some such book, just like that--and I just
give him one look, and I says, 'Mr. Lyman Hickenlooper, if you'll take
notice,' I says, 'you'll see those words was composed by the angel
Moroni over two thousand years ago and revealed to Joseph Smith in the
sacred light of the Urim and Thummim,' I says, and the plague-oned
smarty snickered right in my face--and say, now, what did you and your
second git a separation for?"

He was called back by the stopping of her voice, but she had to repeat
her question before he understood it. The Devil tempted him in that
moment. He was on the point of answering, "Because she talked too
much," but instead he climbed out of the wagon to walk. He walked most
of the three hundred miles in the next ten days. Nights and mornings he
falsely pretended to be deaf.

He found himself in this long walk full of a pained discouragement; not
questioning or doubting, for he had been too well trained ever to do
either. But he was disturbed by a feeling of bafflement, as might be a
ground-mole whose burrow was continually destroyed by an enemy it could
not see. This feeling had begun in Salt Lake City, for there he had seen
that the house of Israel was no longer unspotted of the world. Since the
army with its camp-followers had come there was drunkenness and vice,
the streets resounded with strange oaths, and the midnight murder was
common. Even Brigham seemed to have become a gainsayer in behalf of
Mammon, and the people, quick to follow his lead, were indulging in
ungodly trade with Gentiles; even with the army that had come to invade
them. And more and more the Gentiles were coming in. He heard strange
tales of the new facilities afforded them. There was actually a system
of wagon-trains regularly hauling freight from the Missouri to the
Pacific; there was a stage-route bringing passengers and mail from
Babylon; even Horace Greeley had been publicly entertained in
Zion,--accorded honour in the Lord's stronghold. There was talk, too, of
a pony-express, to bring them mail from the Missouri in six days; and a
few visionaries were prophesying that a railroad would one day come by
them. The desert was being peopled all about them, and neighbours were
forcing a way up to their mountain retreat.

It seemed they were never to weld into one vast chain the broken links
of the fated house of Abraham; never to be free from Gentile
contamination. He groaned in spirit as he went--walking well ahead of
his wagon.