"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.



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.