o save the
train from destruction; that he had chosen to wait, however, in order to
try the faith of the Saints.

"As a matter of fact, Brother Joel," he concluded, "I don't know as
there is any limit to the power with which the Lord has blessed me. I
tell you I feel equal to any miracle--even to raising the dead, I
sometimes think--I feel that fired up with the Holy Ghost!"

"I am sure you will do even that, Brother Brigham." And the young man's
eyes swam with mingled gratitude and admiration. He resolved in his
wagon that night, that when the time came for another miracle, he would
not selfishly usurp the honour of performing it. He would not again
forestall the able Brigham.

By the first of June they had wormed their way over five hundred miles
of plain to the trading post of Fort Laramie. Here they were at last
forced to cross the Platte and to take up their march along the Oregon
trail. They were now in the land of alkaline deserts, of sage-brush and
greasewood, of sad, bleak, deadly stretches; a land where the favour of
Heaven might have to be called upon if they were to survive. Yet it was
a land not without inspiration,--a land of immense distances, of long,
dim perspectives, and of dreamy visions in the far, vague haze. In such
a land, thought Joel Rae, the spirit of the Lord must draw closer to the
children of earth. In such a land no miracle should be too difficult.
And so it came that he was presently enabled to put in Brigham's way the
opportunity of performing a work of mercy which he himself would have
been glad to do, but for the fear of affronting the Prophet.

A band of mounted Sioux had met them one day with friendly advances and
stopped to trade. Among the gaudy warriors Joel Rae's attention was
called to a boy who had lost an arm. He made inquiries, and found him to
be the son of the chief. The chief himself made it plain to Joel that
the young man had lost his arm ten moons before in a combat with a
grizzly bear. Whereupon the young Elder cordially bade the chief bring
his crippled son to their own great chief, who would, by the gracious
power of God, miraculously restore the missing member.

A few moments later the three were before Brigham, who was standing by
his wagon; Joel Rae, glowing with a glad and confident serenity; the
tawny chief with his sable braids falling each side of his painted face,
gay in his head-dress of dyed eagle plumes, his buckskin shirt jewelled
with blue beads and