True Sisters (32 page)

“What about the girl? She could marry, too.”

“She is very young.”

“Young girls are desirable in Zion.”

“If she marries, it will be to my brother.”

“You have not answered my question.”

Jessie laughed at that. “No, I’ve not found a man I care enough to marry.”

“You will in Zion.”

“Perhaps.”

“My wife has told it about that you are coming. You’ll have no lack of suitors.”

“Most of them with a plenty of wives at home already, I think. How many do you have, Brother Thomas?”

“Two,” he replied.

Jessie stared at him, for she had been jesting. She was appalled to think her cousin’s husband had taken a second wife.

“I think it may be one too many, but I can’t say which one.” He grinned at Jessie, then picked her up. Jessie did not smile back.

Jessie felt herself relax as Thomas stepped into the river with her in his arms. “I was all in. I think I could not make it across the river without you.”

“The ordeal isn’t over. There’s much hardship still ahead.”

“There was hardship behind us.”

“I am afraid, Sister, you may find it even worse going on.”

*   *   *

And it was hard. The hardest days Anne Sully had yet spent were the five days at the cove—“Martin’s Ravine,” they called it, in honor of their leader, Edward Martin, although Anne wondered if he felt such a memorial was an honor. The man had been tireless in helping the Saints, as if he believed the company named for him was his sole responsibility.

The wagons carrying the sick went first, and when Anne and the other emigrants pushing handcarts arrived at the cove, just a mile beyond the Sweetwater, they found tents set up and fires blazing. But the food that had been brought by the rescuers was almost used up, and rations were reduced again, this time to just four ounces of flour per adult, two per child. During the angriest storm Anne could imagine—a rescuer told her it was the worst he had ever seen—she and the others remained snowbound in the cove. The snow was relentless, and the wind swirled it around them so that it chapped their hands and faces. They had not been able to do washing in weeks, and their clothes were filthy. So the snow mixed with the dirt on the clothing and made it muddy. Skirts and pants were always wet. The temperature reached ten degrees below zero, and despite the fires, Anne feared they would freeze to death. Some did.

Anne had seen the shallow graves where the dead were buried, because the ground was too hard for digging and the Saints themselves too weak to dig proper graves. At night, she heard the howls of the wolves that dug up the bodies, scattering the bones, leaving scraps of flesh in the snow. She wondered if the Saints would stay in the cove for the winter. “Perhaps it’s better to die here where we are a little comfortable than to perish in the icebound mountains,” she told John. But the leaders said as soon as the weather lifted, the company must push on. So they stayed on a day and then another, each morning carrying the dead from the tents and stacking them like logs in the snow. Anne saw emigrants going through the pockets of the deceased in search of food.

John grew morose and asked Anne, “Are we being punished for our sins?” He had gone into the hills to cut cedar for fuel with others who could walk, and now he was back in the camp.

Thales Tanner, who was standing by when the woodcutters returned, heard the question and shook his head. “What sins does your little daughter have? Or my wife or our unborn babe?” he asked John.

“You don’t believe it, then, as you once did, that only those who are pure in faith will reach Zion?”

“I am not the prophet. I cannot speak for God.”

“Nor do you speak for the prophet any longer,” John replied. The two men watched as Anne helped a woman bathe her daughter’s hand, washing it with castile soap. The girl’s fingers were black, and Thales told the mother, “They will have to come off. She will lose the hand and arm if they don’t, and then her life. They will have to be attended to once we reach the valley.” At first, the woman stared at Thales as if she were a dumb animal, so little did she comprehend. Then she said, “I wish to God I’d never heard of the Mormons. I don’t care the toss of a button for your religion anymore.”

Thales did not chastise the woman, just nodded in understanding. “May God give you strength, Sister,” he said, and then he stepped away, but Anne could hear him remark to John, “Many others will be maimed—in mind and in body.”

“Your faith has weakened,” John said. When Thales didn’t reply, John added, “As my own has. It is my wife, the one some still called ‘a heathen,’ who keeps me in the fold. And she is not even a Saint. I insisted she come. She had always had plenty and never known hardship. We could have had a good team and a wagon, but I gave our money to the elders. This is too much for her.”

“I didn’t appreciate the women until now. They are strong, stronger than we are.”

“But we are still their leaders. It is men who make decisions, who are head of the household. Our faith tells us that.”

Thales nodded. “It’s not easy for us, either.”

The two men parted, and John returned to the fire. The woman and her daughter were gone now, and Anne sat with the children. Lucy slept in her lap, and Joe stared into the coals. “I’m hungry, Papa,” he said when John squatted beside the boy.

“Hush,” Anne said. “We will eat when we reach the valley.”

“I want to eat now.”

“So do I,” John told him, “but there’s not so much food.”

“I don’t want boot broth,” the boy said.

“I’m making something else,” Anne said. She had found two sea biscuits in the bottom of the wagon, biscuits so hard, she could not break them, even when she tossed them against the rocks beside the cart. She had thrown them into a kettle and covered them with water, and now when she lifted the lid, she discovered the pan was filled with food, almost a miracle.

Anne pitied her boy, who had been such a worker the past months. He had pushed the cart without complaint and had helped both Anne and John in camp. He’d collected fuel and tended the fire, watched Lucy, and had even tried cooking when Anne’s head hurt or her melancholy over the loss of her two children was so great that she could not oversee the pot. Now Joe was starving. They all were.

But Anne was more worried about Lucy, who no longer bubbled with excitement as she had in the beginning when she spotted each tree and flower along the trail. Over the past days, she’d grown listless. She slept or else stared into the snow, her little mittened hands clenched. Anne worried about the girl’s feet. John had provisioned them well for the trip, buying warm clothing, but Lucy had outgrown her shoes, and they had been discarded at the North Platte. Anne dressed her in three pairs of stockings, and at Devil’s Gate, she’d torn strips off the canvas cover of a deserted cart to make the bandages that protected Lucy’s feet. As she sat beside the fire with the girl, Anne unwrapped the strips and took off the stockings to check Lucy’s feet. They were cold, but there was no sign of damage. The toes were red, not black, and Lucy did not cry out when her mother touched them.

John took the little feet into his hands to warm them, then tickled them, but Lucy did not respond. “She’s tired,” he told his wife.

“I hope it’s only that,” Anne replied. “Like all, she suffers from cold, but she won’t lose her toes.” She put the stockings back on the girl, then wrapped the strips around her feet.

The wind picked up and blew snow across the camp, sweeping it sideways, under Lucy’s bonnet and into her face, but the girl only blinked. She did not cry or even put up her hands to block the snow. John and Anne exchanged a glance, but neither spoke. In a moment, John picked up the girl and held her, telling his wife to rest. “I’ll walk with her. I think it will do her good to move. Come along, son.” He got up, and Joe stood, and they walked from fire to fire, stopping to speak to the other Saints.

Anne crawled into the tent and curled into a ball to keep warm and dozed a little, wondering if more rescuers would arrive that day or if, as was rumored, they had abandoned their search and gone back to the valley. If that was the case, then the handcarters would all die. There was not food enough left for the days ahead, and many of the people could no longer walk. She did not want to be a martyr, especially when she was not a Mormon.

She heard John return and got to her knees and crawled out of the tent. John was alone. “The children?” she asked, and it hit her then that Lucy was dead, that the cold had taken her. It cannot be, she thought. God had taken Emma Lee and Samuel. He would not take Lucy. He would not be so cruel. “The children?” she asked again, her voice dead.

John looked up at her quickly. “Why, they are fine. Joe got into a snowball fight with his fellows, and Lucy jumped up and down and begged to join in. They will be here shortly.” Anne saw the little girl running toward her and thought of such small acts were Mormon miracles made.

*   *   *

Many of the Saints who hoped to ride in the wagons were turned away. Nannie Macintosh was one of the lucky ones. She’d secured a place for the trip from Devil’s Gate, across the Sweetwater, to Martin’s Ravine, because her feet were so painful that she couldn’t stand on them. She’d barely been able to walk the last few days to Devil’s Gate, and when she’d tried to get up that morning, she’d fallen down from the pain.

“We dinna mean to leave ye,” Andrew had said earlier in the day as he reached to lift Nannie into their cart. Although she weighed barely a hundred pounds—the weight of the sacks of flour the emigrants had once pulled on their carts—she knew she was too much for Andrew to push, since he alone propelled the cart. So Nannie had insisted she would find space in the wagon, and she did. Andrew carried her to the vehicle and set her down in the wagon bed, wrapping a blanket around her. “Hae a care. It is colder riding than walking, and ye could freeze.”

“Shall I walk beside ye?” Ella asked, but Nannie shook her head. She didn’t want her sister to know how she suffered. Because of her feet, she had not slept the night before, and now she wondered how much longer she could take the throbbing. Ella herself was in misery, fearful she would lose the baby, and she shouldn’t have to worry about Nannie, too. So Nannie told her sister to go with Andrew and said they would meet in camp. If I live, Nannie thought. She might die crossing the Sweetwater, and so great was her pain that she didn’t care. She would go to heaven and live with the angels and meet the Lord, but oh, she would miss her sister. How could it be heaven if Ella wasn’t there?

The wagon started off, the jolting adding to Nannie’s despair. She was crowded into the wagon bed with other Saints, many in worse shape than she was. Some of them moaned. A few cried or swore, but most were stoic, for, like Nannie, they wondered if this were their last day on earth, and if that were so, they did not want the Lord to know they had spent it uttering curses and lamentations. Many were preparing themselves for heaven.

“I dare say the riding is better than walking,” a woman said to no one in particular. Nannie turned to agree and saw that a bloody rag was wrapped around the woman’s hand. The fingers were gone. Likely they had frozen and fallen off. The woman’s nose was black, and Nannie wondered if it would have to be cut off, too.

“The Lord tries us,” Nannie said.

“He tries us too much,” another woman muttered. Her eyes were feverish, and when she coughed, the sound came from deep in her throat.

“Have you a potato?” asked a girl who appeared to be eight or nine years old. Nannie could not tell what ailed her.

“They were used up long since. Where are your folks?” Nannie asked.

“They crossed over before Fort Laramie. Just my brother and me’s left, and he died last night. Now there’s only me. He died stiffer’n a ironed shirt.” She seemed to like the analogy and repeated it, “Stiffer’n a ironed shirt.”

“Who cares for ye?” Nannie asked.

“Me.”

“But ye are so young?”

“Who’s to do for me, then?”

Nannie thought she ought to offer to take the girl in, but she couldn’t walk. How could she take care of a stranger? Perhaps that was another burden the Lord had given her, and Nannie decided to speak up, but before she could, the lady with the bloody bandage said, “I will. I’ve lost two children and would fancy a daughter to replace them. If that doesn’t suit, we’ll find a home for you in the valley.”

“You’d be my ma?”

“I would.”

The girl crawled over to the woman, touching one of Nannie’s feet in the process, and pain shot up Nannie’s leg. Then the child looked up at the Saint who had promised to care of her and said, “I could be your good hand.”

At that, Nannie swallowed hard, and she turned away and laid her head against the side of the wagon, and after a time, she slept. When she awoke, her hair was frozen to the wagon, and as she had nothing with which to cut it, she yanked her head until the hair broke off. They were crossing the Sweetwater then, and the jolting of the wagon on the river bottom pained her feet. She put her hand into her mouth and bit down on it until the blood ran. She knew she should take off her shoes and examine her feet, but she was afraid of what she would see. She knew her feet had blistered. But now they might be black, and Nannie would rather die than have them cut off.

When the wagon reached Martin’s Ravine, one of the rescuers lifted Nannie off the wagon and carried her to a shelter to wait for Ella and Andrew. As evening came on, Andrew and Ella found her, and Andrew carried her to where the two had left their cart. She winced when Andrew set her down, and he and Ella exchanged glances before he said, “I must look at your feet.”

“No,” Nannie told him.

“They may be frozen.”

“If they are, ye’ll not cut them off. I won’t lose my feet.”

“Ye would die. Ye’d rather die?”

“Aye. It’s no trouble to die.”

“You can’t, Nannie,” Ella said, kneeling beside her sister.

“What good would I be without feet? Do ye think Levi would marry me then?” She had not seen Levi in two or three days, and she worried that he had taken sick or even died.