Virgin River (11 page)

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Authors: Richard S. Wheeler

BOOK: Virgin River
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I
t all looked mighty good to Skye. Swiftly, Hunsaker′s men hitched two stout mules to the light wagon, while the Jones brothers mounted the newly acquired saddle horses, and Sterling rode his father's Morgan. Enoch Bright preferred to walk, and teamstered the oxen.
Hiram Peacock was soon settled in the supply wagon, where Anna Bennett was ready to help him. He would breathe awhile, convulse, fall into ominous quiet, and then she would start his respiration again, with firm pressure on his chest. Skye peered in at Peacock, lying in a nest there, and felt as helpless as he had ever felt.
Skye and Hunsaker rode ahead of the rest, leading the combined train into the mountains.
“Is there a summit? A place where we'll see the desert?” Skye asked him.
“No, we'll be in valleys and canyons the whole way. It's like a plow cut a crooked furrow through the Wasatch Range.”
“Maybe that's good,” Skye said. “Peacock said he had one
last wish. He wanted to see the desert. He asked me to show him the desert. It's his Promised Land, I guess.”
“He thinks he'll die?”
“One last look is what he wanted. It's keeping him alive. The vision of the desert, where all those people might be healed. But maybe if there's no last look, he'll keep on going.”
“There's no place I know of,” Hunsaker said. “And if he's going to the Virgin River country, like I hear, he's not going to see any of it from up high. That's a long way.”
“It's what's keeping him going,” Skye said.
“How far ahead are those Pukes? I want to be ready for them if we bump into them.”
“They left at first light. They ate breakfast before dawn. Half a day?”
“If we tangle with them, too bad for them,” Hunsaker said. “If they've got forty wagons, we'll probably catch up,”
They pushed through a peaceful green notch, beside a tumbling river that plunged over boulders. Skye sensed they were climbing, though he scarcely felt it. Arid slopes vaulted upward into a dry highland. This was the rain-shadow side of these mountains, and only the valleys were grassed.
But they saw nothing of the big train ahead, and as the morning unwound, they wrestled up a steady grade, passing muddy potholes. The oxen drawing the big supply wagon were the slowest of the teams, slowing down the whole combined company.
“What's in those wagons, Mister Hunsaker?” Skye asked.
“Call me Pete. I'll call you Mister. Oh, chests of drawers, bedsteads, highboys, barrels, dressers, stuffed chairs, dining tables, wooden chairs, flour bins, coffee mill, cast-iron pots, a few books, some cotton mattresses, an empty coffin, a lot of castoff clothing and worn-out shoes, harness, saddles and
tack, ox yokes, a grist mill, some family Bibles, half a dozen plowshares, hoes, spades, pitchforks, harrows, a double-bottom riding plow, you name it, I've got it. The whole of it pitched out beside the Oregon Trail. I'd have a lot more if the pilgrims didn't chop up half of it for firewood.”
“Valuable in Great Salt Lake?”
“You have no idea. I can sell these things for ten times what they'd bring back East. But the Saints haven't much cash, so there's a lot of bartering.”
“Saints do a good business from the migrants.”
“If it weren't for the wagons passing by, the Saints would still be poor.”
“What's this trouble about?”
“Marriage. The Saints say the more wives the better, the government says cut it out or we'll come in and stop you. And that's what's happening. The blueshirts are on the way, I hear. Or will be soon. There's been some troop movements and the federals are sending a column our way.”
“And what are the Mormons doing?”
“Making a lot of noise.” Hunsaker′s grin told Skye a lot.
“Will there be a fight?”
“Some will fight, no doubt of it. If old Brigham says so, there'll be some real battles. And he's sure sounding like a bull moose pawing the ground.”
“Is my company in any danger?”
“Anyone not Mormon, I'd say, could get into trouble. But you're not Pukes. That company ahead of us, the Missouri one, now that could get itself starved in Utah.”
“They're Arkansas people, they tell me.”
“Missouri and Illinois too. That's just asking for trouble. The Saints, they don't forget. They don't forget the killing of Joseph Smith. They don't forget Independence, Nauvoo, getting
driven out, and dying all winter long from exposure. No, Mister Skye, they haven't forgotten one bit of it.”
All that morning and afternoon they ascended the eastern slope, their view cloistered by valleys and canyons. But late that afternoon they reached the summit, and began a descent. That's when Anna Bennett hurried up to Skye and Hunsaker.
“Sir, Mister Peacock begs a halt here.”
“All right,” said Hunsaker. “The stock could use a rest.”
Skye headed back to the wagon, and found Hiram Peacock gazing up at him. Pete Hunsaker joined them.
“That flat there. Take me there, Mister Skye.”
The little flat wasn't far, maybe a hundred yards, but they were steep yards. It actually was a west-facing bench, beneath a craggy red cliff.
“Sir, in your condition …”
“Take me.”
Skye knew at once it must be done; it was one of those commands that no man could thwart or he would regret it all of his days. He glanced at Hunsaker, who was experiencing the same thing.
“Very well, sir. But there is no view west anywhere near here,” Hunsaker said.
Peacock simply nodded.
Some swift commands brought a doubled-up canvas, which Hunsaker's men laid on the ground. Several of them gently lifted the merchant out of the wagon and onto the canvas. Then three on each side—Skye, Enoch Bright, Pete Hunsaker, the Jones brothers, and Sterling Peacock—lifted Hiram Peacock and struggled up the rocky slope, all of them trying their best to ease the journey for him. It seemed far more of a climb than Skye had imagined from the wagon road. But
at last they struggled over a lip of rock onto the boulder-strewn flat.
And there, to Skye's astonishment, was a sharp vee to the west, and beyond it a bright glimpse of another country, arid and dazzling, sharp blue and white and gray. The Promised Land.
It was not difficult to pull Hiram Peacock into a sitting position, with his back against a great red rock. A hush fell over them all. Somewhere, still an infinity away, but there in the Great Basin, was the Virgin River.
How had Peacock known of this overlook? Not even Hunsaker, who had been over this trail scores of times, had known of it. There were mysteries beyond fathoming.
They all stood quietly, while Hiram Peacock stared through that notch in the towering range.
Then he turned to Skye and Hunsaker.
“Thank you. I am done,” he said.
They thought to carry him away, but Hiram Peacock had closed his eyes, and Skye knew at once he was dead. So did the rest. They stared, astonished. Skye gently shook the man, but it was a superfluous gesture. The man who had led this healing expedition two thousand miles was gone.
Sterling Peacock knelt, pulled Hiram's limp hand into his own, and held it.
“Thank you, Papa. You are the Good Father. You brought us here safely. We'll soon be home. I will see to it.”
The youth could not continue, but sat beside his father, saying good-bye. Now Sterling was alone, the last of his family.
In some mysterious fashion, those who stayed below knew what had transpired up on this flat. Those who could struggle toward this benchland had come partway. Now they were clumped together at the foot of the steepest rise. Skye
saw Anna Bennett, the Bridge sisters, Ashley Tucker. Only Peter Sturgeon was not present. And somehow they all knew. Mary and Victoria had come, and had kept a little distance from the consumptives. Yes, they all knew. How could they know? But they did.
Skye lifted his ancient top hat from his head, and it was an acknowledgment of death and a mark of respect. The others beside him pulled their slouch hats from their heads also, thus joining Skye in a moment of quietness. It was over. He who had dreamed a great dream had perished.
Skye peered at that vee in the western mountains, feeling the mysterious power of that view. Hiram Peacock had seen the promise of it. Maybe he should stay here, his face turned west, for all time.
There was a way.
“Sterling, would you like to bury your father here?” Skye asked.
“But it's rock.”
“Many's the time when I was in the mountains that we buried a man where there was no soil at all, in places like this. We are at the foot of a broken cliff, with many a cleft in it. We can bury him in a cleft, facing where he wanted to go.”
Sterling looked doubtful.
“Or we can take him down a way, and bury him beside a creek where there's earth to receive him, son.”
Sterling stood, gazing at that bright notch in the mountains, and the sunny blue desert beyond. Skye knew how hard it was for the young man to make such a decision.
“Here,” Sterling said. “Facing us. Facing where we will be.”
Soon, Hunsaker′s teamsters had wrapped Hiram Peacock in canvas, tied it tight, and placed him in a great cleft in the red cliff, where he could gaze forever westward, toward
his own. And then they all filled the cleft with rock, until no animal would ever unearth Peacock's bones.
And then Skye descended to where the rest waited, partly down the slope.
“We will say good-bye now,” he said.
S
kye peered into the faces of those desperate young people, and knew their fear. He pressed the brim of his hat against his chest, somehow turning the moment into an oath of office.
“We've lost Hiram Peacock, but we'll go on. Mister Bright will see to it. My family and I'll see to it. Sterling Peacock will see to it too. We'll proceed exactly as Hiram Peacock planned, and exactly as he described his mission to his son.
“Sterling's in charge now. He's one of you. I'll take my instruction from him and from Mister Bright.”
But nothing he said allayed their fear. They were sick, helpless, and without their protector. He could read their faces and see it. He realized just how profoundly Hiram Peacock's vision of health and healing had infused them, and how much they all looked up to him. They would be doubtful of Skye, the man of the western mountains, and there was nothing he could do about it except to take them where they were going.
“Mister Peacock faces west now, where his gaze will watch over us,” he added.
“Always assuming the dead see, an unsound proposition,” Bright observed. “But I have long speculated that thought is but galvanic energy that is released from our minds into the ether, and if that proposition stands scrutiny, then Hiram Peacock's thoughts must be radiating into the universe, waiting to be recognized and plucked up.” Bright paused. “Ghosts. Night visions. Dreams. We'll listen for the man.”
The mechanic's odd cosmology seemed to be his alone, and the ill ignored it. But Skye was rather taken with it.
Hunsaker was eager to be off, and his men were standing restlessly, wanting to head to Great Salt Lake, to their homes, their wives and families.
The young convalescents drifted back to the train, pensively. Everything was different now. It was as if no one believed he would be healed now. Only Hiram Peacock's adamant and inflexible belief that the desert would heal them had banished disbelief. But now Skye saw a glumness in them. They had gone from believers to agnostics. And maybe in some, disbelief was slowly twining itself around their hearts.
They traveled uneventfully to Great Salt Lake City, which lay on a plain west of the mountains. It was laid out on the compass, orderly, sunny, and peaceful, almost Mediterranean in the summer sun. It was still more a village than a city, though. It had been erected by journeyman carpenters and millwrights and smiths and joiners and stonemasons, a city rich with skills even if its people were poor. Its very orderliness spoke of a vision they shared, a community of believers safe in this isolated and arid land so far from the rest of the States, which had ejected them. A mighty church was being built to the north.
Mary, who had never seen a white man's city, apart from
the sprawl of Fort Laramie, stared at these orderly rows of white frame houses, some with gingerbread trim, with real glass windows, shake roofs, lilac bushes and hollyhocks, and shaded porches. She lifted her cradleboard until North Star could see these strange things and perhaps glimpse something of his own heritage in this place. The few people walking the streets, women in bonnets and great skirts and bulging bodices, smiled at the whole entourage and stared curiously at Skye's women.
Hunsaker simply took his wagon company through wide clay streets to his shop, a narrow clapboard affair that sprawled back from the street front to an alley behind. There he and his teamsters paused, the oxen sagging in their yokes before the store. A painted sign said “Furniture, New and Used. Household Items. Peter Hunsaker, Prop.” This day would add scores of new items ransacked from the trail to Hunsaker′s stock of goods, all of them unusually valuable so far from any place where these things were manufactured.
There was an awkward pause. Skye knew that he and Enoch would need to detach their wagons and be on their way. The teamsters were eager to unload, care for the livestock, and go to their own homes.
“Thank you, Mister Hunsaker. You've brought us here safely,” Skye said.
“It was what a Saint must do.”
“It was what you personally did.”
“All right, say that about me. The sick, how can a man not help the sick? Now before we part company, I propose a trade. You happen to have two saddle horses, prizes taken in combat. Now I can sell good saddle horses at a handsome price here. There never are enough of them. You, on the other hand, have a great want of livestock. So my proposition is,
would you trade the saddle horses for those mules of mine, currently harnessed to the light wagon? I'm afraid I would have the better of it, offering you a pair of miserable Missouri mules for that brace of saddlers, but if you could see your way clear …”
“Done!” said Skye, before Enoch Bright could engineer an objection.
Hunsaker smiled slightly. “Come in, Mister Skye, while I draft a bill of sale. My men will collect your nags.”
Skye plunged into the cool dark interior, mostly barren of merchandise because the store could not meet the demands of the Saints for household goods. Hunsaker lit an oil lamp, dipped a nib pen into an inkwell, and scratched out the sale.
He handed it to Skye, and the pair of them clasped hands, and then Hunsaker escorted Skye to the door. Already, his teamsters were unloading the freight wagons.
“We'll go on now,” Skye said. “One question, sir: we need to replenish, and have only the Morgan horse to trade. These young people need food. What's a good horse worth, and where do we go for provisions?”
“Good Morgan horse is worth plenty. But I'm no judge of it.”
“Where do we go?”
“We're on State Street. You need to go to Fourth. Parley's Dry Goods, or Kimball's Groceries.”
Skye swore there was a halo behind Hunsaker′s head, and laughed. Their handshake was rough and strong.
Hunsaker was obviously anxious to release his men, so Skye and his party drove quietly south to Fourth, and then east to a cluster of mercantile buildings. Kimball's was a false-front white frame structure with a hitch rail in front. This was a busy place, with women ducking into one store or
another to fill their wicker baskets. Skye hardly saw a male on the street.
Skye and Bright entered, and Skye intuitively let Bright negotiate. He thought maybe a limey with two Indian wives might be at a disadvantage.
A bald man stood behind a polished counter. This was no crude frontier store, but a remarkably well-fitted building.
“We're passing through, and would like to trade, sir,” Bright said. “What would an excellent Morgan horse bring?”
“I have no use for a horse.”
“This is a fine saddler; ride him if you want. And he's well broke to harness and the plow.”
“How old?”
“Five, plenty young, and not a thing wrong with him. He's one of Justin Morgan's own stock, purchased for two hundred fifty dollars in Massachusetts.”
“Well, you won't get that here. I'll have my clerk look him over. I'm busy. Ah, what is it you want?”
“Staples: flour, sugar, coffee—”
Kimball frowned. “Ne'er coffee nor tea, ne'er spirits shall this store stock.”
“Yes, I forgot. But you have flour and lard?”
“In plentiful.” He turned to a skinny lad with a prominent Adam's apple. “Cogswell, go try that nag.”
The youth ducked through the double doors, studied Skye's women a moment, and headed straight for the chestnut horse at the rail. He picked up feet, examined the hooves for cracks, looked for fistulas on the withers, examined the teeth, lifted the tail looking for bots, and once satisfied, led the horse in a few circles looking for a limp, and then sprang up, riding the Morgan a few hundred yards before returning to the hitch rail.
The youth materialized inside. “He's a fair decent horse but I know the sort; he'll be barn sour, and a stump sucker.”
“I'm afraid your terms evade me,” Bright said.
“This one'll head for the barn if he can, it takes a stern rein to hold him, and he'll chew on any wood in a stall.”
“How do you know that? It's not true.”
The youth was grinning.
“Twenty-five for him,” Kimball said. “Taken in merchandise, no cash.”
“A tenth? A tenth of his value?”
“That's my top and final offer, gents.”
He stood behind his polished counter, smiling gravely.
“What's flour the hundredweight?” Skye asked.
Kimball eyed him. “Where are you from?”
“Long ago, London.”
“I thought so. I can tell a man's home within a dozen miles, I always say. Flour′s twelve dollars a hundredweight.”
“Then a first-rate buffalo robe?”
“I have no use for a buffalo robe. Try haggling me and I just raise my prices. Now it's fourteen a hundredweight.”
“I can offer you a good Hawken rifle, shoots true.”
“A Hawken, is it? Let me see it.”
Skye slid outside, into the mild sun and peacefulness of Great Salt Lake City, and pulled his Hawken off one of the travois.
“Your rifle?” Victoria asked.
“One of them,” Skye replied, carrying the faithful old Hawken into the store.
“You can have this rifle for a hundredweight of your best flour, ten of lard, ten of sugar, and ten of dried fruit.”
Kimball studied it, sourly. “One pound of lard, just one
pound. No sugar. It comes clear from Argentina or some place. And one pound of dried apples.”
Kimball looked ready to pitch Skye out the door.
Skye caved in. “All right,” he said.
Kimball summoned his clerk, who collected the stuff.
“Want him to carry it out?”
“We'll do that,” Skye said.
“We need rifles,” Kimball said, grinning. “Saints need firearms just now. You gave it away.”
Skye hunkered down inside of himself.
And so they left Great Salt Lake City with only a hundred pounds of flour and little more. He wanted five hundred of wheat and oats and barley, lard, tea and coffee. Skye wasn't sure how he could keep all those sick people fed or clothed, especially in the desert. For that matter, he didn't even know where he was heading. He was in country he had never seen, and among people he only vaguely understood.

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