_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 that
he had been cheated of all his great long-nursed hopes of some superior
exaltation. Nor this only; for he had sinned unforgivably and incurred
perdition. He who had fasted, prayed, and endured, waiting for his
Witness, for the spreading of the heavens and the glory of the open
vision, had overreached himself and was cast down.
When at last he slowed his horse to a walk, it was the spring of the
day. The moon had gone, and over on his left a soft grayness began to
show above the line of the hills. The light grew until it glowed with
the fire of opals; through the tree-tops ran little stirs of
wakefulness, and all about him were faint, furtive rustlings and
whispers of the new day. Then in this glorified dusk of the dawn a
squirrel loosed his bark of alarm, a crested jay screamed in answer, and
he knew his hour of atonement was come.
He pressed forward again toward the desert, eager to be on with it. The
page with the wash of blood across it seemed to take on a new vividness
in the stronger light. Under the stain, the letters of the words were
magnified before his mind,--"_And as ye would that men should do to
you_--" It seemed to him that the blood through which they came heated
the words so that they burned his eyes.
An hour after daybreak the trail led him down out of the hills by a
little watercourse to the edge of the desert. Along the sides of this
the chaparral grew thickly, and the spring by which he halted made a
little spot of green at the edge of the gray. But out in front of him
was the infinite stretch of death, far sweeps of wind-furrowed sand
burning under a sun made sullen red by the clouds of fine dust in the
air. Sparsely over the dull surface grew the few shrubs that could
survive the heat and dryness,--stunted, unlovely things of burr, spine,
thorn, or saw-edged leaf,--all bent one ways by the sand blown against
them,--bristling cactus and crouching mesquite bushes.
In the vast open of the blue above, a vulture wheeled with sinister
alertness; and far out among the dwarfed growing things a coyote skulked
knowingly. The weird, phantom-like beauty of it stole upon him, torn as
he was, while he looked over the dry, flat reaches. It was a good place
to die in, this lifeless waste languishing under an angry sun. And he
knew how it would come. Out to the south, as many miles as he should
have strength to walk, away from any road or water-hole, a great thirst
would come, and then delirium, perhaps bringing visions of cool running
water and green trees. He would hurry toward these madly until he
stumbled and fell and died. Then would come those cynical scavengers of
the desert, the vulture wheeling lower, the coyote skulking nearer,
pausing suspiciously to sniff and to see if he moved. Then a few poor
bones, half-buried by the restless sand, would be left to whiten and
crumble into particles of the same desert dust he looked upon. As for
his soul, he shuddered to think its dissolution could not also be made
as sure.
He stood looking out a long time, held by the weak spirit of a hope that
some reprieve might come, from within or from on high. But he saw only
the page wet with blood, and the words that burned through it into his
eyes; heard only the cries of women in their death-agony and the
stealthy movements of the bleeding shapes behind him. There was no ray
of hope to his eye nor note of it to his ear--only the cries and the
rustlings back of him, driving him out.
At last he gave his horse water, tied the bridle-rein to the horn of the
saddle, headed him back over the trail to the valley and turned him
loose. Then, after a long look toward the saving green of the hills, he
started off through the yielding sand, his face white and haggard but
hard-set. He was already weakened by fasting and loss of sleep, and the
heat and dryness soon told upon him as the chill was warmed from the
morning air.
When he had walked an hour, he felt he must stop, at least to rest. He
looked back to see how far he had come. He was disappointed by the
nearness of the hills; they seemed but a stone's throw away. If delirium
came now he would probably wander back to the water. He lay down,
determining to gather strength for many more miles. The sand was hot
under him, and the heat of a furnace was above, but he lay with his head
on his arm and his hat pulled over his face. Soon he was half-asleep, so
that dreams would alternate with flashes of consciousness; or sometimes
they merged, so that he would dream he had wandered into a desert, or
that the stifling heat of a desert came to him amid the snows of Echo
Canon. He awakened finally with a cry, brushing from before his eyes a
mass 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 the
south, walking in the full glare of the sun, with his shadow now
straight behind him. He went unsteadily at first, but soon felt new
vigour from his rest.
He walked another hour, then turned, and was again disappointed--it was
such a little distance; yet he knew now he must be too far out to find
his way back when the madness came. So it was with a little sigh of
contentment 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 his
hat above his face, and again his dreams alternated with consciousness
of the desolation about him--alternated and mingled so that he no longer
knew when he did not sleep. And again he was tortured to wakefulness, to
thirst, and to heat, by the yellow hair brandished before him.
He sat up until he was quite awake, and then sank back upon the sand
again, relieved to find that he felt too weak to walk further. His mind
had become suddenly cleared so that he seemed to see only realities, and
those in their just proportions. He knew he had passed sentence of death
upon 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 the
illusions and conceits in which his pride had draped it, thrusting sharp
blades of self-condemnation through his heart. In that moment he doubted
all things. He knew he had sinned past his own forgiveness, even if
pardon had come from on high; knew that no agony of spear and thorns
upon the cross could avail to take him from the hell to which his own
conscience had sent him.
He was quite broken. Not since the long-gone night on the river-flat
across from Nauvoo had tears wet his eyes. But they fell now, and from
sheer, helpless grief he wept. And then for the first time in two days
he 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 with
his tears. When the paroxysm had passed, it left him, weak and prone,
still faintly crying his prayer into the sand, "O God, be merciful to
me, a sinner."
When he had said over the words as long as his parched throat would let
him, he became quiet. To his amazement, some new, strange peace had
filled him. He took it for the peace of death. He was glad to think it
was 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 new
restfulness, he opened his eyes and looked off to the south, idly
scanning the horizon, his eyes level with the sandy plain. Then
something made him sit quickly up and stare intently, his bared head
craning forward. To the south, lying low, was a mass of light clouds,
volatile, changing with opalescent lights as he looked. A little to the
left of these clouds, while his head was on the sand, he thought his
eyes had detected certain squared lines.
Now he scanned the spot with a feverish eagerness. At first there was
only the endless empty blue. Then, when his wonder was quite dead and he
was about to lie down, there came a miracle of miracles,--a vision in
the clear blue of the sky. And this time the lines were coherent. He,
the dying sinner, had caught, clearly and positively for one awful
second in that sky, the flashing impression of a cross. It faded as
soon 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 more
yielded its vision; again that image of a cross stayed for a second in
his eyes, and this time he thought there were figures about it. Some
picture was trying to show itself to him. Still reaching his body
forward, gazing fearfully, his aroused body pulsing swiftly to the
wonder of the thing, he began to pray again, striving to keep his
excitement under.
"O God, have mercy on me, a sinner!"
Slowly at first, it grew before his fixed eyes, then quickly, so that at
the last there was a complete picture where but an instant before had
been but a meaningless mass of line and colour. Set on a hill were many
low, square, flat-topped houses, brown in colour against the gray ground
about them. In front of these houses was a larger structure of the same
material, 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 church
were many moving persons strangely garbed, seeming to be Indians. They
surged for a moment about the door of the church, then parted to either
side as if in answer to a signal, and he saw a procession of the same
people coming with bowed heads, scourging themselves with short whips
and thorned branches. At their head walked a brown-cowled monk, holding
aloft before him a small cross, attached by a chain to his waist. As he
led the procession forward, another crowd, some of them being other
brown-cowled monks, parted before the church door, and there, clearly
before his wondering eyes was erected a great cross upon which he saw
the crucified Saviour.
He saw those in the procession form about the cross and fling themselves
upon the ground before it, while all the others round about knelt. He
saw the monk, standing alone, raise the smaller cross in his hands above
them, 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 dared
to look up, in some sudden distrust of his eyes. Again he saw the
prostrate figures, the kneeling ones farther back, the brown-cowled monk
with arms upraised, and the face of agony on the cross.
He was down in the sand again, now with enough control of himself to cry
out 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 he
thought it would, in a moment of spiritual uplift; but when he had been
sunk by his own sin to fearful depths. Nor had it brought any message of
glory for himself, of gifts or powers. Only the mission of suffering and
service and suffering again at the end. But it was enough.
How long he lay in the joy of the realisation he never knew, but sleep
or faintness at last overcame him.
He was revived by the sharp chill of night, and sat up to find his mind
clear, alert, and active with new purposes. He had suffered greatly from
thirst, so that when he tried to say a prayer of thanksgiving he could
not move his swollen tongue. He was weakened, too, but the freezing cold
of the desert night aroused all his latent force. He struggled to his
feet, and laid a course by the light of the moon back to the spring he
had 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 there
he lay sick for many days, his mind, when he felt it at all, tossing
idly upon the great sustaining consciousness of that vision in the
desert.
The day which he next remembered clearly, and from which he dated his
new life, was one when he was back in the Meadows. He had ridden there
in the first vagueness and weakness of his recovery, without purpose,
yet feeling that he must go. What he found there made him believe he had
been led to the spot. Stark against the glow of the western sky as he
rode up, was a huge cross. He stopped, staring in wonder, believing it
to be another vision; but it stayed before him, rigid, bare, and
uncompromising. He left his horse and climbed up to it. At its base was
piled a cairn of stones, and against this was a slab with an
inscription:--
"Here 120 Men, Women, and Children Were Massacred in Cold Blood Early in
September, 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 any
fever of fear, but as one knowing his sin and the sin of his Church. The
burden of his prayer was, "O God, my own sin cannot be forgiven--I know
it well--but let me atone for the sins of this people and let me guide
them aright. Let me die on this cross a hundred deaths for each life
they 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 a
miracle had been vouchsafed to him in the desert.
Nor would the good _padre_, at the head of his procession of penitents
in his little mission out across the desert, have doubted less that it
was a miracle than did this unhappy apostle of Joseph Smith, had he
known the circumstance of its timeliness; albeit he had become familiar
with such phenomena of light and air in the desert.