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

by Harry Leon Wilson

  CHAPTER XXII.

  _The Picture in the Sky_

  If something of the peace of the night-silence came to him as he rode,he counted it only the peace of surrender and despair. He knew now thathe had been cheated of all his great long-nursed hopes of some superiorexaltation. Nor this only; for he had sinned unforgivably and incurredperdition. He who had fasted, prayed, and endured, waiting for hisWitness, for the spreading of the heavens and the glory of the openvision, had overreached himself and was cast down.

  When at last he slowed his horse to a walk, it was the spring of theday. The moon had gone, and over on his left a soft grayness began toshow above the line of the hills. The light grew until it glowed withthe fire of opals; through the tree-tops ran little stirs ofwakefulness, and all about him were faint, furtive rustlings andwhispers of the new day. Then in this glorified dusk of the dawn asquirrel loosed his bark of alarm, a crested jay screamed in answer, andhe knew his hour of atonement was come.

  He pressed forward again toward the desert, eager to be on with it. Thepage with the wash of blood across it seemed to take on a new vividnessin the stronger light. Under the stain, the letters of the words weremagnified before his mind,--"_And as ye would that men should do toyou_--" It seemed to him that the blood through which they came heatedthe words so that they burned his eyes.

  An hour after daybreak the trail led him down out of the hills by alittle watercourse to the edge of the desert. Along the sides of thisthe chaparral grew thickly, and the spring by which he halted made alittle spot of green at the edge of the gray. But out in front of himwas the infinite stretch of death, far sweeps of wind-furrowed sandburning under a sun made sullen red by the clouds of fine dust in theair. Sparsely over the dull surface grew the few shrubs that couldsurvive the heat and dryness,--stunted, unlovely things of burr, spine,thorn, or saw-edged leaf,--all bent one ways by the sand blown againstthem,--bristling cactus and crouching mesquite bushes.

  In the vast open of the blue above, a vulture wheeled with sinisteralertness; and far out among the dwarfed growing things a coyote skulkedknowingly. The weird, phantom-like beauty of it stole upon him, torn ashe was, while he looked over the dry, flat reaches. It was a good placeto die in, this lifeless waste languishing under an angry sun. And heknew how it would come. Out to the south, as many miles as he shouldhave strength to walk, away from any road or water-hole, a great thirstwould come, and then delirium, perhaps bringing visions of cool runningwater and green trees. He would hurry toward these madly until hestumbled and fell and died. Then would come those cynical scavengers ofthe desert, the vulture wheeling lower, the coyote skulking nearer,pausing suspiciously to sniff and to see if he moved. Then a few poorbones, half-buried by the restless sand, would be left to whiten andcrumble into particles of the same desert dust he looked upon. As forhis soul, he shuddered to think its dissolution could not also be madeas sure.

  He stood looking out a long time, held by the weak spirit of a hope thatsome reprieve might come, from within or from on high. But he saw onlythe page wet with blood, and the words that burned through it into hiseyes; heard only the cries of women in their death-agony and thestealthy movements of the bleeding shapes behind him. There was no rayof hope to his eye nor note of it to his ear--only the cries and therustlings back of him, driving him out.

  At last he gave his horse water, tied the bridle-rein to the horn of thesaddle, headed him back over the trail to the valley and turned himloose. Then, after a long look toward the saving green of the hills, hestarted off through the yielding sand, his face white and haggard buthard-set. He was already weakened by fasting and loss of sleep, and theheat and dryness soon told upon him as the chill was warmed from themorning air.

  When he had walked an hour, he felt he must stop, at least to rest. Helooked back to see how far he had come. He was disappointed by thenearness of the hills; they seemed but a stone's throw away. If deliriumcame now he would probably wander back to the water. He lay down,determining to gather strength for many more miles. The sand was hotunder him, and the heat of a furnace was above, but he lay with his headon his arm and his hat pulled over his face. Soon he was half-asleep, sothat dreams would alternate with flashes of consciousness; or sometimesthey merged, so that he would dream he had wandered into a desert, orthat the stifling heat of a desert came to him amid the snows of EchoCanon. He awakened finally with a cry, brushing from before his eyes amass of yellow hair that a dark hand shook in his face.

  He sat up, looked about a moment, and was on his feet again to thesouth, walking in the full glare of the sun, with his shadow nowstraight behind him. He went unsteadily at first, but soon felt newvigour from his rest.

  He walked another hour, then turned, and was again disappointed--it wassuch a little distance; yet he knew now he must be too far out to findhis way back when the madness came. So it was with a little sigh ofcontentment that he lay down again to rest or to take what might come.

  Again he lay with his head on his arm in the scorching sands, with hishat above his face, and again his dreams alternated with consciousnessof the desolation about him--alternated and mingled so that he no longerknew when he did not sleep. And again he was tortured to wakefulness, tothirst, and to heat, by the yellow hair brandished before him.

  He sat up until he was quite awake, and then sank back upon the sandagain, relieved to find that he felt too weak to walk further. His mindhad become suddenly cleared so that he seemed to see only realities, andthose in their just proportions. He knew he had passed sentence of deathupon himself, knew he had been led to sin by his own arrogance of soul.It came to him in all its bare, hard simplicity, stripped of theillusions and conceits in which his pride had draped it, thrusting sharpblades of self-condemnation through his heart. In that moment he doubtedall things. He knew he had sinned past his own forgiveness, even ifpardon had come from on high; knew that no agony of spear and thornsupon the cross could avail to take him from the hell to which his ownconscience had sent him.

  He was quite broken. Not since the long-gone night on the river-flatacross from Nauvoo had tears wet his eyes. But they fell now, and fromsheer, helpless grief he wept. And then for the first time in two dayshe prayed--this time the prayer of the publican:--

  "_God be merciful to me, a sinner_."

  Over and over he said the words, chokingly, watering the hot sands withhis tears. When the paroxysm had passed, it left him, weak and prone,still faintly crying his prayer into the sand, "O God, be merciful tome, a sinner."

  When he had said over the words as long as his parched throat would lethim, he became quiet. To his amazement, some new, strange peace hadfilled him. He took it for the peace of death. He was glad to think itwas coming so gently--like a kind mother soothing him to his last sleep.

  His head on his arm, his whole tired body relaxing in this newrestfulness, he opened his eyes and looked off to the south, idlyscanning the horizon, his eyes level with the sandy plain. Thensomething made him sit quickly up and stare intently, his bared headcraning forward. To the south, lying low, was a mass of light clouds,volatile, changing with opalescent lights as he looked. A little to theleft of these clouds, while his head was on the sand, he thought hiseyes had detected certain squared lines.

  Now he scanned the spot with a feverish eagerness. At first there wasonly the endless empty blue. Then, when his wonder was quite dead and hewas about to lie down, there came a miracle of miracles,--a vision inthe clear blue of the sky. And this time the lines were coherent. He,the dying sinner, had caught, clearly and positively for one awfulsecond in that sky, the flashing impression of a cross. It faded assoon as it came, vanished while he gazed, leaving him in gasping,fainting wonder at the marvel.

  And then, before he could think or question himself, the sky once moreyielded its vision; again that image of a cross stayed for a second inhis eyes, and this time he thought there were figures about it. Somepicture was trying to show itself to him. Still reaching his bodyforward, gazing fearfully, his aroused body pulsin
g swiftly to thewonder of the thing, he began to pray again, striving to keep hisexcitement under.

  "O God, have mercy on me, a sinner!"

  Slowly at first, it grew before his fixed eyes, then quickly, so that atthe last there was a complete picture where but an instant before hadbeen but a meaningless mass of line and colour. Set on a hill were manylow, square, flat-topped houses, brown in colour against the gray groundabout them. In front of these houses was a larger structure of the samematerial, a church-like building such as he had once seen in a picture,with a wooden cross at the top. In an open square before this churchwere many moving persons strangely garbed, seeming to be Indians. Theysurged for a moment about the door of the church, then parted to eitherside as if in answer to a signal, and he saw a procession of the samepeople coming with bowed heads, scourging themselves with short whipsand thorned branches. At their head walked a brown-cowled monk, holdingaloft before him a small cross, attached by a chain to his waist. As heled the procession forward, another crowd, some of them being otherbrown-cowled monks, parted before the church door, and there, clearlybefore his wondering eyes was erected a great cross upon which he sawthe crucified Saviour.

  He saw those in the procession form about the cross and fling themselvesupon the ground before it, while all the others round about knelt. Hesaw the monk, standing alone, raise the smaller cross in his hands abovethem, as if in blessing. High above it all, he saw the crucified one,the head lying over on the shoulder.

  Then he, too, flung himself face down in the sand, weeping hysterically,calling wildly, and trying again to utter his prayer. Once more he daredto look up, in some sudden distrust of his eyes. Again he saw theprostrate figures, the kneeling ones farther back, the brown-cowled monkwith arms upraised, and the face of agony on the cross.

  He was down in the sand again, now with enough control of himself to cryout his prayer over and over. When he next looked, the vision was gone.Only a few light clouds ruffled the southern horizon.

  He sank back on the sands in an ecstasy. His Witness had come--not as hethought it would, in a moment of spiritual uplift; but when he had beensunk by his own sin to fearful depths. Nor had it brought any message ofglory for himself, of gifts or powers. Only the mission of suffering andservice and suffering again at the end. But it was enough.

  How long he lay in the joy of the realisation he never knew, but sleepor faintness at last overcame him.

  He was revived by the sharp chill of night, and sat up to find his mindclear, alert, and active with new purposes. He had suffered greatly fromthirst, so that when he tried to say a prayer of thanksgiving he couldnot move his swollen tongue. He was weakened, too, but the freezing coldof the desert night aroused all his latent force. He struggled to hisfeet, and laid a course by the light of the moon back to the spring hehad left in the morning. How he reached the hills again he never knew,nor how he made his way over them and back to the settlement. But therehe lay sick for many days, his mind, when he felt it at all, tossingidly upon the great sustaining consciousness of that vision in thedesert.

  The day which he next remembered clearly, and from which he dated hisnew life, was one when he was back in the Meadows. He had ridden therein the first vagueness and weakness of his recovery, without purpose,yet feeling that he must go. What he found there made him believe he hadbeen led to the spot. Stark against the glow of the western sky as herode up, was a huge cross. He stopped, staring in wonder, believing itto be another vision; but it stayed before him, rigid, bare, anduncompromising. He left his horse and climbed up to it. At its base waspiled a cairn of stones, and against this was a slab with aninscription:--

  "Here 120 Men, Women, and Children Were Massacred in Cold Blood Early inSeptember, 1857."

  On the cross itself was carved in deep letters:--

  "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

  He fell on his knees at the foot and prayed, not weeping nor in anyfever of fear, but as one knowing his sin and the sin of his Church. Theburden of his prayer was, "O God, my own sin cannot be forgiven--I knowit well--but let me atone for the sins of this people and let me guidethem aright. Let me die on this cross a hundred deaths for each lifethey put out, or as many more as shall be needed to save them."

  He was strong in his faith again, conscious that he himself was lost,but burning to save others, and hopeful, too, for he believed that amiracle had been vouchsafed to him in the desert.

  Nor would the good _padre_, at the head of his procession of penitentsin his little mission out across the desert, have doubted less that itwas a miracle than did this unhappy apostle of Joseph Smith, had heknown the circumstance of its timeliness; albeit he had become familiarwith such phenomena of light and air in the desert.