The Lions of the Lord by Harry Leon Wilson

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[Frontispiece:
LIFTING OFF HIS BROAD-BRIMMED HAT TO HER IN A GRACIOUS SWEEP]

THE
LIONS OF THE
LORD

A Tale of the Old West

By HARRY LEON WILSON

Author of "The Spenders"

Illustrated by ROSE CECIL O'NEILL

Published June, 1903

TO MY WIFE

FOREWORD

In the days of '49 seven trails led from our Western frontier into the
Wonderland that lay far out under the setting sun and called to the
restless. Each of the seven had been blazed mile by mile through the
mighty romance of an empire's founding. Some of them for long stretches
are now overgrown by the herbage of the plain; some have faded back into
the desert they lined; and more than one has been shod with steel. But
along them all flit and brood the memory-ghosts of old, rich-coloured
days. To the shout of teamster, the yell of savage, the creaking of
tented ox-cart, and the rattle of the swifter mail-coach, there go dim
shapes of those who had thrilled to that call of the West;--strong,
brave men with the far look in their eyes, with those magic rude tools
of the pioneer, the rifle and the axe; women, too, equally heroic, of a
stock, fearless, ready, and staunch, bearing their sons and daughters in
fortitude; raising them to fear God, to love their country,--and to
labour. From the edge of our Republic these valiant ones toiled into the
dump of prairie and mountain to live the raw new days and weld them to
our history; to win fertile acres from the wilderness and charm the
desert to blossoming. And the time of these days and these people, with
their tragedies and their comedies, was a time of epic splendour;--more
vital with the stuff and colour of life, I think, than any since the
stubborn gray earth out there was made to yield its treasure.

Of these seven historic highways the one richest in story is the old
Salt Lake Trail: this because at its western end was woven a romance
within a romance;--a drama of human passions, of love and hate, of high
faith and low, of the beautiful and the ugly, of truth and lies; yet
with certain fine fidelities under it all; a drama so close-knit, so
amazingly true, that one who had lightly designed to make a tale there
was dismayed by fact. So much more thrilling was it than any fiction he
might have imagined, so more than human had been the cunning of the
Master Dramatist, that the little make-believe he was pondering seemed
clumsy and poor, and he turned from it to try to tell what had really
been.

In this story, then, the things that are strangest have most of truth.
The make-believe is hardly more than a cement to join the queerly
wrought stones of fact that were found ready. For, if the writer has now
and again had to divine certain things that did not show,--yet must have
been,--surely these are not less than truth. One of these deductions is
the Lute of the Holy Ghost who came in the end to be the Little Man of
Sorrows: who loved a woman, a child, and his God, but sinned through
pride of soul;--whose life, indeed, was a poem of sin and retribution.
Yet not less true was he than the Lion of the Lord, the Archer of
Paradise, the Wild Ram of the Mountains, or the gaunt, gray woman whom
hurt love had crazed. For even now, as the tale is done, comes a dry
little note in the daily press telling how such a one actually did the
other day a certain brave, great thing it had seemed the imagined one
must be driven to do. Only he and I, perhaps, will be conscious of the
struggle back of that which was printed; but at least we two shall know
that the Little Man of Sorrows is true, even though the cross where he
fled to say his last prayer in the body has long since fallen and its
bars crumbled to desert dust.

Yet there are others still living in a certain valley of the mountains
who will know why the soul-proud youth came to bend under invisible
burdens, and why he feared, as an angel of vengeance, that early cowboy
with the yellow hair, who came singing down from the high divide into
Amalon where a girl was waiting in her dream of a single love; others
who, to this day, will do not more than whisper with averted faces of
the crime that brought a curse upon the land; who still live in terror
of shapes that shuffle furtively behind them, fumbling sometimes at
their shoulders with weak hands, striving ever to come in front and turn
upon them. But these will know only one side of the Little Man of
Sorrows who was first the Lute of the Holy Ghost in the Poet's roster of
titles: since they have lacked his courage to try the great issue with
their God.

New York City, May 1st, 1903.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE DEAD CITY

II. THE WILD RAM OF THE MOUNTAINS

III. THE LUTE OF THE HOLY GHOST BREAKS HIS FAST

IV. A FAIR APOSTATE

V. GILES RAE BEAUTIFIES HIS INHERITANCE

VI. THE LUTE OF THE HOLY GHOST IS FURTHER CHASTENED

VII. SOME INNER MYSTERIES ARE EXPOUNDED

VIII. A REVELATION FROM THE LORD AND A TOAST FROM BRIGHAM

IX. INTO THE WILDERNESS

X. THE PROMISED LAND

XI. ANOTHER MIRACLE AND A TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS

XII. A FIGHT FOR LIFE

XIII. JOEL RAE IS TREATED FOR PRIDE OF SOUL

XIV. HOW THE SAINTS WERE BROUGHT TO REPENTANCE

XV. HOW THE SOULS OF APOSTATES WERE SAVED

XVI. THE ORDER FROM HEADQUARTERS

XVII. THE MEADOW SHAMBLES

XVIII. IN THE DARK OF THE AFTERMATH

XIX. THE HOST OF ISRAEL GOES FORTH TO BATTLE

XX. HOW THE LION OF THE LORD ROARED SOFT

XXI. THE BLOOD ON THE PAGE

XXII. THE PICTURE IN THE SKY

XXIII. THE SINNER CHASTENS HIMSELF

XXIV. THE COMING OF THE WOMAN-CHILD

XXV. THE ENTABLATURE OF TRUTH MAKES A DISCOVERY AT AMALON

XXVI. HOW THE RED CAME BACK TO THE BLOOD TO BE A SNARE

XXVII. A NEW CROSS TAKEN UP AND AN OLD ENEMY FORGIVEN

XXVIII. JUST BEFORE THE END OF THE WORLD

XXIX. THE WILD RAM OF THE MOUNTAINS OFFERS TO BECOME A SAVIOUR ON
MOUNT ZION

XXX. HOW THE WORLD DID NOT COME TO AN END

XXXI. THE LION OF THE LORD SENDS AN ORDER

XXXII. A NEW FACE IN THE DREAM

XXXIII. THE GENTILE INVASION

XXXIV. HOW THE AVENGER BUNGLED HIS VENGEANCE

XXXV. RUEL FOLLETT'S WAY OF BUSINESS

XXXVI. THE MISSION TO A DESERVING GENTILE

XXXVII. THE GENTILE ISSUES AN ULTIMATUM

XXXVIII. THE MISSION SERVICE IN BOX CANON IS SUSPENDED

XXXIX. A REVELATION CONCERNING THE TRUE ORDER OF MARRIAGE

XL. A PROCESSION, A PURSUIT, AND A CAPTURE

XLI. THE RISE AND FALL OF A BENT LITTLE PROPHET

XLII. THE LITTLE BENT MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS

XLIII. THE GENTILE CARRIES OFF HIS SPOIL

ILLUSTRATIONS

Lifting off his broad-brimmed hat to her in a gracious sweep

"Her goal is Zion, not Babylon, sir--remember _that_!"

"_I'm_ the one will have to be caught"

"But you're not my really papa!"

Full of zest for the measure as any youth

"Oh, Man ... how I've longed for that bullet of yours!"

THE LIONS OF THE LORD

CHAPTER I.

_The Dead City_

The city without life lay handsomely along a river in the early sunlight
of a September morning. Death had seemingly not been long upon it, nor
had it made any scar. No breach or rent or disorder or sign of violence
could be seen. The long, shaded streets breathed the still airs of utter
peace and quiet. From the half-circle around which the broad river bent
its moody current, the neat houses, set in cool, green gardens, were
terraced up the high hill, and from the summit of this a stately marble
temple, glittering of newness, towered far above them in placid
benediction.

Mile after mile the streets lay silent, along the river-front, up to the
hilltop, and beyond into the level; no sound nor motion nor sign of life
throughout their length. And when they had run their length, and the
outlying fields were reached, there, too, was the same brooding spell as
the land stretched away in the hush and haze. The yellow grain,
heavy-headed with richness, lay beaten down and rotting, for there were
no reapers. The city, it seemed, had died calmly, painlessly, drowsily,
as if overcome by sleep.

From a skiff in mid-river, a young man rowing toward the dead city
rested on his oars and looked over his shoulder to the temple on the
hilltop. There was something very boyish in the reverent eagerness with
which his dark eyes rested upon the pile, tracing the splendid lines
from its broad, gray base to its lofty spire, radiant with white and
gold. As he looked long and intently, the colour of new life flushed
into a face that was pinched and drawn. With fresh resolution, he bent
again to his oars, noting with a quick eye that the current had carried
him far down-stream while he stopped to look upon the holy edifice.

Landing presently at the wharf, he was stunned by the hush of the
streets. This was not like the city of twenty thousand people he had
left three months before. In blank bewilderment he stood, turning to
each quarter for some solution of the mystery. Perceiving at length that
there was really no life either way along the river, he started
wonderingly up a street that led from the waterside,--a street which,
when he had last walked it, was quickening with the rush of a mighty
commerce.

Soon his expression of wonder was darkened by a shade of anxiety. There
was an unnerving quality in the trance-like stillness; and the mystery
of it pricked him to forebodings. He was now passing empty workshops,
hesitating at door after door with ever-mounting alarm. Then he began to
call, but the sound of his voice served only to aggravate the silence.

Growing bolder, he tried some of the doors and found them to yield,
letting him into a kind of smothered, troubled quietness even more
oppressive than that outside. He passed an empty ropewalk, the hemp
strewn untidily about, as if the workers had left hurriedly. He peered
curiously at idle looms and deserted spinning-wheels--deserted
apparently but the instant before he came. It seemed as if the people
were fled maliciously just in front, to leave him in this fearfullest of
all solitudes. He wondered if he did not hear their quick, furtive
steps, and see the vanishing shadows of them.

He entered a carpenter's shop. On the bench was an unfinished door, a
plane left where it had been shoved half the length of its edge, the
fresh pine shaving still curling over the side. He left with an uncanny
feeling that the carpenter, breathing softly, had watched him from some
hiding-place, and would now come stealthily out to push his plane again.

He turned into a baker's shop and saw freshly chopped kindling piled
against the oven, and dough actually on the kneading-tray. In a tanner's
vat he found fresh bark. In a blacksmith's shop he entered next the
fire was out, but there was coal heaped beside the forge, with the
ladling-pool and the crooked water-horn, and on the anvil was a
horseshoe that had cooled before it was finished.

With something akin to terror, he now turned from this street of shops
into one of those with the pleasant dwellings, eager to find something
alive, even a dog to bark an alarm. He entered one of the gardens,
clicking the gate-latch loudly after him, but no one challenged. He drew
a drink from the well with its loud-rattling chain and clumsy,
water-sodden bucket, but no one called. At the door of the house he
whistled, stamped, pounded, and at last flung it open with all the noise
he could make. Still his hungry ears fed on nothing but sinister echoes,
the barren husks of his own clamour. There was no curt voice of a man,
no quick, questioning tread of a woman. There were dead white ashes on
the hearth, and the silence was grimly kept by the dumb household gods.

His nervousness increased. So vividly did his memory people the streets
and shops and houses that the air was vibrant with sound,--low-toned
conversations, shouts, calls, laughter, the voices of children, the
creaking of wagons, pounding hammers, the clangour of many works; yet
all muffled away from him, as if coming from some phantom-land. His
eyes, too, were kept darting from side to side by vague forms that
flitted privily near by, around corners, behind him, lurking always a
little beyond his eyes, turn them quickly as he would. Now, facing the
street, he shouted, again and again, from sheer nervousness; but the
echoes came back alone.

He recalled a favourite day-dream of boyhood,--a dream in which he
became the sole person in the world, wandering with royal liberty
through strange cities, with no voice to chide or forbid, free to choose
and partake, as would a prince, of all the wonders and delights that
boyhood can picture; his own master and the master of all the marvels
and treasures of earth. This was like the dream come true; but it
distressed him. It was necessary to find the people at once. He had a
feeling that his instant duty was to break some malign spell that lay
upon the place--or upon himself. For one of them was surely bewitched.

Out he strode to the middle of the street, between two rows of yellowing
maples, and there he shouted again and still more loudly to evoke some
shape or sound of life, sending a full, high, ringing call up the empty
thoroughfare. Between the shouts he scanned the near-by houses intently.

At last, half-way up the next block, even as his lungs filled for
another peal, he thought his eyes caught for a short half-second the
mere thin shadow of a skulking figure. It had seemed to pass through a
grape arbour that all but shielded from the street a house slightly more
pretentious than its neighbours. He ran toward the spot, calling as he
went. But when he had vaulted over the low fence, run across the garden
and around the end of the arbour, dense with the green leaves and
clusters of purple grapes, the space in front of the house was bare. If
more than a trick-phantom of his eye had been there, it had vanished.

He stood gazing blankly at the front door of the house. Was it fancy
that he had heard it shut a second before he came? that his nerves still
responded to the shock of its closing? He had already imagined so many
noises of the kind, so many misty shapes fleeing before him with little
soft rustlings, so many whispers at his back and hushed cries behind the
closed doors. Yet this door had seemed to shut more tangibly, with a
warmer promise of life. He went quickly up the three wooden steps,
turned the knob, and pushed it open--very softly this time. No one
appeared. But, as he stood on the threshold, while the pupils of his
eyes dilated to the gloom of the hall into which he looked, his ears
seemed to detect somewhere in the house a muffled footfall and the sound
of another door closed softly.

He stepped inside and called. There was no answer, but above his head a
board creaked. He started up the stairs in front of him, and, as he did
so, he seemed to hear cautious steps across a bare floor above. He
stopped climbing; the steps ceased. He started up, and the steps came
again. He knew now they came from a room at the head of the stairs. He
bounded up the remaining steps and pushed open the door with a loud
"Halloo!"

The room was empty. Yet across it there was the indefinable trail of a
presence,--an odour, a vibration, he knew not what,--and where a bar of
sunlight cut the gloom under a half-raised curtain, he saw the motes in
the air all astir. Opposite the door he had opened was another, leading,
apparently, to a room at the back of the house. From behind it, he could
have sworn came the sounds of a stealthily moved body and softened
breathing. A presence, unseen but felt, was all about. Not without
effort did he conquer the impulse to look behind him at every breath.

Determined to be no longer eluded, he crossed the room on tiptoe and
gently tried the opposite door. It was locked. As he leaned against it,
almost in a terror of suspense, he knew he heard again those little
seemings of a presence a door's thickness away. He did not hesitate.
Still holding the turned knob in his hand, he quickly crouched back and
brought his flexed shoulder heavily against the door. It flew open with
a breaking sound, and, with a little gasp of triumph, he was in the room
to confront its unknown occupant.

To his dismay, he saw no one. He peered in bewilderment to the farther
side of the room, where light struggled dimly in at the sides of a
curtained window. There was no sound, and yet he could acutely feel that
presence; insistently his nerves tingled the warning of another's
nearness. Leaning forward, still peering to sound the dim corners of the
room, he called out again.

Then, from behind the door he had opened, a staggering blow was dealt
him, and, before he could recover, or had done more than blindly crook
one arm protectingly before his face, he was borne heavily to the floor,
writhing in a grasp that centered all its crushing power about his
throat.

CHAPTER II.

_The Wild Ram of the Mountains_

Slight though his figure was, it was lithe and active and well-muscled,
and he knew as they struggled that his assailant was possessed of no
greater advantage than had lain in his point of attack. In strength,
apparently, they were well-matched. Twice they rolled over on the
carpeted floor, and then, despite the big, bony hands pressing about his
throat, he turned his burden under him, and all but loosened the killing
clutch. This brought them close to the window, but again he was swiftly
drawn underneath. Then, as he felt his head must burst and his senses
were failing from the deadly grip at his throat, his feet caught in the
folds of the heavy curtain, and brought it down upon them in a cloud of
dust.

As the light flooded in, he saw the truth, even before his now panting
and sneezing antagonist did. Releasing the pressure from his throat with
a sudden access of strength born of the new knowledge, he managed to
gasp, though thickly and with pain, as they still strove:

"Seth Wright--wait--let go--wait, Seth--I'm Joel--Joel Rae!"

He managed it with difficulty.

"Joel Rae--Rae--Rae--don't you see?"

He felt the other's tension relax. With many a panting, puffing "Hey!"
and "What's that now?" he was loosed, and drew himself up into a chair
by the saving window. His assailant, a hale, genial-faced man of forty,
sat on the floor where the revelation of his victim's identity had
overtaken him. He was breathing hard and feeling tenderly of his neck.
This was ruffled ornamentally by a style of whisker much in vogue at the
time. It had proved, however, but an inferior defense against the
onslaught of the younger man in his frantic efforts to save his own
neck.

They looked at each other in panting amazement, until the older man
recovered his breath, and spoke:

"Gosh and all beeswax! The Wild Ram of the Mountains a-settin' on the
Lute of the Holy Ghost's stomach a-chokin' him to death. My sakes! I'm
a-pantin' like a tuckered hound--a-thinkin' he was a cussed milishy
mobocrat come to spoil his household!"

The younger man was now able to speak, albeit his breathing was still
heavy and the marks of the struggle plain upon him.

"What does it mean, Brother Wright--all this? Where are the Saints we
left here--why is the city deserted--and why this--this?"

He shook back the thick, brown hair that fell to his shoulders,
tenderly rubbed the livid fingerprints at his throat, and readjusted the
collar of his blue flannel shirt.

"Thought you was a milishy man, I tell you, from the careless way you
hollered--one of Brockman's devils come back a-snoopin', and I didn't
crave trouble, but when I saw the Lord appeared to reely want me to cope
with the powers of darkness, why, I jest gritted into you for the
consolation of Israel. You'd 'a' got your come-uppance, too, if you'd
'a' been a mobber. You was nigh a-ceasin' to breathe, Joel Rae. In
another minute I wouldn't 'a' give the ashes of a rye-straw for your
part in the tree of life!"

"Yes, yes, man, but go back a little. Where are our people, the sick,
the old, and the poor, that we had to leave till now? Tell me, quick."

The older man sprang up, the late struggle driven from his mind, his
face scowling. He turned upon his questioner.

"Does my fury swell up in me? No wonder! And you hain't guessed why?
Well, them pitiful remnant of Saints, the sick, the old, the poor,
waitin' to be helped yender to winter quarters, has been throwed out
into that there slough acrost the river, six hundred and forty of 'em."

"When we were keeping faith by going?"

"What does a mobocrat care for faith-keepin'? Have you brought back the
wagons?"

"Yes; they'll reach the other side to-night. I came ahead and made the
lower crossing. I've seen nothing and heard nothing. Go on--tell
me--talk, man!"

"Talk?--yes, I'll talk! We've had mobs and the very scum of hell to boil
over here. This is Saturday, the 19th, ain't it? Well, Brockman marched
against this stronghold of Israel jest a week ago, with eight hundred
men. They had cannons and demanded surrender. We was a scant two hundred
fightin' men, and the only artillery we had was what we made ourselves.
We broke up an old steamboat shaft and bored out the pieces so's they'd
take a six-pound shot--but we wasn't goin' to give up. We'd learned our
lesson about mobocrat milishies. Well, Brockman, when he got our defy,
sent out his Warsaw riflemen as flankers on the right and left, put the
Lima Guards to our front with one cannon, and marched his main body
through that corn-field and orchard to the south of here to the city
lines. Then we had it hot. Brockman shot away all his cannon-balls--he
had sixty-one--and drew back while he sent to Quincy for more. He'd
killed three of our men. Sunday and Monday we swopped a few shots. And
then Tuesday, along comes a committee of a hundred to negotiate peace.
Well, Wednesday evening they signed terms, spite of all I could do.
_I'd_ 'a' fought till the white crows come a-cawin', but the rest of 'em
wasn't so het up with the Holy Ghost, I reckon. Anyway, they signed. The
terms wasn't reely set till Thursday morning, but we knew they would be,
and so all Wednesday night we was movin' acrost the river, and it kept
up all next day,--day before yesterday. You'd ought to 'a' been here
then; you wouldn't wonder at my comin' down on you like a thousand of
brick jest now, takin' you for a mobocrat. You'd 'a' seen families druv
right out of their homes, with no horses, tents, money, nor a day's
provisions,--jest a little foolish household stuff they could carry in
their hands,--sick men and women carried on beds, mothers luggin' babies
and leadin' children. My sakes! but I did want to run some bullets and
fill my old horn with powder for the consolation of Israel! They're
lyin' out over there in the slough now, as many as ain't gone to glory.
It made me jest plumb murderous!"

The younger man uttered a sharp cry of anguish. "What, oh, what has been
our sin, that we must be proved again? Why have we got to be chastened?"

"Then Brockman's force marched in Thursday afternoon, and hell was let
loose. His devils have plundered the town, thrown out the bedridden that
jest couldn't move, thrown their goods out after 'em, burned, murdered,
tore up. You come up from the river, and you ain't seen that yet--they
ain't touched the lower part of town--and now they're bunkin' in the
temple, defacin' it, defilin' it,--that place we built to be a house of
rest for the Lord when he cometh again. They drove me acrost the river
yesterday, and promised to shoot me if I dast show myself again. I
sneaked over in a skiff last night and got here to get my two pistols
and some money and trinkets we'd hid out. I was goin' to cross again
to-night and wait for you and the wagons."

"My God! and this is the nineteenth century in a land of liberty!"

"State of Illinois, U.S.A., September 19, 1846--but what of that? We're
the Lord's chosen, and over yender is a generation of vipers warned to
flee from the wrath to come. But they won't flee, and so we're outcasts
for the present, driven forth like snakes. The best American blood is in
our veins. We're Plymouth Rock stock, the best New England graft; the
fathers of nine tenths of us was at Bunker Hill or Valley Forge or
Yorktown, but what of that, I ask you?"

The speaker became oratorical as his rage grew.

"What did Matty Van Buren say to Sidney Rigdon and Elias Higbee when
they laid our cause before him at Washington after our Missouri
persecutions--when the wicked hatred of them Missourians had as a besom
of fire swept before it into exile the whipped and plundered Saints of
Jackson County? Well, he said: 'Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can
do nothing for you.' That's what a President of the United States said
to descendants of _Mayflower_ crossers who'd been foully dealt with, and
been druv from their substance and their homes, their wheat burned in
the stack and in the shock, and themselves butchered or put into the
wilderness. And now the Lord's word to this people is to gether out
again."

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