"But, alas! a still greater trial awaited me! The call for the battalion had left many destitute. They had to live in wagons. But worse than destitution stared us in the face. Sickness came upon us and death invaded our camp. Sickness was so prevalent and deaths so frequent that enough help could not be had to make coffins, and many of the dead were wrapped in their grave-clothes and buried with split logs at the bottom of the grave and brush at the sides, that being all that could be done for them by their mourning friends. Too soon it became my turn to mourn. My father was taken sick, and in eighteen days he died. Just before he left us for his better home he raised himself upon his elbow, and said: 'Man is like the flower or the grass--cut down in an hour! Father, unto thee do I commend my spirit!' This said, he sweetly went to rest with the just, a martyr for the truth; for, like my dear mother, who died in the expulsion from Missouri, he died in the expulsion from Nauvoo. Sad was my heart. I alone of all his children was there to mourn. "It was a sad day at Mount Pisgah, when my father was buried. The poor and needy had lost a friend--the kingdom of God a faithful servant. There upon the hillside was his resting place. The graveyard was so near that I could hear the wolves howling as they visited the spot; those hungry monsters, who fain would have unsepulchred those sacred bones! "Those days of trial and grief were succeeded by my journey to winter quarters, where in due time I arrived, and was welcomed by President Young into his family." CHAPTER XXXV. THE PIONEERS--THE PIONEER COMPANIES THAT FOLLOWED--METHOD OF THE MARCH--MRS. HORNE ON THE PLAINS--THE EMIGRANT'S POST-OFFICE--PENTECOSTS BY THE WAY--DEATH AS THEY JOURNEYED--A FEAST IN THE DESERT--"AUNT LOUISA" AGAIN. Very properly President Young and a chosen cohort of apostles and elders formed the band of pioneers who bore the standard of their people to the Rocky Mountains. On the 7th of April, 1847, that famous company left winter quarters in search of another Zion and gathering place. Three women only went with them. These must be honored with a lasting record. They were Clara Decker, one of the wives of Brigham Young; her mother, and Ellen Sanders, one of the wives of H. C. Kimball. Yet the sisters as a mass were scarcely less the co-pioneers of that apostolic band, for they followed in companies close upon its track. It was with them faith, not sight. They continued their pilgrimage to the West early in June. On the 12th, Captain Jedediah M. Grant's company moved out in the advance. "After we started out from winter quarters," says Sister Eliza Snow, "three or four days were consumed in maneuvering and making a good ready, and then, at an appointed place for rendezvous, a general meeting was held around a liberty-pole erected for the purpose, and an organization effected, similar to that entered into after leaving Nauvoo.