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

  CHAPTER X.

  _The Promised Land_

  So far on their march the Lord had protected them from all but ordinaryhardships. True, some members of the company had suffered from a feverwhich they attributed to the clouds of dust that enveloped the column ofwagons when in motion, and to the great change of temperature from dayto night. Again, the most of them were for many weeks without bread,saving for the sick the little flour they had and subsisting upon themeat provided by the hunters. Before reaching Fort Laramie, too, theirstock had become weakened for want of food; an extended drought, thevast herds of buffalo, and the Indian fires having combined to destroythe pasturage.

  This weakness of the animals made the march for many days not more thanfive or six miles a day. At the last they had fed to the stock not onlyall their grain but the most of their crackers and other breadstuffs.But these were slight matters to a persecuted people gathering out ofBabylon.

  Late in June they reached the South Pass. For many hundred miles theyhad been climbing the backbone of the continent. Now they had reachedthe summit, the dividing ridge between streams that flowed to theAtlantic and streams that flowed to the Pacific. From the level prairiesthey had toiled up into the fearsome Rockies where bleak, grim cragslowered upon them from afar, and distant summits glistening with snowwarned them of the perils ahead.

  Through all this time of marching the place where they should pitch thetent of Israel was not fixed upon. When Brigham was questioned aroundthe camp-fire at night, his only reply was that he would know the siteof their new home when he saw it. And it came to be told among the menthat he had beheld in vision a tent settling down from heaven andresting over a certain spot; and that a voice had said to him, "Here isthe place where my people Israel shall pitch their tents and spread widethe curtains of Zion!" It was enough. He would recognise the spot whenthey reached it.

  From the trappers, scouts, and guides encountered along the road theyhad received much advice as to eligible locations; and while this wasvarious as to sites recommended, the opinion had been unanimous that theSalt Lake Valley was impossible. It was, they were told, sandy, barren,rainless, destitute of timber and vegetation, infested with hordes ofhungry crickets, and roamed over by bands of the most savage Indians. Inshort, no colony could endure there.

  One by one the trappers they met voiced this opinion. There wasBordeaux, the grizzled old Frenchman, clad in ragged buckskin; MosesHarris; "Pegleg" Smith, whose habit of profanity was shocking; MilesGoodyear, fresh from captivity among the Blackfeet; and James Bridger.The latter had discovered Great Salt Lake twenty-five years before, andwas especially vehement in his condemnation of the valley. They hadhalted a day at his "fort," two adjoining log houses with dirt roofs,surrounded by a high stockade of logs, and built on one of several smallislands formed by the branches of Black's Fork. Here they had found theold trapper amid a score of nondescript human beings, white men, Indianwomen, and half-breed children.

  Bridger had told them very concisely that he would pay them a thousanddollars for the first ear of corn raised in Salt Lake Valley. It is truethat Bridger seemed to have become pessimistic in many matters. For one,the West was becoming overcrowded and the price of furs was falling at arate to alarm the most conservative trapper. He referred feelingly tothe good old days when one got ten dollars a pound for prime beaverskins in St. Louis; but "now it's a skin for a plug of tobacco, andthree for a cup of powder, and other fancies in the same proportion."And so, had his testimony been unsupported, they might have suspected hewas underestimating the advantages of the Salt Lake Valley. But,corroborated as he had been by his brother trappers, they began todescend the western slope of the Rockies strong in the opinion that thissame Salt Lake Valley was the land that had been chosen for them by theLord.

  They dared not, indeed, go to a fertile land, for there the Gentileswould be tempted to follow them--with the old bloody end. Only in adesert such as these men had described the Salt Lake Valley to be couldthey hope for peace. From Fort Bridger, then, their route bent to thesouthwest along the rocky spurs of the Uintah Mountains, whose snow-cladtops gleamed a bluish white in the July sun.

  By the middle of July the vanguard of the company began the descent ofEcho Canon,--a narrow slit cut straight down a thousand feet into thered sandstone,--the pass which a handful of them was to hold a few yearslater against a whole army of the hated Gentiles.

  The hardest part of their journey was still before them. Their road hadnow to be made as they went, lying wholly among the mountains. Loftyhills, deep ravines with jagged sides, forbidding canons, all butimpassable streams, rock-bound and brush-choked,--up and down, throughor over all these obstacles they had now to force a passage, cuttinghere, digging there; now double-locking the wheels of their wagons toprevent their crashing down some steep incline; now putting five teamsto one load to haul it up the rock-strewn side of some water-way.

  From Echo Canon they went down the Weber, then toward East Canon, adozen of the bearded host going forward with spades and axes as sappers.Sometimes they made a mile in five hours; sometimes they were lesslucky. But at length they were fighting their way up the choked EastCanon, starting fierce gray wolves from their lairs in the rocks andhearing at every rod of their hard-fought way the swift and unnervingsong of the coiled rattlesnake.

  Eight fearful miles they toiled through this gash in the mountain; thenover another summit,--Big Mountain; down this dangerous slide, allwheels double-locked, on to the summit of another lofty hill,--LittleMountain; and abruptly down again into the rocky gorge afterwards tobecome historic as Immigration Canon.

  Following down this gorge, never doubting they should come at last totheir haven, they found its mouth to be impassable. Rocks, brush, andtimber choked the way. Crossing to the south side, they went sheerly upthe steep hill--so steep that it was all but impossible for thestraining animals to drag up the heavy wagons, and so narrow that afalse step might have dashed wagon and team half a thousand feet on tothe rocks below.

  But at last they stood on the summit,--and broke into shouts of raptureas they looked. For the wilderness home of Israel had been found. Farand wide below them stretched their promised land,--a broad, openvalley hemmed in by high mountains that lay cold and far and still inthe blue haze. Some of these had slept since the world began under theircanopies of snow, and these flashed a sunlit glory into the eager eyesof the pilgrims. Others reared bare, scathed peaks above slopes thatwere shaggy with timber. And out in front lay the wondrous lake,--ashield of deepest glittering turquois held to the dull, gray breast ofthe valley.

  Again and again they cried out, "Hosanna to God and the Lamb!" and manyof the bearded host shed tears, for the hardships of the way hadweakened them.

  Then Brigham came, lying pale and wasted in his wagon, and when they sawhim gaze long, and heard him finally say, "Enough--drive on!" they knewthat on this morning of July 24, 1847, they had found the spot where invision he had seen the tent of the Lord come down to earth.

  Joel Rae had waited with a beating heart for Brigham's word ofconfirmation, and when he heard it his soul was filled to overflowing.He knew that here the open vision would enfold him; here the angel ofthe Lord would come to him fetching his great Witness. Here he wouldrise to immeasurable zeniths of spirituality. And here his people wouldbecome a mighty people of the Lord. He foresaw the hundred unwalledcities that Brigham was to found, and the green gardens that were tomake the now desert valley a fit setting for the temple of God. Herewas a stricken Rachel, a barren Sarah to be transformed by the touch ofthe Saints to a mother of many children. Here would the lambs of theLord be safe at last from the Gentile wolves--safe for a time at least,until so long as it might take the Lions of the Lord to come to theirgrowth. And that was to be no indefinite period; for had not Brighamjust said, with a snap of his great jaws and a cold flash of his blueeyes, "Let us alone ten years here, and we'll ask no odds of Uncle Samor the Devil!"

  There on the summit they knelt to entreat the mercy of God upon t
heland. The next day, by their leader's direction, they consecrated thevalley to the Lord, and planted six acres of potatoes.