The Lions of the Lord Part 29

"Well, now, since these valleys of Ephraim have got a little fattened a whole lot of us have got the sweeny, and our skins are growing too tight on our flesh." He had been unable to comprehend that the Gentiles were a rejected lot, the lost sheep of the house of Israel. On this occasion it had required all the tact of Elder Rae to soothe the two good men into an amiable discussion of the time when Sidney Rigdon went to the third heaven and talked face to face with G.o.d. They had agreed in the end, however, that they were both of the royal seed of Abraham, and were on the grand turnpike to exaltation.

To these discussions and sermons the child, Prudence, listened with intense interest, looking forward to the last day as an occasion productive of excitement even superior to that of her trips to Salt Lake City, where her father went to attend the October conference, and where she was taken to the theatre.

Of any world outside the valley she knew but little. Somewhere, far over to the east, was a handful of lost souls for whom she sometimes indulged in a sort of luxurious pity. But their loss, after all, was a part of the divine plan, and they would have the privilege of serving the glorified Saints, even though they were denied G.o.dhood. She half-believed that even this mission of service was almost more of glory than they merited; for, in the phrasing of Bishop Wright, they "made a h.e.l.l all the time and raised devils to keep it going." They had slain the Prophets of the Lord and hunted his people, and the best of them were lucky, indeed, to escape the fire that burns unceasingly; a fire hotter than any made by beech or hickory. Still she sometimes wondered if there were girls among them like her; and she had visions of herself as an angel of light, going down to them with the precious message of the Book of Mormon, and bringing them into the fold.

One day in this spring when she was fourteen, the good Bishop Wright, on his way down from Box Canon with a load of wood, saw her striding up the road ahead of him. Something caught his eye, either in her step which had a child's careless freedom, or in the lines of her swinging figure that told of coming womanhood, or in the flas.h.i.+ng, laughing appeal of her dark eyes where for the moment both woman and child looked out. He set the brake on his wagon and waited for her to pa.s.s. She came by with a smile and a word of greeting, to which his rapt attention prevented any reply except a slight nod. When she had pa.s.sed, he turned and looked after her until she had gone around the little hill on the road that entered the canon.

After the early evening meal that day, along the many-roomed house of this good man, from door to door there ran the words, starting from her who had last been sealed to him:

"He's making himself all proud!"

They knew what it meant, and wondered whom.

A little later the Bishop set out, his face clean-shaven to the ruffle of white whisker that ran under his chin from ear to ear, his scant hair smooth and s.h.i.+ning with grease from the largest bear ever trapped in the Pine Mountains, and his tall form arrayed in his best suit of homespun.

As he went he trolled an ancient lay of love, and youth was in his step.

For there had come all day upon this Prince of Israel those subtle essences distilled by spring to provoke the mating urge. At the Rae house he found only Christina.

"Where's Brother Joel, Sister Rae?"

"Himself has gone out there," Christina had answered with a wave of her hand, and using the term of respect which she always applied to her husband.

He went around the house, out past the stable and corrals and across the irrigating ditch to where he saw Joel Rae leaning on the rail fence about the peach orchard. Far down between two rows of the blossoming trees he could see the girl reaching up to break off a pink-sprayed bough. He quickened his pace and was soon at the fence.

"Brother Joel,--I--the--"

The good man had been full of his message a moment before, but now he stammered and hesitated because of something cold in the other's eye as it seemed to note the unwonted elegance of his attire. He took a quick breath and went on.

"You see the Lord has moved me to add another star to my crown."

"I see; and you have come to get me to seal you?"

"Well, of course I hadn't thought of it so soon, but if you want to do it to-night--"

"As soon as you like, Bishop,--the sooner the better if you are to save the soul of another woman against the day of desolation. Where is she?"

and he turned to go back to the house. But the Bishop still paused, looking toward the orchard.

"Well, the fact is, Brother Joel, you see the Lord has made me feel to have Prudence for another star in my crown of glory--your daughter Prudence," he repeated as the other gazed at him with a sudden change of manner.

"My daughter Prudence--little Prue--that child--that _baby_?"

"_Baby_?--she's fourteen; she was telling my daughter Mattie so jest the other day, and the Legislatur has made the marrying age twelve for girls and fifteen for boys, so she's two years overtime already. Of course, I ain't fifteen, but I'm safer for her than some young cub."

"But Bishop--you don't consider--"

"Oh, of course, I know there's been private talk about her; n.o.body knows who her mother was, and they say whoever she was you was never married to her, so she couldn't have been born right, but I ain't bigoted like some I could name, and I stand ready to be her Saviour on Mount Zion."

He waited with something of n.o.ble concession in his mien.

The other seemed only now to have fully sensed the proposal, and, with real terror in his face, he began to urge the Bishop toward the house, after looking anxiously back to where the child still lingered with the mist of pink blossoms against the leafless boughs above her.

"Come, Brother Seth--come, I beg of you--we'll talk of it--but it can't be, indeed it can't!"

"Let's ask _her_," suggested the Bishop, disinclined to move.

"Don't, _don't_ ask her!" He seized the other by the arm.

"Come, I'll explain; don't ask her now, at any rate--I beg of you as a gentleman--as a gentleman, for you are a gentleman."

The Bishop turned somewhat impatiently, then remarked with a dignified severity:

"Oh, I can be a gentleman whenever it's _necessary_!"

They went across the fields toward the house, and the Bishop spoke further.

"There ain't any need to get into your high-heeled boots, Brother Rae, jest because I was aiming to save her to a crown of glory,--a girl that's thought to have been born on the wrong side of the blanket!"

They stopped by the first corral, and Joel Rae talked. He talked rapidly and with power, saying many things to make it plain that he was determined not to look upon the Wild Ram of the Mountains as an acceptable son-in-law. His manner was excited and distraught, terrified and indignant,--a manner hardly justified by the circ.u.mstances, about which there was nothing extraordinary, nothing not pleasing to G.o.d and in conformity to His revealed word. Bishop Wright indeed was puzzled to account for the heat of his manner, and in recounting the interview later to Elder Wardle, he threw out an intimation about strong drink.

"To tell you the truth," he said, "I suspicion he'd jest been putting a new faucet in the cider barrel."

When Prudence came in from the blossoming peach-trees that night her father called her to him to sit on his lap in the dusk while the crickets sang, and grow sleepy as had been her baby habit.

"What did Bishop Wright want?" she asked, after her head was pillowed on his arm. Relieved that it was over, now even a little amused, he told her:

"He wanted to take my little girl away, to marry her."

She was silent for a moment, and then:

"Wouldn't that be fine, and we could build each other up in the Kingdom."

He held her tighter.

"Surely, child, you couldn't marry him?"

"But of course I could! Isn't he tried in the Kingdom, so he is sure to have all those thrones and dominions and power?"

"But child, child! That old man with all his wives--"

"But they say old men are safer than young men. Young men are not tried in the Kingdom. I shouldn't like a young husband anyway--they always want to play rough games, and pull your hair, and take things away from you, and get in the way."

"But, baby,--don't, _don't_--"

"Why, you silly father, your voice sounds as if you were almost crying--please don't hold me so tight--and some one must save me before the Son of Man comes to judge the quick and the dead; you know a woman can't be saved alone. I think Bishop Wright would make a fine husband, and I should have Mattie Wright to play with every day."

"And you would leave me?"

"Why, that's so, Daddy! I never thought--of course I can't leave my little sorry father--not yet. I forgot that. I couldn't leave you. Now tell me about my mother again."

He told her the story she already knew so well--how beautiful her mother was, the look of her hair and eyes, her slenderness, the music of her voice, and the gladness of her laugh.