One by one the trains worked down into the valley, the tired Saints making fresh their covenants by rebaptism as they came.  In the waters of the River Jordan, Joel Rae made hundreds to be renewed in the Kingdom, swearing them to obey Brigham, the Lord’s anointed, in all his orders, spiritual or temporal, and the priesthood or either of them, and all church authorities in like manner; to regard this obligation as superior to all laws of the United States and all earthly laws whatsoever; to cherish enmity against the government of the United States, that the blood of Joseph Smith and the Apostles slain in that generation might be avenged; and to keep the matter of this oath a profound secret then and forever.  And from these waters of baptism the purified Saints went to their inheritances in Zion—­took their humble places, and began to sweat and bleed in the upbuilding of the new Jerusalem.

[Illustration:  “I’M THE ONE WILL HAVE TO BE CAUGHT”]

From a high, tented wagon in one such train, creaking its rough way down Emigration Canon, with straining oxen and tired but eager people, there had leaped one late afternoon the girl whose eyes were to call to him so potently,—­incomparable eyes, large and deep, of a velvety grayness, under black brows splendidly bent.  Nor had the eyes alone voiced that call to his starved senses.  He had caught the free, fearless confidence of her leap over the wheel, and her graceful abandon as she stood there, finely erect and full-curved, her head with its Greek lines thrown well back, and her strong hands raised to readjust the dusky hair that tumbled about her head like a storm-cloud.

Men from the train were all about, and others from the settlement, and these spoke to her, some in serious greeting, some with jesting words.  She returned it all in good part without embarrassment,—­even the sally of the winking wag who called out, “Now then, Mara Cavan!  Here we are, and a girl like yourself ought to catch an Elder, at the very lowest.”

She laughed with easy good-nature, still fumbling in the dusk of blown hair at the back of her head, showing a full-lipped mouth, beautifully large, with strong-looking, white teeth.  “I’ll catch never a one myself, if you please, Nathan Tanner!  I’ll do no catching at all, now! I’m the one will have to be caught!”

Her voice was a contralto, with the little hint of roughness that made it warm and richly golden; that made it fall, indeed, upon the ears of the listening Elder like a cathedral chime calling him to forget all and worship—­forget all but that he was five and twenty with the hot blood surging and crowding and crying out in his veins.