CHAPTER III.

THE APOSTLE.

The followers of Joseph Smith, the martyr to his own fanaticism, were traveling slowly, like the Israelites of old, from their ruined homes in Illinois to the far-off Salt Lake. On the night in which our story deals with them, they had pitched their tents for the night on the grassy banks of the Sweet Water river. Before them loomed up Independence Rock, like some castellated tower of feudal times—grand, hoary, grim and picturesque. Beyond was the “Devil’s Gate,” through which they would soon have to pass. A strikingly appropriate name this for the passage that was to usher them to the valley of the “Saints” beyond! He who named it must have been gifted with prophetic wisdom with regard to the people who were to travel it in after days.

The scene was attractive, even beautiful, for these people wandered like the Patriarchs of old, with flocks and herds, pitching their tents in the wilderness. The last rays of the sun struck with slanting light the canvass homes, tinging them with dusky gold. The cheerful hum of busy labor rose healthfully on the breeze. The song of the maidens while milking the cows—the prattle of little children—the gay laughter of young people and the tones of manly voices swelled together—an anthem of toil. Bright fires were already sending their smoke on high, wreathing in fanciful coils and drifting through the air, tinged with a glorious brightness like thunder-clouds when the sun strikes them. Busy mothers bent over the coals, preparing the evening meal, while their husbands wheeled the heavy wagons into a circle, and formed a temporary fort, calculated to protect them from attack from without, and stampede within. The air was soft, and the clouds mottled, dolphin-like, changing as the sun went down into deeper hues of crimson, gold and purple. The trees were aflame—the swiftly-running stream, molten silver—the burning death-fires of the day had flooded the earth with evanescent brightness.

“Showered the maples with celestial red; The oaks were sunsets—though the day was dead; The green was gold—the willows drooped in wine; The ash was fire—the humblest shrub divine; The aspen quivered in a silver stream.”

Amid all this loveliness, selfish passions were at work, striving for their own ends, with a deluded people toiling on to erect a molten calf in the wilderness to be worshiped in the place of the true God!

But the smoke of the evening fires became thin, and faded away; the glowing coals died out amid the whitened ashes. The children, innocent as yet, thank Heaven, had passed into the sweet dreams that infancy alone can know, and the elders gathered to hear the mockery of an evening service, to profane that almost holy solitude with the idolatry of a purely sensual religion.

The master spirit rose, the beguiling serpent who had lured these ignorant men and women from their quiet homes in the old world, and desecrated the quiet of that lovely evening with his pointless ravings—inflammatory pictures of the “promised land” that should soon dawn upon their longing eyes; all the blasphemous teachings of a wily brain.

A man, subtle in his nature and in his speech—with a superfluity of words, and gifted with the low cunning of an adroit impostor, he yet was looked up to as one on whom the sacred mantle of “the prophet” had fallen. Practice, and his own nature had enabled him to assimilate himself with the peculiar ideas of those he wished to influence—to lower himself to any level, and cunningly use it for his own selfish ends and personal aggrandizement.

Nature had done much toward enabling him to become the living lie he was. In youth his figure had been fine and his face attractive; and though years had told upon the one, rendering it somewhat coarse, and evil thoughts had plowed unmistakable furrows upon the other, enough of early grace and manly beauty remained to enforce the iniquity of his doctrines.

With great unction and show of reverence his discourse was delivered; the sweet strains of the evening hymns rolled forth, echoed by the rocky reverberations of the grand old hills afar off; the smouldering fires were extinguished; the guards placed, and silence settled down upon the shores of the Sweet Water.

But Elelu Thomas—for so the prophet was named—had no inclination for sleep. His tent had been pitched apart from the others, and with little difficulty and no fear of observation he could make his way from the corral into the open prairie.

Alone, if one filled with evil thoughts can ever be alone, he sat for a long time. No sweet memories gathered around his heart and thronged the mystic cells of the brain. No tender recollections flashed, fairy-footed, through the halls of thought, but unholy fancies alone had power with him.

“Yes,” he muttered, between his closely compressed lips; “Yes. The plan will work to a charm. Never yet has a human soul escaped me. This shall be the master-stroke of my life. Hark! No, no, it is not what I long to hear. It is but the half-suppressed song with which the sentinel cheats the long hours. But it is so near midnight—the poor fools who have so blindly followed and given me their gold are asleep—dreaming, perhaps, of the bright valley I have so often told them of. What a waking there will be soon! Well, well, it is necessary to keep up the delusion, and I would be but a fool like them to kill the goose that lays my golden eggs.”

The man opened a trunk upon which he had been seated, took out some arms, and cautiously left the tent. He crept stealthily through the wagons, skirted along them, half hid by the shadows, and gained the woods unobserved.

“Rare sentinels these,” he thought. “To-morrow I will teach them a lesson that they will not soon forget. But here is the spot, and—”

A touch upon his arm caused his cowardly soul to leap to his lips, while a deep voice whispered in his ears:

“The pale chief watches not well the stars.”

“Ah! Black Eagle, is that you?”

“The red-man has been waiting. When the moon first touched the tops of the trees he was to be here. It’s light is now creeping down the trunks.”

“Yes, I know I am late, but now that I am here tell me how you have succeeded?”

“Has the pale-face forgotten his promise?”

“No; here is the gold; the rest you shall have at the proper time. Now, about your mission.”

“He who would keep should watch also. When the fawn wanders far from the horns of the buck, the wolves are soon on its trail.”

“Yes, yes; but tell me plainly what you mean.”

“The eye of Black Eagle is keen, his arm is strong and his horse swift.”

“Bah! with your Indian circumlocution. Tell me about the girl, man. Have you got her?”

“There is mourning and blackened faces in the wigwam of her tribe.”

“You have carried her off then?”

“As the eagle of the mountains does the young dove of the valley.”

“And you brought her here? Here? Where is she, man?”

“Not like the children of the prairies can the pale squaw ride. She is feeble as the little pappoose, and her heart is sick as the snake-charmed bird.”

“What of it?” and a dark frown settled on the face of the speaker. “Why did you not bind her to a horse and bring her here at all hazards? My people would have tended her as—”

“The wolf the lamb.”

A strange speech that, to come from a nomadic, red warrior, and the eye of the white man quailed under the fiery glance fastened upon him.

“Well, yes, something like it,” he replied, trying to conceal his feelings under an unpleasant laugh. “But where is the girl?”

“In the lodges of the Sioux.”

“I must see her this very night.”

“Has the pale-face become a child? Is he a woman, that he forgets the thoughts of yesterday, and would, like the serpent, sting itself to the death.”

“No, no. I had forgotten the plan for a moment. She is safe, you say?”

“As the beaver in the iron-tooth trap.”

“And her father knows nothing of the trail—who carried her off—when or where?”

“The red-man leaves his footsteps in the running water; It rolls over them and they are gone.”

“Keep watch of her, then, as you would guard the very apple of your eye, for she is to my heart as the ‘rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley.’” The old hypocrisy would break out from his impious lips, and the deception of a lifetime found utterance even when his soul was unmasked.

“The lodge of the red-man is as safe as the log war-house of the pale-face.”

“Well, you know the plan. In the roughest part of the cañon—even in the ‘Devil’s Gate,’ as the children of the world call it, I will be prepared to rush down upon you and rescue her. She will be grateful, for her heart is warm and loving. Be sure you are at the appointed spot at the right time, and then—”

He had half turned away from his companion, and on looking for the Black Eagle again, found himself alone. Silent as had been the coming of the Indian was his departure. With a mind filled with conflicting emotions, the impostor turned back again toward the encampment. Very little faith had he in the fidelity of Black Eagle, for his own treacherous heart made him suspicious of others, and this, added to the well-known character of the red-man, made him fear the result. Reaching the corral in safety, he crept through the barricades made by the wagons, and was soon sleeping calmly as the most innocent child in the encampment. Looking on that man, you might have fancied that some angel’s prayers had showered poppy leaves around him, and some kind hand had held to his lips a balmy nepenthe against all the trials, cares and passions of life.

When guilt sleeps, then let the pure in heart rejoice. But what a strange anomaly it is, when an evil nature can throw off its corroding fetters—its whirlwind passions, debasing influences, and slumber like untainted childhood—that even the most depraved can for a time change the entire current of their lives, and, touched by the leaden wand, become oblivious of their own wickedness. “To the pure, all things are pure,” and a very paradox it is that sin, when slumbering, can throw off the crushing millstone and wander like innocence joyously among the roses.

The Indian, when he had secured the gold of his infamous patron, and noiselessly departed, struck at once into the middle of the stream, and dropping into the current, swam leisurely down, till he reached the shadow of an overhanging rock. Here he drew his lithe form cautiously up, shook the water from his garments, and then plunged into the thicket.

His savage nature had mapped out the path he was to follow, and no meddling fancies were allowed to intrude upon him. A double purpose he had in view—gain, and the gratification of his own selfish purposes. The tenets of his savage religion offered no bar to their accomplishment, and he knew quite as little of conscience as his employer.

An hour later, and just as the sun was lighting the fleecy clouds, and all nature sung its first song of praise for the coming day, Black Eagle emerged from the forest, many miles distant, and entered the camp of his followers.