F
ort Bridger occupied a verdant valley watered by Blackâ²s Fork of the Green River. It was a bonanza for whoever operated it; the only outfitting and supply post west of Fort Laramie, heavily patronized by overland travelers.
Skye eyed it sourly from a distance, noting that the Saints had not improved it. It slouched somnolently in the August sunlight, without the slightest sign of life. It was a ramshackle quadrangle of utility buildings, and if it had once been fortified, the defenses had long since fallen away. But the flat before it showed signs of heavy use. Its naked clay was littered with debris, dung, and the remains of hundreds of cook fires.
Skye halted Jawbone and studied the post, finding nothing to alarm him. He motioned to Peacock, and the New Bedford Company made its slow way down a long slope to the rippling river, and followed a worn trail on its bank to the post. This was a good place, generous and comfortable, watered by snowmelt from the mountains. It sat strategically on the junction of several great trails west, to Oregon or California via the
Hastings Cutoff, or to southern California via the old Spanish Trail.
A few years earlier the Mormons had driven old Gabe Bridger out, with warrants for his arrest for supposedly selling powder and lead to the Indians. And soon after, they bought out his partner, Vasquez, and took over. The whole Mormon rationale was a little too convenient for Skye's tastes. Whatever actually happened, the Saints held the post now, and did a lucrative business there, outfitting the endless procession of wagon companies heading west each summer.
“Looks all right. Let's go on in,” Skye said.
“I'm weary of trouble,” Peacock replied. “But I see no warnings here. Nothing but a long flat.”
They proceeded along the crystalline river, admiring the glowing valley, and eventually drew up before the silent fort. But now the quiet was broken by the clanging of a hammer on steel. Enoch Bright halted the hospital wagon, and the Jones brothers pulled up the supply wagon, and the young people began to tumble down to the clay and stretch in the sweet sunlight.
“I imagine you and I ought to go in ahead of the others,” Skye said to Peacock.
“That is wise.”
Skye slid off Jawbone and turned him loose. The ugly roan yawned, stretched, clacked his teeth, and eyed the world suspiciously. Skye and Peacock hiked through the silence, entering the post through a gap between log and adobe buildings, and found themselves in a large yard, naked of even one blade of grass.
But in the center was a forge, with bellows, and at the forge was a burly smith, hammering a red-hot shoe over an anvil.
The man was as powerful as any Skye had ever seen, his broad chest and shoulders ox-strong. A mop of black hair topped him, and a close-cropped jet beard largely hid his face. Obsidian eyes added to the man's darkness.
If he noticed Skye and Peacock's approach, he did not let on to it, but continued to hammer at the horseshoe. Skye saw at once that the smith was widening the heels of the shoe, and expertly employing the various surfaces of the anvil to achieve his goal. The bony spotted horse whose hoof was being fitted, tied to a post, yawned.
Not until the smith was satisfied with his task did he acknowledge the visitors. He lifted the hot shoe with tongs, plunged it into a water bucket, causing spitting and steam, and then laid the shoe on the brick forge.
“I suppose you're the plague party they've been telling me about,” he said.
The voice seemed to rise out of the man's belly.
“Yes, sir,” Peacock said. “New Bedford, Massachusetts.”
“Well, you aren't Saints,” the man said.
“No, we're heading for the desert, where my patients hope to be healed by the climate.”
The smith nodded, dipped his hands into the water bucket, and shook them off. “You don't look sick,” he said.
“The sick are in our wagons, or near them. We keep them apart,” Peacock said.
The smith studied Skye. “I've heard of you,” he said.
“I'm Barnaby Skye, sir. And you?”
“Morton Rockwell.”
They did not shake hands. Skye thought the man's hands could crush every bone in his own, and was grateful.
“I run the post,” Rockwell added.
“We're interested in some trading.”
Rockwell smiled for the first time, revealing great gaps in his incisors. “Fat chance,” he said.
“Because we're a party of the sick?”
“No, because you're the last of the litter. No one heading for Oregon or California's going to get close to there, this late. There's not a thing on my shelves. Go wake up the clerk. Heber Smoot. He's napping on the counter.”
“Not a thing? No food?”
Rockwell shrugged. “I've been bought out. We've had four hundred, five hundred wagons this year.”
“We have great need, sir,” Peacock said.
“So do they all. So do we.”
“We?”
“The Latter-Day Saints. We arrived here with nothing. We still have nothing. Let those who starved us eat stone.”
Peacock swallowed a response.
The smith gingerly lifted the cool horseshoe and set it down quickly. It was still too hot to touch. “The company ahead of you warned me about you. They said you spread sickness. Plague. People die at every campsite. You would bring a plague down on the Saints.”
Some sort of furnace heat radiated from the smith's face, as if he were working himself into a temper.
“Trail talk,” Skye said.
The smith smiled suddenly. “I thought so. They were Pukes. Big company of Pukes.”
“You'll need to educate me about that word, sir,” Peacock said.
“Pukes. Missouri scum, Illinois scum, thugs who killed our prophet Joseph Smith, killed the Saints, mothers and daughters, sons and fathers, and drove us away with only the clothes on our backs. Pukes. They hung around here outfitting,
and then they left. I charged them double. Haven't seen another company since, until you. They talked about you.”
“Trail talk,” said Skye.
“Disease. The Pale Horse of the Apocalypse. Made it sound like you're the ones who'll destroy the Saints. Well?”
“We're passing through, sir,” Peacock said.
The smith stared out at the two wagons sagging outside the post, at the sick young people sitting on the clay, waiting for word. “What is it you need?” he asked.
“Food and fresh stock,” Skye said.
The smith smiled darkly. “Right off the shelves.”
“We're slowed down. Someone shot my prized Morgan horse. We need a yoke of fresh oxen,” Peacock said.
“I have none. I'm cleaned out of every spare animal. I've nary a nag nor a mule nor an ox.”
“I have something valuable to trade, sir,” Skye said. “A new Sharps rifle.”
“A Sharps? Did you say a Sharps?”
“I did. It was used by someone to shoot Mister Peacock's Morgan horse.”
The smith smiled. “The Pukes told me to confiscate any Sharps that was offered to me. Someone stole it from them.”
Skye drew the weapon from Jawbone's saddle sheath. “This?” he said.
“That.”
“Who told you that?”
“Their guide. Manville. He's taking them to the coast.”
Peacock snorted.
“Did this Manville have anything wrong with his shoulder?” Skye asked.
“No, but the other one, Trimble, had his arm in a sling. It was Trimble's Sharps, I think.”
“That explains a lot, Mister Rockwell.”
“What's it explain?”
“Who shot the Morgan horse. I nearly knocked the man out of the saddle. Hit him in the shoulder. It was dark. I picked up the Sharps after he fled.”
“Pukes,” said Rockwell. “Big bunch of Pukes. Two days ahead of you. Their captain is a Puke named Fancher.”
The smith lifted the horseshoe and held on to it now, turning it in his big scarred hands. He lifted a hind foot of the tied-up horse, and pressed the shoe to the hoof. It looked good. Then he straightened.
“I don't have any animal I can trade. I had a few we picked up and rested, but they went fast. But maybe I can do something for you. I got a few bags of oats. You want to buy some oats? Keep your stock going with some oats?”
“I would,” Peacock said at once.
“Five dollars a bag.”
Peacock paled. “Five, you say?”
“Five.”
“But I have to buy food for the sick when we get to Great Salt Lake. I only have fifteen dollars.”
“Five.”
“Buy three bags, Mister Peacock,” Skye said. “We'll make do.”
Peacock stared sharply at Skye, pulled the bank notes out of his purse, and handed them to the smith.
Rockwell steered them toward a warehouse door, opened it, and pointed toward stacked burlap bags of grain.
“Take four,” he said. “Three for your oxen and horses, and one for the sick.”
H
iram Peacock thought of himself as a shepherd. He was herding a flock to better pasture. Now the trail to Great Salt Lake took his little company through verdant meadowland, but ahead was the formidable range of mountains that guarded the Saints' capital from the rest of the country. Soon the weary oxen would be dragging the two wagons up steep grades. At least there would be ample grass and water, and a few oats to fuel them.
Sometimes Peacock rode the Morgan horse now that it was no longer harnessed. He had walked clear from Independence, blistering his feet, and nearly ruining them. But he had ignored the cruel pain, and eventually his bloodied and pulpy feet had healed after a fashion, but he still walked on aching feet, and sometimes in blood. Mere pain would not stay him from his appointed task, which was to shepherd his ill congregation to a place of healing.
The company had fallen into a pattern. Skye and his women and travois ponies led, and at a safe distance, the
wagons followed. Peacock chose to walk this morning, at least until his feet howled at him. So he fell in beside the Jones brothers, teamstering the oxen, one on either side. David and Lloyd were the least afflicted of his consumptives and were a godsend because they helped make camp, yoke and unyoke the oxen, and care for the desperate. Still, Lloyd in particular was subject to convulsive coughing, and he stained an old rag pink with pieces of his lungs.
“How are the oxen, Lloyd?” Peacock asked.
“The off ox in the middle yoke's in trouble, sir.”
And so it was. It was doing little actual work and laboring heavily slightly behind its mate, slowing the team. Bad news. They could not afford to lose another draft animal.
“What do you think, Lloyd?”
“It's done for.”
All they could do would be to cut it loose and let the remaining five oxen drag the two wagonsâuntil they all dropped. They were on level valley ground, but before the day was out they would begin the ascent. The proper course would be to cut the worn ox loose, abandon the second wagon, and try to make it to Great Salt Lake with two yokes plus one reserve ox tied behind.
“I would like to try something, sir. Put the worn yoke in the lead. This ox perks up with he's out front. It's his nature. He doesn't like eating dust.”
Peacock knew plenty of men just like that.
“We'll stop here. We'll do it.”
Peacock strode ahead to catch up with Skye and tell him what was afoot. This was a good place to halt, with grass and water.
“Jawbone's like that too,” Skye replied.
So the struggling company stopped, and the Jones brothers
watered and briefly grazed the stock, fed the lagging ox a charge of oats, and then made that yoke the leaders. The sick young people wandered to the river, soaked up sun, and clambered into the light wagon or settled on their tailgates.
The result of Lloyd Jones's scheme was astonishing. The lagging ox turned himself into the king of the world and bulled forward as if he owned the trail and never slowed for the next hours.
“Lloyd, you've worked a miracle,” Peacock said.
“He's still bad worn,” Jones said.
“There are people who'd wear themselves to the nub for something they want badly,” Peacock said. “That ox wanted to lead. You want to get well more than anything else on earth, and so you're walking across a continent.”
Bright joined them. “That ox has steam in the boiler,” he said. “There's food fuel, and there's spirit fuel. He's running on spirit fuel.”
“How's the hospital wagon, Enoch?”
“It is self-propelled, Captain.”
Peacock laughed.
Bright peered earnestly at his employer. “I swear, sir, the desire of those within it is so large that it propels the wagon. Each young person has only one dream, to reach the place where their lungs might heal. I swear, you could unhitch that wagon and it would slowly roll west, propelled by a force beyond reckoning.”
Peacock almost believed him. For a mechanic who loved pulleys and cogwheels, Bright had an oddly adventuresome mind.
Mary Bridge slipped off a tailgate and joined them. She was one of the luckier ones because her consumption came and went, sometimes leaving her feverish, but just as often it
seemed to vanish. Just now she was doing well, and her square face didn't seem flushed with fever, the way it sometimes did.
She smiled at Lloyd. “I hear you breathed life into a dead ox,” she said.
“He's still pretty far gone,” he replied. “But he likes to have all the rest behind him.”
“I'm going to walk a little,” she said. “You mind?”
“We'll walk to the desert,” he replied. “You and I.”
Peacock was relieved that all of his company got along with one another. United, they could work miracles. Young Jones had taken a shine to Mary, that was plain.
But as swiftly as she had vacated a seat on the tailgate, David Jones had commandeered it. There was never enough room. It had been worse at first, when there were twelve young people struggling to breathe. But now three were gone â¦
Peacock brushed aside thought of Samantha, lying so still on a scaffold in a cottonwood tree.
This was good country, somewhat arid because the great chain of the Uinta Mountains to the west wrung rain from the heavens. Nothing but ruts told travelers where to go. But those fateful ruts led straight to the next oasis, Great Salt Lake, and they passed through some of the handsomest mountain country in the great West. Ahead rose cobalt mountains, and over them hung puffballs in an azure sky. It was good to be alive at that very moment.
Peacock hastened forward a little to study that amazing gray ox, which had transformed itself into a new animal. It was gaunt. Its haunches were hollowed. Its ribs showed. Its muscles rippled directly under taut flesh. It set the pace, a nose or two ahead of its yoke-mate, proud to be leading the procession.
“I suppose I should call you Christopher Carson Ox,” he said. “Out in front, are you? What did it? Was it nutrition? No, not a few oats. Medicine? We haven't doctored you. Yet it was something, something in your ox head that transformed you. I wish I knew what it was. If I knew, I would know the secret of life,” he said.
This was becoming a spiritual odyssey, though he couldn't quite say how or why. He had seen the trip purely in practical terms. How did one get a dozen sick and fevered consumptives safely and easily to the desert, and build them a sanctuary there where the soft air would heal them? So he had dealt with it in such a fashion. Get just the right wagons. Just the right livestock. Just the right equipment. Just the right guide. It had been all logistics and calculation, and now this proud gray ox, worn down to muscle and bone, was telling him there was more to life than logic.
He felt almost liberated, as if he were freeing himself from every habit of thought that had imprisoned him for all his years as a coal and oil merchant. Now, suddenly, he was in a world of will and spirit and liberty.
Ahead, Skye's women stopped at a creekside meadow for the nooning and a rest, while Skye pushed ahead to see what lay there, as Skye usually did. The guide took a hard look at every place they stopped, wanting no surprises. This was a benign country and a benign day, and yet Skye never lowered his guard. Peacock wondered whether Skye was overdoing it a little. What harm could befall them? They had scarcely seen a living person since leaving Bridgerâ²s Fort, and had seen no Indians at all.
He watched Mary Bridge help the youngest and sickest of the group down to the creek bank where they could sip cool water, wash their faces, refresh themselves. She had been a
godsend, a young women brimming with maternal love for those even less fortunate. It was Mary who helped the stumbling, coughing Peter Sturgeon through his daily ordeal; Mary who looked after the Tucker twins, and helped bathe Ashley when she was too weak. But it was also Mary who heartened the youngsters, told them that they soon would be healing, reminded them that they had conquered another day of travel.
His own son, Sterling, was the paternal one among these desperate youngsters. Now Sterling was helping Grant Tucker refresh himself. Grant Tucker had coughed himself down to a skeleton and was too weak to walk, so Sterling had looked after the boy.
They were all living on willpower, all wrestling with the cough, the fevers, the unending pain, the bouts of despair that made them want to curl up and die. It was only hope that kept them going. Somewhere at rainbow's end would be a magical place where they could breathe again, and clamber out of their beds without gasping for air, and enjoy a meal, and walk without agony, and maybe believe there would be a tomorrow.
Anna Bennett was the different one. From the start, she had insisted on caring for herself, letting no one do a thing for her. It was as if her pride was affronted by the disease that sapped her, and she would not surrender to it. Anna stayed much the cleanest, laundered her clothing, washed her hair, combed her dark locks fiercely, and found pride in her ability to fight back. She wasn't a loner, and remained perfectly companionable, and yet there was something that set her apart, something that rejected the communal. During the meals, she often ate by herself, and then fiercely scrubbed her tin mess ware, as if to announce that she would never be a liability or burden to anyone.
Peacock watched her now as she shook out her blankets, scrubbed a spare bonnet, and cleaned her battered shoes.
Then, all too soon, the nooning was over, and Skye's women were collecting the ponies. With luck, they would reach the foothills of the Uinta Mountains by evening. There was something about this day, and their good progress, and the competence of their guide, Skye, that filled Hiram Peacock with optimism. Soon they would settle on the Virgin River, and begin the great healing.