_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 God 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 God 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 God!"
But Brigham's reply was an order to pass 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 passing 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 God 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 pass 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 grass 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 harass you and pick
you off by day and by night, and, as God 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, passed
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 God, 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 God
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 God
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 passed 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 hell--
Du dah, du dah, day!"
He smiled grimly as the belated echo of war came back to him.