In relating the incident to the Entablature of Truth subsequently, he said of Joel Rae at the moment he looked up from this letter: "He'll never be whiter when he's dead! I see in a minute that the old man had him on the bark." "You know what's in this, Brother Seth--you know that Brigham wants Prudence ?" Joel Rae had asked, looking up from the letter, upon which both his hands had closed tightly.
"Well, I told you he dropped a word or two, jest by way of keeping off the Princes of Israel down here." "I must go to Salt Lake at once and talk to him." "Take her along; likely he'll marry her right off." "But I can't--I couldn't--Brother Seth, I wish her not to marry him." The Bishop stared blankly at him, his amazement freezing upon his lips, almost, the words he uttered.
"Not--want--her--to marry--Brother Brigham Young, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in all the world!" "I must go up and talk to him at once." "You won't talk him out of it.

Brother Brigham has the habit of prevailing.

Of course, he's closer than Dick's hat-band, but she'll have the best there is until he takes another." "He may listen to reason--" "Reason ?--why, man, what more reason could he want,--with that splendid young critter before him, throwing back her head, and flashing her big, shiny eyes, and lifting her red lips over them little white teeth--reason enough for Brother Brigham--or for other people I could name!" "But he wouldn't be so hard--taking her away from me--" Something in the tones of this appeal seemed to touch even the heart of the Wild Ram of the Mountains, though it told of a suffering he could not understand.
"Brigham is very sot in his ways," he said, after a little, with a curious soft kindness in his voice,--"in fact, a _sotter_ man I never knew!" He drove off, leaving the other staring at the letter now crumpled in his hand.

He also said, in his subsequent narrative to the Entablature of Truth: "You know I've always took Brother Rae for jest a natural born _not_, a shy little cuss that could be whiffed around by anything and everything, but when I drove off he had a plumb ornery fighting look in them deep-set eyes of his, and blame me if I didn't someway feel sorry for him,--he's that warped up, like an old water-soaked sycamore plank that gits laid out in the sun." But this look of belligerence had quickly passed from the face of Joel Rae when the first heat of his resentment had cooled.
After that he merely suffered, torn by his reverence for Brigham, who represented on earth no less a power than the first person of the Trinity, and by the love for this child who held him to a past made beautiful by his love for her mother,--by a thousand youthful dreams and fancies and wayward hopes that he had kept fresh through all the years; torn between Brigham, whose word was as the word of God, and Prudence who was the living flower of her dead mother and all his dead hopes.
Could he persuade Brigham to leave her?
The idea of refusing him, if he should persist, was not seriously to be thought of.

For twenty-five years he, in common with the other Saints, had held Brigham's lightest command to be above all earthly law; to be indeed the revealed will of God.