectantly.

It is the mark of true greatness that it may never be found unprepared.
Now and again it may be made to temporise for a moment, cunningly
adopting one expedient or another to hide its unreadiness--but never
more than briefly.

Brigham had looked slowly from the speaker to the Indians and slowly
back again. Then he surveyed several bystanders who had been attracted
to the group, and his eyelids were seen to work rapidly, as if in
sympathetic pace with his thoughts. Then all at once he faced Joel.

"Brother Rae, have you reflected about this?"

"Why--Brother Brigham--no--not reflected--perhaps if we both prayed with
hearts full of faith, the Lord might--"

"Brother Rae!"

There was sternness in the voice now, and the young man trembled before
the Lion of the Lord.

"You mistake me. I guess I'm a good enough servant of the Lord, so my
own prayer would restore this arm without any of your help; yes, I guess
the Lord and me could do it without _you_--if we thought it was best.
Now pay attention. Do you believe in the resurrection of the body?"

"I do, Brother Brigham, and of course I didn't mean to"--he was blushing
now.

"Do you believe the day of judgment is at hand?"

"I do."

"How near?"

"You and our priests and Elders say it will come in 1870."

"Correct! How many years is that from now?"

"Twenty-three, Brother Brigham."

"Yes, twenty-three. Now then, how many years are there to be after
that?"

"How many--surely an eternity!"

"More than twenty-three years, then--much more?"

"Eternity means endless time."

"Oh, it does, does it?"

There had been gradually sounding in his voice a ring of triumph which
now became distinct.

"Well, then, answer me this--and remember it shall be as you say to the
best of my influence with the Lord--you shall be responsible for this
poor remnant of the seed of Cain. Now, don't be rash! Is it better for
this poor creature to continue with his one arm here for the
twenty-three years the world is to endure, and then pass on to eternity
where he will have his two arms forever; or, do you want me to renew his
arm now and let him go through eternity a freak, a monstrosity? Do you
want him to suffer a little inconvenience these few days he has here, or
do you want him to go through an endless hereafter with _three arms_?"

The young man gazed at him blankly with a dropped jaw.

"Come, what do you say? I'm full of faith. Shall I--"

"No--no, Brother Brigham; don't--for God's sake, don't! Of course he
would be resurrected with three arms. You think of everything, Brother
Brigham!"

The Indians had meanwhile been growing puzzled and impatient. He now
motioned them to follow him.

By dint of many crude efforts in the sign language and an earnest use of
the few words known to both, he succeeded, after a long time, in putting
the facts before the chief and his son; They, after an animated
conversation, succeeded with much use of the sign language in conveying
to Joel Rae the information that the young man was not at all dismayed
by the prospect of having three arms during the next life. He gathered,
indeed, that both father and son would be rather elated than otherwise
by this circumstance, seeming to suspect that the extra member must
confer superior prowess and high distinction upon its possessor.

But he shook his head with much determination, and refused to take them
again before the great white chief. The thought troubled him exceedingly
and would not be gone--yet he knew not how to account for it--that
Brigham would not receive this novel view of the matter with any
cordiality.

When they were camped that night, Brigham made a suggestion to him.

"Brother Rae, it ain't just the best plan in the world to come on a man
sudden that way for so downright a miracle. A man can't be always fired
up with the Holy Ghost, with all the cares of this train on his mind.
You come and have a private talk with me beforehand after this, when you
got a miracle you want done."

He prayed more fervently than ever that night to be made "wise and good
like thy servant Brigham"--also for the gift of tongues to come upon him
so that he might instruct the Indians in the threefold character of the
Godhead and in other matters pertaining to their salvation.




CHAPTER X.


_The Promised Land_

So far on their march the Lord had protected them from all but ordinary
hardships. True, some members of the company had suffered from a fever
which they attributed to the clouds of dust that enveloped the column of
wagons when in motion, and to the great change of temperature from day
to night. Again, the most of them were for many weeks without bread,
saving for the sick the little flour they had and subsisting upon the
meat provided by the hunters. Before reaching Fort Laramie, too, their
stock had become weakened for want of food; an extended drought, the
vast herds of buffalo, and the Indian fires having combined to destroy
the pasturage.

This weakness of the animals made the march for many days not more than
five or six miles a day. At the last they had fed to the stock not only
all their grain but the most of their crackers and other breadstuffs.
But these were slight matters to a persecuted people gathering out of
Babylon.

Late in June they reached the South Pass. For many hundred miles they
had been climbing the backbone of the continent. Now they had reached
the summit, the dividing ridge between streams that flowed to the
Atlantic and streams that flowed to the Pacific. From the level prairies
they had toiled up into the fearsome Rockies where bleak, grim crags
lowered upon them from afar, and distant summits glistening with snow
warned them of the perils ahead.

Through all this time of marching the place where they should pitch the
tent of Israel was not fixed upon. When Brigham was questioned around
the camp-fire at night, his only reply was that he would know the site
of their new home when he saw it. And it came to be told among the men
that he had beheld in vision a tent settling down from heaven and
resting over a certain spot; and that a voice had said to him, "Here is
the place where my people Israel shall pitch their tents and spread wide
the curtains of Zion!" It was enough. He would recognise the spot when
they reached it.

From the trappers, scouts, and guides encountered along the road they
had received much advice as to eligible locations; and while this was
various as to sites recommended, the opinion had been unanimous that the
Salt Lake Valley was impossible. It was, they were told, sandy, barren,
rainless, destitute of timber and vegetation, infested with hordes of
hungry crickets, and roamed over by bands of the most savage Indians. In
short, no colony could endure there.

One by one the trappers they met voiced this opinion. There was
Bordeaux, the grizzled old Frenchman, clad in ragged buckskin; Moses
Harris; "Pegleg" Smith, whose habit of profanity was shocking; Miles
Goodyear, fresh from captivity among the Blackfeet; and James Bridger.
The latter had discovered Great Salt Lake twenty-five years before, and
was especially vehement in his condemnation of the valley. They had
halted a day at his "fort," two adjoining log houses with dirt roofs,
surrounded by a high stockade of logs, and built on one of several small
islands formed by the branches of Black's Fork. Here they had found the
old trapper amid a score of nondescript human beings, white men, Indian
women, and half-breed children.

Bridger had told them very concisely that he would pay them a thousand
dollars for the first ear of corn raised in Salt Lake Valley. It is true
that Bridger seemed to have become pessimistic in many matters. For one,
the West was becoming overcrowded and the price of furs was falling at a
rate to alarm the most conservative trapper. He referred feelingly to
the good old days when one got ten dollars a pound for prime beaver
skins in St. Louis; but "now it's a skin for a plug of tobacco, and
three for a cup of powder, and other fancies in the same proportion."
And so, had his testimony been unsupported, they might have suspected he
was underestimating the advantages of the Salt Lake Valley. But,
corroborated as he had been by his brother trappers, they began to
descend the western slope of the Rockies strong in the opinion that this
same Salt Lake Valley was the land that had been chosen for them by the
Lord.

They dared not, indeed, go to a fertile land, for there the Gentiles
would be tempted to follow them--with the old bloody end. Only in a
desert such as these men had described the Salt Lake Valley to be could
they hope for peace. From Fort Bridger, then, their route bent to the
southwest along the rocky spurs of the Uintah Mountains, whose snow-clad
tops gleamed a bluish white in the July sun.

By the middle of July the vanguard of the company began the descent of
Echo Canon,--a narrow slit cut straight down a thousand feet into the
red sandstone,--the pass which a handful of them was to hold a few years
later against a whole army of the hated Gentiles.

The hardest part of their journey was still before them. Their road had
now to be made as they went, lying wholly among the mountains. Lofty
hills, deep ravines with jagged sides, forbidding canons, all but
impassable streams, rock-bound and brush-choked,--up and down, through
or over all these obstacles they had now to force a passage, cutting
here, digging there; now double-locking the wheels of their wagons to
prevent their crashing down some steep incline; now putting five teams
to one load to haul it up the rock-strewn side of some water-way.

From Echo Canon they went down the Weber, then toward East Canon, a
dozen of the bearded host going forward with spades and axes as sappers.
Sometimes they made a mile in five hours; sometimes they were less
lucky. But at length they were fighting their way up the choked East
Canon, starting fierce gray wolves from their lairs in the rocks and
hearing at every rod of their hard-fought way the swift and unnerving
song of the coiled rattlesnake.

Eight fearful miles they toiled through this gash in the mountain; then
over another summit,--Big Mountain; down this dangerous slide, all
wheels double-locked, on to the summit of another lofty hill,--Little
Mountain; and abruptly down again into the rocky gorge afterwards to
become historic as Immigration Canon.

Following down this gorge, never doubting they should come at last to
their haven, they found its mouth to be impassable. Rocks, brush, and
timber choked the way. Crossing to the south side, they went sheerly up
the steep hill--so steep that it was all but impossible for the
straining animals to drag up the heavy wagons, and so narrow that a
false step might have dashed wagon and team half a thousand feet on to
the rocks below.

But at last they stood on the summit,--and broke into shouts of rapture
as they looked. For the wilderness home of Israel had been found. Far
and wide below them stretched their promised land,--a broad, open
valley hemmed in by high mountains that lay cold and far and still in
the blue haze. Some of these had slept since the world began under their
canopies of snow, and these flashed a sunlit glory into the eager eyes
of the pilgrims. Others reared bare, scathed peaks above slopes that
were shaggy with timber. And out in front lay the wondrous lake,--a
shield of deepest glittering turquois held to the dull, gray breast of
the valley.

Again and again they cried out, "Hosanna to God and the Lamb!" and many
of the bearded host shed tears, for the hardships of the way had
weakened them.

Then Brigham came, lying pale and wasted in his wagon, and when they saw
him gaze long, and heard him finally say, "Enough--drive on!" they knew
that on this morning of July 24, 1847, they had found the spot where in
vision he had seen the tent of the Lord come down to earth.

Joel Rae had waited with a beating heart for Brigham's word of
confirmation, and when he heard it his soul was filled to overflowing.
He knew that here the open vision would enfold him; here the angel of
the Lord would come to him fetching his great Witness. Here he would
rise to immeasurable zeniths of spirituality. And here his people would
become a mighty people of the Lord. He foresaw the hundred unwalled
cities that Brigham was to found, and the green gardens that were to
make the now desert valley a fit setting for the temple of God. Here
was a stricken Rachel, a barren Sarah to be transformed by the touch of
the Saints to a mother of many children. Here would the lambs of the
Lord be safe at last from the Gentile wolves--safe for a time at least,
until so long as it might take the Lions of the Lord to come to their
growth. And that was to be no indefinite period; for had not Brigham
just said, with a snap of his great jaws and a cold flash of his blue
eyes, "Let us alone ten years here, and we'll ask no odds of Uncle Sam
or the Devil!"

There on the summit they knelt to entreat the mercy of God upon the
land. The next day, by their leader's direction, they consecrated the
valley to the Lord, and planted six acres of potatoes.




CHAPTER XI.


_Another Miracle and a Temptation in the Wilderness_

The floor of the valley was an arid waste, flat and treeless, a far
sweep of gray and gold, of sage-brush spangled with sunflowers, patched
here and there with glistening beds of salt and soda, or pools of the
deadly alkali. Here crawled the lizard and the rattlesnake; and there
was no music to the desolation save the petulant chirp of the cricket.
At the sides an occasional stream tumbled out of the mountains to be all
but drunk away at once by the thirsty sands. Along the banks of these
was the only green to be found, sparse fringes of willow and wild rose.
On the borders of the valley, where the steeps arose, were little
patches of purple and dusty brown, oak-bush, squaw-berry, a few dwarfed
cedars, and other scant growths. At long intervals could be found a
marsh of wire-grass, or a few acres of withered bunch-grass. But these
served only to emphasise the prevailing desert tones.

The sun-baked earth was so hard that it broke their ploughs when they
tried to turn it. Not until they had spread water upon it from the river
they had named Jordan could the ploughs be used. Such was the new
Canaan, the land held in reserve by the Lord for His chosen people since
the foundations of the world were laid.

Dreary though it was, they were elated. Had not a Moses led them out of
bondage up into this chamber of the mountains against the day of wrath
that was to consume the Gentile world? And would he not smite the rocks
for water? Would he not also be a Joshua to sit in judgment and divide
to Israel his inheritance?

They waited not nor demurred, but fell to work. Within a week they had
explored the valley and its canons, made a road to the timber eight
miles away, built a saw-pit, sawed lumber for a skiff, ploughed,
planted, and irrigated half a hundred acres of the parched soil, and
begun the erection of many dwellings, some of logs, some of adobes.
Ground had also been chosen and consecrated by Brigham, whereon, in due
time, they would build up their temple to the God of Jacob.

Meantime, they would continue to gather out of Babylon. During the late
summer and fall many wagons arrived from the Missouri, so that by the
beginning of winter their number was nearly two thousand. They lived
rudely, a lucky few in the huts they had built; more in tents and
wagon-boxes. Nor did they fail to thank Providence for the mild winter
vouchsafed to them during this unprotected period, permitting them not
only to survive, but to continue their labours--of logging,
home-building, the making of rough furniture, and the repairing of
wagons and tools.

When the early spring came they were again quickly at the land with
their seeds. Over five thousand acres were sown to needful produce. When
this began to sprout with every promise of a full harvest, their joy was
boundless; for their stock of breadstuffs and provisions had fallen low
during the winter, and could not last later than harvest-time, even with
rigid economy.

But early in June, in the full flush of this springtide of promise, it
appeared that the Lord was minded to chasten them. For into their broad,
green fields came the ravenous crickets in wide, black streams down the
mountain sides. Over the growing grain they spread as a pall, and the
tender sprouts were consumed to the ground. In their track they left no
stalk nor growing blade.

Starvation now faced the Saints. In their panic they sought to fight the
all-devouring pest. While some went wildly through the fields killing
the crickets, others ran trenches and tried to drown them. Still others
beat them back with sticks and brooms, or burned them by fires set in
the fields. But against the oncoming horde these efforts were
unavailing. Where hundreds were destroyed hundreds of thousands
appeared.

Despair seized the Saints, the bitter despair of a cheated, famished
people--deluded even by their God. In their shorn fields they wept and
cursed, knowing at last they could not stay the pest.

Then into the fields came Joel Rae, rebuking the frenzied men and women.
The light of a high faith was upon him as he called out to them:

"Have I not preached to you all winter the way to salvation in times
like this? Does faith mean one thing in my mouth and another thing here?
Why waste yourselves with those foolish tricks of fire and water? They
only make you forget Jehovah--you fools--you poor, blind fools--to
palter so!"

He raised his voice, and the wondering group about him grew large.

"Down, down on your knees and pray--pray--pray! I tell you the Lord
shall _not_ suffer you to perish!"

Then, as but one or two obeyed him--

"So your hearts have been hardened? Then my own prayer shall save you!"

Down he knelt in the midst of the group, while they instinctively drew
back from him on all sides. But as his voice rose, a voice that had
never failed to move them, they, too, began to kneel, at first those
near him, then others back of them, until a hundred knelt about him.

He had not observed them, but with eyes closed he prayed on, pouring out
his heart in penitent supplication.

"These people are but little children, after all, seeing not, groping
blindly, attempting weakly, blundering always, yet never faltering in
love for Thee. Now I, Thy servant, humble and lowly, from whom Thou hast
already taken in hardest ways all that his heart held dear, who will
to-day give his body to be crucified, if need be, for this people--I
implore Thee to save these blundering children now, in this very moment.
I ask nothing for myself but that--"

As his words rang out, there had been quick, low, startled murmurs from
the kneeling group about him; and now loud shouts interrupted his
prayer. He opened his eyes. From off toward the lake great flocks of
gulls had appeared, whitening the sky, and now dulling all other sounds
with the beating of their wings and their high, plaintive cries. Quickly
they settled upon the fields in swirling drifts, so that the land all
about lay white as with snow.

A groan went up,--"They will finish what the crickets have left."

He had risen to his feet, looking intently. Then he gave an exultant
shout.

"No! No!--they are eating only the _crickets_!--the white birds are
devouring the black pests; the hosts of heaven and hell have met, and
the powers of light have triumphed once more over darkness! _Pray_--pray
now with all your hearts in thanksgiving for this mercy!"

And again they knelt, many with streaming eyes, while he led them in a
prayer of gratitude for this wondrous miracle.

All day long the white birds fed upon the crickets, and when they left
at night the harvest had been saved. Thus had Heaven vouchsafed a second
miracle to the Lute of the Holy Ghost. It is small wonder then if his
views of the esteem in which he was held by that power were now greatly
enlarged.

In August, thanks to the Heaven-sent gulls, they were able to celebrate
with a feast their first "Harvest Home." In the centre of the big
stockade a bowery was built, and under its shade tables were spread and
richly laden with the first fruits their labours had won from the
desert,--white bread and golden butter, green corn, watermelons, and
many varieties of vegetables. Hoisted on poles for exhibition were
immense sheaves of wheat, rye, barley, and oats, coaxed from the arid
level with the water they had cunningly spread upon it.

There were prayers and public thanksgiving, songs and speeches and
dancing. It was the flush of their first triumph over the desert. Until
nightfall the festival lasted, and at its close Elder Rae stood up to
address them on the subject of their past trials and present blessings.
The silence was instant, and the faces were all turned eagerly upon him,
for it was beginning to be suspected that he had more than even priestly
power.

"To-day," he said, "the favour and blessing of God have been manifest
upon us. But let us not forget our debts and duties in this feasting of
the flesh. Afflictions are necessary to humble and prove us, and we
shall have them as often as they are needed. Oh, never doubt it! I have,
indeed, but one fear concerning this people in the valleys of the
mountains--but one trembling fear in the nerves of my spirit--and that
is lest we do not live the religion we profess. If we will only cleave
to that faith in our practise, I tell you we are at the defiance of all
hell. But if we transgress the law God has given us, and trample His
mercies, blessings, and ordinances under our feet, treating them with
the indifference I have thought some occasionally do, not realising
their sins, I tell you that in consequence we shall be overcome, and the
Lord will let us be again smitten and scattered. Take it to heart. May
the God of heaven fill you with the Holy Ghost and give you light and
joy in His Kingdom."

When he was done many pressed forward to take his hand, the young and
the old, for they had both learned to reverence him.

Near the outer edge of the throng was a red-lipped Juno, superbly
rounded, who had gleaned in the fields until she was all a Gipsy brown,
and her movements of a Gipsy grace in their freeness. She did not greet
the young Elder as did the others, seeming, indeed, to be unconscious of
his presence. Yet she lingered near as they scattered off into the dusk,
in little groups or one by one; and still she stood there when all were
gone, now venturing just a glance at him from deep gray eyes set under
black brows, turning her splendid head a little to bring him into view.
He saw the figure and came forward, peeringly.

"Mara Cavan--yes, yes, so it is!" He took her hand, somewhat timidly, an
observer would have said. "Your father is not able to be out? I shall
walk down with you to see him--if you're ready now."

She had been standing much like a statue, in guarded restraint, but at
his words and the touch of his hand she seemed to melt and flow into
eager acquiescence, murmuring some hurried little words of thanks for
her father, and stepping by his side with eyes down.

They went out into the soft summer night, past the open doors where
rejoicing groups still lingered, the young standing, the old sitting in
chairs by the doors of their huts. Then they were out of the stockade
and off toward the southern end of the settlement. A big, golden moon
had come up over the jagged edge of the eastern hills,--a moon that left
the valley in a mystic sheen of gold and blue, and threw their shadows
madly into one as they walked. They heard the drowsy chirp of the
cricket, now harmless, and the low cry of an owl. They felt the
languorous warmth of the night, spiced with a hint of chilliness, and
they felt each other near. They had felt this nearness before. One of
them had learned to fear it, to tremble for himself at the thought of
it. The other had learned to dream of it, and to long for it, and to
wonder why it should be denied.

Now, as they stepped side by side, their hands brushed together, and he
caught hers in his grasp, turning to look full upon her. Her ecstasy was
poignant; she trembled in her walk. But she looked straight
ahead,--waiting. To both of them it seemed that the earth rocked under
their feet. He looked long at her profile, softened in the magic light.
She felt his eyes upon her, and still she waited, in a trembling
ecstasy, stepping closely by his side. She felt him draw a long breath,
and then another, quickly,--and then he spoke.

In words that were well-chosen but somewhat hurried, he proceeded to
instruct her in the threefold character of the Godhead. The voice at
first was not like his own, but as he went on it grew steadier. After
she drew her hand gently out of his, which she presently did, it seemed
to regain its normal pitch and calmness.

He saw her to the door of the cabin on the outskirts of the settlement,
and there he spoke a few words of cheer to her ailing father.

Then he was off into the desert, pacing swiftly into the grim, sandy
solitude beyond the farthest cabin light and the bark of the outmost
watch-dog. Feverishly he walked, and far, until at last, as if naught in
himself could avail, he threw himself to the ground and prayed.

"Keep me _good_! Keep me to my vows! Help me till my own strength grows,
for I am weak and wanting. Let me endure the pain until this wicked
fire within me hath burned itself out. Keep me for _her_!"

Back where the houses were, in the shadow of one of them, was the
flushed, full-breathing woman, hurt but dumb, wondering, in her bruised
tenderness, why it must be so.

Still farther back, inside the stockade, where the gossiping groups yet
lingered, they were saying it was strange that Elder Rae waited so long
to take him a wife or two.




CHAPTER XII.


_A Fight for Life_

The stream of Saints to the Great Basin had become well-nigh
continuous--Saints of all degrees of prosperity, from Parley Pratt, the
Archer of Paradise, with his wealth of wives, wagons, and cattle, to
Barney Bigler, unblessed with wives or herds, who put his earthly goods
on a wheelbarrow, and, to the everlasting glory of God, trundled it from
the Missouri River to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. Train after
train set out for the new Zion with faith that God would drop manna
before them.

Each train was a little migrating State in itself. And never was the
natural readiness of the American pioneer more luminously displayed. At
every halt of the wagons a shoemaker would be seen searching for a
lapstone; a gunsmith would be mending a rifle, and weavers would be at
their wheels or looms. The women early discovered that the jolting
wagons would churn their cream to butter; and for bread, very soon after
the halt was made, the oven hollowed out of the hillside was heated, and
the dough, already raised, was in to bake. One mother in Israel brought
proudly to the Lake a piece of cloth, the wool for which she had
sheared, dyed, spun, and woven during her march.

Nor did the marches ever cease to be fraught with peril and, hardship.
There were tempests, droughts, famines, stampedes of the stock, prairie
fires, and Indian forays. Hundreds of miles across the plain and through
the mountains the Indians would trail after them, like sharks in the
wake of a ship, tirelessly watching, waiting for the right moment to
stampede the stock, to fire the prairie, or to descend upon stragglers.

One by one the trains worked down into the valley, the tired Saints
making fresh their covenants by rebaptism as they came. In the waters of
the River Jordan, Joel Rae made hundreds to be renewed in the Kingdom,
swearing them to obey Brigham, the Lord's anointed, in all his orders,
spiritual or temporal, and the priesthood or either of them, and all
church authorities in like manner; to regard this obligation as superior
to all laws of the United States and all earthly laws whatsoever; to
cherish enmity against the government of the United States, that the
blood of Joseph Smith and the Apostles slain in that generation might be
avenged; and to keep the matter of this oath a profound secret then and
forever. And from these waters of baptism the purified Saints went to
their inheritances in Zion--took their humble places, and began to sweat
and bleed in the upbuilding of the new Jerusalem.

[Illustration: "_I'M_ THE ONE WILL HAVE TO BE CAUGHT"]

From a high, tented wagon in one such train, creaking its rough way
down Emigration Canon, with straining oxen and tired but eager people,
there had leaped one late afternoon the girl whose eyes were to call to
him so potently,--incomparable eyes, large and deep, of a velvety
grayness, under black brows splendidly bent. Nor had the eyes alone
voiced that call to his starved senses. He had caught the free, fearless
confidence of her leap over the wheel, and her graceful abandon as she
stood there, finely erect and full-curved, her head with its Greek lines
thrown well back, and her strong hands raised to readjust the dusky hair
that tumbled about her head like a storm-cloud.

Men from the train were all about, and others from the settlement, and
these spoke to her, some in serious greeting, some with jesting words.
She returned it all in good part without embarrassment,--even the sally
of the winking wag who called out, "Now then, Mara Cavan! Here we are,
and a girl like yourself ought to catch an Elder, at the very lowest."

She laughed with easy good-nature, still fumbling in the dusk of blown
hair at the back of her head, showing a full-lipped mouth, beautifully
large, with strong-looking, white teeth. "I'll catch never a one myself,
if you please, Nathan Tanner! I'll do no catching at _all_, now! _I'm_
the one will have to be caught!"

Her voice was a contralto, with the little hint of roughness that made
it warm and richly golden; that made it fall, indeed, upon the ears of
the listening Elder like a cathedral chime calling him to forget all and
worship--forget all but that he was five and twenty with the hot blood
surging and crowding and crying out in his veins.

Now, having a little subdued the tossing storm-cloud of hair, she stood
with one hand upon her hip and the other shading her eyes, looking
intently into the streets of the new settlement. And again there was
bantering jest from the men about, and the ready, careless response from
her, with gestures of an impishly reckless unconcern, of a full
readiness to give and take in easy good-fellowship. But then, in the
very midst of a light response to one of the bantering men, her gray
eyes met for the first time the very living look of the young Elder
standing near. She was at once confused, breaking off her speech with an
awkward laugh, and looking down. But, his eyes keeping steadily upon
her, she, as if defiantly, returned his look for a fluttering second,
trying to make her eyes survey him slowly from head to foot with her
late cool carelessness; but she had to let them fall again, and he saw
the colour come under the clear skin.

He knew by these tokens that he possessed a power over this splendid
woman that none of the other men could wield,--she had lowered her eyes
to no other but him--and all the man in him sang exultantly under the
knowledge. He greeted her father, the little Seumas Cavan of indomitable
spirit, fresh, for all his march of a thousand miles, and he welcomed
them both to Zion. Again and again while he talked to them he caught
quick glances from the wonderful eyes;--glances of interest, of
inquiry,--now of half-hearted defiance, now of wondering submission.

The succeeding months had been a time of struggle with him--a struggle
to maintain his character of Elder after the Order of Melchisedek in the
full gaze of those velvety gray eyes, and in the light of her reckless,
full-lipped smile; to present to the temptress a shield of austere piety
which her softest glances should not avail to melt. For something in her
manner told him that she divined all his weakness; that, if she
acknowledged his power over her, she recognised her own power over him,
a power equal to and justly balancing the other. Even when he discoursed
from the pulpit, his glance would fasten upon hers, as if there were but
the one face before him instead of a thousand, and he knew that she
mocked him in her heart; knew she divined there was that within him
which strongly would have had her and himself far away--alone.

Nor was the girl's own mind all of a piece. For, if she flaunted herself
before him, as if with an impish resolve to be his undoing, there were
still times when he awed her by his words of fire, and by his high,
determined stand in some circle to which she knew she could never mount.
That night when he walked with her in the moonlight, she knew he had
trembled on the edge of the gulf fixed so mysteriously between them. She
had even felt herself leaning over to draw him down with her own warm
arms; and then all at once he had strangely moved away, widening this
mysterious gulf that always separated them, leaving her solitary, hurt,
and wondering. She could not understand it. Life called through them so
strongly. How could he breast the mighty rush? And why, why must it be
so?

During the winter that now came upon them, it became even a greater
wonder to her; for it was a time when all of them were drawn closer in a
common suffering--a time of dark days which she felt they might have
lightened for each other, and a time when she knew that more than ever
she drew him.

For hardly had the feast of the Harvest Home gone by when food once more
became scarce. The heaven-sent gulls had, after all, saved but half a
crop. Drought and early frost had diminished this; and those who came in
from the East came all too trustingly with empty meal-sacks.

By the beginning of winter there were five thousand people in the valley
to be fed with miraculous loaves and fishes. Half of these were without
decent shelter, dwelling under wagon-covers or in flimsy tents, and
forced much of the time to be without fuel; for wood had to be hauled
through the snow from the distant canons, and so was precious stuff. For
three months the cutting winds came down from the north, and the
pitiless winter snows raged about them. An inventory was early taken of
the food-stuffs, and thereafter rations were issued alike to all,
whether rich or poor. Otherwise many of the latter must have perished.
It was a time of hard expedients, such as men are content to face only
for the love of God. They ranged the hills and benches to dig sego and
thistle roots, and in the last days of winter many took the rawhides
from their roofs, boiling and eating them. When spring came, they
watched hungrily for the first green vegetation, which they gathered and
cooked. Truly it seemed they had stopped in a desert as cruel in its way
as the human foes from whom they had fled.

It was now that the genius of their leader showed. He was no longer
Brigham Young, the preacher, but a father in Israel to his starving
children. When prayers availed not for a miracle, his indomitable spirit
saved them. Starvation was upon them and nakedness to the blast; yet
when they desponded or complained, the Lion of the Lord was there to
check them. He scolded, pleaded, threatened, roared prophecies, and
overcame them, silencing every murmur. He made them work, and worked
himself, a daily example before them of tireless energy. He told them
what to do, and how, both for their material salvation and their
spiritual; when to haul wood, and how to distinguish between false and
true spirits; how to thatch roofs and in what manner the resurrection
would occur; how to cook thistle roots to best advantage, and how God
was man made perfect; he reminded them of the day of wrath, and told
them mirthful anecdotes to make them laugh. He pictured God's anger upon
the sinful, and encouraged them to dance and to make merry; instructed
them in the mysteries of the Kingdom and instigated theatrical
performances to distract their minds. He was bland and bullying by
turns; affable and gruff; jocose and solemn--always what he thought
their fainting spirits needed. He was feared and loved--feared first.
They learned to dread the iron of his hand and the steel of his
heart--the dauntless spirit of him that left them no longer their own
masters, yet kept them loving their bondage. Through the dreadful cold
and famine, the five thousand of them ceased not to pray nor lost their
faith--their great faith that they had been especially favoured of God
and were at the last to be saved alone from the wreck of the world.

The efforts of Brigham to put heart into the people were ably seconded
by Joel Rae. He was loved like Brigham, but not feared. He preached like
Brigham submission to the divine will as interpreted by the priesthood,
but he was more extravagant than Brigham in his promises of blessings in
store for them. He never resorted to vagueness in his pictures of what
the Lord was about to do for them. He was literal and circumstantial to
a degree that made Brigham and the older men in authority sometimes
writhe in public and chide him in private. They were appalled at the
sweeping victories he promised the Saints over the hated Gentiles at an
early day. They suggested, too, that the Lord might withhold an
abundance from them for a few years until He had more thoroughly tried
them. But their counsel seemed only to inflame him to fresh absurdities.
In the very days of their greatest scarcity that winter, when almost
every man was dressed in skins, and the daily fare was thistle roots, he
declared to them at a Sunday service:

"A time of plenty is at hand--of great plenty. I cannot tell you how I
know these things. I do not know how they come to me. I pray--and they
come to life in my spirit; that is how I have found this fact: in less
than a year States-goods of all needed kinds will be sold here cheaper
than they can be bought in Eastern cities. You shall have an abundance
at prices that will amaze you."

And the people thrilled to hear him, partaking of his faith, remembering
the gulls that ate the crickets, and the rain and wind that came to save
the pioneer train from fire. To the leaders such prophesying was merely
reckless, inviting further chastisements from heaven, and calculated to
cause a loss of faith in the priesthood.

And yet, wild as it was, they saw this latter prophecy fulfilled; for
now, so soon after the birth of this new empire, while it suffered and
grew weak and bade fair to perish in its cradle of faith, there was made
for it a golden spoon of plenty.

Over across the mountains the year before, on the decayed granite
bed-rock of the tail-race at the mill of one Sutter, a man had picked up
a few particles of gold, the largest as big as grains of wheat. The
news of the wonder had spread to the East, and now came frenzied hordes
of gold-seekers. The valley of the mountains where the Saints had hoped
to hide was directly in their path, and there they stopped their richly
laden trains to rest and to renew their supplies.

The harvest of '49 was bountiful in all the valley; and thus was the
wild prophecy of Joel Rae made sober truth. Many of the gold-seekers had
loaded their wagons with merchandise for the mining' camps; but in their
haste to be at the golden hills, they now sold it at a sacrifice in
order to lighten their loads. The movement across the Sierras became a
wild race; clothing, provisions, tools, and arms--things most needful to
the half-clad, half-starved community on the shores of the lake--were
bartered to them at less than half-price for fresh horses and light
wagons. Where a twenty-five dollar pack-mule was sold for two hundred
dollars, a set of joiner's tools that had cost a hundred dollars back in
St. Louis would be bought for twenty-five.

The next year the gain to the Saints was even greater, as the tide of
gold-seekers rose. Early that summer they sold flour to the oncoming
legions for a dollar a pound, taking their pay in the supplies they most
needed on almost their own terms.

Thus was the valley of the mountains a little fattened, and thus was
Joel Rae exalted in the sight of men as one to whom the secrets of
heaven might at any time be unfolded. But the potent hand of Brigham
was still needed to hold the Saints in their place and in their faith.

Many would have joined the rush for sudden riches. A few did so. Brigham
issued a mild warning, in which such persons were described as
"gainsayers in behalf of Mammon." They were warned, also, that the
valley of the Sacramento was unhealthful, and that, in any event, "the
true use of gold is for paving streets, covering houses, and making
culinary dishes; and when the Saints shall have preached the gospel,
raised grain, and built cities enough, the Lord will open up the way for
a supply of gold to the satisfaction of his people."

A few greed-stung Saints persisted in leaving in the face of this
friendly admonition. Then the Lion of the Lord roared: "Let such men
remember that they are not wanted in our midst. Let them leave their
carcasses where they do their work. We want not our burying-grounds
polluted with such hypocrites. Let the souls of them go down to hell,
poverty-stricken and naked, and lie there until they are burned out like
an old pipe!" The defections ceased from that moment, and Zion was
preserved intact. Brigham was satisfied. If he could hold them together
under the alluring tales of gold-finds that were brought over the
mountains, he had no longer any fear that they might fall away under
mere physical hardship. And he held them,--the supreme test of his power
over the bodies and minds of his people.

This passing of the gold-seekers was not, however, a blessing without
drawbacks. For the Saints had hoped to wax strong unobserved,
unmolested, forgotten, in this mountain retreat. But now obscurity could
no longer be their lot. The hated Gentiles had again to be reckoned
with.

First, the United States had expanded on the west to include their
territory--the fruit of the Mexican War--the poor bleak desert they were
making to blossom. Next, the government at Washington had sent to
construe and administer their laws men who were aliens from the
Commonwealth of Israel. True, Millard Fillmore had appointed Brigham
governor of the new Territory--but there were chief justices and
associate justices, secretaries, attorneys, marshals, and Indian agents
from the wicked and benighted East; men who frankly disbelieved that the
voice of Brigham was as the voice of God, and who did not hesitate to
let their heresy be known. A stream of these came and went--
trouble-mongers who despised and insulted the Saints, and returned to
Washington with calumnies on their lips. It was true that Brigham had
continued, as was right, to be the only power in the Territory; but the
narrow-minded appointees of the Federal government persisted in
misconstruing this circumstance; refusing to look upon it as the just
mark of Heaven's favour, and declaring it to be the arrogance of a mere
civil usurper.

Under such provocation Joel Rae longed more than ever to be a Lion of
the Lord, for those above him in the Church endured too easily, he
considered, the indignities that were put upon them by these
evil-minded Gentile politicians. He would have rejected them forthwith,
as he believed the Lord would have had them do,--nay, as he believed the
Lord would sooner or later punish them for not doing. He would have
thrust them into the desert, and called upon the Lord for strength to
meet the storm that would doubtless be raised by such a course. He was
impatient when the older men cautioned moderation and the petty wiles of
diplomacy. Yet he was not altogether discouraged; for even they lost
patience at times, and were almost as outspoken as he could have wished.

Even Brigham, on one notable occasion, had thrilled him, when in the
tabernacle he had bearded Brocchus and left him white and cowering
before all the people, trembling for his life,--Brocchus, the unworthy
Associate Justice, who had derided their faith, insulted their prophet,
and slandered their women. How he rejoiced in that moment when Brigham
for once lost his temper and let his eyes flash their hate upon the
frightened official.

"But you," Brigham had roared, "standing there white and shaking at the
hornets' nest you have stirred up--you are a coward--and that is why you
praise men that are not cowards--why you praise Zachary Taylor!"

Brigham had a little time before declared that Zachary Taylor was dead
and in hell, and that he, Brigham, was glad of it.

"President Taylor you can't praise," he had gone on to the gradually
whitening Brocchus. "What was he? A mere soldier with regular army
buttons on--no better to go at the head of troops than a dozen men I
could pick up between Leavenworth and Laramie. As to what you have
intimated about our morals--you miserable cringing coward, you--I won't
notice it except to make my personal request of every brother and
husband present not to give your back what your impudence deserves. You
talk of things you have on hearsay since you came among us. I'll talk of
hearsay, then--the hearsay that you are mad and will go home because we
can't make it worth your while to stay. What it would satisfy you to get
out of us it wouldn't be hard to tell; but I know it's more than you'll
get. We don't want you. You are such a baby-calf that we would have to
sugar your soap to coax you to wash yourself on Saturday night. Go home
to your mammy, straightaway, and the sooner the better."

This was the manner, thought Joel Rae, that Federal officials should be
treated when they were out of sympathy with Zion--though he thought he
might perhaps have chosen words that would be more dignified had the
task been entrusted to him. He told Brigham his satisfaction with the
address when the excited congregation had dispersed, and the alarmed
Brocchus had gone.

"That is the course we must take, Brother Brigham--do more of it. Unless
we take our stand now against aggression, the Lord will surely smite us
again with famine and pestilence." And Brigham had answered, in the
tones of a man who knows, "Wait just a little!"

But there came famine upon them again; in punishment, declared Joel Rae,
for their ungodly temporising with the minions of the United States
government. In '54 the grasshoppers ate their growing crops. In '55 they
came again with insatiate maws--and on what they left the drought and
frost worked their malignant spells. The following winter great numbers
of their cattle and sheep perished on the range in the heavy snows.

The spring of '56 found them again digging roots and resorting to all
the old pitiful makeshifts of famine.

"This," declared Joel Rae, to the starving people, "is a judgment of
Heaven upon us for permitting Gentile aggression. It is meant to clench
into our minds the God's truth that we must stand by our faith with the
arms of war if need be."

"Brother Rae is just a little mite soul-proud," Brigham thereupon
confided to his counsellors, "and I wouldn't wonder if the Lord would be
glad to see some of it taken out of him. Anyway, I've got a job for him
that will just about do it."




CHAPTER XIII.


_Joel Rae Is Treated for Pride of Soul_

Brigham sent for him the next day and did him the honour to entrust to
him an important mission. He was to go back to the Missouri River and
bring on one of the hand-cart parties that were to leave there that
summer. The three years of famine had left the Saints in the valley
poor, so that the immigration fund was depleted. The oncoming Saints,
therefore, who were not able to pay their own way, were this summer,
instead of riding in ox-carts, to walk across the plains and mountains,
and push their belongings before them in hand-carts. It had become
Brigham's pet scheme, and the Lord had revealed to him that it would
work out auspiciously. Joel prepared to obey, though it was not without
aversion that he went again to the edge of the Gentile country.

He was full of bitterness while he was obliged to tarry on the banks of
the Missouri. The hatred of those who had persecuted him and his people,
bred into him from boyhood, flashed up in his heart with more fire than
ever. Even when a late comer from Nauvoo told him that Prudence Corson
had married Captain Girnway of the Carthage Grays, two years after the
exodus from Nauvoo, his first feeling was one of blazing anger against
the mobocrats rather than regret for his lost love.

"They moved down to Jackson County, Missouri, too," concluded his
informant, thus adding to the flame. They had gone to set up their home
in the very Zion that the Gentiles with so much bloodshed had wrested
from the Saints.

Even when the first anger cooled and he could face the thing calmly in
all its deeper aspects, he was still very bitter. While he had stanchly
kept himself for her, cherishing with a single heart all the old
memories of her dearness, she had been a wife these seven years,--the
wife, moreover, of a mob-leader whose minions had put them out of their
home, and then wantonly tossed his father like a dead branch into the
waters. She had loved this uniformed murderer--his little Prue--perhaps
borne him children, while he, Joel Rae, had been all too scrupulously
true to her memory, fighting against even the pleased look at a woman;
fighting--only the One above could know with what desperate
valour--against the warm-hearted girl with the gray eyes and the red
lips, who laughed in her knowledge that she drew him--fighting her away
for a sentimental figment, until she had married another.

Now when he might have let himself turn to her, his heart freed of the
image of that yellow-haired girl so long cherished, this other was the
wife of Elder Pixley--the fifth wife--and an unloving wife as he knew.

She had sought him before the marriage, and there had been some wholly
frank and simple talk between them. It had ended by his advising her to
marry Elder Pixley so that she might be saved into the Kingdom, and by
her replying, with the old reckless laugh, a little dry and strained,
and with the wonderful gray eyes full upon him,--"Oh, I'll marry him!
Small difference to me what man of them I marry at all,--now!"

And while he, by a mighty effort, had held down his arms and let her
turn away, the woman for whose memory he did it was the wife of an
enemy, caring nothing for his fidelity, sure to feel not more than
amused pity for him should she ever know of it. Surely, it had been a
brave struggle--for nothing.

But again the saving thought came that he was being tried for a purpose,
for some great work. And now it seemed that the time of it must be near.
As to what it was there could be little question: it must be to free his
people forever from Gentile aggression or interference. Everything
pointed to that. He was to be entrusted with great powers, and be made a
Lion of the Lord to lead them to their rightful glory.

He was eager to be back to the mountains where he could fitly receive
this new power, and becomingly make it known that he had been chosen of
Heaven to free them forever from the harassing Gentile. He felt
instinctively that a climax was close at hand--some dread moment of
turning that would try the faith of the Saints once for all--try his own
faith as well, and at last bring his great Witness before him, if his
soul should survive the perilous ordeal. For he had never ceased to wait
for this heavenly Witness--something he needed--he knew not what--some
great want of his soul unsatisfied despite all the teachings of the
temple priesthood. The hunger gnawed in his hea

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