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The elder went on to point out two bullet holes in a nearby door, which led to several questions from the kids about the circumstances of the assassination. Did Joseph speak any last words? Wasn't there once a bloodstain on the floor? These kids had seen too many action movies, I sensed, but I could not fault them for their curiosity. Like early Christians eager to handle pieces of the Cross, the kids desired a physical connection with this obscure Midwestern passion play, which was not unlike a 19th century Waco. I felt the same curiosity at their age--intrigued by an American faith that served up not only abstract precepts but also the chance to walk in the footsteps of its heroes.
After Smith's death and Young's rise to power, those footsteps led due west. Mormons like to compare themselves to Jews; they too had a strenuous exodus: across the Mississippi, into Iowa, through Nebraska and Wyoming, into Utah. For the past two years, a few hundred hardy souls have been retracing this journey on horseback and on foot. Many of the pilgrims are blood descendants of the pioneers, and although their re-creation of the procession includes a few dozen motorized support vehicles, the trek is not for the tenderfoot.
I joined up with the march in western Wyoming, near the ghost town of Piedmont. The wind blew gales of dust into people's faces. Some children were limping. The sun was high and hot. At the head of the party were scores of clattering wagons; to the rear, a long line of pedestrians pulling handcarts. Between the groups, a solitary woman, dressed in a bonnet and a long print dress, strode briskly along with her eyes on her tennis shoes.
Karen Hill had trudged almost a thousand miles since spring and had a hundred more to go. The wife of the trek's organizer, Brian Hill, Karen converted to Mormonism when she was 25. "Everyone has a different reason to be here," she said. Karen's was to support her husband. "What I didn't expect," she said, "was the exhaustion, physical and emotional. I think it was the same for the first saints." She recalled a song she had written miles back: "There are angels among us, there are angels about... The veil is getting thinner now."
I dropped back a mile and joined the handcart company. Gordon Beharrell, an elderly Englishman, was carrying a fluttering Union Jack in tribute to his 19th century countrymen who had converted to Mormonism by the thousands and walked this route before him. "I intended to re-enact their adventure, but for me this hasn't been a re-enactment. I've experienced real hardship and real pain." Beharrell told an inspiring story then. Before setting out, he was found to have colon cancer and underwent major surgery. Then, as he neared Scott's Bluff, Neb., he fell ill from complications and was hospitalized again. "When I was released, I could barely walk five yards. I had to be loaded on a cart and pulled. Then two elders gave me a healing blessing. The next Wednesday I managed to walk two miles, then six the next day, then 11 the next. Soon I was making 25 miles a day, and I've been going steady ever since. I attribute all this to a certain British grit, but mostly to the power of that blessing."