Markham tipped his hat and went past her. Lydia watched him for a moment, then went to the door.
* * *
By the time Lydia had been there fifteen minutes, Emma had cheered considerably. Lydia marveled. Emma was a beautiful woman, with her long black hair and flashing dark eyes. She looked too pretty, too elegant to have this kind of resilience. Yet in just moments after entering, it was Lydia who was drawing strength from Emma rather than the other way around. Emma would have vehemently disagreed with that assessment, for Lydia’s coming and her quiet reaffirmation that what Emma was doing was the right thing had been sorely needed this night. But there was no denying it: Lydia had been blessed by her visit as much as the other way around.
But finally, reluctantly, Lydia declared that it was time for her to go. She stood. Julia and Emma stood too. Lydia and Julia hugged quickly, then Lydia turned to Emma. They pressed their cheeks together. “Good-bye, Emma,” Lydia said. “We shall see you in a few weeks, if all goes well.”
Emma was suddenly weeping. “Good-bye, dear Lydia. Will it surely be that long for you?”
“Yes. Father Steed is no better. Perhaps even worse. If we dare to leave now, it will surely kill him.” She sighed. The Steeds had waged some verbal battles over this issue. “And he is determined to stay and help with the departures for as long as he is needed.”
“And bless him for doing it. And Nathan too. Your family is such an inspiration to all of us.” Emma drew a quick breath. “May God be with us both until we meet—”
She turned toward the door. A soft knock had sounded. “I’ll get it,” Julia said. She went to the door and opened it. “Oh, Sister Scott, good evening.”
“Good evening, Julia. Is Sister Smith still—” And then she saw them. “Oh, hello, Sister Emma. And Sister Lydia, good evening.”
Ann Scott was the sister of James Mulholland, who was Joseph Smith’s personal secretary. She was a lovely young woman who had always been greatly concerned about Emma and her children.
“Come in, Ann.”
She did so, and as Julia closed the door, Sister Scott came forward with some obvious anxiety on her face. She carried what looked like a simple pocket apron made of muslin, only it dragged heavily from her arm. “Here they are, Sister Emma. I have come as my brother instructed.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Looking more closely at the apron now, Lydia saw that the pockets were large and had been filled with something. Judging from the shape through the cloth, there was a book, or something similar, about a foot square and two or three inches thick in each pocket. The apron was heavy and quite bulky. The pockets had been sewn tightly shut around whatever they held.
Lydia understood immediately. When Joseph was arrested, Brother Mulholland had taken stewardship for many of Joseph’s most important papers, including the only copy of the manuscript of his inspired translation of the Bible. When Far West fell, Mulholland had given the papers to his sister, hoping that the mob would be much less likely to search a woman.
Sister Scott stepped back as Emma took the apron and hefted it. “I can’t tell you what a relief it is to give these over to your care,” Sister Scott said. “I have not had a peaceful night’s sleep since James gave them to me.”
Emma examined the apron more closely, holding it up to the front of her now. Ann smiled at Lydia. “I designed it so you can tie it around your waist under your petticoats. It is hardly noticeable, especially with a full skirt.”
“Thank you, Sister Ann,” Emma said warmly. “How thoughtful and wise of you. Rest assured, when I leave tomorrow this shall be in place, and I shall care for these papers in the same conscientious manner that you have manifested while they were in your care.” She reached out and took Sister Scott’s hands. “I thank you in behalf of my husband, and in behalf of all the Church. Thank you.”
* * *
“Are you sure, Caroline?” Joshua had stopped his work of tying down the canvas along the wagon box and was looking at her closely.
“Yes, Joshua. If I sit around here any longer with nothing to do, I shall go mad. Mrs. Samuelson is a wonderful woman, and both Olivia and Savannah adore her. They will be fine.”
“And Will?”
“If Will goes to Savannah, which is the most likely thing, the Montagues will tell him the wonderful news about your being alive and will send him straight here. I think we will be back by then, but if not, then the Samuelsons will have him wait here with Livvy and Savannah until we return. If we get a letter from him, Mr. Samuelson will forward it to us. It will only take a few more days to reach us.”
He stopped, watching her with admiration. “You have really thought this through, haven’t you?”
She nodded, her eyes filled with gravity. “After what Nathan did for us, how can we not do this?” Her eyes took on a misty look. “And after the horrible things I said about the Mormons in that letter to your family . . .” She dropped her head. “I need to be there.”
Joshua nodded. In his mind, there was no question about the necessity of what they were doing, although it raised some anxieties in his mind to be headed back to Far West. The Missourians thought he was dead, and he wanted it to stay that way. But they had to help his family. He had known that for over a week now. His main worry now was for Caroline and how she felt about leaving when there had still been no word of Will.
“If the thing with the marshall were still a question, I wouldn’t go,” she said.
“I know,” he replied. “That’s a great relief to me as well.” Four days before, the marshall had come to their house. His news was good, though it did not solve everything. He reported that he had learned that a man by the name of Charlie Patterson, drunk to the point of indiscretion, had confided in some drinking friends that he and two Missourians had set up the robbery of a young lad with a purse full of money. Then something had gone wrong. The Missourians wanted to kill the boy, and Patterson had shot them while trying to stop it from happening. The marshall had gone after Charlie the day after he got that report, but evidently, upon sobering up, Charlie had realized that his loose tongue had put him in jeopardy, and he had fled the city. The upside of all that was that the marshall was satisfied now that Will had no blame in the matter, and he withdrew the warrant. The downside was, Patterson had given no clue as to what had happened to the boy after he saved his life.
Joshua tied the last knot, gave it a solid jerk, then turned to Caroline. “You ready, then?”
“Yes.”
Joshua waved to the two men who would drive the second wagon and who were lolling around outside the livery barn. “All right,” he called. “Let’s move ’em out.”
* * *
For nine bone-jarring, spirit-numbing, strength-sapping days, Emma Smith and her children, along with their neighbor Jonathan Holman and his family and Brother Stephen Markham, had made their way across the prairie. For the most part, the land was open and desolate. They would pass an occasional farmhouse or homesteader’s cabin, but mostly it was just one vast expanse of rolling grassland, with thin strips of woodland along the creeks and rivers. Though they never saw one, at night they could hear the mournful howling of wolves off in the distance, or the eerie hooting of the great horned owl. When the nights were clear, the stars were beautiful, almost taking the breath away. But the clearest nights were also the coldest nights, and they preferred the overcast, even though it left the darkness so thick that one could barely move about with a light.
It brought back many memories for Emma, not all of them happy ones. It was almost exactly one year ago that she and Joseph, fleeing from Kirtland, had crossed this same stretch of country moving west. At the time, that journey had seemed impossible to bear. She had been five-months pregnant with Alexander. But now this trip seemed no better. Alexander was eight months old. Frederick was just two and a half and could not understand the cold and the hunger and the jarring ride; he cried or whimpered almost constantly. Young Joseph the Third, a little over six, and Julia,
a year and a half older, found it difficult but were taking it bravely.
There had been enough Mormons moving eastward now—literally hundreds of wagons—that the road had been churned into an endless morass of ruts and mud holes. Even in summer such ruts and holes would have been considered mankillers, but they were made worse than that by the February weather, which had turned on the refugees as if it too were one of the mobocrats determined to have one last shot at the Mormons before they escaped. During the day the rain alternated between steady drizzle and driving downpours. Half a dozen times a day the wagons would bog down. With backs bent and muscles straining until the veins bulged out on foreheads and arms, everyone would have to lend a hand to help the horses free the wagons again.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, on the sixth day the temperature plummeted. The rain turned to sleet and snow that slashed in horizontally and felt like it would flay the skin off both man and beast. At nights, the roads froze into concrete ruts, and the following days the ride became so rough that it was almost impossible to stay seated. Clothing damp from dragging across muddy ground or through the endless puddles now froze stiff as boards. The children huddled around the meager fires, crying piteously either from hunger or from the cold.
It was late in the afternoon of February fifteenth, the ninth day of the journey, when the two wagons crested a low bluff. There below them were the river bottoms, a mile-wide tangle of marshes and high underbrush, with the silvery stripe of the Mississippi River snaking down the center of it. Sitting on the wagon seat beside Stephen Markham, holding Alexander in her arms, Emma shot to her feet. “Look, children,” she cried. “We’re here.”
Stephen Markham stared down at the scene below them. From this perspective they could clearly see Quincy, Illinois, on the far side. That was their destination. It was a town of some means, with straight streets coming down to the river, and houses going all the way back to the low bluffs on the other side. His eyes began to pick out details. Streamers of smoke were wafting slowly upward from dozens of chimneys and open fires. There was the dock where the riverboats pulled in, though there were no boats now. Just to the north, where the houses petered out, he could see the thin line of the ferry rope that crossed the river. Squinting, he could make out the flat-bottomed ferryboat, pulled up on the shore on the far side.
And then he understood. There were no riverboats. There were no smaller craft—canoes, flatboats, rowboats—shuttling back and forth. The ferryboat was beached. And he didn’t have to ask why. With the low sunlight on it, the river looked like a painting. It was not alive; it was not moving. There was no current, no muddy water swirling logs or debris in lazy circles.
And that also explained why, below them on this side, camped among the heavy undergrowth, there were dozens of wagons and tents and lean-tos and open camps. The Mormons who had gotten there before them were stopped, jammed up against the river like an army of ants run up against an obstacle that thwarted their onward progress.
“Is that Quincy, Mama?” Joseph was crying excitedly. “Is that where we’re going to stay?”
“Yes, Joseph,” Emma said, half laughing. “We’re here. We’ll cross the river and be there by nightfall.”
Stephen Markham reached out and touched Emma’s skirt. She looked down at him, her face radiant. Then she saw his eyes. “What? What is it, Brother Markham?”
He turned to stare. “Look at the river, Sister Emma,” he said in a low voice, the discouragement so heavy it almost left him unable to speak. “We won’t be crossing today. It’s frozen solid.”
* * *
“I’m going across,” Emma said. “I will not have my children spend one more night out in the open.”
Brother Markham blew out his breath, knowing that his words were going to make no difference but feeling compelled to say them anyway. They had come down to the camp where the Mormons waited. There had been a quick flurry of excitement to know that Emma had arrived, but the Saints also told them what Markham had already surmised. With the river frozen, the ferry hadn’t run for two days. This morning, after the cold of the night, when the ice was the hardest, some wagons had started across. But the ice had groaned and creaked. Several had made it, but with the warming of the day, no one else would risk it. A few families, those with wagons furnished by the Committee on Removal, had emptied their belongings and carried them across on foot, leaving the wagons to return west for another load of exiles.
Markham looked at Emma. “You’ve heard what everyone is saying, Sister Emma. The ice isn’t that thick. They don’t think it will carry the weight of a loaded wagon now.”
Emma shook her head, too weary to meet his gaze for more than a moment. “Then we’ll not take it over fully loaded.”
“But—”
“We’ll unhitch the horses and put them in single file. One can pull the wagon if we’re not in it. That way, the weight will be more evenly spread out. You can walk in front, leading the horse. That will help even more.”
“But what about you and the children?”
Emma stepped to the edge of the river and tentatively moved onto the ice. She walked out about five feet, then stamped her foot down solidly. It thumped ominously, like hitting a hollow log with a stick. She looked at Stephen Markham, fighting hard now to keep any quaver from her voice. “I’ll take the children and go first.”
Markham started to say something, then thought better of it. He turned to Brother Holman and gave him a questioning look. Holman glanced briefly at his wife. She looked pale and frightened, and she shook her head quickly. Her husband turned back to Markham. “We have a much heavier load in our wagon than you. And there’s no way we can carry it all across on our own. I think we’ll wait here until it either breaks up or freezes more solidly.”
Emma came back to the bank. She went to her neighbor and took his hand. “I understand, Brother Holman. Thank you for all you’ve done to help. We shall never forget it.”
“Please, Emma—,” Sister Holman started to say. But Emma quickly turned and smiled at her. “We are very much lighter than you. We shall be all right.” She reached out and touched Sister Holman’s shoulder briefly. “We’ll see you when you come over.”
Stephen Markham gave Holman a beseeching look. What would Joseph say if something should happen? But then he finally shrugged his shoulders. Emma was unbendable. Emma was emotionally and physically drained. She was going on pure willpower now. At this point no reasoning with her was going to make a difference.
“All right,” he sighed, “give me a moment to get the horses ready.” He gave her a stern look. “But if we hear one creak, one tiny cracking sound, we turn back. Agreed?”
Emma turned and looked east. This was the narrowest part along this stretch of the river, but it was still a good hundred yards or so of sheet ice they had to cross. Finally she nodded. “Agreed.”
Markham worked swiftly now, determined to be done with it as quickly as possible. He unhitched the one horse and tied it to the back of the wagon with a fifteen-foot length of rope, then redid the harnessing so that the other one would pull the wagon. Finally, he led them down to where Emma stood waiting. “All right, I’m ready.”
She took a quick breath. Julia was holding the baby and watching her mother anxiously. Emma reached down to her waist. Gripping through the skirts, she adjusted the apron with the manuscripts, making sure it was riding comfortably. She looked at Markham, who wouldn’t meet her gaze, then let out her breath. Her heart was pounding and she felt a little dizzy.
“Mama?”
“It’s all right, Julia. Give me the baby.” She took Alexander from Julia and tucked him firmly in her left arm. Going down into a crouch, she reached for little Frederick. “Put your arms around Mama’s neck, Frederick,” she said in a trembling voice.
He nodded gravely, his eyes seeming more like those of a man than those of a boy not yet three, but he did as he was told. Emma straightened with an effort. Frederick clamped his legs around her body as s
he put her other arm beneath him to help hold him up. “Hold on tight,” she commanded. “No matter what, don’t let go of Mama.”
“I won’t, Mama.” He shut his eyes and squeezed against her all the more tightly.
Joseph Smith the Third was Emma’s fourth born, but the first of her children to survive for more than a few hours after birth. At six, he was already taking on a strong resemblance to his father. Emma looked down at him. “Joseph, you’re to take ahold of my skirts here.” She bobbed her head downward to her left side. “You stay right with me. You must not let go either. No matter what.”
“Yes, Mama,” he said. He reached out, grabbed a handful of material, and clenched his fist tightly.
“Julia, you do the same, here on the other side.”
Julia had already moved into position and did as she was told. Finally, Emma looked at Brother Markham. “All right. Let’s go.” She smiled briefly, and wanly, at the Holmans, then turned and stepped out onto the ice. There was no hesitation now. She planted her feet carefully on the slippery surface so as not to fall, but moved steadily out and away from the bank. Little Frederick gave a slight whimper, and Emma saw that Julia’s eyes were tightly closed. She could feel the girl’s hands trembling through her skirts.
“It’s all right,” Emma said soothingly. “The ice is strong.” She forced a light laugh. “It’s like having our own great big ice-skating pond.”
Brother Markham gave her about a twenty-yard head start, then tugged on the reins of the lead horse. “Giddyap, horse,” he clucked. “Let’s go.”
“Go with God,” Brother Holman called softly, standing rigid, holding his breath as he watched them move out into the full expanse of the river. From where he was, the hundred yards across looked like two miles.
Pillar of Light Page 201