Trace was up and dressed and starting to cook. She went and stood close to him. “That storm is raging again out there. Even the snow that has already fallen is back in the air.”
He turned to her and hugged her to him. “It probably doesn’t seem like it, but that will be a blessing. The wind will scour off the ridges and drift the snow into banks and it will actually make the trip out easier. We’ll try to find a trail the wind has blown off and at nights we’ll dig into the huge drifts and stay in a snow cave if we have to. The snow actually makes good insulation, believe it or not.”
She gave him a squeeze. “I’m so glad that it’s you I’m stranded with, Trace. You’re so smart about so many things. How did a doctor learn all this stuff about being a frontiersman?”
Laughing as he flipped the hot cakes, he admitted, “You should have seen me on my first trip across. We were blessed to be traveling with some old campaigners or we’d have never made it. The first time a party of Indians came into our camp, they were positively frightening. I would never have figured out how to handle them without watching those old mountain men. They were nothing like the tame natives I grew up with in Georgia.”
“How many times have you made this trip across?”
“This is the fourth time over, and obviously three trips back. Mose and I wanted to see some of the country and come to where slavery and the Blacks weren’t such volatile issues and it’s been good for both of us. I miss my parents a great deal, but the people out here are certainly more tolerant and less prone to prejudice.”
As she set the table she mused, “Hopefully, the Mormons will find more peace out here as well. The hatred back in the States, and even in other countries, has been terrible. I never understand what makes people who profess to be Christians, hate others because their belief in Christ differs. That seems so backwards to me.”
“You’re right, Giselle, but think back even to the people of the Bible. The devil has always used religion to promote hatred and persecution. Even some of the most devout persecuted the prophets thinking they were heretics. Look at Paul. He was a great man, but at first he just didn’t understand. He truly believed that the apostles were wicked.”
She paused with a fork in her hand. “Thank goodness he finally figured it out. Perhaps, in time, the people in our time will as well.”
Trace shook his head. “I wouldn’t count on things going without a bump even out here, Elley. Smooth sailing has never been the path of the believers and I honestly don’t think it ever will be. Lucifer has too much at stake to take his minions and back off. If what you believe truly did happen and Joseph did see the Father and the Son, then Satan has more of a vested interest in stopping this work than ever before. Even the Saints themselves will lose sight of the goal and persecute each other sometimes. That’s the nature of man, I’m afraid.”
“You’re right. I already know that. The gospel is perfect, but we Saints certainly are imperfect mortals.” She sighed. “Sometimes I dread the whole thought of being a second wife out here. Sometimes the Mormon women don’t really like me. At least some of the ones whose husbands showed an interest in me.”
Trace turned to stare at her. “What? What did you just say?”
She shook her head. “I was just agreeing with you about the Saints not always acting saintly to one another. As a whole, they are a great people, but there have been times that I haven’t been treated all too Christlike right within the fold. The whole plural marriage concept has been particularly difficult. In the first place, it’s an issue that is terribly hard to deal with. At least for me it has been.
“I hate the whole idea with a passion, even when I concede that God knows and understands what I don’t. The actual implementation isn’t very pretty. First wives don’t tend to welcome younger, more uhm… What is the word? Let’s just say women who haven’t been so worn by time and hard work. There was a brother in Nauvoo who took a particular interest in me, and I believe that his wife hated me on sight. It was quite intimidating.”
Trace narrowed his eyes questioningly as he looked at her. “Plural marriage? The Mormons really do practice polygamy? And you’re all right with that?” He looked horrified.
Calmly Giselle continued to set the table. “Some of the Saints do engage in polygamy. I don’t understand it, but I do know that the brethren believe it to be a divinely inspired concept. For me, I have finally had to simply concede that to me, it’s abhorrent, but that God is all knowing, and that somehow I’m just missing the point with my small mortal mind. So no, in a way I am definitely not alright with it, but at some point I will have to come to grips with it, because marriage is a huge part of God’s plan. There are far more women who have joined the Church than men.”
She placed butter and preserves on the table and said tiredly, “Why do you think I worry so much about getting so attached to you? I’m going to miss you miserably when you go. Besides that, I’m going to have to find a way to go from being with a man as attractive as you to facing marrying someone much less desirable. The idea is so repugnant that I already feel like a rebel whose soul is slated forever for fire and brimstone.”
He was staring at her with his mouth open in shock, and neither one of them noticed the hotcakes were smoking on the griddle. Finally, Giselle began to squirm under his stare. “While we’re discussing the ugly truths of my religion, I should tell you there’s another concept that’s even harder to understand for someone who believes that God is no respecter of persons.” She looked down at her nervously clasped hands. “Blacks can’t hold the priesthood either.”
She struggled with her emotions for a few seconds and felt the tears escape from her eyes and trail down her cheek. “That’s the hard one for me. I can’t understand that for anything, but it’s true. That one is far harder for me to deal with than plural marriage.”
In the silence, they both noticed the smoking griddle at the same moment and Trace hurriedly scooped up the torched hot cakes, went to the curtained doorway, and threw them far out into the falling snow. He turned around and looked hard at Giselle as he went back to the fire. Shaking his head, he said, “Jehoshaphat! I’d heard that the Mormons practiced polygamy, but after meeting you and your grandparents, I never dreamed it was true! How in the world can you believe in your Church when they do things like that?”
She looked at him steadily and finally said simply, “I believe Joseph Smith truly did see the Father and the Son that day, Trace. I truly, honestly do.”
He returned her straightforward look for several seconds before going back to making breakfast, and the silence stretched out between them for minutes. When he finally brought the plate to the table and sat across from her, they both bowed their heads without saying anything and Trace quietly asked a blessing on the food. For a little while, they both just ate, neither one of them voicing his or her own thoughts until at length Trace asked her, “Why do you believe that, Giselle? That he saw them?”
“Because when I first learned of the Church and its teachings, I had such a good feeling about it that I had to find out. I asked God if this really was His gospel and He told me yes.”
Trace stopped chewing in the middle of his bite as he stared across the table at her. He watched her, almost studied her for a time again, and then shook his head. “Can’t argue with that one, can you?”
They finished eating and cleaned it up together. Then she milked while he cut twigs for the stock to eat. They were both still quiet when they went back inside, and after a while, Trace lay back down and she sat in the rocker with her messy knitting in her lap. Her mind was far more occupied with her thoughts of him and what he was thinking about the Church, and sometimes she would go several minutes without a single stitch. Realizing it, she glanced down at the tangled lump in her lap and had to smile. She wasn’t good at knitting and she wasn’t fast either.
The look she had seen in Trace’s eyes when he’d asked how she could believe in a Church that practiced plural marriage was so depressi
ng. She had so hoped she and her grandparents had been good enough examples that someday he’d want to become a member, but after seeing his face, she didn’t think that was even a remote possibility. He’d looked at her with a strong mixture of disbelief and disgust.
She could hardly blame him. She’d struggled with this idea from the very first time she’d ever heard it. Having more than one spouse seemed completely opposed to the way human nature felt about a spouse. At least it did to her. She couldn’t imagine sharing a husband or being shared either.
And the Blacks holding the priesthood would be just as hard for Trace to cope with. She knew that without even asking. His friendship and respect for Mose had been unmistakable from the first night she’d met them. She thought about it for a few minutes and came back to the same place that she always did. God knew more than she did and she just had to have faith and try to be obedient even if she didn’t understand. Looking over at Trace lying there asleep, she knew that marrying any other, whether she was the only wife or not, was going to be a problem for her for the rest of eternity.
She sighed and chastised herself. God was all powerful. She needed to trust in that to help her do what this life would ask of her. He wanted her to be happy. She truly believed that, so she just needed to be faithful and hold to the rod. In the meantime, they would need warm stockings, even if they weren’t overly beautiful, and she set to knitting again with a purpose.
When Trace got up, he began to unload the things from the wagon, sort out what they would need to carry out and to pack the rest neatly into the back of the far cave. From time to time, he asked Giselle questions about what they would take, but other than that, their communication was rather limited. By the time they went to bed that night, they were both tired and Giselle was more than a little discouraged. The idea of polygamy must really bother him.
Chapter 15
As Trace lay down beside her that night, he was bothered. It wasn’t necessarily the idea of polygamy as much as the idea of Giselle being married to someone else at all that troubled him. He knew she was worrying about them saying goodbye and how hard it would be, and she’d been diligent about not letting him get too friendly, but that didn’t stop him from wishing that they weren’t going to tell each other goodbye soon. He worried about telling her goodbye as well, but for him it made him want to cherish every second with her and hold her all the more. It was an emotion that definitely picked up steam when he was lying beside her.
It was Trace who woke up that night when he was kissing her neck in his sleep. He hadn’t awakened her, but he wanted to and wanted her to kiss him back. He groaned and dragged himself out of the bed and stoked up the fire again. Then he sat in front of it, staring into the dancing red and orange flames.
For weeks now, he’d been toying with the idea of becoming a Mormon. Right up until this morning, everything he’d learned had made sense and, it felt good in his heart, but the two ideas they’d talked about today had clobbered him. The polygamy possibly fit in a little if you considered Abraham and some of the prophets of old, but that racist part killed him.
Even in the Bible when it spoke of the Jews being the chosen people it had bothered him. The Father who he imagined wasn’t racist. He knew in his heart He wasn’t, so how did all of this work? He picked up Giselle’s Book of Mormon off the floor of the cave near their bed and turned it over and over in his hands.
She had said that it all came down to asking. At first that had seemed too simplistic, but on thinking about it, who could question God if you were sure of His answer? Not Giselle, and certainly not him. He put the book back down and went back to the fire to watch it dance and glow against the wood and embers. Giselle had been right again. He needed to ask.
He spent a quiet hour there in front of the flames, praying and thinking about the concepts he had been learning over the last months from that beautiful girl sleeping there on the floor. She had been the best of Christian examples to him always, and so had her grandparents. They had a sweet spirit about them that had made them fairly glow. It was unmistakable and didn’t leave much to doubt.
Thinking as he was, he was grateful to his parents, and even to Mose’s real parents, for their guidance and teaching throughout his life about his Father in Heaven. It had been a foundation for his everyday living that had helped him avoid so many of the pitfalls in this life that many of the men around him had fallen into. On looking back, he could easily see how living an honorable, Godly life had made for a much happier existence for him than for some other men.
He stood up and yawned and stretched. He was tired enough that, hopefully, he could go back to bed and keep his mind off of Giselle. Especially if he continued to ponder about God. That should help him. He slid in next to her and kept his distance except for putting his foot gently against hers. Just that little bit of contact was all he needed. He smiled into the dark, remembering that first night she had brought her bedroll to his wagon. Looking back over the months, he was really, really glad she had done that.
He’d planned to keep his distance, but by morning he had her wrapped in his arms again. She was turned into him and didn’t seem to mind being cuddled against his chest, and he just held her against him as he mentally began to plan for this day. He could still hear the wind and knew that the storm hadn’t broken yet, but they needed to be getting packed and ready to get out of here the second it did. The snow was deep and it would be a treacherous and grueling trek, but staying here any longer than they had to was a recipe for disaster and they both knew it. The winter would only get more and more cold and deep.
With that thought in mind, he held her and watched her sleep for a few more minutes. Then he gave her the softest of kisses on the top of her head and slipped out of the blankets again.
After stoking the fire, he dressed warmly and went out to care for the stock. Then he stopped and cut a number of stout willow lengths to start fashioning snowshoes for the two of them. This was another of the things he had learned from that first trail across with the seasoned woodsmen. Their tutelage had been indispensable any number of times over the last three years, and he would always be grateful to them.
*****
When Giselle woke up, she looked across to see Trace busily working on something at Petja’s table. She could see willow sticks and strips of leather or rawhide, and he worked at whatever it was with a determined focus. She lay there and watched him for a while, marveling at how lucky she had been in finding his train to come across with that July day months ago. He was definitely not your average male, and his character traits and knowledge had been gifts to her time after time on this journey.
She slipped silently out of the blankets and knelt to say her morning prayers, knowing that giving thanks for Trace would be a good part of her prayer. He had grown to be the most important part of her life. She stood up and took her clothes into the back cave to dress quickly, mentally going over what she needed to be doing today to get ready to leave as soon as the weather broke.
*****
As Trace worked on his snowshoes, he heard a sound and looked over at the bed to see Giselle kneeling there in her white nightgown. She almost looked like an angel in spite of her dress, and he watched her for a moment in fascination. Even through months of the trail and sickness and hardship, she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, both inside and out, and she amazed him sometimes that she had been able to stay that way through it all. The hardships had made her even more beautiful to him in a way, because he knew of the substance and character strength that lay beneath the beautiful bone structure and figure. She stood up and he looked back to his snowshoes.
He knew this last leg of the journey was going to be the most trying of all, but still he wished their time together wasn’t almost gone. For about the ninetieth time, he wondered if there wasn’t some way that they could stay together, but it always came down to the fact that he had committed to going all the way to California and was not a man who went back on his word
. And she had given up everything in her whole life to make this journey to the Mormon Zion, and he wasn’t a member of her Church anyway. At least not yet. Maybe he could come back to her valley next spring and she would still be unmarried. The very thought of her married to someone else, especially as a second wife, made him feel as ornery as that darned rogue mule.
That day, Trace finished moving all but the last few things that they’d need out of the wagon and stored them inside the cave. They took the money out of the false bottom, packed it securely in a leather bag, and stuffed it down into a bag of dried beans for the trip. Then Trace began to painstakingly wall off the back section of the cave with the chunks of rock that lay nearby. He finished the snowshoes, made a rough cloak for her out of the elk hide that Many Feathers had given her, and then fashioned packs for the mules and both of them to use on the walk out. He made her some fur lined mittens and rough boots for both of them out of the bear hide. They weren’t beautiful, but they would keep them from getting frozen feet at least.
Giselle finished the long awaited stockings, and they laughed together at how funny they looked before she packed them away and did a last washing of their clothes. She was going to have to leave most of her things here in the cave, and some little quirk of her personality demanded that she leave them all clean in case they didn’t stay packed in the back cave as they hoped. The idea of someone getting into her under things was very troubling to her. She washed everything, then took her underclothes out and hung them from the hoops of the wagon cover so she didn’t have to face Trace weaving in and out of her undies hanging inside with their outerwear. He laughed at her again when he realized what she was doing out there. By that evening, they were dead tired, but ready to go except for the last few things they’d need right up until the last minute.
Journey of Honor A love story Page 18
