Virgin River

by Richard S. Wheeler

How had Peacock known of this overlook? Not even Hunsaker, who had been over this trail scores of times, had known of it. There were mysteries beyond fathoming.

  They all stood quietly, while Hiram Peacock stared through that notch in the towering range.

  Then he turned to Skye and Hunsaker.

  “Thank you. I am done,” he said.

  They thought to carry him away, but Hiram Peacock had closed his eyes, and Skye knew at once he was dead. So did the rest. They stared, astonished. Skye gently shook the man, but it was a superfluous gesture. The man who had led this healing expedition two thousand miles was gone.

  Sterling Peacock knelt, pulled Hiram’s limp hand into his own, and held it.

  “Thank you, Papa. You are the Good Father. You brought us here safely. We’ll soon be home. I will see to it.”

  The youth could not continue, but sat beside his father, saying good-bye. Now Sterling was alone, the last of his family.

  In some mysterious fashion, those who stayed below knew what had transpired up on this flat. Those who could struggle toward this benchland had come partway. Now they were clumped together at the foot of the steepest rise. Skye saw Anna Bennett, the Bridge sisters, Ashley Tucker. Only Peter Sturgeon was not present. And somehow they all knew. Mary and Victoria had come, and had kept a little distance from the consumptives. Yes, they all knew. How could they know? But they did.

  Skye lifted his ancient top hat from his head, and it was an acknowledgment of death and a mark of respect. The others beside him pulled their slouch hats from their heads also, thus joining Skye in a moment of quietness. It was over. He who had dreamed a great dream had perished.

  Skye peered at that vee in the western mountains, feeling the mysterious power of that view. Hiram Peacock had seen the promise of it. Maybe he should stay here, his face turned west, for all time.

  There was a way.

  “Sterling, would you like to bury your father here?” Skye asked.

  “But it’s rock.”

  “Many’s the time when I was in the mountains that we buried a man where there was no soil at all, in places like this. We are at the foot of a broken cliff, with many a cleft in it. We can bury him in a cleft, facing where he wanted to go.”

  Sterling looked doubtful.

  “Or we can take him down a way, and bury him beside a creek where there’s earth to receive him, son.”

  Sterling stood, gazing at that bright notch in the mountains, and the sunny blue desert beyond. Skye knew how hard it was for the young man to make such a decision.

  “Here,” Sterling said. “Facing us. Facing where we will be.”

  Soon, Hunsaker′s teamsters had wrapped Hiram Peacock in canvas, tied it tight, and placed him in a great cleft in the red cliff, where he could gaze forever westward, toward his own. And then they all filled the cleft with rock, until no animal would ever unearth Peacock’s bones.

  And then Skye descended to where the rest waited, partly down the slope.

  “We will say good-bye now,” he said.

  twenty-one

  Skye peered into the faces of those desperate young people, and knew their fear. He pressed the brim of his hat against his chest, somehow turning the moment into an oath of office.

  “We’ve lost Hiram Peacock, but we’ll go on. Mister Bright will see to it. My family and I’ll see to it. Sterling Peacock will see to it too. We’ll proceed exactly as Hiram Peacock planned, and exactly as he described his mission to his son.

  “Sterling’s in charge now. He’s one of you. I’ll take my instruction from him and from Mister Bright.”

  But nothing he said allayed their fear. They were sick, helpless, and without their protector. He could read their faces and see it. He realized just how profoundly Hiram Peacock’s vision of health and healing had infused them, and how much they all looked up to him. They would be doubtful of Skye, the man of the western mountains, and there was nothing he could do about it except to take them where they were going.

  “Mister Peacock faces west now, where his gaze will watch over us,” he added.

  “Always assuming the dead see, an unsound proposition,” Bright observed. “But I have long speculated that thought is but galvanic energy that is released from our minds into the ether, and if that proposition stands scrutiny, then Hiram Peacock’s thoughts must be radiating into the universe, waiting to be recognized and plucked up.” Bright paused. “Ghosts. Night visions. Dreams. We’ll listen for the man.”

  The mechanic’s odd cosmology seemed to be his alone, and the ill ignored it. But Skye was rather taken with it.

  Hunsaker was eager to be off, and his men were standing restlessly, wanting to head to Great Salt Lake, to their homes, their wives and families.

  The young convalescents drifted back to the train, pensively. Everything was different now. It was as if no one believed he would be healed now. Only Hiram Peacock’s adamant and inflexible belief that the desert would heal them had banished disbelief. But now Skye saw a glumness in them. They had gone from believers to agnostics. And maybe in some, disbelief was slowly twining itself around their hearts.

  They traveled uneventfully to Great Salt Lake City, which lay on a plain west of the mountains. It was laid out on the compass, orderly, sunny, and peaceful, almost Mediterranean in the summer sun. It was still more a village than a city, though. It had been erected by journeyman carpenters and millwrights and smiths and joiners and stonemasons, a city rich with skills even if its people were poor. Its very orderliness spoke of a vision they shared, a community of believers safe in this isolated and arid land so far from the rest of the States, which had ejected them. A mighty church was being built to the north.

  Mary, who had never seen a white man’s city, apart from the sprawl of Fort Laramie, stared at these orderly rows of white frame houses, some with gingerbread trim, with real glass windows, shake roofs, lilac bushes and hollyhocks, and shaded porches. She lifted her cradleboard until North Star could see these strange things and perhaps glimpse something of his own heritage in this place. The few people walking the streets, women in bonnets and great skirts and bulging bodices, smiled at the whole entourage and stared curiously at Skye’s women.

  Hunsaker simply took his wagon company through wide clay streets to his shop, a narrow clapboard affair that sprawled back from the street front to an alley behind. There he and his teamsters paused, the oxen sagging in their yokes before the store. A painted sign said “Furniture, New and Used. Household Items. Peter Hunsaker, Prop.” This day would add scores of new items ransacked from the trail to Hunsaker′s stock of goods, all of them unusually valuable so far from any place where these things were manufactured.

  There was an awkward pause. Skye knew that he and Enoch would need to detach their wagons and be on their way. The teamsters were eager to unload, care for the livestock, and go to their own homes.

  “Thank you, Mister Hunsaker. You’ve brought us here safely,” Skye said.

  “It was what a Saint must do.”

  “It was what you personally did.”

  “All right, say that about me. The sick, how can a man not help the sick? Now before we part company, I propose a trade. You happen to have two saddle horses, prizes taken in combat. Now I can sell good saddle horses at a handsome price here. There never are enough of them. You, on the other hand, have a great want of livestock. So my proposition is, would you trade the saddle horses for those mules of mine, currently harnessed to the light wagon? I’m afraid I would have the better of it, offering you a pair of miserable Missouri mules for that brace of saddlers, but if you could see your way clear …”

  “Done!” said Skye, before Enoch Bright could engineer an objection.

  Hunsaker smiled slightly. “Come in, Mister Skye, while I draft a bill of sale. My men will collect your nags.”

  Skye plunged into the cool dark interior, mostly barren of merchandise because the store could not meet the demands of the Saints for household goods. Hunsaker lit an oil lamp, dip
ped a nib pen into an inkwell, and scratched out the sale.

  He handed it to Skye, and the pair of them clasped hands, and then Hunsaker escorted Skye to the door. Already, his teamsters were unloading the freight wagons.

  “We’ll go on now,” Skye said. “One question, sir: we need to replenish, and have only the Morgan horse to trade. These young people need food. What’s a good horse worth, and where do we go for provisions?”

  “Good Morgan horse is worth plenty. But I’m no judge of it.”

  “Where do we go?”

  “We’re on State Street. You need to go to Fourth. Parley’s Dry Goods, or Kimball’s Groceries.”

  Skye swore there was a halo behind Hunsaker′s head, and laughed. Their handshake was rough and strong.

  Hunsaker was obviously anxious to release his men, so Skye and his party drove quietly south to Fourth, and then east to a cluster of mercantile buildings. Kimball’s was a false-front white frame structure with a hitch rail in front. This was a busy place, with women ducking into one store or another to fill their wicker baskets. Skye hardly saw a male on the street.

  Skye and Bright entered, and Skye intuitively let Bright negotiate. He thought maybe a limey with two Indian wives might be at a disadvantage.

  A bald man stood behind a polished counter. This was no crude frontier store, but a remarkably well-fitted building.

  “We’re passing through, and would like to trade, sir,” Bright said. “What would an excellent Morgan horse bring?”

  “I have no use for a horse.”

  “This is a fine saddler; ride him if you want. And he’s well broke to harness and the plow.”

  “How old?”

  “Five, plenty young, and not a thing wrong with him. He’s one of Justin Morgan’s own stock, purchased for two hundred fifty dollars in Massachusetts.”

  “Well, you won’t get that here. I’ll have my clerk look him over. I’m busy. Ah, what is it you want?”

  “Staples: flour, sugar, coffee—”

  Kimball frowned. “Ne’er coffee nor tea, ne’er spirits shall this store stock.”

  “Yes, I forgot. But you have flour and lard?”

  “In plentiful.” He turned to a skinny lad with a prominent Adam’s apple. “Cogswell, go try that nag.”

  The youth ducked through the double doors, studied Skye’s women a moment, and headed straight for the chestnut horse at the rail. He picked up feet, examined the hooves for cracks, looked for fistulas on the withers, examined the teeth, lifted the tail looking for bots, and once satisfied, led the horse in a few circles looking for a limp, and then sprang up, riding the Morgan a few hundred yards before returning to the hitch rail.

  The youth materialized inside. “He’s a fair decent horse but I know the sort; he’ll be barn sour, and a stump sucker.”

  “I’m afraid your terms evade me,” Bright said.

  “This one’ll head for the barn if he can, it takes a stern rein to hold him, and he’ll chew on any wood in a stall.”

  “How do you know that? It’s not true.”

  The youth was grinning.

  “Twenty-five for him,” Kimball said. “Taken in merchandise, no cash.”

  “A tenth? A tenth of his value?”

  “That’s my top and final offer, gents.”

  He stood behind his polished counter, smiling gravely.

  “What’s flour the hundredweight?” Skye asked.

  Kimball eyed him. “Where are you from?”

  “Long ago, London.”

  “I thought so. I can tell a man’s home within a dozen miles, I always say. Flour′s twelve dollars a hundredweight.”

  “Then a first-rate buffalo robe?”

  “I have no use for a buffalo robe. Try haggling me and I just raise my prices. Now it’s fourteen a hundredweight.”

  “I can offer you a good Hawken rifle, shoots true.”

  “A Hawken, is it? Let me see it.”

  Skye slid outside, into the mild sun and peacefulness of Great Salt Lake City, and pulled his Hawken off one of the travois.

  “Your rifle?” Victoria asked.

  “One of them,” Skye replied, carrying the faithful old Hawken into the store.

  “You can have this rifle for a hundredweight of your best flour, ten of lard, ten of sugar, and ten of dried fruit.”

  Kimball studied it, sourly. “One pound of lard, just one pound. No sugar. It comes clear from Argentina or some place. And one pound of dried apples.”

  Kimball looked ready to pitch Skye out the door.

  Skye caved in. “All right,” he said.

  Kimball summoned his clerk, who collected the stuff.

  “Want him to carry it out?”

  “We’ll do that,” Skye said.

  “We need rifles,” Kimball said, grinning. “Saints need firearms just now. You gave it away.”

  Skye hunkered down inside of himself.

  And so they left Great Salt Lake City with only a hundred pounds of flour and little more. He wanted five hundred of wheat and oats and barley, lard, tea and coffee. Skye wasn’t sure how he could keep all those sick people fed or clothed, especially in the desert. For that matter, he didn’t even know where he was heading. He was in country he had never seen, and among people he only vaguely understood.

  twenty-two

  The trail south from Great Salt Lake City wound through settled country, much of it irrigated. Skye marveled at how much the Saints had accomplished in ten years. The fields were bursting now with wheat and oats and barley as well as potatoes, corn, cabbages, and other vegetables. Emerald pastures nurtured sheep and a few cattle, poultry, and hogs. Some orderly young fruit orchards promised rich harvests soon. All of this was watered from ditches brimming with diverted river water flowing out of the Wasatch Mountains. This was their land of milk and honey, but its emerging abundance had been wrought from endless toil.

  Skye’s small party, just two wagons, one still drawn by oxen and the other with Hunsaker’s well-fed mules, worked slowly south through mild weather that blistered them only during midafternoon, and cooled quickly in the evenings. They trailed through sleepy farm villages, with a few mercantiles huddled together, and always a temple dominating the village square or the center of the town. Sometimes bearded farmers paused to watch them, their gaze guarded. Few women were in sight, but a row of identical frame houses here and there spoke of plural marriage; a man’s several families all in an orderly line along a road. Many had clotheslines strung across their yards, from which dangled breeze-dancing union suits and petticoats and chambray shirts and stiff britches. These caught the attention of Victoria and Mary, who studied undergarments and outer garments with a fascination that puzzled Skye.

  Once in a while they ran into traffic. This was Utah’s great artery, connecting the villages in the south to the capital. These were sometimes high-sided freight wagons drawn by slobbering oxen, sometimes a spring wagon or a buggy drawn by trotters, occasionally horsemen. They stared at Skye’s odd ensemble, the wagons and teams, his wives, his ponies and travois, Enoch Bright teamstering beside the oxen, the Jones brothers beside the mule team, the pale, sick young people sitting on the tailgates. They were oddly silent, sometimes stern, somehow recognizing at once that these were not Saints.

  But then a bull-shouldered man with a jutting brown beard driving a black carriage hailed them.

  “What you got there, stranger?” he asked of Skye.

  “I’m Mister Skye, sir, and these are my wives, Mary and Victoria. We’re taking some people to the desert.”

  “Passing through to California, are you?”

  “The desert out west.”

  “You’ll want to go to California and not stop. You’ll not want to stop anywhere in Deseret.”

  “We don’t plan to.”

  “Not for food, not for supplies. You will not talk to people.”

  “We’ll be looking for provisions. We hope to trade.”

  “What’s in those wagons?”

>   Skye thought the man was probing a little too hard. “Have a look,” he said.

  “You tell me and tell me now.”

  “Who am I talking to, sir?”

  “It matters not.”

  Skye lifted that top hat, contemplated it, and made a decision.

  “Then we’ll be on our way.”

  He touched heels to Jawbone, who started forward, ready to sink his yellow teeth into this man in the buggy. But a subtle signal from Skye cooled the horse.

  “Likely it is you’ll regret your insolence,” the man said.

  The bearded man didn’t move his carriage aside, but sat quietly, reining in his trotter, while Skye’s women passed to the side.

  But as Bright and his oxen pulled up, the man raised a buggy whip.

  “Stop there,” he said. “Your name?”

  “Bright, sir. New Bedford, Massachusetts. And you?”

  “What are you carrying?”

  “Necessaries, my friend.”

  “Who are these children?”

  “All from New Bedford, sir. We are heading into the desert on their account. Most are adults.”

  “I know that. Where are the parents of these children?”

  “Oh, they’re back East.”

  “Who owns them?”

  Bright was taken aback. “Why, I imagine they rightly own themselves.”

  “They are minors, collected here and possessed by you, or Skye there?”

  Bright looked amused. “They were bound over to Hiram Peacock to be taken to a sanitarium in the desert. It is a plan filled with mercy and hope. But he perished near Fort Bridger, and we’re carrying on, friend. I am their guardian.”

  “Perished?”

  “He was killed by a ruffian, sir. A fist to the bellows. The criminal is even now guiding a wagon company a day or two ahead of us. His name is Manville, and it would be a blessing if this territory’s constables were to pinch him.”

  The bull-shouldered man stepped down from his ebony carriage and hiked past the wagons, peering at the pale young people, especially those lying in the second wagon or sitting on its tailgate.

  He whirled suddenly toward Lloyd Jones. “You. Who are these children?”