Virgin River (22 page)

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Authors: Richard S. Wheeler

BOOK: Virgin River
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A
rising moon broke the night open just about where the trail for Cedar City parted company with the Virgin River. Skye took it for an omen. Mostly, nature mocked a man's dreams and plans, but sometimes nature whispered her wisdom to any ear willing to listen. And Skye was listening that bitter night.
Good God, his entire company had vanished. Gone were Bright and every invalid that Bright and the Skyes had brought to the very place they felt would give them the sun, the dry air, the serenity they needed for their bodies to rebuild.
He reined Jawbone to a halt and let the cutpurse catch up. “Mickey, you know these people. I don't. Where did the militia take our company?”
“A mystery, it is. These blokes aren't like Londoners; they're like'ottentots to old Mick.”
“Then we'll look for them,” Skye said to the cutpurse.
“That militia came from somewhere; that's where we'll go,” Mickey the Pick said. “Let's rattle their boudoir.”
Mickey had prowled down the Virgin and found nothing. That left Cedar City or Parowan.
Skye reined in Jawbone.
“Let's think about this,” he said. “If there's trouble with the Paiutes, and the militia really wants to keep our people from harm, that's one thing. If the militia simply wanted to rid Utah of settlers who aren't Saints, that's another thing.”
“I don't suppose the blokes would put the lungers into their'omes, mate.”
“No, they wouldn't. So our people are being guarded somewhere safe but not in town.”
“You damned blind,” Victoria snapped.
“Maybe they were sent along the California Trail. Told to get out. If that's true, they're probably all right. Enoch's a hardened trail captain by now, and Sterling can do it. They've some pine nuts and rested livestock. They could be miles west of St. George now.”
Victoria glared at him as if he were the dumbest man alive.
And it was true that nothing made sense.
“Back to the meadow and wait, I suppose,” Skye said.
It made more sense than chasing around southern Utah at night. If the consumptives were released by the militia, they would either return or send word of their whereabouts to Skye's family on the flat.
Wordlessly, they rode their weary mounts up the Virgin River once again, through a deep dark that made travel hard. Each of them was immersed in the mystery. Utah is a big place; the New Bedford Infirmary Company could be hidden anywhere, in many hundreds of square miles of mountain, desert, and canyon.
They reached the silent meadow in the small hours. An
open heaven lit the way. They paused where the canvas shelters had been erected, and absorbed the quietness.
An owl hooted softly. Another, from some great distance, responded.
“I'm not staying here!” Victoria snapped.
Skye knew what the owls meant to her. And to Mary also.
“There are bad spirits here,” he said to Mickey.
“I'll drink to that.”
“We'll go up the creek a way.”
“Them's owls, but what's'owling?”
Mickey was bravely making fun of the women. But Victoria sank deep into her saddle and steered her mare up the nameless creek, wanting no part of a place with bad spirits.
They paused at the high end of the meadow, where the red canyon walls bolted upward to the stars, and there the silence was not broken by owls.
Wordlessly, Victoria dropped to the grass, knelt beside the purling creek, and washed her face carefully. No one said anything. Skye unsaddled and picketed the horses. Then they rolled into their blankets on the hard ground. Skye didn't sleep, and he knew none of the others were sleeping either. They were all waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen.
But all that happened was a pale creamy coloration of the sky as dawn approached all too soon. None of them slept, and not because they were worried about the Paiutes. They did not sleep because of things unfathomed, things so deep and dark that they kept sleep at bay.
Victoria arose angry, and stalked about, glaring at this beautiful canyon head as if it were hell. Mary quietly looked after North Star, and would not look Skye in the eye. This was a delightful place. The sun threw golden light on the red
bluffs high above, making the whole world peach-colored. The horses grazed bunch grass peacefully.
But there was no sign of the missing company.
The women prepared two travois ponies and headed up the creek, and Skye knew they were retrieving the lodge and family possessions.
Skye and Mickey the Pick drifted across the meadow to the Virgin River. There was no sign of Indians; only the trace of iron tires rolling downstream, and the prints of a lot of shod horses. There was no sign of traffic going upstream, into the maze of red canyons where the Virgin rose. The grass around the campsite was crushed. The Saint militia had been a large force, more than needed to collect a few hapless sick people and carry them to safety.
The women returned with the lodge and gear, and silently erected the lodge exactly in the place where the hospital camp had once risen. Then they took two ponies and hiked up the creek and vanished in the canyon country. Skye knew they would return with piñon pinecones, food that would sustain them all for as long as they chose to wait for the New Bedford Infirmary Company to return. Skye knew he must hunt, but not just yet.
He waited quietly in the shade of a live oak for the missing to return and tell him where they had been taken, and why.
Mickey dropped down beside Skye.
“How long are we going to stay'ere?”
“I don't know, Mickey.”
“You think they're off to California?”
“I'd like to think it.”
“You done guiding them?”
“I don't know.”
“You think Enoch Bright, he'd slip a note to us? Send a messenger?”
“Yes, if he could, he would. That's what's troubling me. There was no note left here. No signal. Nothing I'd recognize. The militia didn't let him leave a note behind for us.”
“How'd your old lady know it was militia?”
“A lot of armed white men on horses came in the night. Men dressed the way Saints dress, lot of beards, plain clothing. Farmers, getting a living from the earth and the rivers.”
“She told you that?”
“Victoria knows white men better than I do.”
“Ain't she some smart.”
The day stretched slowly, and then the women returned laden with pinecones. There would be roasted pine nuts this evening. It took a while to roast the cones and extract the nuts, and the whole day's gathering scarcely allayed their hunger.
Victoria wouldn't look at Skye or Mickey, but toiled angrily at her task, but Mary's gaze fell upon them both. Mary's gaze was troubled, as if she didn't like the sight of white men and yearned only for her own bronzed neighbors and tribe and friends.
Neither woman said a word.
Skye looked across the meadow toward the Virgin River once again, just as he had a thousand times that slow day, and saw nothing. He watched a hawk circle undisturbed, and knew nothing lurked just beyond his field of vision. Time had slowed. The sun had tracked west, and now the eastern walls of the canyon were lit. This was a paradise inhabited only by owls.
He knew Victoria and Mary would have a bad time this night if the owls returned, but he wanted to stay through the night. Tomorrow they would leave.
When the western walls of the canyon blocked the sun, Skye saddled Jawbone, checked his Sharps, and nodded to Victoria, who averted her gaze. She knew he was hunting. He wanted to go by himself.
“Mickey, keep an eye on the Virgin River,” he said. “I'll be back at dusk.”
“Put me in a madhouse, that's where I belong,” Mickey said.
Jawbone took him up the creek, and then he topped a steep grade and found himself on the cedar-dotted mesa. He paused, out of ancient habit, absorbing the land. He studied the maze of canyons, looking for a telltale column of raptors, and then felt ashamed of himself. Why would he do that? There was only transparent sky and twilight. He dropped into a hidden valley, discovered a green streak through it, and soon spotted deer pellets. A spike mule deer buck bolted. Skye whipped his Sharps up, but the deer vanished. The chance was lost. He sat Jawbone quietly. One running deer often triggered others. But he saw nothing.
He retreated at dusk, knowing he could get lost if he tarried, and made his way back to camp empty-handed. One cross glance from Victoria told him all he needed to know.
He unsaddled Jawbone and turned him loose. The horse sawed his head up and down, bared yellow teeth, bit Skye on the arm, and snapped up bunch grass.
“Avast,” Skye growled.
“I'm leaving in the morning,” she said. “You stay if you want. Dammit, Skye. This place got bad spirits.”
“We'll go,” he said.
W
hen dawn broke, they quit camp and left. Victoria had stayed up all night, a nocked arrow in her bow. Mickey, it turned out, had taken his bedroll down to the Virgin River, ready to intercept any of the hospital company stumbling along in the dark.
Skye marveled at Mickey. The Londoner had quit his farm to join the hospital company, comforting the sick and making himself useful to them as if that were the thing he had always wanted to do. Who could explain it? Mickey showed his colors by scouting every hill and gully for miles around, looking for the missing infirmary company. He was taking it harder than anyone else, perhaps because he suspected that something terrible had happened.
Skye wondered about that too, but couldn't imagine any fate worse than a sudden expulsion of the invalids from the Saints' Zion. The New Bedford Infirmary Company was now perhaps forty miles west and heading for the California desert, having been ejected from Zion. But here were Victoria,
grim and flinty and angry and filled with foreboding, and Mickey, prowling every direction in search of the lost.
But not a word was spoken that dawn; whatever subterranean currents of feeling Victoria and Mickey were feeling remained deeply buried in the quiet of the morning. They loaded the lodgepoles and the lodge cover, saddled the ponies, studied the forlorn, lovely canyon one last time, and headed downstream on the Virgin River.
How do you search for people who have vanished at the hands of a local militia? Skye knew only one way, which was to make inquiries. He would inquire of everyone, everywhere, until he found the lost and could help them settle.
For much of that quiet morning, no one spoke. Victoria rode grimly, keeping a sharp eye on the travois ponies, and kept entirely to herself. Mickey, who was swiftly becoming an accomplished horseman riding that Morgan horse, rode alone, often probing side canyons. Mary, the most serene of them, tended North Star and made not the slightest comment. Skye pushed ahead at times, wanting to know what lay around the next curve of the trail. It was as if the loss of the sick had stopped all their communion with one another.
Late in the morning they reached the great valley that formed the artery of Utah. And here they encountered traffic at once, bearded men hurrying past, their gazes dour and dismissive. No one cared about a few Indians or someone in buckskins.
Even as they stood, resting, beside the trail leading north to Cedar City, or south to St. George, four riders raced by, most of them holding their horses to a steady jog. They did not even nod in Skye's direction, and kept their gazes glued to the trail ahead. It seemed odd.
Skye watched a southbound rider draw nigh and waylaid him, stepping Jawbone out on the trail.
“Hello, friend,” Skye said.
A young man of wild eye drew up impatiently. The man's horse was lathered and weary. The man surveyed Skye and nodded curtly.
“We're looking for news,” Skye said. “Something about a scare? Are the Paiutes causing trouble?”
“Sir, I don't know a thing,” the man said. “I must pass.”
“Well, which way is safest?” Skye asked.
“There is no trouble. None at all,” the man said, touching heels to the flank of the gaunt old plug he was riding. He began to work around Skye.
“We've heard otherwise,” Skye said.
“Sorry,” the man replied, and hastened away.
He was plainly agitated.
“I told you so,” said Victoria, somewhat mysteriously.
Skye turned to her. “Told me what?”
“He was a man with bad memories.”
“Such as?”
Victoria shrugged. “Let's get the hell out of here.”
“Who was that?” Mickey asked.
“Some Saint in a big hurry,” Skye said.
A farm wagon was working its way north, drawn by a pair of mules. Skye dismounted and waited. The driver seemed in no hurry. Like most male Saints, he wore a trimmed beard. His wagon groaned under a load of green melons and yellow squash. And contrary to the others, he reined in the mules.
“Nice morning,” the man said.
“It is. You must be taking these to market.”
“Cedar City, yes. It's the only place I can sell these.”
“We're looking for some people. There was an Indian scare and our people were rounded up and taken to safety.”
“Indian scare?” The man peered from watery eyes at Victoria and Mary. “None around here. West, some, they was actin' a little frisky.”
“I'm Mister Skye, sir. We're looking for a company of invalids.”
“Oh, I heard tell of them. Lungers. They got the devil in'em. Bible itself says them that's sick is full of sin. I reckon they'll get freed up of sin, or not.”
“Have you heard where they were taken?”
The seamed old man chewed a straw, and finally gazed steadily into Skye's face. “If I knew, I wouldn't say. But I don't. Reckon they'll get what's coming to them if they're sinners. That's how the Good Lord works. Me, I've never been sick a day in my life, excepting some piles. It's rectitude. And if I didn't eat a mite fast, I'd not have piles, either. You've got to chew your food slow, just as God intended. But I never quite mastered it. I got the sin of fast eating.”
“Where would your militia take our people?”
“Now you've fetched me one I can't answer. I reckon I'd better get along to Cedar City.”
“Would you trade those squash for anything?”
“The prophet says, says he, not a bit of food to Gentiles, long as there's war a-coming.”
“I'm a Saint,” said Mickey.
“Some Saint you are, trafficking with these,” the farmer said.
The man cracked reins over rumps, raising dust. The mules lowered their heads, pushed into the collars, and fell into step.
“Can you help us at all? Even a rumor?” Skye asked.
“Well, they got to be somewhere.”
The mules picked up speed, and the creaking wagon rumbled north. Skye watched the wagon until it grew too small to follow and finally vanished. The farmer wasn't armed. And he was traveling alone, not in company. And he seemed utterly oblivious to real or imagined dangers.
A faint pall of yellow dust hung in the air, until it slowly drifted away. There was only the oppressive silence of the desert and the building midday heat.
It came to him that he didn't have the faintest idea what to do next.
“You got any ideas?” he said to Mickey the Pick.
“There's not going to be some'ospital, it looks like.”
Skye turned to Victoria.
“We got a few pine nuts, that's all,” she said.
He offered Mary a chance.
“Go home,” she said.
It was a good idea. “We're done. We delivered the company to the Virgin River. We fed them while they got set up. Sterling's joined these people here, so he can bargain. I'd have liked to say good-bye, but there's no one to say it to.” He gazed at them. “Have we left anything undone?”
No one said a word.
It felt odd, not knowing the fate of the company, or saying good-bye, or making sure the contract was completed. But there was only the empty valley, the glaring sun, and the silence.
He started Jawbone north along the well-worn road to Cedar City, and the rest fell in behind him. They struck Ash Creek and followed alongside it, glad to have water and grass for a while. But nothing felt right. This was unfinished business.
He wanted a conclusion. He wanted a handshake, a sense that all would be well. But he found none of that this time.
They reached Cedar City at dusk, worn-out and starving. They had nothing. The last of the pine nuts were gone. There was no pemmican or jerked meat. The stores were shuttered. The clay streets were empty. It was as if the town was asleep, though in fact it was not late. Skye had the distinct feeling that something was terribly wrong, but it was entirely intuitive. Still, it was odd that not one soul was visible on the streets, or sitting on a front porch enjoying an evening, or stirring within a house.
They drifted on through, awakening no curiosity, and finally reached the north end of town. Now it was dark. In minutes it would be utterly black.
“You blokes go up there a mile, maybe, and wait for me,” Mickey said.
“What are you up to?”
“No blawdy questions.”
Skye thought he knew. Maybe it would be best not to ask. He and his weary family trudged a way up the road, found a likely spot beside a creek that watered the little brick-making town, and let the horses graze on picket lines.
One of the ponies would do for a few days, he thought. He would slit its throat and butcher it. He'd had horsemeat plenty of times. Mule meat, burro meat, donkey meat, draft horse meat, foal meat, cow meat. These ponies had been used hard and wouldn't butcher well, and their meat would be stringy. But meat was meat.
Victoria, reading his mind as usual, pointed to the smaller one. “He's no good anymore,” she said.
Skye studied the pony, grazing peacefully under the starry heavens.
“Ah, there you are,” said the cutpurse. “Ye can't'ide from me.”
He deposited a burlap sack of something or other before them.
“They got good gardens in that town,” he said. “Old Mickey remembered that it's harvesttime.”

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