True Sisters (29 page)

She thought perhaps she ought to let him court her a little and bring her gewgaws, play the flirt, but that was what Patricia had done. Nannie was not like that. Besides, they weren’t at home, but in a camp filled with dying people, where they could not go pleasuring. They couldn’t walk about in the sunshine as they once had. And where would he find a trinket to give her unless he plucked a gold locket from the fingers of a dead woman? They were Saints, and such frivolity did not become them. But still, she would not say yes. Perhaps she was not really sure of him. Or it might be that she wanted him to feel a measure of the distress he had caused her. “I canna say.”

“Is there someone else?”

“Och, nay.” Nannie realized she shouldn’t have spoken so quickly. Perhaps Levi would value her more if he thought others had sought her hand. Levi grinned at her, grinned with such self-assurance that Nannie added, “None that I hae answered aye to.” She thought his smile lessened, but she could not be sure.

“Of course, there are others who would want such a beautiful girl,” he said. “I may have to fight them off with a stick.” He glanced at the sky and added, “Or snowballs. I suppose it is foolish of me to think you could care for me as you once did. There are many would say I’m not worthy of you, and I’m one of them.”

Nannie thought her heart would swell to bursting with Levi’s words of contrition, and she said, “Aye.”

“You think it, too, then?”

“I didna say aye to the question of your worth. I said aye to your proposal.”

Levi took her hands in his and smiled at her. “You won’t be sorry. We’ll work hard, both of us. Patricia could not have stood the pace, but you can. We’re both strong. We can make it in Zion. You will work beside me. We may have a house made of earth bricks instead of stone, and when we go about, it will be to push a plow instead of walking down a country lane. There may be hardships, but we will know that God is on our side.”

Those might not have been the expressions of love and tenderness that a young girl would cherish, but Nannie and Levi were Mormons, and the words were appropriate for Saints. Nannie had no illusions about a pampered life, and Levi was right to say he expected her to work hard. And she would. She would be cheerful and not complain and show him how much better a wife she was than Patricia had been.

“If it were seemly, I would like to be married today. Brother Martin could officiate, although I don’t believe we could have a party with cake and wine for the guests.” He smiled at his little joke.

“Nay,” Nannie said slowly. “We’ll wait until we reach the valley. My sister’s unwell. The bairn is almost here. I canna leave her. Besides…” Besides what? she asked herself. Was she unsure of her decision? Was she concerned about what others would think of her marrying Levi so soon after his wife died? Perhaps she wanted to postpone the wedding so that she could wear a silk dress and the red shoes after all, or make Levi wait, to worry that she might change her mind, to hunger for her. Nannie didn’t know. “Besides, it’s not right to celebrate a wedding now, not when people are dying,” she told him.

Levi started to protest but thought better of it. A good sign, Nannie told herself. Perhaps after they were married, he would care about her feelings, would listen to her. Maybe she would not be under her husband’s thumb as so many wives were.

“I will agree, if you will make it as soon as we reach Zion, for I don’t care to wait,” he said.

Nannie nodded, and Levi said, “I don’t deserve such a good wife.”

“’Tis true,” Nannie said slyly. “Now I must tell Ella.”

“We’ll tell her together.”

“Nay,” Nannie said quickly, because she didn’t know what her sister’s reaction would be—or Andrew’s.

“You think they won’t approve. They don’t like me.”

“They liked ye fine once. They will again. Just as I love ye again.”

“You never stopped loving me,” Levi chided, then added quickly, “Nor I you.” He put his hand over hers, and hand in hand, they returned to Nannie’s cart, where he squeezed her fingers and left.

Ella, huddled beside the cart, did not look up, and Nannie inquired if she was all right.

“Just cold.”

“There’s news I’m hoping will warm ye as it does me.”

“You will marry him, then?”

Nannie should have realized that her sister knew what Levi was about. “He’s the man I love best of all others. I’m hoping ye will approve.”

Ella did not respond for a moment. “If ye choose him, that is your doing. After all, ye should marry, and he is a good-enough man. But I allow I am selfish. It’s not your marrying I fear; it’s losing ye. What will I do without ye?”

“There’s Andrew.” She sat down in the snow, her feet to the fire.

“Of course, it’s grateful enough I am for him.” Ella looked at Nannie. “But I’m thinking there is no bond as powerful as that of sisters.”

Nannie took Ella’s hand and held it. “What will Andrew say aboot that, do ye think?”

At that, Ella laughed. “He’s said it already. He told me in Iowa City, when he saw Levi was there, that ye would wed the lad as soon as we reached the valley. Of course, we dinna know it would be as his first wife.”

The sisters sat with their arms around each other, Nannie stirring every so often to add juniper to the fire. Once when she reached over to throw a branch on the coals, she caught sight of a woman who looked familiar, although she could not place her, and the woman did not seem to recognize her. She was resting against a cart, two young children clasped to her, sheltered with a shawl—
her
shawl, Nannie realized with a start, the one stolen from her handcart.
That
was what was familiar! At first, Nannie thought to rip the garment off the woman. After all, it was hers to claim. She had bought the shawl, kept it when she had thrown out her boots, and the woman had stolen it. But she stopped, realizing where she had seen the woman—grieving on the banks of the North Platte over her husband, who had died that day of the river crossing. She’d been left a widow, and now hungry and cold, she protected the little children as best she could under the bright shawl. Nannie settled back and watched as the family disappeared in the snow. The shawl is better used to warm the three Saints than to assure a fashionable entry into the valley, she thought, and she leaned against Ella, grateful that she had her sister instead of just a piece of cloth to warm her.

They were there, the two of them, drugged by the cold and lack of food, when Nannie heard a cry. “I see them coming. Angels! The angels have come!” screamed a woman. At first, Nannie dismissed the shouts. Several women had succumbed to dementia after crossing the North Platte. But the cry was taken up by others, so Nannie, ignoring the pain in her feet, pulled herself up. She stood holding on to the wagon wheel, straining her eyes to see through the dense fog, and then she yelled, “Riders, Ella! Three of them. Sent from the valley for sure. We are saved, Ella. We are saved!”

Chapter 8

October 28, 1856

Louisa could tell by the faces of the three express riders who rode into the encampment at Red Buttes on that late-October day that they were stunned by the suffering they encountered among the handcart Saints. She and the other emigrants had been stranded in the snow for nine days. She knew their faces were raw from the wind and cold, and that their arms, sticking out from under torn shirts and filthy cloaks, were as thin as willow shoots. Noses were frozen black, and people wrung their hands or clutched their shawls and blankets around themselves with blackened fingers that would have to be cut off. A few of the Saints were barefoot and stamped their feet to keep warm. There were bloody footprints in the snow near where Louisa stood, some from children’s feet.

These people were told once that they were the spiritual favorites of the Almighty, Louisa thought, and now, they looked at the riders as if they were apparitions. Beside Louisa, her mother, Margaret, cried, the tears of joy freezing on her face. Then the old woman hobbled toward the rescuers, clasping her bare arms around one of the riders’ neck and kissing him. Other emigrants too weak to stand reached out with their arms, shouting, “Hosanna!” and “Hurrah!” “Lord be praised!” and “Angels from heaven!”

“Better than angels—strong men come to help us reach the valley,” said a woman. “We have given up on angels.” She fell down in a faint.

Louisa knew it wasn’t just the physical condition of her people and the scanty provisions—enough for only six more days—or the threadbare clothing and blankets that horrified the riders. It was the emigrants’ shattered spirit. “There is some here that has the heartache mighty bad,” one of the riders remarked to Louisa as he looked over the crowd of converts.

A gray-bearded Saint from Louisa’s village, a man whose skin hung from his cheekbones like empty seed sacks, grasped the hem of the military overcoat worn by a rider and begged for food. A bit of bread, a piece of dried beef, an empty flour sack that could be boiled and the dredges of flour extracted to make a thin soup. It was not for himself, but for his wife, his children, he pleaded, opening his palm, which was like the hand of a skeleton. Louisa knew him as a once-proud man and a leader in the church, and he had been reduced to a beggar.

The rider turned aside and wept. He and the other two carried no food with them except for what was loaded onto a single pack mule and stored in their saddle bags, and that was not enough to feed the multitude. There will be no miracle of loaves and fishes in this desolate place, Louisa thought.

The rider shook his head at the starving Saint. “You must hold out a little longer, Brother, just two days, three at most. The rescue wagons are waiting at Devil’s Gate but will soon be on their way.”

“He may be dead by then, dead of general decay,” Louisa told him, and indeed, the man’s absent stare and countenance foretold his end. “But we have no fear of death. We are so used to looking it in the face that it doesn’t frighten us anymore,” she added.

If they brought few provisions with them, the riders nonetheless brought hope, telling the Saints that relief wagons were only three days away. Louisa all but clapped her hands when the leaders announced that flour rations would be increased to a pound a day from the scanty supply still in the camp. They ordered the emigrants to kill some cattle and divide the meat. “We’ll move on tomorrow,” Thales said, coming up to his wife. “Brother Brigham says the emigrants are to be brought to the valley. He promised that if we journeyed just a few miles each day, we would reach safety.”

“Did the rescuers say why relief supplies were slow in coming? Surely they were asked.”

“They were. Many thought we had wintered in Florence or even Iowa City.” He lowered his voice. “A few admit it was poor planning and poorer execution. They say the prophet will flay the hide of whoever is responsible.”

So the following morning, Thales urged the remaining members of his hundred on. The Saints made up a pitiful train, strung out over three or four miles. Louisa and her mother pulled their cart past old men who were dragging their vehicles behind them. Louisa all but cried when she saw children no older than Dick and Jimmy whimper from the cold as they picked up the shafts of their vehicles, which were piled with the few belongings that they had left and sometimes with a brother or sister or even a mother who was too sick to walk. Snow and mud clung to Louisa’s clothes, and as the weather worsened, the snow turned into icicles, which pierced her worn dress and rubbed against her bare skin. She passed Saints who had given up and were crouched beside their carts to keep out of the wind or had sought shelter among the rocks. They had to be persuaded to keep on.

The two women maneuvered around deserted carts, their axles broken, their wheels shattered. Rather than repair the carts, a few of the Saints packed what they could carry on their backs and trudged on, abandoning the hated vehicles. Pulling the Tanner cart, Louisa walked thirty miles in two days, until at last, the Saints were met by the wagons of the rescue party, with six loads of supplies. But still, Louisa could not rest. Like the others in the Martin Company, she trudged on for two more days until, on November 2, the emigrants and their rescuers arrived at the remains of a log fort, a place known as Devil’s Gate.

*   *   *

Gripping the shafts of her handcart, Jessie had stopped counting the steps she’d taken since their last rest. It was a game she played with herself to keep her mind off their plight. But she’d stopped counting at 403, when she felt the weight of the handcart increase and knew that Emeline had stopped pushing. The girl had weakened at the Red Buttes camp, had caught cold and maybe something worse—pneumonia, Maud had whispered, although they hadn’t told the girl. Jessie pulled the cart a dozen more steps, but Emeline did not resume pushing, so Jessie stopped and looked back, hoping Emeline had not dropped into the snow. To Jessie’s relief, the girl seemed all right. She stood in the road beside Ephraim, holding him up. Maud generally walked with Ephraim now, but the old lady sat in the snow. She, too, was exhausted, not only from the cold and scanty rations but from tending the Saints who needed her. Jessie wondered that the woman slept at all, and she thought that Maud must have simply dozed off. The emigrants did that, fell asleep while trudging along the road. Sometimes they didn’t wake up. But Maud got to her feet and examined Ephraim’s stump, all that was left of his arm, and Jessie dropped the shafts and walked back to the little group.

“I believe the cold helps it heal, but I don’t know why,” Maud said. “Does it hurt?”

Ephraim shook his head, but that told the women nothing, because he had not complained since Sutter died. He was coping better than Jessie had thought, no longer bemoaning his state or saying he hoped to die. He’d asked Jessie once if she thought there would be a place in Zion for a man who could add and subtract and keep books, and she had said there would. Emeline was responsible for the improvement in Ephraim’s attitude, his sister believed. In fact, without Emeline, Ephraim wouldn’t be alive.

Jessie wondered what had drawn them to each other. At first, she’d thought that both had been flawed, Ephraim in body, Emeline in soul, and certainly that had been part of it. But each had found a happiness with the other beyond mutual suffering. She’d watched as Ephraim had drawn a flower in the snow and written “Emeline” beneath it.