Fire of the Covenant

by Gerald N. Lund

  And then there was a sharp intake of breath. “Well, I’ll be!” he exclaimed. He lifted a hand, squinting hard now to make sure he had seen it correctly. After a moment he dropped heavily back into the saddle. There was no mistake. That dark line was moving very slowly toward him. And he could see the round tops of many wagons.

  He dug his heels into the side of his horse, yanking on the lead rope of the packhorse. “Let’s go, boy! I think we’ve found ’em.”

  •••

  “Mama! Mama! Mama!”

  Elizabeth Jackson nearly dropped the pole of the tent she was holding as she whirled around.

  Martha Ann came darting around one of the wagons, and nearly went down as she tried to corner in the snow and her feet slipped beneath her.

  “Hold it,” Brother Roper exclaimed, “don’t let go. I’ve almost got it.”

  Sister Jackson turned back and pulled the tent pole tight again. On the other side of the tent, Hannah held another pole. Ingrid and Sister Roper were opposite Hannah holding yet another. Brother Roper grabbed a tent peg, pulled the rope taut, then scraped the snow off the ground with the side of his boot. Using the blunt end of a small hatchet, he hammered the stake into the half-frozen earth.

  “Mama! Guess what!”

  “Just a minute, dear.”

  Finished, Brother Roper came around and got the rope that would hold up Sister Jackson’s tent pole. Martha Ann was jumping up and down, barely able to contain herself. As Sister Jackson felt the pole straighten of its own accord, she let go and stepped back. “All right, Martha Ann, what has got you so excited?”

  “There’s a man on a horse.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly, a little puzzled. Several of the rescuers rode horses. She wasn’t sure why that sight would surprise her daughter.

  Martha Ann saw the doubt in her mother’s eyes. “No, Mama. From Salt Lake. The man’s from Salt Lake. And he’s giving away buffalo meat.”

  Every head turned. Being among the last ones to arrive, they were on the eastern outskirts of the camp. They were staring now towards the western side of their encampment. And now that they had stopped working, they could clearly hear a great commotion coming from that direction.

  Martha Ann grabbed her mother’s coat, tugging on it frantically. “Hurry, Mama,” she wailed. “He’s giving it away and we won’t get any.”

  •••

  Hannah could not take her eyes away from Ephraim Hanks’s hands. As he held them out to the fire, they looked huge. His fingers were long and narrow, his knuckles prominent. In the firelight she could see that they were heavily callused and that there was a long white scar on the back of one. She kept glancing up at his weathered face half-hidden beneath a full beard, the long hair that fell loosely around his shoulders, the buckskin jacket with its dancing fringes, but it was those magnificent, expressive hands that drew her eye back again and again.

  It was a large fire, perhaps as much as fifteen feet across at the base. The boys from the Valley had dragged in a lot of firewood from the river, and now the central campfire roared and sent embers spinning up and up into the darkness. All around, the people gathered in as closely as they could. Hannah guessed that two or three hundred of the company had come to stare at this man who had so miraculously ridden into their camp and begun delivering chunk after chunk of deep-red buffalo meat, marbled richly with veins of fat. Even now the smell of cooking meat—real meat—seemed to linger in the air. It was intoxicating, even now that they were full.

  Captain Grant raised his hands for silence, though at the moment no one was speaking. Everyone was just watching their deliverer in quiet fascination. “Brothers and sisters, Brother Hanks comes as a direct answer to our prayers. As he told me how it is that he happens to be out here all alone with two horses loaded down with buffalo meat, I thought it would be well for you to hear his story. I know that there have been a few who have begun to wonder if God has forsaken us. Well, I think Brother Hanks can answer that for you.” He turned. “Brother Ephraim, we would be pleased to have you share with us what you will.”

  The man stirred slightly, looking a little embarrassed. When she had first seen him, Hannah had thought he was in his late forties or early fifties. Now up close she could see he was closer to thirty, though his face was well weathered by a lifetime in the sun. And the snow, no doubt.

  “Brothers and sisters,” the bearded man began slowly, “I don’t much feel comfortable blowing my own horn, but Captain Grant is right. The hand of the Lord is in this and I’ve been privileged to be His instrument. And that story is worthy of telling, but the glory is His, not mine.”

  He leaned back, lifting one knee and locking his hands around it. “I had, of course, heard that there were two handcart companies still out here and that a great rescue effort had been launched by President Young. I couldn’t get you folks out of my mind. I kept wondering how you were getting on, especially when the early snows came. Along with everyone else, I was trying to get some things together to see what I might do to help.

  “Well, this one night, I think it was about the twenty-fourth of October, I had been down at Utah Lake doing some fishing. I was after a load of fish to sell that time, not just a string for supper. Well, on my way back home, I stopped at the home of a good friend of mine in Draper—that’s down in the south part of the Valley. My friend’s name is Gurney Brown. Gurney put me up for the night, and being tired, I went right to bed after supper.

  “Though the bed was comfortable enough, for some reason I couldn’t get to sleep. I tossed and turned like a wild man. Finally, I had just dropped off, when I heard someone calling me. ‘Ephraim!’ the voice said. Well, that’s my name, so I said, ‘Yes?’ At first I thought it might be Gurney, but it wasn’t.”

  Now his voice took on a low, almost mournful sound. “ ‘The handcart people are in trouble and you are wanted. Will you go and help them?’ I tell you, my heart was like to have pounded right out of my body.”

  Hannah felt a prickling sensation at the back of her neck. She looked at Ingrid, but she was staring at Brother Hanks in total concentration.

  He took a deep breath, looking around at the wide eyes which stared at him. “I turned instinctively in the direction from whence the voice came and beheld an ordinary-sized man in the room. Without any hesitation I answered, ‘Yes, I will go if I am called.’ I then turned around to go to sleep, but had lain only a few minutes when the voice called a second time, repeating almost the same words as on the first occasion. My answer was the same as before. This was repeated a third time.”

  Now there was not a sound except the crackling and popping of the fire. Every person was leaning forward to catch his words.

  “Well, I tell you, I got right out of bed and told Gurney to get my team hooked up. Sister Brown, she cooked me up some breakfast and I was on my way. I got to Salt Lake from Draper about daybreak, and what should happen but right then I met a messenger from Brother Brigham. He was on his way to come fetch me to go out and help with the handcart people.”

  He looked up at George D. Grant for a moment, then looked into the fire. He held out those huge hands and rubbed them together, as though they were still cold. “Seems like since I was a boy, the Lord has always been willing to keep in touch with me if I’d keep in touch with Him. Here’s the way I got it figured. The Lord isn’t going to fool around with any of His gifts just to impress folks. I do know that when a body needs the Lord, needs something the Lord can do for him, so bad that there isn’t any other way out, that is the time that the Lord will show His face or His voice.”

  He stopped, as if lost in memory. “Just after leaving Reddick Allred, had me another interesting experience with a bull buffalo I’ll tell you about some other time. But anyway, I got my wagon ready and started east as quickly as possible. When the snow got too deep at South Pass, I traded Brother Allred for these two horses.”

  Now a smile lit his eyes and he looked around, more jovial now in his countenance. “Yes, the
Lord does strange things, but I notice He always counts on human folks to help Him out. Now, I’ve traveled this road time and again, and at this time of year I wouldn’t ever have expected to meet a buffalo there on Ice Springs Bench. But you folks needed meat and that fat old buffalo cow was put right in my way. Now, I’ll tell you, if I hadn’t been there, or if I couldn’t have brought her down . . .” He laughed softly. “Well, anyway, the way I figure it, the Lord wouldn’t have bothered to have it there if we couldn’t take advantage of it, that’s all.”

  There were appreciative chuckles all around the circle. At that moment Ephraim Hanks could have asked anything from that company and they would gladly have given it to him. And Hannah would have been first in line to do so if asked.

  “Now, my brothers and sisters, I know you think that two horses packed to the haunches with rich, fat buffalo meat is about the best news you could have, right?”

  Several called out at that. “Yes!” “Amen!” “None better!”

  He smiled slowly, his teeth showing like a line of ivory in the darkness of his beard. “Well, I have something better than that to say to you.”

  Even Captain Grant seemed surprised. “Really, Ephraim? What’s that?”

  “A couple of nights ago I met Brothers Joseph Young and Abe Garr, riding like the wind for Salt Lake City, bearing a letter for President Young from Brother Grant here.”

  “Good,” Captain Grant said. “Were they making good time?”

  “Best as could be expected with all this snow.” Now he turned and looked around at the circle of faces. “I told them about Reddick Allred waiting near South Pass with wagons filled with food and clothing and I told them boys to give Brother Allred the word that you folks are in need and to get them wagons rolling, no matter how deep the snow or how cold the wind. Brothers and sisters, I can promise you this. Help now is only a day or two away.”

  Chapter Notes

  The last crossing of the Sweetwater, a mile or two west of Devil’s Gate, proved to be the most difficult and daunting of the whole trail experience for the Martin Company. The temperature had plunged to well below zero, and while the ford was neither that wide nor that deep, in the impoverished condition the company was in by then, it proved to be, as John Jaques said, “a severe operation to many of the company” (in Bell, Life History and Writings of John Jaques, p. 160; also in Remember, p. 28). The details given here—including Patience’s hiding her face, “Jimmy’s” emotional collapse and then his being accidentally dumped in the water anyway, and the damage from the floating ice—all come from the accounts of those who experienced that terrible day (see Remember, pp. 28–29). John Jaques’s grandson said that his grandfather carried scars inflicted by the ice for the rest of his life (in Bell, Life History and Writings of John Jaques, p. 161).

  Some of the accounts credit three young men with the heroic act of carrying the emigrants across the river; others say there were four. Those named are David P. Kimball, seventeen; George W. Grant, eighteen (son of George D. Grant, the rescue company captain); Stephen Taylor, twenty-one; and C. Allen Huntington, twenty-five (see Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, pp. 132–33; Bell, Life History and Writings of John Jaques, p. 160; Remember, p. 28). Daniel W. Jones, who was also there that day, makes this comment: “We did all we possibly could to help and cheer the people. Some writers have endeavored to make individual heroes of some of our company. I have no remembrance of any one shirking his duty. Each and everyone did all they possibly could and justice would give to each his due credit” (Forty Years, p. 70).

  It is said that when President Brigham Young heard the reports of what the young men had done, he wept like a child and said, “That act alone will ensure [these men] an everlasting salvation in the Celestial Kingdom of God, worlds without end” (cited in Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, p. 133). It has become a popular myth in the Church that these young men all died an early death as a result of their efforts that day. That they suffered the effects long after is true, but David Kimball lived to the age of forty-four and Stephen Taylor to eighty-six (see Remember, p. 142).

  The various accounts differ in some of the details surrounding the Martin Company’s departure from what is now called Martin’s Cove near Devil’s Gate. Some say the group left on the ninth of November; some say the tenth. Also, some say the Martin Company emigrants were met by Ephraim Hanks the same day they left, while another source says it was the following day. The author here has assumed they left on the tenth and met Brother Hanks just as they were making camp that evening at Cottonwood Creek.

  A son of Ephraim Hanks, Sidney Alvarus Hanks, provides a rendition of Ephraim’s story as told that November night at the campfire of the Read family. Ephraim himself later gave an autobiographical account to one of the early Church magazines. His speech in this chapter is taken almost word for word from those two accounts (see Sidney Alvarus Hanks, The Tempered Wind, pp. 37–39 [also in Bell, Life History and Writings of John Jaques, pp. 167–68]; “Ephraim K. Hanks’ Narrative,” in Jenson, “Church Emigration,” pp. 202–5).

  Just how remarkable this man was is shown by the following additional details from his history and one additional comment by Ephraim’s son Sidney.

  The night after meeting Elders Young and Garr, I camped in the snow in the mountains. As I was preparing to make a bed in the snow with the few articles that my pack animal carried for me, I thought how comfortable a buffalo robe would be on such an occasion, and also how I could relish a little buffalo meat for supper, and before lying down for the night I was instinctively led to ask the Lord to send me a buffalo. Now, I am a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer, for I have on many different occasions asked the Lord for blessings, which He in His mercy has bestowed upon me. But when I, after praying as I did on that lonely night in the South Pass, looked around me and spied a buffalo bull within fifty yards of my camp, my surprise was complete; I had certainly not expected so immediate an answer to my prayer. However, I soon collected myself and was not at a loss to know what to do. Taking deliberate aim at the animal, my first shot brought him down, he made a few jumps only, and then rolled down into the very hollow where I was encamped. . . .

  . . . The sight that met my gaze as I entered their [the Martin Company’s] camp can never be erased from my memory. The starved forms and haggard countenances of the poor sufferers, as they moved about slowly, shivering with cold, to prepare their scanty evening meal, was enough to touch the stoutest heart. When they saw me coming, they hailed me with joy inexpressible, and when they further beheld the supply of fresh meat I brought into their camp, their gratitude knew no bounds. Flocking around me, one would say, “Oh, please, give me a small piece of meat;” another would exclaim, “My poor children are starving, do give me a little;” and children with tears in their eyes would call out, “Give me some, give me some.” At first I tried to wait on them and handed out the meat as they called for it; but finally I told them to help themselves. Five minutes later both my horses had been released of their extra burden—the meat was all gone, and the next few hours found the people in camp busily engaged cooking and eating it, with thankful hearts. . . .

  After dark, on the evening of my arrival in the hand-cart camp, a woman passed the camp fire where I was sitting crying aloud. Wondering what was the matter, my natural impulse led me to follow her. She went straight to Daniel Tyler’s wagon, where she told the heartrending story of her husband being at the point of death, and in pleading tones she asked Elder Tyler to come and administer to him. This good brother, tired and weary as he was, after pulling hand-carts all day, had just retired for the night, and was a little reluctant in getting up; but on this earnest solicitation he soon arose, and we both followed the woman to the tent, in which we found the apparently lifeless form of her husband. On seeing him, Elder Tyler remarked, “I can not administer to a dead man.” Brother Tyler requested me to stay and lay out the supposed dead brother, while he returned to his wagon to seek that rest which he needed so mu
ch. I immediately stepped back to the camp fire where several of the brethren were sitting, and addressing myself to Elders Grant, Kimball and one or two others, I said: “Will you boys do just as I tell you?” The answer was in the affirmative. We then went to work and built a fire near the tent which I and Elder Tyler had just visited; next we warmed some water, and washed the dying man, whose name was Blair, from head to foot. I then anointed him with consecrated oil over his whole body, after which we laid hands on him and commanded him in the name of Jesus Christ to breathe and live. The effect was instantaneous. The man who was dead to all appearances, immediately began to breathe, sat up in his bed and commenced to sing a hymn. His wife, unable to control her feelings of joy and thankfulness, ran through the camp exclaiming: “My husband was dead, but is now alive. Praised be the name of God. The man who brought the buffalo meat has healed him.”

  This circumstance caused a general excitement in the whole camp, and many of the drooping spirits began to take fresh courage from that very hour. After this the greater portion of my time was devoted to waiting on the sick. “Come to me,” “help me,” “please administer to my sick wife,” or “my dying child,” etc., were some of the requests that were made of me almost hourly for some time after I had joined the immigrants, and I spent days going from tent to tent administering to the sick. Truly the Lord was with me and others of His servants who labored faithfully together with me in that day of trial and suffering. The result of this our labor of love certainly redounded to the honor and glory of a kind and merciful God. In scores of instances, when we administered to the sick, and rebuked the diseases in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the sufferers would rally at once; they were healed almost instantly. I believe I administered to several hundreds in a single day; and I could give names of many whose lives were saved by the power of God. (“Ephraim K. Hanks’ Narrative,” in Jenson, “Church Emigration,” pp. 203, 204; portions of this are also cited in Remember, pp. 33–34)