t you placed that
gold in my hand, so I reckon you're all right. You ain't a Mormon, are
you?" he asked abruptly.

Granger, taken aback by the question, smiled slowly and shook his
head.

"Well, then, I'd have you to know," Beorn continued, "that I was
brought up in the Mormon faith. One o' the earliest memories I have is
o' the massacre o' the Latter-Day Saints at Gallatin, when Governor
Boggs issued his order that we should be exterminated an' driven out.
I can still see the soldiery ridin' up an' down, pillagin' our city,
insultin' our womenfolk, an' cuttin' down our men. I can just remember
the misery o' the winter through which we fled, an' the tightness o'
my mother's arms about me as we crossed the Mississippi, goin' into
Illinois for safety. From my earliest childhood my mind has bin made
accustomed to travellin's, an' privations, an' deeds o' blood. That's
the sort o' man I am.

"It was six years after the Gallatin affair, when our city o' Nauvoo
had been founded, that the mob once more rose agin us an' murdered our
prophets, an' placed our lives in danger. Again we fled, crossin' the
Mississippi on the ice, till we gained a breathin' space at Council
Bluffs. A year after that, under Brigham Young, we passed through the
Rockies to the Great Salt Lake an' came to rest. All this persecootion
caused our people to become a hard an' bitter race; but I'd have been
true to 'em if it hadn't bin for my mother, an' the manner o' her
death. How did she die? Don't ask me, for I can't tell you. She was a
Swede, a kind o' white slave, who was kept with several other women by
my father. She went out one day, an' never came back. I believe she'd
got heartsick, an' was plannin' t' escape with a feller o' her own
nationality, a newcomer. Anyhow, when I asked my father about her, he
threatened me into silence. He was a priest o' the order o'
Melchizedek, a powerful man among the prophets. From that hour I hated
Mormonism, an' determined t' escape whenever my chance occurred. It
came sooner 'an I expected.

"The Californian gold-rush had robbed the Saints o' the seaboard to
which they was hopin' to lay claim. They began to get nervous lest the
southern territories, from Salt Lake to the Mexican frontier, might
also be lost to 'em if they didn't do something so they organised the
State of Deseret, an' sent out expeditions to take it up before it
could fall into the Gentiles' hands. My father, I believe, had grown
'fraid o' me