They learned to dread the iron of his hand and the steel of his heart—­the dauntless spirit of him that left them no longer their own masters, yet kept them loving their bondage.  Through the dreadful cold and famine, the five thousand of them ceased not to pray nor lost their faith—­their great faith that they had been especially favoured of God and were at the last to be saved alone from the wreck of the world.

The efforts of Brigham to put heart into the people were ably seconded by Joel Rae.  He was loved like Brigham, but not feared.  He preached like Brigham submission to the divine will as interpreted by the priesthood, but he was more extravagant than Brigham in his promises of blessings in store for them.  He never resorted to vagueness in his pictures of what the Lord was about to do for them.  He was literal and circumstantial to a degree that made Brigham and the older men in authority sometimes writhe in public and chide him in private.  They were appalled at the sweeping victories he promised the Saints over the hated Gentiles at an early day.  They suggested, too, that the Lord might withhold an abundance from them for a few years until He had more thoroughly tried them.  But their counsel seemed only to inflame him to fresh absurdities.  In the very days of their greatest scarcity that winter, when almost every man was dressed in skins, and the daily fare was thistle roots, he declared to them at a Sunday service: 

“A time of plenty is at hand—­of great plenty.  I cannot tell you how I know these things.  I do not know how they come to me.  I pray—­and they come to life in my spirit; that is how I have found this fact:  in less than a year States-goods of all needed kinds will be sold here cheaper than they can be bought in Eastern cities.  You shall have an abundance at prices that will amaze you.”

And the people thrilled to hear him, partaking of his faith, remembering the gulls that ate the crickets, and the rain and wind that came to save the pioneer train from fire.  To the leaders such prophesying was merely reckless, inviting further chastisements from heaven, and calculated to cause a loss of faith in the priesthood.

And yet, wild as it was, they saw this latter prophecy fulfilled; for now, so soon after the birth of this new empire, while it suffered and grew weak and bade fair to perish in its cradle of faith, there was made for it a golden spoon of plenty.

Over across the mountains the year before, on the decayed granite bed-rock of the tail-race at the mill of one Sutter, a man had picked up a few particles of gold, the largest as big as grains of wheat.  The news of the wonder had spread to the East, and now came frenzied hordes of gold-seekers.  The valley of the mountains where the Saints had hoped to hide was directly in their path, and there they stopped their richly laden trains to rest and to renew their supplies.