| OCR Text |
Show Page 216 near the present Idaho state line - this was the northern limit of Zion, and when Orson took a sight on Polaris, he could point to the spot on the Fort Hall road where Gentile territory began. They wrestled into place a large stone slab and carved "U" on one side, for Utah, and "0" 14 on the other. Having fixed the northernmost limits of their domain, the brethren next assigned Orson to ascertain the eastern frontier. On September 11, he and Jesse Fox left for Green River. Their mule train straggled over the emigration trail for nine days, and on September 19, Orson's forty-fourth birthday, they encamped exactly at the 42nd Parallel, where Congress had decreed the division between Utah and the unorganized Wyoming badlands. From then on, Orson's marker signaled the emigrant trains of the Saints • 15 that they had reached at last their Zion in the mountains. Coming down from the rugged trail he had crossed so many times, Orson was amazed to encounter his brother Parley. The two had criss-corssed in their assignments for seven years, so that when one arrived home from a mission, the other had just left. Suddenly, they collided, and after years of silences, resentments, pleading for favors, the two were thrown together again for a brief time. The Prophet assigned them to work as "Home Missionaries," to travel and set in order the Mormon settlements, holding instructional meetings among the stakes. The practice continues today in the form of stake conferences; the brothers were appointed to conduct the first ones in Farmington, Utah, for the Davis Stake. They wandered over Utah Territory, into Provo, Ogden, Kaysville, Bountiful, and other outlying settlements of the Saints, discussing all they had seen and been through in seven years. Finding a certain comfort in this middle-aged brotherly closeness after so long, they shared a carriage to the Legislative Assembly meeting in snowbound Fillmore, |
