The Lions of the Lord Part 21

Reports of this distress were duly carried to Brigham and published to the Saints. Their soldiers had made good their resolve to prevent the Federal army from pa.s.sing the Wasatch Mountains. Aggressive operations ceased for the winter, and the greater part of the militia returned to their homes. A small outpost of fifty men under the command of Major Joel Rae--who had earnestly requested this a.s.signment--was left to guard the narrows of Echo Canon and to keep watch over the enemy during the winter. This officer was now persuaded that the Lord's hand was with them. For the enemy had been wasted away even by the elements from the time he had crossed the forbidden line.

In Salt Lake City that winter, the same opinion prevailed. They were henceforth to be the free and independent State of Deseret.

"Do you want to know," asked Brigham, in the tabernacle, "what is to be done with the enemy now on our borders? As soon as they start to come into our settlements, let sleep depart from their eyes until they sleep in death! Men shall be secreted along the route and shall waste them away in the name of the G.o.d of Battles. The United States will have to make peace with us. Never again shall we make peace with them."

And they sang with fervour:--

"By the mountains our Zion's surrounded, Her warriors are n.o.ble and brave; And their faith on Jehovah is founded, Whose power is mighty to save.

Opposed by a proud, boasting nation, Their numbers compared may be few; But their Ruler is known through creation, And they'll always be faithful and true."

CHAPTER XX.

_How the Lion of the Lord Roared Soft_

But with the coming of spring some fever that had burned in the blood of the Saints from high to low was felt to be losing its heat. They had held the Gentile army at bay during the winter--with the winter's help.

But spring was now melting the snows. Reports from Washington, moreover, indicated that a perverse generation in the States had declined to accept the decrees of Israel's G.o.d without further proofs of their authenticity.

With a view to determining this issue, Congress had voted more money for troops. Three thousand men were to march to the reinforcement of the army of Johnston on Black's Fork; forty-five hundred wagons were to transport their supplies; and fifty thousand oxen and four thousand mules were to pull these wagons. War, in short, was to be waged upon this Israel hidden in the chamber of the mountains. To Major Rae, watching on the outposts of Zion from behind the icy ramparts of Echo Canon, the news was welcome, even enlivening. The more glory there would be in that ultimate triumph which the Lord was about to secure for them.

In Brigham and the other leaders, however, this report induced deep thought. And finally, on a day, they let it be known that there could no longer be any thought of actual war with the armies of the Gentile. Joel Rae in Echo Canon was incredulous. There must be battle given. The Lord would make them prevail; the living G.o.d of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, would hold them up. And battle must be given for another reason, though he hardly dared let that reason be plain to himself. For only by continuing the war, only by giving actual battle to armed soldiers, by fighting to the end if need be--only so could that day in Mountain Meadows be made to appear as anything but--he shuddered and could not name it. Even if actual war were to be fought on and on for years, he believed that day could hardly be justified; but at least it could be made in years of fighting to stand less horribly high and solitary. They must fight, he thought, even if it were to lose all. But the Lord would stay them. How much more wicked and perverse, then, to reject the privilege!

When he heard that the new governor, who had been in the snow with Johnston's army all winter, was to enter Salt Lake City and take his office--a Gentile officer to sit on the throne of Brigham--he felt that the Ark of the Covenant had been thrown down. "Let us not," he implored Brigham in a letter sent him from Echo Canon, "be again dragooned into servile obedience to any one less than the Christ of G.o.d!"

But Brigham's reply was an order to pa.s.s the new governor through Echo Canon. According to the terms of this order he was escorted through at night, in a manner to convince him that he was pa.s.sing between the lines of a mighty and far-flung host. Fires were kindled along the heights and the small force attending him was cunningly distributed and duplicated, a few of its numbers going ahead from time to time, halting the rest of the party and demanding the countersign.

Joel Rae found himself believing that he could now have been a fiercer Lion of the Lord than Brigham was; for he would have fought, while Brigham was stooping to petty strategies--as if G.o.d were needing to rely upon deceits.

He was only a little appeased when, on going to Salt Lake City, he learned Brigham's intentions more fully. The new governor had been installed; but the army of Johnston was to turn back. This was Brigham's first promise. Soon, however, this was modified. The government, it appeared, was bent upon quartering its troops in the valley; and Zion, therefore, would be again led into the wilderness. The earlier promise was repeated--and the earlier threat--to the peace commissioners now sent on from Washington.

"We are willing those troops should come into our country, but not stay in our city. They may pa.s.s through if need be, but must not be quartered within forty miles of us. And if they come here to disturb this people, before they reach here this city will be in ashes; every house and tree and shrub and blade of gra.s.s will be destroyed. Here are twenty years' gathering, but it will all burn. You will have won back the wilderness, barren again as on the day we entered it, but you will not have conquered the people. Our wives and children will go to the canons and take shelter in the mountains, while their husbands and sons will fight you. You will be without fuel, without subsistence for yourselves or forage for your animals. You will be in a strange land, while we know every foot of it. We will haunt and hara.s.s you and pick you off by day and by night, and, as G.o.d lives, we will waste your army away."

This was hopeful. Here at least was another chance to suffer persecution, and thus, in a measure, atone for any monstrous wrong they might have done. He hoped the soldiers would come despoiling, plundering, thus compelling them to use the torch and to flee. Another forced exodus would help to drive certain memories from his mind and silence the cries that were now beginning to ring in his ears.

Obedient to priestly counsel, the Saints declined, in the language of Brigham, "to trust again in Punic faith." In April they began to move south, starting from the settlements on the north. During that and the two succeeding months thirty thousand of them left their homes. They took only their wagons, bedding, and provisions, leaving their other possessions to the mercy of the expected despoiler. Before locking the doors of their houses for the last time, they strewed shavings, straw, and other combustibles through the rooms so that the work of firing the city could be done quickly. A score of men were left behind to apply the torch the moment it became necessary,--should a gate be swung open or a latch lifted by hostile hands. Their homes and fields and orchards might be given back to the desert from which they had been won; but never to the Gentile invaders.

To the south the wagons crept, day after day, to some other unknown desert which their prophet should choose, and where, if the Lord willed, they would again charm orchards and gardens and green fields from the gray, parched barrens.

Late in June the army of Johnston descended Emigration Canon, pa.s.sed through the echoing streets of the all but deserted city and camped on the River Jordan. But, to the deep despair of one observer, these invaders committed no depredation or overt act. After resting inoffensively two days on the Jordan, they marched forty miles south to Cedar Valley, where Camp Floyd was established.

Thus, no one fully comprehending how it had come about, peace was seen suddenly to have been restored. The people, from Brigham down, had been offered a free pardon for all past treasons and seditions if they would return to their allegiance to the Federal government; the new officers of the Territory were installed, sons of perdition in the seats of the Lord's mighty; and sermons of wrath against Uncle Sam ceased for the moment to resound in the tabernacle. Early in July, Brigham ordered the people to return to their homes. They had offered these as a sacrifice, even as Abraham had offered Isaac, and the Lord had caught them a timely ram in the thicket.

In the midst of the general rejoicing, Joel Rae was overwhelmed with humiliation and despair. He was ashamed for having once wished to be another Lion of the Lord. It was a poor way to find favour with G.o.d, he thought,--this refusing battle when it had been all but forced upon them. It was plain, however, that the Lord meant to try them further,--plain, too, that in His inscrutable wisdom He had postponed the destruction of the wicked nation to the east of them.

He longed again to rise before the people and call them to repentance and to action. Once he would have done so, but now an evil shadow lay upon him. Intuitively he knew that his words would no longer come with power. Some virtue had gone out of him. And with this loss of confidence in himself came again a desire to be away from the crowded center.

Off to the south was the desert. There he could be alone; there face G.o.d and his own conscience and have his inmost soul declare the truth about himself. In his sadness he would have liked to lead the people with him, lead them away from some evil, some falsity that had crept in about them; he knew not what it was nor how it had come, but Zion had been defiled. Something was gone from the Church, something from Brigham, something from himself,--something, it almost seemed, even from the G.o.d of Israel. When the summer waned, his plan was formed to go to one of the southern settlements to live. Brigham had approved. The Church needed new blood there.

He rode out of the city one early morning in September, facing to the south over the rolling valley that lay between the hills now flaunting their first autumn colours. He was in haste to go, yet fearful of what he should meet there.

A little out of the city he pa.s.sed a man from the south, huddled high on the seat under the bow of his wagon-cover, who sang as he went one of the songs that had been so popular the winter before:--

"Old squaw-killer Harney is on the way The Mormon people for to slay.

Now if he comes, the truth I'll tell, Our boys will drive him down to h.e.l.l-- Du dah, du dah, day!"

He smiled grimly as the belated echo of war came back to him.

CHAPTER XXI.

_The Blood on the Page_

Along the level lane between the mountain ranges he went, a lane that runs almost from Bear Creek on the north to the Colorado on the south, with a width of twenty miles or so. But for Joel Rae it became a ride down the valley of lost illusions. Some saving grace of faith was gone from the people. He pa.s.sed through st.u.r.dy little settlements, bowered in gardens and orchards, and girded about by now fertile acres where once had been the bare, gray desert. Slowly, mile by mile, the Saints had pushed down the valley, battling with the Indians and the elements for every acre of land they gained. Yet it seemed to him now that they had achieved but a mere G.o.dless prosperity. They had worked a miracle of abundance in the desert--but of what avail? For the soul of their faith was gone. He felt or heard the proof of it on every hand.

Through Battle Creek, Provo, and Springville he went; through Spanish Fork, Payson, Salt Creek, and Fillmore. He stopped to preach at each place, but he did it perfunctorily, and with shame for himself in his secret heart. Some impalpable essence of spirituality was gone from himself and from the people. He felt himself wickedly agreeing with a pessimistic elder at Fillmore, who remarked: "I tell you what, Brother Rae, it seems like when the Book of Mormon goes again' the Const.i.tution of the United States, there's sure to be h.e.l.l to pay, and the Saints allus has to pay it." He could not tell the man in words of fire, as once he would have done, that they had been punished for lack of faith.

Another told him it was madness to have thought they could "whip" the United States. "Why," said this one, "they's more soldiers back there east of the Missouri than there is fiddlers in h.e.l.l!" By the orthodox teachings of the time, the good man of Israel had thus indicated an overwhelming host.

He pa.s.sed sadly on. They would not understand that they had laid by and forgotten their impenetrable armour of faith.

Between Beaver and Paragonah that day, toiling intently along the dusty road in the full blaze of the August sun, he met a woman,--a tall, strong creature with a broad, kind face, burned and seamed and hardened by life in the open. Yet it was a face that appealed to him by its look of simple, trusting earnestness. Her dress was of stout, gray homespun, her shoes were coa.r.s.e and heavy, and she was bareheaded, her gray, straggling hair half caught into a clumsy knot at the back of her head.

She turned out to pa.s.s him without looking up, but he stopped his horse and dismounted before her. It seemed to him that here was one whose faith was still fresh, and to such a one he needed to talk. He called to her:

"You need something on your head; you are burned."

She looked up, absently at first, as if neither seeing nor hearing him.

Then intelligence came into her eyes.

"You mean my Timothy needs something on his head--poor man! You see he broke out of the house last night, because the Bishop told him I was to take another husband. Cruel! Oh, so cruel!--the poor foolish man, he believed it, and he cared so for me. He thought I was bringing home a new man with me--a new wedding for time and eternity, to build myself up in the Kingdom--a new wedding night--with him sitting off, cold and neglected. But something burst in his head. It made a roar like the mill at Cedar Creek when it grinds the corn--just like that. So he went out into the cold night--it was sleeting--thinking I'd never miss him, you see, me being fondled and made over by the new man--wouldn't miss him till morning." A scowl of indignation darkened her face for an instant, and she paused, looking off toward the distant hills.

"But that was all a lie, a mean lie! I don't see how he could have believed it. I think he couldn't have been right up here--" she pointed to her head.

"But of course I followed him, and I've been following him all day. He must have got quite a start of me--poor dear--how could he think I'd break his heart? But I'll have him found by night. I must hurry, so good day, sir!" She curtsied to him with a curious awkward sort of grace. He stopped her again.

"Where will you sleep to-night?"

"In his arms, thank G.o.d!"

"But if you happen to miss him--you might not find him until to-morrow."

A puzzled look crossed her face, and then came the shadow of a disquieting memory.

"Now you speak so, I remember that it wasn't last night he left--it was the night before--no?--perhaps three or four nights. But not as much as a fortnight. I remember my little baby came the night he left. I was so mad to find him I suffered the mother-pains out in the cold rain--just a little dead baby--I could take no interest in it. And there has been a night or two since then, of course. Sleep?--oh, I'll sleep some easy place where I can hear him if he pa.s.ses--sometimes by the road, in a barn, in houses--they let me sleep where I like. I must hurry now. He's waiting just over that hill ahead."