“My mother learnt me to pray, boy,” said Uncle Dave quietly; “she allus said it was the right thing to do, and I’ve proved it. You know a man that lives in these wilds alone as I hev these forty-odd years has to get close to God fer comfort. It’s a good thing, boy, to keep the trail between you and Him clear. I once seen it proved, too, by them pioneers you was speaking of.” Fred was interested. “I met ’em in a peculiar way when they wuz comin’ here,” the old man went on; “they called me God’s good angel, and I guess they wusn’t far from right; but I’d mighty nigh forgot the whole thing till you reminded me of it.” “Tell me about it, Uncle Dave,”--the old man had paused. “Well, it wuz this way, you see; I wuz huntin’ and trappin’ and tradin’ along Green River during the late forties, barterin’ my skins to old Jim Bridger. One day I left my camp and wuz startin’ up the hills to scare up some sage hens fer dinner, when somethin’ said to me, ‘Go up the river.’ That didn’t seem right; I begin to argue with myself that the chickens wouldn’t be up the river that time o’ day, but the notion came again, ‘Go up the river.’ I stopped kind o’ puzzled, then laughin’ to myself fer bein’ so foolish, I started off again up the hills, when the feelin’ came the third time, ‘Go up the river,’ and I turned without any more arguin’ to do what I was told. Yes, what I wuz told, boy; fer if I wuz to live a thousand years I’d never believe any different. I larnt that day, if never before, that God does hear prayers when they’re sent up right. “I hadn’t walked far when I seen somethin’ across the river that looked curious. It wasn’t animals--it was men--men on their knees, ’bout six of them in a circle. I supposed at first they wuz havin’ dinner, but they wa’n’t any signs o’ camp about and they had their hats off; looked like they wuz prayin’, and so they wuz. “Then I looked up the river and jest across from them, ’most ashore on a sand bar, was somethin’ else that looked like a dead man. I hurried up the bank and saw thet it was a dead man--anyway I thought so till I waded out and looked him over. He wa’n’t dead, but he was mighty near drowned. I dragged him to a drier place on the bar and worked to bring him to. Bimeby he got enough life in him to tell me what had happened. “The men on the other bank were shoutin’ to me all the while, but I couldn’t make out what they said, fer the river was roarin’, it bein’ high water. But this man told me that they wuz Mormon Battalion boys tryin’ to ketch up with Brigham Young’s band of pioneers. They had come up too late to get ’em on the far side of the river, and the ferryboat was left on the side I was. So he had tried to swim the stream on a horse, but the horse was drowned, and he had just barely made it across by half swimmin’ and bein’ washed by the current on to the bar where I found him.