r after we swap.'
'All right,' says Ed. 'Well, first, he's hard to catch,' says Beasley.
'That ain't anything,' says Ed,--'just picket him or hobble him with a
good side-line.' So then they traded. 'And the other thing,' says the
old man, dragging up his cinches on Ed's pinto,--'he ain't any good
after you get him caught.' So that's like me. I've been hard to teach
all summer, and now I'm not any good after you get me taught."

"Oh, you are! Don't say you're not."

"I couldn't ever join your Church--"

Her face became full of alarm.

"--only for just one thing;--I don't care very much for this having so
many wives."

She was relieved at once. "If _that's_ all--I don't approve of it
myself. You wouldn't have to."

"Oh, that's what you say _now_"--he spoke with an air of shrewdness and
suspicion,--"but when I got in you'd throw up my duty to me constant
about building up the Kingdom. Oh, I know how it's done! I've heard your
preachers talk enough."

"But it _isn't_ necessary. I wouldn't--I don't think it would be at all
nice of you."

He looked at her with warm sympathy. "You poor ignorant girl! Not to
know your own religion! I read in that book there about this marrying
business only the other day. Just hand me that one."

She handed him the "Book of Doctrine and Covenants," from which she had
occasionally taught him the Lord's word as revealed to Joseph Smith. The
revelation on celestial marriage had never been among her selections. He
turned to it now.

"Here, right in the very first of it--" and she heard with a sinking
heart,--"'Therefore prepare thyself to receive and obey the instructions
which I am about to give unto you; for all those who have this law
revealed unto them must obey the same; for behold! I reveal unto you a
new and everlasting covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant then are
ye damned, for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter
into my glory.'

"There now!"

"I never read it," she faltered.

"And don't you know they preach in the tabernacle that anybody who
rejects polygamy will be damned?"

"My father never preached that."

"Well, he knows it--ask him."

It was proving to be a hard day for her.

"Of course," he continued, "a new member coming into the Church might
think at first he could get along without so many wives. He might say,
'Well, now, I'll draw a line in this marrying business. I'll never take
more than two or three wives or maybe four.' He