Snow spit against the two windows. I checked the bolt in the door latch again. In the bedroom, I held a lantern and studied the map that was pinned to the wall near the clothes pegs. Nels had drawn it for me when he came home with the news about the rockslide. “Please show me the route Samuel’s taking,” I’d said. “So I know where he is.”
I put my finger on the map place where Nels had printed the word ROCKSLIDE. From there, I traced the trail, a dotted line, south and then west. Nels had drawn the map to show cliffs and plateaus. Dry washes were zigzags and creeks were shaded dark. The Fish Lake Mountains were capped with snow. The dotted line that went through the mountains showed a wide and smooth pass. In the right-hand corner, Nels had drawn a compass to show the four directions.
Years ago, Nels spent time in this part of Utah. That was before there were any settlements or outposts. It was the summer Samuel and I married, and Nels came by himself. Rocks cluttered the land, and the mountain passes were steep. It was a country determined to keep people away. Yet he had drawn a wide and smooth pass on the map.
It wasn’t a route Samuel usually took. It was longer and the mountains were higher. I wanted to believe Samuel knew how to find the trail and then the pass. I wanted to believe it was as wide and smooth as Nels drew it to be.
My prayer for Samuel was urgent. “Heavenly Father, keep Samuel safe. Guide him along the trail. Keep him warm, fed, and his feet steady. Bring him home.” Then I prayed the deputies would turn back and that tomorrow Nels would deliver the man safely to Floral Ranch.
Dressed in my day clothes, I turned down the lamplight and got into bed. The heat from the stones should have been a comfort but nothing eased the bad feeling that came at me from every direction.
No letters from Samuel. He was forty-one days past due getting home. It was snowing. Deputies were on the other side of the Wastelands. A man was hiding in my barn.
Or maybe he’d run off. Maybe his tracks showed plain as day that I’d opened my door to him and gave him shelter. A hunted man wanted by the United States government. In January.
And Samuel wasn’t home.
SAMUEL
One hundred and four days ago
September 29, 1887
Utah Territory
Dear Wife Deborah,
I trust this Letter finds You well. I write this from under the Wagon. My Campfire is more Smoke than Flame. The Rain these last Days saw to that. Kindling is so heavy with Water the notion came to Me it would be handy to have your Wringer.
Is it Raining at Home?
There is no telling when You will get this. I intended to write You when I was in Escalante. But I worked from Morning to Night. When I encounter Some One going North, I will ask Him to carry these Words your Way.
I left Escalante 2 Days back and am going South to Henrieville. Snort and Wally got the Wagon through the River Crossing. The Rain caused It to be high and Muddy. I would be proud of those 2 if They had done it without Complaint. If You were here You would say it is the Nature of Mules to wheeze and bellow.
Escalante has more Houses and Streets than it did last Year. Do not let that disturb You. I did not get lost. There were so many broken Wheels that needed fixing that Men tracked Me down. One fellow waited for Me outside the Privy. If You were here We would laugh about that.
If You were here We would listen to drops of Rain fall from the Trees. With you beside me it would be a cheersome Sound.
Your Husband,
Samuel Tyler
CHAPTER THREE
DEBORAH – TRACKS
January 12, 1888
It was dark the next morning when I walked to the barn. The snow was up to my ankles and was coming down fast. The air shimmered with it and lit my way.
My boots crunched the snow. Tracks.
The hems of my skirt and wool coat whisked over the snow. My slouch hat was low, and my neck scarf covered my mouth and nose. The parlor clock had chimed five times just before I left the cabin, but I’d been awake most of the night thinking the worst. The man in the barn was a thief. He was a murderer.
Whatever he was, I had given him shelter. That was how the deputies would see it.
Wet flakes clung to my eyelashes. I held my skirt up with one gloved hand and carried a cloth sack in the other. Snow worked its way into the eyelets of my ankle-high boots and dampened my wool stockings.
He was a Saint, I told myself. A man with plural wives. He was like all the others who had asked for my help.
He might have struck out on his own. He’d leave tracks. Tracks that would tell the deputies all they needed to know.
The barn door creaked open. I stopped.
Up ahead, a dark shape moved. It was the man. He was leading his horse. My nerves jangled. I was on my own, and no one knew he was here.
I tamped down those thoughts. He wouldn’t hurt me. He hadn’t gone off on his own. He had done what I’d told him to do.
Or maybe I had just caught him trying to sneak off.
He’d stopped walking. I went toward him, the snow breaking. I wanted him to hear my footfall. A man hiding from lawmen doesn’t like to be surprised. When I reached him, I wasn’t able to make out his features but I felt his stretched nerves. His bearing was tight.
My voice low, I said, “Good, you’re ready.”
“Been ready for a long while.” His voice was as tight as his bearing.
I said, “It’s nearly three hours before full daylight.” I pointed toward the creek in front of my cabin. “From here, follow the Sulphur west but don’t get too close to it. The bank’s steep. When you come to a bridge, cross it. The guide lives in the cabin on that side.”
“How far’s his place from here?”
“A mile, maybe a little less.” I held out the cloth sack. “Here. Food.”
“You’ve done enough. I can’t take more.”
“You aren’t taking. You paid your way.”
He hesitated.
“Take it,” I said. “Now go.”
“All right,” he said. “All right.” He took the sack and put it in the saddlebag. The leather in his saddle crackled in the cold as he mounted his horse. He worked his feet into the stirrups and said, “They’ll see the tracks.”
I looked up at him. I couldn’t see his eyes in the dark but sensed what he was thinking. We needed wind to sweep the ground bare in places and make the snow drift in others. That was unlikely, I thought but didn’t say. We didn’t get much wind here on the floor of the canyon.
I said, “Go. Please.”
“I’m gone.” Then, “May our Heavenly Father watch over you.”
“Over us all.”
He flicked the reins. His horse turned away from me and moved off toward the creek.
My eyes watering from the cold, I watched him. He was a shadowy form on horseback in the falling snow. The man angled east at the creek bank and after that, I couldn’t see him. I turned away and walked toward the barn. The weight of the bad feeling I’d had since last night rode heavy on my shoulders.
The barn wasn’t like I expected it to be. I thought it would need tidying. I expected to have to clean the stall where his horse had been. That wasn’t so. The horse blankets were folded and stacked on one of the storage shelves. He’d cleaned the stall his horse had used. The wheelbarrow was filled with horse droppings and soiled straw.
Holding a lit lantern, I made my way up the loft ladder. I tripped a few times, my boots catching my skirt. Below, my cow mooed to let me know I hadn’t paid any attention to her. Or maybe she was telling me a stranger had been in her barn. In the loft, the straw crunched as I walked from one side to the other. As best as I could tell, all signs of the man’s presence were gone.
He’d done what he could to leave the barn as he’d found it. He was looking out for himself and by doing that, he looked out for me.
Back on the barn floor, I hung the lantern on a wall nail. Buttercup mooed again, deeper and louder. “I know things aren’t right,” I said. “And I�
�ll see to you when I can but there’s something I have to do first.”
Gripping the handles of the wheelbarrow that the man had filled with horse droppings, I pushed it through the barn door. It rocked from side to side as I made my way to the manure heap a little ways from the barn. Samuel had our two mules with him, and it’d do me no good if the deputies found droppings in a barn that didn’t shelter a horse.
The snow-covered manure heap rose up before me. There, I emptied the wheelbarrow. By now, I thought, the man should be close to Nels’ place. The deputies, ten miles back, might be waiting for daylight before venturing into the Wastelands. Once in the Wastelands, it was eight miles of dips and cracks in the earth. Eight miles of massive rock pillars and buttes with rubble at their bases. The trail wasn’t a straight line. It meandered and climbed before it descended close to my cabin. These were hard miles that could take five to six hours in fair weather.
Pushing the empty wheelbarrow, I walked toward the barn. Today’s weather was anything but fair. It was snowing and had been since last night. The trail in the Wastelands had to be covered like the ground was here. Surely the deputies wouldn’t risk the Wastelands before sunrise. Most probably they weren’t from this part of Utah, they wouldn’t know the landmarks. They’d be forced to travel slow. It could be dusk before they got here. At the soonest. Or it could be tomorrow.
Nels had time to deliver the man to Floral Ranch and be back by then. In good weather, it was four hours to Floral Ranch and four to get back. I figured the time, then added two hours to account for the snow. Nels would be home by four o’clock. At the latest.
Inside the barn, Buttercup bellowed her complaint when I pushed and pulled her to another stall. “I know this isn’t how we do things,” I said. “Don’t blame you for not liking it. I don’t either. All the same, I have to keep a level head.”
I got the pitchfork. In Buttercup’s empty stall, I pitched the soiled straw into the wheelbarrow. Nels, I thought, would be startled when the man showed up at his door. Nels might have a bad feeling about him like I did. Not that we’d ever speak of it. The next time I saw him, there’d be only a slight widening of his eyes as he looked my way. A quick duck of his head would tell me he’d done his part to hide the man.
If things went well. If God willed it so.
It was Samuel who had known what to do when the first man came to our cabin asking for help. It was in the spring, nearly four years ago. The man’s sudden appearance at our door took me by surprise. Grim-faced, the man spoke in code like this latest one had. I was bewildered that Samuel knew what he was talking about. “There’s no easy way to get to Pleasant Creek,” he’d told the first man. “It’s on the other side of a range of buttes. It’s rough country.”
We’d been in Junction for a year and I’d not heard of Pleasant Creek. “Samuel,” I said. “What—”
He shook his head, stopping me. “Don’t ask, honey.” He turned his attention back to the man. “I’ll take you. It’s a pretty spot, and I won’t mind seeing it again.” Samuel saddled Wally, one of our mules, gave me a quick kiss, and rode off with the man.
It was late when Samuel got home that night. His supper had dried out from the long wait on the stove. I was relieved to see him but was put out, too. I’d been worried sick all day. Samuel was caught up in some kind of trouble, and it didn’t help matters that he wouldn’t answer my questions.
“Deborah, honey, make like you never saw him,” he said when I set his supper before him. “Don’t lodge him in your memory. Don’t ask me about where I took him. Or how I know about it. If another one like him shows up and I’m not here, send him to Nels.”
“There’ll be more?”
Now, Buttercup’s stall clean enough, I put fresh straw down. When that was finished, I pushed the wheelbarrow outside. The air wasn’t lit with white flakes. It had stopped snowing, and it was darker than it had been earlier.
I needed a light to guide me to the manure heap. I went inside the barn, got the lantern, and went out. Before me, in the lantern’s light, pockets of horse prints glittered in the ankle-deep snow.
They were frozen in place. I knew there would be prints. It’d take a long, heavy snowfall to fill them. I knew they’d show but seeing them laid out from the barn and going toward the creek made my heartbeat knock in my ears.
I had to cover them.
Hurry, I told myself as I carried the lantern a handful of yards ahead of me and left it in the snow. In the dark, I went back for the wheelbarrow and pushed it toward the light. Like before, I took the lantern up ahead, then returned for the wheelbarrow. Over and over I did this, the word hurry filling my thoughts.
Finally at the heap, I emptied the wheelbarrow so the flat cow patties were on top of the horse’s rounded droppings. The deputies wouldn’t be fooled, not if they looked close. But if it snowed again, all the droppings would be covered. If it stayed this cold, the deputies might not bother to walk back here.
Hurry. I headed back to the barn doing like before, carrying the lantern up ahead and then going back for the wheelbarrow. Think of a plan, I told myself. Think what to do about the frozen tracks. First, though, there were the chores that couldn’t be put off. There was time, I convinced myself once I was inside the barn. I propped the wheelbarrow against the side wall like always. The lantern now hung on a nail, I settled myself on the milking stool by Buttercup. My hands shook while I stroked her swollen udder to get her ready to be milked. Rushing made mistakes. That was what my father, a tanner, said about curing leather. Do it right the first time.
“You had a crowd here last night,” I said to Buttercup, still stroking her udder. “Don’t let it worry you.” When she was finally ready, I worked her teats. The warm milk pinged against the side of the first pail. My father had also said that if you have dealings with gentiles, bend the truth if you have to. God wouldn’t think less of you.
When the first pail was full, I reached for the second one. Think of a way to cover the tracks, I told myself as my hands went through the motions of milking Buttercup. Think.
The milking finally finished, I covered the two pails with lids and put them on the flat-bottomed toboggan. I put feed out for Buttercup, broke the thin ice in her water trough, and left the barn. Pulling the toboggan with one hand and carrying the lantern with the other, I plodded my way to the cabin. A plan began to take shape in my mind.
At my cabin I brought in one of the milk pails. The other stayed outside on the toboggan. I busied myself by making the bed and building up the fire in the cookstove. I had to wait until it was close to daybreak before I could begin to cover the tracks. I didn’t want to carry a lantern. I couldn’t risk being seen.
When the tips of the buttes that faced east began to show, I left home, pulling the toboggan with the milk pail on it. I followed the man’s horse tracks to the creek, shuffling and kicking the icy snow, doing what I could to disguise the prints. The milk was my excuse for walking from my barn to Nels’ place on the other side of the creek. When the deputies got here late today or tomorrow, they’d question me about the shuffled tracks. I had to be able to tell them they were mine. I’d say that I owed a neighbor milk in exchange for the cord of wood he’d chopped for me earlier this winter.
At the creek, I turned east. My plum orchard was to my left. The deputies might burn the trees if they caught me helping a felon. My sister and her husband’s cabin was on the far side of the orchard. The deputies might accuse Grace and Michael of having a hand in this. I couldn’t let that happen.
Behind me, the toboggan crushed the kicked snow making the tracks harder to read. It worried me that I couldn’t cover the ones Nels and the man would make once they left Nels’ place. I couldn’t think of a reason for going on past his cabin, not one the lawmen would believe.
One step at a time. I was doing what I could.
My pulse thudded in my ears. My shoulders ached from pulling the toboggan while I shuffled and kicked the snow. I didn’t believe in plural marri
age, but for the life of me, I couldn’t begin to understand lawmen who were willing to do work that tore families apart. That was the way of gentiles, though. Before Saints came to Utah Territory, gentiles claimed our leaders conspired to take control of the small towns where we settled. We bought too much land, they said. The courts, the mayors’ offices, the schools, and newspapers were in our hands. The worst, though, was plural marriage. It was immoral, they said. It was a perversion that must not be allowed to spread.
Farther up the creek, a dog barked. Each bark splintered the quiet and ricocheted off the cliffs. It might be Nels’ dog. I strained, listening. The bark was too high-pitched to be Sally’s. It was another neighbor’s dog that was somewhere well past Nels’ place. Noise carried here on the floor of the canyon. The dog might be barking at Nels and the man as they rode past. Alerted, the owner would try to figure out the reason for the disturbance. He’d see Nels with a stranger.
My nerves flared. The fewer who knew, the better. This was especially so for children. They had a way of reporting what they’d seen and repeating what they’d overheard. Some of the deputies were not above drawing children aside from their parents and questioning them.
The barking faded. My breathing was loud in my ears. The sunrise was gloomy, and thick gray clouds shrouded the upper reaches of the cliffs. As I made my way along the river toward the bridge, a circle of yellow lamp light showed in my sister’s side window. It was like a whip driving me on. I had to keep Grace and her family of little boys safe.
Close to Grace’s, I hunched low and hurried. Don’t anybody see me, I thought. It was early, no one should be outside.
Unless it was later than I thought. Unless someone needed to visit the outhouse. I tucked my chin to my chest like that would keep me from being seen. The milk pail clinked on the toboggan. The snow cracked like thunder as I covered the tracks. Grace will hear me, I thought. Her husband, Michael, or the boys will see me.
Holding my breath, I went on. No one called my name. None of the boys came running.
The Glovemaker Page 4