Joseph was quiet for a moment. “It’s not just Sister Marsh. Thomas was furious. As you know, Brother Benjamin, from meetings you’ve sat in, he already thinks that I do not pay sufficient attention to his counsel or treat him with the respect his office deserves.”
“Is it true that they appealed the case to Bishop Partridge?” Benjamin asked.
“Yes. Like his wife, Thomas said the teachers quorum had no right to sit in judgment on an Apostle. So the bishopric heard the case. A regular Church trial was held. After listening to both sides, the bishopric upheld the decision of the quorum leaders. Thomas did not consider that the bishop had done him and his lady justice. He immediately appealed to the high council. ‘Surely they would side with an Apostle,’ he said.” There was a faint irony in Joseph’s voice now. “Especially with the senior Apostle! He made a desperate defense of his wife and her character, but the high council finally confirmed the bishop’s decision. Sister Marsh was in the wrong.”
Benjamin was staring at Joseph in disbelief. “And he won’t accept that counsel?”
“No.” For a long moment Joseph looked out across the prairie, which was dry and bleak now that the cold weather had come. “Brother Marsh said he had been betrayed. He demanded that the case be brought before the First Presidency.”
“No!” Mary Ann said, deeply shocked now.
“Yes. That does seem a little ironic, doesn’t it? Here we are in the midst of a war. The last word we got from DeWitt is that the Saints are being increasingly threatened. Closer to home, men are being taken out and whipped. Women are driven from their homes in the middle of the night. Haystacks are burned. Cattle stolen or shot. The whole of Missouri is howling for our blood.” There was a soft laugh of derision. “And with all that, the First Presidency has to stop and sit in judgment over a pint of milk strippings.”
“And how did you rule?” Benjamin asked after the silence had stretched on for a time.
Joseph looked up. “Oh, there was no question. Sister Marsh was in the wrong. Sister Harris had to be made right.” He looked at Benjamin, his eyes filled with a great sadness. “What would common sense dictate in such a case? Does one who is called as an Apostle—a supposed model of spiritual justice and commitment to gospel principles—stand by his wife, or does he accept the correction and counsel of the First Presidency?”
“What will he do?” Mary Ann asked, almost whispering.
Joseph turned to her. “I don’t know. It is a hard choice for a proud man. But I fear that it will prove to have lasting and terrible consequences for him.” He looked away. “And for the rest of us.”
* * *
On the fifth of October, Joseph Smith and some of the other brethren rode to the southern part of Caldwell County to look for a site for a new settlement. To their surprise they were met by a rider from DeWitt on his way to Far West to summon help. The report was not good. The Saints in DeWitt were under siege. They were greatly outnumbered. Provisions were low, and any incoming or outgoing was prohibited by the mob. Movement of anyone inside the barricades was drawing fire. One of the attacking groups had sent to Jackson County for a small cannon and powder and shot. Petitions had been sent to the governor, but there had been no answer.
Joseph immediately changed his plans and accompanied the harried messenger back to DeWitt. It was not an easy task. It took them the rest of that day and most of the night to slip inside the city. The main roads were heavily guarded, and only by traveling the least-frequented paths and forging through wooded areas did they make it through the siege lines. They arrived early the next morning.
The reports had not been exaggerated. The Saints were desperate. They had few arms. Food supplies were critically low. Small children were on the verge of collapse. Men and women walked around in a stupor, faint from hunger. The weather was turning colder now, and many of the Saints were emigrants who had stopped in DeWitt, contrary to Joseph’s counsel, and made temporary camp. They were living out of wagons or tents or nothing at all.
Joseph immediately called on some of DeWitt’s more respectable citizens and asked for their help. None were Latter-day Saints, but being honorable men, they deplored the actions of the mobs and agreed to write affidavits attesting to the perilous situation and the mistreatment that the Saints were receiving. A Mr. Caldwell volunteered to take the documents to Jefferson City and present them to Governor Boggs. Joseph and the Saints hunkered down to wait for relief.
Three days later, Caldwell returned. The governor’s answer was short, blunt, and unmistakably final. “The quarrel is between the Mormons and the mob,” he said. “Let them fight it out.”
Joseph was not willing to do that. On October eleventh, the Mormons gathered up about seventy wagons, loaded them with what little goods had not been consumed in the siege or looted by the mobs, and moved out. Though the Missourians had promised to let them go in peace, as the wagon train moved slowly northwestward, the Mormons were continually harassed and occasionally fired upon.
That night, camped in a grove of trees a short distance off the road, the Saints huddled together for protection and against the cold. The sisters hovered around a woman who had given birth to a baby earlier in the day. Their ministerings were not sufficient. The next morning, she was buried in the soft dirt beneath the trees—there was no lumber for a coffin—and the company moved out again. Weakened by starvation, exposure to cold, and a week of relentless terror, several more brethren died that day and were buried along the wayside.
On the afternoon of October twelfth, the ragged, tragic company from DeWitt came slowly into Far West.
Chapter Notes
The details concerning DeWitt and the deteriorating situation in Far West are taken from Joseph’s record and other contemporary sources (see HC 3:77–86, 149–60; Persecutions, pp. 202–12; and CHFT, pp. 195–97).
The story of the Kirtland Camp is filled with many accounts of faith and sacrifice and dedication, but a full treatment of it was not within the scope of this novel. For those wishing to read the full account, Joseph Smith’s history includes the daily journal of the company’s travels (see HC 3:87–148).
The story of the problem between Sister Harris and the wife of Thomas B. Marsh, including the response to the rulings of the various Church courts, is told by Joseph in the novel. But the details, and much of the exact wording, are taken from the account given by George A. Smith in general conference after the Saints arrived in Utah (see JD 3:283–84).
Chapter 12
Joshua reined in and stood up in the stirrups, staring at the silent barricades and the ragged buildings behind them that marked the outskirts of DeWitt. His hand rested on the butt of his pistol as his eyes darted here and there, searching for trouble. But there was no one hiding behind the wall and no one out in front preparing to assault it.
Which was probably just as well, he thought. The wall was obviously hastily built. Boxes and crates were the mainstay, buttressed with nothing more substantial than a plank here, a broken chair there. It wouldn’t have taken much to breach it.
His eyes dropped. The grass was heavily trampled, and the dirt of the road was a mass of hoof and boot prints where man and animal had crossed and crisscrossed a hundred times. He lifted his head a little, letting his gaze take in a wider arc. Even without the barricades, it was obvious that an army had camped here. And not a very tidy one. Charred scars in the prairie sod marked the sites of now cold campfires. The place was littered with trash. Pieces of paper, empty boxes, wet and chewed cigar butts, scraps of food, stripped chicken bones, piles of horse droppings thick with buzzing flies—it was as though a glacier had swept through the garbage dump of a large town, then left its detritus here when it finally melted.
So the siege was over. The Mormons were gone. Joshua felt a tremendous sense of relief. As he nudged his horse forward and passed around the barricades, he kept scanning the ground for any signs of blood. He saw none, and felt the relief even more keenly than before. He kicked his horse into a t
rot and entered the main street of DeWitt.
* * *
“I’m Captain Joshua Steed, adjutant to General David Atchison of the Missouri militia in Richmond, Ray County. We heard there was trouble here. The general asked that I come and survey the situation.”
The look on the face of the woman behind the counter went from suspicious to respectful in one flicker. “General Atchison, eh?” She peered at him over the top of her glasses, the one lens of which was cracked right down the center. “Heard about our war with the Mormons?”
Joshua had to pull his eyes away from staring at the broken lens. How did that affect her vision? Are you seeing two of me? He gave a little shake of his head. “Yes. They’re gone, then?”
She chortled with glee. “Gone like whipped dogs.” She turned and spat toward the corner spittoon. She wasn’t chewing tobacco, but her action was a perfect imitation of the men who did. It made her look all the harder and repulsive to Joshua. “Sorriest bunch of devil worshippers you ever did see. They had their tails ’twixt their legs, I’m tellin’ ya, and their Mormon prophet, old Joe Smith, with ’em.”
That bought Joshua’s full attention. “Smith was here?”
“Yup. Snuck in a few nights ago. Saw that he and his were about to be massacreed and led the whole kit and caboodle out of here yesterday afternoon. And on the run, I might add.”
“Massacred,” Joshua corrected her absently, his mind racing. So a confrontation had been avoided. All the better. “Where have the men gone? Your men, I mean. Not the Mormons. Did they go after them?”
“No,” she said, shutting one eye—the one behind the cracked glass—and squinting at him with a frown. “But they’re planning on it. Goin’ after them today sometime. They’re meetin’ at ten o’clock down at the churchyard. Why you askin’?”
But Joshua barely heard the last question. He glanced at the clock on the wall at the end of the store. It was five minutes of ten. He spun on his heel and was out the door and moving toward his horse.
* * *
Joshua dismounted and edged to the back of the large and angry group of men. As he did so, a man in a long black coat and top hat walked up to the front porch of the church and raised his hands for silence. Joshua nudged the man in front of him. He turned. Joshua held out his hand. “Joshua Steed, from Richmond. Heard I missed all the fun yesterday.”
The man shook his hand enthusiastically. “You sure did.”
“Who’s this?” he asked, gesturing toward the man who stood before the crowd.
“The Reverend Sashiel Woods.”
Joshua nodded, not really surprised. During the Jackson County war with the Mormons five years earlier, Joshua had once convinced his commanding officer to take along two ministers who were rabid Mormon-haters. Joshua cared no more for their religious twaddle than he did for the Mormons’, but he knew they could be useful, lending an air of respectability to the mobbings and stiffening the will of the Missourians by filling them with a towering sense of self-righteousness.
For the first few minutes it was all bombast and braggadocio. Woods reminded them of their victory as the men shouted and cheered him on. Joshua smiled grimly. He knew the technique well. It took a while to get a group of men with limited courage to the point where they were convinced they were invincible.
But then the reverend began to talk about the job not being finished. The Mormons were gone from DeWitt, sure enough, but they were only gone back up to Caldwell and Daviess counties. And the good people of that part of the state were being terrorized by the depredations of the Mormons. It was time for the good men of Carroll County to ride north and put an end to the Mormon scourge once and for all.
That sobered the men somewhat, and Joshua sensed there was some hesitation. But the parson had preached more than one sermon to a shaky audience and knew where the heart of his congregation lay.
“Brethren,” he shouted, “you know what time of year it is?”
Several heads came up. What did the calendar have to do with anything?
“I’ll tell you what time of year it is,” he answered. “Before long it’s gonna be land sales time. Do you hear me, men? Land sales time. Do you know what that means?”
Even Joshua was a little puzzled by this sudden turn of the speech. But again the Reverend Mr. Woods answered his own question.
“You ever heard of preemption? A man farms a piece of ground, it’s his. But if he should leave it for any reason, the land gets preempted and sold in the land sales.”
Now they had it, and Joshua did too. A murmur of excitement swept through the crowd.
“Now, we know the Mormons are horse thieves and lowlifes of every kind,” Woods continued, “but they do have some mighty purty farmland up there. Mighty purty. If we were to go up and help our good brothers in Daviess County drive them Mormons clear out of the state, you know what would happen next?”
“Their land would be preempted!” someone shouted.
“Amen, brother! You got that exactly right. Now, the old settlers up north are gonna drive them Mormons out, with us or without us. We don’t get ourselves up there, they’re gonna be havin’ that land all to themselves.”
“I heard the old settlers agreed to sell out to the Mormons,” another man called.
The reverend swung on him, smiling as if he were real pleased. “Thank you, John. That’s exactly right.” He paused, and then a wolfish grin stole across his face. “And when the Daviess County boys drive the Mormons out of the state, they’ll have that land back and the money they was paid for it.”
Laughter and applause swept through the group.
“Now, do you want to be part of that or not?” Woods shouted, suddenly angry. “Do you want them boys to have it all to themselves?”
“No!”
Woods let his voice drop to a conspiratorial whisper, but made sure it was loud enough to carry to the back of the crowd. “And you know what else? We here in DeWitt know something those boys up there don’t know yet, don’t we?”
“What’s that, Reverend?”
“We know the government ain’t gonna be botherin’ us none while we drive those Mormons out of here. Now, don’t we know that for a fact?”
As the crowd began to whoop, his voice rose to a shout. “You heard Governor Boggs. He said it’s between us and the Mormons. ‘Let them fight it out,’ he said.”
Now the roar was like a howl of triumph.
“So what do you say, boys? Do we ride north or not?”
As the crowd exploded, Joshua turned and walked swiftly to his horse. It was a long ride back to Richmond, and he was going to have to push his horse hard to make it before midnight.
* * *
General Atchison was never at his best early in the morning, tending to grumpiness until he had a couple of cups of coffee and an hour out of the bed. This morning he had had neither, and he was like a rumpled old bear who had been kicked out of his den too early in the spring. “What time did you get back, Steed?” he grumbled.
“About one-thirty, sir.”
“And? What is the situation in DeWitt?”
Joshua gave him his report quickly. “I assume they’re on their way north by now,” he said as he finished.
Atchison swore. “Just what we need is another four or five hundred hotheaded idiots riding around up there with guns in their hands and greed in their hearts.”
“And their bellies full of whiskey,” Joshua added dryly. “But it’s more than that, sir.” He shook his head. His trip back had been delayed when he heard another rumor passing through a town west of DeWitt. “The name Cornelius Gilliam mean anything to you?”
Atchison’s eyes narrowed. “Neil Gilliam? Of course. Is he in on this too?”
Joshua nodded wearily. “Gilliam is raising a group of men from Platte and Clinton counties. They’re joining Parson Woods somewhere north of here.” Joshua knew Gilliam well. When the Mormons had come from Ohio in 1834 in what they called Zion’s Camp, Gilliam had led a party of men t
o the Fishing River to intercept them. Joshua had been with him. They were filled with hard liquor and empty boasts. And then a storm had hit their camp. It still gave Joshua the creeps when he remembered it. He had never seen anything to match the likes of that, not before, not since. The Missourians had been scattered, and the Mormons attributed it to divine intervention. He looked at Atchison. “Near as I can tell, they’ll have about eight hundred men, all told.”
Atchison swore again, this time bitterly. And then the qualities that made him a natural selection to be a general officer in the militia took over. He yelled for the man who served as his personal aide, and dictated a quick letter to Governor Boggs. He turned to Joshua. “I want you to take this personally to Governor Boggs in Jefferson City. Tell him the situation is deteriorating rapidly.” His voice was suddenly sarcastic. “See if you can’t persuade him to get His Excellency’s royal body up here and evaluate the situation before this turns into all-out warfare.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On your way out of town, get General Doniphan over here too. We’d better have a war council.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you get yourself back here in a hurry, Captain. We may be headed north too.”
Joshua kept his face impassive. “Yes, sir.” He turned and started out, but at the door he stopped. “Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Independence is only a little bit out of the way, sir. I haven’t seen my family in almost a month now. Tomorrow is Sunday. Would you mind if I swung by there on my way back, just to see if everything’s all right with them, sir?”
Atchison started to shake his head, then changed his mind. “Why not?” he growled. “One more day isn’t going to see the end of this.” He nodded now. “Permission granted. But don’t dally, Steed. A short visit, then right back here. We’ve got things to do.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” And Joshua was out the door, feeling a deep sense of foreboding as he tucked into his pocket the letters he had been given and strode out of the building.
* * *
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