We got the money to buy.”
“Shut up, Jesse!” my mother cried, landing the back of her hand stingingly on my mouth.
And then, to the stranger, “Go away and let the boy alone.”
“I’ll shoot you full of lead, you damned Mormon!” I screamed and sobbed at him, too quick for my mother this time, and dancing away around the fire from the back-sweep of her hand.
As for the man himself, my conduct had not disturbed him in the slightest.
I was prepared for I knew not what violent visitation from this terrible stranger, and I watched him warily while he considered me with the utmost gravity.
At last he spoke, and he spoke solemnly, with solemn shaking of the head, as if delivering a judgment.
“Like fathers like sons,” he said. “The young generation is as bad as the elder.
The whole breed is unregenerate and damned.
There is no saving it, the young or the old.
There is no atonement.
Not even the blood of Christ can wipe out its iniquities.”
“Damned Mormon!” was all I could sob at him. “Damned Mormon! Damned Mormon! Damned Mormon!”
And I continued to damn him and to dance around the fire before my mother’s avenging hand, until he strode away.
When my father, and the men who had accompanied him, returned, camp-work ceased, while all crowded anxiously about him. He shook his head.
“They will not sell?” some woman demanded.
Again he shook his head.
A man spoke up, a blue-eyed, blond-whiskered giant of thirty, who abruptly pressed his way into the centre of the crowd.
“They say they have flour and provisions for three years, Captain,” he said. “They have always sold to the immigration before. And now they won’t sell.
And it ain’t our quarrel. Their quarrel’s with the government, an’ they’re takin’ it out on us.
It ain’t right, Captain.
It ain’t right, I say, us with our women an’ children, an’ California months away, winter comin’ on, an’ nothin’ but desert in between. We ain’t got the grub to face the desert.”
He broke off for a moment to address the whole crowd.
“Why, you-all don’t know what desert is.
This around here ain’t desert.
I tell you it’s paradise, and heavenly pasture, an’ flowin’ with milk an’ honey alongside what we’re goin’ to face.”
“I tell you, Captain, we got to get flour first.
If they won’t sell it, then we must just up an’ take it.”
Many of the men and women began crying out in approval, but my father hushed them by holding up his hand.
“I agree with everything you say, Hamilton,” he began.
But the cries now drowned his voice, and he again held up his hand.
“Except one thing you forgot to take into account, Hamilton—a thing that you and all of us must take into account.
Brigham Young has declared martial law, and Brigham Young has an army.
We could wipe out Nephi in the shake of a lamb’s tail and take all the provisions we can carry.
But we wouldn’t carry them very far.
Brigham’s Saints would be down upon us and we would be wiped out in another shake of a lamb’s tail.
You know it. I know it. We all know it.”
His words carried conviction to listeners already convinced.
What he had told them was old news.
They had merely forgotten it in a flurry of excitement and desperate need.
“Nobody will fight quicker for what is right than I will,” father continued. “But it just happens we can’t afford to fight now.
If ever a ruction starts we haven’t a chance.
And we’ve all got our women and children to recollect.
We’ve got to be peaceable at any price, and put up with whatever dirt is heaped on us.”
“But what will we do with the desert coming?” cried a woman who nursed a babe at her breast.
“There’s several settlements before we come to the desert,” father answered. “Fillmore’s sixty miles south.
Then comes Corn Creek.
And Beaver’s another fifty miles.
Next is Parowan.
Then it’s twenty miles to Cedar City.