True Sisters (22 page)

They went on together now, because it was dark and snow was swirling around, making it difficult to see more than a few feet. Louisa wondered if they had passed the boy, had missed him in the blackness. And then Thales spotted Jimmy lying in the shallow water, where ice had begun to form. Snow was falling on the boy and in a few more minutes would have covered him, so that passing by, they would have thought him only a rock. Thales knelt and picked up the body from the cold water, pausing to look into the small face for signs of life. But there were none. So with the body in his arms, Thales made his way toward the camp, Louisa beside him, her hand stroking the still face.

The two were chilled through to their bones now. Their wet clothing froze to their bodies, and they shivered as they walked beside the river, snow and sleet pelting them. How could people stand such cold? Louisa wondered. They would sleep in wet clothes, covered by wet blankets, the only warmth coming from bodies crowded into the tents. Louisa would have Thales to keep her warm, but what about Huldah? Whom did she have?

Thales began to mumble. “I did what I thought God wanted. How could I be wrong? Was it what I wanted? Did I hope to prove myself as a leader?”

“Hush,” Louisa said, but Thales did not hear her, did not seem to know she was there. He was talking to himself, not to her.

The boy’s body heavy in his arms, Thales stumbled in the brush that lined the river and went down on one knee, striking it on a rock and ripping his pants, nearly dropping the boy. Clutching the body, he rose, and Louisa saw him bite his lip against the pain in his leg. She was confused now with the snow swirling around them. Which way were they going? Thales stopped a moment to get a sense of direction. They had been turned around when they picked up Jimmy and had headed downriver. The body had floated down with the current. They must go upstream, he told Louisa. So she followed her husband as he turned and headed up the river, stumbling along, her feet so cold, she could barely move them.

They came to the place where the handcarts had left the river and gone west, then followed the tracks in the snow. “If we can make it to the camp, we will be all right,” Louisa said through lips so cold she could barely form the words. “Mother and my sister will have a supper and a fire.”

They trudged on, heading into the storm, which howled like nothing Louisa had ever heard. She was moving slowly because her legs throbbed and her footing was unsure. She did not see the camp—the snow was too thick—but she heard it. The murmur of voices and the sound of oxen, and only when they were upon it did she see the faint yellow flair of campfires. She followed Thales slowly past the fires that the Saints were trying to keep going, until someone recognized him and pointed toward the Tanner cart, where the women were huddled beside their own fire.

Without a word, Huldah held out her arms for her son. She was a small woman, not strong, but the boy had been frail, and she took his body easily, bowing her head over his. She said stiffly, “You found him.”

Thales tried to reply, but his mouth seemed frozen, and he mumbled, “Yes, we found him.” He sat down beside the cart and put his head in his hands.

“Mother has taken Dick to the supply wagon. He is very angry. There is a little pancake left. Would you eat?” Huldah asked.

Thales shook his head, but Huldah had been speaking to Louisa, who was holding her hands over the feeble fire. “Give it to Dick when he comes back.”

They were silent for a moment. Then Thales said, “I made him go into the river. I killed him.”

“No, Thales, it was the Lord’s doing,” Louisa said in a faint voice.

“It was mine,” Thales said, and he glanced at Huldah, who was rocking back and forth with the boy’s body in her arms. “I was tempted by the Destroyer. I sent Jimmy to his death to build up my kingdom. I am sure of it. Now the Lord is pointing me hellward.”

“You are the most righteous man I know. You did what you thought God wanted. You must not get into darkness over it.” Louisa looked at her sister, who was absorbed in her son. “We must look on God’s side. Will this not teach us a lesson?”

“What lesson is that?”

Louisa shook her head. “He will reveal it to you. You have always been His servant.”

“I believe I would rather be a dog and bay at the moon than be that kind of servant.”

Shocked, Louisa reached for her husband and put her arms around him. “No one blames you, not even Huldah. Only Dick, I think, and he will change in time. Draw into the fire and warm yourself.”

But he would not do it. “We must find a winding-sheet.” Thales took down one of the blankets that had been used to shield the carts from the storm. Then he lifted Jimmy’s body from Huldah’s arms and wrapped it in the wet covering. “There is a burial place already dug. I saw it as we passed through the camp.” Thales picked up the boy’s body and, followed by the women, carried it to the mass grave.

Chapter 6

October 20, 1856

Nannie Macintosh made her way out of the tent, past a group of Saints sleeping under a shelter. She stepped on something in the dark, and glancing down, she made out a man’s arm under her shoe. She mumbled an apology, but he did not respond, and Nannie thought that she had not awakened him. Then she realized the arm was as solid as a rock. He was dead. He had frozen in the night.

She did not shudder. Just a few months ago, she would have been horrified at stumbling over a dead man, at the unbreathing quiet, but there had been so much death along the trail that it no longer moved her. Once, she had awakened each morning filled with joy. Now she was grateful just to wake at all. Nannie wondered if the man’s wife felt as she did, because the woman snored beside her husband, her arm carelessly thrown across his body. Perhaps she did not know that he had died. Let her sleep, Nannie thought. The rest would do her more good than the knowledge that her husband was no longer among the living. Nannie wondered if there were others in the tent who slept that same eternal sleep.

She shivered as she walked through the snow, which was still falling. It had settled over the carts, until they appeared like great white humps of sheep, reminding her of those she had seen in the fields of Scotland. Andrew had left the cart in a protected place, and now Nannie wondered how she would find the vehicle. They all looked alike under the powdery white. Other Saints were up before her. Some had started fires with fuel they had saved from the night before, but they were hard put to keep the flames going. Men used flint to start the fires, but the women were not so adept at that and preferred lucifers. Just as soon as one flared up, however, the wind blew it out, and the women were reluctant to light another of the precious matches.

It ought to be morning by now, Nannie thought, glancing back in the direction of the river, but the dark had thinned only a little. She scanned the carts, clapping her cold hands as she looked for her own vehicle, but she could not see it in the winter gloom. She and Ella and Andrew had been among the first to cross the river, and they had left their cart near a stand of willows. They’d thought the trees with yellow leaves still clinging to the branches would be easy to spot in the morning and would give the cart a little protection, but even trees were difficult to make out in the snow now. Nannie trudged along the lines of vehicles, remembering what a soldier at the fort had told her—that people grew disoriented in the snow, confused about direction, and fell down and froze to death, although they were not ten feet from safety. The storm did not seem to be that bad now, however. Shapes loomed up in the blackness, and as long as she could see the lumps of the carts, she would be safe. As if to assure herself she would not get lost in the storm, she touched each cart as she passed it.

A tree loomed up before her. It was too small to be their tree, but she remembered seeing it the night before, so she knew her cart was not far away. In a minute, she made out two vehicles placed so that they formed a V. Her cart had been next to them, and Nannie strained her eyes until she saw the wheels, barely visible in the dawning light.

She had left the tent to retrieve her second shawl. She’d thought about discarding it before they crossed the river, when the Saints had been told to lighten their carts again, but it was her good shawl. In Edinburgh, she had sacrificed her Saturday-afternoon tea outings with the lovely Sally Lunn buns to save her wages to purchase the garment—a heavy wool paisley with picklelike designs. She had picked the purple color so that she would be reminded of the heather at home, in case Utah failed to have the dear plants. Just the thought of the heather cheered her a little. The shawl was as warm as a blanket and not nearly as heavy. A few days before, when the Saints had been told to pare down their belongings once more, she had discarded her second pair of boots in favor of keeping it.

But she had left it in the cart and had shivered all night, even though they all slept in their shawls and cloaks now, had for some time. So Nannie had decided to retrieve the covering. She envied Ella, sleeping in the embrace of Andrew’s arms. The two had kept each other warm. But Nannie had nothing to warm her except her clothing. Now she dug through the things left in the cart.

There wasn’t much. The three of them had watched as nearly half of their belongings went up in flames back across the river. It had been hard for them to part with those last possessions, the things they had brought along for their new life in Zion. They no longer had luxuries such as books or mementos from home. Those had been discarded early in the trip. So the last time, they’d been forced to part with necessities. Andrew had sacrificed his gloves, Ella her second dress. Andrew had tossed Nannie’s red silk slippers into the pile, but Nannie had snatched them up and tucked them into the waistband of her skirt, under her coat; she had lost so much weight that there was room for the red shoes. If she carried them like that, they wouldn’t be weighed. Instead, she had discarded the boots.

Now she looked through the meager possessions in the cart, but she could not find the shawl. Had it been thrown out by accident? At the last moment, had Andrew tossed it into the pile when she wasn’t looking? Or perhaps it had fallen out of the cart during the river crossing. Then Nannie remembered having seen it the night before, when they took out the cooking things. She had put the soft wool against her cheek and felt its warmth before she carefully folded it and placed it in the bottom of the cart, where it would be dry. She went through the things again, and when she still didn’t find the shawl, Nannie removed everything from the cart and repacked it. But the shawl was gone. How could it have been lost? And then Nannie thought, No, it hasn’t been lost. Someone has taken it. She wondered then if other things were missing, and she went through their belongings again. The rice she’d acquired at Fort Laramie in exchange for her silver brooch was gone, along with the coffee. She sank down beside the cart and began to cry.

No one paid her attention. The Saints who were moving among the carts now had their own grief, some worse than Nannie’s. She thought of the little boy who had drowned in the North Platte. He was the nephew of the missionary who considered himself so high-and-mighty. And there was the old man who had died after helping the Saints cross the river. The two were buried in the same grave, left open last night because the emigrants knew others would be dead by morning. Many had died before they’d even reached the North Platte. Not long after the company left Fort Laramie, a man had sat down beside the trail and refused to move, saying he would die before he took another step. The Saints had thought he would change his mind and come in during the night, but when he didn’t, a group of men went back and found the man’s body, already feasted upon by wild animals.

There’d been that woman, too, who’d died in childbirth and others who’d been taken in accidents. Perhaps some had already died of exhaustions. So Nannie couldn’t expect sympathy just because she’d lost a shawl and a little food. Still, even that small amount could mean the difference between life and death in the miles yet to travel to Great Salt Lake City. Without the shawl, she could freeze to death, and with their rations already reduced, the rice might have kept them from starvation. Nannie had not expected to find thieves among the Mormons.

She huddled beside the cart, the chill wind blowing snow into the folds of her shawl and freezing the tears on her cheeks, until a man knelt beside her and said, “Sister Nannie?”

She made out the face in the wan light and replied, “Brother Levi.” She had seen him the night before when he’d pushed his cart near hers. She had heard Levi’s wife, Patricia, complain that she expected Levi to provide her with a fine house in Great Salt Lake City to make up for the misery she had endured on the trail. Nannie had wondered if Levi had told her he expected to take a second wife.

“We did not expect the snow,” Levi said.

“We were promised there would be none.”

“I wonder where the snow prophet is who said he’d eat every flake that fell. He has more than his words to eat now.”

Despite herself, Nannie laughed. Levi had always made her laugh. He could be stormy and pompous, but he found humor in the most serious subjects, and that was one of the reasons she’d loved him—and perhaps loved him still. “I wonder if his courage is as great now as it was in Florence.” She wiped the tears from her face with the backs of her hands.

“You bubble. You’ve given over crying. Is it such a hard trip?” He took her hand, and she did not resist.

“It’s my shawl. I fear it’s been stole.”

“A shame!”

Nannie tried to be charitable. “In the Bible, Solomon says that men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his soul when he’s hungry.”

“Solomon did not cross the continent with a handcart company. Besides, the thief didn’t steal from the warm and well fed, but from others as cold and hungry as he is. I suppose it’s to be expected.”

“Scripture says a thief must make sevenfold restitution. Seven shawls and seven bowls of rice for every one he took would satisfy me.”