ss through if need be, but must not be
quartered within forty miles of us. And if they come here to disturb
this people, before they reach here this city will be in ashes; every
house and tree and shrub and blade of grass will be destroyed. Here are
twenty years' gathering, but it will all burn. You will have won back
the wilderness, barren again as on the day we entered it, but you will
not have conquered the people. Our wives and children will go to the
canons and take shelter in the mountains, while their husbands and sons
will fight you. You will be without fuel, without subsistence for
yourselves or forage for your animals. You will be in a strange land,
while we know every foot of it. We will haunt and harass you and pick
you off by day and by night, and, as God lives, we will waste your army
away."

This was hopeful. Here at least was another chance to suffer
persecution, and thus, in a measure, atone for any monstrous wrong they
might have done. He hoped the soldiers would come despoiling,
plundering, thus compelling them to use the torch and to flee. Another
forced exodus would help to drive certain memories from his mind and
silence the cries that were now beginning to ring in his ears.

Obedient to priestly counsel, the Saints declined, in the language of
Brigham, "to trust again in Punic faith." In April they began to move
south, starting from the settlements on the north. During that and the
two succeeding months thirty thousand of them left their homes. They
took only their wagons, bedding, and provisions, leaving their other
possessions to the mercy of the expected despoiler. Before locking the
doors of their houses for the last time, they strewed shavings, straw,
and other combustibles through the rooms so that the work of firing the
city could be done quickly. A score of men were left behind to apply the
torch the moment it became necessary,--should a gate be swung open or a
latch lifted by hostile hands. Their homes and fields and orchards might
be given back to the desert from which they had been won; but never to
the Gentile invaders.

To the south the wagons crept, day after day, to some other unknown
desert which their prophet should choose, and where, if the Lord willed,
they would again charm orchards and gardens and green fields from the
gray, parched barrens.

Late in June the army of Johnston descended Emigration Canon, passed
through the echoing streets of the all but deserted city and ca