As the wagon rolled west across the prarire, The passenger in black turned to his companion. "Are you sure this is going to work?"
"No," said the man in the European suit, "But I'm sure it might. Have you come up with a better idea yet?"
"No. That's why I'm here, riding through a war zone in a wagon. So how are we supposed to find them."
"From what everybody told us, finding them won't be the problem."
He was correct. The Ghost Dance Confederacy now controlled much of the great plains. There were constant minor incursions and everybody figured that a massive military invasion was coming. The liberated area was continually patrolled by squads of ten warriors, each maintaining contact with the coordinator of ten of those teams, Communicating by mirrors, semiphore, or when weather limited visibility, by fast riders, information followed the decimal heirarchy all the way to Wovoka and his war council or to Salt lake City.
The wagon was following a shallow valley when ten riders appeared above. Most of them were indians, but a couple were white and one of them looked Chinese. They were heavily armed, besides rifles, shotguns and pistols, they also carried things the travelers didn't recognize. They each had several round objects the size of oranges hanging from their belts and some of them had three foot long tubes the thickness of a man's arm on slung across their backs.
The man in the European suit gently pulled back on the reins and brought the wagon to a halt and they waited as the armed men conferred, closely watching them.
"Is this a gang of outlaws or are these the people who are supposed to be our allies? I can't tell." said the man wearing black.
Having apparently reached some kind of agreenment, one of the white men wearing the worn remnants of some kind of uniform handed his rifle to the indian beside him, who handed him his shotgun. Holding the shotgun casually but ready for immediate use, the white man rode down toward the wagon.
1He stopped a dozen yards away. "Who saw the finger of God?" he demanded.
The man in the European suit looked at the man in black, who shrugged and said, "God has a finger? That's news to me."
The man in the suit looked back to the armed man on horseback. "God doesn't have a finger." he said.
The white man on horseback lowered the shotgun a little more in their direction. "This land is controlled by the Ghost Dance Confederacy. Turn around and go back the way you came."
"We have business in Salt Lake City."
"Business in Salt Lake City." repeated the man skeptically, "What sort of business?"
The man in the suit hesitated and looked to his companion, who said to the rider, "We're friends of Orson Hyde."
The white man pulled out a pad and pencil, "Names?" he asked. They told him. "Wait here." he told them and he rode up the slope to join his companions. He handed the sheet of paper off to the Chinese, who rode away out of sight of the wagon. After a few minutes the Chinese reappeared and rode down to the wagon, leaving his rifle slung over his shoulder. He pointed west. "You'll find an overnight camp set up for you five miles up the trail," he said. He turned and rode off to join the others and they all turned and rode away.
2Sometime later in Salt Lake City, Joseph Smith was walking past a half open door and he heard Brigham Young yelling. "God Damn it, Orson, We're fighting for our lives here. We can't get all broken hearted every time we hear a sad story."
Orson Hyde calmly said, "Their people are being murdered, massacred. We can probably help them."
"It's their own fault. They killed the savior. Everybody knows they're a wicked and stubborn people. That's why God sent Jesus to be born among the Jews, because no other people would be wicked enough to kill the savior.
"Well," he went on, sounding disgusted, "Almost everybody knows that. I know... Joseph has another one of his goofy ideas about how the Jews that are around now are the same as the ancient Hebrews and they're still tied up with the prophecies in the Bible, now those ancient guys kicked ass, but they're not like the Jews are today. That's why God made the Latter Day Saints the Children of Israel. The Jews weren't worthy anymore."
"So Joseph sent you all over Europe, the Ottoman Empire and Palestine, to talk to all the Jews you could find. Not to try to get them to repent and be baptized and pay tithing, like how we talk to everybody else." Brigham Young laughed. "He sent you to tell the Jews that the time had come for them to return to the land of their ancestors. Sounds like a great idea to me. I wish all the Jews would leave and go somewhere else. But I just run Deseret. I don't run Egypt or the Ottoman empire or the Arabs who are living there, so there's nothing I can do."
Joseph Smith had heard enough. The idea was exciting, rescuing the world's Jews to restore the Biblical Kingdom of Israel in it's rightful place among the nations of the earth. He was planning to restore the Nation of Israel anyway, but he hadn't fully considered the immediate danger to the survival of the Jews. They would have to figure something out. This would be interesting.
He walked quietly down the hall and sat in a chair and opened the Bible he always carried. He began to read in Hebrew the story of Esther, how she saved all the Jews in an entire nation. His mind considered. This would require something much larger, all the endangered Jews in the world.
The door to Brigham Young's office opened and Joseph saw Orson Hyde emerge with two men he hadn't seen before, all three of them looking deeply discouraged. One looked like a regular European, the other had a long beard with steaks of grey and was dressed in black clothes that Joseph immediately recognized as Orthodox Jew. None of them spoke.
3Joseph stood as they approached. They recognized him from the pictures they had both seen. When the two strangers stopped in front of him Joseph put out his hands and held each of the visitors by a shoulder. "We'll work out a way to help your people," he said.
Smiling, he shook hands with Orson Hyde.