Читать книгу The Lions of the Lord (Western Novel) - Harry Leon Wilson - Страница 5

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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.”

The younger man had listened in deep dejection.

“Yes, it’s to be the old story. I saw it coming. The Lord is proving us again. But surely this will be the last. He will not again put us through fire and blood.”

He paused, and for a moment his quick brown eyes looked far away.

“And yet, do you know, Bishop, I’ve thought that he might mean us to save ourselves against this Gentile persecution. Sometimes I find it hard to control myself.”

The Bishop grinned appreciatively.

“So I heer’d. The Lute of the Holy Ghost got too rambunctious back in the States on the subject of our wrongs. And so they called you back from your mission?”

“They said I must learn to school myself; that I might hurt the cause by my ill-tempered zeal—and yet I brought in many—”

“I don’t blame you. I got in trouble the first and only mission I went on, and the first time I preached, at that. When I said, ‘Joseph was ordained by Peter, James, and John,’ a drunken wag in the audience got up and called me a damned liar. I started for him. I never reached him, but I reached the end of my mission right there. The Twelve decided I was usefuller here at home. They said I hadn’t got enough of the Lord’s humility for outside work. That was why they put me at the head of—that little organisation I wanted you to join last spring. And it’s done good work, too. You’ll join now fast enough, I guess. You begin to see the need of such doin’s. I can give you the oath any time.”

“No, Bishop, I didn’t mean that kind of resistance. It sounded too practical for me; I’m still satisfied to be the Lute of the Holy Ghost.”

“You can be a Son of Dan, too.”

“Not yet, not yet. We must still be a little meek in the face of Heaven.”

“You’re in a mighty poor place to practise meekness. What’d you cross the river for, anyway?”

“Why, for father and mother, of course. They must be safe at Green Plains. Can I get out there without trouble?”

The Bishop sneered.

“Be meek, will you? Well, mosey out to Green Plains and begin there. It’s a burned plains you’ll find, and Lima and Morley all the same, and Bear Creek. The mobbers started out from Warsaw, and burned all in their way, Morley first, then Green Plains, Bear Creek, and Lima. They’d set fire to the houses and drive the folks in ahead. They killed Ed Durfee at Morley for talkin’ back to ’em.”

“But father and mother, surely—”

“Your pa and ma was druv in here with the rest, like cattle to the slaughter.”

“You don’t mean to say they’re over there on the river bank?”

“Now, they are a kind of a mystery about that—why they wa’n’t throwed out with the rest. Your ma’s sick abed—she ain’t ever been peart since the night your pa’s house was fired and they had to walk in—but that ain’t the reason they wa’n’t throwed out. They put out others sicker. They flung families where every one was sick out into that slough. I guess what’s left of ’em wouldn’t be a supper-spell for a bunch of long-billed mosquitoes. But one of them milishy captains was certainly partial to your folks for some reason. They was let to stay in Phin Daggin’s house till you come.”

“And Prudence—the Corsons—Miss Prudence Corson?”

“Oh, ho! So she’s the one, is she? Now that reminds me, mebbe I can guess the cute of that captain’s partiality. That girl’s been kind of lookin’ after your pa and ma, and that same milishy captain’s been kind of lookin’ after the girl. She got him to let her folks go to Springfield.”

“But that’s the wrong way.”

“Well, now, I don’t want to spleen, but I never did believe Vince Corson was anything more’n a hickory Saint—and there’s been a lot of talk—but you get yours from the girl. If I ain’t been misled, she’s got some ready for you.”

“Bishop, will there be a way for us to get into the temple, for her to be sealed to me? I’ve looked forward to that, you know. It would be hard to miss it.”

“The mob’s got the temple, even if you got the girl. There’s a verse writ in charcoal on the portal:—

“‘Large house, tall steeple,

Silly priests, deluded people.’

“That’s how it is for the temple, and the mob’s bunked there. But the girl may have changed her mind, too.”

The young man’s expression became wistful and gentle, yet serenely sure.

“I guess you never knew Prudence at all well,” he said. “But come, can’t we go to them? Isn’t Phin Daggin’s house near?”

“You may git there all right. But I don’t want my part taken out of the tree of life jest yet. I ain’t aimin’ to show myself none. Hark!”

From outside came the measured, swinging tramp of men.

“Come see how the Lord is proving us—and step light.”

They tiptoed through the other rooms to the front of the house.

“There’s a peek-hole I made this morning—take it. I’ll make me one here. Don’t move the curtain.”

They put their eyes to the holes and were still. The quick, rhythmic, scuffling tread of feet drew nearer, and a company of armed men marched by with bayonets fixed. The captain, a handsome, soldierly young fellow, glanced keenly from right to left at the houses along the line of march.

“We’re all right,” said the Bishop, in low tones. “The cusses have been here once—unless they happened to see us. They’re startin’ in now down on the flat to make sure no poor sick critter is left in bed in any of them houses. Now’s your chance if you want to git up to Daggin’s. Go out the back way, follow up the alleys, and go in at the back when you git there. But remember, ‘Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward!’ In Clay County we had to eat up the last mule from the tips of his ears to the end of the fly-whipper. Now we got to pass through the pinches again. We can’t stand it for ever.”

“The spirit may move us against it, Brother Seth.”

“I wish to hell it would!” replied the Bishop.