But when he had come to the end of the street and was on the road up the hill, the smile died. He seemed all at once to shrink and stoop and fade,--no longer a Lion of the Lord, but a poor, white-faced, horrified little man who had meant in his heart to give a great revelation, and who had succeeded only in uttering blasphemy to the very face of G.o.d"s prophet.
From below, the little groups of excited people along the street looked up and saw his thin, bent figure alone in the fading sunlight, toiling resolutely upward.
Other groups back in the square talked among themselves, not a few in whispers. A listener among them might have heard such expressions as, "He"ll be blood-atoned sure!"--"They"ll make a breach upon him!"--"They"ll accomplish his decease!"--"He"ll be sent over the rim of the basin right quick!" One indignant Saint, with a talent for euphemism, was heard to say, "Brigham will have his spirit disembodied!"
To the priests and Elders on the platform Elder Wardle was saying, "The trouble with him was he was crazy with fever. Why, I"ll bet my best set of harness his pulse ain"t less than a hundred and twenty this minute."
The others looked at Brigham.
"He"s a crazy man, sure enough," a.s.sented the Prophet, "but my opinion is he"ll stay crazy, and it wouldn"t be just the right thing by Israel to let him go on talking before strangers. You see, it _sounds_ so almighty sane!"
Back in the crowd Prudence and Follett had lingered a little at the latter"s suggestion, for he had caught the drift of the talk. When he had comprehended its meaning they set off up the hill, full of alarm.
At the door Christina met them. They saw she had been crying.
"Where is father, Christina?"
"Himself saddle his horse, and say, "I go to toe some of those marks."
He say, "I see you plenty not no more, so good-bye!" He kissed me," she added.
"Which way did he go?"
"So!" She pointed toward the road that led out of the valley to the north.
"I"ll go after him," said Follett.
"I"ll go with you. Saddle Dandy and Kit--and Christina will have something for you to eat; you"ve had nothing since morning."
"I reckon I know where we"ll have to go," said Follett, as he went for the saddles.
CHAPTER XLII.
_The Little Bent Man at the Foot of the Cross_
It was dusk when they rode down the hill together. They followed the canon road to its meeting with the main highway at the northern edge of Amalon. Where the roads joined they pa.s.sed Bishop Wright, who, with his hat off, turned to stare at them, and to pull at his fringe of whisker in seeming perplexity.
"He must have been on his way to our house," Prudence called.
"With that hair and whiskers," answered Follett, with some irrelevance, "he looks like an old buffalo-bull just before shedding-time."
They rode fast until the night fell, scanning the road ahead for a figure on horseback. When it was quite dark they halted.
"We might pa.s.s him," suggested Follett. "He was fairly tuckered out, and he might fall off any minute."
"Shall we go on slowly?" she asked.
"We might miss him in the dark. But the moon will be up in an hour, and then we can go at full speed. We better wait."
"Poor little sorry father! I wish we had gone home sooner."
"He certainly"s got more s.p.u.n.k in him than I gave him credit for! He had old Brigham and the rest of them plumb buffaloed for a minute. Oh, he did crack the old bull-whip over them good!"
"Poor little father! Where could he have gone at this hour?"
"I"ve got an idea he"s set out for that cross he"s talked so much about--that one up here in the Meadows."
"I"ve seen it,--where the Indians killed those poor people years ago.
But what did he mean by the crime of his Church there?"
"We"ll ask him when we find him. And I reckon we"ll find him right there if he holds out to ride that far."
He tied her pony to an oak-bush a little off the road, threw Dandy"s bridle-rein to the ground to make him stand, and on a shelving rock near by he found her a seat.
"It won"t be long, and the horses need a chance to breathe. We"ve come along at a right smart clip, and Dandy"s been getting a regular gra.s.s-stomach on him back there."
Side by side they sat, and in the dark and stillness their own great happiness came back to them.
"The first time I liked you very much," she said, after he had kissed her, "was when I saw you were so kind to your horse."
"That"s the only way to treat stock. I can gentle any horse I ever saw.
Are you sure you care enough for me?"
"Oh, yes, yes, _yes_! It must be enough. It"s so much I"m frightened now."
"Will you go away with me?"
"Yes, I want to go away with you."
"Well, you just come out with me,--out of this hole. There"s a fine big country out there you don"t know anything about. Our home will reach from Corpus Christi to Deadwood, and from the Missouri clear over to Mister Pacific Ocean. We"ll have the prairies for our garden, and the high plains will be our front yard, with the buffalo-gra.s.s thicker than hair on a dog"s back. And, say, I don"t know about it, but I believe they have a bigger G.o.d out there than you"ve got in this Salt Lake Basin. Anyway, He acts more like you"d think G.o.d ought to act. He isn"t so particular about your knowing a lot of signs and grips and pa.s.swords and winks. Going to your heaven must be like going into one of those Free Mason lodges,--a little peek-hole in the door, and G.o.d shoving the cover back to see if you know the signs. I guess G.o.d isn"t so trifling as all that,--having, you know, a lot of signs and getting ducked under water three times and all that business. I don"t exactly know what His way is, but I"ll bet it isn"t any way that you"d have to laugh at if you saw it--like as if, now, you saw old man Wright and G.o.d making signs to each other through the door, and Wright saying:--
_"Eeny meeny miny mo!
Cracky feeny finy fo!"_
and G.o.d looking in a little book to see if he got all the words right."
"Anyway, I"m glad you weren"t baptised, after what Father said to-day."
"You"ll be gladder still when you get out there where they got a full-grown man"s G.o.d."
They talked on of many things, chiefly of the wonder of their love--that each should actually be each and the two have come together--until a full yellow moon came up, seemingly from the farther side of the hill in front of them. When at last its light flooded the road so that it lay off to the north like a broad, gray ribbon flung over the black land, they set out again, galloping side by side mile after mile, scanning sharply the road ahead and its near sides.
Down out of Pine Valley they went, and over more miles of gray alkali desert toward a line of hills low and black in the north.
They came to these, followed the road out of the desert through a narrow gap, and pa.s.sed into the Mountain Meadows, reining in their horses as they did so.