But the Lord would stay them.

How much more wicked and perverse, then, to reject the privilege! When he heard that the new governor, who had been in the snow with Johnston's army all winter, was to enter Salt Lake City and take his office--a Gentile officer to sit on the throne of Brigham--he felt that the Ark of the Covenant had been thrown down.

"Let us not," he implored Brigham in a letter sent him from Echo Canon, "be again dragooned into servile obedience to any one less than the Christ of God!" But Brigham's reply was an order to pass the new governor through Echo Canon.

According to the terms of this order he was escorted through at night, in a manner to convince him that he was passing between the lines of a mighty and far-flung host.

Fires were kindled along the heights and the small force attending him was cunningly distributed and duplicated, a few of its numbers going ahead from time to time, halting the rest of the party and demanding the countersign.
Joel Rae found himself believing that he could now have been a fiercer Lion of the Lord than Brigham was; for he would have fought, while Brigham was stooping to petty strategies--as if God were needing to rely upon deceits.
He was only a little appeased when, on going to Salt Lake City, he learned Brigham's intentions more fully.