[The Lions of the Lord by Harry Leon Wilson]@TWC D-Link bookThe Lions of the Lord CHAPTER XII 2/20
One mother in Israel brought proudly to the Lake a piece of cloth, the wool for which she had sheared, dyed, spun, and woven during her march. Nor did the marches ever cease to be fraught with peril and, hardship. There were tempests, droughts, famines, stampedes of the stock, prairie fires, and Indian forays.
Hundreds of miles across the plain and through the mountains the Indians would trail after them, like sharks in the wake of a ship, tirelessly watching, waiting for the right moment to stampede the stock, to fire the prairie, or to descend upon stragglers. One by one the trains worked down into the valley, the tired Saints making fresh their covenants by rebaptism as they came.
In the waters of the River Jordan, Joel Rae made hundreds to be renewed in the Kingdom, swearing them to obey Brigham, the Lord's anointed, in all his orders, spiritual or temporal, and the priesthood or either of them, and all church authorities in like manner; to regard this obligation as superior to all laws of the United States and all earthly laws whatsoever; to cherish enmity against the government of the United States, that the blood of Joseph Smith and the Apostles slain in that generation might be avenged; and to keep the matter of this oath a profound secret then and forever.
And from these waters of baptism the purified Saints went to their inheritances in Zion--took their humble places, and began to sweat and bleed in the upbuilding of the new Jerusalem. [Illustration: "_I'M_ THE ONE WILL HAVE TO BE CAUGHT"] From a high, tented wagon in one such train, creaking its rough way down Emigration Canon, with straining oxen and tired but eager people, there had leaped one late afternoon the girl whose eyes were to call to him so potently,--incomparable eyes, large and deep, of a velvety grayness, under black brows splendidly bent.
Nor had the eyes alone voiced that call to his starved senses.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|