But he shook his head with much determination, and refused to take them again before the great white chief.  The thought troubled him exceedingly and would not be gone—­yet he knew not how to account for it—­that Brigham would not receive this novel view of the matter with any cordiality.

When they were camped that night, Brigham made a suggestion to him.

“Brother Rae, it ain’t just the best plan in the world to come on a man sudden that way for so downright a miracle.  A man can’t be always fired up with the Holy Ghost, with all the cares of this train on his mind.  You come and have a private talk with me beforehand after this, when you got a miracle you want done.”

He prayed more fervently than ever that night to be made “wise and good like thy servant Brigham”—­also for the gift of tongues to come upon him so that he might instruct the Indians in the threefold character of the Godhead and in other matters pertaining to their salvation.

CHAPTER X.

The Promised Land

So far on their march the Lord had protected them from all but ordinary hardships.  True, some members of the company had suffered from a fever which they attributed to the clouds of dust that enveloped the column of wagons when in motion, and to the great change of temperature from day to night.  Again, the most of them were for many weeks without bread, saving for the sick the little flour they had and subsisting upon the meat provided by the hunters.  Before reaching Fort Laramie, too, their stock had become weakened for want of food; an extended drought, the vast herds of buffalo, and the Indian fires having combined to destroy the pasturage.

This weakness of the animals made the march for many days not more than five or six miles a day.  At the last they had fed to the stock not only all their grain but the most of their crackers and other breadstuffs.  But these were slight matters to a persecuted people gathering out of Babylon.

Late in June they reached the South Pass.  For many hundred miles they had been climbing the backbone of the continent.  Now they had reached the summit, the dividing ridge between streams that flowed to the Atlantic and streams that flowed to the Pacific.  From the level prairies they had toiled up into the fearsome Rockies where bleak, grim crags lowered upon them from afar, and distant summits glistening with snow warned them of the perils ahead.

Through all this time of marching the place where they should pitch the tent of Israel was not fixed upon.  When Brigham was questioned around the camp-fire at night, his only reply was that he would know the site of their new home when he saw it.  And it came to be told among the men that he had beheld in vision a tent settling down from heaven and resting over a certain spot; and that a voice had said to him, “Here is the place where my people Israel shall pitch their tents and spread wide the curtains of Zion!” It was enough.  He would recognise the spot when they reached it.