True Sisters (33 page)

“Does Levi love ye for your feet?” Andrew asked.

Nannie did not answer, and Ella said, “I would rather hae half a sister than no sister at all.”

“Would ye deny yourself to Ella?” Andrew asked. He sat down beside Nannie and removed her shoes, then her stockings, which were frozen to her feet. The feet were black and rotting.

“They’ll have to be removed as soon as you reach the valley,” Ella said.

“I wonder can she wait that long. Look how far the rot has gone. By then, they’d hae to take her legs, too. It must be done at once.”

“Nay,” Nannie said in a voice that was choked.

Andrew looked at Nannie. “Can the pain of surgery be any worse than what ye feel now?”

“Please, Nannie,” Ella said.

Nannie looked at her sister, her eyes unfocused. It seemed to her as if she were someplace else, a mountain covered with heather, looking down at herself. Maybe she had already gone to heaven. But if she were in paradise, she wouldn’t feel her feet, and the pain had come on in such force that Nannie wouldn’t mind dying. She no longer thought what her life would be like if her feet were taken, only that she wanted the hurting to end. “Are ye terrible sure they hae to come off?” she asked. When Andrew told her he was, Nannie gave a single nod.

“I canna do it myself. I’ll fetch one of the men,” Andrew said, getting up. “Ella, ye must melt snow in the pot over the fire. Make the water as hot as ye can.” Ella did as she was told, and Andrew left, returning in a few minutes with Old Absalom, the Saint who had spoken in favor of wintering at Florence and had been chastised for it. Ella frowned when she saw the old man and whispered, “What about Sister Maud?”

“Nannie canna be cured with herbs. Old Absalom has seen many amputations,” Andrew told her.

“Done my own,” Absalom said, holding up a hand to show two fingers missing.” He looked at Nannie’s feet, then nodded at Andrew. “She can’t wait for the valley. They got to come off.”

“Where do we take her?” Ella asked.

“Leave be. There ain’t no surgery here.” He took a bottle from his coat pocket and handed it to Andrew, who lifted Nannie’s head so that she could drink. She gagged at the foul taste of the liquor and shook her head, but Absalom told her, “It dulls you some. Best to drink enough to pass out.”

Nannie took another swallow, and another, while Old Absalom removed a wicked-looking knife from his belt, and taking out a whetstone, he sharpened the knife in slow circular movements, then held it over the fire to cleanse it. Ella stepped in front of him so that her sister would not see the knife, but Nannie was already drugged from the pain and the whiskey. “How long does it take?” Ella asked.

“Not a few minutes. You seen a butcher…” The old man cleared his throat. “Have you a needle and thread, silk if you got it?” When Ella produced a threaded needle that she had secured under the lapel of her dress, the old man said, “Hold her down now.” With sure strokes, he cut through the skin and muscle and then the bone, tossing first one foot and then the other into the snow. He wrapped flaps of skin over the bones and, using Ella’s needle, stitched the flaps in place.

“Is she done for?” Andrew asked.

“Ask the Lord about that. Some’s so agitated, they don’t care to live. They give up to dying. I seen an old woman here, Maud, that’s got some herbs and such to help the healing, but the girl’ll not walk. Behopes someday she’ll crawl. If she lives.”

At that, Ella began to weep. Old Absalom seemed uneasy at Ella’s sobs and stood up. “I’ll come back to ye and check.”

“We haven’t anything to pay ye with, but when we get to Zion—”

Old Absalom cut him off. “I wouldn’t charge a Saint. ’Sides, she might curse me for what I done.” He turned and disappeared.

Since she had no rags for bandages, Ella wrapped her sister’s legs in her own underclothing and lay down beside her in the tent. That night came a terrible wind that blew down the tent, and Ella and Andrew dragged Nannie into the snow and huddled with her under a blanket until dawn, cooing when Nannie cried out and lulling her back to sleep. Nannie didn’t wake until morning, and her first words were, “My feet pain me like fire.”

Ella was startled, but Andrew had learned something about amputation and said that was a common complaint. “They’re gone, Nannie.”

“They can’t be if they hurt.”

“They were cut off last night. Dinna you remember?” Ella asked.

Nannie touched her leg through the blanket and slowly slid her hand over her thigh, down to her calf, and lower, the tears pouring down her face.

Andrew knelt beside her, taking her hand. And then he reached into his pocket, removing a small bit of purple. “Here, lass. I dinna know it was in my pocket until last night. Down at the bottom it was, caught in the seam, only a wee bit, but it will do ye.” He pried Nannie’s fingers open and slipped a snippet of dried flower into her hand. Then he held it to Nannie’s nose, and she sniffed it.

“Heather?”

“Aye. If you can smell the heather, I think ye will make it.”

Chapter 9

November 10, 1856

When the weather broke the day before, the Saints once more resumed their trek. But there had not been joy in it for a long time, Louisa thought, no singing, no praising of the Lord. She did not talk unless there was a reason, instead tramping along in the snow, dumb as a stone. The only sounds she heard from the wagons were an occasional moan or sob. She wondered where the rest of the rescuers were or even if there were other rescuers. Thomas Savage had told her the prophet had called a meeting of the Saints in the valley when he heard there were still handcarts in the mountains, and the people had responded with donations of food and clothing. Men had volunteered to drive relief wagons, she was told, although Louisa couldn’t help but fear that the drivers had been discouraged and returned to the valley. Perhaps even the prophet himself had abandoned them.

She thought each day would be her last on earth and was surprised to awaken in the morning; sometimes with a flicker of disappointment. So she walked, once more pushing the cart, placing one foot in front of the other, plodding along in an uneven line that stretched out for miles. There was no order to the march.

Almost all of the hated handcarts were abandoned now, along with the freight that had been carried in the wagons, and a contingent of rescuers had been assigned to stay behind and watch the discarded belongings throughout the winter. Nonetheless, Thales insisted they keep their cart. They had come so far with it that they would see it to the valley, he told his wife. If we live, she thought.

“Is it penance, pushing the cart now?” she had asked when she saw that others had left their vehicles behind.

He didn’t answer her question, but said instead, “It is my burden. I promised to see it through.”

“And I promised to stand by your side,” Louisa told him, taking her place behind the cart.

“No, Louisa. You must save your strength. Walk with your mother. This is my duty, not yours.”

“I am stubborn, too.”

He studied her a moment. “I am not the man you think I am, Louisa. I have deceived you. I—”

“Hush. I am not disappointed in you.” She knew that Thales questioned himself, but she did not want to hear it. She needed his strength, his belief in the rightness of their journey, to keep going. So in that long line of emigrants, the two silently plodded along with the cart.

“Ah, Brother Thales.” Thomas Savage brought his horse to a walk and steadied the boy who rode in front of him, a child who had given out in the snow and had been sleeping under a bush when Thomas spotted him. “Why does it not surprise me that you will be the only member of the Martin Company to reach the valley with a handcart?”

Thales laughed for the first time in a long while. “My wife doesn’t understand it, and I daresay I don’t, either. But there is a strong desire upon me to keep it. Perhaps you can explain it.”

“You don’t give up. That’s why you are such a good missionary. You could convert the devil himself.”

“Some think the devil’s mark is on me. There is more than one in this train who wishes he’d never heard me preach.”

Louisa thought to speak up then, to deny her husband’s words, but she held her tongue.

“And more than one still grateful for it.” Thomas dismounted and handed the reins to the boy and told him to walk the horse behind the cart. He joined Thales in pulling the vehicle. “At the cove, I talked with a girl who said you had rescued her from a life of sin, Sister Emeline, by name.” Louisa remembered the girl, the one Jessie had taken on.

“A sad story. Her foster parents died weeks ago, and now the man who intends to be her husband has lost an arm.”

“What will become of her if he dies?”

“Some Saint will take her up. She’s young and works hard and would make an excellent wife. Are you in the market?”

“No. I have troubles of my own. I believe at times that plural marriage is a hard doctrine,” Thomas told him.

“I will find that out for myself one day. The woman with the girl, Jessie by name, I had thought to marry her once, but Louisa was a better match, sweeter and more obedient.” He glanced over his shoulder at Louisa, who gave him a wan smile.

“I believed such with my second wife, whom I took just weeks ago, but I’ve learned that in polygamy, few of them are obedient and fewer yet, sweet. Is there a secret to making them get along with each other?”

“If there is, I haven’t heard it. And neither has anyone else in Zion.”

The two men pulled the cart together, pulled it with such strength that after a time, Louisa gave up pushing, and they didn’t notice.

*   *   *

One evening after the Saints had set up their camp in the snow, Ella spied a lone rider coming toward them, his pack horses loaded with buffalo meat. The rider was a Mormon who had killed two buffalo, then gone in search of the Martin Company. As he stopped near Ella’s cart, he said, “I wouldn’t ever have expected to meet a buffalo. But you folks needed meat, and he was put in my way. When a body needs the Lord, needs something the Lord can do for him so bad that there isn’t any other out, that is the time the Lord will show His face.”

Declaring the meat a miracle, Ella and Andrew and the other Saints gathered around the man, shouting hosannas and crying that they were saved, although it wasn’t much of a miracle, since the meat was little enough for a camp of hundreds. Besides, the rider brought news that some of the rescue parties had indeed turned back, believing the emigrants could not have survived in the awful cold. Ella clutched her distended belly and turned away.

The man said he was a surgeon of sorts, and Andrew followed him as he moved through the crowd, examining the frozen extremities of the emigrants, checking fingers and toes and hands and feet, muttering, “Dang me.” Then he agreed to look at Nannie’s maimed limbs, turning the legs this way and that and proclaiming, “As good as if I done it myself. It will heal right well if she lives. They’ll pain her bad.”

“The Lord was with her,” said a Saint who was looking on.

“If the Lord was with her, she wouldn’t have froze her feet in the first place,” retorted Old Absalom, who had come to see his patient. “In all my travels, I’ve never seen worse than in this company. They’ve had a darksome time,” he told the rider.

“Will I walk? Will ye tell me will I walk?” Nannie asked. It was more of a plea than a question.

The rider was not one to mince words. “No, but you’ll crawl, and the skin flaps is better than the bone sticking out. They’ll pain you less.”

That evening, Andrew brought news of Levi. “I hae seen him. He’s sick almost to death.”

“Conscious is he?” Nannie asked.

“Aye. He asked for ye. I said ye were ill and canna be moved.”

“Ye didn’t tell him—” Ella whispered.

Andrew shook his head. “Nay. ’Tis not my place.”

“Maybe he should know,” Ella said.

“As he may not live long, I saw no reason to grieve him.”

They spoke softly, but Nannie overheard them. “And if he disna live, what then? What’s to become of me? Not many want a wife who canna walk,” she said.

“A man who desires a wife with a sweet temper,” Andrew said, uncomfortable, perhaps, that he had mentioned Levi at all.

“Any man who prizes a lass who can sew a cunning seam and cook like an angel, who would be a loyal wife and raise up children in the faith,” Ella added. “Not every man looks first to the feet.”

But Nannie was not comforted and turned away.

*   *   *

With Nannie riding in a wagon, Ella and Andrew trudged on, one day and then another. At night, Andrew carried Nannie to a fire, and the three camped together. The weather was not so bad now, although it was cold, especially at night, and the deaths continued. But there was a birth. At a campsite called Bitter Cottonwood Creek, Ella went into labor.

Andrew fetched Maud, and then thinking it would do no harm, he asked Old Absalom, too, to attend his wife. “I will help,” Nannie said.

She winced at the pain, and Andrew told her they could take care of Ella, but Maud said, “I have need of her. You must rub your sister’s back whilst I attend her.”

Old Absalom nodded in approval and whispered, “You bring the poor girl around, Sister Maud.” He watched as Maud prepared Ella, and when Andrew glanced at him as if to ask if Absalom shouldn’t be in charge, the old man said, “It’s woman’s work. She knows better’n me. Now if the baby’s born with froze fingers…” He looked uncomfortable when Maud frowned at him, and he did not finish the jest.

As such things went, it was an easy birth, but Nannie, who had never attended a birthing before, did not know that. Tears ran down her face when her sister cried out, and she left off rubbing Ella’s back to smear her damp cheeks with her fingers. “Canna you do something?” she asked Maud.

“It’s Eve’s pain,” Absalom said.

“Men’s pleasure, women’s pain,” Maud chided him. “Likely the Lord got this wrong. It ought to have been the other way around.”

“Women’s pleasure, too, it is, old woman.”

“Then ought’n men to share the pain?”

Old Absalom started to reply, but Maud shushed him and told Ella, “Push, Sister. Push.”