“What do you think?” he said to Caroline, already knowing the answer.
She smiled, gave one brief nod, then turned to the Wellers. “It’s our home. It’s on Granger Street, between Mulholland and Ripley Streets.”
Both shook their heads. “We’ve only been in Nauvoo since November,” Calvin explained. It was clear that both he and his brother were dazed by what was happening.
“It’s a beautiful home,” Caroline rushed on, turning to the two women. “It’s two stories, all brick. There’s a large barn. Most of the furnishings are still there.” She described the inside of the house quickly.
The Wellers listened to her, then on signal from Calvin stepped back and went into a quick huddle, whispering urgently amongst themselves. As they did so, the Steeds went into a huddle of their own. Nathan looked at Joshua. “I should have asked you first,” he whispered. “But it came in such a rush. I would have offered our home, but we deeded it to the Church trustees in Nauvoo.”
“And I deeded mine to Carl and Melissa,” Derek added.
Joshua was shaking his head. “It’s enough, Nathan.”
Nathan misunderstood. “I’m sorry, Joshua. I didn’t mean to—”
Joshua reached out and took him by the shoulders and stopped him. “It’s enough. We’ll probably never sell the house anyway. Carl will be lucky to get ten cents on the dollar for it.”
“Less, maybe,” Derek said. “John D. Lee told me that the Church trustees got twelve dollars and fifty cents for his house and farm, and he estimates they’re worth about eight thousand dollars.”
Joshua shrugged. “The house isn’t going to do us any good where we’re going.”
“Then it’s all right?” Nathan asked slowly, hardly daring to believe it was this easy.
“All right?” Joshua cried. “It’s wonderful!”
“Oh, yes, Nathan,” Caroline exclaimed. “This is the answer to our prayers.”
“Yes,” Nathan said in wonder, “it is, isn’t it?”
Before she could respond to that, the Wellers broke up and the two brothers came back over, followed by the women and children now, who were clearly excited. But Calvin was still troubled. “Look,” he began, “your offer is more than fair, but we’re not sure we need a house. We’ve got to get back to Tennessee. We can’t do that with one wagon and a couple of mules.”
“And the horses,” Joshua pointed out. “You know that the horses alone will bring more than enough to replace your oxen.”
“If they’re available,” Jacob spoke up. “You know what it’s like in Nauvoo right now.”
“But that’s just it,” Nathan burst out. “We have no choice. But you do. You can stay in Nauvoo for a time. By summer, our people will be gone. Then there won’t be the shortages anymore.”
Joshua jumped in. “You could even stay in the house until next spring if you had to. The house alone is worth four or five thousand dollars.”
Calvin looked at Jacob. Clearly they were torn, but they were not yet convinced. Suddenly, to everyone’s surprise, Savannah spoke up. “Mr. Weller?”
Calvin turned. “Yes?”
“There’s a beautiful piano in the house.”
Caroline and Joshua both whirled.
Calvin’s wife stepped forward. “And that would be included?”
Joshua went to his daughter. “Savannah, are you sure? I told you I would come back for it.”
“I know, Papa. But it’s more important that we go west.”
Joshua straightened slowly and looked at Caroline, who nodded.
Then, again catching everyone by surprise, Savannah looked at Calvin Weller. “It’s a Knabe piano. The best they make. We’d have to have the second tent too if we give you the piano.”
Caroline’s mouth opened, then shut again. Nathan choked a little. Derek tried to suppress a grin.
“But what will we—”
Calvin Weller’s wife came forward and grabbed his arm. “We can sleep on the ground for one night if we have to,” she said urgently. “It’s a piano, Calvin. For Sarah. A piano!”
The teenaged girl came up beside her mother. “Please, Papa.”
The two brothers stepped back again, whispering urgently with one another. Finally, the older one turned back to face Joshua and Nathan. “Tell me again exactly what you are offering.”
Nathan spoke slowly and distinctly. “You get our wagon, the two mules, the two horses, and a deed to the house in Nauvoo with all its furniture—” He looked at Savannah. “Including the piano. For that, you take what is necessary to see you back to Nauvoo and we take the rest.”
“Including both tents,” Savannah reminded him.
Nathan grinned. “Including both tents.”
One more time Calvin Weller turned and looked at his family. They were all nodding, including Jacob. He swung back around, extending his hand. “I guess you’ve got a deal.”
Chapter 7
On Saturday, March seventh, Brigham Young called a halt to the westward march and made camp at a place known as Richardson’s Point. The muddy roads had cost them dearly. Wagons were in need of repair, teams were exhausted, and many of the Saints were strung out for miles behind the main company. A rest was badly needed. He would stop for two days before pushing on, he decided.
The next day being the Sabbath, no work was done. The Twelve called for a combined worship service, the first such joint meeting held since they had crossed the Mississippi River more than a month before. The rest of the day was spent quietly visiting with friends, neighbors, and family, reading the scriptures, and cooking simple meals. But come Monday morning, the day of rest was over and everyone pitched in so that they could depart the following day. Throughout the day, other families continued to straggle into the camp. Though they would have little rest, they were grateful that they had caught up with the main company.
Brigham wished there was time to let the stragglers lay over and rest as well, but he was growing increasingly anxious. They had been on the road for over a month now and were still only fifty-five miles from Nauvoo. That was not acceptable. Winter came early in the Rocky Mountains, and they had to find a home in time to plant crops and get food enough to see them through until spring. At suppertime he sent out the word. They would move out in the morning.
But nature has a way of reminding men that they are only intruders in her domain and that while on her terrain they must dance to her music. That same Monday evening, shortly after dark, it began to rain. It came softly at first, almost more a mist than actual raindrops. Those wise to Mother Nature’s capricious moods understood the gentle warning for what it was. They immediately saw to their tents and wagons. They lashed down the wagon covers, trenched around the tents, checked to make sure everything was covered or put away. Within an hour the mist had turned to a steady drizzle. By the time the trumpeter sounded lights out at nine o’clock, the rain had become torrential and the camp was quickly becoming a quagmire.
In his tent, Brigham stopped for a moment and listened to the drumming of the rain on the canvas above him. Finally, with a weary sigh, he leaned over and blew out the lamp. There would be little sleep tonight, he thought. Not that it would make a lot of difference. No one would be going anywhere in the morning.
The Steeds had not caught up with the main company by Tuesday as hoped. First of all, after Nathan’s group had rejoined the rest of the family—who were elated that Joshua had brought with him Caroline and the children—it had taken almost a full day to fix the wagon tongue on their newly acquired wagon. They started off late Monday afternoon, but made only three miles before the rain commenced and they had to stop. The next morning, rain or no rain, they pushed on, slogging onward at a snail’s pace in the miserable conditions. By Tuesday night, when Nathan had hoped to be back with the main camp, they were still eleven miles from Richardson’s Point. Once again they made camp in a pouring rain.
“Mama!”
Lydia turned her head toward her youngest son. In the blackness of the tent she could see nothing, not even the shapes in the bedrolls that filled the tent. She went up on one elbow. “What is it, Joseph?”
“A leak, Mama.”
“Another one?” Nathan said with a groan.
“Yes, Papa. This one hit me in the face.”
“We only have one more pan, Papa,” Emily said from another corner.
“I’ll get it,” Josh said. Nathan heard the bedclothes rustle as his son got himself out from beneath the covers.
“It’s in the corner by your feet,” Lydia said, lying back down again, grateful that she did not have to try to get up herself.
“Hurry, Josh,” Joseph wailed, “it’s coming faster.”
“Coming,” Josh soothed. He brushed past his father, got the small cooking pot, and made his way carefully between Josiah and Elizabeth Mary. There was silence for a moment, then a new plinking sound as Josh located the drip and put the pan under it. It added to the tiny symphony of sounds as water dripped into the various pots and pans scattered around the tent.
The other children were silent for the moment, but Lydia knew they weren’t asleep. No one in the Nathan Steed tent was asleep, even though they had been in bed for over an hour. Thus far they had six pots, two pans, and three serving bowls scattered around the tent, catching the water that was oozing through the saturated canvas in one place after another. And with the rain still roaring like water over a millrace, she knew it was not going to get any better. So much for the promises of the merchant who sold them the canvas and assured them that it would shed rain like the back of a goose. Instantly she was repentant. The man had been honest. He had just never envisioned anything like what was pouring down upon them now.
“We’re going to have to move your bed, Joseph,” Josh was saying.
“Where?” Emily muttered. “There’re no more empty places that are still dry.”
“Yeah,” Elizabeth Mary joined in. “My quilt is wet around my feet.”
“And I’ve got a rock where I’m sleeping,” Josiah mourned. “Right where my bottom wants to be.”
“Children,” Lydia called out. “What am I hearing right now?”
There was a deep silence except for the dripping water; then, meekly, Joseph answered. “Murmuring?”
“Yes. Remember when we talked about this? What was it that caused the children of Israel to lose the Lord’s blessings? And what did Laman and Lemuel in the Book of Mormon keep doing that got them in trouble?”
The tent went silent and Nathan smiled to himself. They had read some of those passages just the night before.
“Why is it called murmuring?” Lydia asked.
There was an instant response from all five children. “Mur-mur-mur-mur-mur,” they sang out in low, melodious, singsong voices.
Now Nathan chuckled aloud. Lydia had given the family a lesson before they ever left Nauvoo, and as part of that lesson she taught them a great big word she had learned as a schoolgirl back in Palmyra, New York. The word was onomatopoeia. She had described how proud she had been when she had learned to pronounce that huge word without hesitation, and soon had all the family repeating after her, “O-na-ma-ta-pee-a, o-na-ma-ta-pee-a.” Then she explained that onomatopoeia referred to using words that sounded like what they described, such as gurgle or cuckoo. To that point, Nathan had been perplexed, not sure why his wife had felt compelled to gather them around to teach them this one unusual word. Then she made her point. Taking them into the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon, they read together several verses that talked about the people murmuring. “Why do you suppose they call it murmuring?” she asked. They shook their heads. “Because this is what it sounds like. Mur-mur-mur-mur-mur. It isn’t raising your voice and making your complaint known. It’s muttering under your breath, whispering behind someone’s back, lowering your voice and barely getting the sounds out.”
She then made them mimic the sound, which had brought peals of giggling. Now each time one of them started to complain, or heard someone in the camp start to complain, Lydia would cock her head, put her hand to her ear, and whisper, “What was that I just heard?” Back would come the chorus, “Mur-mur-mur-mur-mur,” and in a moment the complaining would be gone and they would all be laughing.
“Come, Joseph,” Lydia called out. “There’s room for you between Papa and me. You’ll be warm here.”
Nathan got to his knees and began making room on the canvas floor beside his bed. In the darkness a hand touched his. “You didn’t really think you were going to sleep, did you?”
“I had hopes,” he said forlornly, squeezing Lydia’s hand back. And then Joseph was there, crawling awkwardly around his mother. Nathan laid a hand on his head and guided him so that he wouldn’t knee Lydia’s stomach as he made his way to his new place. “But if I’m not going to get any sleep,” he mourned, “is it too much to ask that we at least be dry?”
“What was that I just heard, children?” Lydia sang out clearly.
Back came the response, the children delighted that it was Papa who had just been caught. “Mur-mur-mur-mur-mur.”
By the afternoon of March eleventh, after two days of relentless rain, Richardson’s Point was a sea of mud. Nearby Chequest Creek had gone from a narrow stream of clear water to a roaring, angry, muddy torrent, too dangerous for fording in a wagon. It came as a surprise to no one when Brigham Young declared that they would not move on until the weather cleared. What they had thought would be a two-day rest stop was now becoming a full week, and no end in sight. Richardson’s Point had become the next Sugar Creek, a rest camp where the Saints could regroup and marshal their strength before moving on. With that in mind, Brigham ordered what work was possible on the sprawling campsite to make it more suitable for those who would follow, but there was not much that could be done in the continuing downpour.
“Utter misery” was the phrase that best described conditions during those two days. Families stayed mostly in their tents—crowded, wet, irritable, trying to catch the water seeping through the canvas as best they could, working desperately to keep children who were confined to a space no larger than ten feet by ten feet occupied and happy. Those who did venture out not only were quickly soaked through but also brought globs of mud back in with them and fouled the tents and bedding at every turn. Bedding was damp at best, soaked in many cases. Starting a fire was virtually impossible. Food consisted of whatever could be had cold—mostly biscuits and a thin gruel of flour and water—which did little to eliminate the growing frustration and shortening tempers.