to a mother of many children. Here would the lambs of the Lord be safe at last from the Gentile wolves—safe for a time at least, until so long as it might take the Lions of the Lord to come to their growth. And that was to be no indefinite period; for had not Brigham just said, with a snap of his great jaws and a cold flash of his blue eyes, “Let us alone ten years here, and we’ll ask no odds of Uncle Sam or the Devil!” 

 There on the summit they knelt to entreat the mercy of God upon the land. The next day, by their leader’s direction, they consecrated the valley to the Lord, and planted six acres of potatoes. 

 

Chapter XI. Another Miracle and a Temptation in the Wilderness

 The floor of the valley was an arid waste, flat and treeless, a far sweep of gray and gold, of sage-brush spangled with sunflowers, patched here and there with glistening beds of salt and soda, or pools of the deadly alkali. Here crawled the lizard and the rattlesnake; and there was no music to the desolation save the petulant chirp of the cricket. At the sides an occasional stream tumbled out of the mountains to be all but drunk away at once by the thirsty sands. Along the banks of these was the only green to be found, sparse fringes of willow and wild rose. On the borders of the valley, where the steeps arose, were little patches of purple and dusty brown, oak-bush, squaw-berry, a few dwarfed cedars, and other scant growths. At long intervals could be found a marsh of wire-grass, or a few acres of withered bunch-grass. But these served only to emphasise the prevailing desert tones. 

 The sun-baked earth was so hard that it broke their ploughs when they tried to turn it. Not until they had spread water upon it from the river they had named Jordan could the ploughs be used. Such was the new Canaan, the land held in reserve by the Lord for His chosen people since the foundations of the world were laid. 

 Dreary though it was, they were elated. Had not a Moses led them out of bondage up into this chamber of the mountains against the day of wrath that was to consume the Gentile world? And would he not smite the rocks for water? Would he not also be a Joshua to sit in judgment and divide to Israel his inheritance? 

 They waited not nor demurred, but fell to work. Within a week they had explored the valley and its cañons, made a road to the timber eight miles away, built a saw-pit, sawed lumber for a skiff, ploughed, planted, and irrigated half a hundred acres of 

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