Fire of the Covenant

by Gerald N. Lund

  “And where is that?” someone called out.

  Spencer turned. “Generally the first wagons meet us at Deer Creek, west of Fort Laramie. That’s roughly about five hundred miles from here. Then more meet us at Fort Bridger, and so on.” He waited for a moment, but that seemed to satisfy whoever had spoken up, so he went on.

  “We have tacked copies of the group lists on both sides of the wagons, and a copy is also pinned on the outside wall of my tent. As soon as we dismiss here, please see which group you are in. We will ask that by tonight you move your things and join together in your new tent groups. The lists also show the tent groups and handcart assignments.”

  He looked down at the five subcaptains and spoke directly to them. “Brethren, Brother Webb has all of the handcarts down at the cart assembly area. This afternoon take enough men to bring back the handcarts you need for each hundred.”

  As they nodded, he spoke loudly to the group once more. “Beginning in one hour, Brother Kimball, Brother Grant, and I will come to your tents, where you are now—don’t bother trying to move until tonight. We want you waiting outside with all your personal belongings. Each of us will have a set of scales to weigh what you plan to take with you and—”

  A great groan went up and he had to stop. He let it roll through the group, then finally raised his hands. “Seventeen pounds, brothers and sisters. That’s for each adult. Ten pounds for children. Seven pounds for infants. You were told this before you ever left Europe, so let’s hope you have already made many of those hard decisions.” He didn’t sound very hopeful.

  “If you have more than you can take—” He stopped and shook his head. “When you see that you have more than you can take, you can go into Iowa City and see if you can trade or sell the surplus to the residents. But don’t get your hopes up. They have already seen three previous companies go through, and though I am sad to admit it, they know that once you leave they can come in and, at no cost to them, get those things which you will abandon.”

  He looked around. “That’s it, brothers and sisters. One hour in front of your tents. Seventeen pounds per person. Not one ounce more.”

  •••

  As Eric and Olaf moved to the last wagon to check their list, they saw Jens Nielson pushing his way back out of the crowd. With his height, he was easily seen. He towered over many others in the company. Eric pulled on Olaf’s arm and started for him, but Brother Nielson had already spotted them. “Eric! Olaf!” he called. “You are in this group.”

  As he pushed his way clear of the group, they saw that he had Elsie with him, holding her hand and making a way for her through the people. His wife was so short—barely five feet tall, if that—that she had been lost to them before that. She saw the boys and waved happily. “Wonderful news. Guess what!” she called, smiling broadly.

  “Are we still in your tent group?” Eric said, hoping that such was the case but afraid they would be assigned elsewhere.

  “Better,” she said, as they came up. She reached out and took Eric’s hands and squeezed them. “Not only are you and Olaf in our tent group, but you have been assigned to our handcart.”

  “Truly?” Olaf said.

  “Yes.” Jens clapped him on the shoulder. “I guess since we have two small children they decided we could use some help.”

  “This is wonderful,” Elsie said. “Little Jens and Bodil will be so pleased. And to have someone who can speak English now right with us. It is very good.”

  “We too are pleased,” Eric said earnestly. “This is more than we hoped for.”

  “Far more,” Olaf agreed.

  The two brothers started back with the Nielsons. There was no need for them to check the list now. “Then we’d better go and get our things ready for the weight check,” Eric said. He grimaced. “That could be more painful than the blisters we got while making the handcarts.”

  As they made their way, they passed the other groups congregating around the wagons. People called out to each other. There were cries of delight and groans of disappointment as friendships made during the last two months were placed together or split apart. Then Olaf pointed. “Look, there are the McKensies and the Jameses up ahead of us.” He raised a hand and shouted. “Sister McKensie! Brother James!”

  The two families all turned, waved, and stopped while the brothers came up to join them.

  “What group are you in, Olaf?” Hannah asked.

  “The five hundred.”

  “You mean the fifth hundred?” she suggested.

  “Ah, yah, the fifth hundred. And you?”

  “We are in the third hundred,” Robbie said. “Brother Woodward’s our captain. Most of us from Scotland are in that group.”

  “And who—,” Eric started. He searched for the right words. “Who will be on your tent?”

  Sarah smiled. “In our tent, Eric. We sleep on the ground but in a tent.”

  He nodded sheepishly. They had worked on prepositions in class for several days now, but they were a bewildering whirl in his mind. Or was it on his mind?

  “The James family and our family get to stay together,” Mary McKensie said. “We’re still assigned to the same tent. Ingrid too. Isn’t that wonderful? She’ll get to travel with us.”

  Brother James was nodding. “Even with both families and Ingrid, we aren’t quite enough to fill it, so there will be another family assigned with us when we get ready to leave. We don’t know who yet.”

  Mary smiled. “We wish they would let you and Olaf stay with us as well. Ingrid’s English has really improved since she’s started staying with us.”

  Eric shook his head slowly, his eyes grave. “That would not be good.”

  Surprised, Jane James leaned forward. “Why not?” Then she thought she understood. “Oh, because there would be single young men and single young girls in the same tent?”

  “No, much worse.”

  “Worse? How so?” Mary asked. Now the girls were watching him closely too, puzzled by his somberness.

  “In your tent,” he said slowly, glancing sidelong at Maggie and Sarah, “there vill be—” He shook his head. Pronouncing the w as a v was one of the hardest habits to break. “There will be no sleep, yah?”

  Mary looked up in surprise. “No sleep? Why not?”

  He turned his back on the girls in a conspiratorial manner, then lifted his hands and moved his fingers in a motion that was like a duck’s bill opening and closing. “How you say in English? Yakkity yak. Yakkity yak.”

  William James whooped and slapped his leg in delight. The girls howled. “Eric Pederson!” Maggie cried, hardly believing she had heard him right.

  “ ’Tis true, no?” Eric said to her mother, still ignoring the girls, who were just coming to realize that he was poking fun at them.

  “Oh, yes, Eric,” Mary said ruefully. “You’re exactly right. These five girls can laugh and giggle all night long.”

  “Don’t tell them I say that,” he said soberly. “They will be much angered at me.”

  “I think it’s a little late for that now,” Maggie said, trying to look offended but unable to contain her own laughter. His droll manner had once again taken her completely by surprise.

  After a moment, when they got more serious again, Olaf looked at Brother James. “Do your family get two handcarts?”

  “Yes. Two. Sarah and Emma and Reuben will pull the one, Mother and I will take the other.”

  Sister James spoke up again. “And since there are five of us who are older, Brother Willie says we can help Mary and her family some days.”

  “We won’t need help,” Robbie said calmly. “I’m big enough to pull.”

  “True, Rob,” Brother James said, “but since Brother Spencer asked you to stand guard duty, there may be some days that you’ll be out doing other things.”

  “Oh.” That seemed to satisfy him. “In that case, yes. Mother and the girls could use some help.”

  Maggie and Eric exchanged a look and a smile. “Mother and the girls.”
Robbie spoke as if he were the one who was nineteen and Maggie was only twelve.

  “What about you two?” Sarah asked. “Will you be with that family you came on the ship with?”

  “The Nielsons?” Olaf said. “Yes. We are in same tent and we also help them pull the handcart.”

  “That’s good,” Mary said. “Don’t they just have two children?”

  “Yes,” Eric answered. “Little Jens, who is five, and Bodil Mortensen, who is only nine. They will need help and we are very happy. They are like our family now.”

  “Ingrid will help us pull our two carts,” Reuben James said. Though he was two years younger than the Danish girl, he and Ingrid had become great friends since she had moved into their tent.

  “Very good,” Eric said.

  “Well,” Brother James said to his wife. “We have less than an hour. We’d better get our things together.”

  “Yah,” Olaf responded. “We go to prepare for the weights too.” He pulled such a face that everyone laughed.

  Sister James sighed. “I think we are all in for a very long afternoon.”

  •••

  “Do you think we have too much, Eric?”

  Eric looked at the meager pile before him on their bedroll. They were outside the tent where the Nielsons and the others slept. Whenever the weather was clear, Eric and Olaf slept outside. Now they had their things piled up neatly. The sweater his mother had knitted for him was folded on top. After a moment he shook his head. “We don’t have much, Olaf, and thank goodness for that.”

  Olaf slid his hand under his pile and hefted the whole thing, bouncing it up and down to gauge the weight. “It doesn’t feel like a lot. I think we’ll be all right.”

  “Remember, you have to count the bedding too.”

  Olaf pulled a face at that, then set his stack on top of the folded blankets. Then he picked all of it up this time. His confidence was clearly shaken. “Are you going to leave Mama’s sweater behind if you have too much?”

  Eric instantly shook his head. “No. I’ll leave something else. We are going to need Mama’s sweaters this winter when we get to Utah.” He didn’t have to say that this was the only real tie the two of them had to their parents now.

  Olaf seemed much relieved. “Good.”

  There was a shout from behind them and they both stood up. Picking up their things, they walked around to the front of the tent. Brother Ahmanson was there with Brother George D. Grant, one of the Church agents. Grant carried a scale with large weighing pans in one hand and a box of weights in the other. It was time.

  In an unplanned but unanimous decision, the Pederson boys were chosen to go first. Olaf placed his stack of belongings on one side of the scales. It clunked to the ground heavily. Then Elder Grant took out the metal weights. On went a ten-pounder. Olaf’s pile began to lift, but not high enough. Grant put on a five-pound block, but that was too much. Now the side with the weights dropped lower. He took off the five, added a three. Not quite. He added a one-pounder, and as everyone smiled in surprise, the two sides slowly balanced each other.

  “Very good,” Brother Grant said. “Fourteen pounds.”

  Eric was next. He too was under, coming in at a little over fifteen pounds. He breathed a great sigh of relief and looked at the Nielsons. “Now you have an example to follow,” he said with a laugh.

  “All right, folks,” Grant said, looking up at the others who stood around them. “Who’s next?”

  Jens Nielson stepped forward, raising his hand. He spoke in Danish to Brother Ahmanson. “Can we count all of us together?” he asked.

  Ahmanson turned to Brother Grant. “They would like to know if the whole family can be counted together.”

  Grant nodded immediately. This wasn’t the first time he had been asked that. “Seventeen pounds for each adult, ten for each of the two children. That’s fifty-four pounds total.”

  Ahmanson told Jens, and so he gathered everything up into bundles that would fit on the pans. When they were done, again Elder Grant was pleased. They were two pounds under, thanks largely to the fact that little Jens had very little of his own.

  “Excellent,” Grant grunted, shaking Jens’s hand. “Wish everyone would do this well.”

  •••

  Maggie looked up in surprise. Across the tent from her, Ingrid was holding what looked like a brand-new pair of shoes. They were in her lap and she was rubbing the black leather gently with the tips of her fingers.

  “Are those new?” Maggie asked.

  Ingrid turned in surprise. Then nodded and smiled. Maggie smiled back. How she loved Ingrid’s smile! It made her whole face light up. Combined with her blond hair braided in a French braid at the back of her head and the crystal-clear blue eyes, she was the perfect representation of Scandinavia, Maggie decided.

  “Yah,” Ingrid said, “deese were—” She stopped. “Not deese. How you say it again?”

  Emma and Hannah, who slept in the same bedroll, stopped what they were doing to watch now too. “These,” Emma supplied.

  “Ah, yah. These shoes were given to me by my father as present.”

  “When you left Denmark?” Maggie asked.

  “Yah. He and Mother very sad that I go before them. Father save his money and buy me new shoes.”

  Now Sarah turned around from what she was doing. “But we’ve never seen them until now, Ingrid. Have you not worn them before?”

  She shook her head, holding them up so they could see them better. Sister James and Maggie’s mother also stopped what they were doing to see them. “I decide . . .” It was obvious she was struggling to find the proper words to express herself. “I not want to see President Brigham Young in old shoes.”

  “Oh,” Maggie said slowly.

  “If wear them now, they be old by time we get to Salt Lake City, no?”

  “Yes,” Jane James said, her eyes softening. “They would be old and worn out.”

  “I want to meet President of the Church in new shoes.” She held them against her body. “So I save them now.”

  Suddenly Reuben James had a thought. “What if you have too much stuff?” he asked. “What if you have to leave something behind? Will you leave your shoes?”

  There was not a moment’s hesitation. “No. I will leave more important things first. Not my shoes.” She put them back in her valise and tucked them firmly into the corner.

  “I think that’s wonderful,” Mary McKensie said quietly. “I wish we could all have new shoes when we enter the Valley.”

  And that turned Maggie back to her own dilemma. She had known about the seventeen-pound limit before they ever left Scotland. She thought she had culled out everything that she could bear to leave behind. But now as she eyed the two stacks she had made—one for discard, one for taking—the one looked pitifully small, the other unbelievably large.

  Taking a deep breath, she started through the larger stack one more time. Out went her favorite dress. She had bought it a year ago, one of the few times she had spent her wages on herself. It wasn’t much in comparison to what she had seen other women wear, even some of those on the ship, but it represented almost half a month of standing at the cutting machine through the long midnight shifts at the factory. It had also been James’s favorite. Every time she wore it he would compliment her.

  With a sigh she pushed it behind her, where it would not lie there and tempt her. It was old-fashioned now anyway, she told herself. After a moment’s hesitation she removed the shoes that went with it. These too were the nicest pair she owned, but they were little more than flimsy slippers with heels. Even if she saved them for that final day of the journey, as Ingrid was doing, they weren’t suitable for walking out-of-doors for even half a block. Half closing her eyes, she tossed them over her shoulder onto the dress.

  After another five minutes of agonizing, it came down to two things. There was the brass looking glass that James had given her for Christmas last year. She stared at herself, seeing the frustration around her mouth. It
was not just that it was a gift from him. She had fully accepted the fact that James was gone from her life now. But she loved the mirror. Embossed in the brass on the back of it was the image of Edinburgh Castle, sitting majestically astride Castle Rock. Beneath it was the word Dunedin, the Gaelic name for Edinburgh. She had left the country that she loved. She had left the city that was all she had known for the first nineteen years of her life. Must she part with the only thing she now had left to remind her of her former home?

  And yet . . . She laid the mirror down and picked up the plain wooden box. Her fingers moved to the key on the bottom. For a moment she was tempted to wind the key and open the lid, but then she decided against it. As soon as the strains of “Loch Lomond” came from the music box, every eye in the tent would turn to her. The others didn’t know about this gift from her father, but her mother did. And Hannah did. And they would feel like they had to say something.

  She started a little as she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see Sarah kneeling beside her. “I think I am going to be under weight,” she said, half whispering. “I could take one of those.”

  Maggie reached up and laid a hand on Sarah’s, even as she shook her head. “I think I’m close. But thank you.” She squeezed her hand, wishing there was some way to say more than that. In one simple sentence Sarah James had once again shown what she was, and Maggie would ever love her for it.

  “Hang on to them both for now,” Sarah suggested. “Then if you have to give one of them up, I’ll take it for you.”

  “They are both gifts,” Maggie said, as if that explained everything.

  Sarah nodded. “I’ll take whichever one you can’t.”

  •••

  But in the end, Sarah could take neither.

  As the two families lined up in front of their tent, Daniel Spencer and William H. Kimball nodded at the Jameses. “We’re ready when you are.”

  “Can we count ourselves all together?”

  Spencer nodded. “You can add your limits together if you wish. You have three adults—” He looked at Emma. “You’re how old, Sister James?”