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[Frontispiece:
  LIFTING OFF HIS BROAD-BRIMMED HAT TO HER IN A GRACIOUS SWEEP]




                          THE
                     LIONS OF THE
                         LORD


                A Tale of the Old West

                 By HARRY LEON WILSON

               Author of "The Spenders"


           Illustrated by ROSE CECIL O'NEILL



                 Published June, 1903




                      TO MY WIFE




FOREWORD


In the days of '49 seven trails led from our Western frontier into the
Wonderland that lay far out under the setting sun and called to the
restless. Each of the seven had been blazed mile by mile through the
mighty romance of an empire's founding. Some of them for long stretches
are now overgrown by the herbage of the plain; some have faded back into
the desert they lined; and more than one has been shod with steel. But
along them all flit and brood the memory-ghosts of old, rich-
days. To the shout of teamster, the yell of savage, the creaking of
tented ox-cart, and the rattle of the swifter mail-coach, there go dim
shapes of those who had thrilled to that call of the West;--strong,
brave men with the far look in their eyes, with those magic rude tools
of the pioneer, the rifle and the axe; women, too, equally heroic, of a
stock, fearless, ready, and staunch, bearing their sons and daughters in
fortitude; raising them to fear God, to love their country,--and to
labour. From the edge of our Republic these valiant ones toiled into the
dump of prairie and mountain to live the raw new days and weld them to
our history; to win fertile acres from the wilderness and charm the
desert to blossoming. And the time of these days and these people, with
their tragedies and their comedies, was a time of epic splendour;--more
vital with the stuff and colour of life, I think, than any since the
stubborn gray earth out there was made to yield its treasure.

Of these seven historic highways the one richest in story is the old
Salt Lake Trail: this because at its western end was woven a romance
within a romance;--a drama of human passions, of love and hate, of high
faith and low, of the beautiful and the ugly, of truth and lies; yet
with certain fine fidelities under it all; a drama so close-knit, so
amazingly true, that one who had lightly designed to make a tale there
was dismayed by fact. So much more thrilling was it than any fiction he
might have imagined, so more than human had been the cunning of the
Master Dramatist, that the little make-believe he was pondering seemed
clumsy and poor, and he turned from it to try to tell what had really
been.

In this story, then, the things that are strangest have most of truth.
The make-believe is hardly more than a cement to join the queerly
wrought stones of fact that were found ready. For, if the writer has now
and again had to divine certain things that did not show,--yet must have
been,--surely these are not less than truth. One of these deductions is
the Lute of the Holy Ghost who came in the end to be the Little Man of
Sorrows: who loved a woman, a child, and his God, but sinned through
pride of soul;--whose life, indeed, was a poem of sin and retribution.
Yet not less true was he than the Lion of the Lord, the Archer of
Paradise, the Wild Ram of the Mountains, or the gaunt, gray woman whom
hurt love had crazed. For even now, as the tale is done, comes a dry
little note in the daily press telling how such a one actually did the
other day a certain brave, great thing it had seemed the imagined one
must be driven to do. Only he and I, perhaps, will be conscious of the
struggle back of that which was printed; but at least we two shall know
that the Little Man of Sorrows is true, even though the cross where he
fled to say his last prayer in the body has long since fallen and its
bars crumbled to desert dust.

Yet there are others still living in a certain valley of the mountains
who will know why the soul-proud youth came to bend under invisible
burdens, and why he feared, as an angel of vengeance, that early cowboy
with the yellow hair, who came singing down from the high divide into
Amalon where a girl was waiting in her dream of a single love; others
who, to this day, will do not more than whisper with averted faces of
the crime that brought a curse upon the land; who still live in terror
of shapes that shuffle furtively behind them, fumbling sometimes at
their shoulders with weak hands, striving ever to come in front and turn
upon them. But these will know only one side of the Little Man of
Sorrows who was first the Lute of the Holy Ghost in the Poet's roster of
titles: since they have lacked his courage to try the great issue with
their God.

New York City, May 1st, 1903.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I.       THE DEAD CITY

II.      THE WILD RAM OF THE MOUNTAINS

III.     THE LUTE OF THE HOLY GHOST BREAKS HIS FAST

IV.      A FAIR APOSTATE

V.       GILES RAE BEAUTIFIES HIS INHERITANCE

VI.      THE LUTE OF THE HOLY GHOST IS FURTHER CHASTENED

VII.     SOME INNER MYSTERIES ARE EXPOUNDED

VIII.    A REVELATION FROM THE LORD AND A TOAST FROM BRIGHAM

IX.      INTO THE WILDERNESS

X.       THE PROMISED LAND

XI.      ANOTHER MIRACLE AND A TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS

XII.     A FIGHT FOR LIFE

XIII.    JOEL RAE IS TREATED FOR PRIDE OF SOUL

XIV.     HOW THE SAINTS WERE BROUGHT TO REPENTANCE

XV.      HOW THE SOULS OF APOSTATES WERE SAVED

XVI.     THE ORDER FROM HEADQUARTERS

XVII.    THE MEADOW SHAMBLES

XVIII.   IN THE DARK OF THE AFTERMATH

XIX.     THE HOST OF ISRAEL GOES FORTH TO BATTLE

XX.      HOW THE LION OF THE LORD ROARED SOFT

XXI.     THE BLOOD ON THE PAGE

XXII.    THE PICTURE IN THE SKY

XXIII.   THE SINNER CHASTENS HIMSELF

XXIV.    THE COMING OF THE WOMAN-CHILD

XXV.     THE ENTABLATURE OF TRUTH MAKES A DISCOVERY AT AMALON

XXVI.    HOW THE RED CAME BACK TO THE BLOOD TO BE A SNARE

XXVII.   A NEW CROSS TAKEN UP AND AN OLD ENEMY FORGIVEN

XXVIII.  JUST BEFORE THE END OF THE WORLD

XXIX.    THE WILD RAM OF THE MOUNTAINS OFFERS TO BECOME A SAVIOUR ON
           MOUNT ZION

XXX.     HOW THE WORLD DID NOT COME TO AN END

XXXI.    THE LION OF THE LORD SENDS AN ORDER

XXXII.   A NEW FACE IN THE DREAM

XXXIII.  THE GENTILE INVASION

XXXIV.   HOW THE AVENGER BUNGLED HIS VENGEANCE

XXXV.    RUEL FOLLETT'S WAY OF BUSINESS

XXXVI.   THE MISSION TO A DESERVING GENTILE

XXXVII.  THE GENTILE ISSUES AN ULTIMATUM

XXXVIII. THE MISSION SERVICE IN BOX CANON IS SUSPENDED

XXXIX.   A REVELATION CONCERNING THE TRUE ORDER OF MARRIAGE

XL.      A PROCESSION, A PURSUIT, AND A CAPTURE

XLI.     THE RISE AND FALL OF A BENT LITTLE PROPHET

XLII.    THE LITTLE BENT MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS

XLIII.   THE GENTILE CARRIES OFF HIS SPOIL




ILLUSTRATIONS


Lifting off his broad-brimmed hat to her in a gracious sweep

"Her goal is Zion, not Babylon, sir--remember _that_!"

"_I'm_ the one will have to be caught"

"But you're not my really papa!"

Full of zest for the measure as any youth

"Oh, Man... how I've longed for that bullet of yours!"




THE LIONS OF THE LORD




CHAPTER I.


_The Dead City_

The city without life lay handsomely along a river in the early sunlight
of a September morning. Death had seemingly not been long upon it, nor
had it made any scar. No breach or rent or disorder or sign of violence
could be seen. The long, shaded streets breathed the still airs of utter
peace and quiet. From the half-circle around which the broad river bent
its moody current, the neat houses, set in cool, green gardens, were
terraced up the high hill, and from the summit of this a stately marble
temple, glittering of newness, towered far above them in placid
benediction.

Mile after mile the streets lay silent, along the river-front, up to the
hilltop, and beyond into the level; no sound nor motion nor sign of life
throughout their length. And when they had run their length, and the
outlying fields were reached, there, too, was the same brooding spell as
the land stretched away in the hush and haze.