He found Bright.
“There’s a farm a few miles west, but they’re as hostile as the rest. Their view is biblical. We are the Apocalypse descending on their people. I confess, I don’t know how to deal with that.”
“Let them be! We’re here! We feel as if we’ve come home. Something’s stirring us. It’s as if this is what they’ve waited for, struggled for.”
“We’ll stay, then. But I should warn you, this is reserved land, or that’s what I was told. The Church’s holding it for more of the Saints as they come.”
“But it’s not patented land! It’s free for the taking. Preempt it and when the surveying is done and it can be legally described, then file on it.”
Skye pondered it. “You know that the Mormons may fight you for it, even if they don’t claim it.”
“When they see our infirmary, Mister Skye, they’ll have a change of heart.”
Skye looked at this meadow, nestling so serenely in the red rock, and knew it was as good a place as any. The air was soft and dry. Maybe things would work out. Courage and quietness and industry might yet win the day.
“All right, Enoch. I’m going to start hunting while you start building and preparing your fields. Maybe you could plant some winter wheat. Food’s the thing. We’ve got to lay in food or starve.”
Maybe he could make meat. It had been a while since anyone in the company had tasted meat. He climbed up on Jawbone, who was snapping at horseflies, nodded to Victoria and Mary, and rode slowly up the creek, looking for deer scat. This ought to be mule deer country. He rode quietly, his senses aware of the wildlife around him. But one thing he did not see was evidence of any deer. He thought he would find something: this was the afternoon feeding hour, the drinking hour, the time when deer were moving from place to place. And yet he met only silence. A faint game trail took him slowly uphill, where the tributary tumbled over rapids. He continued slowly, carefully, studying surrounding hills and ridges and red rock cliffs, and saw nothing. He let Jawbone work his way up a steep slope, and then they reached a high plateau that the creek drained. Still no wildlife. But here, at least, in the fading light, he found some evidence of bedding. Deer had rested here, hollowing the grass.
There had to be game. This was fairly good game country, grass and water and shelter and brush. And yet he found none. Had the deer been shot away by settlers? Had the newly armed Paiutes killed off the deer? He couldn’t say. But this was not the Great Plains, teeming with animals. He would not find great bears, many elk, or many deer or antelope. He doubted that he would see a buffalo.
At twilight, he knew he had done what he could this time. He turned Jawbone back to camp, filled with a deepening desperation.
He could not feed this group by supplying meat. He and his family could not even stay; they would need to head for the Great Plains soon, make meat and tan buffalo robes, which was their only real source of income when guiding didn’t pay. He felt bad because he knew he would have to tell them what their chances were.
Tomorrow he might make meat. But what of the next day, and the day after that? December, January, February? How did one keep a large company alive until the crops came in next summer—if they came in at all? How could he supply them with a deer a day for two hundred days?
Heavy-hearted, he and Jawbone slowly worked down the creek to the soft-lit meadow where the camp rested comfortably in the gloaming.
They had eaten oatmeal. Skye released Jawbone from the saddle and hackamore, and turned his young medicine horse loose to graze. Jawbone trotted off to the creek to stick his ugly snout in the cool water.
Victoria and Mary appraised him and his empty saddle, and knew he had failed. Wordlessly he spooned some oat gruel, the only food that this company had left, into a wooden bowl and ate it. They were all staring at him, expecting this highly touted and famous guide to bring them abundant meat.
“Enoch, we should have a word,” he said, inviting the leader of this group to his family’s fire.
“We’re in more of a dilemma than you may know,” he said. “There’s deer, but the population is thin. We can’t count on my hunting to keep all of us fed until crops come in. It comes down to this. We need to find people who can sell or trade for food. There’s no escaping it. These people have food stored in their granaries, but it’s not for us to have. If we stay here, we’ll swiftly starve. We’re on the brink of it right now.”
“Move, then, sir?”
“Not right away. One swift hunt doesn’t prove anything. But over the next days if I make no meat, then we’re going to need to move along until we find some people who can help us.”
“I’m no diplomat,” Bright said.
“I’m not either. I’d rather wrestle a grizzly bear than try to bargain with these people.”
“What do we do?” Bright asked.
“Sterling’s a Saint, more or less. They won’t listen to me; they might listen to him. I think it’s going to be up to him to bargain for food. He has the Morgan horse. We can give him a spare horse to trade for grain. I don’t have any other idea.”
Bright sighed. “It’s the sick I’m feeling for,” he said. “They made it clear across a continent, hoping to heal, not starve to death.”
thirty-eight
No one wanted to leave this Eden. All the doubts had dissolved. It was as if these people had crossed a continent to come to this very spot. The horses and mules grazed peacefully on cured grass, while the invalids soaked up the gentle breezes and warm sun. They washed their travel-worn clothing, washed blankets, and slept. The red rock cliffs formed an amphitheater open on the south that nurtured and protected them and would keep winter at bay. A laughing creek running crystal cold water succored them.
“Don’t ask me how I know it, but I do,” Sterling Peacock said. “This was what my father looked for. He had an image in his mind, and he gave that image to me even though he was describing a place he’d never seen. He told me what the air would be like; warm and dry, like velvet in the lungs. I have a strange sense of recognition, sir. I’ve never before seen this corner of the world, and yet I knew it, I welcomed it, as soon as I saw it.”
“Then we’ll find a way to stay,” Skye said.
Mary of the Shoshones, aware of things that the rest knew little of, walked quietly up a game trail and into the piñon pine forest and harvested cones, which she brought to camp and roasted until the cones opened and discharged their pine nuts. She gathered these in amazing quantities, and soon she and Victoria were taking ponies up the creek to the pine forests and loading them with piñon pinecones from above.
The big long nuts, filled with white meat, astonished everyone. This was delicious food, and nourishing too. Then Enoch Bright, armed with his fowling piece, began his own hunting and surprised a flock of wild turkeys, shot half a dozen, and returned laden with meat. The rich turkey meat seemed every bit as delicious as the meat of the domesticated turkeys these New Englanders had known.
Off a way, on the trail along the Virgin, an occasional mounted traveler passed by, but none ever paused at the isolated camp of the New Bedford Infirmary Company. Skye suspected that the company was being monitored; there was nothing in all the territory of Utah that did not escape the Saints.
He rode Jawbone high into the canyon country, looking for larger game, but the deer or elk or mountain sheep eluded him and he returned empty-handed each trip. After that, he helped his women harvest pine nuts. The piñon forests were endless, stretching as far as the eye could see, and there might be months of food for anyone who made the effort to collect the cones and roast the nuts out of them.
The ponies and mules fattened; the invalids inhaled the velvet air, and seemed less gaunt and desperate. The Jones brothers, aware that this company needed to prepare for cold, took time to build pole-frame structures and enclose them with wagon sheets and the spare canvas. They began to collect firewood against the chilly months to come.
Enoch shot more turkeys after the first were eaten, an
d Skye marveled that nature here was offering her riches in her own way. Skye thought he had lived too long in the northern Rockies to grasp what might be edible here. More and more, he struck out on foot, carrying his Sharps but not expecting to use it, looking for whatever nature provided. It was a learning time for him. Different foods, different meat.
But the sweetest pleasure of all was simply the change in mood among these desperate young people. Where there had been pinched faces, now he saw smiles; where there had been fever and fear, now he saw peace and quietness taking hold in their bosoms. They were not entirely quiet. Often they would rest an hour or two, then do some simple task such as washing their clothes, and return to their blankets.
The nights were chill, but the canvas-walled housing was protection enough for the time being. This was September; by November, their needs would be different. Skye began to survey the surrounding country for firewood. There was not a lot of deadwood close by, but plenty upslope, and he would need to drag a lot of it down to the meadow. The mesas and slopes above were loaded with dead pine. The sweet scent of piñon smoke was remarkable, almost like the healing sweetgrass smoke some tribes used as a form of catharsis. And the pinecones that had yielded their nuts would make a good fuel too.
He allowed himself to believe that these people could manage here after all, in spite of his dour instinct that nature was too niggardly to yield food and heat and shelter in this place. There was more to all this than he had ever dreamed.
Mickey the Pick was the only restless soul. He often wandered down to the Virgin River and scanned it, as if looking for a passing traveler—or danger. He took it upon himself to become the eyes and ears of the company, sometimes patrolling up and down the river, keeping an eye out for trouble.
One night, at Skye’s campfire, he spilled his worries.
“You may think it’s all jist fine, bloke, but I think we’re in blawdy trouble, and the Saints, they’ll put a stake through our’earts.”
“Why do you say that?” Skye asked.
“Because this is Zion. You know what Zion is? Sanctuary. We’re in the middle of their bloomin’ sanctuary. We’re camping on the altar.”
“But there aren’t many Saints anywhere near here, Mister Pick.”
“Mister Pick, Mister Pick! When’ll youse get over your bad’abits, eh? The Saints are’ere, and you’ll see them soon enough and you won’t enjoy it when they come.”
“Are they at war?”
“I picked up a bit of news, I did, talkin’ to a rider jist today. That federal column, it’s knocking at the gates. Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, that’s what they say. He’s not far from that post up there, Bridger′s Fort, zat the name? The Saints, they’re going to burn it down before the federals get there. That’s the talk, anyway.”
“Yes, that’s the name I heard. We passed through there. The Saints had squeezed the owners out. That’s where we first ran into trouble.”
“Well, the blawdy feds, they’re going to snatch it if it’s not arsh first. That Yank colonel, he’s in no hurry, just plodding along like he knows all the quail’s going to scatter once he marches into Great Salt Lake. But the Saints, they’ve got twenty-five hundred armed men, just waiting, and a mess of Indians too.”
“Who told you this, Mister Pick?”
“You got bad habits, matey. Mister Pick! I stop the horsemen, tell’em I’m a Saint and I want the news, and they sure give it to me.”
“A lot of horsemen?”
“Blawdy parade of’em down the river a piece. Something big’s stirring, that’s for sure.”
“Where are they coming from? Where are they going?”
“It’s coming out of Cedar City. The’orsemen, they go back and forth from there.”
“Do they know we’re here?”
“Saints know every yard of the whole country, they do. If it’s not us being bothered, it’s because they got bigger fish to fry. A big wagon company rolled through Cedar City few days ago, Pukes, it’s said. Them from Missouri or Illinois that persecuted the Saints. That’s what’s stirring up the’ornets.”
“Maybe they’ll leave us alone, then.”
“Saints don’t leave nobody who’s Gentile alone, let me tell youse.”
“What would they do to us?”
“Right now, everyone all’eated up, matey, they’d do whatever they damned please.”
“We’re entirely at their mercy.”
“You can count on it.”
Mickey ate a bowl of oat gruel mixed with pine nuts, pronounced himself well fed, and drifted off into the purple twilight. Skye tried to process what he knew. This was their Zion. Settling here would be, in their eyes, taking land from them. War brought extreme feelings and extreme measures.
He didn’t like it a bit. He knew how to deal with wilderness, with wild animals, with surviving, but this time of passion, of mobs, of militia, was something he knew little about.
“Some time, some night, these damned Saints, they’ll come and kill us all,” Victoria said, out of the blue.
Mary stared somberly. Skye looked at her, at their son, lying on a robe, his brown eyes focused on his mother. He felt Victoria’s love and her worries. Maybe, somehow, they could slip away from here, hide in the canyon lands while this war lasted and then quietly return. The federal army would keep the peace.
It was a good thought, and he wondered what sort of hidden valley lay straight up this creek. He knew now that the land could support them, at least awhile. From high points he had seen vast piñon forests stretching in all directions across the high country, forests laden with pine nuts.
“No damned hiding from them people,” she said. “They got the big eye.”
He knew she was right. These Saints were gifted, tenacious, courageous people, and they had swiftly become masters of a sprawling desert empire. He could not hide a dozen sick people from them for long. Their only safety lay in friendship.
Skye thought about it and came to a reluctant conclusion.
“I’ll ride up there to Cedar City and talk with those people a bit. I want to talk to the leaders, not the ones who take orders. The ones who make the decisions. The elders. The bishop. I think maybe I can make some headway, even if they’re all primed for a war.”
“What did they do to Jim Bridger, eh?” she asked.
He and Victoria already knew the answer. They had trumped up some charges about selling weapons to Indians, gotten a warrant, and came after him with a posse. Skye didn’t doubt they could do the same to him. He was simply another minor obstacle in their path.
“I have to go,” he said.
“Talk! Ha! They ain’t talking.”
She rose softly, settled beside him, and touched his face. It was an old, old gesture whose meaning was well known to both of them. She was saying that if he rode alone up there, tried to persuade them to do something they wouldn’t consider, she would send her love along with him, whatever his fate.
But he had to go. These invalids might be camping in paradise, but at any moment heaven could turn into hell.
thirty-nine
Skye was reluctant to leave the peaceful camp on the meadow, but knew he must. In any case, nothing he could do would make the camp any safer. Whether or not he was present, the encampment would be vulnerable. The thing to do was settle the matter with the Saints and that meant a long trip to Cedar City.
Mickey the Pick joined him, riding the Morgan horse. Maybe they’d listen to a pair of Londoners. Skye headed up the creek toward the high country, aware that he could trap himself in box canyons and mesas, but he thought he could get through to Cedar City. Little did he realize that Mickey could scarcely ride, and bounced along helplessly behind Skye. It was too late to worry about that. The little East End pickpocket would learn how to ride before the end of the trip or live with a bruised butt and chapped legs for weeks.
They saw no one. This land was so vast it could swallow armies. There was only sun and wind, silences, red rock and yellow ro
ck, cedar and pine. The usual route, Skye knew, involved a dogleg west and then north up Ash Creek, valley travel all the way; but he was cutting the corner to save time, and working through high country that looked as if no man had ever ridden through.
It took an entire hard day of travel before they reached Cedar City, which was set in a desert bowl. It was not yet dusk. The city rested somnolently, its work done for the day. Here were civilized sights. Mercantiles, whitewashed frame houses with lilac bushes and roses. Picket fences. Wide avenues. The soft and sleepy air of the desert. Sometimes there were three or four identical dwellings in a row, but each had been rendered unique with curtains or plantings. This was a dusty place, and the town looked parched.
And song. Skye heard it clearly, and Mickey did too.
On a rise stood the whitewashed temple, its windows open, the evening breezes carrying song upon them through the small town. Skye steered Jawbone up a gentle grade toward the church, and in its ample yard he and Mickey paused, listening.
Up, awake, ye defenders of Zion,
The foe’s at the door of your homes.
Let each heart be the heart of a lion
Unyielding and proud as he roams,
Remember the wrongs of Missouri
Forget not the fate of Nauvoo
When the God-hating foe is before you
Stand firm and be faithful and true.
That proved to be the closing anthem of this evensong. Skye dismounted and waited. He hadn’t the faintest idea whom to contact, or what to say, or whether it would be best to wait for the morrow.
“They’re serious, mate,” Mickey said.
“They’ve been persecuted.”
“Don’t give the blokes an excuse. They’re’ell-bent to fight. Matey, they’re itching for a fight. They’ll damned well pick one.”
“You know them; I don’t,” Skye said. “Who’ll I ask for?”
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