st the glow of the western sky as he
rode up, was a huge cross. He stopped, staring in wonder, believing it
to be another vision; but it stayed before him, rigid, bare, and
uncompromising. He left his horse and climbed up to it. At its base was
piled a cairn of stones, and against this was a slab with an
inscription:--

"Here 120 Men, Women, and Children Were Massacred in Cold Blood Early in
September, 1857."

On the cross itself was carved in deep letters:--

"Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

He fell on his knees at the foot and prayed, not weeping nor in any
fever of fear, but as one knowing his sin and the sin of his Church. The
burden of his prayer was, "O God, my own sin cannot be forgiven--I know
it well--but let me atone for the sins of this people and let me guide
them aright. Let me die on this cross a hundred deaths for each life
they put out, or as many more as shall be needed to save them."

He was strong in his faith again, conscious that he himself was lost,
but burning to save others, and hopeful, too, for he believed that a
miracle had been vouchsafed to him in the desert.

Nor would the good _padre_, at the head of his procession of penitents
in his little mission out across the desert, have doubted less that it
was a miracle than did this unhappy apostle of Joseph Smith, had he
known the circumstance of its timeliness; albeit he had become familiar
with such phenomena of light and air in the desert.

CHAPTER XXIII.

_The Sinner Chastens himself_

How to offer the greatest sacrifice--how to do the greatest
service--these had become his problems. He concerned himself no longer
with his own exaltation either in this world or the world to come.

He resolved to stay south, fearing vaguely that in the North he would be
in conflict with the priesthood. He knew not how; he felt that he was
still sound in his faith, but he felt, too, some undefined antagonism
between himself and those who preached in the tabernacle. For his home
he chose the settlement of Amalon, set in a rich little valley between
the shoulders of the Pine Mountains.

Late in October there was finished for him on the outer edge of the
town, near the bank of a little hill-born stream, a roomy log-house,
mud-chinked, with a water-tight roof of spruce shakes and a floor of
whipsawed plank,--a residence fit for one of the foremost teachers in
the Church, an Elder after the Order of Melchisedek, an eloquent
p