Without a word, Will turned and walked to the door of the second bedroom, where he and Olivia slept. When he reached it, he stopped. “Mama?” He spoke without turning around.
“Yes, Will?”
“I’ll see you and Livvy and Savannah safely to Georgia. Then I’m coming back.”
Caroline nearly dropped a knife. “You’re what?” she blurted.
“If those men can find
us,
then I can find them. You heard Mr. Samuelson. He’s going to try and find out all about them. When I come back, he’ll know something.”
She laid down a dish very carefully, still staring at him in utter amazement. “He’s doing that so he can send word to Obadiah Cornwell, Will. Obadiah will know what to do. These are dangerous men, Will. And you are only fourteen! Don’t be insane.”
His back only stiffened. “By the time my first father was fourteen, he had sailed back and forth to England three times.”
“Will . . .” She couldn’t finish. He had shocked her so deeply the words wouldn’t come.
“Come on, Livvy,” Will said quietly. “Let’s get things packed.” And with that, he walked into the bedroom without looking back at his mother.
* * *
“Jenny, I can’t do that without asking your mother.”
Her head bobbed back, the light brown hair bouncing softly. “My mother?” Her mouth twisted in puzzlement. “I just want to read your book, Matthew. Why should you ask my mother about that?”
Matthew looked over at Joshua for help. But he was not paying any attention to either of them. He was in a chair in front of the fireplace, his bad leg stretched out so that it caught the fulness of the heat. He had been staring steadily into the flames for the last ten minutes.
“Tell her, Joshua.”
He looked up. “Tell her what?”
“She wants to read my Book of Mormon. I told her I can’t let her do that without asking her mother.”
Joshua frowned immediately. “That’s right, Jenny.”
“But why? I just want to see what it says.”
Matthew blew out his breath. This dealing with a woman’s mind was a new experience for him. So he started again, slowly and patiently. “Being a Mormon in Missouri right now is not a wonderful thing. And—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Matthew, I don’t want to be a Mormon. I just want to read in your book.”
“And,” he continued stubbornly, “your mother has taken a great risk by taking us into her home. We owe her a great deal, and I won’t be doing anything behind her back.”
“Matthew’s right, Jenny,” Joshua said, coming fully back to their company now. “Your family is—”
She threw up her hands, blue eyes flashing angrily. “Oh, what’s the use? I don’t want to read your old book anyway.” She stood and flounced angrily off into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
Kathryn stood up and sidled up to Matthew. “She really does,” she said in the kind of conspiratorial whisper only a twelve-year-old was capable of. “She’s just like that when she doesn’t get her way.”
Joshua reached down and picked up his crutch. He hauled himself up and hobbled over to the front door. He took his coat down. “I’m going to take another turn around the house,” he said, “get some fresh air.”
Matthew pulled his head around, wanting to deal with something he could handle. “You’re getting pretty good with that,” he smiled. “Are you getting any more feeling in your leg?”
Joshua reached down and rubbed his hand up and down his left thigh. “Maybe a little,” he said hopefully. Instantly he sobered again. “Matthew? Don’t ask.”
Matthew’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Don’t ask what?”
Joshua spoke gently. “Don’t ask Mrs. McIntire about the Book of Mormon. That’s not going to help them. Not now. Not here. The McIntires are Catholics. They already have religion. You don’t have to make them into Mormons.”
Matthew watched him steadily for a moment, then finally nodded glumly. “I know,” he murmured.
Putting on his coat, Joshua gave Matthew a nod, opened the door, and stepped outside. He stood there for a moment, breathing in deeply the crisp afternoon air. One hand came up and rubbed at his beard. He would make ten circles around the yard and outbuildings today. Yesterday it had been six. Two days before that, only three. Day after tomorrow it would be exactly three weeks since he had been shot. And there was still no answer from Caroline. He couldn’t delay much longer.
* * *
Benjamin looked down at the weevil floating on the top of the watery stew. With hardly a second thought, he began to dip out the ones he could see and toss them aside. He was too tired and cold and hungry to care much anymore. The bread tasted moldy, but there again, he hardly hesitated. For the past three meals there had been no bread, and right now it tasted wonderful.
He looked up and Joseph was grinning at him.
Surprised, Benjamin stopped what he was doing. “What?”
“You’re becoming quite the expert at that, Brother Ben.”
Benjamin looked down in his bowl, then at the spattering on the floor where he had been tossing the unwanted portions. “I guess I am.”
“We all are,” Hyrum said. He rubbed his thick whiskers ruefully. “Straining things out of my soup is a talent I never knew I had.”
Benjamin didn’t laugh. The battle against despair was endless now, and humor had little place in it. It was Tuesday, November twentieth. They had been in jail and undergoing “trial” for seven days now. They had spent another fruitless, spirit-crushing day before Judge Austin King and the mob that surrounded him. Now they were back in their “cell” in the vacant house. The guards were just outside, eating a decent meal brought by the towns-people. The prisoners welcomed the chance to talk freely.
They ate in silence for a time, then Joseph turned to Benjamin again. “Brother Ben, do you remember a conversation you and I had a few weeks ago, not long after Thomas Marsh left us?”
Benjamin lowered his spoon and nodded. He remembered it well, thought of it often. “Yes. I asked you why all of these things were happening to us. I also remember your answer. You said the Lord would have a pure people so that his work could be done.”
Benjamin looked around. Here they were in a makeshift jail cell, without proper facilities, bound together by chains and padlocks. And their families were forty or fifty miles away, facing who knew what after going through a hellish nightmare. “Is this what it takes?”
There was a short, mirthless laugh. “I guess it is, Ben. I guess it is.”
* * *
The guards assigned to watch the prisoners in the vacant house and also those in the unfinished courthouse building were under the direction of a Colonel Price from Chariton County. He and his unit had been picked by General Clark and Judge King because of their reputation. Some of the militia units who had fought against the Saints in Far West had been moved by the plight of the Mormons and tended to treat them more kindly. There was none of that in Price’s company. They were merciless enemies of the Mormons in general and Joseph Smith in particular.
As the trial progressed, Price and his men quickly saw that Judge King was giving them license for mistreating the prisoners. The slightest hesitation in obeying the guards’ commands—often deliberately vague or contradictory—brought a swift kick or a slap across the face. There was a stream of mockery, abuse, ridicule, profanity, and vulgarity. “Hey, Joe, I’m feelin’ kinda poorly right now. How ’bout a healing?” Or, “Joe Smith, why don’t ya get one of them angels to come in here and help you escape?” Or, “Ol’ Joe, close your eyes and prophesy which one of us will be the lucky one who gets to shoot you dead.”
But on this night, when the guards came back into the house after their dinner, things were especially bad. Even before Benjamin smelled whiskey in the air, it was obvious that Price and his men had gotten a generous ration of liquor as part of their meal. They immediately forced the prisoners to lie down and warned them that one word would bring a rifle butt to the side of their heads.
There was no possibility of sleep. The alcohol made the men even louder and meaner than usual, if that was possible. Nine o’clock passed and they did not tire. Ten and eleven o’clock came and went, and they only got the more boisterous and ugly. There were obscene jests, horrid oaths, the most dreadful of blasphemies, and the filthiest language Benjamin had ever heard.
And then as the hour of midnight neared, the conversation took another, even more terrible turn. Price’s men had been present at the fall of Far West. They began to regale one another with tales of their exploits there. Benjamin’s disgust and revulsion now turned to something else—a sickness in his stomach that made him want to retch.
Murder, robbery, looting, destruction—each man tried to outboast the other, telling more and more horrible stories of what they had done. One bragged of smashing in the head of a young father with his rifle butt. It had fractured his skull but hadn’t killed the man, so they had carried him about in the back of a wagon for two days until he died. Another one said he personally had killed a man while his young son watched.
Benjamin was between Lyman Wight and Parley Pratt. Wight was as rigid as a steel rod, and Benjamin could feel Parley’s body trembling with rage and disgust. On the other side of Parley, Joseph Smith lay on his back. Benjamin raised his head. In the dim light from the one lamp that burned in a far corner, he saw that Joseph’s eyes were open and that he was staring at the ceiling, his jaw clamped shut tightly.
“Well, you boys ain’t done nothin’ like me and Carl Thompson did,” the next voice called out, cackling obscenely. “We came to this one cabin. Thought at first it was empty. Then we found this woman hiding under the bed. She had a young’un, but we drove him out of the house screamin’ and hollerin’. We took her outside and called a bunch of our comrades. She was screamin’ and cryin’ and beggin’ for mercy.”
“And I’ll bet you were real merciful!” someone hooted.
“We were,” he retorted seriously. “We tied her hands down to a bench so she wouldn’t hurt herself thrashing around and all that. Then we—”
There was a sudden and sharp rattle of the chain, and Benjamin saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. His head came up just in time to see Joseph leaping to his feet.
“
Silence, ye fiends of the infernal pit!
”
It was like a clap of thunder, or the roar of a lion as it rides down its prey. The guards jerked around violently, stunned by what they saw before them. Joseph was facing his captors, hands out in front of him, fists clenched into hard balls, his eyes like a flame of fire.
“In the name of Jesus Christ I rebuke you, and command you to be still! I will not live another minute and bear such language. Cease such talk, or you or I die this instant!”
Joseph ceased to speak. He stood fully erect and in terrible majesty. Though he was chained and without a weapon, he was nevertheless unruffled and dignified as an angel.
A rifle clattered to the floor. Benjamin whirled. What he saw was as shocking as Joseph’s sudden eruption. There was absolute silence in the room now. The guards had shrunk back. Their weapons were lowered—one had dropped his rifle completely—and they were quailing like children in front of a furious schoolmaster. Their knees smote together, and their eyes were wide and frightened.
The nearest suddenly dropped off his chair, falling to his knees a few feet in front of Joseph. “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he stammered. “Forgive me, sir.” And with that, he jumped up and slunk out of the room, averting his face from his fellow keepers.
Joseph did not even look at him. He remained standing for what seemed like a very long time but was actually less than a minute. Then he calmly lay back down again and continued to stare up at the ceiling.
One by one the others slunk away, going into the next room or outside to smoke quietly until the changing of the guard. But inside or out, there was not another word of revilement from those men for the remainder of their time of duty.
Chapter Notes
We are indebted to Parley P. Pratt for the account of the rebuke of the guards (see
PPP Auto.,
pp. 179–80). The account in the novel follows closely his description. Parley concluded: “I have seen the ministers of justice, clothed in magisterial robes, and criminals arraigned before them, while life was suspended on a breath . . . ; I have witnessed a Congress in solemn session to give laws to nations; I have tried to conceive of kings, of royal courts, of thrones and crowns; and of emperors assembled to decide the fate of kingdoms; but dignity and majesty have I seen but
once,
as it stood in chains, at midnight, in a dungeon in an obscure village of Missouri” (
PPP Auto.,
p. 180, italics in original).
Chapter 28
“Matthew! Matthew! Wake up! Quick!”
Matthew jerked up, looking around wildly, and nearly cracked his head on the low ceiling above him. The McIntire cabin had one small bedroom above the main room, and a tiny attic loft above that. With Joshua in the main bedroom where the girls usually slept, they now slept with their mother, and Matthew slept above them. The loft was barely long enough for his six-foot form. The ceiling sloped, so even at its highest point he could not sit up fully.
Jenny was kneeling at his side. She was in her long nightdress with a robe over it. Her hair was loose and hung down past her shoulders. It was obvious she too had recently been asleep.
He rubbed his eyes, fighting to come alert. “What is it, Jenny? What’s the matter?”
“Mama says to come quick.” She backed up and started partway down the ladder that led up to the loft. “Hurry, Matthew! Joshua’s gone!”
* * *
As he came down the stairs three at a time, Matthew could see into Joshua’s room. The bed had not been slept in.
He spun around again. “Where is he?”
Mrs. McIntire mutely held out her hand. There was a piece of paper in it. Matthew took the paper and turned to the lamp.
Mrs. McIntire—
How does one repay a gift of the heart? I know in your mind there has never been any expectation of repayment. That is one of the things that make the gift of such great value. I don’t know how, or when, or where, but someday I shall return and say thank you in a proper manner. Until then, know of my great esteem and affection for you and your wonderful daughters.