by Adell Harvey
When the prophet had sent the first relief party from Salt Lake in November to rescue the stranded handcart travelers, Andy and nine other men – the healthiest survivors of the ill-fated cross-country journey – were selected to stay at Devil’s Gate to guard the possessions that had to be left behind. Ten of the rescuers also offered to stay so there would be room for the rest of the bedraggled survivors to make the return trip to Salt Lake.
Andy glanced ruefully at the stuff piled in one corner of the cabin. There didn’t seem to be anything worth looking after. The families forced to travel by handcart had had to sell everything of value at Fort Laramie so they could buy food to keep from starving to death. Most of the travelers hadn’t had that much to start with.
Following Andy’s gaze, Walters continued his rant. “Ain’t nothin’ in that pile worth risking our necks for,” he griped. “But that’s just more of Brigham’s folly – give ‘em something to do; make ‘em feel important.”
Brother Rigby fingered the knife hanging from his belt. “Careful there, Walters. Yer getting mighty close to apostasy.”
“Yeah,” Brother Ricks cautioned. “Better hold your tongue. Men have been sent to paradise for saying less. You can’t criticize the prophet.”
Walters spat. “Prophet, my eye. Brigham ain’t no prophet. An’ he’s not the voice of God. He’s just a man who makes mistakes. And this handcart business is one of his stupidest ones. We’re stranded here, starving to death with nothin’ to eat but boiled rawhide, and he’s livin’ it up with all his pretty young wives in his supposed Zion.”
Andy drew in his breath. Walters was on dangerous ground.
“That’s blasphemy!” Ricks shouted. He headed for Walters, his knife drawn from its sheath. “What more do we need to hear, men? Let’s slit his throat here and now so we can save his eternal soul.”
The men mobbed around the hapless complainer, dragging him outside the cabin.
“Wait, fellas,” Andy protested. “We’re all pretty frazzled. I’m sure Brother Walters is not in his right mind. Let’s stop and think this through.”
Rigby shoved him aside. “Better one man be sacrificed for the good of the church. An’ it’s for his own good, too.”
Andy tried again. “But we’re not barbarians. We’re Saints, the Lord’s own Saints. I say it’s time we acted like it an’ showed a little compassion.”
“Compassion’s got no place for them who criticize the prophet, the Living Word of God!” someone shouted. “Let’s do him in!”
Helpless against the frenzied mob, Andy stood aside as the men dug a grave in the spring-softened mud. It was amazing how their energy returned when they had something to occupy their minds, Andy thought. Knowing what was coming, he was reluctant to watch and yet unable to turn away.
His hands tied behind his back, Walters was forced to sit on the edge of his grave. Rigby, wiping his knife against his coat, cleaning its edge, knelt down next to him. “Prepare for paradise, Brother Walters. You must atone for your sin by spilling your blood – it’s the only way.”
Andy’s stomach tightened as he watched Rigby plunge the knife into Walters’ neck and draw it quickly across his throat. He heard a gasp and a gurgle, then a thud as Walters’ body fell into the shallow grave.
Andy rushed behind the cabin, physically ill. It wouldn’t do for the others to see him losing what little breakfast he’d eaten. His stomach knotted and lurched in wrenching heaves for what seemed an eternity. He could hear the others laughing and joking as they filled in the grave, apparently so caught up in their celebrating they hadn’t noticed his absence.
The execution seemed to bring renewed life to the men. Several of them left the camp in yet another hunt for food. Others stayed behind to build a fire from sagebrush and bits of wood they tore off the mail cabin. “We’re going to eat tonight,” Ricks promised. “Now that we’ve rid the camp of the apostate, the Lord’s face will shine upon us.”
Andy couldn’t join in the festivities. The cruel death of Walters had shaken him to the depths of his soul. How could killing a man make a Saint feel so jubilant, so victorious? He sat close to the fire reading and rereading his Book of Mormon, trying to find solace in it. The words rambled across the pages, saying nothing. It was as though a terrible darkness had plunged into his soul, just as the knife had plunged into Walters’ neck.
“Reading the Good Book?” Ricks drew up a rock and joined Andy at the fire. “Never read it much myself,” he admitted. “But the Prophet Joseph said it’s the most perfect book ever written and it’s the only way to Celestial Glory.”
“Then why don’t you read it?”
“Don’t read anything much. I figure I learn everything I need to know by listening to Prophet Brigham and the apostles. They know what the Book says.” He studied Andy intently. “Today the first blood atonement you’ve seen?”
Startled by the sudden change of conversation, Andy drew back. “Yes,” he said quietly.
“But you do know it’s the only way, don’t you? The prophet says there are sins that a man has to atone for by shedding his own blood. I heard him say it many times.”
Andy sat silently, unable to think of anything to say. He had heard of blood atonement and had even met some of the Danites, the Avenging Angels, in Nauvoo. But they killed the church’s enemies, not the Saints.
As if reading his thoughts, Ricks added, “Sometimes our enemies are within. We must rid the church of evil before it spreads. The first man I ever used up was one of them mobocrats in Missouri – that wasn’t to save his soul, but to rid the world of evil. Then Prophet Joseph asked me to take care of Brother Jamison back in Nauvoo. He was a traitor, spying for the Illinois militia.”
Andy laid the Book of Mormon on the ground. His heart pounding, he asked, “Are you a Danite?”
Ricks laughed. “Now what would a young feller like you know about the Danites? They’re just an old church myth, you know.”
“A church myth?” With more daring than thought, Andy said, “Wonder if it brings comfort to a man facing your knife to know that you’re just an old church myth…”
Ricks threw back his head and laughed loudly. “I like you, young man! We can use spunk like that in our ranks. How’d you like to join the myth?”
“I don’t know…”
“Save a wicked man’s soul by spilling his blood and raise your own self up in the process. Salvation for the victim and exaltation for the slayer. It’s a good deal for both parties,” Ricks said. “How can you fault it?”
Andy stood up. “Reckon I’ll have to think on it awhile. But thanks for the offer.”
That night, Andy’s tortured mind denied him the escape of sleep. Lying on his bed – a pile of sagebrush covered with a counterpane of old newspapers – he relived the day’s events. How could such killings be the will of God? But if Brigham Young were really the mouthpiece of the Lord, how could Andy doubt his teachings? Over and over, his mind rehearsed everything he knew about the Danites. Tales of the bravado of men like Bill Hickman and Porter Rockwell flashed through his memory. Back in Nauvoo, those men had been the stuff legends were made of, heroes for young Mormon boys to look up to.
He shuddered. Tales and legends were a far cry from actually watching a man’s throat slit and hearing the last breath gurgle from his body. And for what? Simply because he had had a belly full of troubles and the audacity to complain about it? If the truth were told, probably most of the men who wintered at Devil’s Gate secretly harbored some of the same complaints and doubts.
Thinking back over the ill-conceived handcart journey, Andy remembered how time after time he had urged the leaders to wait until spring, how he and others had tried to persuade them that the flimsy handcarts would break down, that many of the Danish and English immigrants were too old or feeble to walk across the plains pulling their duffel in the carts. But no one had listened. The path of graves across the Mormon Trail and now the trench grave outside the mail cabin with its fill of frozen bodie
s were mute evidence that the leaders should have heeded him.
“We don’t question our leaders.” Pa’s voice came to him in the darkness. Pa had drilled that point into him from the time he was a young’un. “When the leaders speak, the thinking has been done,” Pa always said. But what thinking? How much thought had gone into this terrible tragedy that sent hundreds to an early grave? That had taken Anne Marie’s precious life from him?
Andy turned over on his pallet. “I will not doubt. Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Lord, and Brigham Young is the voice of God.” Startled, Andy sat up in bed to hear who had spoken, only to realize he, himself, had said the words aloud.
Lying back down, Andy muttered the words of his testimony over and over, trying to feel the assurance it usually gave him. Tonight, however, the testimony failed to give him the “burning in his bosom” he had come to recognize as the spirit of God. Instead, each time he repeated, “I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Lord,” a small voice seemed to challenge, “How do you know? What proof do you have?” Where were these doubts coming from? Had God deserted him because he had promised Anne Marie he would let Ingrid take her baby away from the Saints? Was this awful torture of mind and spirit his punishment?
Failing all else, Andy eventually tried to bargain with God. “If you’ll give me peace of mind, I promise I’ll make sure Ingrid and Ammie return to the fold. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I give you my solemn promise that I will.”
Thus resolved, Andy finally fell asleep, just as the first gray streaks of dawn pierced the cracks in the cabin walls.
River Bend Plantation
Elsie stood at the window gazing out over the broad sweeps of rolling lawn, the stables and white-fenced corrals, the patchwork of fields and distant woodlands that made up her family plantation. How could she leave this, the only home she had known? The home her ancestors had carved out of the Kentucky wilderness so many years ago?
She felt almost a traitor to their memory, a memory that echoed in the now empty rooms of the plantation house.
She shivered. The house that had once rung with laughter and music was cold and silent. It was a house built, not to trumpet wealth or proclaim power, but as a home – a home for people to live and love in. Tomorrow, a new family would drive a carriage up the wide avenue of pines that led to the front of the house. They would bring their own treasures into the two stories of weathered stone. And in the still summer evenings, they would sit and sip mint julep on the double-story veranda framed by ionic columns.
Elsie sighed. She hoped the new inhabitants of River Bend would be as happy there as she had been. She patted the money pouch pinned beneath her bodice as if to reassure herself that it was still intact.
That money, from the sale of River Bend, would pay her passage to St. Louis and then to Independence where she was to purchase enough dry goods to stock an emporium in Loma Parda, New Mexico Territory. Then she would hire drovers to get her goods safely through Indian territory and buy tickets for herself and Isaac on a Wells Fargo stagecoach into Santa Fe.
Again, she sighed – a deep, fearful sigh. Was she up to it? Thoughts of the long journey ahead, the dangers and the possibilities, were daunting. She had been aboard a riverboat but once, a vacation trip with her family up the Ohio River when she was young. That had been a time of excitement and security. But now? Could she manage this huge task with only Isaac to help? Doubts assailed her.
On the other hand, how could she stay here in Kentucky? Her family, devout Methodists originally from Massachusetts, had always hated slavery. Grandfather Condit had determined after much thought that he could be of most use to the cause of abolition by furthering the education of black men and women. Thus, River Bend had become a place of tutelage to create a corps of leaders for the time slavery was finally abolished.
Over the years, hundreds of slaves had been schooled and quietly freed. Many of them were now teachers, doctors, lawyers, craftsmen, and engineers in the North. Papa had carried on the family tradition. Every slave who came to River Bend was educated, mostly in secret.
Although Kentucky was one of the few states that allowed slaves to be educated, many plantation owners objected to such activity. Papa told them he was simply protecting his own interests by making his slaves better able to handle his business affairs. For the most part, the neighbors ignored the Condits, thinking them a bit eccentric, but harmless.
Then Papa had died. His will provided for the manumission of all his slaves, plus enough money to equal a fair wage for each month of service with accrued interest. Elsie had tried to keep the news from the general public, but giving dozens of slaves their freedom could not go unnoticed. With the fomenting talk of secession, feelings ran high on the subject.
Once more fingering the letter from her brothers, Elsie knew beyond doubt that it would be far too dangerous for her to stay here in Kentucky. Her unpopular abolitionist views were becoming too widely discussed. Besides, she couldn’t run a plantation alone.
She directed her gaze back out the window, once again taking in the vast expanse of land that was River Bend in the early summer. A dozen mares grazed and played with their foals in a nearby pasture. Trees dotted the landscape in what seemed to be a million shades of green. Tea roses lined the hedgerow leading to the ponds that powered the steam sawmill. Her father had used the mill to rip massive yellow poplars into floorboards and trim. Every spring, he and the slaves would float planks on flatboats down the creek and river to New Orleans where they would sell the lumber. In the winter, they would cut ice from the ponds, pack it in sawdust from the mill, and store it in the icehouse.
Elsie pictured the ice saws, felling axes, and two-man crosscuts hanging along the icehouse wall in mute testimony of their winter activities. And testimony of the fact that a woman alone couldn’t possibly run a sawmill and pack an icehouse, she thought ruefully. Her brothers were right. She had no choice but to follow their instructions and begin a new life out West. Besides, River Bend was no longer hers.
She swept down the grand staircase, reminded again how the rich green carpet mirrored the thick lawns surrounding the house. How many times she and her brothers and Isaac had played on these very stairs, bouncing down them, sliding on the ornate banister rail, always in danger of a stern reprimand from Mama. Oh, to be so young and carefree again!
Isaac, his broad shoulders glistening with sweat, came across the polished floor of the grand hallway to meet her. “We’ve had lots of happy times in this house, haven’t we?” His voice was wistful.
Elsie grinned at her lifelong friend. “I was just remembering the fun we had here on these stairs. Remember the time Mama spanked us all for sliding down the banister?”
Isaac rubbed his bottom playfully. “Yep. I can still feel the sting of that willow branch!”
“But it didn’t stop us from trying it again every time Mama’s back was turned.” Elsie brushed a tear from her cheek. “But those times are over now – we’re all grown up, with grown-up responsibilities and problems.”
Isaac ran past her, heading up the stairs two at a time. “You may be grown up, but I want one last ride!”
He swooshed down the banister, landing with a thud at the bottom. “Come on, Elsie. Try it,” he urged. “For old times’ sake!”
Giggling, Elsie rushed to the top of the stairs and lifted her skirts as she sat on the railing. With a whoosh and a thud, she joined Isaac on the floor at the bottom. Laughing, she exclaimed, “You sure know how to bring a girl out of the doldrums!”
“Well, my mama didn’t name me Isaac for nothing. She said my name meant laughter, and I guess she knew we all need a little laughter in life.”
At the mention of Isaac’s mother, both young people sobered. Elsie knew the story of Amanda, having heard it many times as proof of the evils of slavery. As a young girl, Amanda had been bought as a concubine by a Virginia planter. Her first baby had been taken from her a few hours after birth on the orders of her master’s wife, who did
n’t want a daily reminder of her husband’s adultery. Grief-stricken, Amanda had refused to eat. She had become so sickly, her owner became disenchanted with her and sold her at auction. It was there Papa had found her and determined to restore her to health. Amanda had married another of the Condit slaves and later gave birth to Isaac, but she mourned the loss of her firstborn until her death.
Elsie broke the silence. “If you made her laugh even half as much as you do me, you’ve lived up to your name!”
Isaac grinned. “Well, a fella’s got to be of some use in this world. Right now, I’d best get your trunks loaded in the carriage and head for the dock. That riverboat will be coming around the bend right soon.”
Elsie paused as she stepped out onto the veranda. Summer’s heat had come early and with a vengeance. “It must be close to 100 degrees,” she said, trying to hide from the burning sun under her bonnet and parasol as she walked toward the carriage. “I declare, I’ve never been so hot!”
As the carriage bounced down the lane, Elsie peered out, for the last time, at the garden. Masses of pink and purple sweet peas tumbled across the low stone walls that framed the garden. A tangle of rosebushes served as a stage for hundreds of singing birds, all chirping against the extreme heat. Across the flagstone path, rows of young vegetables poked their tender heads tentatively through the soil.
“Reckon someone else’ll be caring for ‘dem vegetables,” Isaac said, almost to himself.
A feeling of despair threatened to engulf Elsie. The idea of someone else in her carefully tended garden did not sit well. No, this will never do, she told herself as she checked her thoughts. Feeling sorry for herself at every turn of the wheel was not her way. She would deal with this departure as she had every other trauma in her life – meeting it head-on. She sat up, ramrod straight, and looked out over the garden. “I’m glad somebody else has to tend it. I declare, it would finish me off in this heat!” she muttered.
