Destroying Angel
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2013 Michael Wallace
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612182223
ISBN-10: 1612182224
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012948145
CHAPTER ONE
From the personal journal of Henrietta Rebecca Cowley, born Independence Rock, Wyoming, 1872. Died Blister Creek, Utah, 1969.
October 19, 1890
I killed a man in cold blood. I provided him with strong drink, took his gun, pressed the barrel to his skull, and sent his miserable soul to hell.
When the federal marshals arrest me—unless the elders condemn me first and cut my throat—I will admit everything. I will show them where I dumped the body into a sinkhole and explain how we covered it with buckets of sand. If justice demands that I swing for my crime, I shall go to the gallows like a lamb to the slaughter. I answer only to God.
Three months now since we came into this valley: seven women, twenty-two children, and our wagons and livestock. We found a land of desolation, a desert valley covered in thorns and infested with venomous snakes and stinging creatures. If civilized man had ever entered this land, he had not tarried but had fled to greener pastures.
Three months, yet I remember every detail, every word, even—or close enough to swear their veracity, with God and His angels as my witnesses. It is as if the very finger of the Lord has written these things in my mind, and I record them now to seal my testimony before man, even unto the seventh generation.
On the day we arrived, Sister Annabelle was laid up in bed with a vexation of the bowels, and she didn’t see the valley until the following morning when she climbed down to make water. Her eyes widened as she looked across the desolate expanse, and then she turned to me with her jaw set and insisted we drive our oxen out of this wretched place.
“This is the place, as Brigham Young said.”
Her face flushed with fever and the furnace created by the August sun. “My husband said we would find a land flowing with milk and honey.”
“It will flow,” I said. “In the Lord’s time.”
“Keep going. Load those wagons. Maude, Nannie, yoke the oxen. We’re leaving right now.” She snapped her fingers at Nannie as if she were a child receiving chores, instead of Annabelle’s sister wife. The young woman obeyed.
“Nannie!” I said. She drew short. “You heard my order. I want that stockade up before the Paiutes discover that we’re here. Maude!”
The other women stopped, torn between my nominal control and Sister Annabelle’s force of will. Annabelle’s father was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, answerable only to the prophet, and her husband had six wives already, three of them here.
Annabelle turned to me with a look of mixed frustration and anger. “We can do better than this. Take us east, closer to the Colorado. There’s another valley there. Fertile and green. Plenty of water.”
“We’re not looking for fertile and green, we’re looking for isolated.”
“Listen to me. You haven’t seen the place.”
“I know the spot. It’s too close to Lee’s Ferry, and the marshals will be looking for us there. This is good enough. There’s running water, flat land, forage enough for cattle. We’ll make our own milk and honey.”
“You’re not in charge here.”
“Yes, she is,” Sister Laura answered in her clipped English accent. I turned to see my sister wife standing behind my right shoulder with a bundle of sticks for firewood. “You heard what Elder Cowley said.”
Annabelle’s grip tightened on the brake-beam shelf of the wagon. Sweat poured down her cheeks from the effort of standing. “I heard what your
husband
said, self-serving as it may be. But if you think I’m going to let some girl—” She broke off suddenly. Her knees wobbled, and if Nannie hadn’t dropped the clothing she’d been hanging on a line when Annabelle barked at her, the older woman would have fallen. Nannie grabbed her and helped her sit in the back of the wagon.
“If you are done venting your gall,” I said, “you should lie down and gather your strength. We’ll discuss it later.”
Laura leaned close to my ear. “That fever was sent by the Lord, but Annabelle is recovering quickly. Don’t waste time.”
Two mornings later a man appeared in camp, riding bareback on a pinto. He was a handsome young Lamanite, with his black hair pulled into a ponytail and a string of beads across his bare chest. He wore only a loincloth, and the sun had burnt his skin bronze. Paiute. I was with Sister Laura at the creek when he appeared on the opposite stream bank.
I stiffened and grabbed Laura’s arm. “Get the girls.”
She looked up and gave a start, and then her eyes darted to her daughters, who were bathing naked in the pool between us and the man on the horse. The girls splashed each other, laughing, not yet noticing the man. Laura grabbed the girls and dragged them away.
The man watched Laura hustle them off, and his gaze trailed up the hillside toward our encampment. We’d built a crude stockade of crisscrossed branches collected from the banks of the creek and had started digging root cellars where I’d laid out the first three cabins in a defensive triangle. There could be no doubt of our intentions. It was a permanent encampment.
The man turned back to me with narrowed eyes and said something in a hard voice. I warrant it was something like, “This is my hunting ground. Go away.” But for all I knew, he was asking how long it would take until we opened the trading post, or if we’d seen a certain good-for-nothing horse that had run off.
“We’re peaceable,” I said. “We mean you no harm.”
He nudged his horse toward me. It kicked up mud as it crossed the creek. I froze.
And suddenly I was only a girl. Eighteen and alone in the wilderness. Unarmed. This man might hate white men. Maybe soldiers had killed his family and driven him into the wilderness, and this was his chance for revenge.
Dear Lord, where are they?
I prayed.
Where are my sisters?
Women’s voices rose on the hillside. Sister Laura’s climbed above the others, shrill and angry.
The horse pulled next to me while I stood perfectly still, trembling in terror. I could smell the man and his horse. He carried a bow over his shoulder and a knife at his waist, its leather sheath decorated with green and yellow glass beads that reflected the sun. The man ran his fingers through my hair. He said something else. It sounded curious rather than hostile, but I’d squeezed my eyes shut and couldn’t see his expression.
A gunshot cracked the sky. The horse shied away with a toss of the head and a whinny of fear. The rider gripped its mane and struggled to regain control.
Laura came running, waving the rifle over her head. “Leave her alone, you brute! I’ll shoot you dead this time!”
The man’s eyes flashed and he reached for his bow. But when Laura lowered her gun, he jerked on the horse’s mane and rode off. He picked his way through a dry wash and then disappeared into the labyrinth of sandstone fins and columns that runs through the center of the valley.
Fury rose in my breast as I stormed back into camp with Laura at my heel. “You cowards! Where were you? He was one man
with a bow. Why didn’t you defend me?” Most of them wouldn’t meet my eye. “That man might have killed me. Why didn’t you come?”
“Because Sister Annabelle told them not to,” Laura said in an angry voice. “That’s why.”
“A savage,” Annabelle said. She sat on the edge of her wagon with her legs dangling over the edge. Her fever had passed. A rifle lay across her lap, but her hands busied themselves stitching up a hole in a child’s shirt. “If we’d gone down waving guns around like this one”—she jabbed her needle in Laura’s direction—“he’d have seen that we’re
all
women. And then a dozen of the beasts would show up in the night to make an attempt on our virtue.”
“We
are
alone,” I said. “And if the Lamanites come back, they’ll figure that out soon enough. We need to prove it doesn’t matter. We won’t be intimidated. The Lord is on our side, and with His help, with a well-fortified camp, and with our rifles, they’ll see we’re not to be bothered. We can defend ourselves. Next time—”
“There won’t be a next time,” Annabelle interrupted. “Because we’re not staying here. We’re going east to Lee’s Ferry. We’ll leave tomorrow morning.”
“No, we won’t. My instructions are to settle this valley.”
“Those were the old instructions,” she said. “We have a new commandment. We’ve been ordered to settle on the north side of the Colorado. There’s a place called Blossom Meadows. It’s high in the mountains, cool, with water and timber.”
“A new commandment?” I asked. “Did the pony express ride in with a message from the prophet? Did they build a telegraph line while I was at the creek?” It was a mistake to lose my temper, but I was still shaken from my encounter with the Lamanite.