The Work and the Glory (582 page)

“Watch him,” Peter called.

Nodding, Reed moved slowly forward, poised for a charge. But the great beast had charged its last. From about ten feet away Reed raised his pistol and fired. For a moment nothing happened; then the old bull slowly sank to its knees. With one final grunt, it collapsed and rolled over onto its side. The eyes closed. The old bull was dead.

For several moments the two men stared at the beast, a sudden sadness upon them. They had won, but it had been over a formidable enemy. Then Reed turned to Peter and smiled. “I can hardly wait to get back to camp. We’ll see who the ‘sucker hunters’ are now.”

That night Peter found Kathryn a bathing spot. It was a place where some long-ago flood had scoured out a large pool near the bank. The water was almost three feet deep and quite still. Thick stands of willows and underbrush provided privacy. Unfortunately it was almost a full mile from where they were camped, and he was worried about how he would get Kathryn there and back. But when Mrs. Reed learned about what he had found, she told her husband that all of the women were going and to take them in a wagon. When word spread through the camp, they ended up with three wagons filled with women.

By the time darkness settled in—even the bravest of women would never have dreamed of bathing out-of-doors in broad daylight—there were some twenty or so women and girls frolicking in the river. Several hundred yards away the men stood beside their oxen or horses, talking quietly, smoking pipes or chewing plugs of tobacco. Peter settled on a long stem of stiff prairie grass. From time to time they would stop, looking up and smiling at each other as the sounds of girlish laughter or wild squeals floated across the stillness to them. The women had chanced into paradise and romped happily and without restraint for the limited time they would have there.

The talk among the men was mostly about the hunt. About a dozen men had gone out with the professional hunters and brought in meat from two buffalo. When Reed announced that the four of them had killed eight, including three bulls, his triumph was complete. Now the men who had come to the river wanted every detail. Peter had to tell about the killing of the bull again and again.

Finally about nine o’clock there was a call from the willows. They turned and saw a figure step out and wave. “James!” It was Margret Reed. “We’re ready.”

The men moved quickly to the wagons. When they reached the stand of willows, most of the others had come out to stand beside Mrs. Reed. In the pale light of a half moon, Peter saw that each of the ladies had changed to a different dress and each carried her wet laundry over her arm. Their hair was wet and stringy, but their faces were scrubbed and glowing. They were still giggling like a group of four-year-old girls as the wagons stopped for them.

Peter turned to his employer. “I say, Mr. Reed. Is that anyone you recognize?”

Reed squinted in the moonlight, leaning forward, then shook his head slowly. “The one face does look familiar, but the name escapes me.”

The women laughed merrily, then trooped around to the back of the wagons and climbed in. As Peter turned the oxen around and started back, Kathryn called out from the wagon. “Mr. Reed. Peter. We have an idea how you can both become very rich.”

“What is it?” Reed asked.

“Let’s stop here and build a tavern,” Margret Reed came in. “We’ll dig a large pool out back and let the river water fill it in. Then we’ll offer bathing facilities as well as a hot meal and feather beds to all the emigrant trains passing by.”

Reed chuckled. “Now, there’s an idea for you, Peter.”

“But the baths would be only for women,” Margret said.

“Yes, only women,” Tamsen Donner, George’s wife, chimed in.

“But,” Reed protested, “how could we make a profit if only women can use it?”

“Charge five dollars a bath,” Kathryn said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Five dollars a bath!” Peter cried. “Who would pay that kind of money?”

“Only every woman who ever passed by here,” Kathryn said sweetly. “That’s all.”

Chapter Notes

In June of 1846, James Frazier Reed wrote a letter to his brother-in-law James W. Keyes that was later published in a Springfield, Illinois, newspaper (see
Overland in 1846,
pp. 274–77). In that letter he described a buffalo hunt he had been on. Many of this chapter’s details—including the use of the phrase “perfect stars,” the idea of the “sucker hunters,” and the killing of one old bull—come from that letter. Other details of the nature of the buffalo and of buffalo hunts of that time are taken from other early writers. The author drew heavily upon a particularly vivid description by Frederick Ruxton, a contemporary pioneer (see Bernard DeVoto,
Across the Wide Missouri
[Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947], pp. 35–40).

Chapter 3

Melissa Steed Rogers was alone in the store, working in the back room sorting through the latest collection of bartered goods she had acquired over the last two days. She glanced at the small clock on the fireplace mantel. It was a quarter past nine o’clock. She was startled a little by the lateness of the hour. Normally she closed the store at eight, unless she had customers, but she had become so absorbed in her task that time had been forgotten.

She quickly began to gather up the china set that she had taken in trade for fifty pounds of sugar and a small slab of bacon. Carefully placing the blue-and-white plates and saucers in the box, she saw how chipped and faded they were. It had not been a good trade, at least not for her. But the woman had looked so forlorn, so desperate. The china had been her grandmother’s. It had come from Boston and been carried from Kirtland to Far West and then to Nauvoo. Now it would be left behind. Melissa simply didn’t have the heart to say no.

Her shoulders lifted and fell. How she needed Carl to advise her! How she hated facing these things alone! But Carl wasn’t waiting for her at home. Nor was he at the brickyard where she could go to him if she needed him. She bit her lip.
Stop it! Stop it this very moment!

When Joshua decided to go west and help his mother, he had offered Carl the rights to his lumber business in Wisconsin. He and Melissa could keep whatever profit they could make, he said. It was an incredibly generous offer and they needed that money desperately. They hadn’t received an order of any consequence at the brickyard for over a month. And the store was barely profitable. Melissa kept busy there, but mostly it was barter, and then only for peripheral goods like this set of china. Essentials were more scarce now in Nauvoo than the finest of luxuries had been before.

Carl had delayed going to Wisconsin because of the tensions in the city and the dread it had brought to Melissa. He hadn’t blamed her. He said that he didn’t feel he could leave with all that was going on. But there was the letter from Jean Claude Dubuque, Joshua’s foreman and partner in the logging operation. The lumber, he said, would be ready for floating downriver by the first week of June. Even with Dubuque’s urging, Carl had not left until the fourteenth, six days earlier, way past the time when he should have been up there.

A knock on the door brought her up with a jerk. Again she glanced at the clock and felt a little twinge of anxiety. Had something happened at home? She closed the box and grabbed her shawl, wrapping it around her shoulders, then hurried down the hall and into the main room of the store. The lamp was turned low there and shed little light through the windows. She could see that there were two large dark shapes at the door, but nothing more. At least it wasn’t one of the children with news of problems at home.

Feeling a little uneasy, she moved to the door, unlocked it, and opened it a crack. “Yes?”

One of the shapes moved closer, and in the faint light of the moon she saw a bearded face beneath a broad hat. “We’re looking for Carl Rogers.” The voice was gruff, and she caught a whiff of cigar smoke and whiskey.

“I’m sorry, but my husband has left town and—” With a lurch of fear, she realized her mistake. “The store is closed now. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.” She started to shut the door again but the man shoved his foot against it.

“We have business with him. When do you expect him back?”

Her heart was thumping wildly now and her mouth felt dry. “Tomorrow,” she stammered. “Maybe even tonight.”

The second man hooted.

“Really?” the first man said sarcastically, showing discolored teeth through his beard. He put his shoulder against the door and shoved it open, pushing Melissa back like a small child.

“Please. The store is closed for the evening.”

“Of course it is.” The man stepped inside, followed immediately by his companion. The second man peered out the door, then quickly shut it. He pulled the blind down.

Now Melissa felt genuine fear. One glance at them in the light told her exactly who they were. The riffraff that rode the riverboats up and down the Mississippi all had that same look to them. A year ago Brigham Young had finally dealt with the problem by creating the “whistling and whittling brigades.” But Brigham was gone now, and so were the boys who followed after the strangers, whittling on their sticks and whistling some nameless tune until the person couldn’t stand it any longer and left. Clutching at her shawl, she moved back until she bumped up against the counter. “What do you want?”

The second man was looking around, his porcine eyes dark and tiny, darting here and there, taking eager inventory. The first held out his hands in a gesture of amiability. “Now, missy,” he said with a condescending sneer, “we just want to look around.”

“My . . . I have a neighbor who is coming to escort me home. I think you’d better go.”

There was a disdainful laugh. “I don’t think so,” said the second man as he moved around behind the counter.

Melissa half turned, her head swinging back and forth to keep both men in sight. “I’ll scream,” she said, but it came out weakly.

The first man’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You don’t want to do that.”

The second man was at the register where normally she kept what little cash came in. He pulled open the drawer and swore softly. “There’s nothing here, Jeb.”

Melissa fumbled wildly in the pocket of her apron, pulling out one crumpled bill and a few coins. “This is all I have,” she said, fighting to get control of her lower lip, which had started to tremble. Jeb came to her and looked at what she held in her palm. “We don’t do much business anymore,” she said in a small voice. “And most of that is done in trade.”

He took it from her and shoved it into his trouser pocket. “You go sit in the corner there and don’t make a peep. Then we’ll be gone”—he laughed contemptuously—“and you can wait for your neighbor to come take you home.”

Afraid that her legs might not carry her that far, Melissa meekly obeyed. She moved to the corner and sank slowly into a seat that allowed her to watch them.

Jeb found a bag of potatoes and dumped them out across the floor, then moved to the shelves. The second man went into the back room, looked around for a moment, then brought back one of the empty flour sacks Melissa had folded and stacked on the sorting counter. They worked swiftly, taking only that which was of greatest value and easily carried—two cans of gunpowder, an old pistol that no longer worked but which Carl had agreed to take because it might be fixable, some small bags of lead shot, a larger bag of salt, some women’s jewelry. If they picked something up and then decided they didn’t want it, instead of putting it back on the shelf or in a box, they flung it disdainfully aside. Soon the floor was littered with what little goods the store still had.

The one called Jeb raised his finger at her in warning to stay still, then went back into the storage area. She could hear him thumping around and an occasional crash. A few moments later he came out, his sack lumpy and hanging heavily from his hand. “All right, Levi, let’s get out of here,” he growled.

Melissa felt a great surge of relief. Maybe they would simply go. Maybe they . . .

Her heart dropped as Jeb gave her a long, sensuous look, then moved slowly toward her. His partner grabbed three knives from beneath a counter and shoved them in his sack. Melissa shrank back as Jeb reached her and leaned down, shoving his face close to hers. His breath was foul and she saw flecks of tobacco in his beard. “For a storekeeper, you’re not a bad looker.”

He reached out his hand to touch her hair. She jerked away. “Please! Take what you want. Just go.”

The second man was finished now. He started toward the door. “Come on, Jeb. Let’s get out of here.”

“Maybe I ain’t finished quite yet,” he said, leering at Melissa.

“Come on,” the other snapped. “What if she does have someone comin’?”

Jeb’s free hand shot out and grabbed Melissa at the back of her neck. She pulled back, but he easily pulled her in closer. “Now, why you fightin’ me, missy? If your hubby’s gone, maybe what you need is—”

Suddenly the door flew open, crashing back against the wall with a sharp crack. “Get away from her!”

The two men jumped and whirled around. The one called Jeb let go of Melissa as if her skin had suddenly become red hot.