He said, “If the wheel is Samuel’s, and I pray it’s not but if it is, it will free your mind.”
“You’ll come home to Parowan with us,” Grace said. “Samuel would want that.”
My throat had narrowed. I couldn’t talk. Grace kept her arms around me. Her lips were near my ear. She said, “Samuel was always good to me. When you courted and it plagued me that you had more time for him than me, he’d have me come and sit on the love seat between you. He’d ask me what I’d learned in school. I’d tell him and he’d rear back, amazed, and say that a smart little girl like me was bound to grow up and be a schoolteacher. After you married and I was homesick for you, Samuel fixed a room off your kitchen for me. He put in a cot for me. He made me feel like I still had you.”
Grace’s memories made my chest burn with an ache. When I left their cabin, Jacob, Joe, and Hyrum were waiting for me outside. They were dressed for the cold and snow but they hadn’t rolled snowballs or made a fort. They just stood, peeking glances at me, then at each other. “You look sad, Aunt Deborah,” five-year-old Joe said.
I smiled for them. I thought my face might break from the effort but it didn’t. Then all at once, the boys were bunched around me, their arms reaching up. I leaned down to hold them close to me. My family, I thought. I wasn’t alone.
On the trail, Nels, Carson, and I snaked our way through the Wastelands. The rock formations thinned out and the land rolled in soft waves. We came to a grove of trees where we cut toward the south. When the sun was directly overhead, we stopped for a cold meal of ham, biscuits, and canned peaches. We stood in the snow while we ate, stomping our feet from time to time to keep the blood moving. Carson shot me quick glances. He tugged at his hat and his square jaw was clenched. He was uneasy around me. Nels asked two times if I was all right.
“Yes,” I said both times. “I want to do this.”
Back on our horses, we rode due south toward Boulder Mountain. The snow was deeper as we climbed and the horses worked harder. I felt Samuel with me. This was the route he took each time he left Junction and went south. This was the route he took when he came back home.
Grace and Michael wanted me to go back with them to Parowan. Doing that meant leaving the cabin, the orchards, and the irrigation ditches. Samuel and I had built the cabin together. We’d planted the trees together. We’d dug the ditches together. Leaving them would give me nothing to touch that proved we’d been in this world together. They were the landmarks of our marriage.
Grace and Michael probably expected me to live with my mother. She was fifty-seven and her hands were crippled from years of hard use. She’d welcome my help and my company. My father, who spent most of his time with Caroline, his other wife, would approve. My mother wouldn’t be alone.
In Parowan, the church would tell me how to spend my time. There would be Sunday services, Family Night prayer time on Wednesdays, and weekly Relief Society meetings. No one would know what to make of me. I was a woman without children. I made gloves to earn my keep. I was a woman whose husband didn’t have a marked grave.
The marshal’s wife was spared that. She’d have her husband back to bury even if he wasn’t home yet. Much depended on when his son and cousin got his body to the train station in Salt Lake. I felt sure Henry would telegraph his mother ahead of time. She would know to expect her husband. She’d know he died in a bed and he wasn’t alone.
Nels and Carson could be wrong about Samuel. There wasn’t a wheel in the ravine. If there was, it wasn’t Samuel’s. But if it wasn’t his, where was he?
We camped the first night on the floor of a three-wall lean-to made by the Indians years back. It was cold and I was glad for that. It slowed my thinking. It dulled my worry about what we’d see in the ravine. Nels laid my bedroll so that I was between him and Carson. “It’s warmer this way,” he said. I didn’t argue.
I listened to the night breathing of the two men, neither of them my husband or blood relative. Since the marshal’s death, a crevice split the ground between Nels and me. The evening he came and told me he’d gotten Braden to Floral Ranch, he and I were alone. The marshal’s body was in my barn. We sat at the kitchen table and I saw something in Nels’ eyes. He cared for me. Not as a friend did but as a man did for a woman.
Since then, I’d kept away from Nels. I belonged to Samuel. I wanted to belong to him. I yearned for him to come home. Yet keeping away from Nels made me miss him in ways I hadn’t expected. He was a man whose presence was a comfort.
Never had that been truer than now. Earlier, when we stopped at the lean-to for the night, Nels told me Samuel probably used this lean-to when he traveled. I needed this to be so. He’d looked up through the chinks in the roof and seen swatches of the Milky Way. He’d listened to the coyotes, yapping and howling. He’d heard an owl’s long hoots. His campfire, just outside of the lean-to, had brightened the dark.
Samuel would feel at home in a lean-to. It was a shelter yet it wasn’t all-the-way enclosed. Maybe he thought of it as an in-between place.
The weather held the second day. Nels didn’t seem to listen to the land as hard as he had yesterday. Lawmen would come from the north, not the south, the direction we were heading.
On the trail, I studied the crevices in the cliffs and the shapes of the snow-covered rocks. I wanted to see them as Samuel did.
We camped the second night in a pocket of rock carved out of the side of a mountain. It made me think of Braden who had done the same in a pocket close to Junction. I hoped his wives knew he was safe. Then I told myself to stop thinking about him.
The third morning we rode in the quiet under a blue sky. Like before, we traveled single file. The cliffs were higher and the snow deeper. The horses blew clouds of steam as we climbed the switchbacks. The trail was just wide enough for a narrow wagon. Samuel would have been careful when he came this way. It’d be easy for a wheel to slip off the edge.
Nels’ horse moved slow and at times, Carson fell a good ways behind us. The trail was steep but it wasn’t just that. I felt the men’s dread. I understood they didn’t know what I might do once we got to the rockslide. I didn’t know, either.
It was midday when Nels had us stop. “We’ll walk from here,” he said. My blood seemed to drop. We were there.
“You all right?” Nels said.
I nodded.
He studied me for a moment. I nodded again. He looked at Carson and they staked the horses. When they were finished, Nels looked at me. “You ready?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll stay here with the horses,” Carson said.
“No,” Nels said, the word coming quick. He was uncertain about me, I thought. He wanted Carson with him to help keep me steady.
The three of us began to walk. The snow was eight inches deep or so. The narrow trail was cut into the side of a rock cliff. I stayed on the inside close to the wall. Nels was beside me on the ravine side. Carson was behind us. Samuel would walk his mules on this stretch, I thought. He’d take them through slow. He’d tell them they’d traveled this before and they could do it again.
We rounded a bend. I came to a standstill. The rockslide.
“You all right?” Nels said to me.
“Stop asking me that.”
A boulder bigger than my cabin had taken out the trail. It’d come to a stop just below where the path had once been. The boulder was at a slant so that one end gouged the cliff. The other end hung in midair. A spillage of rock slabs and broken trees flowed into the ravine.
I took a step forward. I stumbled. Nels took my arm. Carson was on the other side of me. I said, “Show me where.”
Nels must have given Carson a signal of some sort. Carson walked to the edge. Nels kept me back. His hold on me was firm. Carson looked down into the ravine, then walked along the edge. He stopped and got on his hands and knees in the snow. He leaned forward. He was quiet as he studied the ravine.
Samuel, I thought. Samuel.
Carson stood up and walked to us. His voic
e low, he said, “The light’s stronger today. More direct.” He paused. He couldn’t look at me. His gaze was fixed on Nels.
“Stay with her.” Nels let go of my arm and then it was Carson holding me up. Nels went to the place Carson had been. He got down on his hands and knees. Finally he backed away from the edge and stood up. When he turned around, I knew. Nels’ eyes carried a stricken look.
“I have to see,” I said.
The men walked me to the edge. We got down in the snow.
The ravine was a straight plunge. There was nothing to break a fall. There was nothing for a man to hold on to. The side was sheer rock.
“Where?” I said.
Nels pointed.
The bottom was strewn with rocks and deep drifts of snow. Stunted trees and low brush grew where the sun reached. I strained to pick out the particulars. My vision blurred. I blinked, then saw it. A wheel. It showed in a shaft of light.
There were boards, too. It was the back end of a wagon. The rest of the wagon, if it hadn’t broken apart, was lost under a dense tangle of snow-covered brush.
Samuel had painted his name on a right-hand sideboard near the front. I couldn’t see it. I wasn’t able to see anything that proved it was Samuel’s. But I knew it was. There was something about it that was deeply familiar.
A great choking pain welled up in my chest.
“Sister Deborah,” Nels said.
The air was thin, my ears rang. “Steady,” he said. “Breathe.” I did as he said. My hearing cleared.
I looked again into the ravine. The snow-covered branches of the brush that shrouded the wagon glimmered in the narrow sunlight.
“Samuel’s there, isn’t he?” I said to Nels.
“I believe so.”
I turned to Carson. He said, “Yes. Most likely.”
I’d missed Samuel from the moment he left on the first day of September. That was five and a half months ago. Since the beginning of December, I’d looked for him. I kept expecting to hear him call out to me, telling me he was home. Seventy-six days. It wasn’t all that long. Unless a person was waiting each minute of those days. Unless a person didn’t know where someone was.
A sense of calmness, something I didn’t expect to ever feel, came over me. Samuel wasn’t hurt and afraid. He wasn’t at the mercy of strangers. Samuel was here.
I looked at Nels. “Do you think he suffered?”
“No. It would have been quick.” His voice broke. He cleared his throat. “Samuel wasn’t the suffering kind.”
I felt myself smile. Then I thought of Thomas Fletcher and how it pained him to move even a little. I heard again the wheeze and rasp of his breathing.
It wasn’t that way for Samuel. Maybe there was only a moment of fear. Maybe there wasn’t any pain.
Carson said, “We’ll go back to Junction and get the men. We can try to get Brother Samuel out.”
“No,” I said. “He wouldn’t want you to risk it.”
“We can try.”
An image of my husband, his body broken, being hauled up the cliff by rope flashed through my mind. Then I thought of my bargain with God. I’d take care of the marshal and God would send Samuel home. In His way, God had done that. I knew where he was. Samuel was with his rocks.
I said, “There are all kinds of graveyards. I want Samuel left here.”
Carson glanced at Nels. Nels gave him a quick nod. I said, “I’d like to put a marker here for Samuel.”
Nels said, “We can do that.”
“I’d like a drawing of Samuel. If you’re willing, Brother Nels.”
“I am.”
“I’d like him to be holding one of his rocks. I want him smiling.”
“That won’t be hard to do.”
“You’re a good friend.”
Nels ducked his head. He turned away from me but not before I saw that his eyes were heavy with sadness.
Carson said something about wanting to get back to the horses. “If nobody minds.”
“Go on,” Nels said. “Likely we won’t be long.”
Carson left, rounding the bend.
Nels said, “You want to stay here by yourself for a spell?”
“No. Not by myself. I’d like you here.”
“All right.”
We stood near the edge of the trail. Nels took off his hat and put it over his heart. The sky was a crisp blue. The sun lit the cliff on the other side of the ravine. The snow that clung to its ridges glittered like flecks of clear crystals. The ravine was my husband’s cemetery. The cliffs were his marker.
I said, “I’m not leaving Samuel.”
Nels’ eyebrow shot up.
“I’m not going back to Parowan. There’s nothing of Samuel there.”
“It might not be safe in Junction. The law won’t forget about Braden.”
“We did nothing wrong.”
A strange look darted across Nels’ face. Something had happened to the marshal that I didn’t know about. I wanted it left that way. After a moment, he said, “We helped a felon, that’s how they’ll see it. Even if they leave us alone, and I’m not sure they will, but if they do, more hunted men are bound to come through.”
“I’m not leaving.” I looked down at my hands. The leather in my gloves had deepened in color. The yellow had gone a mild shade of brown. “I can’t leave Samuel. I can’t leave the trees we planted together or the cabin we built.”
“Your sister’s going. The Bakers are too. Others are apt to clear out once spring comes.”
It hurt to think of being parted from Grace and the boys, from Michael, too. I’d miss them more than I could put words to. It could be that there would come a day when I’d change my mind and go back to Parowan. If that day came, I’d do that. But not now.
“Samuel’s here,” I said. Then I was thinking of his hands. They were scarred and nicked from years of making wheels. His palms were ridged with callouses. For all that, his touch was always tender.
I’d never see his hands again. I’d never feel his fingertips caress my cheek.
Pain wrapped itself around me and tightened.
“Sister Deborah,” Nels said. He was holding me up. My knees had gone weak. “You’ve seen enough. We’re going back.”
I gathered up some air and steadied myself. “Not yet.” I walked to the edge of the trail. Nels held on to my arm. I got down on my hands and knees. He did, too. I looked into the ravine.
The wagon covered Samuel, I told myself. He’d been wearing gloves I’d made for him when the slide happened. They were on his hands now. He had something of me with him when he died.
Images of Samuel—the first time he had dinner with my family, the two of us dancing after our wedding, the stones he found in the creek, and his goodbye when he left last September—flashed through my mind. My heart hurt. I believed it always would.
Samuel wasn’t suffering. He wasn’t frightened. This comforted me.
Nearby, a bird rustled in underbrush. Another bird called a two-note trill. The wind was a low whistle. These would keep Samuel company.
I turned to Nels. Like mine, his eyes watered. I said, “Are you leaving Junction in the spring?”
“I’m never leaving. Unless I’m run off.” He looked up at the cliff on the other side of the ravine. “Junction’s home.”
Samuel was gone. But Nels was here. I wasn’t ready to think past that. It was enough to have the comfort of Nels’ steady presence. It was enough to know that I always would. Unless he was run off by lawmen.
There was nothing I could do about that. What I could do was stop waiting for what might happen.
“Nels,” I said. “I’m ready to go home. If you are.”
AUTHOR NOTES
Today, orchards planted by early settlers thrive in what is now Capitol Reef National Park. These settlers named their town Junction and were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Yet, unlike most LDS communities, the Junction families didn’t build a wardhouse. Nor did Junction have its o
wn bishop. The families didn’t conform to the typical LDS pattern of building their homes close to one another. Historical evidence also indicates the families were not called by the church to settle this remote part of Utah Territory. It appears they came on their own, one or two families at a time. It seems they had their own reasons for settling in this isolated part of Utah.
Floral Ranch did exist and historical evidence indicates it was a place of safety for LDS men hiding from federal deputies. Located about eleven miles south of Junction, it was difficult to find. Although documentation is limited, it seems likely that LDS men charged with polygamy came through Junction on their way to Floral Ranch. A trail known as Cohab Canyon overlooks the Junction orchards. It is believed that “cohab” is short for “cohabitation” and that men hid there until they were able to travel safely to Floral Ranch.
The population of Junction during the 1880s was about eight families. Only one family practiced plural marriage.
The Massacre at Mountain Meadows began on September 7, 1857, and ended on September 11, 1857.
Junction’s name was eventually changed to Fruita. Under the care of the United States National Park Service, the orchards flourish and visitors are welcome to pick the fruit. The original irrigation ditches are still visible. Visitors can hike the Cohab Canyon Trail, and old cabins and barns stand at Floral Ranch. Indian pictographs reveal the presence of the first inhabitants. The convergence of Sulphur Creek and Fremont River can be seen from vantage points high on the red rock cliffs.
The Glovemaker is a work of fiction but I did my best to keep the historical details as accurate as possible. I have been fascinated by Junction’s early LDS settlers since my first visit to Capitol Reef National Park years ago. The area is remote and the landscape is daunting. Yet a handful of settlers called it home. The Glovemaker is my attempt to remember the brave and hardy people who lived in the rugged canyon country during difficult times.
For further reading:
Red Rock Eden: The Story of Fruita by George Davidson (Capitol Reef Natural History Association, 1986).
Echoes from the Cliffs of Capitol Reef National Park by Max E. Robinson and Clay M. Robinson (Ol’ Gran’pa Stories, 2004).
The Glovemaker Page 25