Virgin River (19 page)

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Authors: Richard S. Wheeler

BOOK: Virgin River
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T
hey set off on a cold clear morning. The desert had swallowed the rain and there was no sign of it, not a puddle or a dampened rock.
For a long moment, Enoch Bright looked at the forlorn supply wagon, which sat empty. For hundreds of miles he had maintained it, using his mechanic's skills to keep the axles and wheel hubs in perfect shape, keeping harness mended, the wagon sheet waterproof and trim, and the tires tight on the felloes. But now it stood mutely, its ribs poking the blue sky. The sheet had been removed and would go west.
Skye knew Bright was grieving. Never had a wagon gone so far and received such care. But it was no longer essential. The depleted stores fit into Mickey the Pick's burro-drawn cart. The ambulatory invalids would walk, or take turns resting on the tailgate of the hospital wagon. The sicker ones would ride the Skyes' horses, and Skye, Mary, and Victoria would walk, leading their animals. It was not necessary for the Skyes to abandon their lodge or lodgepoles.
But now it was a tiny company that started toward the
Virgin River; a wagon, a burro cart, and Skye's family and ponies.
The country here was grand, a canyon land of red rock, white rock, cedars, and sky.
On Jawbone, Anna Bennett sat sidesaddle. Eliza and Mary Bridge sat the ponies of Skye's wives. And Sterling Peacock, Lloyd and David Jones, and Grant Tucker were rotating a seat on the Morgan. Peter Sturgeon and Ashley Tucker continued in the hospital wagon. When any of the male invalids got too tired, they would rest on the tailgate.
It was perfect traveling weather, mild and sunny. Skye thought they might make the last lap in good order, and the problem now was finding a place to settle, getting shelters up before winter, and securing food. That latter was what troubled Skye the most. There were many mouths to feed and once again only a few days' food left. He wondered whether Mickey's cart and the little burros might be traded for food from the Saints. But even that was stopgap. He needed food and plenty of it.
Deserts can be the quietest places on earth. Now they were hiking through a deep silence, hearing nothing, not even the fall of their own feet and hooves. The silence was odd to Skye, who was so closely attuned to the endless songs of the mountains and rivers and plains that this desert hush made him uneasy.
There was no traffic on this trail, not even the hurried couriers of the Saints, busily marshaling the faithful to resist the Yankee bluecoats invading them. By now Skye's party was beyond the Mormon settlements and wending its way through desert wilderness.
“Too damn quiet,” said Victoria.
They plunged into a canyon that worried Skye, but the
two-rut trail went relentlessly forward. They were following Ash Creek, which Skye believed to be a tributary of the Virgin River. They forded the creek again and again, continuing all that day in a land of vaulting yellow and red rock beauty. When last-light caught them, they camped on a choice flat above the creek, a place that lifted hearts. There was ample firewood so they made a merry camp, the wood smoke caught in layers above them.
The next day they reached the creek's confluence with what appeared to be the Virgin River.
“This is probably the Virgin,” Skye said, drawing from the lore he had absorbed over a lifetime in the mountains.
The invalids who could walk stumbled down to its banks. The water tumbled west.
They were oddly quiet. They had come across a continent to this place. Whatever they had imagined, this little river wasn't it.
“We came all the way for this?” Lloyd Jones asked.
The silent cliffs offered him no comfort at all.
“It's the air, not the place. We came here for the air and the warmth,” Enoch said. “We came here so you could rest, and that's what you'll be doing soon.”
“But there's nothing …”
The little river purled by, oblivious of the dreams and disappointments of these ill people, who had somehow imagined a magical place, a place of gold and silver and pearl and ivory and rainbows.
“There's a settlement downstream,” Mickey said. “A few nasties there,” he added.
“What do you propose, Mickey?” Skye asked.
“Go upstream, blokes. Find a good flat, get settled, and lay low. Stay outa sight.”
“Mister Bright?”
“We're going to need all the help we can get from settlers,” he said.
Sterling, who had somehow assumed his father′s authority, decided the matter: “We'll go upstream and find a good place to settle. I'm a Saint now; I'll go downstream later and look for help. They will welcome me.”
Skye had no better idea.
They turned east, slowly working up the Virgin River as it wended its way out of the red canyons. They followed a faint bankside trail ever east and north, sometimes across boxed valleys, sometimes confined in startling narrows cut by the river. And they never met a soul.
Then, as evening approached, they entered a broad valley bisected by the Virgin River, a country so sweet that Skye marveled. Here was sparkling water, grassy flats dotted with live oak trees, and all this guarded by red rock cliffs covered with cedar and pine. A tributary creek tumbled out of the north.
The air was pure, dry, easy on the lungs, and scented with the aromatic plants of the desert. A great healing peace pervaded the intimate flat, as if this were set aside as an Eden.
Enoch Bright joined Skye and his wives as they paused at the confluence of the creek.
“I know just as surely as I'm standing here, Mister Skye, that Hiram Peacock envisioned this very place.”
“I think he did too. Here's the air that heals, water, firewood, shelter from wind and storm, and fields that can be cultivated and maybe irrigated. I think you're home.”
The others pulled up and stared at this enclosed and warm valley.
“Now, take a good look. This is your place of healing,”
Bright said. “This is what Hiram Peacock dreamed of, and right here's why we've come across a whole continent.”
“But where are the people?” Eliza asked.
“There's no one close by. That's part of it. It's a place to rest, lie abed, and let the sun and the air do their work.”
“But I would like some neighbors, Mister Bright.”
“I'm sure we'll find some,” Bright said.
Lloyd Jones didn't like it. “We came two thousand miles for this?” He waved a hand at the meadow, the brooding red rock. “This is nothing. This is one more empty place in a west full of them. This is supposed to heal us?”
Mary Bridge didn't care for it either. “Are you sure, Sterling, this is what Mister Peacock had in mind? This?”
“Yes, this,” said Sterling. “It's the air. The mild climate.”
“But, Sterling … one can't find neighbors, oh, I don't know how to say it. There's nothing here. Are we to stare at this red rock for months on end? It will drive me mad. Did I come all this way to starve and die on a lonely meadow?”
Skye had a question. “Sterling, why the Virgin River?”
“It came to him, that's all, Mister Skye. It just came to him as he studied the maps.”
“Had anyone been healed here?”
“No, sir, not to my knowledge.”
“So Hiram Peacock's trip was to be an act of faith.”
“Yes, sir. He believed. I do too.”
Skye studied this vacant land, wondering why the Saints had not settled it, why not a soul was to be seen in a place that might be called paradise.
“Should we go on?” he asked.
“We could look for better,” Bright said. “Maybe there's better. But we're heading into the cold season, and I'd hate to lose a minute.”
Skye turned to Mickey the Pick. “We'll need supplies. How close is a settlement?”
“There's a few Saints around, you can count on it.”
“Where can we go for supplies?”
“Beats me, matey.”
“Mister Bright, what did Hiram Peacock plan to do? After he had selected a place for his infirmary?”
Bright could not answer. No one else offered an answer. Sterling Peacock didn't know. It was as if Peacock had set out for some Shangri-la, and once he found it, everything would take care of itself. And yet that was not Peacock's way. He was a sound man, with sound plans. But those plans had apparently died with him.
Skye eyed the company uneasily. They were scores of miles from a settlement. The infirmary would need to be entirely self-supporting and he doubted that it could be done with so few able to work.
“Enoch, we need a town nearby,” he said. “Either that or enough credit to buy food and haul it here. Maybe we should keep on going until we're close to a settlement and able to buy or trade for what we need.”
Sterling Peacock sat the Morgan, and volunteered nothing.
Skye felt the weight of decision falling upon him.
“All right. This is a good place to camp while we make some decisions. Good grass. There's firewood, fresh, cold water. We can make tents. We need a rest. We haven't paused for weeks. The sickest need do nothing at all, just blot up this sun and this good dry air and gather strength. We'll stop here, but maybe this won't be the last stop. Maybe there's a final resting place ahead.
“My wives and I need to do two things. We'll hunt, and I'm going to ride downriver to see about a settlement or a farm.”
Skye lifted Eliza Bright down off Jawbone and helped the other invalids reach ground. They gazed upon sun-cured grasses waving in a soft breeze under an azure sky, with iron-red cliffs rising in most directions, occasionally stratified with white rock. A copse of waxy-leaved trees Skye couldn't identify offered ample wood for the moment.
He watched them drift through the bunch grass while Bright unharnessed the mules and set them to grazing. The Massachusetts mechanic had become a first-rate camp-tender and would make a good camp here.
There was something about this place that sung to him. This was a paradise and a sanctuary, what the Saints called Zion, and somehow it filled Skye with a sweetness he barely understood. He lifted his old top hat and let the dry air filter through his hair, feeling the need for a bath, for this clean and virgin place required a cleaned and freshened body. He wondered whether the others had the same strange stirrings, and thought they did.
Bright stood rapt, slouch hat in hand, his gaze shifting from grassy fields to stratified red rock to the laughing creek. The sick who couldn't walk simply sat, their gazes on the horizons. It was as if they were all in church, hat in hand, waiting to sing a Te Deum. This might be their home. Even Victoria and Mary were in no hurry to raise the lodge and make camp. Mary was unloosing North Star from his cradleboard to let the wiggling infant rejoice in the soft dry air and the setting sun.
T
he next morning Skye rode downriver looking for a settlement. Not far below the place where his company had struck the Virgin, he found a rawboned farm. A diversion dam irrigated some stubble fields. A ramshackle adobe shack and some corrals were all that these people had managed to build. But that was natural: the crops were the main thing. Three rawboned men and a woman in a shapeless dress watched him come.
Skye approached warily. The three men had fanned out. The woman had disappeared into the rawboned adobe and wood structure that served for a house. These men were hardworking farmers, their weathered faces seamed, their hands gnarled, their bodies half crippled from toil.
Skye removed his top hat.
“I'm Mister Skye,” he said.
“We know,” said the oldest of them.
“I'm looking for some advice.”
“We know all about you. Keep on moving.”
“Who are you, sir?”
“I'm Elder Lee.” He did not introduce the others.
“You've put a lot of work into this place, and I can see it's bearing fruit.”
“The word is, you are not a Saint and you have come to spread sickness among us. You're the rider of the Pale Horse, and that rider is Death.”
Skye scarcely knew how to respond to that. “Sickness, I suppose. We have some young people, men and women who have consumption. They're looking to be healed in the desert. They've come a long way, and some have died along the way, to come here. Like you, they're seeking their Zion.”
“We were warned you'd make soft talk. No, sir, be on your way.”
Skye took a gamble. “They'll be your neighbors, Mister Lee.”
“Neighbors! You'll not pause here, not now, not ever.”
Skye chose his words carefully. “They've claimed unsettled land up the river for their infirmary. They'll be building it this fall. The sick can go no farther. This is a beautiful land.”
“Where?”
“Six or seven miles up.”
“That's reserved land. You can't stay there.”
“It's not been claimed, I believe.”
“It's reserved for Saints.”
“Has anyone title? Has it been surveyed?”
“The church preempts it.”
“Has it been filed on? Registered with the government?”
“That matters not.”
“If it's not owned, we will settle. These people are American citizens just like yourself, and entitled to settle there. We were hoping to trade you for food. I see you've brought in a grain crop. And your corn patch is ready. We have some
horses that might prove useful. A fine Morgan mare, some ponies, a cart we might trade.”
The men glanced at each other and lowered their weapons until the black bores aimed casually toward Skye and Jawbone.
“We'll not hear another word. Go or face the consequences.”
“Are there other settlers nearby?”
“Pass through, do not stop.”
Lee's unblinking stare, followed by a slight twitch of his fowling piece, a tiny gesture telling Skye to leave at once, was ample warning.
“Don't do anything you'll regret,” he said. “Not to me. Not to these sick young people.”
Lee smiled slowly. “I wouldn't regret a thing,” he said, the smile widening into a leer.
Skye settled his hat. “Good day,” he said, and rode off, his back itching knowing the bores of two rifles and a scattergun were following him. At the trail he hesitated, thought about heading downriver a way to look for more settlers, and finally turned back to his company upriver.
It wasn't an auspicious beginning. There was war in the air, suspicion of outsiders, fear, madness, maybe hallucination, and obviously very good communications among the Mormons. This isolated family had been well informed about who was on the road. All those couriers who cantered by in the night served the Saints' purposes.
Skye turned to look behind him. The three stood like statues, watching his every move, distrustful to the last. He steered Jawbone upriver through an achingly beautiful afternoon, desolated by all this. It was going to be very hard to feed his company until crops came in.
He reached the serene meadow late in the day and found
that Bright had moved them up the creek, well back from the Virgin River. The ponies and mules and burros were grazing greedily. Skye's lodge rose near a grove of live oak. Acorns littered the earth. A nearby slope was dotted with piñon pine and juniper, all offering abundant firewood.
He found Bright.
“There's a farm a few miles west, but they're as hostile as the rest. Their view is biblical. We are the Apocalypse descending on their people. I confess, I don't know how to deal with that.”
“Let them be! We're here! We feel as if we've come home. Something's stirring us. It's as if this is what they've waited for, struggled for.”
“We'll stay, then. But I should warn you, this is reserved land, or that's what I was told. The Church's holding it for more of the Saints as they come.”
“But it's not patented land! It's free for the taking. Preempt it and when the surveying is done and it can be legally described, then file on it.”
Skye pondered it. “You know that the Mormons may fight you for it, even if they don't claim it.”
“When they see our infirmary, Mister Skye, they'll have a change of heart.”
Skye looked at this meadow, nestling so serenely in the red rock, and knew it was as good a place as any. The air was soft and dry. Maybe things would work out. Courage and quietness and industry might yet win the day.
“All right, Enoch. I'm going to start hunting while you start building and preparing your fields. Maybe you could plant some winter wheat. Food's the thing. We've got to lay in food or starve.”
Maybe he could make meat. It had been a while since
anyone in the company had tasted meat. He climbed up on Jawbone, who was snapping at horseflies, nodded to Victoria and Mary, and rode slowly up the creek, looking for deer scat. This ought to be mule deer country. He rode quietly, his senses aware of the wildlife around him. But one thing he did not see was evidence of any deer. He thought he would find something: this was the afternoon feeding hour, the drinking hour, the time when deer were moving from place to place. And yet he met only silence. A faint game trail took him slowly uphill, where the tributary tumbled over rapids. He continued slowly, carefully, studying surrounding hills and ridges and red rock cliffs, and saw nothing. He let Jawbone work his way up a steep slope, and then they reached a high plateau that the creek drained. Still no wildlife. But here, at least, in the fading light, he found some evidence of bedding. Deer had rested here, hollowing the grass.
There had to be game. This was fairly good game country, grass and water and shelter and brush. And yet he found none. Had the deer been shot away by settlers? Had the newly armed Paiutes killed off the deer? He couldn't say. But this was not the Great Plains, teeming with animals. He would not find great bears, many elk, or many deer or antelope. He doubted that he would see a buffalo.
At twilight, he knew he had done what he could this time. He turned Jawbone back to camp, filled with a deepening desperation.
He could not feed this group by supplying meat. He and his family could not even stay; they would need to head for the Great Plains soon, make meat and tan buffalo robes, which was their only real source of income when guiding didn't pay. He felt bad because he knew he would have to tell them what their chances were.
Tomorrow he might make meat. But what of the next day, and the day after that? December, January, February? How did one keep a large company alive until the crops came in next summer—if they came in at all? How could he supply them with a deer a day for two hundred days?
Heavy-hearted, he and Jawbone slowly worked down the creek to the soft-lit meadow where the camp rested comfortably in the gloaming.
They had eaten oatmeal. Skye released Jawbone from the saddle and hackamore, and turned his young medicine horse loose to graze. Jawbone trotted off to the creek to stick his ugly snout in the cool water.
Victoria and Mary appraised him and his empty saddle, and knew he had failed. Wordlessly he spooned some oat gruel, the only food that this company had left, into a wooden bowl and ate it. They were all staring at him, expecting this highly touted and famous guide to bring them abundant meat.
“Enoch, we should have a word,” he said, inviting the leader of this group to his family's fire.
“We're in more of a dilemma than you may know,” he said. “There's deer, but the population is thin. We can't count on my hunting to keep all of us fed until crops come in. It comes down to this. We need to find people who can sell or trade for food. There's no escaping it. These people have food stored in their granaries, but it's not for us to have. If we stay here, we'll swiftly starve. We're on the brink of it right now.”
“Move, then, sir?”
“Not right away. One swift hunt doesn't prove anything. But over the next days if I make no meat, then we're going to need to move along until we find some people who can help us.”
“I'm no diplomat,” Bright said.
“I'm not either. I'd rather wrestle a grizzly bear than try to bargain with these people.”
“What do we do?” Bright asked.
“Sterling's a Saint, more or less. They won't listen to me; they might listen to him. I think it's going to be up to him to bargain for food. He has the Morgan horse. We can give him a spare horse to trade for grain. I don't have any other idea.”
Bright sighed. “It's the sick I'm feeling for,” he said. “They made it clear across a continent, hoping to heal, not starve to death.”

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