Yet lingering still was the doubt that he would ever return to this wild, untamed land where there was no law, and certainly no church for his Gritta and the young’uns. The ache for home and family was far too strong.
It lay heavy on his heart as he moved east across the plains—this doubt he carried with him that he would ever again lay eyes on Shad Sweete’s face in this lifetime.
Yet that medicine wheel lay in the palm of his hand for the rest of that day’s long march. And the next day’s. And the next …
Boothog’s father and uncle had both known Jubilee Usher’s father, one of the original twelve apostles who came to believe in prophet Joseph Smith and his gold tablets dictating the formation of a new church, under a new people: the Latter-day Saints.
So it had been the natural, expected thing to do out in that western kingdom of Deseret to join Brigham Young’s special, handpicked military arm. With his Avenging Angels, the Mormon Prophet smote those who threatened the sanctity of the State of Deseret. Citing ancient precedent, Young empowered his hundred handpicked Danites, these Avenging Angels, to right all wrongs done the Saints, or the Mormon state.
They were vigilantes, self-empowered men who saw things through their own self-righteousness. Justice in this broad, big western land skewed to their side of the pew.
Year after year, young Lemuel Wiser had come to know the tall, imposing figure of Jubilee Usher, who was rapidly rising in influence among the more militant and self-protective of the Saints. As Wiser grew to manhood, he found the immense tower of a man all the more a capable leader of men, able to inspire and motivate, cajole when needed, threaten when necessary—but always able to get his men to do exactly what he wanted, if not exactly what Brigham Young himself desired as well.
Boothog remembered now when Jubilee first began to lose his hair, early in life for a man. Before one of those first trips east with the Mormon handicrafts for sale in Missouri and other points east. For a time, Usher felt ridiculed for this early receding of hair, then eventually learned to admire his balding head himself. He took to growing what hair there was down past his shoulders—thick and black as sin. And only in recent years had he begun to wear a mustache that curled down into a neat Vandyke beard every bit as glossy black as the boots he had one of the men shine with lampblack and grease each night in camp.
Young Wiser had yearned to take his horse and carry his new rifle along with Usher’s military escort that each spring accompanied a great wagon train of two hundred, even as many as three hundred Saints, rolling east with Mormon-made goods to sell and barter for what Brigham Young’s faithful could not acquire in their own land of Zion. And with each year’s trip east, the Church Train found more and more immigrants from the States and other countries anxiously waiting for this annual journey, so that the newcomers could join in the return trip back—an anointed gathering of Israel in Brigham’s holy valley.
In 1857 Boothog had taken his first trip east since childhood. Already tensions had blossomed again among the people of Missouri, requiring Usher to exercise a firm hand on his Mormons, reminding them that these same proslavery Missourians had been the very Gentiles to turn their guns on Mormon brethren.
“We must have nothing but the most limited contact with these sinners,” Boothog had explained to some of his friends, unaware that Usher had been near enough to overhear his admonition during that trip east in fifty-seven.
That night Jubilee Usher had called Wiser to his tent and proposed to take the young man under his wing.
“You will make a capable officer, Mr. Wiser. More than that—” Usher stuffed a slice of game hen into his huge mouth. “You might even take over the reins of this operation from me one day.”
“I could never … never think of ever being as good as you.”
Usher had smiled. “That’s good, Wiser. Affecting the modesty as you have done comes off as quite genuine. It is good that you play the role so effectively.”
“But I—”
Usher waved his hand. “We have more important things to concern ourselves with than your sincerity. What matters most is your faith in Brigham and his prophecies from God Almighty. And how well you obey, without question, the orders of his military commanders. Don’t you agree, Mr. Wiser?”
“Yes, sir.”
So it was that every day Boothog had grown more convinced of the rightness in Usher’s might. No matter the cruelty of the man—Usher carried not only the seal of the Prophet, Brigham Young, himself, but Usher claimed he had been chosen by the Prophet to lead a rebuilding of Zion’s defenses.
Most Mormon men still smarted at the military occupation of Utah by Union troops under General Albert Sidney Johnston from fifty-eight to sixty-one, ending only when the war broke out and Johnston resigned his commission to fight on the side of his beloved Confederacy, and most of the Union troops were recalled east to fight the rebels down south. Never again, the Mormons vowed, would they allow anything like that immoral and illegal occupation.
Usher was all-consumed with rebuilding the might of Deseret’s army when he led Wiser’s military escort for the Church Train east in sixty-two. It was to have been Boothog’s sixth round trip. But in south central Missouri, the great wagon procession was surprised and stopped by an imposing force of proslavers operating under a self-appointed general named Sterling Price. The Confederates moved among the disarmed Mormon men, looking each one over and selecting the best as conscripts in Price’s guerrilla campaigns against the Union.
Price reminded the surrounded Mormons that his Missouri Confederates had not forgotten the problems caused by the Mormons in years past: “My men would love nothing more than to leave you all bleeding here on the road. But let’s see if you Saints are men enough to fight the Yankees invading from the North.”
With his new draftees and his ragtag army in tow, Price marched south from there, heading for a place called Pea Ridge, leaving behind the Church Train stripped of its mules, horses, firearms, and ammunition, along with supplies and every able-bodied young male.
It was with that army of Missouri proslavers that Boothog had learned to play poker. A game to this day that he loved to play with some of the men who rode with Usher’s guerrilla band raiding across postwar Missouri. Jubilee called many of the recent converts to Mormonism his cannon fodder. Boothog liked many of the simple, ignorant, fiery Southerners for no other reason than they provided some temporary diversion while the small army waited for Jubilee to decide on moving.
They always did a lot of waiting.
The cold rains of late November were turning to sleet outside the series of limestone caves where Usher’s advance scouts under Captain Eloy Hastings had found them a place out of the weather three days before. In the back of this main cavern was a long, dark drop at the end of which a man could hear the faint splash of any rock he threw off the ledge to amuse himself. Without a lantern to guide him to the edge, he might fall into what hell no man knew waited at the bottom of that deep, black cavern.
Picketing the horses in a nearby grove and stowing their supplies in another cave, Usher’s men had settled in for what they knew would be days of restless inactivity, waiting out the passing of the first winter storm rumbling across southern Missouri.
It wasn’t their first winter in this country.
And they weren’t new at waiting either.
“Who’s next?” asked one of the Danites as he emerged from a side cavern, buttoning the fly to his britches, yanking on his belt.
A man quickly stood, jostling the crate they were using as a card table these days of waiting. “Me. I want a poke.”
Just after leading Jubilee Usher’s band to this series of caves, Hastings’s scouts had been ordered back out into what was then a drizzling rain to ride farther south and see what they could rustle up in the way of women on the nearby farms.
“The men will need a little something besides cards to keep them happy,” Usher had reminded Wiser and Captain Hastings.
“Nig
ger or white, makes no difference to my loins right now,” Boothog had replied, that devilish grin crossing his handsome face.
So it was the scouts had found a black slave girl no more than sixteen and hurrying toward a Creek Indian farm located close by when the horsemen had surrounded her. From the moment she had been dropped from the horse at the entrance to the cave three days ago, the unkempt sprigs of her black hair dripping with diamonds of sleeting rain, the girl had had little rest.
Boothog had ordered her carried to an adjoining cave, where under lamplight a few of the soldiers stripped her, staked her out, and proceeded to rotate themselves on her body—Wiser claiming first go at their skinny captive. At first she had screamed and thrashed about, until gagged. No man among Boothog’s army minded the nigger girl thrashing in the least. It only added to a man’s fun, and enjoyment.
Wiser looked up from his cards and glanced over his shoulder as the man disappeared into the chamber where the captive lay.
As his eyes came back to the crate table, Boothog thought he caught a flicker of movement from the hands of another player.
He smiled grimly. “Lay your cards down, Billy.”
The man’s eyes grew wide as the rest of the players eased back from the oblong rifle crate.
“I didn’t do nothing wrong, Boothog. Major Wiser, sir.”
“Put the goddamned cards down.”
“Yessir.” He laid them down in a neat stack.
“Count them for us, Billy Baker,” Wiser demanded as he slowly pulled the pistol from his waistband.
The rest of the card players arose suddenly and backed away as the solitary man left at the crate chewed on the end of a finger. With his thumb, Boothog drew back the pistol’s hammer.
“I said—count your cards.”
“Just playing a little poker with you, Major. I fold. See? I fold. Hand’s all done.”
Baker started to shove his cards under some others when Boothog slammed his hand down onto the man’s wrist. With the pistol shoved under the soft underside of Baker’s chin, Wiser slowly spread the cards.
“One … two … three … four—and five.”
“See, Major? Just like I—”
“What’s this, Billy? Why, it’s a sixth pasteboard,” Wiser declared sinisterly as he slowly pulled free the extra card.
Things became a blur in that next heartbeat as Baker attempted to bat the pistol barrel aside and the hammer fell, sending a bullet into the card player’s mouth, crashing on through the brain, and splintering out the top of his head with a wet, slimy explosion of blood and gore.
The body fell backward from the crate of hardtack, trembling in death throes.
Boothog rose after glancing at the rest, their eyes wide and hollow with shock. He walked over, held the muzzle of his pistol inches from the victim’s heart and pulled the trigger a second time. Baker’s shirt grew damp and shiny. Wiser knelt and picked through the dead man’s pockets, pulling out what little money there was.
“Bring me his bedroll,” Wiser commanded. “I get first call on the bastard’s things.”
“Get the body out of here,” Usher’s voice boomed from the roof of the cavern. “It’s beginning to smell a bit in here already.”
Wiser turned, smiling. “It is, isn’t it, Colonel?”
“Men die a violent death like that—they’re apt to fill their britches with shit,” Jubilee replied. “Dispose of the body now, Major.”
Wiser turned to the other players. “You heard the colonel. Take Baker’s body back to the far end of the cave and throw him down.”
One of the players who had hold of Baker’s leg snarled at the others. “I got call on his boots, I do.”
“Hurry up!” Wiser snapped. “Throw him down in that cave and get on back here. I got money to win. And then I want to dip my stinger in that nigger gal’s honey pot again before I take me a nap.”
14
Late January, 1866
HE HAD BEEN nearly three months getting here from Fort Laramie. Cold and wet and scared most of the way. Knowing that in the next few minutes when he finally stood on the hillside overlooking the homestead, he would at last feel a lot different.
God, how he wanted to hold Gritta. Just hold her. And hug his children. Until they cried for him to stop.
Then sit in front of the fireplace he had built with his own hands from rock quarried at the nearby creekbank. Drink the sweet milk they always kept cooling down in the limestone springhouse in the woods behind the cabin. He hadn’t had a drink of cow’s milk in …
Jonah couldn’t remember now. That’s how long it had been.
Drop after drop of sleet sliding off the stringy strands of oily hair at the back of his neck made Hook all the colder as he huffed to the crest of the hill where the north wind greeted him full in the face.
He drew a long breath of it, not minding its cold. For in the near valley he would finally see his home. Snowflakes lanced straight down from the icy clouds, then danced momentarily on the cruel gusts of wind cutting through the bare trees. He startled a flock of black-winged crows from their roost. They went cawing over him with a noisy clatter of wings and protest. And then it was quiet once more, except for the moaning sigh of the wind tormenting the skeletal branches brushing the underside of a low-belly sky.
He stood on one foot a moment, shaking the other. The side seam on each boot had split weeks back, just before reaching Fort Leavenworth, where he and the rest had to wait, and wait some more while the army got around to mustering them out. Because the Confederates were being discharged, the Yankees who were turning their army into Indian fighters weren’t about to issue any new shoes or boots to those soon-to-be civilians who needed them.
“G’won home barefoot, for all I care,” snapped a quartermaster’s sergeant at Leavenworth. “I’m saving these boots for Injun fighters. Not Yankee killers.”
What Jonah had left of stockings were now drenched and incapable of keeping his feet warm where the rain and mud and snow crept in through the split seam. It did not matter now. Just another mile or so was all they had to last, these boots, his feet, and he. His good broughams awaited him down there under their bed.
That made him worry of a sudden just how he would be with Gritta tonight when the lampwicks were rolled low and the children’s rhythmic breathing was all the two of them could hear from the loft overhead. That, and the reassuring crackle of a hardwood fire from his stone fireplace. How would she respond to his great appetite for her? After these years without a woman, and finally able to push that need aside of late … only to stand here now on the hillside above their farm and know he wanted that one woman like he had never wanted her before.
He’d be twenty-nine this spring, yet still felt his cheeks go hot now at how randy he felt. Like a stud colt for the first time snuffling the moist heat of a mare in the breeding corral. His eyes sought to penetrate the low clouds and wispy fog sticky among the bony hardwoods in the valley below.
Perhaps some of that’s smoke from the stone chimney—
But the more he squinted through the swirl of a few darting snowflakes, Jonah grew more certain that none of it was smoke rising from the chimney he had laid stone by stone.
“Maybe they gone over to Uncle Moser’s place,” he said to assure himself as he emerged from the trees.
Almost by feel beneath last autumn’s great dropping of leaf and the winter’s wet snow still clinging to the ground in icy slicks, his feet located the game trail that would take him down to the spring behind the cabin, right where he had built the limestone root cellar—there by the clear, cold spring where the deer and the other critters came to drink of a morning. A long-used game trail, worn by his feet across the many years he and Gritta had built their life together here in Missouri, at the far end of the same valley where his mother’s brother, Amos Moser, had homesteaded years before Jonah ever stood tall enough to climb atop a plow mule by himself.
Of a sudden he stopped. The cabin was clearly in view for th
e first time. Unsure if he should believe his eyes. A section of corral posts busted down and no animals to be found.
Two more steps and he stopped again, now able to see the yard between cabin and barn where one of its big doors lay in the icy mud like a sawyer in the river, the other door mournfully creaking with a ghostly whisper on its cracked leather hinges, ready to give up and join its brother on the ground.
Beyond, the fields were overgrown. Uncared for … for months now.
She’s gone to live with the Mosers, he told himself. I been so long getting back—what with her having to care for the children alone, the work and all. Maybe, goddammit, she give up on me ever coming back and went back to her family in Virginia.
The fear struck him more cold than any wind-driven sleet could at that moment.
He was cursing his luck, the Union, and the frontier army that had galvanized him out of Rock Island Prison and sent him off to the plains to fight Injuns—
But then his feet stopped him again, staring at the two windows he had been able to afford putting into the front of the cabin. What with the high price of glazing, he and Gritta bought only two when they raised the cabin from the valley floor. Both were broken, on either side of the dark, gaping rectangle where the door had once held out the cold Missouri winter.
From both holes fluttered the curtains Gritta had made years ago, looking now like the petticoats kicked up and swirled around pairs of plump knees on those chippies who worked the soldiers for all they were worth, night after night in those watering holes and brothels down in Dobe Town just outside Fort Kearney in Nebraska Territory.
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