Chapter Nine
Nathan straightened, and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. It came away stained and wet. He turned and eyed the progress they had made so far that morning. The four of them—Matthew, Nathan, Derek, and Peter—had taken their shoes off and left them on a dry hump of ground, had rolled their pant legs up to their knees, and now were standing in water and muck above their ankles. They were at the east end of a long ditch that ran straight as an arrow through the swampy terrain, ending where the riverbank dropped off to the water’s edge. This was the third ditch they had started in the past week. Two more main channels and a couple of short laterals, and they would have pretty well covered the ten-acre plot of farmland that had been allocated to Derek by the committee Joseph had appointed to arrange for the distribution of land.
Derek saw that Nathan had stopped and he straightened too, holding his back as he arched it stiffly. “Get one of them new John Deere steel plows and a good team,” he observed, “and we could dig this ditch in an hour and a half.”
“If you didn’t mind losing the team,” Nathan said dryly. The land around them was a treacherous place for a man, let alone a team. There were swampy bogs, low hillocks of dry, matted grass, numerous ponds—large and small—of open, standing water. One could step onto what looked like solid ground and have it give way to a deep, black, grasping mud beneath. The muck was usually only a couple of feet deep, and the quip about losing the team was an obvious exaggeration, but this was no place for working horses.
Worst were the swarms of mosquitoes. The full heat of summer had brought them out in huge swarming clouds. They settled on any living thing like soot from a fire, driving livestock and man alike to near madness. The four of them wore wide-brimmed hats, and kept neckerchiefs tied around their necks. Their faces were smeared with black mud, leaving only the pink of their lips and the white circles around their eyes showing. This helped, but not totally.
A movement caught Nathan’s eye. He lifted a hand and pointed. “Hey! There’s Jenny.”
Matthew looked up in surprise, turning in the direction Nathan was looking. Sure enough, it was Jenny, coming toward them, picking her way carefully around the bogs, trying to stay on the faint path the men had made as they came through the swampy area.
“Is it time to eat already?” Peter asked, glancing up at the sun.
Derek pulled a large rag from his back pocket and wiped his forehead. “No, it’s not even eleven o’clock yet.”
Jenny saw that they were looking at her and waved.
Matthew waved back. “Careful,” he called. “That spot by the cattails is really soggy.”
Jenny had a large rag in one hand that she constantly waved back and forth in front of her face, trying to ward off the hordes of mosquitoes. As she came up next to where their shoes were, she stopped dead and began to laugh. “I’m sorry,” she started, deadpan, but then she couldn’t hold it and began giggling again. “I thought you were somebody I knew.” She turned away, feigning confusion.
Matthew pulled a face at her and stuck his shovel into the soft mud. “Very funny. The mud keeps the mosquitoes off,” he said, climbing out of the ditch to stand beside her. Without thinking, he reached up and slapped at his cheek. When his hand came away, there was a tiny patch of blood and a squashed mosquito there.
Jenny laughed, then reached out, took his arm, lifted it to his cheek, and wiped the spot off with his sleeve. “I see,” she said soberly.
“What brings you out here?”
She got instantly serious. “Joshua and Caroline are back.”
Nathan, Derek, and Peter had stopped working to watch. “Already?” Nathan asked in surprise. Joshua and Caroline had helped them move up to Commerce, then returned to St. Louis to wrap up affairs there. It was only the first of July. Joshua had talked as though it would take him as long as August to get back.
“Yes. He’s got two wagonloads of lumber and shingles. Father Steed says to come home. He wants to try and get cabins roofed before we get another rainstorm. He says the ditches will have to wait.”
“Two loads,” Derek said, sloshing down the ditch, then jumping out beside Matthew. “That’s great. Joshua has a way, doesn’t he?”
Nathan also climbed out of the ditch, then turned to give Peter a pull up as well. As they all came together, Matthew lifted his left leg and examined it closely, then rolled down the pant leg. He did the same with the other. He moved to Derek and then suddenly stopped, looking at the back of his legs. “Bloodsucker, Derek,” he said. He stepped to him. “Hold still.”
Jenny turned to look and saw the slimy green blob, about an inch and a half long, attached to Derek’s flesh just below the back of the knee joint. It was a swamp leech. She shuddered as Matthew leaned over, pulled it off, and dropped it to the ground. It left a raw spot tinged with blood where it had been. Peter picked up the nearest shoe and crushed the leech beneath the heel.
Matthew wiped his feet off on the grass, then sat down and began to pull his socks on. Peter and Nathan checked each other for leeches as Derek sat beside Matthew. As they put on their shoes, Jenny surveyed their morning’s labors. “Phew!” she said, wrinkling her nose. “This stinks worse than I thought.”
“Yeah,” Derek agreed. “It’s bad enough anytime, but digging into it doesn’t help.”
“Is it going to work?” she asked dubiously.
Matthew’s head bobbed quickly up and down and he pointed to the nearest ditch. “Look. You can see water trickling toward the river. It’s not much, but it’s draining, all right.”
Derek turned and looked too. “Give it two weeks and this land will be ready to plow. And what land it’s gonna be. Look at that soil. Look how black it is.”
Matthew looked at Derek incredulously. “Two weeks? Tell you what. In two weeks, you plow, I’ll watch.”
Derek reconsidered. “All right, maybe two weeks isn’t enough. Let’s give it fourteen days.”
Jenny laughed as Matthew just shook his head. Besting Derek took some doing, even from Matthew. She smiled at this black-faced Englishman. “By the way, Rebecca came down with me. She and Mother Steed are waiting for us by the big tree.”
“Rebecca came?” Derek asked, surprised.
“Yes. She fed Christopher and he went right back to sleep, so she left him with Rachel.”
Derek grinned proudly. “That’s all that boy does is eat and sleep.”
“Be grateful,” Nathan laughed. “Elizabeth Mary is over a year old now, and still sleeps through the night only about half the time.”
Matthew carefully wiped his hand on his pants, then took Jenny’s hand. “Let’s go down to the river first, and we’ll wash this mud off.”
When they reached the river, Jenny stood beside them and talked as they splashed water on their faces and arms. “Caroline said they’ve found them a house to rent in Quincy and that Joshua has already started work on a corral and stable so he can bring his teams up. They brought the girls with them.”
Matthew half frowned as he stood up. “So Olivia’s here too?”
Jenny laughed merrily and slipped her arm through his. “Yes. So there’ll be no holding hands when she’s around.”
The others laughed, but Matthew didn’t find it that amusing. He blew out his breath in a little expression of frustration. “Jennifer Jo, Olivia is just going to have to get used to the idea of you and me. She’s not even twelve yet, for heaven’s sake. Does she really think I can wait that long for her to grow up?”
She shook her head, giving him a chiding look. “Don’t be too hard on her, Matthew. When you’re almost twelve and deeply in love, reality seems far away.”
Matthew pulled a face, but Jenny just laughed again. “Come, your mother and Rebecca are waiting for us.”
Nathan and his mother walked along, arm in arm. The July sun was hot and the air heavy and still. Beads of moisture stood out on Nathan’s forehead, and the back of his shirt was dark with sweat. Jenny, Matthew, and Peter—still young and full of energy—had gone on ahead and were almost to the homesite. Derek and Rebecca were a few paces behind Nathan and his mother. Christopher Joseph Ingalls had been born only three weeks before and Rebecca wasn’t back up to full strength yet. Equally weighty in slowing her step was the knowledge that Derek would soon be leaving her. Joseph Smith had called a meeting for the morrow so that he could give the Apostles their instructions before they departed. Derek would leave with them, which meant Rebecca’s time with him was very limited now. So she savored every opportunity to be with him alone.
The leisurely pace was fine with Mary Ann. They were moving up a slight rise, and the long, sweeping curve of the Mississippi was visible behind them. She loved the view from here. On the far side of the river—the Iowa side—she could see evidence of settlement there. Commerce had only one stone house and a scattering of cabins when the Saints began to arrive, so many of them had crossed the river to Montrose. Old Fort Des Moines was there, and they found temporary shelter in the deserted barracks. Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff lived in Montrose, along with some of the other leaders. Joseph had purchased large tracts of land on that side of the river too and encouraged the Saints to build a settlement there as well.
She lowered her gaze again. In every direction, the landscape was verdant and lush. Willows and cottonwoods formed a darker line near the water. Elsewhere a hundred different shades of green caressed the eye. And through it, just starting to really take form, were the dark black slashes of the drainage ditches—dozens of them—that the men were digging.
Directly ahead of them was the Steed homesite. Land in Commerce had been divided into building lots large enough to have a home and an ample garden plot, perhaps even an animal or two. Each able-bodied Saint was charged five hundred dollars for a lot. Under Joseph’s direction, those who had suffered the most in Missouri were given their lots free of charge. Joshua had purchased six lots for the Steeds; Caroline had acquired an additional one for the store, two blocks away from where the houses would be. Cabins, waiting now only for the roofs to be shingled, occupied four of the six lots.
The smallest would be Benjamin and Mary Ann’s. It had one main room with a stone fireplace on one end; and then off the back wall there was a small room, barely big enough for two beds, where Peter and Matthew slept. It wasn’t much, but it was sufficient to begin with. Next to it on the south was Nathan and Lydia’s home. Since they had four children, it was almost twice as big, but still had only two rooms and an attic loft. Across the street from that one was Derek and Rebecca’s. It was closer to the size of Benjamin’s, but they had built it in such a way that it could be easily expanded as Christopher got additional brothers and sisters.
Jessica’s cabin was the largest of the four. Like Nathan and Lydia, she too had four children, but—over her protests about getting special treatment—the family had decided to add an extra room on the back. It would be a place to hold school when fall came. At night it also served as Jenny and Kathryn’s bedroom. Nancy McIntire was a proud woman, and though the Steeds begged her to come north with them, she refused to do so until she could get enough money to make her own way. She did agree to let the girls come, for they could earn their board and room by helping Jessica and Lydia care for the children, but she herself remained behind in Quincy for now.
Beside Derek’s home, one of the two additional lots would be for Joshua and Caroline, and—if all went as planned—the other would be for Melissa and Carl. The lot for the store was on the corner of what promised to become a major intersection in the town. With cash at a premium, the land allocation committee had been so pleased with Joshua and Caroline’s cash purchase, they had insisted on giving them that lot for the store.
As Mary Ann let her eyes come all the way around to the east where the land rose to form gentle bluffs, she was struck again with the activity that was everywhere present. There was an amazing number of structures under construction. Log cabins, sod huts, frame homes, stone houses, barns, sheds, stables—they dotted the landscape everywhere one looked.
Mary Ann marveled at how quickly things were happening. Today was the first day of July. It had not yet been a full two months since they had sat in general conference and heard Brother Joseph ask them to come north. Ever one to set the example, less than a week later Joseph, along with Emma and their children, moved into one of the few standing cabins at Commerce, which was quickly dubbed the “Old Homestead.” That settled it for most of the members. If Brother Joseph moved north, they would follow. And for the past six weeks they had streamed upriver.
It had been a busy time for the Steeds as well. In addition to clearing and draining Derek’s acreage, and building four cabins, they had been blessed with the arrival of a new family member: on the tenth day of June, Rebecca Steed Ingalls had given birth to a healthy son, the first baby from a Latter-day Saint family to be born in the settlement of Commerce.
“It’s really something, isn’t it?” Nathan said.
Mary Ann looked up and saw that he too was looking at the frenzy of activity going on around them. “It really is,” she said. That reminded her of something. “By the way, did you hear what Joseph is thinking of calling our new city?”
“No, what?”
Rebecca and Derek had closed the gap between them and were right behind them. Rebecca heard her question and was interested too. “I thought it already had a name.”
Mary Ann shook her head. “Joseph says Commerce is all right for a small river settlement, but he wants a name fitting for a city of the Saints.”
“So what is it?” Derek asked.
“Nauvoo.”
“Nauvoo?” Rebecca echoed, repeating the name slowly.
“Yes. N-A-U-V-O-O. Nah-vuh.” She exaggerated the pronunciation a little to cement it into their minds. “It’s a Hebrew word, he says. He says it means ‘beautiful.’ It also, according to him, carries with it the idea of rest.”
“Nauvoo,” Rebecca mused. “Yes, I like it.”
Nathan slapped at the back of his neck but missed the mosquito. “Well, it
is
beautiful except for the unclean air.”