I had matters in a much better shape on the arrival of the company than I found them. I was careful to listen to all the talk of the Indians, and spent the evening and also the night with the largest collection of them, so that they could not make any general move without my knowledge.
We continued our journey across the fifty-six mile desert to Los Vegas springs. There we met Brothers Ira Hatch and Dudley Leavitt, on their return from a mission to the Mohave Indians.
Those Indians, on the arrival of these brethren among them, took their horses, and then held a council to decide whether they should kill the brethren or not. The chief called a vote of his people, and it was decided that the brethren should die.
A Piute friend who had accompanied the Elders from Las Vegas, began to mourn over their fate, and said to them, "I told you that the Mohaves would kill you if you came here, and now they are going to do it."
Brother Hatch told their Piute friend, who acted as interpreter, to tell the Mohave chief, Chanawanse, to let him pray before he was killed.
The chief consented, and Brother Hatch knelt down among the bloodthirsty savages, and asked the Lord to soften their hearts, that they might not shed their blood. He also said more that was appropriate to the occasion.
The prayer was repeated in measured sentences by the interpreter.
It had the desired effect. The heart of the chief was softened. He took the brethren to his lodge, and put them at the farther end of it, in a secure place. There he guarded them until nearly morning, then told them to go as fast as they could to Las Vegas, eighty miles distant.
They traveled this distance on foot, and with but little food. When I met them they were living on muskeet bread. This is an article of food manufactured from a pod resembling that of a bean, which grows on the muskeet tree. These circumstances were related to me by the Elders when we met.
At Las Vegas I learned that the Indians there expected that the company would have been massacred at the Muddy Creek.