The Lions of the Lord Part 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You ought to thank me, Brother Rae, for not telling you on the other side, when you asked me. I knew better. Because, why? Because I knew you'd fly off the handle and get yourself killed, and then your ma'd be left all alone, that's why, now--and prob'ly they'd 'a' wound up by dumping the whole pa.s.sle 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 sa.s.sy--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 G.o.d,' 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 G.o.d'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 h.e.l.l 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, 'd.a.m.n 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 h.e.l.l," said the Bishop.

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

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 pa.s.sed. 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.