Again the mind of Joseph Smith had overmastered Susannah's mind. As Elvira had said, he, lying in a gaol far away, enduring hardship, imminent danger of torturing death, was by his spirit animating this motley crowd, and now at last again his will broke down the barriers of reason that Susannah had raised and fortified even against the love of her child and the long reverence she had yielded to her husband. The true secret of human leadership is, perhaps, known only to the Divine mind, perhaps also to the Satanic. It would certainly seem that the men who chance upon the power and wield it, have often little understanding of the law by which they work, and their critics less.
CHAPTER XV.
The Mississippi was filled with large cakes of floating ice. Another company which had gone out from Far West some weeks before was still encamped on the Missouri banks of the river. Yet other companies from Far West came up before the main body of the Saints with which Susannah had travelled was able to cross. The surrounding woods were cut down to make shanties; the surrounding country was scoured for food. In the intervening weeks, while they lay encamped on the banks, the last enemy to be vanquished in that region, the malarial fever, grappled with the sect and dealt deadly wounds. Illinois, shocked by the cruelty of her sister State, held out kind hands and fed the fugitives to some extent, and when April came, helped them to cross the river.
Elvira had been ill in one of the women's sheds, now shrieking in hot delirium, now shaken with ague as if by a strong beast that worried its prey. When they at last crossed the river to the city of Quincy, Susannah was established with her charge, the one legacy of relationship Halsey had left her, in a meagre home with some of the Saints who already lived there.
Within a few days Susannah went to the tithing office, which had been swiftly established for the relief of the destitute Saints, and asked for paper on which she could write a letter. It was her first chance, since leaving her last asylum, of writing the proposed letter to Ephraim Croom. Elder Darling was officiating. She fancied that he looked at her with rude curiosity.
Until this moment she had presented so sad an exterior, had seemed so indifferent to all the ills of their common lot, that Darling and the other men who had dealings with her had stood not a little in awe. As outward physical details of suffering always appeal more largely to common sympathy than inward grief, the manner of her loss had set a temporary crown upon her head, to which the elders had knelt, refusing to admonish her because she took no part in their public services, or because, except for attention to the sick, she did not give much sign of social comradeship.
Now when she asked for the paper, Darling felt that the ice was beginning to break, and gave what seemed to him genial encouragement.
"First time that you've asked for anything but daily rations, Sister Halsey; glad to see you plucking up heart. The living God giveth us all things richly to enjoy." He repeated the last words in an unctuous drawl while he was looking for the paper, "richly to—enjoy. Well now, I was thinking we had some with a black border on it, but you're more than welcome to such as there is."
The stores indeed were scanty enough; food, cloth, household utensils, a little stationery, a large pile of devotional books, were arranged in meagre order in the shed used as a warehouse. Darling had as yet scarcely respectable clothes to wear, but Susannah was astonished only at the energy that had in a few days collected so much, at the order and patient kindliness which ruled in this poverty-stricken administration. Already those who could work paid into the common store, and those who had lost all had but to state their needs to have them supplied as well as might be.