| OCR Text |
Show Ill while gun-toting Mexican rebels lolled in the sandy shade of the wardhouse ogling shy, prim Mormon girls. The black-clad patriarchs and their wives (having sacrificed property, society and U.S. citizenship to keep the Principle without breaking the Thirteenth Mormon Article of Faith which promises allegiance to the government) were as dazzled by the refraction of the desert sun off white, unarable sand as by their uncompromised religious ideals. The intemperate land appropriately backdropped the unyielding remnant of Mormon polygamists. Two weeks after their entrance into Mexico, the baby of Grandfather's family, Othello, died of meningitis, fulfilling part of Charlotte's nightmare. Three days later, another part of the phantasm came true --at least in Charlotte's eyes -- despite Grandfather's claim that he never ignored her suffering. Grandfather, Charlotte, and Evelyn hitched up the wagon and carried a sealed envelope to Stake President Anthony W. Ivins in Colonia Juarez. The document, signed by Mormon Church President Joseph F. Smith, gave permission for the three to be sealed in plural marriage. Ivins performed the ceremony as he had countless others since his appointment to the Mexican mission, although in later years, he would become one of the Principle's major detrators, labeling fundamentalists who clung to polygamy as "adulterers" and "outlaws." The journey back to Dublan brooded as though no transition had been made from the short funeral procession the day before. |
