I said, “He’s working.”
“Doing what? Where is he?”
“He’s working in another town.”
“Another town. Is that what you people call Floral Ranch?”
“What?”
“Don’t you act ignorant with me. Where’s your husband?”
“He’s a wheelwright. He travels from town to town. What’s this all about?”
“I’m looking for Lewis Braden. Where is he?”
“There aren’t any Bradens here.”
“You sure about that? You sure your husband’s not hiding him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The marshal coughed, then cleared his throat. He said, “I find that mighty peculiar. I’ve been tracking Lewis Braden since Tennessee and have good reason to know he’s here. Or been here. I’ve got a warrant for his arrest.”
I took a step backward.
The lawman said, “I’ll have myself a look around the place.” He pointed to my barn. “I’ll start there, then the cabin.” He tipped his head back, squinted his eyes against the falling snow, and looked up at the buttes. My teeth chattered. I clamped my jaw tight. His gaze swept over the orchards before turning back to me.
He said, “Who lives here with you? Other than your husband who happens not to be here.”
“Just me.”
“Nobody else?”
I shook my head.
“You a Mormon?”
“Yes.”
“There’re others of your kind here?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“They live along the creek.” I pointed past my plum orchard. The marshal didn’t bother to look. He squinted, looking at me like he didn’t believe a word I said.
Samuel, I thought. I’m scared.
The marshal stood up in his saddle, stretching, then sat back down. He clicked his tongue twice and flicked the reins. “Don’t do anything foolish,” he said as he rode past me and toward the barn.
SAMUEL
Eighty-nine days ago
October 15, 1887
Utah Territory
Dear Wife Deborah,
I trust You are well and the Apple Harvest is good for Nels and the Others. Is Buttercup minding her Manners? I believe She is ornery only for Me. I am in Johnson. It is a new Outpost. There are more Hoot Owls in a handful of trees than People.
There are two Familys. The Church sent Them in May. All ready there is a Childs grave in a hard patch of land They call a Cemetery. Rain is rare in these parts. The Creek is down to a trickle. Afternoons the North Clouds turn black. The familys wait and pray Wind will blow the Clouds this way. It never does. I fear for the people here. I do not see how they can hold out much longer.
Do not worry about me. My bones got so wet from the Rain up by Escalante that I will be a long Time drying out.
In the Morning I go North and some West to Mt. Carmel. It will not take long to get there. Likely You will hear Snort and Wally complaining all the way from here. They have loud opinions about creek beds that lack water. I am still carrying my first Letter to You. But I am sure to come across Some One that will get both of these to You.
This Sun baked Country is not meant for Familys. It was wrong of the Church to send them here. It makes Me glad for Junction. But the Cliffs here are something to behold. They rise up in great Swirls of pink and white Rock. The Stars hang low. They make a Man believe He can jump up and touch Them. If You were with Me I would try to do that just to hear You laugh.
Your Husband,
Samuel Tyler
CHAPTER SIX
DEBORAH – THE TROUGH
January 12, 1888
The marshal crowded my cabin. I felt this from the moment I let him inside after he’d had his look around the barn. It was like the ceiling had dropped lower. The walls felt tight around me and it wasn’t just because of his size. Or because I was alone with him. It was how he looked at me, his dark eyes shadowed with suspicion.
He stood just inside the door, his coat shimmering with snow. He held his hat in one hand. His rifle was in the other with the barrel pointed down.
I backed away from him so that the kitchen table was between us.
The marshal eyed Samuel’s rifle that was propped in a kitchen corner. From there, his gaze went to the two parlor chairs and the small picture in the parlor half of the front room. My pulse was so loud in my ears that I couldn’t hear the clock’s tick. Hurry home, Nels, I thought. Be home before this lawman gets to your place.
The marshal studied the open door that went to the other room.
“There’s no one else here,” I said. “But you may look around.” It took everything I had to keep my voice steady. It wouldn’t pay to be meek. That might tell him how scared I was and that I had something to hide. I said, “If you would, please wipe your boots on the door rug. The floor’s newly washed.”
“I know my manners.”
“Yes. Of course. I didn’t mean any offense.”
He raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything. He did as I asked. After the small rug was streaked with icy clumps of snow and mud, the man took a few long strides across the room and stood in the doorway of the bedroom. He looked in, seeing, I believed, the dresser with Samuel’s rocks beside my comb, brush, and hand mirror. There was also Samuel’s Sunday suit that hung on a wall peg to consider. My two dresses and nightclothes were on pegs too, and on the floor were the butter-colored shoes I wore to services during fair weather.
Still in the doorway, the marshal crouched down. The tail of his long coat bunched on the floor. He was looking under the bed, I thought. He held the stock of his rifle under one arm so that it was now pointed at the bed. Then it came to me that he wasn’t going to go into the room. Something held him back. Maybe he understood it wasn’t right to go into a woman’s bedroom.
The marshal put a hand on the doorframe. His knees popped when he straightened. He turned to face me, the rifle barrel down. Dark patches shadowed his red-rimmed eyes, and crisscrossing lines ran to his cheekbones. His deep brown hair was creased and mashed from his hat. Even in the poor light I could see the gray in his mustache and that his cheeks and chin were in need of a shave. A patch of skin along his right cheekbone was slick and yellow. Frostbite.
He said, “Where’d you say your husband was?”
“He’s a wheelwright, he goes from town to town south of here.”
“This time of year?”
“He’s due home any moment.”
“He’s got other wives in those towns?”
“No.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s true. We don’t practice plural marriage.”
“Just like your claim about not seeing Lewis Braden is true?”
I felt my face flush. The air in the cabin was all of a sudden overheated and close. I said, “I haven’t seen this Lewis Braden. I don’t know anything about him.”
“You have a horse?”
He’d found the pile of horse dung, I thought. I’d tried to cover the dung but he must have seen it. I said, “I borrow my brother-in-law’s horse from time to time.”
“Where’s he live?”
“On the other side of the plum orchard.”
“He’s home? Or maybe he’s away like your husband is. Maybe they’re both taking Braden to Floral Ranch.”
“My brother-in-law’s at the schoolhouse. He’s the schoolmaster.”
The marshal put his head back like he was looking down his nose at me. Air caught in my throat. It was hard to breathe.
He said, “Tell me about Floral Ranch.”
I could lie and say I’d never heard of it. But patches of truth might make the lies harder to find. I said, “I’ve never been there. The travel’s too hard.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“A family lives there, that’s what I’ve heard. They have orchards. But I don’t know them, they don’t come this way. They trade in
towns on the other side of the canyons. The far east side, not our side. That’s what I’ve been told.”
The lawman’s gaze pierced me. He knew I was lying, I thought. Before I could stop myself, I touched my forehead. It was damp with sweat. Say something, I told myself. Something any woman might say. I put my hand on the back of the chair to steady myself.
“This man you’re looking for,” I said. “If he comes this way, is he dangerous? Could he hurt me? What’s he done?”
“He’s got a pack of wives.”
“A pack?”
Anger flashed across his face. He took a step toward me. I backed away, bumping into the cooking counter. “Three wives,” he said. His thick drawl had gone hard. “That’s what Braden calls them. Wives. The last one’s a girl, just sixteen.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I know he was here. There’s water in two troughs. One’s in the stall used by that cow of yours. One animal, two stalls with water. I find that mighty odd. A trough without an animal to water should be dry. Or, seems to me, if there’s water, it should be all the way iced over, no animal there to do any drinking. But it wasn’t. Only a layer of ice along the edge, ice as thin as a slip of paper.” He paused. “You know why that is?”
“It’s for my cow. I filled both this morning.”
“You hauled water to two stalls when one would do? You think I believe that?”
“It’s true.”
He shook that off. “Another animal was in the barn. One that isn’t there now. Braden Lewis’ horse. He paused, disgust showing in his eyes. “Isn’t that so?”
“No.”
The marshal slapped his hat against the side of his leg, then put it on. He walked toward the door. His hand clenched his rifle and his footfall was crisp with anger. He opened the door. Snow-filled air rushed in. He looked at me. “You’re covering for Braden, it’s how you people do. You’re good at that. But where I come from in Tennessee, we don’t do harm to women. Not like you people do. Neither do we lay the blame on others. Lying is what you Mormons do. That book of you all’s is a pack of lies. You all lie about how your men charm young women. You all lied about what happened at Mountain Meadows.”
The air left the room. Thirty years ago, gentiles in a wagon train on their way to California were killed where they had camped not far from Cedar City. The place was Mountain Meadows.
The marshal said, “You reckoned I didn’t know about that, didn’t you?”
“I had nothing to do with any of that.”
“Like you don’t know anything about Lewis Braden.”
I couldn’t find words. He said, “Where I come from, we don’t force women to do things against their will. We don’t shake them into talking. Not even women who lie.” Then he walked out into the weather, the door left open.
On my knees, I put a rag over the wet muddy footprints on the door rug. The palms of both hands flat on the rag, I pressed hard. I wanted to get rid of the marshal’s presence in my home. Just like I wanted to get rid of the trough I hadn’t thought to empty.
I pressed harder on the soiled rug. Somehow the marshal came through the Wastelands faster than I’d figured. Somehow I had overlooked the trough. If we got caught, it was my fault.
The marshal was probably following my shuffled tracks this very moment. He’d stop at Grace’s and question her. From there, he would follow the tracks to Nels’. It was half past two. Nels wouldn’t be back yet.
Mountain Meadows. Bringing that up was the marshal’s way of unnerving me all the more. Horrible things had gone on there. I was six when it happened, and Mountain Meadows wasn’t all that far from Parowan where I lived. Only a handful of children from a wagon party traveling from Arkansas to California survived the massacre.
Paiutes had done the killing. I’d grown up believing that. The Indians were provoked by the members of the wagon party, church elders said. The gentiles had poisoned the Paiutes’ drinking water.
Rumors and the surviving children told a different story. They said white men, painted to look like Indians, killed the travelers. White men who were Saints. Saints who believed gentiles were poking their noses too much into the church’s business.
Twenty years after the massacre, one Saint was tried and convicted for the killings. His punishment was the firing squad.
Whispered rumors said there were others. One man couldn’t kill a wagon party of over a hundred people. Other Saints, it was said, were guilty of killing innocent women and children.
Since Mountain Meadows, the United States had turned against us all the more. They claimed we knew more than we were saying. They claimed we lied to protect guilty men. They believed that all us who lived in this part of Utah were responsible for the deaths.
Saints tried to forget the massacre. Some gentiles hadn’t. The marshal was one of those. And now he had caught me in a lie.
The dirty rag in my hands, I rocked back on my heels. It didn’t fit that he was a marshal. Marshals didn’t hunt outlaws. They ran their states’ courts and jails. Their deputies did the tracking.
A marshal. Trouble like never before. Whatever Braden had done to bring this on, it was bad.
And where were the marshal’s deputies? He wouldn’t come here alone. They were out there somewhere. They might be watching me.
The minute hand on the clock had barely moved. Nels was probably at least an hour from Junction. It was snowing but likely the tracks I’d trampled early this morning showed as a trail of soft-edged indentations. The marshal might be at Grace’s cabin. I’d told him I had family there. He might think they had something to do with hiding Braden. The marshal would push his way inside with his questions. He aimed to catch Braden and because of my carelessness, he knew Braden had been here.
I’d never had dealings with a marshal before. Only deputies. Grace hadn’t dealt with either.
The marshal might expect me to try to send a warning of some kind. He could be watching me. Or his deputies were. It hurt to think of Grace and Hyrum alone with a lawman but I had to keep away from them. I couldn’t do what the marshal might expect. I’d made one mistake, and maybe I’d made others. I couldn’t make any more.
Never again, I told myself. I went back to cleaning the rug, pressing hard on the watery tracks. “You’ve come to the wrong place,” I’d say to the next stranger who showed up at my door. Charity was a virtue and the Book of Mormon said it was the pure love of Christ. I believed that. But it was someone else’s turn to help the men with plural wives. I’d done it long enough.
My hands went still. There wouldn’t be a next time. Not if the marshal caught Lewis Braden. I’d be arrested, convicted of helping a felon, and my property taken from me. My name would be in gentile newspapers. There would be sly hints of my depravity.
I could go to jail. Nels, too. I couldn’t bear the thought of Samuel coming home and finding me gone.
All because of Braden, a man I didn’t know until yesterday. Three wives, the marshal said about him. He made it out to be something filthy, as if the women were forced to marry against their will. It wasn’t like that. Braden would have asked church elders for permission to have more than one wife. The elders would consider his devotion and service to the church. They’d ask if he had the means to support more wives and children. “Are you willing to marry this man, Sister?” they’d ask the third woman just as they had asked the second wife.
“Yes,” the third woman must have answered. Her good fortune might have made her rejoice. Marriage to a man with plural wives was said to ensure everlasting life in the celestial kingdom.
I balled the wet rag, stood up, and went to the parlor window that faced the plum orchard and Grace’s cabin. The snowfall was dense and I couldn’t see past the first row of trees. If the marshal was at Grace’s, her hazel eyes would be wide with bewilderment and fear. Hyrum might be crying as he held on to her skirt. But her bewilderment was her protection and so was the truth. She didn’t know about Braden, her husband was at the school
house, and I had visited her this afternoon like I always did.
Lewis Braden’s third wife was sixteen, the marshal had said, his tone bitter. That was young but some girls knew their minds early. Grace had. She’d married Michael the day after her sixteenth birthday and would have married him sooner if our father had allowed it.
It wasn’t the same. Grace had been sixteen to Michael’s twenty. Braden looked to be in his early thirties, much older than his third wife.
Her age riled the marshal, I thought. Not plural marriage itself. Otherwise he would have said something about the other two wives. It was the girl that had him worked up. Maybe it wasn’t only because she was young. There must be something different about her. Or about Braden.
The marshal’s bitterness about Mountain Meadows was different, too. No other lawman had ever said anything about it. Maybe he knew someone who’d been killed there. Or it could be he was like other gentiles who used the massacre as one more thing to hold against us.
I left the window. In the kitchen I put the rag in the empty laundry basin. Questioning Grace would slow the marshal, I thought. From there, he might go to the schoolhouse to speak to Michael. By the time he got around to following the tracks that crossed the bridge, Nels could be home. The marshal would find everyone where they should be, nothing out of place.
Except for the water in the trough. And anything else I overlooked.
Time hung. Three o’clock. No deputies. Not yet. The marshal must have left Grace’s by now. He might be at the schoolhouse questioning Michael. Or he might be looking around Nels’ place.
Four o’clock. I thought by now Grace or Michael would have come to my cabin. I thought they’d tell me about the marshal. They hadn’t. And Nels. Surely he was home by now. The marshal could be questioning him this very moment.
Five o’clock. I choked down some venison and bread. I didn’t understand why gentiles and Saints couldn’t live together in peace. When I was a child and first learned about the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, I asked my mother, “Why’d they do this to the Prophet and his brother?” We were in the kitchen and she was peeling potatoes. She put down her paring knife and looked into my eyes. “Because the angel Moroni revealed to the Prophet the existence of more holy scripture. Because he was the one who found the scriptures, the golden tablets. Gentiles don’t know what to make of that. Why would God send an angel to a farmer’s son? It scared them. And when folks are scared, they’re not in their right minds. They’re likely to do anything.” She paused, her eyebrows pulled close. “Don’t ever lose sight of that, Deborah, should you have dealings with gentiles.”
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