True Sisters (26 page)

After her husband was gone, Anne stayed where she was, huddled beside the cart, cold and lonesome. So Catherine used a frying pan to scoop away the snow; some twelve inches of it had fallen by then. Then Catherine broke branches off a sagebrush and built a fire, which sputtered a little but kept going. Anne still did not stir and was still sitting where John had left her when he returned with Joe. “He has had a fine adventure, Mother,” John said, squatting down to warm his hands over the flame.

“I sat with the driver,” Joe told her. “I helped him hand out the provisions. I’d have taken extra for us, but it’s not allowed. I didn’t steal, Mother. I’m a good Saint.”

Anne did not respond. She sat staring off into the snow until John came over to her and asked, “Does your head pain you?” She had suffered one of her dreadful headaches the week before, and the effects often lingered for days. When she didn’t reply, he said, “You must stir yourself, Anne. The children need you. Catherine’s making a pancake, but I don’t want any. You can have my portion. Maybe it will bring back your milk.”

“For what purpose?” she asked. She peeled back the shawl that she had used as a sling and showed him the body of Samuel, the boy curled up like a frosted flower, his eyes frozen shut, his tiny shirt frozen to his body. “My heart is bleeding. He died along the road. I could not bear to leave him in the snow.”

John reached for the bundle, but Anne would not give it up. “We must bury him. There are others…” He did not finish, only looked at his wife with sad blue eyes.

“He is the second of our children to be buried without a name stone. Pray God he is the last.”

*   *   *

In the morning, John and the other men prepared a mass grave, digging it through deep snow and frozen earth. Then the Saints brought the bodies of their loved ones, more than a dozen of them, and laid them in a row. Jessie and Emeline had wrapped Sutter’s body in a blanket and carried it to the grave, and now they set it alongside the body of another, Jessie thinking the dead were laid side by side like logs in a corduroy road.

Little Samuel was the last to be placed in the grave. Anne had wrapped him in the silk shawl, and so tiny was he that he looked like a Christmas gift folded inside the bright silk. At the last moment, Anne had slipped Emma Lee’s doll into her dead son’s hands, along with a slip of paper with the words “This is my son Samuel Sully, who joins his beloved sister Emma Lee and all the angels in heaven.” John placed the tiny body at the end of the row of dead, and the men reached for spades to cover the grave. But just before the frozen clods fell onto the bodies, Anne reached into the grave for Samuel and snatched him out. Then she placed him on the shroud containing Sutter. “He will be warmer here. He mustn’t get cold,” she said, and the other mourners nodded in understanding. Then she stood back with John and joined the Saints standing in the falling snow as they sang the Mormon hymns. Just before the carts pulled out, men would gather brush and throw it on top of the graves, then set it on fire to kill the scent of the bodies so that wolves would not dig them up.

When the mourners were finished, a Saint stood before them and announced that rescue teams were certainly on their way. They would arrive any day, he said, and the Saints must stand firm. “Have faith in God, brethren, and you will not take cold,” he admonished. But Anne turned away. No messengers had arrived to say that the wagons had started out. For all she and the other members of the Martin Company knew, no one was aware that they were caught in the snow, that they were starving. What if people in Great Salt Lake City believe the company remained behind at Fort Laramie? she wondered. After all, if the Mormon prophet knew they were on their way, wouldn’t he have sent rescuers long before?

She did not believe the words of the man.

Chapter 7

October 26, 1856

Louisa and her family, along with the other members of the Martin Company, had been snowbound for nearly a week in the gray-white mountains. Winter had come on all at once, the snow falling without letup, the wind howling down the mountainsides, the ground frozen so solid that it was almost impossible for Thales to drive in the tent pins, and when the tents were at last raised, the wind blew them down. The snow was deep and not just the Chetwins but all the Saints so weak that they could not push their handcarts farther. So they sheltered near a sandstone outcrop known as Red Buttes and prayed for deliverance. The Chetwins were fortunate that their cart had been made with a cover, so that Margaret could huddle inside, emerging from time to time to warm herself before a meager fire or to jump up and down and wave her arms to keep from freezing. “It is like a picture of hell,” Huldah told Louisa.

The sisters tramped through the snow for as much as a mile from the camp, searching for fuel—juniper, called “green cedar,” mostly, because there were no longer buffalo chips. Then using all their strength, they dragged the broken branches back to the camp.

Food rations had been reduced once more—eight ounces of flour a day for adults and four for children. Louisa worried that they would starve to death, that their long trip across the ocean and over the plains had been for naught. They would never reach the valley. Huldah cried as she asked Louisa if she thought they were facing death.

Each day, the family attended meeting, at which the leaders exhorted the Saints to have faith. The snow was punishment for their sinfulness, one told them. “If it were not for your transgressions, you would be redeemed from this horrid, stinking place by now,” he said. Then he prayed, “Lord, let thy chastising hand be upon thy people until they learn to obey. Strike down every cursed person who will not do right.”

Louisa knew that it was a principle of the church that the people must be tried by hardship and purified, a principle that some leaders never gave up expounding upon. “I am tired of these sad faces that show you are broken down in spirit. The Lord punishes us for refusing to obey divine counsel. We must become a righteous people, without spot, and blameless. The Lord will save only the pure in heart,” declared one. “If you continue in wickedness as you have done, your own prayers will bring a curse upon you.”

But Louisa did not believe the hardships her mother and sister faced were a result of their evil ways, and she was glad when Thales asked the Lord to forgive them their sins and stop the storms for a repentant people. “We know our nature is stormy, dark, and wicked, and we pray for thy forgiveness. I myself have done many wrong things, and I ask for thy mercy. Rebuke the storms and restore us so that we may join our brethren in Zion,” he prayed at a meeting of the Saints.

Many around Louisa murmured in agreement as they stood shivering in an open area near the tents. All those who were able attended the prayer meetings, even the Saints who despaired of ever reaching the valley. The meetings gave them hope, an explanation of their plight, a way of sharing their troubles, and besides, what else was there to do in that cold place that Louisa dubbed “Camp Misery” and others called “the Snowbound Camp of Death”? Louisa stamped her feet and flailed her arms as she prayed with Thales for deliverance.

After Thales finished his testimony and his prayer, the people broke into the Mormon hymn “Come, Come, Ye Saints,” with its soothing words: “If we die before our journey’s through, happy day, all is well.”

As she sang the words that gave her strength, Louisa studied her husband. He had changed a great deal since the death of little Jimmy. Thales no longer appeared to the people as a thundering prophet of old, preaching death and destruction to any who did not obey the Lord. He no longer spoke as if he were the voice of Brigham Young. Nor did he puff up when others asked if he had known Joseph Smith, although not many thought about such things now. Thales did not march through the camp as he once had, giving orders to his hundred, which was now composed of considerably fewer than one hundred members. Instead, he humbled himself, feeding the sick and offering to do the most demeaning chores, such as washing with snow the linen of those who had fouled themselves. He walked into the storm to search for fuel for the weary, took the watch for men who were nearly senseless, and he and Louisa sat with the dying, assuring them they would be with Christ in heaven. “Your sufferings are not worthy to be compared to the glory that awaits you,” he said, trying to comfort them.

“They are like worn-out cattle, with no feeling except to eat or die,” Thales told Louisa. “The thought of them unmans me. God forbid I should ever witness such scenes again.”

“They knew when they left England the way would be hard. They knew not all would make it,” Louisa replied. “They came of their own free will.”

“Did they? Or did they come because they thought I was Moses leading them into the Promised Land? Did they willingly leave their homes for this?” He lifted his arms heavenward to indicate the snow. “Is this the better life I promised them when I said that America was the land of milk and honey, that God had set aside for them rich farmlands? It’s poor steerage I’ve given them.”

“You could not have known this would happen. You are not responsible for the storms.”

“Perhaps I am. Do you not remember that I called those who wanted to winter in Iowa City and Florence apostates? I accused your own father of having not one atom of the spirit of Zion, and now he’s dead, and dead because I would not let him stay behind. If not for me, he would be alive.”

“If not for you, he would not be saved.”

Thales stared at his wife. “Do you believe that, or are you muddled?”

“I believe that God is testing us, that He wants to make sure we’re worthy of reaching Israel.” Louisa tightened the shawl about her head, tucking in her hair, which was now dull and lifeless. The shawl was torn, and Louisa’s hands had been too cold to thread a needle to repair it. The frayed ends whipped about her head in the wind. “We can none of us see the future, but we must do what we think God expects of us, you no less than the others. Who is to say my father would not have died in England.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I have to. If I do not believe that God led us here, then there is nothing for me to believe, and I will perish unsaved.” She stared long and hard at her husband, allowing herself for a moment to question his righteousness. “Do not take away our belief that we will be reunited with Father and Jimmy in heaven, that we have come here for a reason. It would be vanity for you to convince us of anything else,” she begged, thinking he would argue, afraid he would tell her his ambition was gone, that he was in the midnight of his mind. Her eyes pleaded with him to reassure her that he was the Saint she had married, a man sure of his faith.

Instead, Thales regarded Louisa a moment, his eyes roaming over the once-neat figure that was now swollen in pregnancy. “I look at your face and see gold shining in every corner of it. The Lord blesses me with an understanding wife, although He knows I have not been square with her.” He took off his coat and wrapped it around her.

Louisa was uncertain what he meant about not being “square,” but she was gratified, at least, for her husband’s faith in her. She thought to ask then if he meant that he no longer found fault with her. But she feared such a remark would sting him, and she held her tongue.

He reached out his hand to catch the falling snow and said bitterly, “Do you remember I said I would eat every flake of snow that fell?”

“Oh, I think no one holds you to that.”

Thales frowned at his wife, perhaps not sure if she had made a joke, then deciding she hadn’t. He said, “They say they will slaughter one or two of the oxen that have fallen and distribute pieces of meat. I’ll see what they’re about.” He went off into the cold.

She watched as he trudged through the snow to a makeshift corral where the oxen and milk cows were kept. The Saints needed the stronger animals to pull the wagons, but many of them, like the people, were starving. The oxen could not paw away the snow to reach the dried grass beneath it, and each day, one or two fell and would not rise. So the Saints slaughtered any beast that was almost starved or was chilled to death, hitting it with hammers and hatchets and even frying pans to knock it senseless so that its throat could be cut. Then two or three men who could do butchering cut up the carcass, setting aside the tenderest parts for the leaders and dividing the rest among members of the company. Every bit of the ox was used, even the hides, which were scraped and roasted over the fire so that the Saints could chew them.

Thales returned to the campfire with the beast’s head and handed it to Louisa. “We’ll roast it in the campfire and turn it into a great feast. Tomorrow, we’ll make a broth of the remains, and we can suck on the bones after that,” she said, accepting the ox head as reverently as if it had been a suckling pig.

Louisa’s nephew Dick came up to her and looked at the bloody thing that had already stained the snow with drops of red. Blood was on Thales’s hands and his pants, too. “It’s a damnable cow’s head,” the boy said with disgust. He shivered from the cold in his thin coat, and Louisa wished he had not thrown away the green scarf.

“You must not say that. This is food,” Louisa told him. “It is the likeliest food Brother Thales could find.”

“At home, we wouldn’t eat the disgusting thing.”

“We aren’t at home, and we are grateful to the Lord for giving us this something to eat,” his aunt told him.

“
I’m
not grateful, and I believe
you
are deluded, Aunt Louisa. We’d be at home if it wasn’t for him. Jimmy would be alive.” Dick jerked a finger at Thales, giving him a hard look. “We’re here because he tricked us. I hate him.”

“Dick!” Louisa said, shocked. “Brother Thales is a great man. He knew Joseph. Without him, we wouldn’t have been saved.”

“
I’m
not saved. I don’t care about your Joseph, and I don’t want to be a Mormon anymore. I’d rather go to hell.”

Dick turned and walked away, and Louisa stared after him. “He doesn’t mean it,” she told Thales, putting a hand on his arm, afraid he would go after Dick. “He’s not an apostate.”