The tiny hut with its dirt walls and dirt floor and dirt ceiling seemed to shrink with every hour that the gray and gloomy weather persisted. With the fields a mud bog and the roads not much better, there had been no getting away from it either. She longed for some sunlight. She longed to be warm. She longed for a pot of her mother’s hot chicken dumpling soup. She longed for a bath and a chance to let her hair dry enough to brush it out straight again. She would give anything for a chance to sit across a table and talk with her mother or Lydia or Mary Fielding Smith. Any feminine voice. Anyone who knew her and could make her laugh again.
“You didn’t bring me here against my will, Derek,” she said, with a little more tartness to her voice than she had intended. “I wanted to come. I didn’t want to wait until spring.”
“I know, but—” He stopped, so glum it was almost laughable. “I’m just glad your parents can’t see what I’ve brought you to.”
Suddenly the thought of Mary Smith she had had a moment ago filled Rebecca with shame. Mary Fielding had married Hyrum Smith at the very height of the apostasy in Kirtland. In one day she went from single woman to mother of five children, including a six-week-old baby. Within less than a month they were fleeing westward across the frozen plains of Ohio and Illinois, driven out by those who sought the lives of Joseph Smith and any who stood by him. Now she was seven months pregnant. She was due in November, which meant she would have two babies barely a year apart. And yet Rebecca had never seen her the least bit cross. Around others Mary was always teasing or cajoling them until they were laughing out loud and their troubles were forgotten.
Rebecca looked around. If Mary were here, how would she deal with this? That thought was enough to cheer her a little. She wasn’t sure what Mary would do, but she was sure of one thing: Mary wouldn’t be standing here moping around like a kicked dog. A thought popped into Rebecca’s mind and she turned around. “Derek, where’s the Book of Mormon?”
Her voice seemed to startle him. “What?”
“Where’s the Book of Mormon?”
He gave her a strange look. “In the chest. Why?”
She didn’t answer. She walked quickly over to the small chest they kept at the foot of the bed, opened it, and found the book lying on the top of some other papers. She sat down on the bed, blew on her fingers for a moment, then began thumbing quickly through the pages of the book. It took her a minute but finally she found what she was looking for.
Rebecca gave her husband a fleeting smile. “This is in the book of Alma. It’s one of Mother’s favorite passages.” She looked down and started to read. “ ‘I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive . . .’ ” She let her eye drop a few lines. “ ‘Always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive.’ ”
He stood there, looking at her as if she were daft.
She closed the book. “I’ll bet I can think of more things to be thankful for than you can.”
“What?”
She giggled a little, warming up to the game even more now when she saw his bewilderment. She leaned over, touching the bucket of water that was catching the heaviest stream of water from above. “I would like to return thanks to God for the fact that we have rain barrels inside the house as well as outside.”
“Rebecca!” He was clearly exasperated.
“And I’m grateful that mouse didn’t bite my toes last night.”
He smiled in spite of himself.
“That’s two to zero. I’m ahead.” She jumped up quickly and went to him. She reached up and touched the scar on his forehead. “And I’d like to return thanks to God for giving you a head harder than any piece of wood ever made.”
He grabbed her hand. “I beg your pardon.”
Laughing, she pulled away. “And I’m grateful he broke your left arm and not the arm you hold me with.” She cocked her head impishly at him. “That’s four. You’re falling behind, Mr. Ingalls.”
He gave her a sharp look, then finally smiled. “All right. I’m . . .” He looked around. “I’m grateful that we don’t have to worry about the water warping the boards on our floor.”
She squealed with delight. “Bravo! Four to one. And I’d like to return thanks to the Lord for having the grass on our sod roof only grow upwards. Otherwise, we’d have to cut our ceiling.”
Derek roared. Rebecca tried to keep a straight face, but couldn’t hold it and started to giggle again.
He spun around, his eyes darting. “Oh, and I’m grateful that the Lord didn’t bless you with a stronger pair of lungs, or Peter and I wouldn’t have any eardrums after you saw the mouse last night.”
She slapped at his good arm. “Not true!” she cried.
“Five to two,” he said. “And I’m also grateful for . . .”
Five minutes later when Peter opened the door and stepped inside the hut, shaking the water off the umbrella, he stopped dead. Derek and Rebecca were sitting on the edge of the bed, convulsed with laughter. The sight of his face only set them off again and they fell back, holding their stomachs.
“What is going on?” Peter said when they finally subsided a little.
Both of them just shook their heads as they sat up again. Finally, Derek got control of himself enough to speak. “It’s a long story. We were just talking about being thankful, that’s all.” He chuckled to himself as he reached out and took Rebecca’s hand. Then he looked back at his brother. “Was there any mail today?”
Peter reached inside his coat and withdrew a letter. He was beaming. “Yes, I got a letter from Jessica.”
Rebecca stood up. “Really? How nice.”
Peter tossed the umbrella to one side and opened the envelope quickly. “She and John are going to Father Steed’s on Saturday the twenty-ninth. They’re going to stay over for Sunday services in Far West.” He paused for a moment; then excitement filled his voice. “She wants to know if we could come down too. She says if we do, she could give me my first school lessons. Can we go, Derek? Please, can we go?”
* * *
By the middle of September, rumors among the Missourians as well as the Mormons were flying as thickly as a plague of locusts, and it became increasingly difficult to discern truth from story. Di-Ahman was going to be attacked. The Mormons were arming themselves under the banner of “the Armies of Israel.” The mobs were taking prisoners and torturing them. The Mormons were in a state of uprising and were looting and pillaging the countryside. The call to arms went out in every direction.
And with increasing frequency, rumor fueled reaction. A wagonload of arms was sent north to the citizens of Daviess County. The Mormons learned of it, intercepted it, and took two prisoners. The very men who had sent for the illegal weapons now screamed foul. Though the prisoners were released a few days later and the arms eventually returned to General Atchison, the word that the Mormons were in open rebellion was sent to Jefferson City with desperate cries for help from Governor Boggs. Roving bands of both Mormons and Missourians covered the countryside, often coming together to shout insults and threats at one another. By day and by night, the situation deteriorated. Cattle were rustled, stock shot, hogs run off, haystacks fired. On the twenty-fifth of September, General Parks, not known as being a friend to the Saints, wrote a report to Governor Boggs: “Whatever may have been the disposition of the people called Mormons, before our arrival here, since we have made our appearance, they have shown no disposition to resist the laws or of hostile intentions. There has been so much prejudice and exaggeration concerned in this matter, that I found things entirely different from what I was prepared to expect. When we arrived here, we found a large body of men from the counties adjoining, armed and in the field, for the purpose, as I learned, of assisting the people of this county against the Mormons, without being called out by the proper authorities.”
There is no record of any reply from Governor Boggs to this report.
General Atchison—commander of the militia in northern Missouri, and Parks’s superior officer—twice wrote to the governor. “Things are not so bad in [Daviess County] as represented by rumor,” he wrote in one letter, “and, in fact, from affidavits I have no doubt your Excellency has been deceived by the exaggerated statements of designing or half crazy men. I have found there is no cause of alarm on account of the Mormons; they are not to be feared; they are very much alarmed.”
He requested that the governor come north and view the situation for himself. There was no reply.
He wrote a second letter asking Boggs to come and review the situation personally. There was no reply.
* * *
“I don’t feel like playin’ this afternoon, Mama.”
Caroline let out her breath. “Olivia, we’ve gone over this again and again. When your father left to go with the militia, you promised him you would practice an hour a day.”
Olivia’s head was down and her hands were in her lap. “I know, Mama,” she said in a low, pleading voice. “I . . . I’ll practice two hours tomorrow.”
“That’s what you say about half the time, Livvy. And you never do. Now, you sit here and get it over with. Then you can go out and play.”
Olivia shook her head stubbornly. “I can’t, Mama. Not today. Besides, I don’t want to go out and play.”
Caroline stood up, totally exasperated. “Your father brought this piano all the way from New York City, Livvy. Do you know what that cost him?” When Olivia didn’t answer but only tucked her chin in more tightly against her chest, Caroline’s frustration only went up. “Do you know how few girls west of the Mississippi have a piano in their home? Do you know how hard I had to look to find someone who could give you piano lessons?”
Olivia turned for just a moment, her long auburn hair swishing across her back. The green eyes that were so like her mother’s were dark and stricken. In November she would turn eleven, but at that moment she looked like she was thirty. “Please don’t make me, Mama.”
Caroline threw up her hands. “You are so stubborn!” she exploded. She walked swiftly to the door of the small parlor, then decided to try another tack. “Livvy, Mrs. Harwood says you are doing very well. You have a natural talent for it. But if you don’t practice, that talent is not ever going to be developed.”
Olivia was staring at her hands, and there was no response.
“Well,” Caroline snapped, “then you can just sit there until you do feel like playing.” She left the room and shut the door hard, rattling the glass in the windows. She started down the hall, thoroughly angry now. Why were her children so stubborn? They were good children but as hardheaded as Missouri mules. Will had always driven her to the point of distraction with his independent nature and free-spirited approach to life. And Olivia had that stubborn streak that no amount of coaxing or threatening could bend.
She shook her head, and a smile came to her lips in spite of herself. And then there was Savannah. At eighteen months, Caroline’s youngest was already putting the other two to shame. More social than an East Coast society matron, Savannah was at her happiest when she was around people. She was not in the least intimidated by adults and would come up to perfect strangers, tug on their dress or coattails, and then, with soft flirtatiousness, look up at them and say, “Hi.” It melted the hardest almost instantly. As saucy and impudent as her fiery red hair, she was a tiny, totally adorable and completely irresistible little tyrant, bending everyone to her will with ridiculous ease.
Caroline stopped, feeling the anger melting away. She loved her children and was fiercely proud of what they were. With the emotions calming now, she turned back and looked at the door. What was the matter with Olivia? This was not like her. She loved the piano, took to it as naturally as a water bug to the swamp.
Puzzled now, Caroline tiptoed back to the door and opened it softly. What she saw brought a quick intake of breath. Olivia still sat on the piano bench, but her face was buried in her hands and her shoulders were shuddering convulsively.
In four steps Caroline was to her and took her in her arms. “Livvy,” she said in alarm, “what’s the matter? What is it, honey?”
Her daughter stood up and threw herself against her mother. For almost a minute, the sobs were too great for Olivia to speak. Caroline just patted her and stroked her hair. Then gradually she got control of herself, and the racking sobs began to subside. Caroline put a finger under her chin, lifting her head. “What is it, Livvy? What happened?”
It came out in a torrent, the words tumbling like stones in a flood. “Elizabeth . . . she said she hates me. And Kathy and Mary. They say they are never going to play with me again.” That brought a new burst of tears.
“But why?” Caroline soothed. “What caused all this?”
Now that the gate had been opened, Olivia couldn’t stop. “They were so hateful, Mama. Elizabeth wouldn’t let me come in the house. She said her mother didn’t allow no Mormon-lovers in their house. They hate me, Mama. They hate me! Mary even threw some dirt at me as I left.”
Caroline had gone cold. “Mormon-lovers?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Olivia cried. “They know about Grandma and Grandpa and all of Papa’s family. They said they’re Mormons, and that means we must love the Mormons. They won’t play with anyone who’s a Mormon-lover.”
Caroline’s mouth had tightened into a thin line. She held her daughter tightly, staring over her head out of the window, not seeing anything. “It’s all right, Livvy,” she murmured. “It’s all right.”
* * *
Jessica and John Griffith arrived at Benjamin Steed’s cabin a little before ten o’clock on the morning of September twenty-ninth. Derek, Rebecca, and Peter, who had left even earlier because they had about twice as far to go, arrived just after noon. Mother Steed had a full dinner on the table waiting by then, and there was little chance for Peter to talk with Jessica. But the moment the meal was finished and the dishes done, he came to her. She was ready for him. She brought out some books and papers, and they spread them out across the table and plunged in. As an only child of one of Palmyra’s wealthier families, Lydia McBride, now Lydia Steed, had received the finest of schooling as a child. So she joined them and quickly became a second tutor to Peter, filling in where Jessica could not.