Fort Bridger is a disappointment after Fort Laramie. It is really nothing more than a small trading post established by Mr. Bridger and his partner, Louis Vasquez, both experienced mountain men and fur traders. The only buildings are two or three miserable log cabins, rudely constructed, and bearing but a faint resemblance to habitable houses. There is a small stockade providing some protection from the Indians, but it is barely a hundred feet long on a side. It is, however, situated in a pleasant valley with good water and plenty of grass. The post is located about two miles south of where the Oregon Trail turns off to follow the Bear River to the Snake River and Fort Hall. There is a cutoff called the Greenwood Cutoff, which turns off between the Big and Little Sandy. You will know when you reach it. It is called the Parting of the Ways. This cutoff saves about fifty miles over coming to Fort Bridger, but includes 50 water-less miles that are very hard on stock. Thus, many trains come south to Fort Bridger, then turn north again.
And that brings me to the purpose of my letter. By now it is likely that you have met Mr. Wales B. Bonney and read the letter from Mr. Lansford Hastings. If so, you know that Mr. Hastings is urging all oncoming emigrants to come to Fort Bridger, where he will then guide them across a proposed new route to Upper California. Hastings is now here with us and is enthusiastically promoting his new route. He supposes he can save hundreds of miles over the Fort Hall route to California. My impressions, even after hearing him out, are unfavorable to the new route, especially for wagons and families. But a number of emigrant parties have been convinced by Mr. Hastings—who, I must admit, can be very persuasive—and have determined to adopt this route with Messrs. Hastings and Hudspeth as their guides. They are only waiting for other parties, including your own, I’m sure, to come up and join them.
Saturday, July 18
The press of preparations for our departure has prevented me from finishing my letter before now. This morning, our party determined to take the new route via the southern end of the great Salt Lake. Mr. Hastings will stay behind, waiting for additional companies to join him. Unfortunately, there is no one going east to take this letter to you. Therefore I have asked Mr. Vasquez to deliver it to you upon your arrival, which should be in a week or so now. My purpose in writing is this. Again I strongly encourage you not to take Mr. Hastings’s proposed shortcut but to go on by way of Fort Hall as originally planned. I know you were of a mind otherwise, but I strongly discourage it.
But, you say, are you not yourselves taking the new way? Yes, but our situation is very much different from yours. We are mounted on mules and have no wagons and can make thirty-five to forty miles each day. Also, none of us have families with us. We can afford to hazard experiments and make explorations, whereas you cannot. I have great concerns about your crossing over the Sierra too late. Late yesterday afternoon, a rain shower came through here. The temperature dropped from 82 to 44 degrees in a quarter of an hour, and we can see fresh snow on the mountains. And this is still mid-July. I encourage you to take the safer, known route. This is my advice. I must go.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
Edwin Bryant
Melissa watched Carl wash his face in the basin of water, then dry it briskly. He folded the towel neatly and hung it back on the small rack fastened to the side of the dresser. She smiled faintly. Other women complained about how their husbands either tossed things into a corner or let them drop wherever they happened to be standing at the moment. But Melissa had no such complaints about Carl. He always liked things orderly. His socks were tucked neatly in one corner of the lower drawer. His shirts were folded carefully and sorted by color—the blues in one pile, the grays and whites in another. His boots—two pair—were lined up in one corner so that the heels were exactly on a line. Maybe that’s why he had loved the brickyard so much. Bricks were neat and precise and exactly the same size every time.
Melissa sat in bed with two pillows propped up behind her. The book had been put away as the daylight had faded. She had heard him come in and so she had waited, her hands folded in her lap. There was still enough twilight outside to see, so she had not lit a lamp.
Carl hung his shirt on a peg—he had worn it only one day, and unless it was a particularly strenuous or grimy day, he always wore his shirts at least twice. As he moved toward the chair, he glanced in the mirror, took a moment to smooth an errant lock of hair, even though he would shortly be in bed and mess it up completely, then sat down and began to remove his boots. If he was aware of her watching him, he gave no sign. Off came the socks. He wrapped them together before tossing them in the wicker basket she kept beside the chair. It seemed effortless, almost as though he paid no mind to where they were set, but when he stepped back from putting these boots beside the other two pair, they were perfectly aligned with the others.
Suddenly there came a flash of insight. Strangely, she had not thought of it in this way before. Out on the trail, there wouldn’t be much purpose in lining up boots in a perfect line. There wouldn’t be a wicker basket for dirty socks or a dresser where he could keep his shirts arranged by color. It wasn’t an obsession with him, just a strong preference for how he wanted things to be. But it wasCarl. He wanted life orderly and everything in its proper place. He wanted to be able to rise while it was still dark and know which shirt he was getting without having to light a lamp. Trail life would hardly offer that. The whole experience was a plunge into uncertainty. It was the unexpected, the unplanned, and the unpredictable.
As he climbed into bed and pulled up the sheet, she wiggled down beneath the covers too, still lost in the surety of this discovery. It was something she wanted to think about. If she could find a way to get around that feeling of jumping into chaos, would he be more willing to consider going? Was there a way out there to preserve some of what he had now? At first look, it didn’t seem so, but it was worthy of careful thought.
“I’ll be leaving at five in the morning,” he said suddenly, his face turned away from her.
She winced a little. This had once been a wonderful time for them. He would come to bed, she would be waiting, and they would lie there and talk, sometimes for as much as half an hour. Then he would come up on one elbow, kiss her gently, and wish her good night. But since his return from St. Louis this was the more common pattern—heavy silence while they got ready for bed, a brief sharing of essential information, then silence again.
“Fine. Are you taking all three of the boys?”
“Yes. I warned them. They’ll be ready.”
“I fixed a basket of food. It’s in the icehouse.”
“Thank you.”
“Carl?”
There was a long pause; then, “I’ve got to be up early, Melissa. This is the first order of brick we’ve had in almost two months.”
“I know. But will we ever talk about this, Carl? Will we ever sit down and try to come to some solution?”
“I’ve got to be up early,” he said again.
Stung, she turned her head away from him. It had been a week since the beatings and the ensuing kidnapping of the five brethren who were members of the Church. The city was still in an uproar. Rumors flew anew almost every hour. The five men had been seen. They had escaped. They had been beaten. They had been executed. The tension in the city was still high, and people went around in considerable fear. Hardly anyone dared venture out of the city now. And through it all, Carl refused to even speak of it with her. He went to his meetings with the new citizens and returned in a shell of silence. He refused to answer questions or discuss the issue in any way. “It’s going to be fine,” was all he would say. “We’re handling the situation.”
She waited now, hoping for some sign of softening, longing for him to realize how he had hurt her and reach out his hand in apology. When it didn’t come she felt the sorrow rise, and with it came a touch of anger. “Why is it that what I want, what I feel, what I think has no bearing on any of this? You won’t even talk with me. Why, Carl? It didn’t use to be this way between us.”<
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There was no answer, but she could feel his stiffness beside her. She knew if she said one more thing, he would get up, take his trousers and shirt and boots, and go down and sleep on the sofa. That had happened now twice since his return, another change in their bedtime routine.
The despair and hopelessness were almost overwhelming. She felt the first of the tears start to sting behind her eyes, and that only made her the angrier. Why wasn’t hecrying? Why was hethe one who was angry? Didn’t he understand anything she was feeling?
Suddenly she pulled the sheet back and threw her legs over the side of the bed. She got up, reaching for her nightdress.
He turned. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going down to the store.”
In the faint light she could see the incredulous look on his face. “What? There is no store. There’s nothing there anymore.”
“There is more for me there than there is here anymore,” she said with great weariness. She moved to the door, opened it, then stepped through.
“Melissa?”
She paused.
“It’s not safe for you to be out walking at night.”
Her head came up. “If something happens,” she said coldly, “I’ll send for young Carl.” And with that she closed the door and walked swiftly down the hall.
In the end, his final warning wouldn’t leave her mind and she decided it wasn’t safe to be out alone this late. She had already had one terrible experience with the new circumstances in Nauvoo. She wasn’t looking for another. But neither could she stay in the house. Not after flinging that last shaft at him. So, let him worry about her. That would be nice for a change.
She stood for a moment on the porch, debating what to do. Then she had it. Kitty-corner across the street from their house was the small house where Benjamin and Mary Ann had first lived when they came to Nauvoo. It stood empty now. The family had deeded the house to Carl and Melissa before leaving. But there were too many larger and nicer homes; they hadn’t had even one person interested in buying this one. Carl had padlocked both of the doors, but Melissa knew where the key to the back one was hidden. She walked swiftly across the street and through the gate. She found the key and let herself in.
The house smelled musty and close, still holding much of the heat from the day. She stopped. A prickling chill stole up her back. What if someone had broken in without their knowledge and was staying here? They hadn’t checked the house for some time now. She gave a little shudder and nearly turned right around and went out again, but there was too much pride involved now. Steeling herself, she moved slowly into what had been her parent’s bedroom. The dresser, chair, and armoire that had once been there were gone, taken to the store for sale, then lost in the fire; but the bed was still there, with its lumpy tick mattress. Gingerly, listening intently to make sure she was alone, she moved to the bed and sat down. The dust billowed up and she sneezed heartily. Holding one hand over her mouth and nose, she brushed off the mattress, then leaned back.
She was gratified five minutes later when she heard Carl’s voice. “Melissa?”
She tiptoed to the front window and saw a dark figure step out into the street in front of their house.
“Melissa.”
She nodded in satisfaction. He sounded worried. After a moment, he turned and started in the direction where the store had once been. She nearly burst from the house to call to him. He was worried. He had come looking for her. That softened her considerably. Then she remembered the curtness of his tone and his unbending attitude. With that, she went back to the bed and sat down again.
Carl returned after about a quarter of an hour. He called again before going in the house, but this time there was little hope in it. She didn’t get up to see what he did. She heard their front door open and then close again, and then all was quiet.
There was no thought of sleep. Her mind was like the rapids in a fierce river—churning, roaring, tumbling wildly over the rocks. In Melissa’s mind there were only two alternatives which now lay before her, and both were equally terrible to contemplate. Either she accepted Carl’s decision and stayed here to see it through, or else she took the children and went to her family without him. Carl had closed every other door. He wouldn’t consider returning to Kirtland to be with his brothers. Both of his parents were dead now, and his brothers wouldn’t warmly welcome another family to support off the livery stable. Running the lumber operation was out of the question. Like the brickyard, there was no building boom to sustain the market. St. Louis. New Orleans. She had suggested them all, and he swatted each idea away as if it were an annoying insect.
Carl was sure that because he wasn’t a Mormon they could escape any serious problems. But Melissa knew better. She knew what the mobs were like. Women and children engendered no mercy. Jessica, carrying Rachel in her arms, had been driven barefoot some twenty-five miles across a frozen prairie, leaving bloody footprints in the snow. Amanda Smith lost not only her husband at Haun’s Mill but a ten-year-old son as well. Her seven-year-old lost a hip when another man jammed a rifle into the blacksmith shop where the boy was hiding and blew the hip away. Women were ravished to the point of death. Children were left to starve.
Why did Carl think these people would be any different? Yelrome had been burned to the ground within the last year. Edmund Durfee, an elderly, unarmed man, had been shot down by men too cowardly to face him. Some of the very men who now howled for action against the Mormons were the same ones who had painted their faces and stormed the stairs of Carthage Jail two years before. Ask Joseph Smith about mercy, she thought. Talk to Emma or Mary Fielding Smith about how much tolerance you could expect from Mormon-haters. Was she willing to stay by Carl’s side when his bullheadedness put her and the children at that kind of risk? She didn’t think so.
On the other hand, could she simply walk away from Carl? If he wouldn’t bend, if he continued to adamantly refuse to consider going west—or anywhere else, for that matter—what would she do? They had shared the same bed now for fifteen years. She could not imagine life without him. Even in the consideration of it, the pain was so sharp that she had to cover her mouth to stop from crying out.
And there it was. So simple. So terrible. Lose Carl, or put her children at risk. Which part of her did she surrender—being a wife or being a mother? With that terrible dilemma weighing in upon her, she finally lay back and fell into a fitful sleep.
She awoke fully and realized she was perspiring. Her hair stuck to her forehead, and the mattress felt cold and clammy beneath her neck. She sat up slowly, brushing back the hair from her eyes. Her body was sluggish, showing the signs of deep exhaustion. She turned toward the window. It was still dark, and through it she could see stars. She guessed it was somewhere around three or four in the morning.
Quietly she slipped out of the house and padlocked the door again. Looking up and down the street to make sure she was alone, she darted quickly to her house and onto the porch. Now, moving with infinite care, she opened the door. Taking off her shoes, she tiptoed down the hall, stopping at the bottom of the stairs to see if there was any sound. There was not. She continued on into the kitchen and carefully rummaged through a drawer until she found a candle and a match. Making sure the kitchen door was shut, she lit the candle, then went to the shelf above the fireplace and got down her Bible. Carl would be up in an hour or two. There was no sense in waking him now.
Tired to a depth that she had not known before and unwilling to think anymore about what she had to do, she opened the book to the New Testament and began to read. There was no purpose in it other than to help her pass the time until she had to face him again.
She read idly in the Gospel of Matthew for a time but found herself looking up and staring at nothing. Finally, with a deep sigh, she set the book beside the candle and dropped to her knees. She closed her eyes, her thoughts still a jumble, and then finally she began.
“O Father, my dear Father in Heaven. I come to thee in the midst of the
night—a night of darkness, a night of terror, a night of pain and indecision. I know not what to do, Father. I fear deeply for my children. I have seen what our enemies have done. I know that just because we are thy people doesn’t mean there is always protection. I do not question that, O God. I trust in thy wisdom and thy mercy. But I fear for the safety of my children. Help Carl to see that we are in great danger.”
There was a long silence; then, “I miss my family, Father. How I love them! How grateful I am that I was privileged to be born to such goodly parents! But I have my own family now, Father. I have Carl, and I know that he too is a blessing from thee. What do I do? I have wavered from the faith, but now I am determined to try to do thy will. What is thy will, O Lord? Must I leave Carl to find safety for my children? Must I put my children in danger in order to honor my vows with my husband? O Lord, my heart quakes at the very thought of either of these terrible choices. Bless me to be wise. Help me, Father. Help me to know what to do. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”
She rose slowly and sat down again. For a long time she stared at nothing. The image of a headstone beneath an oak tree on the far side of the river came to her mind. “Papa, help me. Help me to know what to do.”
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