The day he reached Salt Lake City, Joel Rae was made major of militia.  The following day, he attended the meeting at the tabernacle.  He needed, for reasons he did not fully explain to himself, to receive fresh assurance of Brigham’s infallibility, of his touch with the Holy Ghost, of his goodness as well as his might; to be caught once more by the compelling magnetism of his presence, the flash of his eye, and the inciting tones of his voice.  All this he found.

“Is there,” asked Brigham, “a collision between us and the United States?  No, we have not collashed—­that is the word that sounds nearest to what I mean.  But the thread is cut between us and we will never gybe again, no, never—­worlds without end.  I am not going to have their troops here to protect the priests and rabble in their efforts to drive us from the land we possess.  The Lord does not want us to be driven.  He has said to me, ’If you will assert your rights and keep my commandments, you shall never again be brought into bondage by your enemies.’  The United States says that their army is legal, but I say that such a statement is false as hell, and that those States are as rotten as an old pumpkin that has been frozen seven times over and then thawed in a harvest sun.  We can’t have that army here and have peace—­you might as well tell me you could make hell into a powder-house.  And so we shall melt those troops away.  I promise you our enemies shall never ‘slip the bow on old Bright’s neck again.’”

Joel Rae was again under the sway of his old warlike feelings.  Brigham had revived his fainting faith.  He went out into the noise and hurry of war preparations in a sort of intoxication.  Underneath he never ceased to be conscious of the dreadful specter that would not be gone—­that stood impassive and immovable as one of the mountains about him, waiting for him to come to it and face it and live his day of reckoning,—­the day of his own judgment upon himself.  But he drank thirstily of the martial draught and lived the time in a fever of tumultuous drunkenness to the awful truth.

He saw to it that he was never alone by day or night.  Once a new thought and a sudden hope came to him, and he had been about to pray that in the campaign he was entering he might be killed.  But a second thought stayed him; he had no right to die until he had faced his own judgment.

The army of Israel was now well organised.  It had taken all able-bodied males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five.  There were a lieutenant-general, four generals, eleven colonels, and six majors.  In addition to the Saints’ own forces there were the Indians, for Brigham had told a messenger who came to ascertain his disposition toward the approaching army that he would “no longer hold the Indians by the wrist.”  This messenger had suggested that, while the army might be kept from entering the valley that winter, it would assuredly march in, the following spring.  Brigham’s reply had not lacked the point that sharpened most of his words.