Authors: Richard S. Wheeler
Virgin River (14 page)
T
he invalids demolished more potatoes and cabbage than Skye thought was possible. Even Peter Sturgeon, whose consumption had ulcerated his throat, downed all he could. And the Jones brothers were ready for more even after Enoch's stew pot was empty.
he invalids demolished more potatoes and cabbage than Skye thought was possible. Even Peter Sturgeon, whose consumption had ulcerated his throat, downed all he could. And the Jones brothers were ready for more even after Enoch's stew pot was empty.
Skye and Bright had loaded the sacks of grain and potatoes and cabbage into the supply wagon, swiftly calculating that they could go two or three weeks on what had been collected from the farmer. With a little meat, Skye thought, it might suffice for the time being.
They camped that night on a flat beside the Sevier River, where Jawbone, the ponies, and oxen and mules could make short work of the abundant grasses. The place seemed safe enough.
All that day his company was shadowed by the gents who had declined Skye's hospitality. Skye saw something in them that troubled him: bright glares, calculating glances, a certain odd eagerness, things he couldn't quite fathom that were rippling through them just under the surface.
The supper hour passed, the stars tolled their bright songs in the darkness, the Utah wilderness stretched endlessly east and west. Once again they were far from habitation, and this country was as untouched as it was before the Mexicans had worked out the trajectory of the old Spanish Trail.
For a change, the invalids didn't simply crawl into their blankets but sat around Bright's cook fire as embers lifted into the darkness.
“I think it's time to force the issue,” Skye said to Victoria.
She grunted skeptically. He had learned to heed her skepticism and supposed little good would come of it.
He caught Jawbone and saddled him, and rode into the night, working through a moonless black along the river, relying on the horse to pick his way. He could hardly see his own hands but Jawbone had better night vision than he did.
The two shadowers were nearly a mile back, and had built a little fire deep in a gulch where they would not be noticed. Skye heard their horses snort and then nicker when they picked up Jawbone's scent, and wondered whether these two stalkers would arm themselves. He paused, letting the night thicken around him once again. The other horses quieted, but he suspected that if the shadowers bothered to look, they would find those horses staring straight at Skye, their ears cupped forward.
It was easy. These two weren't expecting company. Skye slid his hand over his belaying pin and walked in. He loomed suddenly out of the black, startling them. They leaped up.
“I'm Mister Skye,” he said.
“What right have you to come here?” Square-beard snapped.
The pair of them spread apart, ready to jump Skye.
“I think not,” Skye said, checking their hands for weapons. Behind him Jawbone loomed out of the night.
“It's time for some hospitality. Come join us,” Skye said.
“Never.”
“I think you will.”
“We don't have commerce with Lamanites.”
“I'm unfamiliar with the term. Tell me,” Skye said.
Square-beard nodded faintly toward Owl-beak, and they both rushed Skye. Jawbone snarled, crashed into Owl-beak, and sent him sprawling. Skye's belaying pin snicked out, cracked Square-beard's knee, and then landed just above the man's ear. He tumbled also, howling.
They weren't seriously hurt.
“Let's walk,” Skye said.
“Are you constraining us?”
“An odd word, but yes. Consider yourself constrained.”
“You are violating our persons. We are sovereign persons and if you insult our persons you'll suffer the consequences.”
All this was pouring from Square-beard, who seemed to be the senior one here.
“Well, you've been stalking us for days, and violating our persons,” Skye said. “March.”
“You'll drag me through hell first.”
Jawbone snorted, leaned over Square-beard, and bit him on the shoulder.
“That horse is doomed to hell for violating me,” Square-beard yelled.
“What are your names?”
Both men rose slowly, fearful of Jawbone, who clacked his teeth at them.
“Call me the Messenger of the Prophet,” Square-beard said.
This was all most peculiar. But his two captives offered no further resistance, other than a simmering rage and
watchfulness, and Skye drove them ahead of him through the night, barely seeing the river that was his only compass.
watchfulness, and Skye drove them ahead of him through the night, barely seeing the river that was his only compass.
It took them a while to reach Bright's cook fire, and when Skye and Jawbone drove both men in, they gazed fearfully at the young invalids.
“You do not need to come closer,” Skye said.
He turned to the young people. “These are the men following us. They decline to tell me why. We will tell them exactly who we are, and I will show them the contents of both of our wagons, and introduce them to my family. This man with the combed beard announces himself as the Messenger of the Prophet, and the other gentleman declines to name himself. They both work for the president, or so they say. I presume it is not the president of the United States.”
The pair had subsided into stony silence, and were still looking for a way to make a sudden escape into the cloak of night.
He saw Victoria come as close to the invalids as she dared, and noticed she had her quiver thrown over her back, and bow in hand.
Square-beard exuded rage. The type of rage that radiates heat. The type of rage that teeters on the brink of an abyss. Skye noted it.
“Sterling, please begin. Tell them about your father, yourself, and this wagon company of invalids.”
“I am the last of my family, sirs. We're from Massachusetts. We buried my sister Samantha not long ago, and my younger brother Raphael near Fort Kearney. Consumption killed my mother, my brother and sister, and would have killed my father, Hiram Peacock, but he was killed near Bridgerâ²s Fort by a man named Manville.”
The visitors stiffened.
“It was his dream to bring us to a place of healing,” he continued. “He sought understanding of the thing that was destroying us, and finally came across the work of Ezekiel Throckmorton, who wrote about the effect of climate on our sickness.” He described his fatherâ²s vision, his belief in desert healing, his studies of consumption, his employment of Bright, organizing the company, spending his last cent on it, collecting the sick and desperate, most of them neighbors, and starting west.
One by one the invalids shyly explained who they were.
“I'm Mary Bridge. My sister and I, we ⦠we've just been sick so long. It seemed like a dream, going with Mister Peacock. I believe we'll get well there in the good air. I really do. It is so cruel, stealing breath from me. But ⦠but Eliza ⦠and me ⦔ She couldn't continue.
“Hello, I'm Peter. Peter Sturgeon. I can't get up much, so I'll tell you, this is my last hope. I just want to grow up. If I could get to be eighteen ⦠I would like that.”
Anna Bennett stood up, lovely in the firelight, and walked directly to the two stalkers. “I am one of the sick,” she began. “One of those who are passing through your land. You need not care about me, personally. I will wrestle with my sickness without your help or caring, if you wish. I am simply a stranger, as far as you are concerned, so why care about me? But I care about you. For one thing, I hope that none of you are afflicted, as we are. I think, if we are healed by the desert, you will soon know of it and you'll be able to heal your own. Who am I? I'm a believer in the suffrage of women, taking the part of Susan B. Anthony and my friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I intend, as soon as I am well again, to work for the rights and equality of women everywhere.”
Square-beard's sulphurous gaze fixed upon her longer
than it should have. She sensed it, and stood prouder and taller. Then the moment passed.
than it should have. She sensed it, and stood prouder and taller. Then the moment passed.
“David Jones here. I'm in usable shape. We're helping out, my brother Lloyd and I. We've got the consumption, but it don't seem so fast as the others. So we're teamsters, getting these wagons west. I guess we'll just pass through, and be out of your hair pretty quick.”
Skye watched the men he had coerced to come to this place, and saw not a flicker of warmth, not a hair of sympathy, not a blink of regret. He also had a sense that they knew much of this.
Soon the rest of the invalids had spoken their piece. Eliza, Lloyd, Grant, Ashley. Small hopes, small dreams, desperation, and maybe a miraculous future.
But if it had any impact on these burning-eyed men, Skye didn't see it.
“And Mister Bright?” Skye said.
“Me, I'm no sicker than I ever get. I hired on, mostly because Mister Peacock, he's a hero of mine, and also I saw how I could keep the wagons and equipment up and running, and how I could keep the world running too. A mechanic, that's what I am, and now I'm a mechanic of body and soul too, I imagine. I'll say, sirs, if this company finds healing, the world will follow. You'll see a miracle in the desert.”
Skye took his visitors around to the other cook fire, away from the invalids, where Mary sat quietly on a robe, with their child.
She stared up at them, uneasily, as they approached the wavering fire.
“This is my younger wife, Mary. She's Shoshone, one of Chief Washakie's band. And here is my son, who bears two names. His English name is Dirk, and his Shoshone name is
North Star. You have met my wife Victoria, of the Absarokas, my lifelong companion. I'm a Londoner by birth, and then I led a trapping brigade for the American Fur Company, and was in the robe trade, and now I guide. It's my privilege to take these struggling invalids to a place of hope.”
North Star. You have met my wife Victoria, of the Absarokas, my lifelong companion. I'm a Londoner by birth, and then I led a trapping brigade for the American Fur Company, and was in the robe trade, and now I guide. It's my privilege to take these struggling invalids to a place of hope.”
The visitors stared with expressionless faces, their sharp gazes leaping from the sleeping infant to Mary, then to Victoria, and back to Skye.
Skye showed his visitors the supply wagon, with its food, kitchen supplies, rolls of canvas, implements, and tools.
“There it is. You've seen the entire outfit. You know who we are, what we do, what our intentions are. I'll take you back to your camp now, and if you are peaceable men, men of goodwill, you'll take all this to your president.”
“You have it wrong, Skye,” said the square-bearded one. “I am not a peaceable man. And I have nothing but ill-will in me. You are Lamanites. You insulted my person. Anyone who holds me captive, even for one moment, one second, violates me. You have held me under your powers for an hour, and for that you will be placed on the list, the very top. It is the unforgivable offense, this captivity, for which there is no forgiveness. And for this insult to our persons, sir, I pronounce your fate. The doom of everyone and everything in your company.”
Skye listened closely, not only to words but to the icy, seething soul behind those words, and he knew he had made a grave mistake. And no one could tell him what a Lamanite was.
A
n ill wind brought sharp cold that night, and Skye knew that summer was over and they must hasten. It reminded him that he had no lodge-poles and ought to cut some. That would prove no problem just here, where cottonwoods, willows, and sycamores dotted the Sevier River basin.
n ill wind brought sharp cold that night, and Skye knew that summer was over and they must hasten. It reminded him that he had no lodge-poles and ought to cut some. That would prove no problem just here, where cottonwoods, willows, and sycamores dotted the Sevier River basin.
The next morning he found green saplings that would suffice. They were not as sturdy as the lodgepole pine so loved by Victoria's people, but they would do. These grew arrow straight and amply tall, so he hacked down the nine needed for his family's small lodge. Wordlessly Victoria limbed the poles and dragged them to the travois. They added weight, and Skye hated to do it, but he had Mary and North Star to think about, and cold fall drizzles that could destroy health.
It took very little time to cut the poles. Bright and the invalids watched, at first not grasping what the Skyes were doing.
“Seasons,” Skye said.
“I was thinking we've been slow and need to hasten before we get caught in a storm,” Bright said. “Hiram has a roll
of canvas in that wagon, and we intended to put up temporary canvas houses in the desert until we could build better.”
of canvas in that wagon, and we intended to put up temporary canvas houses in the desert until we could build better.”
“It's a good plan. But it's September, and from now on things could change.”
They started later than usual that morning and continued along the well-worn trail. A horseman passed them by with scarcely a glance, and then another who kept his distance, making a wide loop around Skye's company. Skye couldn't see the man but kept thinking it was the Square-beard, en route to foment trouble ahead. It puzzled him.
Still, the day progressed peacefully, and now the midday temperatures were pleasant rather than hot.
Late that day they reached a considerable village, which lay somnolently beside the river, flanked by peaceful hills on either side. It was the first settlement of any consequence in miles. And even as they approached town, a cluster of armed men blocked the road. Victoria quietly slipped her quiver over her back, and took up her bow, but Skye feared that a fight would be a disaster for them.
The plunging sun turned each of those men into a silhouette, an utterly featureless human male, black against gold and blue. The light blinded Skye, and he tugged his hat lower so the brim gave him relief.
A leader of some sort, his face in deep shadow under the slouch hat pressed low on his head, waved his rifle.
“No farther,” he said so softly that Skye could barely hear him.
“Well, all right, we'll go around town,” Skye replied.
“No, you're going back the way you came.”
“I see. And where would you expect us to go?”
“Away. It matters not where.”
There were ten or twelve men here, all of them with long
guns of some sort. Some were fowling pieces, the others were rifles. The shadow on their faces was so deep they might as well have been masked. They looked determined, and there was no prospect of persuading them to open the road.
guns of some sort. Some were fowling pieces, the others were rifles. The shadow on their faces was so deep they might as well have been masked. They looked determined, and there was no prospect of persuading them to open the road.
Mister Bright hurried forward. “What's the trouble here?” he asked.
“There's no trouble unless you cause some, and then there will be trouble you won't ever remember,” the slouch-hat man said.
“Have you reasons?” Skye asked.
“You've been told, and that's reason enough.”
“Would you really do this to invalids?”
“You are Lamanites. We will defend our land.”
“We're just passing through.”
“How about if we circle well away from town?”
“Men, prepare to do your duty!” the man snapped.
At once, every rifle and fowling piece was lowered and aimed, most of them directly at Skye. He saw the muzzles of half a dozen weapons pointing his way, and found the threat persuasive.
He smiled and lifted his topper. “Very well, we will turn around, and a fine afternoon to you, gents.”
He started to wheel Jawbone, who was trembling with his own wild rage, when he spotted the square-beard standing well back of this skirmish line. Skye nodded, waved his hat, and plunked it down on his graying hair.
It took some doing to turn the wagons, and Skye feared a misstep would unloose a murderous blast. But these resolute men were not hasty, and watched carefully as Bright and the two Jones men gradually wheeled the caravan around. Victoria, seething but showing none of it, Skye thought, turned the travois ponies, and eventually they were all headed north.
Skye's back itched. Now they were at the back of the wagon train, and Bright was ahead, and Square-beard was back there, watching every step.
Skye's back itched. Now they were at the back of the wagon train, and Bright was ahead, and Square-beard was back there, watching every step.
After a mile or so Skye ventured up a knoll and found the town's sentries still there, gathered on a hilltop where they could mark the progress of Skye's company. Skye studied the rambling Sevier River, and thought he saw twin tracks ford it. It was growing dark by the time they turned a bend and left the sentries behind.
“We'll head for the river,” Skye told Bright. “I thought I saw a ford back a bit.”
“Ford?”
“If we camp on the road, we'll probably have visitors. Let's use the dark to good advantage. I'm going to explore a little.”
Skye rode through twilight, uncertain whether anyone was watching but willing to take the risk. This was a cloudless evening, and stars were piercing through the dusk, one by one. He reached the river, scaring up a large animal he knew was a mule deer, and walked southward along its flats, looking for the faint two-rut mark upon the earth.
He missed it the first time, but something bade him stop and go back, and then he did find the faint mark of wagons descending to the river, and the same marks barely visible on its far bank. The trouble was, this country was so anonymous that if he fetched the company here, he would miss this place in the thickening dark. So he slipped Jawbone toward the bank, which was a gravelly flat. Jawbone hated crossings, and shivered, but Skye urged him into the shallow river, and found good hard gravel underfoot. Jawbone didn't even get wet above the hocks. It was a fine ford. Skye took Jawbone up the far bank, which was another reach of gravel, and rode a
little into the unremarkable hills there as night settled. There was plenty of firewood and deep cover on that far shore, and the place was as safe as anyâif he could find the ford again. He worked back in the twilight, found the ford, crossed the river, and then dug his red bandanna out of his britches pocket. He found a stake, drove it into soft earth a few yards from the ford, and tied his bandanna to it. Then he headed back to the camp, where the invalids were washing themselves and stretching.
little into the unremarkable hills there as night settled. There was plenty of firewood and deep cover on that far shore, and the place was as safe as anyâif he could find the ford again. He worked back in the twilight, found the ford, crossed the river, and then dug his red bandanna out of his britches pocket. He found a stake, drove it into soft earth a few yards from the ford, and tied his bandanna to it. Then he headed back to the camp, where the invalids were washing themselves and stretching.
“It's good,” he said to Victoria. “We'll cross the river. I put my scarf on a stick.”
She nodded, and began preparing to travel once again. The night was cold, but lit by a lingering twilight in the west, and Skye managed to find the ford again, recover his bandanna, and await the creaking wagons. Victoria splashed the travois ponies across, finding easy passage, and Mary and North Star followed, with Bright's ox-drawn supply wagon first.
“Solid, shallow, and an easy grade on both sides,” Skye said.
Bright removed his boots and then took his oxen into the river, crossing without trouble. The Jones brothers splashed the mules and their wagon across easily. Somehow or other they had made it, and gathered on the far side of the river. Skye rode ahead in a pleasant, if chill, night, found a grove of trees well hidden from Redmond by a ridge, and thought it would be as good a place as any.
“What are we going to do, Mister Skye?” asked Lloyd Jones.
“I don't know. I wish I did know. I don't know how bloody mad these bloody damned people are. I don't know what they think. I'm hoping to work around this town. I don't want any trouble.”
He was seething. All he wanted to do was get sick people to safety, and he'd gotten caught in a war. He felt like attaching a white flag on a pole and walking straight through. Let them violate a white flag if they would. And yet ⦠it had come to that. They would.
They slept undisturbed. The young people looked distraught. Not even potatoes and cabbages solaced them this time. Would they wander the desert hills until they all died? This time it was Eliza whose tears flowed down her shadowed face in the flickering firelight.
At first light Skye looked around carefully. It was always the most dangerous moment in wilderness. And yet it was hard to imagine these sturdy, hardworking Saint settlers who wanted only to be left alone descending on them. But then he remembered Square-beard, another sort of Saint altogether, with something smoldering in his eyes.
So he slipped out of his robes in the half-light, studied the hills, and paused. There, on a ridge to the south, was someone standing in plain sight. The person didn't seem to notice Skye's camp because it lay in deep shadow. But that someone was hunting, and Skye knew his company was the prey.
He nudged Victoria. She nodded, slipped out of her robes, pulled her quiver over her shoulder, strung her bow, and vanished into the woods. A brushy gulch would take her to the very foot of the ridge where someone was watching and maybe a hundred more were armed and readied just over its brow. Skye quietly awakened the rest, told them to find cover in the thick brush away from camp. Who could know what sunrise would bring?
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