The Fugitive Son (23 page)

Finally! Andy let out his breath in relief. Someone was finally talking sense and getting this thing under control. Following Pa, he rode through the high brush and tall grass toward the wagons in time to see a company of soldiers riding toward the beleaguered immigrants under a large white flag. The commander, John Lee, stopped and called a halt to the siege and then approached the man who seemed to be in charge of the wagon train.

Andy felt a sense of relief sweep over the entire encampment. The men lowered their guns; the women wept with joy; and a young pastor knelt down and thanked God for deliverance. Andy himself was moved to tears. The siege had gone on for five days, and the travelers’ suffering was obvious. They were running out of supplies. Several of their men and children had been killed. And their throats must be parched from lack of water. Andy felt like kneeling with the pastor to offer his own prayers of thanksgiving. But to which God would he pray? Was Heavenly Father responsible for this rescue, or was it the Loving Creator Major Crawford had told him was the only true God?

Andy listened closely as Brother Lee, the adopted son of the prophet himself, offered his condolences for the terrible treatment the Indians had perpetrated on the wagon train. Lee said he was sorry the Mormons hadn’t realized the plight and awful suffering of the travelers or they would have helped sooner. But first, as the military authority under the prophet, he must talk to the Indians and appease their anger.

Lee called his company together and marched up the hill to where the Indians were hiding in the brush. After a few minutes, he returned to the wagon train. Andy drew closer to hear the conversation.

“The Indians are willing to call off their siege in exchange for some of the cattle. But because they don’t trust white men, they insist that you give me all your guns and ammunition,” Lee told the wagon master.

“But how do we get out of here with no guns for protection?” The immigrants were obviously reluctant to comply with the terms of the truce.

Lee considered. “We will escort you and return your guns when we get you to safety. Otherwise, I cannot protect you from the savages.”

When the travelers agreed to hand over their guns, Lee turned to all the Mormon men who seemed to have multiplied in number during the proceedings. “Brethren, put the children in the wagons, let the women walk in front of us, and each of you choose a man to personally escort through the meadow.”

Andy and Pa both quickly fell into the line of marchers, Andy escorting a young fellow who looked to be in his early twenties. Andy introduced himself, and the young man grinned. “I’m Marion Tackitt, and I just got married a few months back out on the trail. I’m so glad God sent you along to rescue us. My wife, Sally, just found out we’re going to have a baby, and I sure want to be around to raise my young’un.”

The two young men chatted as they marched along toward Cedar City, fast becoming friends. Andy glanced ahead and saw that the wagons with the children had just passed out of sight over the hill. The women walked along, their energy and their spirits revived from relief at their rescue. He could see that they were laughing and joking, their fear gone.

Just as the long, winding file of men and their Mormon rescuers entered a small ravine, Andy saw Major Higbee step out of the brush on the divide. Higbee raised his arms and shouted, “Brethren, do your duty!”

At that instant, each Mormon escort swirled toward his captive and shots rang out across the meadow. Andy saw men falling everywhere. Speechless, he turned toward Marion, only to see the young man had fallen face down in front of him. Pa took a few steps toward Andy and fairly spat at him. “You yellow-bellied coward! Didn’t you hear the command to do your duty?”

There was no time to answer. Women and children were running and shrieking, some on their knees begging for their life. Andy could only watch in horror as tomahawks crashed through the skulls of those on their knees and knives plunged into hearts. Several of the men he knew from the Legion went from victim to victim, slitting the throats of those who still breathed so the atoning blood would flow freely.

Shouting above the chaos, Lee prayed loudly, “O Lord, my God, receive their spirits, for it is for thy kingdom that I do this.” He lifted his rifle to his shoulder and shot several of the women at point blank range.

In a state of shock, Andy gasped for breath in between spasms of vomiting. He watched senselessly as his friend Jim Pearce mounted his horse and tried to leave the scene, only to be shot by his father, James Pearce, who had been instrumental in plotting the massacre. The bullet must have only grazed Jim’s face, as it was bleeding profusely, yet he rode on.

Never had Andy seen anything so brutal, so horrific. What the Mormons had suffered at the hands of the gentiles was nothing like this blood-thirsty mob, screaming for revenge and committing such vile atrocities. Andy saw two little girls run into a ravine about fifty yards away from the slaughter, followed by an Indian boy who pointed them out to Lee and a couple of his men. The men dragged the girls from the brush and brutally ravished them. Andy could hear Lee and an Indian chief arguing about the girls’ ultimate fate. The chief said the girls were too pretty to kill, but Lee insisted they had to die.

Feeding on their bloodlust, the Saints rushed over the killing field, stripping the bodies and gathering the spoil. Anything of value was either pocketed or loaded into a wagon to be taken to the Tithing House in Cedar City. Nothing was left but the bloody scene of nude, mangled bodies left to be devoured by nature’s scavengers.

The entire nightmare had taken less than ten minutes – only ten minutes to snuff out the lives and futures of more than a hundred people. Andy shook his head in disbelief, knowing this day would haunt him the rest of his life. Never would he forget the grizzly scene. He stumbled over to where he had left his horse and saw Pa mounting up.

Pa threw him an angry look of utter disdain. “Never thought a son of mine would be such a spineless coward!”

Andy bent over again as more great wrenching heaves tore through his body. “But they were just innocent travelers.” He gulped. “They trusted us to rescue them.”

“Innocent?” Pa thundered. “Innocent? It’s those marauding thugs that chased the Saints out of Missouri and drove us into Nauvoo! And how innocent were they when they murdered that great man of God, Parley Pratt, when he was out preaching the eternal gospel?”

Unaccustomed to talking back to his father, Andy felt certain he would meet the same fate as Jim Pearce if he tried to ride away. His voice barely audible, he said, “The returning missionaries told us that Pratt was ambushed by the estranged husband of his twelfth wife because he didn’t cotton to the apostle spiriting his wife and kids off to add to his harem. So what did that have to do with slaughtering a whole wagon train of families?”

Andy paused and looked toward Pa, almost begging to see some sign of compassion. Seeing nothing, he sobbed, “So many of them were just little kids…”

The elder Rasmussen gazed at his son with contempt. “Nits make lice. We have to stomp ‘em out before they grow up into Saint haters. Besides, we spared the youngest ones.”

“Yeah, the babies and toddlers who are too young to tell anyone about what happened,” Andy snapped.

Pa angrily signaled for Andy to turn his mount around. “One thing’s for sure, your life isn’t worth a plug nickel down here in southern Utah where all these men saw your cowardice. I’m going to send you back up north to Rockwell’s militia. Maybe you can grow a backbone fighting Johnston’s troops.”

Almost as an afterthought, Pa added, “Back there while you were puking your guts up, all of us men took a sacred pledge not to ever speak of what happened here today. It was an Indian massacre and nothing else. I told them I could speak for you and that you would honor the pledge, too.” This last was given clearly as a threat.

When the duo arrived back in Parowan, they noticed a group of men standing in front of the log building that served as the ward meeting place. “Looks like I maybe ought to stay and see what’s going on, so our final report to the prophet covers everything,” Pa said. “You go on up to Hettie’s, and I’ll spend the night down here. I’ll meet you at Hettie’s in the morning, and we’ll head on up north.” As an afterthought, he added, “Tell her to fix us a nice breakfast so we can be fueled up for our trip.”

Andy rode away quickly, riding in a jagged line just in case Pa had any idea about shooting him in the back. At this point, nothing would surprise him, but one thing he knew for certain… he had to get out of Deseret. Not only for his own safety, but because never again could he consider himself a Mormon. He wanted nothing to do with such evil. And if that made him an apostate, then so be it.

Santa Fe Trail
New Mexico Territory

Once again, Elsie looked back and waved farewell to her friends.
This entire trip has just been one sad farewell after another,
she mused. She sincerely hoped her life in Santa Fe would be peaceful and of long duration, without a lot of goodbyes.

Keeping her mules on the rutted trail kept her too busy all afternoon to even think about her life. Her hands began to feel raw and miserable from holding onto the reins so tightly. She wished she had taken the time to dig a pair of leather gloves out of her supply box. She looked at her hands ruefully. They sure weren’t the hands of a Kentucky belle now! Indeed, they looked more like the rough, red hands of a farmer.

Heading west on the wide, well-traveled trail, she was thankful when the glare of the bright sunlight finally began to slip behind the horizon and gave her eyes some relief. Trip raised his hand in a wide motion to get her attention and signaled he was pulling off the trail. She followed his lead, thankful that she would be able to get some ointment out of her bag to soothe her burning, chafing hands.

The spot Trip had chosen for their overnight camp was beautiful beyond words. Wooded with towering pines and large junipers, it gave protection from the trail, yet offered a good view if anyone was approaching. Trip assured her the Indians almost never came this close to the trail, as it was such a busy route and they didn’t want to get into scrapes with the hundreds of travelers who passed by on it. “We’re practically downtown,” he teased. “Probably more people come along this road every day than you ever saw back on your plantation in Kentucky.”

“That wouldn’t have to be very many people,” she replied. “My folks pretty much stayed by themselves, and we didn’t have a whole lot of visitors. Most of our neighbors thought we were strange because of our beliefs.”

“What beliefs?”

“We didn’t believe in slavery. That didn’t sit well with most of the plantation owners.”

Trip raised an eyebrow. “Yet you had slaves. You said you’d freed Isaac.”

Elsie tried to explain her family’s position on slavery but found it difficult to put into words. “Father bought many slaves just so he could release them from bondage. He educated them and quietly gave them their manumission papers whenever it was safe. Isaac and I grew up and were schooled together all our lives. He was raised as one of my brothers.”

She paused, watching Trip as he chopped firewood. “I probably shouldn’t be confiding these things to you,” yet she continued without hesitation. “Back home, it could be very dangerous to educate and free slaves. That’s mostly the reason I’m heading out here to New Mexico Territory. When Papa died this spring, his will freed the remaining slaves. My brothers were afraid that when the neighbors heard about it, there would be a great deal of trouble. They decided I should join them out here. So I sold everything, and here I am.”

“Personally, I never could understand how a person thought they had the right to own another person,” Trip said. “Being a half-breed myself, I’m kind of the live and let-live persuasion.”

They were silent for a few minutes, and Elsie decided it was now or never if she ever hoped to get any information about him. “What do you know about the Mormons?” she asked bluntly.

Trip stopped what he was doing and came closer to where she was gathering twigs for the fire. “Where did that come from? Out of nowhere you ask me about the Mormons?”

Elsie giggled but had the grace to be embarrassed. She shrugged. “I don’t know. Just thought maybe you were one of them.”

He startled her with a fit of laughter. “Me? A Mormon? That’s got to be the funniest thing I’ve ever been accused of! Seriously, all I know about them is what I’ve read in the newspapers and heard from others along the trail.” He shook his head in disbelief. “How any man can do some of the stuff they’ve been accused of and then justify it in the name of religion is beyond belief.”

“So what do you believe?”

“I told you, I believe in live and let live. The same goes for my religion – worship whom or what you want, but just let me worship the Great Spirit out in nature and leave me be.”

Elsie was surprised to realize that all the time they had been talking, they had gathered a fair amount of wood for a campfire. Trip set fire to it, and soon a roaring flame warmed the now chilly night air. He brought out a pan and began roasting wild game the men had caught earlier that morning. “Ready for some supper?”