Virgin River

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “You drove all the hogs to town, Mister Pick?”

  “Mister Pick is it, yeeeow, ye miserable bloke. No, I sold’em the right to collect the porkers himself, and any loose goose he might find around the place. I fetched me twenty dollars for the lot.”

  That seemed low to Skye, but it was cash in a barter economy, and maybe the best Mickey could manage.

  “I got a bit of news, matey. Ye know what’s rufflin’ their feathers? Big train full of Pukes, Missouri men they say, a hundred forty of them, rolling through here two days ago. Fancher′s the captain, the very devil of a hater, they say. He’s fixing to kill every Saint he can or drive us out of here. Him and his company, wagon after wagon after wagon.”

  Skye wondered about all that. Was any of it true?

  thirty

  They set out in a great quiet, never seeing a soul that day, or the next and the next. The settlements had vanished. The arid country was as empty as it had been before the Saints swarmed in. The meandering river bisected an anonymous valley, with distant snow-dusted ridges to both sides. Fall had arrived in the mountains, even if summer lingered in the bottoms. But Skye could always feel change of season in his bones, even when it was not yet apparent to anyone else. They were running out of time.

  Mickey the Pick had taken to walking beside Skye in the van of this small procession. Jawbone fended for himself, and Mickey’s burros seemed to know they were to follow him. There had been a sudden fraternity blooming between the two Londoners, and Skye enjoyed hearing the music of Mickey’s tongue, something he had not heard since his days in the Royal Navy.

  “Now, Skye, bloke, these Saints, they’re two sorts, and we’re facing the worst. The ones up at Great Salt Lake, they’re a bit more reined in, but these southern ones, they’re a wild bunch, full of bad memories, let me tell ye. They’ve not got a law to their name, other than what they make up when they need one. The lot’d as soon kill ye as look at ye. And they don’t take orders from old Brigham, neither. They’re like a nation inside of a nation, and we’ll have to tread mighty light. Just a little word of warning.”

  “I was hoping we were done with them. It’s pretty quiet.”

  “That’s because this isn’t land they favor. Now down south, there’s good sheep country in the valleys, and a man can grow squash and tooties.”

  “What’s this war about?”

  “Gawd help a bloke for trying to explain it. I’m as dumb as a turkey about this war. But it’s mostly about wives, matey. Wives it is. The Americers, they’re saying no more than one to a customer, and the Saints, they’re saying up yours, go to’ell, ye buggers.”

  “What about Deseret?”

  “Deseret? Haw. Some of the Saints, they want to carve out a little empire all their own, see? It’s Yank turf, it is, but that don’t stop the bastids. Old Brigham, he was territorial governor until the Yanks tossed him, and now all the’otheads, they’re spoiling for war and stirring up the Indians too.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “The Saints, they’ve spent a lot of time playing footsie with the redskins. Buttering’em up like, with gifts and all that, but at the same time settling in the river bottoms where the Paiutes raised squash. So the Saints, they give’em pie and mash, and got the tribes in their pocket. Not only that, but they got the tribes to do their fighting for’em. This federal column heading’ere, they’re going to meet up with a few hundred Paiutes and they’re going to get their arse whipped, because the Saints have armed those Paiutes into some dandy little cavalry, or so the blokes tell me. Me, I don’t trust a thing I’m told. They by damn holy promised me a wife a year ago and never delivered. A man needs a woman. I should have me about three now. How come did I join the Saints? That’s how come. And now the bloomin’ elders, they got in ahead of this little East Ender, every chance they had, and probably laugh when they think about it.”

  “Where are these Paiutes now?”

  “All over the hills, bloke. We could run into five hundred of the devils any moment.”

  “You’re a Saint? Is that enough to quiet them if we do?”

  “I’ll damned well tell’em a thing or three. I’ll tell them here you are, two wives, a true Saint by’ell. Not a Mericat in the lot. That’s what they call Yanks, Mericats.”

  “What if they’ve been told otherwise?”

  “Ain’t you the worrier. I’ll give’em some little porkers and hens, and they’ll sit their arses down and start a cook fire.”

  Skye laughed. Ever since Mickey the Pick joined the party, the day’s worries had dissolved in humor.

  What’s more, Mickey had not hesitated to mix with the invalids. He was often back there gabbing with them, telling them about London’s East End, telling them that the bad air of London, thick with coal smoke and fog, sometimes in deadly combination, knocked off consumptives at an alarming rate, and that was why he was going to get them all to good air.

  “Mister Pick, what do you plan to do when we find a place on the Virgin River?” Skye asked.

  “Mister Pick is it? A low and coarse insult is Mister Pick. I’ll damned well get these poor cobs settled and start me a’og farm and build what needs to be built and start the wretches to healing. You know what heals’em up, bloke? A horse laugh and a toddy.”

  “A toddy? And you, a Saint?”

  “Me, I’m a special kind of Saint, call me Jack.”

  “Jack Saint?”

  “Haw!”

  Each evening Mickey the Pick fed his fowl from the stores of grain, or let them pluck a living from the brush for a while, and did the same with his little porkers. Skye saw the value of it at once. Someday these breeding animals would provide meat for the invalids.

  The Sevier River continued to take them south through open arid country, but the distant slopes were dark on top, revealing the presence of pines. This trail would take them to California if they wished to go that far, providing adequate graze for the livestock, firewood, water, and safety.

  But all that could change in an instant. Skye was too much a man of the wilds to trust a peaceful place too far.

  That night, at his own family campfire, he asked Mary what she knew of the Paiutes, the numerous tribe that inhabited the Utah country, and which her Shoshones knew well.

  “Ah, a good people,” she said, her face aglow. “I know their tongue a little. It is like my own. I maybe know their talk like this.”

  She held two fingers up, a little apart.

  “They grow things in the river valleys. Maize, squash, melons, seeds. They eat agave, the great plant of the desert. They collect piñon nuts and kill small game. They eat eggs and lizards and snakes. Rabbits, little animals of the desert.”

  “Mickey says the Saints converted them.”

  “I know nothing of that. They honor a spirit, Coyote, that I know. They live in small family groups around springs. Long ago the white priests came and took children away, and then the Utes and Navajos took Paiute children away.”

  “You can talk with them?”

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  “Are they warriors?”

  “Oh, no, they are a quiet people. Sometimes my people trade with them. They have nothing and they want robes and furs and trade with us for squash and melons and nuts and seeds.”

  “Could they be turned into an army by the Saints?”

  “Ah, no, Mister Skye, I don’t think so. They have too many headmen. Each in a little village, little hunting band.”

  “The head of the Saints, Brigham Young, is threatening to send a whole army of Indians to stop the Yankee column. He said the Yanks won’t even get close to here.”

  She frowned. “I do not know this thing. Everything changes. For a woman of the People nothing is ever the same now.”

  Change was coming too fast for all the tribes, Skye thought. He had a dark premonition about the future of them all.

  Food, then. If there was trouble, greet the starving Paiutes with food. That was what he got from Mickey th
e Pick, and now Mary. It was hunger that drove them, hunger caused by the usual dislocation of the tribes from choice land by whites, in this case the Saints.

  The wagons progressed ever southward through a deep desert peace, day by day. The land was changing. Now there was cactus and wax-leaved shrubs and everything had thorns. Desert plants had their own fierce defenses. And the air continued to change in some ineffable way. If anything, the world grew more silent. Arid country could make a man think he was deaf.

  One eve, Enoch Bright dropped in at Skye’s campfire.

  “You know, the cabbages and potatoes are putting a little bloom on our invalids,” he said.

  “I hadn’t noticed. One of my sorrows is that I can’t join your people or bring my wives to their camp. There’s no help for it.”

  “Well, take my word, this air, this quiet, this better food, it’s working some good. I take it that people are like furnaces. You can build a fire with most any wood, but put in a good seasoned hardwood, some ash or hickory or beech, and you’ll see a fine hot flame. You feed some good hard food to these people, and they build up steam until their safety valve’s whistling.”

  “Well, I hadn’t quite thought of it that way, Mister Bright. And what do you think about the stock?”

  “I’ve been studying on it. These grasses here, mostly dried and brown, make better fuel than some of the lush green stuff we passed by. This desert fodder puts some heat into their furnaces. Our oxen, oh, they’re lean and worn all right, but rightly muscled up and ready for more. Christopher Carson Ox is still leading the parade, skinny as he is. And the mules, tough as lions, and they yank that wagon along as if it’s a feather. Mickey the Pick claims that his burros do better around here than up north.”

  “And the wagons?”

  “We have loose tires. This dry air′s shrunk the felloes and I’ll need to do a little smithing if it gets worse. For now, I’ve driven a few wedges into the wheels to keep the tires tight, but the same desert air that’s making life better for our invalids, it’s starting to give me some aches and pains.”

  “How about you? You’ve come across a continent.”

  “I was talking to Mickey the Pick about that just an hour ago, Mister Skye. We’re not tired. That London man and I, we think alike. I’m stronger than when I started. I’m Hiram Peacock’s steward, you know. He said, before a few witnesses, if anything happened to him, I’d be in command and he’d entrust me with carrying it through. Well, that’s my fuel, Mister Skye, good seasoned hardwood in my own furnace, and it’s making steam, all right.”

  thirty-one

  They arrived at Parowan, the most important settlement in southern Utah, one chill September afternoon. The town lay in a wide valley and was surrounded by excellent farms.

  Skye saw nothing that troubled him. The trip south had been peaceful and the clouds of war had vanished. Parowan boasted broad streets and practical frame houses, and was already a solid city that displayed the genius of the industrious Saints in its orderly buildings. Hollyhocks and lilacs and rosebushes furbished the yards and added grace to this austere settlement. Life here in an arid land might be hard, but familiar flowers softened it and turned their town into an Eden. The city slumbered in a cool bright afternoon, paying no attention at all to wagon traffic on the artery connecting southern and northern Utah.

  Skye rode warily ahead of his company, hoping that the troubles were past and they could proceed unimpeded to their refuge in the desert. They weren’t far now; in a few days Bright’s company would be camped somewhere on the Virgin River, and beginning to erect some winter quarters.

  He would see about food. Always food. He did not yet know how this company would feed itself. It had no money, no time to break ground and plant crops, no meat, no fruits, and spring planting was a long time away.

  Skye thought he could trade another of his ponies for quite a bit of food, and as he led his company through the sleepy streets, he looked for a general store, and settled on one across the broad avenue.

  “We’ll look for food, Enoch,” Skye said.

  “Fuel for the boilers,” Bright replied.

  The main street had two or three false-front mercantiles, plain but serviceable, plus a few lesser buildings that housed a clothier, a smith, a harness shop, an apothecary shop, an implement dealer, and a livery barn. Beyond, lay a somnolent town square, with a stone temple dominating the far side. Substantial houses lined the square.

  Victoria and Mary studied the place; white men’s towns always fascinated them. The few people on the streets, mostly bonneted women, gazed discreetly at this odd company.

  A small shake of Victoria’s head sent a silent message to Skye. She didn’t trust this place, and was letting him know it.

  But he saw little that alarmed him, and stiffly dismounted, leaving Jawbone to stretch, clack his yellow teeth, and slay dragons.

  “Let’s see what we can do at the Parowan General Store,” he said to Bright.

  “A real store; not a mirage,” Bright replied.

  They had not seen a store for weeks.

  But even as they started across the clay street, a party of three men hailed them. These were all dressed in black broadcloth suits, and Skye thought they might be officials of some sort.

  He paused, awaiting the Saints.

  One wore a small nickel-plated circlet.

  “Marshal Klingonsmith, sir,” the man said.

  A homely one, Skye thought, as he shook hands.

  “I’m Barnaby Skye, sir; guiding this company west.”

  “Ah, then you’ve got the sick people.”

  “I’m Enoch Bright, in charge here. Pleased to meet you. Yes, we’re taking some consumptives to the desert to heal. It’s a remedy that holds great promise.”

  Bright shook hands with the marshal, and then with the others, who proved to be a deputy marshal named Tanner and Bishop Higbee, a balding, bespectacled man with a receding chin hidden by a close-cropped beard.

  “We’ve heard you’re coming,” Klingonsmith said. “It’s not a good time, you know. Our people aren’t happy to entertain Gentiles.”

  “And that’s what we want to talk to you about,” the bishop said. “There’s Indian trouble ahead. The Paiutes are stirred up, and we think it’d be fatal for you to proceed.”

  “Why?” asked Skye.

  “They’ve been treated badly by California companies. That’s what we hear. So we thought to warn you.”

  “What companies?”

  “A large train a few days ahead of you. They’ve got the Paiutes stirred up. We don’t know much more, but we thought to pass along a friendly warning.”

  There were a lot of ways a company could stir up Indians.

  “Where are the Paiutes now?” he asked.

  “Who can say, sir? West of us, we believe,” Klingonsmith said.

  “What do you want of us?”

  “Camp a day or two here. When it’s safe, we’ll send you on your way.”

  Skye had the odd sensation that this was an order, even if it was clothed as a suggestion. “We’re hoping to find a suitable place and put up shelter before it turns cold, sir. These people are very sick.”

  “Children, mostly, I’m told.”

  “Young people, from twelve into their twenties.”

  “Women, I’m told.”

  “Four. All from New Bedford, Massachusetts. The company lost two.”

  “We would like to meet them,” the bishop said.

  “You’re welcome to meet all of our company, sir. They’re consumptives, and it’s necessary for you to keep some distance.”

  Skye shepherded them all to the two wagons, where the young people had collected. All who could escape their pallets stood, awaiting what fate brought them.

  But first, his family.

  “This is my Crow wife, Victoria Skye, and my Shoshone wife, Mary Skye, and my newborn, who carries two names. Dirk, after my English father, and North Star, a name given to my son by my wife’s people.
”

  The bishop smiled dismissively. He was not interested in Indians or a half-breed child. Instead, he beelined for the consumptives, who stood or sat on the tailgates of the wagons.

  Bright made the introductions. “Now, let’s start with Eliza and Mary Bridge. Eliza’s seventeen, Mary’s nineteen. They’re daughters of Ethan and Geneva Bridge, New Bed-ford. Geneva, their mother, was sick with the consumption herself, and wasn’t strong enough to come here. Their parents sent them with us.”

  “They are without a guardian,” Higbee said.

  “I’ll get to that,” Bright said. “Now we have Anna Bennett. She’s eighteen. Her father’s a Congregational minister. She’s had the consumption for three years and has suffered more than a plenty. She asked to come along, thinking it might do her a good turn. It was hard; she left behind a lad she’s promised to. She told him she’d fly to his arms just as soon as the desert air did its work.”

  The bishop eyed Anna too long, Skye thought.

  One by one, Enoch introduced the consumptives, taking a moment to make each of them a person with hopes and dreams, for the benefit of the bishop.

  Skye listened carefully. He did not detect the sort of rank hostility here that he had discovered earlier among the Saints. Higbee was assessing each of these people, the Jones brothers, Peter Sturgeon, the Bridge sisters, the Tucker twins, and Sterling Peacock with quiet gazes.

  But there was something else, something hidden, something Skye wondered if he would ever fathom, that was transpiring here. At last, after the somber bishop had met the entire company, he addressed Bright and Skye.

  “Come, let us sit in the shade,” Higbee said.

  Skye and Bright followed him to a storefront with a roofed boardwalk before it. A log bench stretched across its front.

  With the gesture from the bishop, they seated themselves.

  “It’s the war,” Higbee said. “In the eyes of some of the Saints, you’re the enemy. It doesn’t matter that you’re transporting unfortunate souls to the desert. You are Gentiles. From here on, if you insist on traveling, you will encounter people who burn within, whose gaze takes you for a Mormon or for an enemy. The Paiutes have been stirred up against you, and there is nothing I can do about it. The fire that eats these settlers south of here burns fiercely on the memories of all the persecutions. And not just Illinois or Missouri, either. These people remember every persecution in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and elsewhere. As God is my witness, they will take you for enemies too.”