The Gentile Issues an Ultimatum

June went; July came and went.  It was a hot summer below, where the valley widens to let in Amalon; but up in the little-sunned aisle of Box Canon it was always cool.  There the pines are straight and reach their heads far into the sky, each a many-wired harp to the winds that come down from the high divide.  Their music is never still; now a low, ominous rush, soft but mighty, swelling as it nears, the rush of a winged host, rising swiftly to one fearsome crescendo until the listener cowers instinctively as if under the tread of many feet; then dying away to mutter threats in the distance, and to come again more fiercely; or, it may be, to come with a gentler sweep, as if pacified, even yearning, for the moment.  Or, again, the same wind will play quieter airs through the green boughs, a chamber-music of silken rustlings, of feathered fans just stirring, of whisperings, and the sighs of a woman.

It is cool beneath these pines, and pleasant on the couches of brown needles that have fallen through all the years.  Here, in the softened light, amid the resinous pungence of the cones and the green boughs, where the wind above played an endless, solemn accompaniment to the careless song of the stream below, the maiden Saint tried to save into the Kingdom a youthful Gentile of whom she discovered almost daily some fresh reason why he should not be lost.  The reasons had become so many that they were now heavy upon her.  And yet, while the youth submitted meekly to her ministry, appearing even to crave it, he was undeniably either dense or stubborn - in either case of defective spirituality.

She was grieved by the number of times he fell asleep when she read from the Book of Mormon.  The times were many because, though she knew it not, he had come to be, in effect, a night-nurse to the little bent man below, who was now living out his days in quiet desperation, and his nights in a fear of something behind him.  Some nights Follett would have unbroken rest; but oftener he was awakened by the other’s grip on his arm.  Then he would get up, put fresh logs on the fire or light a candle and talk with the haunted man until he became quiet again.

After a night like this it was not improbable that he would fall asleep in very sound of the trumpet of truth as blown, by the grace of God, through the seership of Joseph Smith.  Still he had learned much in the course of the two months.  She had taught him between naps that, for fourteen hundred years, to the time of Joseph Smith, there had been a general and awful apostasy from the true faith, so that the world had been without an authorised priesthood.  She had also taught him to be ill at ease away from her, - to be content when with her, whether they talked of religion or tried for the big, sulky three-pounder that had his lair at the foot of the upper Cascade.

Again she had taught him that other churches had wickedly done away with immersion for the remission of sins and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost; also that there was a peculiar quality in the satisfaction of being near her that he had never known before, - an astonishing truth that it was fine to think about when he lay where he could look up at her pretty, serious face.

He fell asleep at night usually with a mind full of confusion, - infant baptism - a slender figure in a pink dress or a blue - the Trinity - a firm little brown hand pointing the finger of admonition at him - the regeneration of man - hair, dark and lustrous, that fell often half away from what he called its “lashings” - eternal punishment - earnest eyes - the Urim and Thummim, - and a pleading, earnest voice.

He knew a few things definitely:  that Moroni, last of the Nephites, had hidden up unto the Lord the golden plates in the hill of Cumorah; and that the girl who taught him was in some mysterious way the embodiment of all the wonderful things he had ever thought he wanted, of all the strange beauties he had crudely pictured in lonely days along the trail.  Here was something he had supposed could come true only in a different world, the kind of world there was in the first book he had ever read, where there had seemed to be no one but good fairies and children that were uncommonly deserving.  Yet he had never been able to get clearly into his mind the nature and precise office of the Holy Ghost; nor had he ever become certain how he could bring this wonderful young woman in closer relationship with himself.  He felt that to put out his hand toward her - except at certain great moments when he could help her over rough places and feel her golden weight upon his arm - would be to startle her, and then all at once he would awaken from a dream to find her gone.  He thought he would feel very badly then, for probably he would never be able to get back into the same dream again.  So he was cautious, resolving to make the thing last until it came true of itself.

Once when they followed the stream down, in the late afternoon, he had mused himself so full of the wonder of her that he almost forgot his caution in an amiable impulse to let her share in his feelings.

“You know,” he began, “you’re like as if I had been trying to think of a word I wanted to say - some fine, big word, a fancy one - but I couldn’t think of it.  You know how you can’t think of the one you want sometimes, only nothing else will do in place of it, and then all at once, when you quit trying to think, it flashes over you.  You’re like that.  I never could think of you, but I just had to because I couldn’t get along without it, and then when I didn’t expect it you just happened along - the word came along and said itself.”

Without speaking she had run ahead to pick the white and blue columbines and pink roses.  And he, alarmed at his boldness, fearing she would now be afraid of him, went forward with the deep purpose of showing her a light, careless mood, to convince her that he had meant nothing much.

To this end he told her lively anecdotes, chaste classics of the range calculated to amuse, until they reached the very door of home: - About the British sailor who, having drifted up the Sacramento valley, was lured to mount a cow-pony known to be hysterical; of how he had declared when they picked him up a moment later, “If I’d been aware of the gale I’d have lashed myself to the rigging.”  Then about the other trusting tenderfoot who was directed to insist at the stable in Santa Fe that they give him a “bucking broncho;” who was promptly accommodated and speedily unseated with much flourish, to the wicked glee of those who had deceived him; and who, when he asked what the horse had done and was told that he had “bucked,” had thereupon declared gratefully, “Did he only buck?  It’s a God’s mercy he didn’t broncho too, or he’d have killed me!”

From this he drifted into the anecdote of old Chief Chew-feather, who became drunk one day and made a nuisance of himself in the streets of Atchison; how he had been driven out of town by Marshal Ed Lanigan, who, mounting his pony, chased him a mile or so, meantime emptying both his six-shooters at the fleeing brave by way of making the exact situation clear even to a clouded mind; and how the alarmed and sobered chief had ridden his own pony to a shadow, never drawing rein until he reached the encampment of his tribe at dusk, to report that “the whites had broken out at Atchison.”

He noticed, however, that she was affected to even greater constraint of manner by these sallies, though he laughed heartily himself at each climax as he made it, determined to show her that he had meant absolutely nothing the moment before.  He succeeded so little, that he resolved never again to be reckless, if she would only be her old self on the morrow.  He would not even tell her, as he had meant to, that looking into her eyes was like looking off under the spruces, where it was dark and yet light.

The little bent man at the house would look at them with a sort of helplessness when they came in, sometimes even forgetting the smile he was wont to wear to hide his hurts.  He was impressed anew each time he saw them with the punishing power of such vengeance as was left to the Lord.  He could see more than either of the pair before him.  The little white-haired boy who had fought him with tooth and nail so long ago, to be not taken from Prudence, had now come back with the might of a man, even the might of a lover, to take her from him when she had become all of his life.  He could think of no sharper revenge upon himself or his people.  For this cowboy was the spirit incarnate of the oncoming East, thorned on by the Lord to avenge his Church’s crime.

Day after day he would lie consuming the little substance left within him in an effort to save himself; to keep by him the child who had become his miser’s gold; to keep her respect above all, to have her think him a good man.  Yet never a way would open.  Here was the boy with the man’s might, and they were already lovers, for he knew too well the meaning of all those signs which they themselves but half understood.  And he became more miserable day by day, for he saw clearly it was only his selfishness that made him suffer.  He had met so many tests, and now he must fail at the last great sacrifice.

Then in the night would come the terrors of the dark, the curses and groans of that always-dying thing behind him.  And always now he would see the hand with the silver bracelet at the wrist, flaunting in his face the shivering strands of gold with the crimson patch at the end.  Yet even this, because he could see it, was less fearful than the thing he could not see, the thing that crawled or lurched relentlessly behind him, with the snoring sound in its throat, the smell of warm blood and the horrible dripping of it, whose breath he could feel on his neck and whose nerveless hands sometimes fumbled weakly at his shoulder, as it strove to come in front of him.

He sat sleepless in his chair with candles burning for three nights when Follett, late in August, went off to meet a messenger from one of his father’s wagon-trains which, he said, was on its way north.  Fearful as was the meaning of his presence, he was inexpressibly glad when the Gentile returned to save him from the terrors of the night.

And there was now a new goad of remorse.  The evening before Follett’s return he had found Prudence in tears after a visit to the village.  With a sudden great outrush of pity he had taken her in his arms to comfort her, feeling the selfishness strangely washed from his love, as the sobs convulsed her.

“Come, come, child - tell your father what it is,” he had urged her, and when she became a little quiet she had told him.

“Oh, Daddy dear - I’ve just heard such an awful thing, what they talk of me in Amalon, and of you and my mother - shameful!”

He knew then what was coming; he had wondered indeed, that this talk should be so long in reaching her; but he waited silently, soothing her.

“They say, whoever my mother was, you couldn’t have married her - that Christina is your first wife, and the temple records show it.  And oh, Daddy, they say it means that I am a child of sin - and shame - and it made me want to kill myself.”

Another passion of tears and sobs had overwhelmed her and all but broken down the little man.  Yet he controlled himself and soothed her again to quietness.

“It is all wrong, child, all wrong.  You are not a child of sin, but a child of love, as rightly born as any in Amalon.  Believe me, and pay no heed to that talk.”

“They have been saying it for years, and I never knew.”

“They say what is not true.”

“You were married to my mother, then?”

He waited too long.  She divined, clear though his answer was, that he had evaded, or was quibbling in some way.

“You are the daughter of a truly married husband and wife, as truly married as were ever any pair.”

And though she knew he had turned her question, she saw that he must have done it for some great reason of his own, and, even in her grief, she would not pain him by asking another.  She could feel that he suffered as she did, and he seemed, moreover, to be pitifully and strangely frightened.

When Follett came riding back that evening he saw that Prudence had been troubled.  The candle-light showed sadness in her dark eyes and in the weighted corners of her mouth.  He was moved to take her in his arms and soothe her as he had seen mothers do with sorry little children.  But instead of this he questioned her father sharply when their corn-husk mattresses had been put before either side of the fireplace for the night.  The little man told him frankly the cause of her grief.  There was something compelling in the other’s way of asking questions.  When the thing had been made plain, Follett looked at him indignantly.

“Do you mean to say you let her go on thinking that about herself?”

“I told her that her father and mother had been rightly married.”

“Didn’t she think you were fooling her in some way?”

“I - I can’t be sure -

“She must have, or she wouldn’t be so down in the mouth now.  Why didn’t you tell her the truth?”

“If only - if only she could go on thinking I am her father - only a little while -

Follett spoke with the ring of a sudden resolution in his voice.

“Now I’ll tell you one thing, Mister man, something has got to be done by some one.  I can’t do it because I’m tied by a promise, and so I reckon you ought to!”

“Just a little time!  Oh, if you only knew how the knives cut me on every side and the fires burn all through me!”

“Well, think of the knives cutting that girl, - making her believe she has to be ashamed of her mother.  You go to sleep now, and try to lie quiet; there ain’t anything here to hurt you.  But I’ll tell you one thing, - you’ve got to toe the mark.”