The Lions of the Lord: A Tale of the Old West — Story, Setting & Ideas

AD 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 CAÑON 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

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!”