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

by Harry Leon Wilson

  CHAPTER XXI.

  _The Blood on the Page_

  Along the level lane between the mountain ranges he went, a lane thatruns 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 ridedown the valley of lost illusions. Some saving grace of faith was gonefrom the people. He passed through sturdy little settlements, bowered ingardens and orchards, and girded about by now fertile acres where oncehad been the bare, gray desert. Slowly, mile by mile, the Saints hadpushed down the valley, battling with the Indians and the elements forevery acre of land they gained. Yet it seemed to him now that they hadachieved but a mere Godless prosperity. They had worked a miracle ofabundance in the desert--but of what avail? For the soul of their faithwas gone. He felt or heard the proof of it on every hand.

  Through Battle Creek, Provo, and Springville he went; through SpanishFork, Payson, Salt Creek, and Fillmore. He stopped to preach at eachplace, but he did it perfunctorily, and with shame for himself in hissecret heart. Some impalpable essence of spirituality was gone fromhimself and from the people. He felt himself wickedly agreeing with apessimistic elder at Fillmore, who remarked: "I tell you what, BrotherRae, it seems like when the Book of Mormon goes again' the Constitutionof the United States, there's sure to be hell to pay, and the Saintsallus has to pay it." He could not tell the man in words of fire, asonce 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" theUnited States. "Why," said this one, "they's more soldiers back thereeast of the Missouri than there is fiddlers in hell!" By the orthodoxteachings of the time, the good man of Israel had thus indicated anoverwhelming host.

  He passed sadly on. They would not understand that they had laid by andforgotten their impenetrable armour of faith.

  Between Beaver and Paragonah that day, toiling intently along the dustyroad 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 hardenedby life in the open. Yet it was a face that appealed to him by its lookof simple, trusting earnestness. Her dress was of stout, gray homespun,her shoes were coarse 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 pass him without looking up, but he stopped his horseand dismounted before her. It seemed to him that here was one whosefaith was still fresh, and to such a one he needed to talk. He called toher:

  "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 hebroke out of the house last night, because the Bishop told him I was totake another husband. Cruel! Oh, so cruel!--the poor foolish man, hebelieved it, and he cared so for me. He thought I was bringing home anew man with me--a new wedding for time and eternity, to build myself upin the Kingdom--a new wedding night--with him sitting off, cold andneglected. But something burst in his head. It made a roar like the millat Cedar Creek when it grinds the corn--just like that. So he went outinto the cold night--it was sleeting--thinking I'd never miss him, yousee, me being fondled and made over by the new man--wouldn't miss himtill 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 havebelieved it. I think he couldn't have been right up here--" she pointedto her head.

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

  "Where will you sleep to-night?"

  "In his arms, thank God!"

  "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 adisquieting memory.

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

  He saw her ascend the rise with a new spring in her step. When shereached the top, he saw her pause and look from side to side below her,then start hopefully down toward the next hill.

  A mile beyond, back of a great cloud of dust, He found a drove ofcattle, and back of these, hot and voiceful, came the good BishopWright. He described the woman he had just met, and inquired if theBishop knew her.

  The Wild Ram of the Mountain mopped his dusty, damp brow, took an easierseat in his saddle, and fanned himself. "Oh, yes, that's the first wifeof Elder Tench. When he took his second, eight or ten years ago,something went wrong with this one in her head. She left the house thesame night, and she's been on the go ever since. She don't do any harm,jest tramps back and forth between Paragonah and Parowan and Summit andCedar City. I always _have_ said that women is the contrary half of thehuman race and man is the sanifying half!"

  The cattle were again in motion, and the Bishop after them with strongcries of correction and exhortation.

  Toward evening Joel Rae entered Paragonah, a loose group of log housesamid outlying fields, now shorn and yellow. Along the street in front ofhim many children followed and jeered in the wake of a man who slouchedsome distance ahead of them. As Joel came nearer, one boy, bolder thanthe others, ran forward and tugged sharply at the victim's ragged graycoat. At this he turned upon his pursuers, and Joel Rae saw hisface,--the face of an imbecile, with unsteady eyes and weakly droopingjaw. He raised his hand threateningly at his tormentors, and screamed atthem in rage. Then, as they fell back, he chuckled to himself. As Joelpassed him, he was still looking back at the group of children nowjeering him from a safe distance, his eyes bright for the moment, andhis face lighted with a weak, loose-lipped smile.

  "Who is that fellow, Bishop?" he asked of his host for the night, a fewmoments later, when he dismounted in front of the cabin. The Bishopshaded his eyes with his hand and peered up the road at the shamblingfigure once more moving ahead of the tormenting children.

  "That? Oh, that's only Tom Potwin. You heard about him, I guess. No?Well, he's a simple--been so four years now. Don't you recollect? He'sthe lad over at Manti who wouldn't give up the girl Bishop Warren Snowwanted. The priesthood tried every way to make him; they counselled him,and that didn't do; then they ordered him away on mission, but hewouldn't go; and then they counselled the girl, but she was stubborntoo. The Bishop saw there wasn't any other way, so he had him called toa meeting at the schoolhouse one night. As soon as he got there, thelights was blowed out, and--well, it was unfortunate, but this boy'sbeen kind of an idiot ever since."

  "Unfortunate! It was awful!"

  "Not so awful as refusing to obey counsel."

  "What became of the girl?"

  "Oh, she saw it wasn't no use trying to go against the Lord, so shemarried the Bishop. He said at the time that he knew she'd bring him badluck--she being his thirteenth--and she did, she was that hifalutin. Hehad to put her away about a year ago, and I hear she's living in adugout somewhere the other side of Cedar City, a-starving to death theytell me, but for what the neighbours bring her. I never did see why theBishop was so took with her. You could see she'd never make a worker,and good looks go mighty fast."

  He dreamed that night that the foundations of the great temple they werebuilding had crumbled. And when he brought new stones to replace theold, th
ese too fell away to dust in his hands.

  The next evening he reached Cedar City. Memories of this locality beganto crowd back upon him with torturing clearness; especially of themorning he had left Hamblin's ranch. As he mounted his horse two of thechildren saved from the wagon-train had stood near him,--a boy of sevenand another a little older, the one who had fought so viciously with himwhen he was separated from the little girl. He remembered that theyounger of the two boys had forgotten all but the first of his name. Hehad told them that it was John Calvin--something; he could not rememberwhat, so great had been his fright; the people at the ranch, because ofhis forlorn appearance, had thereupon named him John Calvin Sorrow.

  These two boys had watched him closely as he mounted his horse, and theolder one had called to him, "When I get to be a man, I'm coming backwith a gun and kill you till you are dead yourself," and the other,little John Calvin Sorrow, had clenched his fists and echoed the threat,"We'll come back here and kill you! Mormons is worse'n Indians!"

  He had ridden quickly away, not noting that some of the men standing byhad looked sharply at the boys and then significantly at one another.One of those who had been present, whom he now met, told him of thesetwo boys.

  "You see, Elder, the orders from headquarters was to save only them thatwas too young to give evidence in a court. But these two was veryforward and knowing. They shouldn't have been kept in the first place.So two men--no need of naming names--took both of them out one night.They got along all right with the little one, the one they called JohnCalvin Sorrow--only the little cuss kicked and scrambled so that we bothhad to see to him for a minute, and when we was ready for the other,there he was at least ten rods away, a-legging it into the scrub oak.Well, they looked and looked and hunted around till daybreak, but he'dgot away all right, the moon going under a cloud. They tracked him quitea ways when it come light, till his tracks run into the trail of a bigband of Navajos that had been up north trading ponies and was going backsouth. He was the one that talked so much about you, but you needn'tever have any fear of his talking any more. He'd be done for one way oranother."

  For the first time in his life that night, he was afraid topray,--afraid even to give thanks that others were sleeping in the roomwith him so that he could hear their breathing and know that he was notalone.

  He was up betimes to press on to the south, again afraid to pray, anddreading what was still in store for him. For sooner or later he wouldhave to be alone in the night. Thus far since that day in the Meadows hehad slept near others, whether in cabins or in camp, in some freighter'swagon or bivouacking in the snows of Echo Canon. Each night he had beenconscious, at certain terrible moments of awakening, that others werenear him. He heard their breathing, or in the silence a fire's light hadshown him a sleeping face, the lines of a form, or an arm tossed out.What would happen on the night he found himself alone, he knewnot--death, or the loss of reason. He knew what the torture wouldbe,--the shrieks of women in deadly terror, the shrill cries ofchildren, the low, tense curses of men, the rattle of shots, the yellsof Indians, the heavy, sickening smell of blood, the still forms fallenin strange positions of ease, the livid faces distorted to grins. He hadnot been able to keep the sounds from his ears, but thus far the thingsthemselves had stayed behind him, moving always, crawling, writhing,even stepping furtively close at his back, so that he could feel theirbreath on his neck. When the time came that these should move around infront of him, he thought it would have to be the end. They would gobefore him, a wild, bleeding, raving procession, until they tore hisheart from his breast. One sight he feared most of all,--a bronzed armwith a wide silver bracelet at the wrist, the hand clutching and wavingbefore him heavy strands of long, yellow hair with a gory patch at theend,--living hair that writhed and undulated to catch the light, coilingabout the arm like a golden serpent.

  His way lay through the Meadows, yet he hardly realised this until hewas fairly on the ground in the midst of a thousand evil signs of theday. Here, a year after, were skulls and whitening bones, some in heaps,some scattered through the sage-brush where the wolves had left them.Many of the skulls were pierced with bullet-holes, shattered as by heavyblows, or cleft as with a sharp-edged weapon. Even more terrifying thanthese were certain traces caught here and there on the low scrub oaksalong the way,--children's sunbonnets; shreds of coarse lace, muslin,and calico; a child's shoe, the tattered sleeve of a woman's dress--allfaded, dead, whipped by the wind.

  He pressed through it all with set jaws, trying to keep his eyes fixedupon the ground beyond his horse's head; but his ears were at the mercyof the cries that rang from every thicket.

  Once out of it, he rode hard, for it must not come yet--his first nightalone. By dusk he had reached the new settlement of Amalon, a little offthe main road in a valley of the Pine Mountains. Here he sought thehouse where he had left the child. When he had picketed his horse hewent in and had her brought to him,--a fresh little flower-likewoman-child, with hair and eyes that told of her mother, with remindersof her mother's ways as she stood before him, a waiting poise of thehead, a lift of the chin. They looked at each other in the candle-light,the child standing by the woman who had brought her, looking up at himcuriously, and he not daring to touch her or go nearer. She becameuneasy and frightened at last, under his scrutiny, and when the womanwould have held her from running away, began to cry, so that he gave theword to let her go. She ran quickly into the other room of the cabin,from which she called back with tears of indignation in her voice,"You're not my papa--not my _real_ papa!"

  When the people were asleep, he sat before the blaze in the bigfireplace, on the hearth cleanly swept with its turkey-wing andbuffalo-tail. There was to be one more night of his reprieve fromsolitude. The three women of the house and the man were sleeping aroundthe room in bunks. The child's bed had been placed near him on the floorafter she slept, as he had asked it to be. He had no thought of sleepfor himself. He was too intensely awake with apprehension. On the floorbeside his chair was a little bundle the woman had brought him,--thebundle he had found loosened by her side, that day, with the trinketsscattered about and the limp-backed little Bible lying open where it hadfallen.

  He picked the bundle up and untied it, touching the contents timidly. Hetook up the Bible last, and as he did so a memory flooded back upon himthat sickened him and left him trembling. It was the book he had givenher on her seventeenth birthday, the one she had told him she waskeeping when they parted that morning at Nauvoo. He knew the truthbefore he opened it at the yellowed fly-leaf and read in faded ink,"From Joel to Prudence on this day when she is seventeen years old--June2d, 1843."

  In a daze of feeling he turned the pages, trying to clear his mind,glancing at the chapter headings as he turned,--"Abram is Justified byFaith," "God Instructeth Isaac," "Pharaoh's Heart Is Hardened," "TheLaws of Murder," "The Curses for Disobedience." He turned rapidly and atlast began to run the leaves from between his thumb and finger, andthen, well over in the book something dark caught his eye. He turned theleaves back again to see what it was; but not until the book was openedflat before him and he held the page close to the light did he see whatit was his eye had caught. A wash of blood was across the page.

  He stared blankly at the reddish, dark stain, as if its spell had beenhypnotic. Little by little he began to feel the horror of it,remembering how he picked the book up from where it had fallen beforeher. Slowly, but with relentless certainty, his mind cleared to what hesaw.

  Now for the first time he began to notice the words that showed dimlythrough the stain, began to read them, to puzzle them out, as if theywere new to him:--

  "But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,

  "Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.

  "And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also.

  "Give to every man that asketh of thee; an
d of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.

  "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise."

  Again and again he read them. They were illumined with a strangelyterrible meaning by the blood of her he had loved and sworn to keephimself clean for.

  He could no longer fight off the truth. It was facing him now in all itsnakedness, monstrous to obscenity, demanding its due measure from hisown soul's blood. He aroused himself, shivering, and looked out into theroom where the shadows lay heavy, and from whence came the breathing ofthe sleepers. He picked up the now sputtering candle, set in its holebored in a block of wood, and held it up for a last look at the littlewoman-child. He was full of an agony of wonder as he gazed, of piteousquestioning why this should be as it was. The child stirred and flungone arm over her eyes as if to hide the light. He put out the candle andset it down. Then stooping over, he kissed the pillow beside the child'shead and stepped lightly to the door. He had come to the end of hissubterfuges--he could no longer delay his punishment.

  Outside the moon was shining, and his horse moved about restlessly. Heput on the saddle and rode off to the south, galloping rapidly after hereached the highway. Off there was a kindly desert where a man couldtake in peace such punishment as his body could bear and his souldecree; and where that soul could then pass on in decent privacy to bejudged by its Maker.