The Lions of the Lord Part 6

Freedom's banner waves on high!"

They watched him until the wagon swung around into the street that fell away to the ferry. Then they faced each other, and he stepped to her side as she leaned lightly on the gate.

"Prue, dear," he said, softly, "it's going hard with me. G.o.d must indeed have a great work reserved for me to try me with such a sacrifice--so much pain where I could least endure it. I prayed all the night to be kept firm, for there are two ways open--one right and one wrong; but I cannot sell my soul so early. That's why I wanted to say the last good-bye out here. I was afraid to say it in there--I am so weak for you, Prue--I ache so for you in all this trouble--why, if I could feel your hands in my hair, I'd laugh at it all--I'm so _weak_ for you, dearest."

She tossed her yellow head ever so slightly, and turned the scoop of her bonnet a little away from his pain-lighted face.

"I am not complimented, though--you care more for your religion than for me."

He looked at her hungrily.

"No, you are wrong there--I don't separate you at all--I couldn't--you and my religion are one--but, if I must, I can love you in spirit as I wors.h.i.+p my G.o.d in spirit--"

"If it will satisfy you, very well!"

"My reward will come--I shall do a great work, I shall have a Witness from the sky. Who am I that I should have thought to win a crown without taking up a cross?"

"I am sorry for you."

"Oh, Prue, there must be a way to save the souls of such as you, even in their blindness. Would G.o.d make a flower like you, only to let it be lost? There must be a way. I shall pray until I force it from the secret heavens."

"My soul will be very well, sir!" she retorted, with a distinct trace of asperity. "I am not a heathen, I'd thank you to remember--and when I'm a wife I shall be my husband's only wife--"

He winced in acutest pain.

"You have no right to taunt me so. Else you can't know what you have meant to me. Oh, you were all the world, child--you, of your own dear self--you would have been all the wives in the world to me--there are many, many of you, and all in a heavenly one--"

"Oh, forgive me, dearest," she cried, and put out a little gloved hand to comfort him. "I know, I know--all the sweetness and goodness of your love, believe me. See, I have kept always by me the little Bible you gave me on my birthday--I have treasured it, and I know it has made me a better girl, because it makes me always think of your goodness--but I couldn't have gone there, Joel--and it does seem as if you need not have gone--and that marrying is so odious--"

"You shall see how little you had to fear of that doctrine which G.o.d has seen fit to reveal to these good men. I tell you now, Prue, I shall wed no woman but you. Nor am I giving you up. Don't think it. I am doing my duty and trusting G.o.d to bring you to me. I know He will do it--I tell you there is the spirit of some strange, awful strength in me, which tells me to ask what I will and it shall be given--to seek to do anything, how great or hard soever, and a giant's, a G.o.d's strength will rest in me. And so I know you will come. You will always think of me so,--waiting for you--somehow, somewhere. Every day you must think it, at any idle moment when I come to your mind; every night when you waken in the dark and silence, you must think, 'Wherever he is, he is waiting for me, perhaps awake as I am now, praying, with a power that will surely draw me.' You will come somehow. Perhaps, when I reach winter quarters, you will have changed your mind. One never knows how G.o.d may fas.h.i.+on these little providences. But He will bring you safe to me out of that Gentile perdition. Remember, child, G.o.d has set his hand in these last days to save the human family from the ruins of the fall, and some way, He alone knows how, you will come to me and find me waiting."

"As if you needed to wait for me when I am here now ready for you, willing to be taken!"

"Don't, don't, dear! There are two of me now, and one can't stand the pain. There is a man in me, sworn to do a man's work like a man, and duty to G.o.d and the priesthood has big chains around his heart dragging it across the river. But, low, now--there is a little, forlorn boy in me, too--a poor, crying, whimpering, babyish little boy, who dreamed of you and longed for you and was promised you, and who will never get well of losing you. Oh, I know it well enough--his tears will never dry, his heart will always have a big hurt in it--and your face will always be so fresh and clear in it!"

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down into the face under the bonnet.

"Let me make sure I shall lose no look of you, from little tilted chin, and lips of scarlet thread, and little teeth like grains of rice, and eyes into which I used to wander and wonder so far--"

She looked past him and stepped back.

"Captain Girnway is coming for me--yonder, away down the street. He takes me to Carthage."

His face hardened as he looked over his shoulder.

"I shall never wed any woman but you. Can you feel as deeply as that?

Will you wed no man but me?"

She fluttered the cherry ribbons on the bonnet and fixed a stray curl in front of one ear.

"Have you a right to ask that? I might wait a time for you to come back--to your senses and to me, but--"

"Good-bye, darling!".

"What, will you go that way--not kiss me? He is still two blocks away."

"I am so weak for you, sweet--the little boy in me is crying for you, but he must not have what he wants. What he wants would leave his heart rebellious and not perfect with the Lord. It's best not," he continued, with an effort at a smile and in a steadier tone. "It would mean so much to me--oh, so very much to me--and so very little to you--and that's no real kiss. I'd rather remember none of that kind--and don't think I was churlish--it's only because the little boy--I will go after my father now, and G.o.d bless you!"

He turned away. A few paces on he met Captain Girnway, jaunty, debonair, smiling, handsome in his bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned uniform of the Carthage Grays.

"I have just left the ferry, Mr. Rae. The wagon with your mother has gone over. The other had not yet come down. Some of the men appear to be a little rough this morning. Your people are apt to provoke them by being too outspoken, but I left special orders for the good treatment of yourself and outfit."

With a half-smothered "thank you," he pa.s.sed on, not trusting himself to say more to one who was not only the enemy of his people, but bent, seemingly, on deluding a young woman to the loss of her soul. He heard their voices in cheerful greeting, but did not turn back. With eyes to the front and shoulders squared he kept stiffly on his way through the silent, deserted streets to the ferry.

Fifteen minutes' walk brought him to the now busy waterside. The ferry, a flat boat propelled by long oars, was landing when he came into view, and he saw his father's wagon driven on. He sped down the hill, pushed through the crowd of soldiers standing about, and hurried forward on the boat to let the old man know he had come. But on the seat was another than his father. He recognised the man, and called to him.

"What are you doing there, Brother Keaton? Where's my father?"

The man had shrunk back under the wagon-cover, having seemingly been frightened by the soldiers.

"I've taken your father's place, Brother Rae."

"Did he cross with Brother Wright?"

"Yes--he--" The man hesitated. Then came an interruption from the sh.o.r.e.

"Come, clear the gangway there so we can load! Here are some more of the d.a.m.ned rats we've hunted out of their holes!"

The speaker made a half-playful lunge with his bayonet at a gaunt, yellow-faced spectre of a man who staggered on to the boat with a child in his arms wrapped in a tattered blue quilt. A gust of the chilly wind picked his shapeless, loose-fitting hat off as he leaped to avoid the bayonet-point, and his head was seen to be shaven. The crowd on the bank laughed loud at his clumsiness and at his grotesque head. Joel Rae ran to help him forward on the boat.

"Thank you, Brother--I'm just up from the fever-bed--they shaved my head for it--and so I lost my hat--thank you--here we shall be warm if only the sun comes out."

Joel went back to help on others who came, a feeble, bedraggled dozen or so that had clung despairingly to their only shelter until they were driven out.

"You can stay here in safety, you know, if you renounce Joseph Smith and his works--they will give you food and shelter." He repeated it to each little group of the dispirited wretches as they staggered past him, but they replied staunchly by word or look, and one man, in the throes of a chill, swung his cap and uttered a feeble "Hurrah for the new Zion!"

When they were all on with their meagre belongings, he called again to the man in the wagon.

"Brother Keaton, my father went across, did he?"

Several of the men on sh.o.r.e answered him.

"Yes"--"Old white-whiskered death's-head went over the river"--"Over here"--"A sa.s.sy old codger he was"--"He got his needings, too"--"Got his needings--"

They cast off the line and the oars began to dip.

"And you'll get your needings, too, if you come back, remember that!

That's the last of you, and we'll have no more vermin like you. Now see what old Joe Smith, the white-hat prophet, can do for you in the Indian territory!"