Virgin River

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “What’s it explain?”

  “Who shot the Morgan horse. I nearly knocked the man out of the saddle. Hit him in the shoulder. It was dark. I picked up the Sharps after he fled.”

  “Pukes,” said Rockwell. “Big bunch of Pukes. Two days ahead of you. Their captain is a Puke named Fancher.”

  The smith lifted the horseshoe and held on to it now, turning it in his big scarred hands. He lifted a hind foot of the tied-up horse, and pressed the shoe to the hoof. It looked good. Then he straightened.

  “I don’t have any animal I can trade. I had a few we picked up and rested, but they went fast. But maybe I can do something for you. I got a few bags of oats. You want to buy some oats? Keep your stock going with some oats?”

  “I would,” Peacock said at once.

  “Five dollars a bag.”

  Peacock paled. “Five, you say?”

  “Five.”

  “But I have to buy food for the sick when we get to Great Salt Lake. I only have fifteen dollars.”

  “Five.”

  “Buy three bags, Mister Peacock,” Skye said. “We’ll make do.”

  Peacock stared sharply at Skye, pulled the bank notes out of his purse, and handed them to the smith.

  Rockwell steered them toward a warehouse door, opened it, and pointed toward stacked burlap bags of grain.

  “Take four,” he said. “Three for your oxen and horses, and one for the sick.”

  seventeen

  Hiram Peacock thought of himself as a shepherd. He was herding a flock to better pasture. Now the trail to Great Salt Lake took his little company through verdant meadowland, but ahead was the formidable range of mountains that guarded the Saints’ capital from the rest of the country. Soon the weary oxen would be dragging the two wagons up steep grades. At least there would be ample grass and water, and a few oats to fuel them.

  Sometimes Peacock rode the Morgan horse now that it was no longer harnessed. He had walked clear from Independence, blistering his feet, and nearly ruining them. But he had ignored the cruel pain, and eventually his bloodied and pulpy feet had healed after a fashion, but he still walked on aching feet, and sometimes in blood. Mere pain would not stay him from his appointed task, which was to shepherd his ill congregation to a place of healing.

  The company had fallen into a pattern. Skye and his women and travois ponies led, and at a safe distance, the wagons followed. Peacock chose to walk this morning, at least until his feet howled at him. So he fell in beside the Jones brothers, teamstering the oxen, one on either side. David and Lloyd were the least afflicted of his consumptives and were a godsend because they helped make camp, yoke and unyoke the oxen, and care for the desperate. Still, Lloyd in particular was subject to convulsive coughing, and he stained an old rag pink with pieces of his lungs.

  “How are the oxen, Lloyd?” Peacock asked.

  “The off ox in the middle yoke’s in trouble, sir.”

  And so it was. It was doing little actual work and laboring heavily slightly behind its mate, slowing the team. Bad news. They could not afford to lose another draft animal.

  “What do you think, Lloyd?”

  “It’s done for.”

  All they could do would be to cut it loose and let the remaining five oxen drag the two wagons—until they all dropped. They were on level valley ground, but before the day was out they would begin the ascent. The proper course would be to cut the worn ox loose, abandon the second wagon, and try to make it to Great Salt Lake with two yokes plus one reserve ox tied behind.

  “I would like to try something, sir. Put the worn yoke in the lead. This ox perks up with he’s out front. It’s his nature. He doesn’t like eating dust.”

  Peacock knew plenty of men just like that.

  “We’ll stop here. We’ll do it.”

  Peacock strode ahead to catch up with Skye and tell him what was afoot. This was a good place to halt, with grass and water.

  “Jawbone’s like that too,” Skye replied.

  So the struggling company stopped, and the Jones brothers watered and briefly grazed the stock, fed the lagging ox a charge of oats, and then made that yoke the leaders. The sick young people wandered to the river, soaked up sun, and clambered into the light wagon or settled on their tailgates.

  The result of Lloyd Jones’s scheme was astonishing. The lagging ox turned himself into the king of the world and bulled forward as if he owned the trail and never slowed for the next hours.

  “Lloyd, you’ve worked a miracle,” Peacock said.

  “He’s still bad worn,” Jones said.

  “There are people who’d wear themselves to the nub for something they want badly,” Peacock said. “That ox wanted to lead. You want to get well more than anything else on earth, and so you’re walking across a continent.”

  Bright joined them. “That ox has steam in the boiler,” he said. “There’s food fuel, and there’s spirit fuel. He’s running on spirit fuel.”

  “How’s the hospital wagon, Enoch?”

  “It is self-propelled, Captain.”

  Peacock laughed.

  Bright peered earnestly at his employer. “I swear, sir, the desire of those within it is so large that it propels the wagon. Each young person has only one dream, to reach the place where their lungs might heal. I swear, you could unhitch that wagon and it would slowly roll west, propelled by a force beyond reckoning.”

  Peacock almost believed him. For a mechanic who loved pulleys and cogwheels, Bright had an oddly adventuresome mind.

  Mary Bridge slipped off a tailgate and joined them. She was one of the luckier ones because her consumption came and went, sometimes leaving her feverish, but just as often it seemed to vanish. Just now she was doing well, and her square face didn’t seem flushed with fever, the way it sometimes did.

  She smiled at Lloyd. “I hear you breathed life into a dead ox,” she said.

  “He’s still pretty far gone,” he replied. “But he likes to have all the rest behind him.”

  “I’m going to walk a little,” she said. “You mind?”

  “We’ll walk to the desert,” he replied. “You and I.”

  Peacock was relieved that all of his company got along with one another. United, they could work miracles. Young Jones had taken a shine to Mary, that was plain.

  But as swiftly as she had vacated a seat on the tailgate, David Jones had commandeered it. There was never enough room. It had been worse at first, when there were twelve young people struggling to breathe. But now three were gone …

  Peacock brushed aside thought of Samantha, lying so still on a scaffold in a cottonwood tree.

  This was good country, somewhat arid because the great chain of the Uinta Mountains to the west wrung rain from the heavens. Nothing but ruts told travelers where to go. But those fateful ruts led straight to the next oasis, Great Salt Lake, and they passed through some of the handsomest mountain country in the great West. Ahead rose cobalt mountains, and over them hung puffballs in an azure sky. It was good to be alive at that very moment.

  Peacock hastened forward a little to study that amazing gray ox, which had transformed itself into a new animal. It was gaunt. Its haunches were hollowed. Its ribs showed. Its muscles rippled directly under taut flesh. It set the pace, a nose or two ahead of its yoke-mate, proud to be leading the procession.

  “I suppose I should call you Christopher Carson Ox,” he said. “Out in front, are you? What did it? Was it nutrition? No, not a few oats. Medicine? We haven’t doctored you. Yet it was something, something in your ox head that transformed you. I wish I knew what it was. If I knew, I would know the secret of life,” he said.

  This was becoming a spiritual odyssey, though he couldn’t quite say how or why. He had seen the trip purely in practical terms. How did one get a dozen sick and fevered consumptives safely and easily to the desert, and build them a sanctuary there where the soft air would heal them? So he had dealt with it in such a fashion. Get just the right wagons. Just the right livestock. Just
the right equipment. Just the right guide. It had been all logistics and calculation, and now this proud gray ox, worn down to muscle and bone, was telling him there was more to life than logic.

  He felt almost liberated, as if he were freeing himself from every habit of thought that had imprisoned him for all his years as a coal and oil merchant. Now, suddenly, he was in a world of will and spirit and liberty.

  Ahead, Skye’s women stopped at a creekside meadow for the nooning and a rest, while Skye pushed ahead to see what lay there, as Skye usually did. The guide took a hard look at every place they stopped, wanting no surprises. This was a benign country and a benign day, and yet Skye never lowered his guard. Peacock wondered whether Skye was overdoing it a little. What harm could befall them? They had scarcely seen a living person since leaving Bridger′s Fort, and had seen no Indians at all.

  He watched Mary Bridge help the youngest and sickest of the group down to the creek bank where they could sip cool water, wash their faces, refresh themselves. She had been a godsend, a young women brimming with maternal love for those even less fortunate. It was Mary who helped the stumbling, coughing Peter Sturgeon through his daily ordeal; Mary who looked after the Tucker twins, and helped bathe Ashley when she was too weak. But it was also Mary who heartened the youngsters, told them that they soon would be healing, reminded them that they had conquered another day of travel.

  His own son, Sterling, was the paternal one among these desperate youngsters. Now Sterling was helping Grant Tucker refresh himself. Grant Tucker had coughed himself down to a skeleton and was too weak to walk, so Sterling had looked after the boy.

  They were all living on willpower, all wrestling with the cough, the fevers, the unending pain, the bouts of despair that made them want to curl up and die. It was only hope that kept them going. Somewhere at rainbow’s end would be a magical place where they could breathe again, and clamber out of their beds without gasping for air, and enjoy a meal, and walk without agony, and maybe believe there would be a tomorrow.

  Anna Bennett was the different one. From the start, she had insisted on caring for herself, letting no one do a thing for her. It was as if her pride was affronted by the disease that sapped her, and she would not surrender to it. Anna stayed much the cleanest, laundered her clothing, washed her hair, combed her dark locks fiercely, and found pride in her ability to fight back. She wasn’t a loner, and remained perfectly companionable, and yet there was something that set her apart, something that rejected the communal. During the meals, she often ate by herself, and then fiercely scrubbed her tin mess ware, as if to announce that she would never be a liability or burden to anyone.

  Peacock watched her now as she shook out her blankets, scrubbed a spare bonnet, and cleaned her battered shoes.

  Then, all too soon, the nooning was over, and Skye’s women were collecting the ponies. With luck, they would reach the foothills of the Uinta Mountains by evening. There was something about this day, and their good progress, and the competence of their guide, Skye, that filled Hiram Peacock with optimism. Soon they would settle on the Virgin River, and begin the great healing.

  eighteen

  As dusk approached, Skye hunted for a good campground. There was wood smoke in the breeze, which made him uneasy. But this was fine camping country, with ample grass and firewood and a rushing creek. Even the weather was perfect, the temperature swiftly falling after a hot afternoon. Except for a few clouds lanced by the Uinta Mountains, the sky was clear.

  He rode ahead of the infirmary company, and finally settled on a pleasant meadow that ran alongside the rushing creek. It had been much used by travelers on the Mormon Trail, but it was one of those watered places where the grass sprang back as fast as it was grazed. Cottonwoods, aspens, willows, and jack pine crowded nearby slopes along with juniper and sagebrush.

  He signaled to his wives, who were not far behind, and then steered Jawbone along the trail, wanting to know all about the wood smoke. It didn’t take long. Once he rounded a bend, he beheld an even larger and greener valley, and here, on both sides of the little creek, were scores of wagons, their white wagon sheets making them look like giant boulders strewn everywhere. This was no small company. At a great distance he saw people wandering everywhere, busy with their evening chores, for the burdens of overland travel did not cease when the wagons stopped rolling.

  Even from Skye’s perspective, it was plain this was a westbound party, and a large one. And that posed the usual problem. Should he and Hiram Peacock act as ambassadors once again, and let this great party know of the presence of some consumptives? Sometimes that was the right and diplomatic thing to do; but Skye had seen it work badly too. What pained him worse was the possibility that this was the giant train that Rockwell had warned him about, with Millard Manville and his crony, Jimbo Trimble, guiding.

  So far, he had not been seen. He quietly turned Jawbone and vanished around the bend, sensing that maybe the best course was to camp obscurely a way back and simply avoid trouble altogether.

  He found Peacock settling in. He used a bedroll and slept outside whenever the weather permitted, and under a wagon or sometimes in the supply wagon when the weather was troublesome.

  “There’s a big camp up the road. Forty or fifty wagons, a lot of people.”

  “Well then, we must visit them.”

  “I’m not sure we should, Mister Peacock. I think this is the Missouri crowd that Rockwell warned us about. And Millard Manville and his crony are guiding it. We might well just hunker down and avoid trouble.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it. This whole trip, candidness has served us well. Companies didn’t like to camp near us, but at least they were not surprised. And besides, it’s the thing to do.”

  Skye held his peace. Peacock lived by his code, and now he would adhere to his code, no matter what the result.

  “All right. You want to saddle that Morgan?”

  Peacock swiftly caught the Morgan horse and soon was ready to go.

  “We’re going to visit the camp up there,” Skye told Victoria.

  She stared, her eyes flinty.

  But just as they were about to ride up the creek, two horsemen appeared out of the twilight, coming from the camp above. Skye waited quietly. Camping companies always wanted to know who their neighbors were.

  “I believe we’ve saved ourselves a trip, Mister Peacock,” he said.

  The two horsemen approached in a leisurely manner, and Skye could make out the brims of slouch hats and the relaxed forms of experienced horsemen. Then, as the pair drew near, Skye knew who his guests were: his Fort Laramie rival, Millard Manville, and his flunky, Jimbo Trimble. This would not be a friendly visit. Skye noted that Trimble kept his left arm in a sling fashioned from a black bandanna. No indeed, not a friendly contact from a neighboring camp.

  “Gentlemen?” Skye said.

  “So it’s you. We thought so,” Manville said easily as they dismounted. The perpetual smile was on his freckled face.

  “I’m most pleased that you’ve come by,” Peacock said, dismounting. He offered his hand to Manville, who shook it.

  Skye waited warily for trouble, but it didn’t seem to materialize.

  “I’ve been hoping you’d come for a visit,” Peacock continued. “Perhaps you can tell me what’s ahead.”

  “We’re just looking things over,” Manville said. “Those sick people, are they getting along?”

  “It’s hard for them, Mister Manville. But I’ve never seen such courage. They’re going to get where we’re going.”

  Trimble had said nothing, and his gaze roved everywhere, finally settling on Jawbone, who stood saddled near Skye, his ears laid-back. He knew an enemy when he saw one.

  Light from Victoria’s cook fire was swiftly replacing the twilight, as the world turned darker.

  Trimble finally pointed at Jawbone, a gesture that Manville picked up at once; he nodded slightly.

  “Looks like you’ve got a Sharps there in that sheath, Skye.”

>   “I do. And I prefer to be addressed as Mister.”

  Trimble was looking itchy now, and Skye sensed what was unfolding.

  “Well, now, I think that’s my Sharps. Same brass patch-box in the stock. Most likely it is. It was stolen from me, plumb stolen when I wasn’t looking.”

  “You accusing me, Mister Trimble?”

  Manville stood ready, and Skye knew a confrontation was brewing.

  “Well, I’m just getting my property back.”

  “And how do you suppose I got it, if it’s yours?”

  “Now that’s a real question, ain’t it? Likely someone made off with it.”

  “Are you calling me the thief, Trimble?”

  Trimble licked his lips and glanced at Manville. It would be Manville’s play, with Trimble’s arm laid up like that.

  Manville smiled easily. “Seems to me, Skye, you should hand it back. A guide taking these nice folk out to the desert really should be a little more careful about how he conducts himself, don’t you think?”

  “Trimble, your arm’s laid up. What happened?” Skye asked.

  “I took a fall,” he replied. “Now do I get my property back, or do we push a little, Skye?”

  “You push.”

  “Now see here, Mister Skye, if this man’s Sharps is in your possession, it behooves you to return it,” Peacock said.

  Skye ignored him.

  “Shoot horses, do you? Shoot a prize Morgan horse, do you? Try to strand some sick people in the wilderness, do you?”

  “This is the man?” Peacock asked.

  Skye discovered a massive Colt Dragoon revolver in Trimble’s fist, aimed squarely at himself.

  “Hand over my Sharps, Skye,” Trimble said.

  Manville was grinning, his hand in the pocket of his duck cloth jacket.

  Peacock exploded. “You shot my horse? What sort of wretch are you! You destroyed a great horse. You’ve endangered my party! You scoundrel, I’ll have your hide. I’ll report you to authorities and see you punished. When we reach Salt Lake, mark my words, you’ll see irons on your legs.”