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 shore answered him.
"Yes"-- "Old white-whiskered death's-head went over the river"-- "Over here"-- "A sassy 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!" He stood at the stern of the boat, shivering as he looked at the current, swift, cold, and gray under the sunless sky.

He feared some indignity had been offered to his father.