True Sisters (18 page)

“What?” Louisa asked.

“A lemon pudding. I would have one for dinner. What would you have?”

Louisa looked at her father curiously, as if his mind had gone soft. Where in the world did he think they would find lemons and cream and sugar? And then she realized he had begun a game. “An apple tart with cream poured over it. And I would dearly like a roast goose, a roast goose stuffed with sauerkraut.”

“What’s this about a roast goose?” Margaret asked.

“We are planning a feast for when we reach Zion,” Louisa explained. “What would you most like to eat?”

“Strawberries. I would walk a hundred miles more for a strawberry. And fresh buns, saffron buns.”

Huldah joined the game. “A fish. I should like a fresh fish, fried in butter, served up with potatoes and peas.”

“A jelly. I’d give my penknife for a jelly,” her son Jimmy added, while the elder son, Dick, supposed he could eat an entire cream cake. “I’ll give you half, Jimmy,” Dick said, for the two were close fellows and always shared.

“And you, Thales?” Louisa asked, since he had not joined the game. “What would you have to eat when we reach the valley?”

Her husband turned to her with a frown. “It is a silly game. Milk and bread made with wheat flour from a Mormon mill are good enough for me. If you believe you will find roast goose and cream cakes waiting for you, you will be greatly disappointed.”

“It is only a game, Thales, something to pass the time.”

“Then it is a foolish game.”

“I do not recall that you turned down such food in England,” Louisa said, almost in defiance. In fact, she remembered, her husband had timed his proselytizing and courting visits so that he would arrive as the family sat down to dinner. Louisa had joked that Thales had married her as much for her mother’s cooking as for her own piety.

“It does no good to talk about such things,” Thales said, his voice only a little softer now. “You knew when you agreed to come here that you would put those luxuries behind you. It is little enough sacrifice for the Lord.”

Louisa, rebuked, replied, “You are right, of course. We will give over jostling.” The others, disappointed that Thales had spoiled their fun, grew silent, except for Jimmy and Dick, who walked with their grandfather now as they told each other about the cakes and tarts they would eat when they reached Zion, and bragged each would consume more than the other.

Louisa, her head bowed in meekness, went to join her husband at the crossbar.

“You must understand that the valley is a harsh place. We did not become Mormons for an easy time,” Thales told her.

“I understand.”

“Our reward will come in the next life.”

“I told you I understand. There is no need to instruct me further in the perfecting of my character.”

Thales reached over and patted her hand. “You will be a good wife.”

She had much to learn to please her husband, so Louisa was satisfied at the rare words of approval. There was no further talk of food until they reached camp and the women took out their bacon, rancid now, and meager ration of flour and prepared a dinner that all of them hoped would not be their usual fare in the valley.

After consuming his portion, Hall said it had given him strength to attend the meeting that evening. So when the meal was done, the family joined the others to praise the Lord and to sing the songs of Zion, which brought them joy after the difficult days. Louisa heard the sound of a fiddle, and she watched as people swayed to the music, thinking that before they knew it, they would be at Fort Laramie and would partake of the food that awaited them there. After all, she thought, we are God’s chosen people, so we should not doubt that supplies have been stored in Fort Laramie for us. Thales had told her that Brigham Young would be displeased with the complaining. Their lot had been easy, he said. After all, they had not suffered the torments of those who had been driven out of Nauvoo, but had only been inconvenienced a little by their scanty rations.

Then Thales stood up before the gathering and bore his testimony, saying he knew the Latter-day Church was the true church, that Joseph Smith himself had told him so. The crowd murmured their approval; Thales was always an inspiring speaker. And then he said that anyone who doubted had only to look at the many miracles the Saints had experienced on their journey. Why just that day, he had thought his father-in-law, Hall Chetwin, would not make it into camp, so weak was he. Louisa listened with concern, for surely Thales would not question her father’s faith now. But Thales smiled a little at her when he said he had asked the Lord to give the old man strength, and there he was, fit and healthy, sitting among them at the meeting. “Now the prospect is fair that his faith will allow him to reach Zion.” At that, the Saints praised the Lord, and Hall bowed his head in prayer—or perhaps it was in embarrassment at being singled out before the brethren. When Louisa took his arm and peered into his face, she saw a look of rapture and blessed Thales for bringing that joy to her father.

As Hall left the meeting, several of the Mormons patted him on the back or smiled their approval. But Hall, humbled, kept his eyes on the ground.

“You have restored his dignity,” Louisa told her husband as the two walked a little apart from the rest of the family.

“I believe he has overcome his weakness. God favors him now. If he can reach Fort Laramie, he will reach Zion.”

The family went to the tent and lay down, all of them falling asleep from exhaustion. Louisa awoke just at daylight, to see her mother leave the tent. When the old woman did not return, Louisa rose and went outside, straining her eyes in the dawning light. She did not see Margaret at first, but then she spied her near the Tanner cart, sitting beside the cold gray ashes of the campfire. “You have given over knitting, Mother. You must be very tired. I will see to the fire, and Huldah and I will make breakfast,” Louisa said. “Go back into the tent with Father.”

Margaret appeared not to hear her.

“Mother, are you ill?”

Margaret sighed and shook her head.

“What is it, then? Is Father poorly?”

The old woman did not answer at first, and then she turned to her daughter. “He slipped from me just after you went to sleep. I have lain beside him the night long.”

“Oh, Mother,” Louisa said, taking the woman into her arms.

“I was so sure he would reach Zion. He wanted to go there more than anything in this world. To want to and can’t is hell.”

“Not hell, Mother, for he is in heaven with the Lord. He went up to Zion in peace. We will pray for the peace of him who’s gone.” The two women rocked back and forth until the camp began to stir, and Louisa’s sister emerged from the tent.

“If only…” Huldah said after Louisa told her their father had died. Louisa knew what she meant; it was not necessary for her sister to finish.

The next day, on October 8, Louisa and her family and the rest of the handcarts reached Fort Laramie.

Chapter 5

October 8, 1856

The Martin Company had camped a mile east of Fort Laramie, and in the morning, Jessie walked into the military post with the other Saints. Having seen the stone castles of England, she wasn’t much impressed with the ramshackle outpost. There was a motley collection of structures—a large house for the officers, two long adobe barracks, log cabins and stables, and a few other buildings. Nonetheless, she was glad to be there, because she had not entered a building since leaving Iowa City, and the coolness of the structures was a relief from the prairie heat.

Jessie quickly found the sensation of standing under a roof confining, however. The air was close, and she missed the openness of the prairie, even with its deadening heat. It had been a good time coming across the prairie, seeing the vastness of America, discovering herbs and plants and trees. But she gave little thought to all that now as she passed a group of noisy Indians lounging on the ground and inquired the whereabouts of the post surgeon. A soldier directed her across the parade ground to a hospital, and she and her brothers, along with Maud and Emeline, joined a line of emigrants waiting for medical attention.

Ephraim’s arm had grown worse each day. It was black and swollen, so tender that he fought Maud now when she changed the dressings. He was weaker, too, and for the past week, he’d barely walked at all, riding on top of the cart instead. Maud had inquired about a place for him in one of the wagons, but they were full, and the Saint in charge said that as Ephraim had two good legs, he must use them. At night, Ephraim suffered such pain that he could not sleep, and he muttered and cried out, until others grumbled that he kept them awake. Sutter took Ephraim’s turn at guard duty now, for no matter how sick a man was, he was expected to do his share. Jessie had volunteered to take Ephraim’s turn as guard, but the leaders would not allow a woman to patrol the camp. That meant Sutter walked the campsite for six hours each night instead of every two nights, and during the day, he was so tired that he almost fell asleep while pulling the cart. He dozed off by the side of the road, and the women propelled the cart until he woke up and rushed to catch up with them.

“I believe Ephraim’s arm will have to come off,” Maud had confided to Jessie a few days before they reached the fort. “I do not have the skill for it, so we must pray he will last until he sees the surgeon at Fort Laramie.”

“Is it that bad?”

“It is. He’s dangerous ill.”

So now they waited in a line on the parade ground as the physician examined those who had arrived before them. Ephraim was not the only sufferer. Some, like him, had broken arms and legs. Others were plagued with dysentery or malaria. There were toothaches and rashes and fevers, and at least one woman inside the cabin that served as an examining room was far gone in labor. They could hear her moans.

After more than an hour of waiting, Jessie, Ephraim, and the others crowded into a little office in the building that served as a surgery, where the doctor looked at Ephraim in a detached way. As Maud told him how she had treated the arm, the herbs she had used, the doctor turned the arm one way and the other, probing, while Ephraim gritted his teeth. “It’s putrefied. There is no way to save it. Smell the decay yourself,” the doctor said brusquely. “I will amputate, but you’ll have to wait until I’ve seen the rest of these people. You Saints are a healthy lot, but you’ve had a bad time of it. Yes, we have to take it off unless you want to meet your Mormon God on the morrow. I don’t know why you aren’t dead already.”

Ephraim looked at Jessie and then at Emeline. “No. You won’t cut me,” he told the doctor. “What good am I with one arm? I’ll take my chances.”

“Suit yourself,” the doctor replied.

“You’ll do no such thing, Ephraim. I’d rather have a live brother with one arm than a dead one with two,” Jessie told him.

“It’ll turn me into a cripple, sitting in the gutter with a tin cup.”

“Nonsense. There are no gutters in Salt Lake. We’ll find work to suit you.”

“What work is there for half a man?”

“Better you should have one arm than risk death,” Emeline told him. “I couldn’t stand it if you died, too.”

Ephraim looked at her a long time before he said, “I could just as well die from the amputation.”

“And you might die falling on your face when you walk out the door,” Jessie said. “Life’s a chance, but keeping your arm isn’t. It’s certain death.”

“Take your choice. There are other patients,” the doctor told them. “If you’re of a mind to do it, wait over on the parade ground. If you’re there when I finish up here, then come back, and I’ll amputate. You are in a bad way. You won’t live a week with your arm in that condition.”

“We’ll be back,” Jessie said, and Emeline took Ephraim’s good hand and led him to the shade of a wagon. Groups of Mormons lounged nearby, watching a formation of soldiers march. Jimmy and Dick, the sons of Jessie’s friend Huldah, followed behind the soldiers, sticks over their arms to serve as guns.

When they were seated in the dirt, Jessie repeated the doctor’s words. “You’ll die if he doesn’t take the arm,” she told Ephraim. But he was stubborn and shook his head.

“What you can’t do with one arm, I’ll do with my two,” Sutter told his brother. “There is plenty of work for a man with one arm. You can write the letters and keep the books, the way you did before. I’ve always hated such work.”

Ephraim looked at Sutter scornfully. “I didn’t come thousands of miles to scribble on paper.”

“Look at Brother Paul. He has only one arm, and he can push his cart as well as any man. He says he can ride a horse and push a plow, too,” Maud said.

“I won’t be a cripple.”

They were all silent for a time. Then Emeline began whispering to Ephraim, her voice so low that only Jessie could hear it. “Please, Ephraim, for me. You’re the only man besides Papa and the missionary that’s ever treated me decent, treated me like I wasn’t dirty. If you died, I couldn’t go on. I’d just give up. I’d rather you had one arm to put around me instead of none.” He listened to her, dejected, but finally Emeline whispered something in his ear that made him smile, and he nodded his head. Later, when the doctor came out of the surgery and beckoned to them, Emeline helped Ephraim rise.

“What did you tell him?” Maud asked the girl, but Emeline only shook her head.

Inside the cabin, they helped Ephraim climb on top of a table covered with a sheet that was none too clean and spotted with blood, and the surgeon ordered him to drink a concoction. Maud asked what it was, and he replied, “Laudanum. He’ll suffer, but he’ll live. Or if he don’t, it won’t be because of the amputation. It’ll be because you waited too long.”

The woman in childbirth lying on another table moaned, and the sister attending her spoke out, asking the doctor to help.

“Shouldn’t you attend to her first?” Jessie asked.

“She’ll wait. What’s a woman in labor need a doctor for anyway?” He did not wash his hands, but picked up a saw that was splattered with gore. “Third amputation this week. One’s a soldier got shot through the arm, the other a fool who let his horse fall on him. Bones sticking out every which way. If it hadn’t happened a day’s ride from here, he’d be dead. I took off his leg below the knee. Course, he don’t much need the knee no more. Pretty funny, if you ask me.” The doctor chuckled, then gave a cough when no one else laughed, and he ordered Sutter and Jessie to hold their brother down. “It’ll be over before you know it,” he said, and indeed, in barely a minute, he had cut through the bone and thrown the severed arm into a pail. Ephraim thrashed about, protesting, screaming, and then passed out. The surgeon folded a flap of skin around the stump and stitched it in place, then announced, “It’s done. I usually get two dollars.” After Sutter paid him, the doctor took Maud aside and explained how to care for the wound.