Mary Ann reached down and took Matthew by the elbow and pulled him back up to stand in front of her. Looking up into his face, she shook her head in amazement. “I think that is the most wonderful dish chest I have ever seen,” she murmured.
“Really?” he cried. “Do you really like it, Mother?”
She started to speak, then suddenly couldn’t. She reached up and laid one hand on his cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you, Matthew.”
* * *
Brigham was standing on the porch putting on his hat as Benjamin stepped out to join him. Benjamin shut the door and said, “Thank you, Brother Brigham. That really is a fine piece of work. The ash turned out beautifully.”
“It did,” Brigham agreed. He gave Benjamin a piercing look. “I meant what I said in there about Matthew, Ben. He’s got a gift.”
Benjamin nodded. “I know. He sure didn’t get it from his father.”
Brigham was still pinning him with his eyes. “His heart’s not in farming, Ben. You know that, don’t you?”
Startled, Benjamin peered at his friend. “I . . . Maybe not, but he does well at it.”
“Of course he does. Matthew is a fine young man. He’ll do well at whatever he’s asked to do. But his heart’s not in farming. Not like it is in this.” He shook his head, remembering. “You should see him when he’s in that shop, Ben. It’s like he’s an artist, painting on a canvas.”
Benjamin was silent for a moment, then finally conceded. “I know he loves it.”
“I’d like to make him more than just my apprentice, Ben. Give me another year to help him develop his natural abilities, and then I’d like to make him a partner with me.”
Benjamin made no effort to hide his surprise.
“But I know you need help with the farm too,” Brigham said, “so I won’t encourage him without your permission. You know that.”
“I know. Thank you, Brigham.”
“I don’t need an answer now. You think about it. And talk it over with Mary Ann.”
“I will.”
Brigham stuck out his hand and Benjamin gripped it tightly. “Think about it hard, Ben. That’s one fine boy you’re raising there.”
* * *
In 1833, during the trouble in Jackson County, Joseph Smith found two lawyers in Clay County who agreed to represent Joseph and the Church. David Atchison and Alexander Doniphan had proven to be not only fair and competent attorneys but also friends to the Mormons. That friendship had continued since that time, and Joseph was so grateful for the integrity of Alexander Doniphan that he named the son born to Emma on June 2, 1838, Alexander Hale Smith. Both Doniphan and Atchison were also generals in the Missouri militia, Atchison being the senior commander in northern Missouri. So it was not surprising that, on September second, Joseph wrote and asked if they would represent the Church as legal counsel once again. Both agreed, and Atchison immediately suggested that Joseph and Lyman Wight submit to trial in Daviess County to answer the charges filed by William Peniston. Atchison also promised he would do all he could as a military officer to disperse the mobs and protect the Saints.
Joseph agreed, and the trial was set for September seventh. Wary of being trapped by the same mob spirit that had flared on election day in Gallatin, Joseph asked that the proceedings be held at the home of a nonmember who lived just across the Caldwell-Daviess county line. He then stationed a company of the brethren just south of the line, with instructions to be ready at a moment’s notice should trouble erupt.
Austin King, the same one who had taken the original deposition from William Peniston, sat as judge. Peniston and Adam Black came into the court with the wildest concoction of lies and exaggerations ever heard. Joseph countered with a series of defense witnesses who refuted their testimony.
When the testimony was finished, Judge King ordered the two defendants bound over to be tried before the circuit court, then released them on five hundred dollars bond. Privately he told Joseph and others that there was not enough incriminating evidence to convict them of any wrongdoing, but he feared the reaction of the citizenry and did not dare acquit them. Not surprisingly, this waffling did nothing to satisfy the Mormons, and only infuriated the Missourians all the more.
* * *
“Maybe we should have waited,” Derek said in disgust. “By spring I could have done something with this.”
“Derek Ingalls, you stop that!”
He didn’t look at Rebecca. Morosely he let his eyes sweep around the small room. This was the third day of incessant rain, and the sod roof was now leaking muddy water in nearly a dozen different places. Some of the leaks were slow drips, others steady streams. They didn’t own enough jars, pans, and buckets to catch them all, and several places on the packed dirt floor were becoming muddy slicks.
He shook his head. “Mice in your bed, water coming through the ceiling like it wasn’t there, moldy corn bread to eat. What in the world was I thinkin’ of, bringing you here now?”
Rebecca’s lips pressed into a tight line. She couldn’t remember a time when she had been so miserable. Though it was still only mid-September, the rain had brought a cold spell along with it and she was constantly chilled. Their bedding was damp. Their clothes were damp. The firewood was soaked and seemed to put out no heat at all as it sputtered and smoldered in the fireplace. The night before, just after they had gone to bed, she felt something crawling across her feet. She had jumped up screaming. Even the mice were looking for somewhere warm to sleep.
The tiny hut with its dirt walls and dirt floor and dirt ceiling seemed to shrink with every hour that the gray and gloomy weather persisted. With the fields a mud bog and the roads not much better, there had been no getting away from it either. She longed for some sunlight. She longed to be warm. She longed for a pot of her mother’s hot chicken dumpling soup. She longed for a bath and a chance to let her hair dry enough to brush it out straight again. She would give anything for a chance to sit across a table and talk with her mother or Lydia or Mary Fielding Smith. Any feminine voice. Anyone who knew her and could make her laugh again.
“You didn’t bring me here against my will, Derek,” she said, with a little more tartness to her voice than she had intended. “I wanted to come. I didn’t want to wait until spring.”
“I know, but—” He stopped, so glum it was almost laughable. “I’m just glad your parents can’t see what I’ve brought you to.”
Suddenly the thought of Mary Smith she had had a moment ago filled Rebecca with shame. Mary Fielding had married Hyrum Smith at the very height of the apostasy in Kirtland. In one day she went from single woman to mother of five children, including a six-week-old baby. Within less than a month they were fleeing westward across the frozen plains of Ohio and Illinois, driven out by those who sought the lives of Joseph Smith and any who stood by him. Now she was seven months pregnant. She was due in November, which meant she would have two babies barely a year apart. And yet Rebecca had never seen her the least bit cross. Around others Mary was always teasing or cajoling them until they were laughing out loud and their troubles were forgotten.
Rebecca looked around. If Mary were here, how would she deal with this? That thought was enough to cheer her a little. She wasn’t sure what Mary would do, but she was sure of one thing: Mary wouldn’t be standing here moping around like a kicked dog. A thought popped into Rebecca’s mind and she turned around. “Derek, where’s the Book of Mormon?”
Her voice seemed to startle him. “What?”
“Where’s the Book of Mormon?”
He gave her a strange look. “In the chest. Why?”
She didn’t answer. She walked quickly over to the small chest they kept at the foot of the bed, opened it, and found the book lying on the top of some other papers. She sat down on the bed, blew on her fingers for a moment, then began thumbing quickly through the pages of the book. It took her a minute but finally she found what she was looking for.
Rebecca gave her husband a fleeting smile. “This
is in the book of Alma. It’s one of Mother’s favorite passages.” She looked down and started to read. “ ‘I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive . . .’ ” She let her eye drop a few lines. “ ‘Always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive.’ ”
He stood there, looking at her as if she were daft.
She closed the book. “I’ll bet I can think of more things to be thankful for than you can.”
“What?”
She giggled a little, warming up to the game even more now when she saw his bewilderment. She leaned over, touching the bucket of water that was catching the heaviest stream of water from above. “I would like to return thanks to God for the fact that we have rain barrels inside the house as well as outside.”
“Rebecca!” He was clearly exasperated.
“And I’m grateful that mouse didn’t bite my toes last night.”
He smiled in spite of himself.
“That’s two to zero. I’m ahead.” She jumped up quickly and went to him. She reached up and touched the scar on his forehead. “And I’d like to return thanks to God for giving you a head harder than any piece of wood ever made.”
He grabbed her hand. “I beg your pardon.”
Laughing, she pulled away. “And I’m grateful he broke your left arm and not the arm you hold me with.” She cocked her head impishly at him. “That’s four. You’re falling behind, Mr. Ingalls.”
He gave her a sharp look, then finally smiled. “All right. I’m . . .” He looked around. “I’m grateful that we don’t have to worry about the water warping the boards on our floor.”
She squealed with delight. “Bravo! Four to one. And I’d like to return thanks to the Lord for having the grass on our sod roof only grow upwards. Otherwise, we’d have to cut our ceiling.”
Derek roared. Rebecca tried to keep a straight face, but couldn’t hold it and started to giggle again.
He spun around, his eyes darting. “Oh, and I’m grateful that the Lord didn’t bless you with a stronger pair of lungs, or Peter and I wouldn’t have any eardrums after you saw the mouse last night.”
She slapped at his good arm. “Not true!” she cried.
“Five to two,” he said. “And I’m also grateful for . . .”
Five minutes later when Peter opened the door and stepped inside the hut, shaking the water off the umbrella, he stopped dead. Derek and Rebecca were sitting on the edge of the bed, convulsed with laughter. The sight of his face only set them off again and they fell back, holding their stomachs.
“What is going on?” Peter said when they finally subsided a little.
Both of them just shook their heads as they sat up again. Finally, Derek got control of himself enough to speak. “It’s a long story. We were just talking about being thankful, that’s all.” He chuckled to himself as he reached out and took Rebecca’s hand. Then he looked back at his brother. “Was there any mail today?”
Peter reached inside his coat and withdrew a letter. He was beaming. “Yes, I got a letter from Jessica.”
Rebecca stood up. “Really? How nice.”
Peter tossed the umbrella to one side and opened the envelope quickly. “She and John are going to Father Steed’s on Saturday the twenty-ninth. They’re going to stay over for Sunday services in Far West.” He paused for a moment; then excitement filled his voice. “She wants to know if we could come down too. She says if we do, she could give me my first school lessons. Can we go, Derek? Please, can we go?”
* * *
By the middle of September, rumors among the Missourians as well as the Mormons were flying as thickly as a plague of locusts, and it became increasingly difficult to discern truth from story. Di-Ahman was going to be attacked. The Mormons were arming themselves under the banner of “the Armies of Israel.” The mobs were taking prisoners and torturing them. The Mormons were in a state of uprising and were looting and pillaging the countryside. The call to arms went out in every direction.
And with increasing frequency, rumor fueled reaction. A wagonload of arms was sent north to the citizens of Daviess County. The Mormons learned of it, intercepted it, and took two prisoners. The very men who had sent for the illegal weapons now screamed foul. Though the prisoners were released a few days later and the arms eventually returned to General Atchison, the word that the Mormons were in open rebellion was sent to Jefferson City with desperate cries for help from Governor Boggs. Roving bands of both Mormons and Missourians covered the countryside, often coming together to shout insults and threats at one another. By day and by night, the situation deteriorated. Cattle were rustled, stock shot, hogs run off, haystacks fired. On the twenty-fifth of September, General Parks, not known as being a friend to the Saints, wrote a report to Governor Boggs: “Whatever may have been the disposition of the people called Mormons, before our arrival here, since we have made our appearance, they have shown no disposition to resist the laws or of hostile intentions. There has been so much prejudice and exaggeration concerned in this matter, that I found things entirely different from what I was prepared to expect. When we arrived here, we found a large body of men from the counties adjoining, armed and in the field, for the purpose, as I learned, of assisting the people of this county against the Mormons, without being called out by the proper authorities.”
There is no record of any reply from Governor Boggs to this report.
General Atchison—commander of the militia in northern Missouri, and Parks’s superior officer—twice wrote to the governor. “Things are not so bad in [Daviess County] as represented by rumor,” he wrote in one letter, “and, in fact, from affidavits I have no doubt your Excellency has been deceived by the exaggerated statements of designing or half crazy men. I have found there is no cause of alarm on account of the Mormons; they are not to be feared; they are very much alarmed.”
He requested that the governor come north and view the situation for himself. There was no reply.
He wrote a second letter asking Boggs to come and review the situation personally. There was no reply.
* * *
“I don’t feel like playin’ this afternoon, Mama.”
Caroline let out her breath. “Olivia, we’ve gone over this again and again. When your father left to go with the militia, you promised him you would practice an hour a day.”
Olivia’s head was down and her hands were in her lap. “I know, Mama,” she said in a low, pleading voice. “I . . . I’ll practice two hours tomorrow.”
“That’s what you say about half the time, Livvy. And you never do. Now, you sit here and get it over with. Then you can go out and play.”
Olivia shook her head stubbornly. “I can’t, Mama. Not today. Besides, I don’t want to go out and play.”
Caroline stood up, totally exasperated. “Your father brought this piano all the way from New York City, Livvy. Do you know what that cost him?” When Olivia didn’t answer but only tucked her chin in more tightly against her chest, Caroline’s frustration only went up. “Do you know how few girls west of the Mississippi have a piano in their home? Do you know how hard I had to look to find someone who could give you piano lessons?”
Olivia turned for just a moment, her long auburn hair swishing across her back. The green eyes that were so like her mother’s were dark and stricken. In November she would turn eleven, but at that moment she looked like she was thirty. “Please don’t make me, Mama.”
Caroline threw up her hands. “You are so stubborn!” she exploded. She walked swiftly to the door of the small parlor, then decided to try another tack. “Livvy, Mrs. Harwood says you are doing very well. You have a natural talent for it. But if you don’t practice, that talent is not ever going to be developed.”
Olivia was staring at her hands, and there was no response.
“Well,” Caroline snapped, “then you can just sit there until you do feel like playing.” She left the room and shut the door hard, rattling the glass in the windows. She started down the hall, thoroughly angry now. Why
were her children so stubborn? They were good children but as hardheaded as Missouri mules. Will had always driven her to the point of distraction with his independent nature and free-spirited approach to life. And Olivia had that stubborn streak that no amount of coaxing or threatening could bend.
She shook her head, and a smile came to her lips in spite of herself. And then there was Savannah. At eighteen months, Caroline’s youngest was already putting the other two to shame. More social than an East Coast society matron, Savannah was at her happiest when she was around people. She was not in the least intimidated by adults and would come up to perfect strangers, tug on their dress or coattails, and then, with soft flirtatiousness, look up at them and say, “Hi.” It melted the hardest almost instantly. As saucy and impudent as her fiery red hair, she was a tiny, totally adorable and completely irresistible little tyrant, bending everyone to her will with ridiculous ease.
Caroline stopped, feeling the anger melting away. She loved her children and was fiercely proud of what they were. With the emotions calming now, she turned back and looked at the door. What was the matter with Olivia? This was not like her. She loved the piano, took to it as naturally as a water bug to the swamp.
Puzzled now, Caroline tiptoed back to the door and opened it softly. What she saw brought a quick intake of breath. Olivia still sat on the piano bench, but her face was buried in her hands and her shoulders were shuddering convulsively.
In four steps Caroline was to her and took her in her arms. “Livvy,” she said in alarm, “what’s the matter? What is it, honey?”
Her daughter stood up and threw herself against her mother. For almost a minute, the sobs were too great for Olivia to speak. Caroline just patted her and stroked her hair. Then gradually she got control of herself, and the racking sobs began to subside. Caroline put a finger under her chin, lifting her head. “What is it, Livvy? What happened?”
It came out in a torrent, the words tumbling like stones in a flood. “Elizabeth . . . she said she hates me. And Kathy and Mary. They say they are never going to play with me again.” That brought a new burst of tears.
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