Virgin River (13 page)

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Authors: Richard S. Wheeler

BOOK: Virgin River
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T
hey plodded ever southward into a lonely land without sign of habitation. Sagebrush cast a gray coverlet upon the land. There were timbered mountains rising to the east, a vast distance away, but from now on the country would become even drier.
Only a rude trail marked the way, but it was the sole artery connecting the settlements of the north and south.
Behind them was that horseman. When the company halted, so did he. Sometimes he seemed to vanish, but he always reappeared. At night he was nowhere in sight, but no one doubted that the man was not far off, and possibly very close. Who was he?
One night Enoch Bright reported that his wards had a new ailment. Some were bleeding from their gums and their joints were swollen and stiff. Both of the Bridge girls were suffering this new sickness, as well as Peter Surgeon and the Jones brothers.
Skye didn't like the sound of it.
“Is this a symptom of consumption?” he asked.
“None of us has ever heard tell of it.”
“How long has this been troubling your people?”
“A few days now, Mister Skye.”
“What are they eating now?”
“Porridge, sir. It's all we have left. The dried apples are gone.”
“Oatmeal?”
“That's the whole of it. They add a little sugar.”
“We're that low?”
“We have a sack of oats, and that's it. Hiram was going to buy things in Great Salt Lake, you know. We were assured there would be ample of everything. Fruits, vegetables, preserves. He was going to get cuttings too, so we could start our own orchards.”
Skye gazed into Victoria's cook fire a careful distance away, knowing his own family was not much better off than these sick ones. He still had some pemmican and jerky. The pemmican contained chokecherries.
Here there was little that was familiar to him. He had been watching what his livestock grazed upon, and discovered there was still a little grass hidden under the sagebrush, and something else. They were eating a saltbush, at least he thought that was what it was, including its fruit, which had four little wings. Maybe what was good for stock would be good for human beings.
He returned to Victoria's fire, troubled.
“What?” she asked.
“A new sickness, bleeding gums, soreness of the bones and joints. It sounds familiar. Scurvy is what it's called.”
She opened a parfleche. “Take this to them,” she said.
It was the last of the pemmican.
He hesitated.
“Take it!” she said crossly.
He carried the parfleche to the other campfire, where the consumptives huddled or lay stretched out on grimy blankets.
“My wife wants you to eat this. Divide it up. It's pemmican, a food the Indians make from fat and berries and shredded meat, and she thinks it might help you. It has chokecherries or buffalo berries.”
Sterling Peacock took it. “We don't have greens, Mister Skye. And now this sickness.”
“Are you sure this is not consumption?”
“I mastered everything my father mastered about consumption. He wanted me to know it all in case anything happened … in case he didn't live. It's a disease that destroys any flesh, not just lungs and throat and mouth. But this bleeding doesn't fit.”
Skye nodded. “I've been studying what the livestock eat here, and maybe it'll help us.”
They didn't look very convinced. But he had nothing else to offer them.
Long ago, in the Royal Navy, he had learned everything there was to learn about scurvy and its cures. Sailors were called limeys for a reason. They were given a lime each day to ward off scurvy, or if not a lime, then a lemon or orange. And most vegetables would do in a pinch, especially potatoes. Somehow it worked. On board, with their daily gruel or ship biscuit, they were never getting enough greens. Was this scurvy? Was it even possible to get it in the middle of a continent?
Mary, who was cleaning North Star, looked up. “I see what the ponies eat, and this plant with the four little wings,
I see how they snatch it, so I collect it each evening and mix it up with things for us. It is in our broth, see?”
She fished some shredded green material from her bowl.
Skye squatted beside her. “Maybe you're keeping us from sickness, Mary.”
“It is a good thing to eat,” she said.
“I don't know what's good and what's bad here. But you know.”
“It is in my heart,” she said.
The whole food situation was becoming critical. He had scarcely seen a four-footed animal in this area. Once he saw some desert mule deer fleeing over a hilltop. But this was a land without many animals and he would not be making meat. Not unless he got lucky. Still, he thought he would need to hunt each day. The road was plain; he could leave the navigation to Bright and ride toward those eastern ridges and valleys, where water tumbled out of the mountains, and maybe find an antelope or a deer. Not that either animal would provide more than a meal for so many people.
The next morning he headed into the open slopes looking for the winged fruit of the desert shrub he thought might be saltbush. There wasn't much here. This was sagebrush and juniper country, gray and black in the early light. Still, there was a little, and he harvested it.
“Mister Bright, put this in your stew pot,” he said. “It's a green the livestock like, and maybe it'll help us. And look for it along the trail. In country like this, we need to make everything count.”
Bright held up the little winged blooms as if they were roses. “Nature supplies what we need if we have the wits to make good of it,” he said.
Skye watched him carry his armload of greens to the campfire, consult with Lloyd Jones, who was doing the breakfast that morning, and watched them shred the greens and drop them into the porridge.
Who could say if it would help?
This was the loneliest campsite they had visited, but it had a mildly alkaline spring that fed the foliage marching down a ravine. It had seemed a good place, far from trouble.
Twice in the night horsemen had trotted by on the road below the spring, awakening Skye, who always slept lightly. The traffic never ceased, he thought. It must be urgent if a horseman was cantering along at two in the morning. Had war come to the Saints?
But nothing more disturbed the night. He missed the night sounds of the great plains and the mountains, the bark of coyotes, the occasional howl of wolves, the muted conversations of owls. This was a different and harsher land.
In the morning, he heard at once about Eliza Bridge. She had slid into tears, which welled from her eyes in an unending stream for hours. All her courage was gone.
Bright summoned Skye, who found her lying on the ground near their camp, wrapped in her blanket, her arms covering her face.
“Eliza, it's Mister Skye.”
“Leave me alone,” she said.
“You would like to go home, I think.”
She stared upward at him. He knelt beside her.
“It's a long journey. We've a way to go. And we don't know what we'll find when we reach the desert. We don't even know for sure how many of us will be healed. The man who was leading you and giving you hope died too. He was a friend of your family. And now he's gone.”
She said nothing, but at least she was listening.
“You're fevered again. I can see it.”
She looked bad, with dark circles hollowing her eye sockets and a harried desperation consuming her faster than her disease was eating her flesh.
“And we're not welcome here. You feel bad about it. It would be so good if these people were kinder to strangers and would help us any way they could. Like Peter Hunsaker. But they aren't doing that. I feel just the way you do, as if we're trespassing.”
He could tell that his words were resonating with her. At least she was listening.
“I have little to offer you, Eliza. But don't forget prayer.”
“My family doesn't hold with religion. It's futile. This whole trip is futile. How many days down the road will I live? Where will my end come?”
“Live just for today, Eliza. Just for now, and don't worry about tomorrow.”
“I won't worry about tomorrow. I have no tomorrow.”
Skye had no answer for that.
“Have you ever ridden a horse?” he asked.
“It's not becoming for a woman,” she said.
“I'd like to sit you sideways, sidesaddle, on my horse. Jawbone is a fine, proud horse. You can hold on to the saddle. You can watch the desert go by instead of lying in that wagon. Would you like that?”
“I'm too sick.”
“For a little while? And see the land as we pass over it?”
She stared, and finally nodded.
He brought Jawbone to her, a crazy, wild-eyed animal with floppy ears, the ugliest horse in the universe.
She let Skye lift her to the saddle and settle her sideways
and let Skye tuck her grimy blanket about her against the morning chill. It was late August now, and the seasons were shifting.
They started out from the alkaline spring a little later that morning, with Eliza Bridge just barely hanging on while Skye led the stallion.
And now they were trailed by two horsemen.
A
ll that hot day the two horsemen trailed Skye's party. Often they were invisible, but then one or another would show up again. They rarely came closer than half a mile and were little more than tiny dots crawling across a monotonous sea of sea-green sagebrush, or slopes black with juniper.
This was still an open land, preserving its virgin ways against the enterprising settlers. Not a single homestead came into view. No cleared brush, no plowed fields, no irrigation ditches, no trees surrounding a house, or livestock grazing in random bunches on cleared land. This was country that was always ushering the wayfarer somewhere else: to the east, beyond countless ridges, rose mighty mountains, arid and yellow and speckled with pine, while obscure desert ridges to the west led into mystery. Who could say what sort of life played out here on the gray and tan slopes?
Skye rode ahead, keeping an eye out for water. The trail was clear, but the distances between water holes or creeks out of the mountains were not clear. For a while they paralleled a
dry river that probably ran in the spring but now was a sandy waste lined by chaparral.
And still they came, those dark riders who kept a careful distance between themselves and the slow-moving wagons. When Skye and Bright speeded up, so did the riders. When the train slowed to a crawl, so did the riders.
“Who do you suppose they are, Mister Skye?” Bright asked.
“They seem to regard us as important. We'd be ignored if we weren't somehow important.”
“It's this war. Colonel Johnston's column is heading here to end the Mormon rebellion. People in the East don't take kindly to the Saints and their assorted wives.”
Skye laughed. “I think it's a dandy custom, Mister Bright.”
“I'd rather collect buggies,” the New Englander said.
This country was hot, and Skye paused frequently. Eliza Bridge had lasted an hour or so on Jawbone, and asked to return to the wagon. Somehow, the ride put her at ease. Perhaps it was simply seeing the country go by. But as long as she didn't become more feverish, she could bear the journey again.
Skye's women roved far and wide, hunting edible greens, but found little in this bleak stretch of juniper and sagebrush. The whole question of food gnawed at Skye. If they didn't soon replenish, they would have to go onto half rations, which would further weaken the sickest of the young people.
Late in the day they descended into a shallow valley with a green swath indicating a river. Skye sat Jawbone absorbing the startling change.
“The Sevier,” Bright said. “It's on the maps.”
“Good. That helps me.”
The Sevier was on an ancient Spanish route south and west, and vital to the Territory of Utah because it offered
well-watered passage north and south. Skye thought it also meant settlements again, and maybe the chance to trade for food.
The Sevier proved to be not much of a river, but it was at least wet, and its water nurtured abundant grasses for the livestock. Skye's ponies as well as the oxen and mules nipped grass whenever they could. But the country was still desolate, and Skye wondered why he saw no farms. Bad soil, maybe.
Then indeed he did spot a homestead on the far side of the river, well off the trail.
“I'm going to take Victoria and try for some food,” he said to Bright. “You keep going. Maybe a squaw man and his wife will do better.”
“I see no friction in it,” Bright said.
He summoned Victoria and explained his mission.
“I bring a travois, yes?”
“All our travois ponies. And we'll take the Morgan for trading.”
“Hey, you can trade me for food, eh?”
She laughed. Her people had an endless stock of bawdy ideas and stories.
Bright and Mary, with her ponies and North Star, continued their way along the trail while Skye and Victoria cut off, descended a gulch, gingerly forded the stream, wary of quicksand, and then made their way toward a single forlorn farmstead. It wasn't much of a place, with an adobe house and shed and corral, and implements in the yard.
It looked deserted. Skye slid off Jawbone and knocked on the plank door.
“Yousah?” asked a male voice from the shed.
A red-bearded young man, built like a bull, emerged.
“I didn't heah youse. Shoeing my plow horse and I hardn't git company heah.” He stared. “Why mah stars, it's hun Injun.”
“I'm Mister Skye, and this is Missus Skye …”
“Well, that's a good match. Me, I got no one. All the elders grab the girls, they're knee-deep in fat wives, and that leaves a mess of bachelors hereabouts. Like me. Given the half and half of the sexes, some poor Saints ain't so lucky. But they's promising me sumpin' pretty soon. I hope she can pull like a hoss.”
“I think some young lady's going to set her cap for you, Mister …”
“Oakshott. Lemuel Oakshott. Ohio-born. Well, if she does, she'll be plain as a cucumber or else the elders, they'll get to her first.”
“Mister Oakshott, we're looking to trade for some food, especially vegetables and also grain, and maybe some meat.”
“I got stuff all over here, except meat. Haven't slaughtered a hog in some while, needing to take a few to market. But I got potatoes, so many spuds a man can't hardly get rid of them before they go soft. And cabbages, just come in last week, and lots of stuff. What'll you give?”
At last. Skye eyed the empty adobe corral. “We were thinking about maybe one of these ponies. Broke to travois, so they'll pull a plow. Good tough mustang stock.”
“That's a deal. How about that one there?”
It was the pony that dragged the travois with the lodge loaded on it.
“We could do that.”
“I got stuff there in the shed. Sacks of potatoes, all the rest. You take as much as you can haul outa here and give me a bill of sale for the horse, and I'll put that nag to good use around here.”
It happened like that. Skye gave young Oakshott a bill of sale and the pony. Victoria recruited the beautiful Morgan mare to drag the travois carrying the lodge. And both of them lugged burlap and cotton bags of spuds and cabbage and barley and onions and even some maize and heaped them onto the groaning travois. Skye slid two burlap bags of potatoes onto Jawbone's saddle and anchored them down. He would walk.
How swiftly it all happened. Twenty minutes later, he and Victoria and the ponies dragging the groaning travois left young Oakshott to his shoeing, waded the warm river along with the horses, barely avoiding wetting some of the grain sacks, and headed south.
The wagons were almost two miles ahead, and Skye suddenly realized the stalkers were between him and the wagons, and there could be trouble.
“We're going to meet our followers,” he said.
“I'll be ready,” Victoria said.
“Maybe we can walk right through.”
“Dammit, Skye, why do these many-wives people not like the other white men?”
“It's the wives. You get some white men arguing about how many wives they're worth, and you've got trouble.”
“Me, I'm worth about ten husbands,” she said, and laughed wickedly.
That was the Crows for you, he thought.
Ahead, the two horsemen had stopped and dismounted and were resting their horses. That meant that Bright's company had probably stopped too up ahead.
Skye walked boldly forward leading Jawbone and feeling increasingly cheerful. He'd take a good gander at this pair and their horses and whatever they might be carrying with them.
They saw him and stood suddenly, scowling. Skye walked straight on, and saw the recognition run through this pair. One was big and mean-looking with a squared beard that was combed straight down. The other was thin and ferretlike, with bright brown eyes and a hawk's beak. Neither was armed.
“Afternoon, gents,” Skye said.
They nodded.
“You resting up?” Skye said. “We're a long way from anywhere.”
They glanced at each other. “Who are you?” the square-beard asked.
“Why, I'm Mister Skye, and this is Missus Skye, and yourselves?”
He paused directly before them.
“We're—”
The other shook his head. “It's a nice day,” the square-beard said.
“Say, how far to the next settlement?” Skye asked.
“It's a piece,” Square-beard said.
“We're heading into the desert,” Skye said. “You coming our way? Won't you join us? Quite a trip, and we're safer traveling together.”
Square-beard shook his head. “We pretty much mind our own business.”
“I'm a guide,” Skye said, “and you are?”
“We work for … ah, the president.”
“Oh, the president, that's a fine position. What do you do for him?”
The question went unanswered. “Where did you get those spuds?”
“We traded a pony for them back a way. They're a blessing for us. We were just about out of food. Why do you ask?”
“President Young has decreed that no food may be given to outsiders for the duration of the emergency. Some Saint has betrayed the elders. I'd like to know who.”
“It was a Good Samaritan,” Skye said.
“Who?”
“I'd want no harm to come to him,” Skye said. “He helped the needy.”
It had come to be an odd standoff. Jawbone didn't like either man, and was slowly clacking his teeth. In a trice, if Skye had let him, he would have plunged into them and knocked them flat. But Skye's hand quietly soothed the animal.
“Come join our party, my friends,” Skye said. “Maybe we can share a meal and good company.”
But they didn't reply. Skye and Victoria and the horses trudged on while the other two stared. Skye itched to look back, fearful of a back-shooting, but Victoria was better at it. Somehow no one ever looked at her; they were too busy watching Skye. And then the stalkers disappeared behind a bend in the trail.
“They have their secrets,” Skye said.
“They mean to kill us all,” Victoria said.
Skye had, over many years, learned to heed Victoria's intuition.
The one with the well-combed square beard lingered in his mind.

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