Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

  He swung around. “Truly! You really mean it?”

  She was pleased at his excitement. “Yes, I think so.”

  “That’s wonderful. Let’s think of some names.”

  She laughed merrily and leaned against him. “I think we have plenty of time, Will.”

  Brigham Young’s company arrived at Mount Pisgah on the afternoon of Monday, May eighteenth. They had come to create another way station, and by Saturday, just five working days later, they had done a remarkable amount of work toward that end. Two or three hundred acres were fenced now, and most of that was plowed. Wheat, corn, and barley were going in right behind the plows. There were five cabins or sod huts now completed and eight more in various stages of completion. Work on a sturdy bridge across the river was under way. They were also constructing a gristmill. Dozens of small plots were already spaded and planted with garden vegetables. Not only was Mount Pisgah a place of remarkable beauty, it was also, unlike Garden Grove, completely free of rattlesnakes. That alone made it almost a paradise. So what had been the week before uninhabited wilderness was now a significant community.

  The first of the wagons of those who had stayed behind at Garden Grove started arriving on Wednesday. At first it was just a few here and there. By Friday it was a steady trickle. By Saturday they were coming in an almost endless stream.

  The sound of wagons caused both Joshua and Nathan to stop work for a moment and look to where the road dropped over the eastern bluffs and into the Grand River floodplain. It took them only a moment to see that there were no Steed wagons among the six that came into sight and they immediately lost interest. They didn’t really expect their family for another day or two, but they always stopped to look.

  Joshua leaned on the beetle, looking down at the pile of rails they had completed since the wagon had last come for them. In five days they had become quite proficient, and Nathan, who always liked to track things like that, said they had cut almost five hundred rails, enough to make about a half mile of fence.

  Joshua reached down and pulled on a long piece of prairie grass. When it came free he began to chew on its soft, sweet stem. “Nathan?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do you think we should do?”

  Nathan frowned. He didn’t have to ask what Joshua meant. It was the number-one topic of discussion in camp right now. President Young had already chosen the leadership for Mount Pisgah. To Nathan’s pleased surprise, Father William Huntington was chosen as president, and he had chosen Ezra T. Benson as his first counselor and Charles Rich as his second. Other families would be chosen to stay here in Mount Pisgah, just as Solomon and Jessica would be staying at Garden Grove for a time. Their job would be to prepare things for the thousands yet to come. If the Steeds were chosen as one of those, then there would be no further question, but neither Joshua nor Nathan thought they would be.

  The question that weighed heavily on Brigham’s mind was the Rocky Mountains. May was almost over and they weren’t even across Iowa Territory yet. That meant they still had more than a thousand miles to go, five times the distance they had already come! On Wednesday, two days after their arrival, Brigham called a council meeting. The rain had started again by then, so they gathered in the post office tent. Heber C. Kimball, in his usual direct manner, started the meeting by stating that at their current rate of travel and with the present numbers of teams, there was no way they were all going to make it over the mountains this season.

  That started a vigorous discussion. No one disagreed with the assessment, but what to do about it was not so clear. After almost half an hour of listening, President Young stood. “Brethren, I have a possible solution. I would propose that the Twelve and a few others blaze the way ahead to Council Bluffs on the Missouri River. There, if all goes well, we can purchase additional supplies, establish a third way station, then push on with a vanguard company across the Rockies. Hopefully we could get to the valley in time to put in crops. Next spring that group would return to guide the rest of the people to our new home.”

  It was quickly agreed that this was the only practical answer. The bulk of the Saints would stay in the area at Council Bluffs, Mount Pisgah, or Garden Grove to raise crops for next year’s journey. Only those who had good teams and sufficient provisions would be allowed to continue west.

  Though not the best equipped of families, the Steeds met Brigham’s criteria for the vanguard company. And that selection would not be strictly by assignment. If they wanted to go, they could go. But not the whole family. A vanguard company would be almost exclusively men. Speed would be of the essence. And therein lay the question. Should Nathan and Joshua, and perhaps Matthew, go on with the vanguard company and winter over, leaving their family behind? Or should they leave that to others?

  Nathan shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I’m torn both ways. What are your feelings by now?”

  Joshua looked around, his eyes taking in all that had been done in the last few days. This was a lovely place. Parley Pratt had not exaggerated. It would not be an unpleasant place to settle in for a time. But . . . He pulled the piece of grass from his mouth and flipped it away. “I was never very good at standing in place, Nathan.”

  “Yeah, me neither,” he said glumly. The thoughts of plopping down here and waiting until spring were thoroughly depressing. Now that they were on the move, he wanted to keep moving. On the other hand, splitting up the family was a totally unattractive option. “I think we wait until the family gets here, and then hold a family council.”

  “You’re right,” Joshua agreed. “Everyone needs to be in on this discussion and—”

  He stopped. Nathan was looking past him, peering intently at the oncoming wagons which were now just about seventy-five yards east of where they stood.

  Joshua turned too. “What is it?”

  “I think that’s John Taylor,” he said. “There, at the head of the first wagon.” Then, with a shout, he started toward the road. “Elder Taylor! John Taylor! Is that you?”

  “We brought a whole sack of letters,” Elder Taylor said to Nathan. “One was from your sister.”

  “Melissa?” both Nathan and Joshua said together. They were walking beside Elder Taylor as they moved slowly toward the main encampment.

  “Yes,” Elder Taylor said, “but we gave it to your mother.”

  “So you saw them?” Joshua asked eagerly. “How far out?”

  “They were packing up getting ready to leave Garden Grove. They told us to tell you they should be here Monday afternoon.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “It is so good to see you,” Nathan said, laying a hand on Elder Taylor’s shoulder. Nathan had accompanied Parley P. Pratt on a mission to Upper Canada in the spring of 1836. The first place they stayed was in the home of a recent English emigrant. The rest had become history. John Taylor and his wife eventually joined the Church and referred many of their friends as well, including Joseph Fielding and his two sisters, Mary and Mercy. So the friendship between Nathan and the Taylors went back many years and was strengthened even more by the natural affection that ties a missionary and his proselytes together.

  The Apostle was smiling at him. “Had you heard that Melissa came to the temple dedication?”

  Nathan stopped. “She did?”

  “Yes. Wilford Woodruff is back from England now. He went and saw Melissa at the store and told her there would be a public dedication. To his surprise, she came.”

  “Did Carl?” Joshua asked, as surprised as Nathan.

  “No, but Melissa brought the children.”

  John Taylor frowned, and there was clear anxiety in his eyes. “Things are not good for those who are staying in Nauvoo, Nathan. I worry about them.”

  “We have heard that our old enemies are getting more and more impatient about us leaving. Are more of the Saints getting out of there?”

  “It seems the whole city is on the move,” he replied. “Guess how many wagons we counted that had crossed the Mississippi and wer
e waiting on this side of the river to get under way.”

  “How many?”

  “Over four hundred.”

  Joshua gave a low whistle. Nathan just shook his head. Four hundred. That was about the same number as their total company, including those in Garden Grove and in between.

  “And I’ve been counting the numbers of teams we have passed on the trail. I thought President Young would want to know.”

  “How many?” Nathan asked.

  “Not counting the four hundred at Montrose and Sugar Creek, we easily passed another eight hundred wagons between here and there.”

  “Twelve hundred wagons!” The very thought of that was staggering.

  “At five or six people per wagon,” Joshua calculated quickly, “that’s six or seven thousand people. Oh, my!”

  “At least,” Elder Taylor agreed. “Nauvoo is like a ghost town. I would say that by the time June is here, there will be less than a thousand of our people left in the city.” The Apostle smiled at Nathan. “Would you like some good news that you will find quite depressing?”

  Nathan gave him a strange look, and Elder Taylor just laughed. “When did you actually leave Sugar Creek?”

  Nathan thought back.

  Joshua spoke up. “It was March first.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Nathan agreed.

  “And today is the twenty-third of May?” Elder Taylor queried.

  “Yes.”

  “So it has taken you two months and three weeks—almost three months—to get to this point?”

  “That’s right. In another week it will be a full three months since we started.”

  There was a smile mingled with just a touch of sadness. “Most of the companies are covering that same distance in about three weeks.”

  Nathan’s mouth fell open. “Three weeks?”

  “Yes. I’m really not trying to gloat. We have been traveling with a light wagon and carriage, but we have come from Nauvoo in about two weeks. I tell you this because those thousands of people behind us are going to be here much sooner than you think.”

  Nathan let out his breath slowly. Three weeks! And yet, strangely, he felt no regrets, no envy. Those coming now would never know what they had endured. But they had been the first, and they had paid the price. If it smoothed the way for those to follow, then there was a deep satisfaction in that. He looked at his old friend. “President Young will need to know all of this, Elder Taylor. He is going to be very glad to see you.”

  “Yes. I am anxious to see him again. Also Leonora came on with others when I returned to Nauvoo. I am most anxious to see her again too.”

  Joshua lay on his back, staring up at the interwoven latticework of willows that made up the roof of their simple lean-to shelter. He slapped at a mosquito that buzzed near his ear, then rolled over onto his stomach. Directly in front of his nose lay Lydia’s Book of Mormon. It was closed. It had been closed since Nathan had left to have supper with Parley Pratt and the Taylors. Once he had left, Joshua had fished the book out of his saddlebags and tossed it on the bed, and there it had lain ever since.

  It was a perfect time for reading. He and Nathan had chosen to make their shelter out away from the main encampment so that they would be close to the trees where they were splitting rails. It was not likely that someone would happen by unexpectedly. There was at least another three-quarters of an hour during which there would be sufficient light to read by. But still the book lay there, closed and silent.

  “Keep the book, Joshua. Read it until you’re done.”

  “You need to tell Caroline, Joshua. Of all people, she should know.”

  “It’s your life that is raising the questions, Joshua. The Book of Mormon has only helped give voice to those questions.”

  He sat up abruptly, wanting the voices in his mind stilled. He was reading. Not as much as before. The man-killing schedule Brigham had put them on greatly restricted that, but he was more than two-thirds through the book now. And he was no closer to an answer or to a resolution of his questions than he was when he and Nathan set out from Garden Grove eleven days ago now. He had not gone back to Nathan with further questions since that day they talked while splitting rails. He could tell it was costing Nathan dearly, not to be able to prod him a little, but thus far he had been completely true to his promise. It was Joshua’s lead, and Nathan would not push him. That was not without its drawbacks. Sometimes he would not have resented a little push. It was hard to jump in just out of the blue and start asking questions.

  “It’s not enough to just read, Joshua. You have to ask.”

  Well, he retorted to himself, that was not without its own problems. Three times now he had determined that he would try to pray, and specifically that he would pray about the Book of Mormon, as both his mother and Lydia had strongly suggested. But each time, when he actually started to open his mouth, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Once he had even found a place behind a clump of brush and knelt down. Before he could actually pray, he ended up feeling so ridiculous that he jumped up and stalked away. He had sworn aloud, at himself and at his family, and vowed he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Abruptly he grabbed the book, rolled over, and shoved it back inside his saddlebags. He retrieved the rifle from its scabbard and sighted down its barrel. Now there was a thought to solve this malaise he was in. He looked up at the sky. The sun was just going down. That gave him another thirty or forty minutes of daylight. The perfect time for hunting. Cheered by the thoughts of occupying his mind with something besides religion, he turned back to the saddlebags and began rummaging for his powder and the bag of lead balls. As he did so, he began to whistle to himself some unknown tune.

  He found three does and a yearling—probably a young spike—stripping buds off the willows right at the river’s edge. They were no more than twenty or thirty yards from where he was. Perhaps they heard the scrape of the branches against his shirt. Maybe it was their incredible sixth sense of danger. Through a screen of underbrush, he saw their heads come up with a frightened jerk, ears cocked forward, their bodies frozen, poised for flight. So perfectly did they blend into the deepening shadows, that had it not been for that sudden movement, he wouldn’t have seen them at all. Then he would have stepped out into the open and spooked them for sure. As it was, he was still mostly hidden from them. He stood there, as motionless as they, poised on the balls of his feet, barely breathing. After almost a full minute of staring in his direction, they finally decided that whatever it was they heard was not a threat and they turned back to the willows.

  He relaxed, letting himself sink slowly down into a crouch. Slowly, ever so slowly, he slid the muzzle of his rifle through the screen of underbrush. Then he sat back on his heels, letting his eyes scan the trees behind them. Where there was a group of does, there was a good possibility that they would be escorted by something more than this young male. He was sure of the sex of the yearling now, seeing the stubby little knobs that marked the beginning of his antlers. He was too young to qualify as the protector of this group. But if there was an old mossy-back buck, he would be far more cautious than his womenfolk. That’s how they got to be old enough to carry those magnificent racks of antlers. And for that, he would wait.

  He was close enough that he could see their fur—light brown now, with summer coming—ripple as they tried to ward off the swarms of mosquitoes that were thickening as the air cooled. Their white tails flipped up and down, flashing like naval semaphores when they turned their rumps toward him. Every few seconds they would stop. Their ears would come forward, and they would stare at some spot along the river before returning to their eating.

  He waited almost five minutes before he saw it. There was a movement in the trees that lay beyond the flat meadows along the river. It was so nearly imperceptible he wasn’t even sure but what it was the flash of a bird’s wing. Another full minute went by. The gloom was deepening rapidly, and he knew that if he waited much longer, he would have to be content wi
th taking one of the others, or go home empty-handed.

  Then, just like that, it was there. Again there was a brief movement, and then another deer stepped out from between two trees and into the clearing, moving ever so slowly. If the other four saw it, they gave no sign. Neither did he seem the least interested in them. When the new deer turned his head, Joshua gave a satisfied grunt.

  A deer’s antlers begin to grow in the spring, usually in April or early May. They start as stubby knobs on the top of the animal’s head and then, for the next several weeks, grow rapidly. By August they are fully grown, though still in the “velvet stage,” semi-soft and covered with a fuzzy sheath. But as fall approaches, the velvet covering is quickly rubbed off, and the antlers become the bone-hard racks that are worn through the winter before they fall off and the whole process starts over again. Since this was late in May, the buck’s antlers were still in the first stages of growth. Nevertheless they were far enough along that Joshua could see that this animal had significantly more than the stubby knobs on the yearling. They were already four inches long and very thick at the base. Judging from that, he guessed this one was eight, or maybe nine, years old, well into his prime.

  Carefully, moving so slowly as to make no sound or move the brush in any unnatural way, Joshua lifted the rifle. He aimed the front sight so it pointed at the neck, just ahead of the front quarters. He took a breath, let it out slowly, breathed again, let it out halfway, then squeezed slowly.

  The crack of the rifle was like the explosion of a cannon in the evening quiet. The buck jerked around violently, leaped once into the air, then crumpled as his forelegs buckled beneath him. The other four deer shot away in great bounding leaps, tails flashing white. Three crows burst into the air from a dead cottonwood, cawing angrily at this intrusion on their privacy.

  Joshua straightened and pushed out from his blind. The buck was down now, legs shaking in its final death throes. He nodded in satisfaction. A clean shot. No suffering. No having to track the blood stains, then losing them in the darkness.