Fire of the Covenant

by Gerald N. Lund

  Ingrid stepped back, letting Sister McKensie and Robbie take her place now. Then suddenly someone picked her up from behind and swung her around. She turned her head. “Eric!”

  “Yes!” He set her down. “We are so happy to see you,” he said in Danish. “Welcome home.”

  “Have you seen my uncle and aunt?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He turned and pointed back up the street. “They were up there. I saw them just a minute ago.”

  “Thank you.” She turned and started away, but she had gone only a few steps when a streaking figure came at them. “Ingrid!”

  She turned just in time to have Emma James hurl herself at her. Around and around they danced. “You’re here!” Emma shouted exultantly.

  Seeing Emma, Hannah let go of her family and rushed in to join her two friends. Now none of them could speak. They just clung to each other, laughing and crying and touching each other’s faces. Finally, Ingrid broke free and darted away to find her family.

  It was as if there were so much joy that it couldn’t be contained. Hannah took Robbie in her arms one minute, then would let him go and come to Maggie. A moment later she was in her mother’s arms again. Then she finally noticed Eric standing back. With a squeal she ran to him. “Is it true?” she cried.

  “What?” He laughed, knowing exactly what she meant.

  “Are you and Maggie married?”

  He shook his head. “Of course not.” As she reared back in surprise, he laughed again. “How could we marry without the maid of honor being here?”

  Hannah whirled. “You waited for me, Maggie?”

  Maggie nodded. “Of course. We knew you’d come soon. We’ll be married as soon as you and Ingrid are feeling up to it.”

  “How about this afternoon?” Hannah exclaimed, giving her sister an enormous hug.

  Just then Sarah James came running up and threw herself into the fray. Sister James and the children followed right after her. As they all greeted Hannah, Sister Elizabeth Jackson climbed slowly down from the back of the wagon, then came around with her three children. Jane James saw her and with a low cry ran to meet her old friend.

  Suddenly the others went quiet. The joy of reunion was momentarily subdued now as the rest of them watched. “Where’s Aaron?” Eric asked Hannah in a low voice.

  She shook her head. “He is buried somewhere near Red Buttes. He never recovered from wading across the river at the last crossing of the Platte.”

  “Oh, no,” Maggie said.

  Emma stepped up beside Hannah now. “Papa died too, Hannah.”

  Hannah gave a low cry and rocked back.

  “Yes. The night after we came across Rocky Ridge.”

  Silenced, the family turned to watch Sister James and Sister Jackson, two women who now shared something more than just their friendship.

  Suddenly Hannah realized something. She turned to Eric very slowly. “Eric? Where’s Olaf? Why isn’t he here?”

  One look told her all she needed to know. There was an anguished cry as one hand came up to her mouth. “Not Olaf!”

  Eric nodded slowly, his eyes glistening now in the sunlight.

  Hannah buried her face in her hands. “Not Olaf too?”

  Eric and Maggie moved forward at the same time and took her in their embrace. “It’s all right,” Eric whispered. He wiped at the corners of his eyes. “He died trying to save little Jens Nielson. I am very proud of him.”

  Hannah looked up. Her face crumpled into a mask of sorrow. Now there were no more tears of joy. “There have been so many,” she said softly through her tears. “So very many.”

  Now Mary McKensie came forward. She put her hands on Hannah’s shoulders and turned her around to face her. “There have, Hannah. But you survived. You are here with us. And thanks be to God for that.”

  •••

  And so it was. Joy was tempered by grief. Grief was pushed back by joy.

  As they stood together, talking quietly, sharing little pieces of their experiences with each other, another family came forward. As soon as she saw them, Maggie turned to face them. “Did you find him?” she asked.

  The woman shook her head. “He’s not here. We found Stephen Taylor. He told us that David was asked to stay at Devil’s Gate and watch the freight that was cached there until spring.”

  Hannah, Sarah, and Emma were talking together, but that brought Hannah around. “David Granger?” she asked.

  The woman turned. “Yes, that’s our son. Did you meet him?”

  Hannah went forward. “He was a great blessing to us.” She stuck out her hand. “It is an honor to meet you, Sister Granger.”

  “Thank you. Then he was all right?”

  Hannah nodded. Her eyes had become very grave now. “He carried me across the river when it was so cold I knew that if I had to do it on my own, I would very likely die. And I wasn’t the only one.”

  David’s father, Jonathan Granger, came forward now to stand beside his wife. With him was a young woman who appeared to be a little older than Hannah. Hannah took one look at her and smiled. “And you must be Eleanor.”

  “Yes. Did he speak of me?”

  “He adores you,” Hannah said.

  Tears were instantly in Eleanor’s eyes. “And I him,” she whispered. “You’re sure he is all right, then?”

  “He was fine,” Hannah said, speaking to both of his parents as well as to Eleanor. Then suddenly her mind clicked. She looked at her mother. “He sent you a letter.”

  “Me a letter?” Mary McKensie said in surprise.

  Hannah pulled off her mittens, then unbuttoned her coat and fished inside, trying to find her dress pocket. Then she had it. She brought out the folded paper, still sealed with candle wax. “Yes. He made me promise not to open it.”

  The disappointment was clearly written on Sister Granger’s face. As her own mother began to break open the seal, Hannah turned to David’s mother. “He also made me promise to come visit with your family and bring you his greetings.”

  Now Eliza Granger smiled. “Wonderful. And has Maggie told you that your family is staying with us?”

  Hannah just stared. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. We will be delighted to have you join us. Then you can tell us all about David.”

  “I can’t believe it. David will be so surprised to hear that.”

  Before Sister Granger could respond to that, Mary McKensie stepped forward, the letter in her hand. She was looking strangely at her daughter.

  “What?” Hannah asked. “What did he say?”

  Instead of answering, Mary handed the letter to Eliza Granger. “I think this is for you as well as for me.”

  Puzzled, Sister Granger took the letter. Her husband stepped up beside her. Eleanor, too curious to be left out, peered over their shoulders. It was Eleanor who reacted first. She clapped her hands in delight. “Well, I’ll be.” She looked at her mother, who was obviously completely taken aback as well. “I wish he were here so I could give him a big fat kiss,” Eleanor said.

  “Well,” Mary McKensie said, smiling at Eliza Granger. “What do you think of that?”

  Eliza glanced at her husband, who was chuckling openly. He was just shaking his head in disbelief.

  Sister Granger turned to Hannah’s mother. “Just two or three nights ago, I said to Jonathan, ‘It’s too bad that Eric is such a nice boy or I’d try and get him out of the way and see if we could save Maggie for David.’ ” She looked now at Hannah, her eyes filled with soft pleasure. “But I think this will be just fine too.”

  “What?” Hannah cried, exasperated now.

  David’s mother handed the sheet of paper to her. Hannah took it and looked down. The handwriting was roughly scrawled with a lead pencil, but it was clearly legible.

  Dear Sister McKensie:

  I know I only met you briefly at the Sixth Crossing and so I have no wish to be presumptuous. However, it has been my great pleasure to make acquaintance with your other daughter, Miss Hannah McKensie. Up
on my return, I should like to come to wherever you may be staying at that time and ask for your permission to court your daughter. If Miss Hannah would be willing to accept me as a suitor, under much better circumstances than those which prevailed when we first met, I would be most pleased. I have found her to be someone who impresses me deeply and who has my greatest respect.

  Yours respectfully,

  David Granger

  Hannah lowered the letter slowly, staring first at her mother and then at David’s mother. Finally, it was her own mother who spoke. “Well, Hannah?” she asked. “Would you be willing to accept him as a suitor when he returns next spring?”

  Hannah turned and looked directly at David’s mother. “David Granger was a ray of light in a time of darkness, a candle of courage that relit my faith when I thought it had gone out. If he is still of the same mind when he returns home, you can tell him that I will be waiting for him.”

  She realized that Maggie had come up beside her. As Hannah turned to look at her, Maggie took Hannah’s face in her hands and kissed her softly on the cheek.

  “Welcome home, Hannah,” she whispered. “Welcome to the Valley.”

  Chapter Notes

  Normally the incoming companies were met outside the city and welcomed warmly by the Saints in the Valley. However, John Jaques indicates that the Martin Company “arrived in Salt Lake City about noon, driving into East Temple Street as the congregation was leaving the old adobie tabernacle in the southwest corner of Temple block” (in Bell, Life History and Writings of John Jaques, p. 171; also in Remember, p. 35). The assumptions as to why this was the case are the author’s.

  The Willie Handcart Company arrived in Salt Lake City on 9 November, thirteen days after Captain George D. Grant and his rescue company found them at the Sixth Crossing of the Sweetwater. It is estimated that of the original five hundred emigrants who made up that company, sixty-seven died en route to the Valley.

  The Edward Martin Handcart Company, the last to come in 1856, arrived in Salt Lake on 30 November, a full month after being found by Captain Grant at Greasewood Creek east of Devil’s Gate. With considerably more of the older and infirm in their company, they suffered more than double the number of deaths that the Willie Company did. Though their records were not as complete, it is estimated that somewhere between 135 and 150 of the original 567 in the company perished somewhere along the trail, a full third or more of those at Martin’s Cove alone (see Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, p. 193).

  Though the losses are some of the highest experienced by any emigrant party of that time period (almost triple the number of those who died with the Donner Party), the rescue effort mounted by President Brigham Young and carried out by the courageous and tireless Saints from the Valley averted a major disaster.

  Perhaps the most fitting ending to this story was given by Elizabeth Horrocks Jackson, who lost her husband at Red Buttes. As she started her history, she wrote: “I have a desire to leave a record of those scenes and events, thru which I have passed, that my children, down to my latest posterity may read what their ancestors were willing to suffer, and did suffer, patiently for the Gospel’s sake. And I wish them to understand, too, that what I now word is the history of hundreds of others, both men, women and children, who have passed thru many like scenes for a similar cause, at the same time we did. I also desire them to know that it was in obedience to the commandments of the true and living God, and with the assurance of an eternal reward—an exaltation to eternal life in His kingdom—that we suffered these things. I hope, too, that it will inspire my posterity with fortitude to stand firm and faithful to the truth, and be willing to suffer, and sacrifice all things they may be required to pass thru for the Kingdom of God’s sake” (Kingsford, Leaves from the Life of Elizabeth Horrocks Jackson Kingsford, p. 1).

  Sources Cited in Chapter Notes

  Ahmanson, John. Secret History: A Translation of “Vor Tids Muhamed.” Translated by Gleason L. Archer. Chicago: Moody Press, 1984.

  Allred, Reddick N. “Journal of Reddick Newton Allred, 1852–1856.” Typescript. The National Society Daughters of Utah Pioneers Memorial Museum, Salt Lake City, Utah.

  Bartholomew, Rebecca, and Leonard J. Arrington. Rescue of the 1856 Handcart Companies. Rev. ed. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1993.

  Bell, Stella Jaques. Life History and Writings of John Jaques. Rexburg, Idaho: Ricks College Press, 1978.

  Bennett, Richard E. “ ‘Dadda, I Wish We Were Out of This Country’: The Nauvoo Poor Camps in Iowa, Fall 1846.” In The Iowa Mormon Trail: Legacy of Faith and Courage, edited by Susan Easton Black and William G. Hartley, pp. 155–70. Orem, Utah: Helix Publishing, 1997.

  Carter, Kate B., comp. Heart Throbs of the West. 12 vols. Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1939–51.

  ———, comp. Treasures of Pioneer History. 6 vols. Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1952–57.

  Christy, Howard A. “Weather, Disaster, and Responsibility: An Essay on the Willie and Martin Handcart Story.” BYU Studies 37, no. 1 (1997–98): 7–74.

  Clark, James R. ed. Messages of the First Presidency. 6 vols. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965–75.

  Deseret News 1999–2000 Church Almanac. Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1998.

  Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Edited by Daniel H. Ludlow. 5 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1992.

  Glazier, Stewart E., and Robert S. Clark, comps. and eds. Journal of the Trail. 2d ed. N.p., 1997.

  Godfrey, Kenneth W., Audrey M. Godfrey, and Jill Mulvay Derr. Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1982.

  Hafen, LeRoy R., and Ann W. Hafen. Handcarts to Zion: The Story of a Unique Western Migration, 1856–1860. 1960. Reprint, Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

  Hafen, Mary Ann. Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860: A Woman’s Life on the Mormon Frontier. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.

  Hanks, Sidney Alvarus. The Tempered Wind: The Life Story of Thisbe Read Hanks. Edited by Helen H. Jones. Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Times, 1956.

  Jenson, Andrew. “Church Emigration.” Contributor 14 (March 1893): 199–205.

  Jones, Daniel W. Forty Years Among the Indians. Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1890.

  Journal History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Church Historical Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

  Kimball, Stanley B. “Sail and Rail Pioneers before 1869.” BYU Studies 35, no. 2 (1995): 7–42.

  Kingsford, Elizabeth Horrocks Jackson. Leaves from the Life of Elizabeth Horrocks Jackson Kingsford. Ogden, Utah: N.p., 1908.

  The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star (Liverpool and London, England). 1840–1970.

  Lyman, Albert R. “Bishop Jens Nielson.” Typescript.

  Madsen, Carol Cornwall. Journey to Zion: Voices from the Mormon Trail. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1997.

  Madsen, Susan Arrington. The Second Rescue: The Story of the Spiritual Rescue of the Willie and Martin Handcart Pioneers. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1998.

  Martin, Charles W. “John Ahmanson vs. Brigham Young: A Nebraska Legal Controversy, 1859–1861.” Nebraska History 64 (Spring 1983): 1–20.

  Remember: The Willie and Martin Handcart Companies and Their Rescuers—Past and Present. Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1997.

  Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah). 1871–present.

  Stegner, Wallace. “Ordeal by Handcart.” Collier’s 138 (6 July 1956): 78–85.

  Turner, Lynn Slater. Emigrating Journals of the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies and the Hunt and Hodgett Wagon Trains. Lynn Slater Turner, 1996.

  About the Author

  Gerald N. Lund received his B.A. and M.S. degrees in sociology from Brigham Young University. He also did extensive graduate work in New Testament studies at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles, California, and stud
ied Hebrew at the University of Judaism in Hollywood, California.

  During his thirty-five years in the Church Educational System, the author served as a seminary teacher, an institute teacher and director, a curriculum writer, director of college curriculum, and zone administrator. His Church callings have included those of bishop, stake missionary, and teacher. In April 2002, he was sustained to the Second Quorum of the Seventy. He is currently serving as the first counselor in the Europe West Area Presidency.

  Gerald Lund has written many books, including such novels as The Work and the Glory series, The Kingdom and the Crown trilogy, The Alliance, The Freedom Factor, Leverage Point, and One in Thine Hand. He has also written several books on gospel studies, including The Coming of the Lord and Jesus Christ, Key to the Plan of Salvation. He has twice won the Independent Booksellers “Book of the Year” Award and has received many other honors for his works.

  He and his wife, Lynn, are the parents of seven children.