Pillar of Fire

by R. R. Irvine

  Traveler was leaning against the alabaster statue when Tanner appeared ten minutes later. Tanner’s squint, which appeared during times of stress, had narrowed one eye to a slit. His arrival sent the docent scurrying out of earshot. She, like everyone else in town, knew that he spoke for the church’s living prophet, Elton Woolley.

  “Mo,” Tanner said in a hushed voice, “what brings you here?”

  “Josiah Ellsworth.”

  The errant eye twitched.

  “I want to know the ground rules before I go looking for the messiah,” Traveler added.

  “This is holy ground you’re standing on,” Tanner said. “And leaning on.”

  Traveler removed his hand from the prophet. “Let’s start with Jason Thurgood. What’s the official line on him?”

  “The name means nothing to me.” As he spoke, Tanner’s eye closed down altogether. Such a reaction had been as good as a lie detector when they were growing up together, though now Traveler felt too many church-inspired nuances stood in the way to make it a totally accurate test.

  “All right, Willis, tell me this. How many messiahs do we have in southern Utah at the moment?”

  “Would-be messiahs, you mean.”

  Traveler shrugged.

  Tanner rubbed his eye. “A week ago I would have said four. But a few days ago we had a shootout between a couple of brothers, both claiming the honor. One’s dead and the other got himself pretty badly wounded. So that leaves us with two standing, which is about normal for that part of the state.”

  “Their names might help.”

  “Eli Nicholson down around Colorado City and John Elkins somewhere in the vicinity of Kanab.”

  Traveler nodded, relieved. Both locations were miles from Fire Creek.

  “What about Moroni’s Children?” he said.

  “The last I heard they weren’t claiming to have a messiah among them.”

  “Knowing you, Willis, the last you heard was probably ten minutes ago. Just tell me who I’m working for. You, Ellsworth, or the prophet?”

  Tanner smiled lopsidedly. “You know what they say about cult country, Moroni. Never turn your back on anybody, even your wives.”

  “That’s not good enough, Willis. I’ll walk away from this rather than go into that part of the state blind.”

  “Let’s take a walk,” Tanner said, leading the way out onto South Temple Street. He headed north, toward the Lion House where Brigham Young had stabled his wives. Out front, Tanner paused to stare up at the ten gables that were said to represent the women’s individual apartments.

  “He had twenty-seven wives.” Traveler shuffled his feet on the scorching sidewalk. “Not ten.”

  Tanner smiled and replied, “It wasn’t exactly a secret, Mo. Now what do you want to know?”

  “Let’s start with Moroni’s Children.”

  Tanner looked up and down the sidewalk, empty because of the 100-degree heat. “Some of this is only hearsay, you understand. Nothing has been proved against them other than trespassing, and those charges were never brought to court.” He ducked his head. “Of course, that was in Arizona and by the time the authorities got involved, the Children had fled across the border to Utah.”

  “Get to the hearsay, Willis.”

  “The word is that they tried to take over a small town in Arizona, a place called Box Elder. There was violence. People went missing, or so the story goes.”

  “Hold it. If people are missing, someone must be looking for them.”

  “Box Elder isn’t much more than a general store and gas station, just enough to service the surrounding ranches. There’s no law to speak of, except maybe for the Highway Patrol which has better things to do than worry about back roads. There’s no proof and probably no truth in the story anyway. People pull up stakes all the time and wander off in search of greener pastures.”

  Traveler grabbed Tanner’s arm. “We’re not talking another Great Disappearance, are we?”

  “Damn it, Mo. Keep your voice down.”

  “Look around you, Willis. No one else is crazy enough to be out in this kind of heat.”

  Shaking his head, Tanner led Traveler into the shade of a sycamore two houses away. There, Tanner pretended to admire the Beehive House, Brigham Young’s personal residence, which his wives took turns visiting. Tanner’s twitching eye made Traveler long for a polygraph.

  “The Great Disappearance is a myth, Moroni. You know that. It never happened. It’s just another urban myth.”

  “There’s nothing urban about cult country.”

  “It was the 1930s, for God’s sake, the Depression,” Tanner said. “People moved around looking for work. So who knows what happened to a few malcontents.”

  Traveler had first heard the story from his grandfather, Ned Payson, who claimed the jawbone he kept on display in his dentist’s office came from one of the dead. He’d finger it each time he got Traveler in the chair. Pretending to drill the yellowed fossil teeth, he’d say, “Mo, boy, I pulled this baby out of one of the skulls myself.” He’d blow on his fingers as if savoring the memory. “It was all the evidence I dared take from the site. More than a hundred skeletons there were, too, bleaching in the desert sun. That was all that remained of those polygamists who bolted the church and headed south to start their own religion. Only they didn’t move fast enough. The Danites caught up with them down near Kanab, just this side of the state line. The avenging angels killed every damn one of them, just like the Mountain Meadow Massacre.”

  Later, after Traveler had heard other versions of the Great Disappearance, all of which stressed the fact that an entire community had disappeared without trace, he asked Ned why he hadn’t reported his skeletal find to the police.

  Ned’s answer had been to tap the side of his grandson’s nose and say, “You never know who’ s a Danite, no matter what kind of uniform they’re wearing.”

  Traveler tapped the side of Tanner’s nose the same way. “Tell me, Willis, what’s your instinct when it comes to Moroni’s Children?”

  “They’re no longer welcome in Arizona, that’s for sure.”

  “Forget Arizona. Tell me what I’m up against in Fire Creek.”

  Tanner took a deep breath. “Watch your back, Mo. That’s always a good idea. We’ve got a disappearance there too. The mayor, I’m told. The word is he ran for reelection against one of the Children and lost more than votes. Though I’m betting it’s just another urban myth.”

  “Is anybody looking for him?”

  “Officially, he left town to go on a sightseeing trip.”

  “You’re squinting again, Willis.”

  Tanner knuckled his wayward eye.

  “If I disappear,” Traveler said, “will you come looking for me?”

  “I’ll raise hell,” Tanner said, wide-eyed for the first time.

  “Give me some names, Willis, people I’m going up against.”

  “Moroni’s Children are led by a man named Snelgrove.”

  “Are you sure he’s not calling himself a messiah?” Traveler asked.

  Tanner shook his head. “He claims he’ll know the messiah when he sees him, though.”

  “Keep going.”

  “There’s some guy who thinks he’s the reincarnation of Orrin Porter Rockwell, old Brigham’s avenging angel.”

  “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

  “Only in heaven.”

  “You must have spies in the area,” Traveler said.

  Tanner spread his hands. “Okay, Mo, so we sent in a couple of missionaries. They were picked at random with no special training. We didn’t want them to stand out. They were told to go about their regular duties. ‘Ask no questions,’ we told them. ‘Don’t draw attention to yourselves.’ ”

  Tanner shook his head. “ ‘One question,’ they told us later. ‘That’s all we asked, and they were on us.’ ”

  “Who was?” Traveler asked.

  “A mob of women. Apparently they surrounded the two and scared the hell out of th
em. You know nineteen-year-olds. They may be horny, but women still intimidate them, especially in bunches. Anyway, these two got run right out of town. Got damn near tarred and feathered to hear them tell it.”

  Tanner laughed. “Moroni’s Children can’t be so tough if they let a bunch of women do the fighting for them.”

  Traveler thought that over for a moment. “Let’s get back to Jason Thurgood, then. What have you got on him?”

  “I don’t think he’s the messiah, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Ellsworth told me he was licensed to practice medicine in Utah. What else is there?”

  Tanner shrugged. “We’ve been running computer checks, Mo. All we’ve come up with is the fact that he worked for the government at one time, but whatever he did for them is classified and unavailable to us.”

  “You can do better than that.”

  Tanner held up his right hand. “Scout’s honor,” he said, squinting badly.

  5

  TWO HUNDRED and fifty miles later, driving a rental whose weekly rate was twice the value of his Ford Fairlane, Traveler reached the beginning of red rock country on Interstate 15. Cedar City was behind him, St. George ahead.

  The highway passed between fortresslike sandstone pinnacles, whose bases had eroded into a blood-red soil. Mushroom-shaped clouds hung in the sky, their intermittent shade failing to dispel the heat. Their presence reminded Traveler that this was “downwind” country, downwind from Nevada’s atomic test sites where people had been dying of radiation poisoning since the 1950s. Even the wildlife—the marmots, the porcupines, and the mountain lions—were gone. The politicians blamed their extinction on the coming of the interstate. The locals knew better.

  Traveler groaned out loud. The locals had damn near gotten him killed the last time he’d been in this part of the state. It was barren country, beautiful only to tourists, and downwind from a lot more than fallout. Here, if the radiation didn’t kill you, the apostates fleeing the church authorities in Salt Lake might.

  Traveler stopped on the shoulder of the highway and checked his map. Cow Fork was forty miles due east.

  He pulled back onto the road and the thump of his tires on the washboard surface seemed to drum out Lynn Ann, Lynn Ann. It was supposed to have been a routine pickup. Lynn Ann was underage, fifteen, from a good Mormon family, and probably already regretting the fact that she’d picked cult country as the site of her teenage rebellion.

  Traveler hadn’t missed the girl by more than a hour at the bus station in Salt Lake, though her destination had surprised him.

  “You could have knocked me over,” the window clerk told him, “when she asked for a ticket to cult country. Cow Fork, my foot. They ought to call it Polygamist City and be done with it, if you ask me. So I told her, ‘The best I can do, is a dropoff on Highway 89.’ ‘That’s all right,’ she says. ‘They promised to send a truck for me.’ ” The clerk shook his head. “A young girl like her. Them polygamists will be on her like hounds on a leg.”

  “I’m only half a day behind her,” Traveler had said. “They won’t have time.”

  “It’s later than that, if I’m any judge.”

  Traveler hadn’t caught the innuendo until he saw Lynn Ann for himself. By then he was surrounded by cult members, one of whom claimed to be the father of her child, which, judging by the size of her belly, was well on the way. Her father, Traveler’s client, had failed to mention the pregnancy, only that his daughter was kicking up her heels.

  “She’s underage,” Traveler told them.

  “Not in God’s eyes,” one of them answered.

  Traveler assessed the odds and decided to back off.

  At his first step, Lynn Ann said, “If we let him go, he’ll bring back help.”

  It was fight or run, he decided, scooping her up and making a dash for the car. The bullet went right through him and into her stomach.

  That had been the last time Traveler had entered cult country unarmed.

  ******

  By the time Traveler reached St. George, three hundred miles south of Salt Lake, the sun was setting. Martin’s Jeep, already parked in front of the car rental agency, was covered with a layer of red dust. The windshield wipers had been used recently, leaving crimson streaks in the wake of their blades.

  Martin was brushing dust from his jeans as he stepped from the office. “Come on, Mo. Turn in that car and let’s get going. We’ve got an all-night drive ahead of us.”

  “It can’t be more than a hundred miles to Pioche.”

  “Who said anything about Pioche? Old Pete has moved his sheep camp south of town and into the desert. The only way to get there is a dirt road. More of a track, really. Five miles an hour in the dark, he told me. And there’s thirty miles of that ahead of us after we leave the Pioche turnoff.”

  ******

  Traveler had been no more than ten when he first met Petain Biscari, a Basque sheepherder working the foothills east of Salt Lake. In those days, he’d lived in a horse-drawn caravan, smelling of sweat and sheepdogs. Now, Biscari had an oversize four-by-four pickup truck with a full rifle rack and a camper shell attached. It was parked at the base of a scrub-covered rise where a small band of sheep was grazing in a tight bunch watched over by a black and white border collie. The surrounding desert looked too sparse to support much of anything, let alone sheep.

  A second black and white border collie, its muzzle grayed with age, stood at Biscari’s side. Traveler’s boyhood memory of Biscari was of a tall old man. He still looked old, his weather-beaten face and neck like cracked leather. Only now he was half Traveler’s size, short and wiry, with dark fierce eyes that denied his short stature.

  When Traveler reached out to shake hands, hair rose along the dog’s back.

  “Easy, Janie,” Biscari said. “These are friends.”

  The dog made a rumbling sound deep in her throat.

  “She’s like me,” Biscari said. “She’s getting old, too old to run sheep all day. That’s why I keep her with me. Besides, ever since Petey went missing, she’s sensed my mood and won’t leave my side.”

  Smiling grimly, he led the way to an open fire and poured coffee into three metal mugs already set out, along with a can of Eagle Brand milk, as thick as honey.

  When everyone was served, Biscari squatted on his heels, Janie beside him, and blew on his coffee. After a while, he said, “What have you told him, Martin?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I want to hear it again myself. We both do.”

  Biscari nodded but didn’t respond immediately, concentrating on his coffee instead. He was a recent widower, Traveler knew from Martin’s briefing during the night-long drive, a Basque who’d come to America to earn enough money to send back to the old country for the woman he intended to marry. They’d had one late-life son, Petain Jr.

  Rather than squat, Traveler sat cross-legged on the ground, while Martin found a rock to perch on.

  “When it comes to children, I’m lost,” Biscari said, rubbing the dog’s ears. “All I know is sheep. I’ve been moving them around in this desert for years.”

  He pointed east, toward a line of low hills along the horizon. “Over there’s Utah. It’s open range, and that’s where I’m headed. It’s the direction Petey boy would have gone, too.”

  Traveler started to ask why, then caught Martin’s signal to let the man continue on his own.

  “Our house is on the eastern edge of my ranch. For years I’ve been telling Petey, ‘If you ever get lost on our ranch, east is home. Remember, son, if you don’t know where you are, walk east.’ Only this time, it wasn’t home he wandered away from. Walking east would have meant suicide.”

  With an angry gesture, Biscari threw the dregs of his coffee into the fire. The hiss caused Janie’s ears to flatten against her head.

  “Petey’ s sixteen but . . .” Biscari began. He tapped the empty mug against the side of his head. “He’s still an eight-year-old up here. As long as his mother was alive, she took care of him. Bu
t I’m not getting any younger, and he has to learn to get by on his own. At least, that’s what I thought. Maybe I was being selfish, I don’t know. But I couldn’t run a sheep ranch with Petey under foot. That’s why I sent him to that damned clinic. We’d been talking about it before Miriam died. When she knew she didn’t have much time left, she sewed his name in his underwear so he wouldn’t lose them. She’d skin me alive now, for losing Petey.”

  Shaking his head, he pulled off his faded red neckerchief and mopped his face with it. “The Echo Canyon Clinic, it’s called, over near Pioche and less than an hour’s drive from my place. Close enough for me to see Petey every weekend, I figured, and I did, too. But I didn’t listen, not when he told me he didn’t like the place. I guess I thought he was upset because he’d never been away from home before. Besides, what could I do? I don’t have any close relatives in this country, nobody to see to him after I’m gone. And they promised me at the clinic that they’d teach him a skill. His doctor, a man named Ottinger, seemed very nice.”

  Biscari tied his neckerchief back in place.

  “It’s a government clinic specializing in treating the retarded,” Martin said for Traveler’s benefit. “They told Pete their program makes boys like Petey self-sufficient.”

  “It doesn’t matter what they told me,” Biscari said. “I’m to blame. I promised my Miriam I’d take care of Petey.” His shoulders sagged. “Then a month ago, they said Petey ran away with another boy named Tad Whitlock—the ringleader they called him. I met Tad on one of my visits. He was even . . . more simple than Petey. How could he have been a ringleader?”

  He rose to his feet and circled the fire, his hands thrust against the small of his back, the dog at his side. “I’m no fool. Petey’s been missing a month now. A full-grown man can’t last much more than a day in this country, not without proper provisions.”