“From now on, you’re Lord Cutpurse,” Skye said. “Ladies, meet Lord Cutpurse.”
But the name meant nothing to them. They stared.
Swiftly, Skye collected and saddled his wives’ ponies. Mary slipped North Star into the cradleboard. The child had almost outgrown the board, and would soon be riding in a shawl wrapped around Mary’s shoulder and back.
They left in a hurry. Skye knew that food was going to be a problem. All those pine nuts so painfully harvested had gone with the wagon. But what was more important, at that moment, was catching up. The Saint militia had almost a day’s head start.
They made good time, and would have done even better if Lord Cutpurse had known more about riding a horse. The militia was not visible, but the wheel tracks were plain, and Skye knew that it would not take more than a day or so to catch up with slow-moving Mormons. Just what he would do when he spotted the armed force ahead he wasn’t sure; whatever he did, it would require the cloak of night.
He let Jawbone set the pace, and the ugly brute chose a bone-jarring trot out of sheer perversity. Trotting never wearied a nag, even if the trot pounded the tailbone of any rider. Victoria’s eyes became slits, but she didn’t complain. Only Lord Cutpurse complained. He howled and growled, and cursed Skye and his whole tribe.
They met no one. Perhaps because the militia was roaming, no travelers were out this day. They followed the Virgin River as it flowed toward the mighty Colorado. The road was well worn and smooth, and had swiftly dried after the rain. There wasn’t much to say so they rode silently, locked in their own thoughts. The long, wearisome ride took them clear to a little settlement calling itself St. George at dusk, and there the wheel tracks melded with dozens of others, and the hoof-prints in the dust became indistinguishable from all the rest. The militia and its prisoners had vanished behind the closed doors of humble houses in the dusty hamlet. Skye thought to look for the mules and burros, but they, too, were hidden.
There were few people visible, and these seemed to be hurrying. An odd tension caught the settlement. Skye could hear nothing; no coughing, no talk, no barking of a dog, no whistle, no singing. He had the sense that eyes were peering at him from dark windows. He saw only one lamp, in a tiny store that had stayed open.
“Matey, it’s dangerous for you here. Now this is a job for Lord Cutpurse. Let it get a little blacker and I’ll have me a good look.”
Skye agreed. In fact, he was worried that an armed band of men would loom out of the twilight and capture them all, his son, wives, horses, and the East Ender.
“We’ll be on the river, above town,” he said.
Mickey grinned.
Skye turned Jawbone, and his family softly retreated from the desert town but not before a barking dog investigated them. Nothing came of it, and Skye steered off the road and found the river purling slowly. Night settled. Skye dismounted, let Jawbone lap up water. Mary slipped off her pony and began nursing the boy. Victoria grumbled through the chores, but in time the ponies were all cared for and there was nothing to do but wait for a gifted pickpocket to slip into their camp, with news—or no news.
Skye thought of Enoch Bright, trapped somewhere in that dusty hamlet, fuming at his captors. He tried to imagine what the mechanic would do or say to Saints who wanted to purge their Zion of unbelievers. Bright would probably light a pipe and tell them their cogwheels were missing teeth. He thought of Anna Bennett, proud and aloof. Of the Bridge sisters, bravely coming west to be healed. He thought of the Jones brothers, both of them the walking sick. He thought of Sterling Peacock, probably lying somewhere, and angry at these people he had made his own. And Peter Sturgeon, sick, twelve, and bewildered.
The stars emerged, bright pricks in a clear sky, and soon it was as black a night as Skye had known. He slipped close to Victoria, who sat stolidly on the ground. Without speaking, she welcomed him, a single touch of her brown hand enough to convey her thoughts. The Dipper rotated through the night, and still they sat, awaiting word from the king of pickpockets.
Mary materialized and sat beside them, and she handed the boy, North Star, to Skye, who hefted the chunky child and was gladdened. This little bundle of life was all he would leave behind him. For now, the boy was well. But he would have a hard life. Skye did not live in safe cities where there would be food and warmth and medicine and help. He lifted the boy to his lap.
“Ah, Dirk, it is a quiet night here. When you’re older you’ll know that men’s beliefs get in the way of good sense,” he said. “May you be wiser and stronger than your old father.”
The child’s smooth flesh seemed silky to the touch, not a wrinkle in this one. Dirk clamped his little hand around Skye’s fat thumb and hung on, and Skye was content.
It was a slow night but not an uncomfortable one.
“Ye blawdy Londoner, where be ye?” Mickey’s voice carried softly from perhaps fifty yards.
“Here, mate.”
In a moment, a wraith of a man slipped into the resting place and dropped to his knees.
“There’s not a one of’em in there. They gave us the slip.”
“How do you know?”
“I got eyes, they got windows and shutters.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s not a big burg, mate. There’s not six’ouses.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t think. They’re not ′ere. Not a woman, not a man. There’s not a consumptive ′ere. Not Bright, either.”
“How do you know?”
“I can damned well see a ring on a pinky finger at ten paces when the fog’s thick as soup.”
“But these are homes.”
“I can see anything anywhere.”
“Closed shutters?”
“I got me a pair of ears good as my eyes. I tell you, there’s no bunch of consumptives, neither are they spread out in a few houses, and there’s not a shed or a loft where they might be guarded. And I’iked along the river, below town, looking for a camp too.”
“Any chance you’re wrong?”
“Why do they call me Lord Cutpurse, may I ask?”
“Did we miss something on the trail?”
“That’s for you, mate. Me, I’m a pickpocket. The night’s my game.”
“They are dead,” said Victoria.
“Naw!”
She shrugged. “It is a big land.”
“But why?” Mickey asked.
“Goddamn white men, why should I know?”
Skye had that bad feeling again, a sense that Victoria had discerned truth without quite knowing how or why. It was her medicine. Sometimes she saw things that turned out to be true. Still, he rebelled.
“They wouldn’t,” he said.
Victoria refused to answer him, always a danger sign. She saw what she saw.
“I get itchy here. We must go.”
“Now?”
“Yes! Now!” she cried.
He helped her up. With nothing but starlight to help them, they collected their ponies, and Mickey the Pick found the Morgan, and they rode softly along the Virgin, not knowing where they would go or stop. Skye didn’t even know whether he was employed, or whether his task was done. He had brought them to the place where they intended to heal themselves. What next?
forty-two
A rising moon broke the night open just about where the trail for Cedar City parted company with the Virgin River. Skye took it for an omen. Mostly, nature mocked a man’s dreams and plans, but sometimes nature whispered her wisdom to any ear willing to listen. And Skye was listening that bitter night.
Good God, his entire company had vanished. Gone were Bright and every invalid that Bright and the Skyes had brought to the very place they felt would give them the sun, the dry air, the serenity they needed for their bodies to rebuild.
He reined Jawbone to a halt and let the cutpurse catch up. “Mickey, you know these people. I don’t. Where did the militia take our company?”
“A mystery, it is. These blokes aren’t
like Londoners; they’re like’ottentots to old Mick.”
“Then we’ll look for them,” Skye said to the cutpurse.
“That militia came from somewhere; that’s where we’ll go,” Mickey the Pick said. “Let’s rattle their boudoir.”
Mickey had prowled down the Virgin and found nothing. That left Cedar City or Parowan.
Skye reined in Jawbone.
“Let’s think about this,” he said. “If there’s trouble with the Paiutes, and the militia really wants to keep our people from harm, that’s one thing. If the militia simply wanted to rid Utah of settlers who aren’t Saints, that’s another thing.”
“I don’t suppose the blokes would put the lungers into their’omes, mate.”
“No, they wouldn’t. So our people are being guarded somewhere safe but not in town.”
“You damned blind,” Victoria snapped.
“Maybe they were sent along the California Trail. Told to get out. If that’s true, they’re probably all right. Enoch’s a hardened trail captain by now, and Sterling can do it. They’ve some pine nuts and rested livestock. They could be miles west of St. George now.”
Victoria glared at him as if he were the dumbest man alive.
And it was true that nothing made sense.
“Back to the meadow and wait, I suppose,” Skye said.
It made more sense than chasing around southern Utah at night. If the consumptives were released by the militia, they would either return or send word of their whereabouts to Skye’s family on the flat.
Wordlessly, they rode their weary mounts up the Virgin River once again, through a deep dark that made travel hard. Each of them was immersed in the mystery. Utah is a big place; the New Bedford Infirmary Company could be hidden anywhere, in many hundreds of square miles of mountain, desert, and canyon.
They reached the silent meadow in the small hours. An open heaven lit the way. They paused where the canvas shelters had been erected, and absorbed the quietness.
An owl hooted softly. Another, from some great distance, responded.
“I’m not staying here!” Victoria snapped.
Skye knew what the owls meant to her. And to Mary also.
“There are bad spirits here,” he said to Mickey.
“I’ll drink to that.”
“We’ll go up the creek a way.”
“Them’s owls, but what’s’owling?”
Mickey was bravely making fun of the women. But Victoria sank deep into her saddle and steered her mare up the nameless creek, wanting no part of a place with bad spirits.
They paused at the high end of the meadow, where the red canyon walls bolted upward to the stars, and there the silence was not broken by owls.
Wordlessly, Victoria dropped to the grass, knelt beside the purling creek, and washed her face carefully. No one said anything. Skye unsaddled and picketed the horses. Then they rolled into their blankets on the hard ground. Skye didn’t sleep, and he knew none of the others were sleeping either. They were all waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen.
But all that happened was a pale creamy coloration of the sky as dawn approached all too soon. None of them slept, and not because they were worried about the Paiutes. They did not sleep because of things unfathomed, things so deep and dark that they kept sleep at bay.
Victoria arose angry, and stalked about, glaring at this beautiful canyon head as if it were hell. Mary quietly looked after North Star, and would not look Skye in the eye. This was a delightful place. The sun threw golden light on the red bluffs high above, making the whole world peach-colored. The horses grazed bunch grass peacefully.
But there was no sign of the missing company.
The women prepared two travois ponies and headed up the creek, and Skye knew they were retrieving the lodge and family possessions.
Skye and Mickey the Pick drifted across the meadow to the Virgin River. There was no sign of Indians; only the trace of iron tires rolling downstream, and the prints of a lot of shod horses. There was no sign of traffic going upstream, into the maze of red canyons where the Virgin rose. The grass around the campsite was crushed. The Saint militia had been a large force, more than needed to collect a few hapless sick people and carry them to safety.
The women returned with the lodge and gear, and silently erected the lodge exactly in the place where the hospital camp had once risen. Then they took two ponies and hiked up the creek and vanished in the canyon country. Skye knew they would return with piñon pinecones, food that would sustain them all for as long as they chose to wait for the New Bedford Infirmary Company to return. Skye knew he must hunt, but not just yet.
He waited quietly in the shade of a live oak for the missing to return and tell him where they had been taken, and why.
Mickey dropped down beside Skye.
“How long are we going to stay’ere?”
“I don’t know, Mickey.”
“You think they’re off to California?”
“I’d like to think it.”
“You done guiding them?”
“I don’t know.”
“You think Enoch Bright, he’d slip a note to us? Send a messenger?”
“Yes, if he could, he would. That’s what’s troubling me. There was no note left here. No signal. Nothing I’d recognize. The militia didn’t let him leave a note behind for us.”
“How’d your old lady know it was militia?”
“A lot of armed white men on horses came in the night. Men dressed the way Saints dress, lot of beards, plain clothing. Farmers, getting a living from the earth and the rivers.”
“She told you that?”
“Victoria knows white men better than I do.”
“Ain’t she some smart.”
The day stretched slowly, and then the women returned laden with pinecones. There would be roasted pine nuts this evening. It took a while to roast the cones and extract the nuts, and the whole day’s gathering scarcely allayed their hunger.
Victoria wouldn’t look at Skye or Mickey, but toiled angrily at her task, but Mary’s gaze fell upon them both. Mary’s gaze was troubled, as if she didn’t like the sight of white men and yearned only for her own bronzed neighbors and tribe and friends.
Neither woman said a word.
Skye looked across the meadow toward the Virgin River once again, just as he had a thousand times that slow day, and saw nothing. He watched a hawk circle undisturbed, and knew nothing lurked just beyond his field of vision. Time had slowed. The sun had tracked west, and now the eastern walls of the canyon were lit. This was a paradise inhabited only by owls.
He knew Victoria and Mary would have a bad time this night if the owls returned, but he wanted to stay through the night. Tomorrow they would leave.
When the western walls of the canyon blocked the sun, Skye saddled Jawbone, checked his Sharps, and nodded to Victoria, who averted her gaze. She knew he was hunting. He wanted to go by himself.
“Mickey, keep an eye on the Virgin River,” he said. “I’ll be back at dusk.”
“Put me in a madhouse, that’s where I belong,” Mickey said.
Jawbone took him up the creek, and then he topped a steep grade and found himself on the cedar-dotted mesa. He paused, out of ancient habit, absorbing the land. He studied the maze of canyons, looking for a telltale column of raptors, and then felt ashamed of himself. Why would he do that? There was only transparent sky and twilight. He dropped into a hidden valley, discovered a green streak through it, and soon spotted deer pellets. A spike mule deer buck bolted. Skye whipped his Sharps up, but the deer vanished. The chance was lost. He sat Jawbone quietly. One running deer often triggered others. But he saw nothing.
He retreated at dusk, knowing he could get lost if he tarried, and made his way back to camp empty-handed. One cross glance from Victoria told him all he needed to know.
He unsaddled Jawbone and turned him loose. The horse sawed his head up and down, bared yellow teeth, bit Skye on the arm, and snapped up bunch grass.
“I’m leaving in the morning,” she said. “You stay if you want. Dammit, Skye. This place got bad spirits.”
“We’ll go,” he said.
forty-three
When dawn broke, they quit camp and left. Victoria had stayed up all night, a nocked arrow in her bow. Mickey, it turned out, had taken his bedroll down to the Virgin River, ready to intercept any of the hospital company stumbling along in the dark.
Skye marveled at Mickey. The Londoner had quit his farm to join the hospital company, comforting the sick and making himself useful to them as if that were the thing he had always wanted to do. Who could explain it? Mickey showed his colors by scouting every hill and gully for miles around, looking for the missing infirmary company. He was taking it harder than anyone else, perhaps because he suspected that something terrible had happened.
Skye wondered about that too, but couldn’t imagine any fate worse than a sudden expulsion of the invalids from the Saints’ Zion. The New Bedford Infirmary Company was now perhaps forty miles west and heading for the California desert, having been ejected from Zion. But here were Victoria, grim and flinty and angry and filled with foreboding, and Mickey, prowling every direction in search of the lost.
But not a word was spoken that dawn; whatever subterranean currents of feeling Victoria and Mickey were feeling remained deeply buried in the quiet of the morning. They loaded the lodgepoles and the lodge cover, saddled the ponies, studied the forlorn, lovely canyon one last time, and headed downstream on the Virgin River.
How do you search for people who have vanished at the hands of a local militia? Skye knew only one way, which was to make inquiries. He would inquire of everyone, everywhere, until he found the lost and could help them settle.
For much of that quiet morning, no one spoke. Victoria rode grimly, keeping a sharp eye on the travois ponies, and kept entirely to herself. Mickey, who was swiftly becoming an accomplished horseman riding that Morgan horse, rode alone, often probing side canyons. Mary, the most serene of them, tended North Star and made not the slightest comment. Skye pushed ahead at times, wanting to know what lay around the next curve of the trail. It was as if the loss of the sick had stopped all their communion with one another.
Virgin River Page 23
