The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

  Brigham Young was just as fervent an advocate of polygamy as Joseph Smith was, if not more so. Young served as president when Mormon polygamy was out in the open. In the Mormons’ Journal of Discourses, Volume 11 (1866), Young is quoted as saying, “The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy. Others attain unto a glory and may even be permitted to come into the presence of the Father and the Son; but they cannot reign as kings in glory, because they had blessings offered unto them, and they refused to accept them.” Public records show that upon his death in 1877, Brigham Young left his fortune of over $2 million to his seventeen wives and fifty-six children, though some sources put the number of wives at fifty-five.

  211 That is, Heber C. Kimball (1801–1868), the prominent officer and missionary who accompanied Brigham Young to Utah, shortly thereafter becoming his first counsellor. The name is consistently misspelled in various editions.

  212 Luke S. Johnson (1807–1861) was a member of the pioneer party who had little role in the Church thereafter.

  213 Incorrectly termed the “Wahsatch” Mountains in the Beeton’s and English texts.

  214 The phrase is “their minds as they” in the English book edition.

  215 “Gold fever” first broke out in 1848, when gold was discovered near Sacramento, California, at the unfinished sawmill of cattle rancher John Sutter. On January 24, Sutter’s carpenter, James Marshall, discovered several pea-sized nuggets of gold at the construction site. He brought the pieces back to Sutter, and the two men decided to keep Marshall’s find a secret. But it was not long before the secret was out, spread in part by Sam Brannan, a Mormon preacher and entrepreneur who ran through the streets of San Francisco holding up a bottle of gold dust and shouting, “Gold! Gold in the American River!” (Brannan, in fact, had no interest in the gold itself, but in selling the shovels that gold-seekers would need to purchase.) Potential prospectors streamed into California, and by the end of 1849 some 80,000 “forty-niners” had arrived seeking to make their fortunes.

  Most of the gold near Sutter’s Mill had run out by the middle of 1849, but the miners’ dreams were slow to die, and further discoveries kept their hopes alive. In 1855, another frenzy erupted further south when gold was found along the upper Kern River, in Kern County; in 1858, the Fraser River gold rush in British Columbia saw disillusioned miners packing up their things and stampeding northward. But many of those who made the trip to Fraser River would come to regret it. By the early 1860s, the Fraser River rush and the succeeding Cariboo rush were over, and British Columbia lapsed into a recession. Apparently the Fraser River rush, which led prospectors to leave California, is what the text refers to as the “gold fever … in California.”

  216 The proper word is “peltry,” meaning pelts, furs; especially, raw, undressed skins.

  217 A bit that exerts severe pressure on a horse’s jaws; also, the chain or strap attached to it.

  CHAPTER

  III

  JOHN FERRIER TALKS WITH THE PROPHET

  THREE WEEKS HAD passed since Jefferson Hope and his comrades had departed from Salt Lake City. John Ferrier’s heart was sore within him when he thought of the young man’s return, and of the impending loss of his adopted child. Yet her bright and happy face reconciled him to the arrangement more than any argument could have done. He had always determined, deep down in his resolute heart, that nothing would ever induce him to allow his daughter to wed a Mormon. Such a marriage he regarded as no marriage at all, but as a shame and a disgrace. Whatever he might think of the Mormon doctrines, upon that one point he was inflexible. He had to seal his mouth on the subject, however, for to express a unorthodox opinion was a dangerous matter in those days in the Land of the Saints.

  Yes, a dangerous matter—so dangerous that even the most saintly dared only whisper their religious opinions with bated breath, lest something which fell from their lips might be misconstrued, and bring down a swift retribution upon them. The victims of persecution had now turned persecutors on their own account, and persecutors of the most terrible description. Not the Inquisition of Seville,218 nor the German Vehmgericht219 nor the secret societies of Italy,220 were ever able to put a more formidable machinery in motion than that which cast a cloud over the state of Utah.

  Its invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It appeared to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. The man who held out against the Church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone or what had befallen him. His wife and his children awaited him at home, but no father ever returned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was followed by annihilation, and yet none knew what the nature might be of this terrible power which was suspended over them. No wonder that men went about in fear and trembling, and that even in the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper the doubts which oppressed them.

  At first this vague and terrible power was exercised only upon the recalcitrants who, having embraced the Mormon faith, wished afterwards to pervert or to abandon it. Soon, however, it took a wider range. The supply of adult women was running short, and polygamy without a female population on which to draw was a barren doctrine indeed. Strange rumours began to be bandied about—rumours of murdered immigrants and rifled camps in regions where Indians had never been seen. Fresh women appeared in the harems of the Elders—women who pined and wept, and bore upon their faces the traces of an unextinguishable horror. Belated wanderers upon the mountains spoke of gangs of armed men, masked, stealthy, and noiseless, who flitted by them in the darkness. These tales and rumours took substance and shape, and were corroborated and re-corroborated, until they resolved themselves into a definite name. To this day, in the lonely ranches of the West, the name of the Danite221 Band, or the Avenging Angels, is a sinister and an ill-omened one.222

  “Armed men, masked, stealthy and noiseless.”

  Geo. Hutchinson, A Study in Scarlet (London: Ward, Lock Bowden, and Co., 1891)

  Fuller knowledge of the organization which produced such terrible results served to increase rather than to lessen the horror which it inspired in the minds of men. None knew who belonged to this ruthless society. The names of the participators in the deeds of blood and violence done under the name of religion were kept profoundly secret. The very friend to whom you communicated your misgivings as to the Prophet and his mission might be one of those who would come forth at night with fire and sword to exact a terrible reparation. Hence every man feared his neighbour, and none spoke of the things which were nearest his heart.

  One fine morning, John Ferrier was about to set out to his wheatfields, when he heard the click of the latch, and, looking through the window, saw a stout, sandy-haired, middle-aged223 man coming up the pathway. His heart leapt to his mouth, for this was none other than the great Brigham Young himself. Full of trepidation—for he knew that such a visit boded him little good—Ferrier ran to the door to greet the Mormon chief. The latter, however, received his salutations coldly, and followed him with a stern face into the sitting-room.

  “Brother Ferrier,” he said, taking a seat, and eyeing the farmer keenly from under his light-coloured eyelashes, “the true believers have been good friends to you. We picked you up when you were starving in the desert, we shared our food with you, led you safe to the Chosen Valley, gave you a goodly share of land, and allowed you to wax rich under our protection. Is not this so?”

  “It is so,” answered John Ferrier.

  “In return for all this we asked but one condition: that was, that you should embrace the true faith, and conform in every way to its usages. This you promised to do, and this, if common report says truly, you have neglected.”

  “And how have I neglected it?” asked Ferrier, throwing out his hands in expostulation. “Have I not given to the common fund? Have I not attended at the Temple? Have I not—?”

  “Where are your wives?” asked Young, l
ooking round him. “Call them in, that I may greet them.”

  “It is true that I have not married,” Ferrier answered. “But women were few, and there were many who had better claims than I. I was not a lonely man: I had my daughter to attend to my wants.”

  “It is of that daughter that I would speak to you,” said the leader of the Mormons. “She has grown to be the flower of Utah, and has found favour in the eyes of many who are high in the land.”

  John Ferrier groaned internally.

  “There are stories of her which I would fain disbelieve—stories that she is sealed to some Gentile. This must be the gossip of idle tongues. What is the thirteenth rule in the code of the sainted Joseph Smith? ‘Let every maiden of the true faith marry one of the elect; for if she wed a Gentile, she commits a grievous sin.’ This being so, it is impossible that you, who profess the holy creed, should suffer your daughter to violate it.”

  John Ferrier made no answer, but he played nervously with his riding-whip.

  “Upon this one point your whole faith shall be tested—so it has been decided in the Sacred Council of Four. The girl is young,224 and we would not have her wed grey hairs, neither would we deprive her of all choice. We Elders have many heifers,225 but our children must also be provided. Stangerson has a son, and Drebber has a son, and either of them would gladly welcome your daughter to their house. Let her choose between them. They are young and rich, and of the true faith. What say you to that?”

  Ferrier remained silent for some little time with his brows knitted.

  “You will give us time,” he said at last. “My daughter is very young—she is scarce of an age to marry.”

  “She shall have a month to choose,” said Young, rising from his seat. “At the end of that time she shall give her answer.”

  He was passing through the door, when he turned, with flushed face and flashing eyes. “It were better for you, John Ferrier,” he thundered, “that you and she were now lying blanched skeletons upon the Sierra Blanco, than that you should put your weak wills against the orders of the Holy Four!”226

  With a threatening gesture of his hand, he turned from the door, and Ferrier heard his heavy steps scrunching along the shingly path.

  He was still sitting with his elbows upon his knees, considering how he should broach the matter to his daughter, when a soft hand was laid upon his, and looking up, he saw her standing beside him. One glance at her pale, frightened face showed him that she had heard what had passed.

  “I could not help it,” she said, in answer to his look. “His voice rang through the house. “Oh, father, father, what shall we do?”

  “Don’t you scare yourself,” he answered, drawing her to him, and passing his broad, rough hand caressingly over her chestnut hair. “We’ll fix it up somehow or another. You don’t find your fancy kind o’ lessening for this chap, do you?”

  “He was passing through the door when he turned with flushed face and flashing eyes.”

  Geo. Hutchinson, A Study in Scarlet (London: Ward, Lock Bowden, and Co., 1891)

  “ ‘It were better for you, John Ferrier,’ he thundered, ‘that you and she were now lying blanched skeletons upon the Sierra Blanco, than that you should put your weak wills against the orders of the Holy Four!’ ”

  Richard Gutschmidt, Späte Rache (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1902)

  A sob and a squeeze of his hand was her only answer.

  “No; of course not. I shouldn’t care to hear you say you did. He’s a likely lad, and he’s a Christian, which is more than these folks here, in spite o’ all their praying and preaching. There’s a party starting for Nevada to-morrow, and I’ll manage to send him a message letting him know the hole we are in. If I know anything o’ that young man, he’ll be back here with a speed that would whip electro-telegraphs.”

  Lucy laughed through her tears at her father’s description.

  “When he comes, he will advise us for the best. But it is for you that I am frightened, dear. One hears—one bears such dreadful stories about those who oppose the Prophet: something terrible always happens to them.”

  “But we haven’t opposed him yet,” her father answered. “It will be time to look out for squalls when we do. We have a clear month before us; at the end of that, I guess we had best shin out227 of Utah.”

  “He was still sitting with his elbow upon his knee.” Geo. Hutchinson, A Study in Scarlet (London: Ward, Lock Bowden, and Co., 1891)

  “Leave Utah!”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “But the farm?”

  “We will raise as much as we can in money, and let the rest go. To tell the truth, Lucy, it isn’t the first time I have thought of doing it. I don’t care about knuckling under to any man, as these folk do to their darned Prophet. I’m a free-born American, and it’s all new to me. Guess I’m too old to learn. If he comes browsing about this farm, he might chance to run up against a charge of buckshot travelling in the opposite direction.”

  “But they won’t let us leave,” his daughter objected.

  “Wait till Jefferson comes, and we’ll soon manage that. In the meantime, don’t you fret yourself, my dearie, and don’t get your eyes swelled up, else he’ll be walking into me when he sees you. There’s nothing to be afeared about, and there’s no danger at all.”

  John Ferrier uttered these consoling remarks in a very confident tone, but she could not help observing that he paid unusual care to the fastening of the doors that night, and that he carefully cleaned and loaded the rusty old shotgun which hung upon the wall of his bedroom.

  218 The Spanish Inquisition, a tribunal intended to pass judgement on accused heretics of the Roman Catholic Church, was established in 1478 by Ferdinand and Isabella. The pope at the time, Sixtus IV, had given the Spanish sovereigns his papal approval; but he soon came to regret that he had handed such far-reaching ecclesiastical powers over to the royal court, which did not have to report to Rome regarding its secret proceedings and use of torture. Defendants were not allowed counsel, and those who were condemned to execution had their property confiscated and distributed among the crown, the church, and the accusers. While the tribunal was originally set up to investigate Jews who had converted to the faith (conversos), in time it extended to converted Muslims, Protestants, and people accused of other crimes. In Spain alone, through 1809, over 340,000 individuals were killed by one means or another in the name of the Inquisition.

  219 See note 168, above.

  220 See note 170, above.

  221 During the Mormons’ period of settlement in Missouri, Smith’s previously unquestioned leadership began to show cracks, as he was criticised both from outside the community and, quietly, within his own ranks. The 1888 Encyclopædia Britannica (9th Ed.) reported that “his gross profligacy had repelled many of his leading supporters and bred internal dissensions, while from the outside the brethren were harassed and threatened by the steadily growing hostility of the native Missourians.”

  Smith’s most devoted followers rallied to his defence. The Danites, or Sons of Dan, were a secret society organised in Missouri in 1838 by Dr. Samson Avard, a recent convert to the church. (The original tribe of Dan was one of twelve groups of Israelites who would later become the Jewish people. Dan was the firstborn son of Jacob.) While the organisation vowed vengeance against all who crossed the church, it also had larger ambitions. Its intent, according to the Britannica, was to support Smith “at all hazards, of upholding the authority of his revelation and decrees as superior to the laws of the land, and of helping him to get possession, first of the State, then of the United States, and ultimately of the world.”

  Smith himself had little desire to condone this form of “support.” Upon learning of the Danites’ existence, he disbanded the group and excommunicated Avard before any acts of vengeance could be carried out. “Nonetheless,” Tracy writes in Saints, “the depredations of ‘the Danite Band, or the Avenging Angels’ were featured in anti-Mormon literature for another
fifty years following its abolition.” Tracy asserts that no evidence exists that the society ever engaged in any activities in Utah.

  222 Michael Harrison, in In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, explains that the mid-Victorian English impression of Mormons was as “white slavers,” who stole English servant-girls and spirited them away to Utah. “There were riots over the Mormons, especially when the servant girls [who compared] their lot below-stairs with the prospects offered of life in a state which has never known unemployment, … left voluntarily and in quite large numbers… . [W]hen Watson recorded the case of A Study in Scarlet, it must have confirmed a good many of the more traditional British in their view that there was nothing wickeder than a Mormon.”

  223 The events that follow reveal that the year was 1860, at which time Brigham Young was fifty-nine.

  224 Lucy, who was five in 1847, was in fact eighteen years old in 1860.

  225 The English and American book editions here include a footnote (probably added by Arthur Conan Doyle) that “Heber C. Kemball, in one of his sermons, alludes to his hundred wives under this endearing epithet.”

  226 In fact, the “Holy Four” was a literary device. Upon the death of Smith, the church voted to place supreme authority in the hands of the “Quorum of the Twelve” or the “Twelve Apostles,” headed by Brigham Young.

  227 In English slang, to clear off or run away. Jack Tracy, in his Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana, notes that the teller of this tale puts a distinctly English colloquialism in the mouth of the American John Ferrier.

  CHAPTER

  IV

  A FLIGHT FOR LIFE

  ON THE MORNING which followed his interview with the Mormon Prophet, John Ferrier went in to Salt Lake City, and having found his acquaintance, who was bound for the Nevada Mountains, he entrusted him with his message to Jefferson Hope. In it he told the young man of the imminent danger which threatened them, and how necessary it was that he should return. Having done thus he felt easier in his mind, and returned home with a lighter heart.