While these disclosures of the Smoot investigation were shocking the sentiment of the whole nation, the Prophets carried on the conspiracy of their defense with all the boldness of defiant guilt. In Salt Lake City, the office of the United States Marshal and even the post-office were watched for the arrival of subpoenas from Washington; men were posted in the streets to give the alarm whenever the Marshal should attempt to serve papers; and before he entered the front door of a Mormon's house, the Church sentry had entered by the back door to warn the inmates. If the Federal power had been moving in a foreign land, it could not have been more determinedly opposed by local authority. Notorious polygamists, wanted as witnesses before the Senate committee, made a public flight through Utah, couriered, flanked and rear-guarded by the power of the hierarchy. One of these law-breakers (who, it was known, had been subpoenaed) went from Salt Lake City to take secret employment in one of the Church's sugar factories in Idaho. When he was discovered there and served with the Senate requisition, he gave his word that he would appear at Washington, and then he fled with his new polygamous wife to a polygamous Mormon settlement in Alberta, Canada--a fugitive, honored because he was a fugitive, and officially sustained as a ward of the Church. Apostles John W. Taylor and Mathias F. Cowley left the country, to escape a summons to Washington; and President Smith pleaded that he had no control over their movements, and promised that he would, if possible, bring them back to comply with the Senate subpoenas. He knew, as every Mormon and every well-informed Gentile knew, that the slightest expression of a wish from him would be the word of God to those two men. They would have gloried in going to Washington to show the courage of their fanaticism. They would never have left the country without instructions from their President. But they could not have married plural wives after the manifesto, and solemnized plural marriages for other polygamists, without Smith's knowledge and consent; their testimony would have placed the responsibility for these unlawful practices upon the Prophet; and the penalty would have fallen on the Prophet's Senator.