by Alissa York
The dark core of her brain expands. In the seconds it takes her to blink it back, a terrible scene evolves. Lal’s rifle lies where he’s thrown it. He’s curled in a squat, his left arm pure violence, levering down on Bendy’s neck. Hammer stands at a little distance. His gun is nowhere in evidence—small comfort as he draws a blade from the sheath at his hip.
“Hold him, son.”
Dorrie crawls hard for the shelves, coming face to face with the naphtha. Nothing better for cleaning blood from feathers. Also the tallest, heaviest jar. She grabs it, already rising. A single leaping stride and it shatters beautifully, sending a shower of clear, stinking liquid and splintering glass down the sweep of Lal’s hair. He rears and topples, his skull meeting plank with a resounding crack.
Bendy scrambles back, Dorrie yanking him up beside her. The two of them have their feet now, but Hammer’s still the one with the knife. He jabs the blade their way.
“You little bitch.”
Behind him, the frame of the door stands empty. Then, sudden as a ghost at a gateway, the Tracker fills its breach. The repeater swings up from his side. He draws a silent bead—not on either of the two young lovers, but on the back of Hammer’s head. Reading disbelief on the faces before him, Hammer glances over his shoulder. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. A last wave of his knife, and he turns a slow, controlled about-face.
Shaking his head clear, Bendy balls his two fists into one and brings them down hard on the older man’s wrist. Hammer’s grip springs open. Dorrie swoops, plucking up the knife and sending it hilt over blade into the shadows.
The Tracker advances, lifting his boots high over the father wolf’s body, grazing not a single hair. He doesn’t stop until the muzzle of his rifle meets Hammer’s brow. “Horses.” He gestures with his head to the door, then looks Dorrie straight in the eye. “Black one yours.”
She takes a last, blurred account of the wolves—four sitting vigil, one missing, one lying dead on its side. There’s no time to gather her tools, no time to reach beneath her cot and rescue Cruikshank Crow. Time only, as Bendy drags her by the hand toward the door, to snatch the still-unopened Doctrine and Covenants from the corner of her workbench, the final offering from a mother’s hand.
Ursula cannot say whether she’s been sleeping, only that she is now awake. Hoofbeats in the night don’t signify trouble the way they used to, but she’s not so incurious as to keep to her bed.
From her window she can make out the ghost of the track and, down its length, two figures riding hard away. Both mounts are dark, the larger of the two in the lead. Hammer dragging the hired man out on some fool’s errand. A more suitable companion for him than the Indian, in any case.
Withdrawing from the casement, Ursula returns to the shadowy bulk of her bed. Should she lie flat and hold her eyes closed, hoping against hope to drift off, or light the lamp and stretch a fresh square of linen on her hoop? The answer isn’t long in coming.
For behold, the day cometh
that shall burn as an oven;
and all the proud, yea,
and all that do wickedly,
shall be stubble.
Hammer’s eyes run bright streams. His breath is the breath of a labouring woman, his mouth the mouth of an expiring child.
On his knees astride the white man, the Tracker lays his left forearm across Hammer’s windpipe and feels the resulting panic between his thighs. In his right hand, the Henry languishes. He meets the white man’s bulging eyes briefly before tilting his gaze to take in the greater scene. The son stirs like a child dreaming, rolls groaning to push up onto all fours. The Tracker considers taking aim. Then sees he needn’t bother.
The son sags, snakelike. Cranes his neck to look about him, his eyes fathomless, empty of sense. His golden head has gone dark with the loss of his own blood. He struggles past on his belly, reaching with his elbows, writhing. He makes the door, worries it open, slithers through. Leaving Indian and white man alone.
On the lip of the long workbench a lamp burns. Raising up his rifle, the Tracker finds its barrel to be just the right length. He swings a slow arc, upsetting the child wife’s light, smashing it like a bright egg on the floor. A yolk of oily flame stains the planks. The Tracker watches its progress keenly. Beneath him, Hammer begins to quieten, what little air his body still harbours turning bad.
Crossing the yard to the horse barn, Lal evolves—now a crawling, a lurching, a loping thing. His father and the Tracker are friends again, practically lovers, the Indian straddling Hammer the way Thankful straddles Lal. There’s only one path now, only one route clear to his father’s heart. Catch the sinners—adulterers, betrayers both—and bathe them in the purest of streams. He gives no thought to his lack of weapon. He has hands and boots, a mouthful of teeth. Catch them, bleed them, bring them back. Father’s wife, father’s worker. The pair of them made quiet, obedient, clean.
He finds his horse by sound—a panicked wheezing that grows quicker the closer he gets. In the dark he hurts Bull worse than ever, wrenching the cinch, jamming and yanking the bit. He mounts in a bruising assault, clears the stable door and pulls the palomino up short. His dripping head is an owl’s now, rotating on its stalk. His eyes dilate to take in the yard, the long grey tail of the track. Messy with mud and hoofprints. They’ve got a good lead on him, but sooner or later they’ll stop and rest. Bull jigs beneath him. Lal kicks him up hard.
He makes it a scant half mile before the palomino imagines danger and digs in his heels. A headlong gallop ground to stillness. Lal flies from his saddle like an axe head forsaking its handle, turning bright-edged circles through the dark.
A thing of air now, the blaze rises, taking hold in feathers and fur. Beast after beast catches. Glass eyes fill to brimming with light.
Curling down, the Tracker brings his lips gently to Hammer’s ear. The tale is an old one, the taste of his own language strange. Smoke rushes his open mouth as he forms the words, knowing his friend cannot hear them, would find them meaningless if he could.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FIRST AND FOREMOST, I would like to acknowledge the descendants of all those present at the Mountain Meadows Massacre. While Effigy is a work of the imagination, it does cross paths with history. It is a painful story, no denying. I have done my best to tell it with love.
Of the many books and websites I consulted during the course of my research, the following deserve special mention: The Mountain Meadows Massacre by Juanita Brooks; Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Will Bagley; The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail by Wallace Stegner; History of Utah, 1540–1886 by Hubert Howe Bancroft; Wife No. 19 by Ann Eliza Young; Brigham’s Destroying Angel: Being the Life, Confession and Startling Disclosures of the Notorious Bill Hickman, the Danite Chief of Utah by William Adams Hickman; Beneath These Red Cliffs: An Ethnohistory of the Utah Paiutes by Ronald L. Holt; Handbook of North American Indians: Great Basin, edited by Warren L. D’Azevedo; Tracking and the Art of Seeing: How to Read Animal Tracks and Sign by Paul Rezendes; Guide to Taxidermy by Charles K. Reed; Mirror of the Dream: An Illustrated History of San Francisco by T.H. Watkins and R.R. Olmsted; Saddles and Spurs: The Pony Express Saga by Raymond W. Settle and Mary Lund Settle; The Man Who Listens to Horses by Monty Roberts; Bird Flight by Robert Burton; Wolf Songs: The Classic Collection of Writing About Wolves, edited by Robert Busch; The Story of Silk by Dr. John Feltwell; The Official Internet Site of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at www.lds.org; The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco at www.sfmuseum.net; Pony Express Historic Resource Study at www.nps.gov/poex/hrs/hrs.htm; Utah Division of Wildlife Resources at http://www.wildlife.utah.gov.
Many thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and the Winnipeg Arts Council for their support during the writing of this book.
I am grateful to the good people at Random House Canada, especially my esteemed editor, Anne Collins. My thanks also to my agent,
the tireless and tenacious Denise Bukowski.
As ever, my gratitude to family and friends knows no bounds. To my husband, Clive, I say again and again, thank you.
The body of Effigy has been set in Fairfield, a typeface originally designed by Rudolph Ruzicka for the Linotype Corporation in the 1940s. The face references modern versions of such classic text faces as Bodoni and Didot, and, like its influencial forerunners, Fairfield is at its best when used in book-length text settings.
ALISSA YORK’S highly acclaimed first novel, Mercy, was published in 2003. Her short stories have won several awards, including the Journey Prize and the Bronwen Wallace Award. She has lived all over Canada, and now makes her home in Toronto.
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2007
COPYRIGHT © 2007 ALISSA YORK
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Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2007. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2007. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
York, Alissa
Effigy / Alissa York.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37562-9
I. Title.
PS8597.O46E34 2008 C813′.54 C2007-903608-2
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