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Show THE FAIR APOSTATE. 329 cade had halted for midday at the creek j and he followed with the weary child, who seemed all at once to have acquired great confidence in him. Meanwhile the pioneer had been down to talk with the party, and Willie had to bid his little acquaintance good- bye and hurry back. " And who are they, any how?" said the wife. " Oh, a set of d d fool Mormons," replied the matter- of- fact Hoosier " they say they're a goin' to Zion. More likely goin' to the devil, startin' out the way they are." But Willie had in mind his little friend of an hour, and, after much pondering, concluded that she must be a " bound girl " as he had been a " bound boy," and that some harsh master was taking her away from home; so, with the good woman's permission, he gathered up some delicacies left from their dinner, and ran down to offer them to the little girl. He listened to the talk of the elders, but it was a strange jargon to him; there was so much about " wicked Babylon," and " God's wrath," and " the last days," that he was frightened again, and could hardly say whether he was glad or sorry when the cool of the day came on and the strange party set out again. But the vision remained long in his memory; and months after he astonished his patron by suddenly asking: " Who are Mormons, anyhow? and why don't they use teams just like folks?" A year passed, and the boy was again moving westward. A year had done wonders in strengthening his body ; he was already known as a skillful driver, and when a train set out to haul provisions to the army in the mountains, he was promoted to the management of " one span " and a " light outfit." " Three span outfits," on such a route as that, were reserved for men. Need I recount the incidents of that dis-astrous autumn and winter of suffering? Our army, marching care-lessly and without a thought of resistance, allowed the Mormon troops to run off their stock, and render them helpless on the inhospitable plains of Bridger. There the train to which Willie was attached found them in the dead of winter, and but for this timely arrival they must have suffered for food. The winter dragged on in misery and ex-posure; but fortune, which had denied our little hero almost every thing else, had at least given him a rugged constitution, and he lived through a season when strong men drooped and died. When spring had dissolved the snow banks from the Wasatch passes, and " King Buchanan had come to his senses," as Mormon history expresses it, peace was made, and the army entered the Territory, traversed Salt Lake City, and was located at Camp Floyd. And now came the era that was to decide our young hero's future |
