"That ain"t anything," says Ed,--"just picket him or hobble him with a good side-line." So then they traded. "And the other thing," says the old man, dragging up his cinches on Ed"s pinto,--"he ain"t any good after you get him caught." So that"s like me. I"ve been hard to teach all summer, and now I"m not any good after you get me taught."
"Oh, you are! Don"t say you"re not."
"I couldn"t ever join your Church--"
Her face became full of alarm.
"--only for just one thing;--I don"t care very much for this having so many wives."
She was relieved at once. "If _that"s_ all--I don"t approve of it myself. You wouldn"t have to."
"Oh, that"s what you say _now_"--he spoke with an air of shrewdness and suspicion,--"but when I got in you"d throw up my duty to me constant about building up the Kingdom. Oh, I know how it"s done! I"ve heard your preachers talk enough."
"But it _isn"t_ necessary. I wouldn"t--I don"t think it would be at all nice of you."
He looked at her with warm sympathy. "You poor ignorant girl! Not to know your own religion! I read in that book there about this marrying business only the other day. Just hand me that one."
She handed him the "Book of Doctrine and Covenants," from which she had occasionally taught him the Lord"s word as revealed to Joseph Smith. The revelation on celestial marriage had never been among her selections. He turned to it now.
"Here, right in the very first of it--" and she heard with a sinking heart,--""Therefore prepare thyself to receive and obey the instructions which I am about to give unto you; for all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same; for behold! I reveal unto you a new and everlasting covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant then are ye d.a.m.ned, for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory."
"There now!"
"I never read it," she faltered.
"And don"t you know they preach in the tabernacle that anybody who rejects polygamy will be d.a.m.ned?"
"My father never preached that."
"Well, he knows it--ask him."
It was proving to be a hard day for her.
"Of course," he continued, "a new member coming into the Church might think at first he could get along without so many wives. He might say, "Well, now, I"ll draw a line in this marrying business. I"ll never take more than two or three wives or maybe four." He might even be so taken up with one young lady that he"d say, "I won"t even marry a second wife--not for some time yet, that is--not for two or three years, till she begins to get kind of houseworn," But then after he"s taken his second, the others would come easy. Say he marries, first time, a tall, slim, dark girl,"--he looked at her musingly while she gazed intently into the stream in front of them.
"--and then say he meets a little chit of a thing, kind of heavy-set like, with this light yellow hair and pretty light blue eyes, that he saw one Sunday at church--"
Her dark face was flushing now in pained wonder.
"--why then it"s so easy to keep on and marry others, with the preachers all preaching it from the pulpit."
"But you wouldn"t have to."
"No, you wouldn"t have to marry any one after the second--after this little blonde--but you"d have to marry her because it says here that you "shall abide the law or ye shall be d.a.m.ned, saith the Lord G.o.d.""
He pulled himself along the ground closer to her, and went on again in what seemed to be an extremity of doubt.
"Now I don"t want to be lost, and yet I don"t want to have a whole lot of wives like Brigham or that old coot we see so often on the road. So what am I going to do? I might think I"d get along with three or four, but you never can tell what religion will do to a man when he really gets it."
He reached for her small brown hand that still held the Book of Mormon open on her lap, and took it in both his own. He went on, appealingly:
"Now you try to tell me right--like as if I was your own brother--tell me as a sister. Try to put yourself in the place of the girl I"d marry first--no, don"t; it seems more like your sister if I hold it this way--and try to think how she"d feel when I brought home my second.
Would that be doing square by her? Wouldn"t it sort of get her on the bark? But if I join your Church and don"t do that, I might as well be one of those low-down Freewill Baptists or Episcopals. Come now, tell me true, letting on that you"re my sister."
She had not looked at him since he began, nor did she now.
"Oh, I don"t know--I don"t _know_--it"s all so mixed! I thought you could be saved without that."
"There"s the word of G.o.d against me."
"I wouldn"t want you to marry that way,--if I were your sister."
"That"s right now, try to feel like a sister. You wouldn"t want me to have as many wives as those old codgers down there below, would you?"
"No--I"m sure you shouldn"t have but one. Oh, you couldn"t marry more than one, could you?" She turned her eyes for the first time upon him, and he saw that some inward warmth seemed to be melting them.
"Well, I"d hate to disappoint you if you were my sister, but there"s the word of the Lord--"
"Oh, but could you _anyway_, even if you didn"t have a sister, and there was no one but _her_ to think of?"
He appeared to debate with himself cautiously.
"Well, now, I must say your teaching has taken a powerful hold on me this summer--" he reached under her arm and caught her other hand.
"You"ve been like a sister to me and made me think about these things pretty deep and serious. I don"t know if I could get what you"ve taught me out of my mind or not."
"But how could you _ever_ marry another wife?"
"Well, a man don"t like to think he"s going to the bad place when he dies, all on account of not marrying a few more times. It sort of takes the ambition all out of him."
"Oh, it couldn"t be right!"
"Well now, I"ll do as you say. Do I forget all these things you"ve been teaching me, and settle down with one wife,--or do I come into the Kingdom and lash the cinches of my glory good and plenty by marrying whenever I get time to build a new end on the house, like old man Wright does?"
She was silent.
"Like a sister would tell a brother," he urged, with a tighter pressure of her two hands. But this seemed to recall another trouble to her mind.
"I--I"m not fit to be your sister--don"t talk of it--you don"t know--"
Her voice broke, and he had to release her hand. Whereupon he put his own back up against the pine-tree, reached his arm about her, and had her head upon his shoulder.
"There, there now!"
"But you don"t know."
"Well, I _do_ know--so just you straighten out that face. I do know, I tell you. Now don"t cry and I"ll fix it all right, I promise you."
"But you don"t even know what the trouble is."
"I do--it"s about your father and mother--when they were married."