The Fugitive Son (2 page)

“Can’t have anything happening to the prettiest Condit in the crowd,” he had joked when he volunteered to come along. “Besides, maybe I’ll find me a young lady out there in the wilds and settle down.”

Elsie smiled, remembering their conversation when she had tried to dissuade him from traveling with her. “Maybe a pretty Spanish senorita will set her sights on you!” she had teased him.

“From what I hear, that wouldn’t be such a bad bargain!” Isaac laughed – a deep throaty chuckle that was almost his calling card.

When her brothers had heard that Isaac planned to accompany her, they were glad but worried. “It will be like old times to have Isaac with us in New Mexico,” Ned had written, “and I am happy that you will have someone to look after you.” That part had raised Elsie’s hackles. She wasn’t a child who needed looking after! But the rest of Ned’s letter had been troubling as he warned about the dangers for Isaac.

Their journey would eventually take them through “Bleeding Kansas,” where the slavers and free-staters were battling over whether the territory should be admitted to the Union as a slave state. Isaac could get caught up in all the violence.

Elsie and Isaac had discussed the situation, especially the possibility of an unscrupulous ruffian hoping to make a profit by trying to sell Isaac back into slavery. But Isaac wasn’t to be deterred. He reminded Elsie of all the dangers he had faced helping her father conduct escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad. “The good Lord will protect me, just as he has in the past,” he had said. Nonetheless, he had insisted that when the time came, he would pose as Elsie’s slave so no one would get any greedy ideas.

Pulling a few weeds from her parents’ graves, Elsie wondered once again if she was doing the right thing. It was hard enough to leave River Bend, but she would never forgive herself if something happened to Isaac.

He again broke into her reverie, reaching down to lend her a hand. “We really should be going, Miss Elsie,” he repeated.

“It’s just Elsie,” she said, laying her hand on his arm. “You’re a free man. You don’t have to act the slave – at least not when it’s just the two of us.”

He smiled down at her. “We’ll see. But for now, we need to go back to the house to pick up your things. There’s not much time.”

Elsie gave one last, long look around the cemetery, then bent low to kiss her parents’ graves. “Goodbye, Mama and Papa,” she whispered.

June 1857
Devil’s Gate

“A
IN’T IT
‘bout time them relief wagons was gettin’ here? We’ve been holed up in this God-awful place for more than six months!”

Andy turned wearily toward Brother Walters. “It wouldn’t seem near so long if you’d quit your bellyaching and complaining. The prophet promised to send somebody back for us as soon as it was spring.”

Walters snorted. “The prophet, hah! It’s been spring in Great Salt Lake for a couple of months already, and I don’t see no relief wagons.”

Much as he hated to admit it, Andy was afraid Walters was right. The winter in the mail cabin at Devil’s Gate had seemed endless – twenty cold, hungry men trying to survive with nothing to pass the time but bickering and an occasional forage onto the treeless plain in search of nonexistent wild game. He looked around the dingy cabin at the men leaning listlessly against the rough log walls. Once strong and full of life, they were now gaunt skeletons, with their eyes protruding from hollow sockets. Why hadn’t the relief wagons come as promised?

When the prophet had sent the first relief party from Great Salt Lake City in November to rescue the stranded handcart travelers, Andy and nine other men – the healthiest survivors of the ill-fated cross-country journey – were selected to stay at Devil’s Gate to guard the possessions that had to be left behind. Ten of the rescuers also offered to stay so there would be room for the rest of the bedraggled survivors to make the return trip to the Promised Land.

Andy glanced ruefully at the stuff piled in one corner of the cabin. There didn’t seem to be anything worth looking after. The families forced to travel by handcart had had to sell everything of value at Fort Laramie so they could buy food to keep from starving to death. Most of the travelers hadn’t had that much to start with.

Following Andy’s gaze, Walters continued his rant. “Ain’t nothin’ in that pile worth risking our necks for,” he griped. “But that’s just more of Brigham’s folly – give ‘em something to do. Make ‘em feel important. That sorta stuff.”

Brother Rigby fingered the knife hanging from his belt. “Careful there, Walters. Yer getting mighty close to apostasy.”

“Yeah,” Brother Ricks cautioned. “Hold your tongue. Men have been sent to paradise for saying less. You can’t criticize the prophet.”

Walters spat. “Prophet, my eye. Brigham ain’t no prophet. An’ he’s not the voice of God. He’s just a man who makes mistakes. And this handcart business is one of his stupidest ones. We’re stranded here, starving to death with nothin’ to eat but boiled rawhide, and he’s livin’ it up with all his pretty young wives.”

Andy drew in his breath. Walters was on dangerous ground.

“That’s blasphemy!” Rigby shouted as he headed for Walters, his knife drawn. “What more do we need to hear, men? Let’s slit his throat so we can save his eternal soul.”

The men mobbed around the hapless complainer, dragging him outside the cabin.

“Wait, fellas,” Andy protested. “We’re all pretty frazzled. I’m sure Brother Walters is not in his right mind. Let’s stop and think this through.”

Rigby shoved him aside. “Better one man be sacrificed for the good of the church. An’ it’s for his own good, too.”

Andy tried again. “But we’re not barbarians. We’re Saints, the Lord’s own Saints. I say it’s time we acted like it an’ showed a little compassion.”

“Compassion’s got no place for them who criticize the prophet, the Living Word of God!” someone shouted. “Let’s do him in!”

Helpless against the frenzied mob, Andy stood aside as the men dug a grave in the spring-softened mud. It was amazing how their energy returned when they had something to occupy their minds, Andy thought. Knowing what was coming, he was reluctant to watch and yet unable to turn away.

His hands tied behind his back, Walters was forced to sit on the edge of his grave. Rigby, wiping his knife against his coat, knelt down next to him. “Prepare for paradise, Brother Walters. You must atone for your sin by spilling your blood – it’s the only way.”

Andy’s stomach tightened as he watched Rigby plunge the knife into Walters’ neck and draw it quickly across his throat. He heard a gasp and a gurgle, then a thud as Walters’ body fell into the shallow hole.

Andy rushed behind the cabin, physically ill. It wouldn’t do for the others to see him losing what little breakfast he’d eaten. His stomach knotted and lurched in wrenching heaves for what seemed an eternity. He could hear the others laughing and joking as they filled in the grave, apparently so caught up in their celebrating they hadn’t noticed his absence.

The execution seemed to bring renewed life to the men. Several of them left the camp in yet another hunt for food. Others stayed behind to build a fire from sagebrush and bits of wood they tore off the mail cabin. “We’re going to eat tonight,” Ricks promised. “Now that we’ve rid the camp of the apostate, the Lord’s face will shine upon us.”

Andy couldn’t join in the festivities. The cruel death of Walters had shaken him to the depths of his being. How could killing a man make a Saint feel so jubilant, so victorious? He sat close to the fire reading and rereading his Book of Mormon, trying to find solace in it. The words rambled across the pages, saying nothing. It was as though a terrible darkness had plunged into his soul, just as the knife had plunged into Walters’ neck.

“Reading the Good Book?” Ricks drew up a rock and joined Andy at the fire. “Never read it much myself,” he admitted. “But the Prophet Joseph said it’s the most perfect book ever written and the only way to Celestial Glory.”

“Then why don’t you read it?”

“Don’t read anything much. I figure I learn everything I need to know by listening to Prophet Brigham and the apostles. They know what the book says.” He studied Andy intently. “Today the first blood atonement you’ve seen?”

Startled by the sudden change of conversation, Andy drew back. “Yes,” he said quietly.

“But you do know it’s the only way, don’t you? The prophet says there are sins that a man has to atone for by shedding his own blood. I heard him say it many times.”

Andy sat silently, unable to think of anything to say. He had heard of blood atonement and had even met some of the Danites, the Avenging Angels, in Nauvoo. But they killed the church’s enemies, not the Saints.

As if reading his thoughts, Ricks added, “Sometimes our enemies are within. We must rid the church of evil before it spreads. The first man I ever used up was one of them mobocrats in Missouri – that wasn’t to save his soul, but to rid the world of evil. Then Prophet Joseph asked me to take care of Brother Jamison back in Nauvoo. He was a traitor, spying for the Illinois militia.”

Andy laid the Book of Mormon on the ground. Heart pounding, he asked, “Are you a Danite?”

Ricks laughed. “Now what would a young feller like you know about the Danites? They’re just an old church myth, you know.”

“A church myth?” With more daring than thought, Andy said, “Wonder if it brings comfort to a man facing your knife to know that you’re just an old church myth.”

Ricks threw back his head and laughed loudly. “I like you, young man! We can use spunk like that in our ranks. How’d you like to join the myth?”

“I don’t know.…”

“Save a wicked man’s soul by spilling his blood and raise your own self up in the process. Salvation for the victim and exaltation for the slayer. It’s a good deal for both parties,” Ricks said. “How can you fault it?”

Andy stood up. “Reckon I’ll have to think on it awhile. But thanks for the offer.”

That night, Andy’s tortured mind denied him the escape of sleep. Lying on his bed – a pile of sagebrush covered with a counterpane of old newspapers – he relived the day’s events. How could such a killing be the will of God? But if Brigham Young were really the mouthpiece of the Lord, how could Andy doubt his teachings? Over and over, his mind played over everything he knew about the Danites. Tales of the bravado of Danites like Bill Hickman and Porter Rockwell flashed through his memory. Back in Nauvoo, those men had been the stuff legends were made of, the heroes of every young Mormon boy.

He shuddered. Tales and legends were a far cry from actually watching a man’s throat slit and hearing the last breath gurgle from his body. And for what? Simply because he’d had a belly full of troubles and the audacity to complain about it? If the truth were told, probably most of the men who wintered at Devil’s Gate secretly harbored some of the same complaints and doubts.

Thinking back over the ill-conceived handcart journey, Andy remembered how time after time he had urged the leaders to wait until spring, how he and others had tried to persuade them that the flimsy handcarts would break down, that many of the Danish and English immigrants were too old or feeble to walk across the Plains pulling their duffel in the carts. But no one had listened. The path of graves across the Mormon Trail and now the trench outside the mail cabin with its fill of frozen bodies were mute evidence that the leaders should have heeded him.

“We don’t question our leaders.” Pa’s voice came to him in the darkness. Pa had drilled that into him from the time he was a young’un. “When the leaders speak, the thinking has been done,” Pa always said. But what thinking? How much thought had gone into this terrible tragedy that sent hundreds to an early grave? That had taken Anne Marie’s precious life from him?

Andy turned over on his pallet. “I will not doubt. Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Lord, and Brigham Young is the voice of God.” Startled, Andy sat up in bed to hear who had spoken, only to realize he had said the words aloud.

Lying back down, Andy muttered the words of his testimony over and over, trying to feel the assurance they usually gave him. Tonight, however, the testimony failed to give him the “burning in his bosom” he had come to recognize as the spirit of God. Instead, each time he repeated, “I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Lord,” a small inner voice challenged,
How do you know? What proof, if any, do you have?