SYDNEY ALVARUS HANKS
To a noble father we say “Thanks.”
Thanks for this book, The Tempered Wind. The Story of your Mother’s life, Thisbe Quilly Read. For the book, “Scouting for the Mormons,” the life story of your father, Ephraim K. Hanks. For the story of your own life and your family, “The Time of Ripening.”
Now we can better appreciate our noble ancestors and the trials they passed through for the love of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Ephraim K. Hanks was ordained patriarch to the Wayne Stake of Zion, and true to his prediction, two of his sons enjoyed the same calling. In 1939 Sidney Alvarus was sustained patriarch to the Pasadena Stake, Los Angeles, Calif. The office he held until the time of his death, April 1, 1949.
Thanks to a loving mother, Martha Huber Hanks. Her patience and help, during the many hours father was busy writing, helped to make this book possible. For her untiring efforts after his death to have it published.
Thanks to all who have helped in any way.
The Family
Thisbe Read
CHAPTER ONE
Thisbe looked up into the sun-reddened eyes of the drover. “Please, Brother Temple. Have you seen my brother. Walter?”
Brother Temple took off his hat and wiped his sleeve up over his face and the place where his bald head was as smooth as the back of your hand. “Be ye Brother Sam Read’s little girl?”
Thisbe nodded. “I’m nine, and my sister Alicia is ten and Walter’s just turned eight. Please, we can’t find Walter any place, and he asked Ma at noon if he could come up ahead with the herd.”
“Walter’d be the little black-headed fellow that’s always riding his stick horse around, then. Yes, he’s been with the herd this afternoon.” Brother Temple chuckled as he put his hat back on his head. “Most of us is groanin’ because we can’t walk one way to the Valley. But that young’un’ll make the trip three times afore we’re through. For’ard and back an’ on again.”
The worry line between Thisbe’s grayish brown eyes smoothed out for a moment. Brother Temple talked as if he could lift Walter right out of the pocket of his home-spun trousers. “Where is he now?” she asked. “Ma’s making a special supper for him because he’s eight years old today.”
Brother Temple rubbed his stubble covered chin. “Where is he? That I don’t know. We passed him two, three hours ago, sittin’ beside the road waitin’ for the cart company and yer pa and ma.”
Three hours ago! Then he must be with the cart company after all. She’d find Alicia, who was talking with some of the other drovers, and then they’d go back to the place where the hand-carts were already circled in for the night and maybe they’d find Walter sitting by somebody’s supper fire.
As soon as Thisbe saw Alicia she called, “Did you find Walter?” But she knew the answer the minute she saw Alicia’s face. Alicia had been crying and the tears had made wagon tracks down her dusty face. They took each other’s hands and without a word hurried back to the circle of hand-carts.
“Let s go to every fire until we find Walter,” Thisbe suggested.
“Why, you know there are more than five hundred people, counting all of us. That would take all night. We ought to go tell Pa and Ma so they can help us look. It’s getting dark. Thisbe, what if Walter is really lost!”
“Oh, he isn’t lost,” Thisbe said, but she wasn’t at all sure she was telling the truth. It made her feel funny in the stomach to think of Walter and his stick horse not being with the drovers –or anywhere.
In the light of the campfire the girls saw Pa and Ma sitting by a spread-out canvas. The tin plates and knives and forks were all set for supper. There was jam and a piece of pound cake and some fine smelling fried venison. Pa was rubbing his foot – the one with the broken-down arch in it – and singing:
We’re marching to Zion, that beautiful Zion,
We’re marching, marching to Zion.
That beautiful city of love.”
Ma called, “Girls, where’s Walter?”
Alicia burst into a new flood of tears. “He’s lost. He wasn’t with the drovers.
Thisbe took off her sunbonnet. Suddenly her head felt too hot, and cold perspiration soaked the back of her neck under the bonnet’s curtain. “The drovers left him by the side of the road waiting for the carts to come.”
Pa jumped to his feet. “Walter can’t be lost. He’s somewhere in the camp. I’ll go to Captain Martin. He’ll give the alarm. We’ll find the boy in no time.” But Thisbe and Alicia and Mother all three knew that Pa didn’t believe a word he was saying. Why, he even forgot to slip his foot back into his boot, and hurried off like “my son John,” limping as he ran.
Ma and Thisbe and Alicia followed as fast as they could. By the light of the fire they saw Captain Martin’s face, full of sympathy, but stern, too. “Did you give your little son permission to leave your family and go with the drovers?”
Thisbe watched Pa’s face, his limp hanging shoulders, his bowed head. He seemed like such a little man standing there with Ma half a head taller and Captain Martin two or three inches taller than Ma. She was proud when Pa’s shoulders straightened and his head came up. “Yes, the boy had permission.”
Sympathy smoothed out of Captain Martin’s face and only sternness was left there. “That is bad, Brother Read. It is bad for a father to give his little son permission to break one of the sacred laws of the camp. I hope you have read the rules of the camp.”
Pa looked up again, “I have Captain Martin.”
“I’m surprised to see such an honorable man disregard these rules.”
“But Captain Martin –” Ma began.
Captain Martin went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “Have you read the rule which says, ‘Parents or guardians are responsible for every child in the family, every minute of the day traveling and every minute of the night in camp’?”
“But Captain Martin,” Ma began again, and this time he let her go on. “Blame it on me. I told Walter he could go ahead for awhile. It was his birthday – and he coaxed.” Thisbe put her hand in her mother’s and felt the usually cool, strong hand trembling. “Don’t blame Samuel. Blame me.”
When Pa put his arm around Ma’s waist. Ma began to cry. Tears came to Captain Martin’s eyes too, and he brushed them away with a red bandana. “Sister Read,” he said kindly, and the sternness was gone. “I feel it is my duty to forgive you for breaking the rule. And may God do the same.”
Thisbe grasped Ma’s hand tighter. She didn’t understand everything that was going on and she felt that time was wasting. She itched to be looking again for Walter. Pa must have been feeling the same way, she thought, because he said slowly, “Captain Martin, I’ve brought along gold to start me in business when I get to the Valley. I’ll gladly give every bit of it towards finding the boy.”
“We’ll do what we can,” the Captain promised. “And what we can do can’t be paid for with money. We’ll find the boy, if –”. There was something in the pause that frightened Thisbe more than anything that had happened – “if it is God’s will. Go get your supper and in thirty minutes, after I have talked with my council, I’ll call an assembly.”
Thisbe held tight to Ma’s hand as they walked back to their camp. The wood fire had fallen into embers. Pa put some more wood on it and poked it into a blaze. In the new flame the canvas with Walter’s birthday dinner spread out on it looked forlorn and deserted. “Do you want supper, Samuel?” Ma asked. “What about you girls? I can warm it up.”
“No, Elizabeth.” Pa said, and Thisbe and Alicia started to gather up the plates and knives and forks and put them in their place in the cart, while Ma took care of the food.
In a few minutes the folks next in the circle came over to the Read fire. “Hear your baby’s lost,” Sister Smuin said, and the word “baby” set Ma to crying again. Sister Smuin’s arm around her shoulder comforted her, and Pa began to tell about Walter waiting by the roadside.
“Oh, he’s somewhere in the camp,” Brother Smuin said in his bluff voice. But Thisbe could see his face was worried too. Everybody was just whistling – that was all. Pa always talked about whistling in the dark to keep your courage up.
In a few minutes other neighbors came over, the women talked with Ma and the men talked with Pa. Somebody gave Thisbe a slice of bread fried in bacon grease, and she ate it without noticing whether the grease was good or rancid.
It seemed like a long time before the alarm was sounded and everybody joined in the center of the circle of carts. There were more than five hundred people in the company, and it seemed to Thisbe that everybody was there. For a moment there was shuffling and talking, then Captain Martin began: “One of our beloved flock has been lost this afternoon. Walter P. Read, eight years old today. I well know all of you are tired and need your rest. The drovers last saw him about three o’clock, perhaps eight miles from here, sitting by the side of the road waiting for the on-coming train.” He paused a moment, then said, “May I have two men to go back and hunt for the boy?”
For a second Thisbe’s heart waited for something to happen – but only for a second. Hands went up all around the circle. “More than a hundred,” Alicia whispered to Thisbe, but before Thisbe had a chance to count, Captain Martin went on, “You, Brother Temple, and you, Brother Evans. You are both men of the plains. You’ll be able to pick up the child’s tracks, and if he has wandered away a little, bring him in. I want you to take good horses, and your guns, and bring the boy back before starting time in the morning, if –”. Again there was that awful pause– “if it be God’s will.” He bowed his head. “We will now unite in evening prayer.”
Thisbe had meant to follow every word of the prayer, but at her side she heard a dry, racking sob. The woman next to her was almost a stranger. She couldn’t even call her by name. She remembered her because – because – and the picture took every word of Captain Martin’s prayer from Thisbe’s ears. Not more than two weeks ago the company had gathered around the grave of a little boy no bigger than Walter, and the woman who now knelt next to Thisbe had been the child’s mother. Thisbe remembered that the mother had begged to be left with the little grave and had not wanted to go on with the cart company. Suddenly Thisbe knew what losing Walter meant. It wasn’t just being worried sick for an hour or even through a night. It was more than likely forever. Something inside of her had known this all the time. That was why it had hurt so when Captain Martin had said. “If – if it be God’s will.”
When the two men rode out of the circle to go back over the road everybody wished them God speed. For a moment Pa held to the stirrup of one of the horses and talked to Brother Temple. Thisbe knew that Pa would like to have been one of the searchers Captain Martin sent back, but he wasn’t a plainsman. He was just a city man newly come from London.
In a few moments every campfire was out and quietness prevailed. Ma spread the bed for Thisbe and Alicia, and the girls crawled under the cover with part of their clothing still on, without Ma ever noticing. It didn’t seem right to be in bed without Walter. He always slept at the bottom, and if Thisbe moved her foot the least little bit she could lay it up against his restless little legs. Besides, Pa and Ma still sat by their gone out fire talking and talking. Pa’s voice was too low to hear, but once in a while Ma’s carried to the camp bed. Her words were detached and Thisbe could make nothing out of them – “Snow – mountains – heavy carts – almost impassable – alone – alone – alone.” These were the words.
At last Thisbe slept, her arm locked around Alicia’s body for comfort. When she wakened, stripes of color were just beginning to cut through the grayness of the sky. Captain Martin was talking to Ma and Pa. Thisbe slipped out of bed and quickly put on her shoes. She moved close enough so she could hear the conversation. Captain Martin was saying, “If the snow catches us in the mountains, it will mean the lives of the whole company. So, Brother Read, if you want to stay and search for your son you have our blessing.”
Ma’s voice came clear and firm. “Samuel and I have been talking through the night and he’ll stay here and I’ll go on with my little girls.”
Thisbe crept back to bed and pulled the covers up over her head. With Pa and Ma so brave she didn’t want to be seen crying. But they hadn’t found Walter. He was lost forever and ever. And Pa would be lost, too. He was going to stay in this horrid Iowa hill country. And what ever would happen to Ma and Alicia and her?
Thisbe could see as well as if she were looking at it now, the loaded cart stuck in the dry rutted earth, Pa pulling for all he was worth, and Ma pushing with the strength of a man. And these were only hills. What would happen when the cart company reached the mountains everybody had been dreading? She remembered Ma’s words – “Snow – mountains – almost impassible – alone.”
When Captain Martin had walked away, Ma came over and shook the two girls by the shoulder. “Is Walter, here?” Alicia asked, then she began to cry when she read Ma’s face. Thisbe had finished her cry under the covers. She was ready to be brave to help Ma.
When everything was packed into the cart Captain Martin came over again. “I wish we could wait for you, Brother Read.” He put his hand on Pa’s shoulder. “But you understand. It is already late to start for the Valley.”
Pa stood up, tall and dry-eyed. “We know. We wouldn’t want you to wait. Elizabeth and the girls will get along.”
“We’ll do all we can for your wife and daughters. If it is humanly possible – and God willing – we will see that they reach Zion in safety.”
“I know you will.” Pa’s voice caught for a minute. “Elizabeth has always been a determined woman, and one that can manage. She shall have the gold I exchanged in New York when we landed.
“No.” said Captain Martin. “This is a sparsely settled district, and the few ranchers there are known how to charge a man to stay over night in their sod shacks. You’ll need to buy a good horse, too, Brother Read. And saddles cost money.”
Pa took off his belt and counted out twenty gold pieces. He put them in Ma’s hand.
Ma didn’t hesitate a minute. She walked over to where Brother Martin stood on wide braced feet. “We have no need for money while we are in your care, Captain Martin. We have our cart well packed. Our cow gives the milk we need and to spare. There may be those in the Company who will fall into need.”
Captain Martin put his hand on Pa’s shoulder before he moved away, but he didn’t say a word. Soon the signal was given for the move and Thisbe stood with her hand in Pa’s. Suddenly Pa was dearer to her than anything in the world. She didn’t want to go on without him. Why couldn’t they all stay? “Mountains – snow – impassable” – the words ticked through her mind.
When the last cart drew into line Ma turned to Pa. For a minute their eyes held. Pa said steadily, “I love you, Elizabeth. I love you.”
Ma took a breath that swelled her bosom under her gray linsey dress, then she turned and lifted the shafts of the loaded cart. She didn’t look back as she steadfastly pulled it up the gentle slope of the first little hill.
But Thisbe, pushing the cart from behind, kept her eyes turned back to Pa. There he stood like a soldier at attention, a lone man in a vast wilderness. Thisbe watched until he looked no bigger than a toy man. Then she called. “Pa, we love you and Walter, and may God protect you both and bring you back to us.” Pa lifted his hat and waved it, but Thisbe couldn’t be sure that he had heard her. Maybe her voice had sunk like summer rain into the thirsty hills.
CHAPTER TWO
Thisbe kept her eyes on Ma’s back as she walked beside Alicia, pushing the heavy cart. Ma pulled just like a man – her shoulders and hips moving in regular rhythm. If Ma didn’t have on woman’s fixings, maybe you couldn’t even tell her from a man. She was even taller than most, and just as broad and strong. Her hands on the shafts of the cart were broad and already burned brown by the sun. Her bonnet covered the neat bob of dark brown hair in the back of Ma’s neck. When they got to the top of the hill Ma would throw back her bonnet to get a little breeze and then the bob would show, with maybe a few hairs pulled out of it and lying in dark curls on her neck. Then Ma would turn around and smile at the two girls and her face wouldn’t be like a man’s at all – but sweet and gentle even if it wasn’t pretty like some faces.
“Say, Thisbe,” Alicia asked, panting a little on the uphill grade. “Doesn’t it make you feel sad to see Ma pulling the cart?”
Thisbe was silent for a minute. “I was just feeling proud,” she said slowly. “Why, I think she’s even a better puller than Pa.”
“Well, I wish she didn’t have to do it. I wish we could all have stayed back with Pa and hunted for Walter.”
“I wish God would find Walter pretty soon,” Thisbe said practically. “Then Pa could catch up when we stop at Florence and – and everything!”
At the top of the hill Ma rested a moment just like she always did. “Girls,” she cautioned, “going down don’t drag your feet to much. It wears out your shoes. Hold back as much as you can, though, or the cart will push me.”
The down hill slope wasn’t steep so the girls held back just a little and Ma walked as fast as she could and the cart seemed to almost fly along. “Ma,” Alicia called over the rattling of the wheels, “wouldn’t it be fine if it was like this all the way to the Valley? We’d put you in the cart and you could ride like a queen.”
Ma turned and glanced at Alicia’s lovely soft face framed in its fluffy light brown hair. A smile lightened her tired, sober face. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “Really, it wouldn’t be fine at all. That would be too easy. It’s the hard things we do that make us strong.” She smiled again and brushed the back of her hand across her forehead. “You wouldn’t want a weak mother, would you, girls?”
“You’re the strongest woman in the world, Ma. Strong in body and – and –” she stopped, hunting for a word.
Thisbe was silent. “That would be too easy – you wouldn’t want a weak mother –.” Her mind circled the thought. Time and again, since Walter had been lost, she had wished with all her heart that they were back in England. That they had never come at all. She had even considered asking God, when she said her evening prayers, to take them back where things were – easy.
In England Pa had seemed to belong more than out here in wild America. His clothes were always the best, his Vandyke beard was smoothly waxed and neatly clipped, his black eyes were always dancing at a joke or a happy story, he always had money in his pockets. Sometimes Alicia and Thisbe, with their older sister Claire, had gone into Pa’s bookstore. There he was just like a prince, with people asking his advice and giving him money for the beautiful books that were on the shelves – books which Pa always handled as if they were day-old kittens.
Trudging along behind the cart, Thisbe could almost smell roast pork and applesauce cake. That’s the way their pleasant house had smelled the night two strangers changed their lives for them. Thisbe and Alicia had come home for the week-end from the boarding school they attended. Claire was there, too, and Sam, who was an apprentice to a leather worker, had come home long enough to eat Saturday night supper with the family.
Sam played with Walter while the three girls helped Ma serve the dinner, then they all sat down to eat. Pa said grace, but he hadn’t had time to even pick up his knife and fork when a knock came at the door.
“I’ll go,” Thisbe said, slipping from her place.
At the door stood two young men with book satchels in their hands. “Is your father at home?” one of the young men asked, and his voice was kind, but the way he said his words was strange.
“I’ll call him,” Thisbe promised shyly, but Pa was already at the door. Thisbe stood behind him and peeked out at the strangers from the side of Pa’s jacket.
“What are you selling?” Pa asked. “You see, I am –.”
The same young man spoke. “We are selling nothing. We are doing missionary work in behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” It sounded to Thisbe as if the man had learned his words by heart. “We have been called by a prophet of God to leave our homes and explain the principles of the true and everlasting gospel to those who are willing to listen.”
“Is that right?” Pa said in his friendly bookstore way. “Well, we have our own church and we are satisfied.” The man looked at his companion and both turned and started down the steps to the sidewalk.
Thisbe could see the disappointment in the set of their shoulders and Pa must have seen it, too, because he said, “Come in and eat with us. We are just commencing dinner.”
The two young men turned, and the one who had done the speaking smiled, and his clean strong teeth shone in the half light from the entry hall. “Thank you. It does smell good. We Elders travel without purse or script, relying on the spirit of the Lord to soften the hearts of men and lead us to the doors of good folks like you.”
After Pa and the strangers came back to the table, Pa picked up his knife and fork and started to eat. Ma served the strangers a great plate of sweet smelling food. For awhile everybody was silent, busy themselves with their food. Finally Sam said to the stranger next to him, just to make talk, “You’re a lot braver than I am, Mr. –.”
The stranger’s teeth flashed in another smile. “Call me Elder Hunt,” he said, “and this is Elder Allen.”
“You’re a lot braver than I am, Elder Hunt, to come to a strange country and preach a new untried gospel to people who are already happy in their own religions.”
Even Thisbe could feel the half hidden thrust in her brother’s words, but Elder Hunt didn’t seem to notice it. “I came because I love my fellow men, and I love the true and everlasting gospel.” He paused for a moment and said, looking at Pa, “After supper I’d like to explain to you and your family that our gospel isn’t new. We know that it’s the same gospel that Adam taught his children, that Noah taught his, that Jesus taught when He was on earth.
Elder Allen spoke for the first time and his words came more slowly than Elder Hunt’s. “I, too, would like to bear my testimony.”
“All right, all right,” Pa said, hurrying to make up to the strangers for Sam’s rudeness.
During the meeting the Elders held after dinner, Pa listened thoughtfully. Thisbe could see his handsome face keen and clear in the firelight, his body bent forward and his chin resting on his hand. Ma sat in the shadows, but it was Ma that asked the questions about Jesus, and about the new prophet, Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith wasn’t in the Bible. He had been a boy just like other farm boys in America, but his thoughts had turned to God and God had spoken in answer to his prayer. Sam and Claire stayed for the meeting, too, but Thisbe could see them looking at each other now and then and sort of smiling with their eyes.
She tried to listen like Pa and Ma, but the words were long and strange – “dispensation of the fullness of time,” “second advent of Christ,” “for as in Adam all men die, so in Christ all men live again.” Not only were the words strange, but the tongues that spoke them made even ordinary words sound like new ones. Thisbe was glad when Elder Allen passed some little hymn books and asked them to join with them in singing some of the sweet old hymns.
“Come again,” Pa invited the Elders when he took them to the door.
“Thank you. We’ll be glad to,” Elder Allen said, and Elder Hunt said, “I thank God for leading us to you.” Both the young men held their hats in their hands while they shook Pa’s hand.
When Pa came back into the sitting room Sam said, “Let me know next time and I won’t bother to be at home.”
“Why, Sam,” Ma said, quiet like.
“Well, I mean it. I’ve never heard such rubbish.”
“Sam,” Pa said, and Sam was silent, but there was a cross feeling in the house that Thisbe felt even after she and Alicia had gone to bed.
So the Elders came again and again, and always Claire and Sam would try to be away from home, or if they saw the young men coming up the brick steps in front of the house, they hurried out through the back garden. Pa was quiet these days, quiet and thoughtful, and Ma carried with her, all of the time, some of the little tracts and black bound books that the Elders had loaned her.
Life wasn’t easy those days, with Pa and Ma pulling one way and Claire and Sam the other, with Alicia and Thisbe and Walter somewhere in between. It wasn’t hard, though. Not like it got to be after Ma told the Elders that she had prayed earnestly and had a testimony of the new gospel and wanted to be baptized. Pa said he was ready, too, and Sam sat sullen and quiet. It was after this that the news got about that the Reads were Mormons and the girls at school wouldn’t be friends with Alicia and Thisbe, and folks that knew about it stopped coming to the bookstore to ask Pa about what books they should buy to read.
Thisbe felt half unhappy all the time. It was a relief when Pa said one night at Saturday night supper that he and Ma felt the spirit of gathering and were planning to go to America.
“Well, I don’t feel the spirit of gathering.” Sam said. “I feel the spirit of staying in England where we are well off and where we belong. If anybody would have told me that two young men from America could make my parents act like they were crazy, I’d have called him a liar if I’d had to do it with a sword,” he said.
Thisbe expected Pa to be cross, but instead tears come to his clear, dark eyes. “Your mother and I have expected this. It will break our hearts to leave you and Claire here, but we must go. And Sam, let me tell you this. It wasn’t two young men from America that converted Ma and me. It was God Himself, using those fine, clean boys for an instrument. Don’t think we haven’t prayed, Sam. We’ve prayed night and day to be allowed to know, and now we do know we must gather to Zion.”
Thisbe held her breath. It seemed a long, long time before Sam held out his hand and said, “Forgive me, Pa. I just don’t see it your way and I never will.”
“I guess you never will,” Ma said, and Thisbe felt a lump in her own throat when she heard the quaver in Ma’s usually strong, alive sounding voice.
After that there was lots of excitement, and Thisbe and Alicia and Walter wakened each morning to the tense feeling that something great might happen today. At last it came sailing time, and Thisbe and Walter hung to Pa every minute so they wouldn’t miss anything. The Thornton was to leave Liverpool with a whole load of Saints gathering to Zion on board her. From the baggage room to the ticket office and round and back again Thisbe and Walter followed Pa while Alicia waited like a little lady, her hand in Claire’s. Claire wasn’t going to America, she had just come to say goodbye.
When the Thornton lowered her gangplank, the people moved forward like a river of water. “Wait, Ma,” Claire said, tears running down her face.
“I can’t wait.” Ma took Claire’s face between her two big, strong hands and kissed it again and again. “I must go now – or I won’t be able to go.”
Thisbe tugged at Ma’s skirt. “Walter and Pa are going,” she said. Alicia was still clinging to Claire and she was crying too. “Come on, Alicia,” Thisbe urged.
Ma turned away from Claire and shooed the two little girls before her as she hurried toward the gangplank.
Thisbe tried to find Claire in the crowd as they stood on the deck looking down at the oily water and across to the pier where a great crowd stood to wave good-bye. The ship lifted anchor, the ship creaked, and then there was a funny feeling beneath her feet. Suddenly the space of oily water got wider, people on shore waved white handkerchiefs, and the band began to play “God Save the Queen.”
“Oh, Samuel,” Ma said, “they are playing ‘God Save the Queen’.”
“They sing the same song in America,” Pa said. “There they call it ‘My Country, ‘Tis of Thee’.”
“Sounds like an odd song,” Ma said, but she wiped her eyes and smiled at Pa, and Thisbe felt happy inside again.
As soon as the band stopped playing one of the elders began to sing:
“Come with me beyond the sea
Where happiness is true,
Where Joseph’s band, let by God’s hand
Inviting waits for you.
With joy we hail the welcome day
When safely we are gathered there.
I know it is the Promised land.
My home, my home is there”
With the 760 other Saints, the Read family had been on board the Thornton for almost two months. They had got tired of ship fare, and once there had been a big storm that had made everybody sea sick and Pa had rolled out of bed in the middle of it. Ma had cleaned all the family up after the storm was over and she had laughed at Pa’s long face. “That wash around the cabin floor gave you the proper spirit of humility, Samuel,” she told Pa as she helped him change the clothes. “You look as if you’d been rolled around in a barrel.” But Pa hadn’t laughed and Thisbe had wondered what the “proper spirit of humility” was that Pa should appreciate in the midst of the trial.
They had landed in New York to the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner,” and everybody had shouted cheers and praises to God as they put their feet on ground again. There was business to tend to in New York City. Thisbe and Alicia and Walter stayed close to Ma where the Saints were herded together by Elders who were appointed to put the folks on the cars for the West. Pa had gone off by himself like a man of business and had changed his English money for American gold.
The trip on the cars through strange, wide country had been exiting, too, and all the time Ma had said, “Sam would have been happy here,” or “Claire would have liked this.” In a few days they were in Iowa City. Here the Saints had been met by Brethren from the West who had already seen the Valley and who had come all the way back to help these newer Saints to get there. Pa moaned when he had to sell all the family’s extra clothes, even to Ma’s fur piece, for what he could get for it in the little town. Ma looked sad about giving up her English willow-wear dishes, every piece of which she had packed by hand in the midst of their trunks of clothing and linen; but it was plain to see that if they had to push everything they had for more than 1300 miles in a hickory handcart, they wouldn’t want to be moving more things than they needed. Pa comforted Ma, “We can buy the things we need when we reach the Valley.”
“Samuel,” Ma said, “shame on you. I’m not down hearted. Aren’t these men from the prophet of God? Just set to and pick out the clothing that will wear the longest and give us the most warmth if cold overtakes us.”
Pa “set to.” “I could have got a much better price in New York,” Pa said, mostly to himself. For just a minute Pa sounded a great deal like Sam.
Everybody was eager to be off, but they stayed and stayed in Iowa City. There wasn’t enough handcarts for everybody and it took about three weeks to build more and load each one with the best things to push and pull across the plains. Ma had lots of ideas for things to take, but she gave them up when Pa told her about the things they carried when he was in the Army. Pa had been an officer in the Burma War, so when he said, “When I was in the war,” Ma listened and heeded what he told her.
“What are you dreaming of, Thisbe?” Ma called back. “You usually rattle along like an iron rim on cobble stones.”
“What you said a minute ago,” Thisbe answered. “What, you said about easy things not being good for us and about hard things making us strong.”
“Isn’t that right, Thisbe?’ Ma questioned, turning for a minute and putting a curl of soft brown hair back off her forehead.
“I was just thinking we’ve never really had it hard, what you’d call hard.”
“It was hard to leave Walter and Pa,” Alicia said, tears coming readily to her eyes. “And Sam and Claire.”
Thisbe’s effort at thought twisted her brows into a frown. “I don’t know about Sam and Claire. Maybe they’ll embrace the gospel sometime. But if we have faith and pray that God will help Pa find Walter they’ll catch up with us any day now.”
Ma smiled and her whole face looked warmed and different. “You keep that faith, Thisbe.” Then the smile faded as fast as it had come. “No doubt we’ll need it and more, too. I don’t have any idea that our hardships are at an end.”
CHAPTER THREE
“One step, two steps, three steps
Stop!
Four steps, five steps, give a little
Hop!”
Thisbe sang as the cart rolled along smoothly over a level field of summer-browned grass, When the cart rolled ahead almost by itself, one could play a little game without making pulling any harder on Ma.
“What are you doing, Thisbe?” Brother Stuart’s big boy asked as he came up even with her.
Thisbe hung her head and dropped her eyes. It was hard to explain to anybody, especially a boy, that when your feet get too tired to walk it is easier for them to dance. When she looked up, the boy had passed by her and was talking to Ma. Thisbe stopped singing so she could hear what he had to say. It wasn’t anything much. “Sister Read, my brother and I have both been harnessed to our cart, and we thought that right now while the pulling is easy one of us could go it alone and the other one could give you a little rest.”
Ma pushed her hair back from her forehead with the back of her sunbrowned hand. “That’s mighty kind of you, but I’m strong as an ox, you know. So thanks anyway.” The boy turned away when Ma added, “But Maybe it would be nice if you’d like to pull for a spell and I’ll push and give the girls a chance to run with the other young-ones.”
“Oh, thank you!” Thisbe shouted. “Come along, Alicia.”
“I think I’ll walk by Ma,” Alicia said, and Ma called, “Now don’t stray away, Thisbe. Keep right where I can call you any time.”
“I will,” Thisbe promised. Her feet weren’t tired any more, now that there were plenty of young ones to race and chase with.
She went back down the line for twenty carts, looking for someone her size, then she turned and started up the line again.
“Thisbe,” someone called. It was Joe Nelson, a boy she had known in England. “Come see what we’ve found.”
Thisbe hesitated a moment and then left the line, running toward a great oak tree that stood like a stranger in the tan grass. Around its trunk half the children in the company were gathered.
Joe held out a dirty brown hand tightly locked. “Shut your eyes,” he requested. Thisbe obligingly made her eyes into tiny slits. He put his fist in her palm and opened out his fingers.
She opened her eyes and squealed with delight. Her hand was full of bright Indian beads.
“Where did you get them?” She danced first on one foot then on the other. “Are they mine to keep?”
“Sure,” Joe said. “There’s a whole lot under this tree. At first we thought they were seeds or berries or something, but when we washed them they were beads!”
“Where did they come from?”
“Dare me to find out?”
“I’ll dare you,” Thisbe answered with a dozen others. Then she added thoughtfully, “But how are you going to do it?”
Joe pointed up into the high branches of the tree. “See that big bird nest up there? I’m going to climb up and find out if –”
“Once my ma found her locket and chain in a mouse’s nest,” one of the girls put in hopefully.
One of the boys gave Joe a boost, and up the tree he went. It took him only a minute to make his way through the branches, while the children watched the seat of his pants ascending. He reached the nest, threw his leg up over the last branch and grasped a branch above with both hands. Then he turned his face toward the children, chalk white.
“What’s up there?” Thisbe called. “My sakes, what you looking at? A ghost?”
“Worse than that,” Joe said, and down he came amid a shower of broken twigs.
He sat down with his back against the tree. Even his hands were white when he folded them around his shaking knees. “Listen,” he said, to the open-mouthed group around him. “That’s a nest of bones!”
“Bones?”
“Yes, it’s the bones of an Indian young one. About your size, Thisbe.”
“Girl or boy?” Thisbe asked curiously.
“Well, a girl I guess. They’ve put some beautiful dolls up there with her. They’re all made of carved wood and dressed in fur. These beads used to be on the little Indian girl, I reckon.”
“I know,” Thisbe said. “That’s where they put her when she was just new dead. That’s nicer than in a grave, I think.”
“Do you want I should get you one of the dolls?” Joe asked.
Thisbe shook her head. “She’ll be up in Heaven now and she’d know we took it.”
“I don’t believe it,” one of the boys scoffed. “I don’t believe Indians go to Heaven.”
“I do,” Thisbe maintained stoutly. “Jesus loves the little children. It says so where Ma reads in the Bible to us. And it doesn’t say that Jesus loves the white children.”
“Yes,” Joe said, “but maybe she’s more than eight years and if she ain’t baptized –.”
“That’s so.” Thisbe said. “Let’s catch up with the carts.” For a time she walked along in silence, Joe beside her.
“Do you think we ought to put these beads back?” he asked.
“She won’t miss ‘em.” Thisbe looked at the bright beads in her hand. “That little girl’s pa and ma loved her just like Pa and Ma loved Walter.”
“Don’t cry, Thisbe,” Joe comforted her awkwardly. “I wish we’d never found the old beads.”
“I wish she hadn’t had to die so young – and everything,” Thisbe said, trying to understand the sadness that had overtaken her in the middle of a beautiful morning.
“Ma,” she said, when she had got back to the cart and taken her place beside her mother. “Let Alicia push and me pull. I want to ask you something.”
She showed the handful of beads and told about the burial nest high in the oak tree, then she asked, “Is that little girl in Heaven?”
“Why, of course.”
“That’s what I told the rest of the young-ones, but they said maybe she wasn’t baptized.”
For a time Thisbe trudged along by the side of her mother, then tears squeezed through her tightly closed lids and ran over her cheeks. “Ma, Walter wasn’t baptized, either, and he was eight years old the – that day!”
“I’ve thought of that,” Ma said quietly, “and I’ve prayed about it. Thisbe, this is just for our family to know, but it has been revealed to me through inspiration, that Walter will be found, and that he will be privileged to go down into the waters of baptism.” Thisbe dried her eyes with the inside of the hem of her skirt. “Wish I had a kerchief,” she said. Then, after a minute, “Ma, if wolves carried Walter off wouldn’t they eat him?”
“Do you remember Daniel?” Ma asked.
“In the lion’s den,” Thisbe agreed, “Only it seems like miracles like that can’t happen to Walter.”
“There is nothing impossible with God,” Ma said.
“Just the same,” Thisbe said, “I’d like to hear from Pa.”
When she went back to push on the cart and Alicia moved up to pull beside her mother, she tried to play again,
“One step, two steps, three steps
Stop! . . .”
but there were too many things to think about. “Father in Heaven,” she prayed to herself, “I wish you’d let us get a letter from Pa or something.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Today was just like yesterday, and tomorrow would be just like today. The cart company would be laboriously moving over, the same rolling hills, under the same late summer sun, pushing and pulling the loads which seemed heavier every day through the same patches of sand. But, too, there would be the same cheerful songs, the same evenings of warm fellowship, and the same promise that soon – not too soon, though – the cart company would be welcomed in Zion.
Thisbe sometimes wondered if the cart were really making any progress at all; but each night when she looked sadly at her wearing-away shoes she realized that they bore testimony that the road behind was growing daily longer and longer.
One day as Thisbe pushed alone at the back of Ma’s cart she saw a stranger standing by the side of the line talking with Captain Martin. He was tall – more than six feet – and heavy, too. But in spite of his heavy build he seemed as muscular as Pa. His deep brown beard fell almost to his chest, and what was most remarkable, his head was up, and his gestures as he spoke were so quick and lively that Thisbe knew in a minute he hadn’t been pushing a cart forever and a day.
When the Read cart drew abreast of Captain Martin and the stranger, Captain Martin held out his hand to detain Ma. “Sister Read,” he said, “This is Ephraim Hanks.” He smiled at the lively interest in Thisbe’s eyes, and added, “a real Mountain Man.”
“Do you mean,” Thisbe put in eagerly though Ma’s eyes on her told her that she was talking out of turn, “that Brother Hanks has really been to Zion?”
Brother Hanks spoke then, and his voice was full of good humor and kindliness, even though his speech was as vital as his movements. “There and then some,” he said.
Brother Martin explained. “Brother Hanks was one of the Battalion boys.”
This is Ephraim Hanks
“I see,” Ma said, though Thisbe knew that Ma didn’t know any more than she and Alicia did what being one of the Battalion Boys meant.
“Some few of them stayed in California,” Captain Martin said, “but not Eph Hanks. He’s too fond of action.”
Ephraim Hanks laughed, and his laugh was something good to hear when you were tired and not feeling too lively yourself. “I do like action, and that’s a fact,” he admitted. He turned to Captain Martin for a minute, then looked back at Ma. “I’m carrying the mail just now, Ma’am. Captain Martin has told me how your little Walter was lost and that your husband stayed back to hunt for him. Would you like me to take a letter back to him?”
For the first time since they had left Pa, Thisbe saw tears come to Ma’s eyes. “I’ve been hoping for this,” she said. She reached into the pocket that was hidden in the folds of her skirt and drew out a letter already written and addressed to Pa.
Brother Hanks took the letter. “I’d figured on leaving it for him, but since I’ve seen you folks I’ll try to look him up and have a talk with him. Then when I come back this way I can let you know how he is and what he has found out about the young-un.”
Ma started to speak, but when her voice broke she didn’t try to go on. It was Thisbe who said in her lively, impulsive way, “Oh, Brother Hanks, we’ll love you forever.”
Brother Hanks laughed as he put his hand for a minute on her sleek, dark head. “You remember that promise. I will,” he said. Then he turned to Ma. “Good day, Ma’am, and I do hope that I can bring you good news next time I see you.”
Ma couldn’t speak. She bowed to the two men, then took up the shafts of the cart. “My goodness, Ma,” Alicia said anxiously, “we’re last in line.” But Ma didn’t answer and Thisbe had her head turned so far to watch what Brother Hanks and Captain Martin would do next that she couldn’t be worried about being the last cart in the procession.
So Ma and Thisbe and Alicia toiled along, with a hope for word from Pa making the load lighter and the way shorter.
It was past the middle of August when the monotony was again broken by visitors. This time it was the arrival of Apostle Franklin D. Richards and a score of returning missionaries from England and Scandinavia, and even far-off India. These were not ordinary visitors, and Thisbe knew at once that something important was about to happen. They heard whispers that a special council was meeting to decide something very important. When Thisbe asked Ma what was happening Ma just shook her head, “Nothing that I know of.”
“Well,” Thisbe declared, “there’s something, because I feel it in my bones.”
“I do, too,” Alicia said, and when the two girls talked to the other children in the cart train and the wagon company that had joined them, everybody seemed to feel the same thing – a strange tenseness in the air as if a storm were about to break, or some momentous thing happen.
Sunday morning, August twenty-fourth, Thisbe with Ma and Alicia, went eagerly to church service – but it was just like other services. There were songs and prayer and the sacrament was administered, and Apostle Richards and some of the other elders spoke. Today they didn’t speak of the journey still before the companies. They praised them for the journey that was already behind them, and spoke words of comfort and encouragement. Thisbe wiggled and squirmed. Still the air felt heavy with something impending. At the close of the service, Captain Martin said, “This evening at six we shall hold another meeting on this same camp ground. Every member of the handcart company and of the Hodgett and Hunt Independent Wagon Companies is requested to be present.”
So there was something happening! All afternoon there was speculation about Apostle Richards’ message. “I think he’s going to tell us to remain here at Florence or at Council Bluffs until next spring,” one of the women said to Ma.
“Oh, no!” Ma exclaimed.
“Well, it’s getting late in the year.”
“I know,” Ma agreed. “I’ve been chafing to get on our way I ever since we laid over Friday. They wouldn’t wait even a day when –.” Then Ma bit her lip firmly with her even white teeth, but Thisbe knew that she had almost said “– when Walter was lost.” Then Captain Martin had pointed out the necessity for hurrying, had talked of snow and impassable roads.
At the evening meeting Apostle Richards rose and stretched out his hands to the people seated about him on the camp ground. “Brothers and Sisters,” he began, and his voice was like a father’s, full of love and gentleness.
Now there were no words of praise for the journey that lay behind them. Now, all the talk was of the thousand miles that lay before. Thisbe listened to every word. Apostle Richards had made the journey before and he knew what he was talking about. He spoke of the lateness of the season. He said that if the storms were late that the company might cross the mountains in safety, but that the storms were not predictable, they might come early – even very early.
(It seemed strange to talk of the early storms when the sun was so hot that it burned even through the curtain of a good sunbonnet.)
He said that many of the infants and aged might die by the way.
(But there was always room in the wagons for the old folks who didn’t feel well enough to walk; and Thisbe had seen time and again parents pick up their little folks and ride them on top of the loads in the handcarts.)
Then he spoke of disease, and impure waters, of fatigue and exhaustion.
(Thisbe had been tired before. So had all of them. You couldn’t walk from Iowa City to Florence, Nebraska, and not get used to being tired. But nobody died from just being tired.)
For a moment Apostle Richards was silent, almost reading the minds of the people. “If you choose to stay here,” he continued, “rather than take the risks of these possible and probable fatalities –”
(Not here on this endless plain! Not here instead or in Zion – after all this!)
His voice grew more gentle and his words were slower. He promised that if they chose to stay through the winter and begin the journey early in the spring they could have the provisions that were in the warehouses waiting to put on the wagons, and that he had means in his hands to purchase what supplies were available in the little villages round about. He promised that he would help them in every way if they decided to stay.
Again he paused for a few seconds. For a moment Thisbe thought his sermon was finished, but he went on: “This is the largest season’s emigration that has ever been shipped from the British Isles since I have presided at Liverpool. Hundreds of you are among the first converts to the faith. Many of you know, just as I know, that your hearts have answered the call for the gathering over and over again but you have never been able to emigrate yourselves. Eighteen years in the faith, and some of you only now are finding an answer to your prayers to repair to Zion. There has been no groaning and fault-finding among you. The way is hard, but it is a way blessed by the Lord. I pray to Him who has put the answer to the call for the gathering in each of your hearts that you will all reach Zion in safety this season.”
There was a moment’s bustle after Apostle Richards sat down, then a moment or two of silence before anyone rose to speak. Thisbe felt herself holding her breath, waiting – waiting . It was for the company to decide, Apostle Richards had said. Now the company would speak.
“Let us go on,” Brother McAllister said. Thisbe knew him because he had written the handcart song. As he spoke he gave reasons for going on, but it was his energy and the excitement with which he spoke that made the blood tingle down Thisbe’s back. After Brother McAllister had sat down Brother Cyrus Wheelock, Brother George Grant, and some others whom Thisbe didn’t know by name spoke for going on. Only Brother Webb urged that the company be cautious and stay in Florence for the winter. Folks listened to Brother Webb until he finished, but his words seemed to fall short on the people’s ears and hearts. Then others spoke for going on, and again the excitement of the meeting lifted Thisbe’s heart. She knew which way she would vote if children were given a chance to have a say.
At last Apostle Richards rose. You have your free agency,” he said solemnly. “Each of you must take the responsibility of your own decision. I cannot decide for you, neither can you decide for any other man.” Now the pause was a long one before his voice lifted. All in favor of going on signify it in the usual manner.
With uncovered heads and right hands raised to Heaven, the men and women and children voted to go on.
All those opposed, signify it in the same manner,” Apostle Richards said, still solemnly. Thisbe turned her head to see if Brother Webb would raise his hand against going, but he had moved out of her line of vision. It seemed that the vote was unanimous.
It took a long time for the cart company and the Saints in the wagon trains to settle for the night. Folks stood about in groups talking. “I’m glad we’re going on,” Thisbe said, “aren’t you, Ma?”
“Well –” Ma hesitated, “I’d feel better if Apostle Richards has favored it, He is a prophet, seer, and revelator.”
“But he did,” Alicia said.
Thisbe set with her hands around her legs, her knees against her chest. She was thinking back on what Apostle Richards had said. He had spoken of the hardships ahead and said infants and old folks would die on the path; he had promised to help them to live through the winter if they decided to stay – but he hadn’t spoken in favor of going on. Oh, if you wanted to twist his words you might make something of them. He had prayed to God that all of them might “reach Zion this season.” But that was all. He had asked them to vote with their free agency and take the responsibility for their own decision. And she had voted to go on. Just as if she were a grown up man or woman she had held up her hand and had her say.
CHAPTER FIVE
Pushing the cart was easier for a few days after the meeting in Florence, Nebraska. Thisbe’s heart felt light as a cloud and she sang as she trudged along. So did everybody in the long file of carts. Apostle Richards had promised to report their condition to President Brigham Young as soon as he reached the Valley then he and the other returning missionaries had hurried on. Ma said that when Brigham Young heard that the food in the wagons was getting low he would send other supplies from the Valley. But Thisbe didn’t worry about food. There was still food enough for everybody every time the company camped, and Ma still had some special delicacies in the cart.
Mostly Thisbe thought about the day they would reach the Valley and she could live in a house again, though sometimes she thought of Pa and of Walter. “I wish the letter man would come back,” she said one day to Alicia.
“Who?” Alicia questioned. Then she laughed. “You mean Brother Hanks, who took Ma’s letter back to Pa?”
Thisbe nodded, her gray eyes glowing. “He promised Ma he’d bring back word of Walter and he’s so big and strong I know he could do it, too.”
Alicia shrugged her thin shoulders. “Thisbe, I just keep on thinking that God is taking care of Walter and Pa and I try not to worry.”
“So do I,” Thisbe agreed. “But I’ll be glad to see Brother Hanks, anyway, just to see how God is getting along.”
For a moment Alicia looked shocked, then she laughed. “Thisbe, you do beat all.”
The first frost had come and turned the leaves to gold and the cart folks’ minds to their thin jackets and worn out shoes, before Brother Hanks came back. The company had stopped for the noon meal by the bank of a clear stream when he rode in. He went first to Captain Martin and handed him a package of letters for the Saints, then he dismounted and leading his horse, came down the line of carts looking for Ma. When he found her, bending over a little fire she was fanning to life, he stopped, and holding his hat in his left hand, offered the other to Alicia and Thisbe. When Ma straightened up and saw Brother Hanks, a light came over her face and she held out her hand. Brother, Hanks reached into his pocket and drew out a letter. Ma’s hands trembled so when she took the letter that she couldn’t even open it. She just stood there, looking up into Brother Hanks’ face with the eager question in her eyes.
Brother Hanks looked away for a minute, then he said softly, “I am sorry, Sister Read. I can’t tell you anything of your lost boy.”
Ma, still holding the unopened letter, put her knuckles to her eyes, but Alicia saw tears squeeze through.
“Your husband thinks there is yet a chance. The Indians there are friendly and there aren’t any wolves. He said to tell you that he has put posters up where people meet, had the story published in some of the papers, and that he is riding every day to see if he can’t pick up word of the child.”
Ma turned her back to Brother Hanks while she wiped her eyes, then she said with an even voice, “I hope you’ll take food with us, Brother Hanks.”
Thisbe and Alicia watched, while Brother Hanks hobbled his horse and opened his pack. “There’s fish in this stream,” he explained. “I’ve got two outfits and if any of you would like to try your luck with me we’ll have a fish dinner.”
He took out his knife and began to cut two willows for fishing poles. Thisbe stood by wide-eyed until he said, “Here, little sister, you catch some grasshoppers if you can.”
With the grasshoppers Thisbe caught Brother Hanks baited the hooks. He showed her how to throw them out into the water. As they stood side by side, the big man and the little girl, she said shyly, “I’ve prayed for you every night, Brother Hanks, when I’ve asked God to look after Walter and Pa.”
“I’m grateful for your prayers,” he said simply. “God hears the prayers of honest little souls like you.”
Suddenly Thisbe felt a jerking on her willow pole and bait and hook disappeared. “Play her, play her,” Brother Hanks cried, and finally she brought up a fine ten-inch trout. Her screams of excitement brought a group of folks away from their own dinners and they stood and watched while the two added fish after fish to their string.
Brother Hanks cooked the fish while Ma made flap-jacks and Alicia set the dishes out on the canvas cover. At her first taste of the fish Thisbe said, “I wish we could pray these fish into enough for the whole company.”
Ma and Brother Hanks smiled at each other. “She knows her Bible, Ma’am,” he said approvingly. As soon as the dinner was over, Thisbe and Alicia were sent to take the fish that were left to other folks in the party who were ailing and would relish a change of diet from the everyday bacon and flapjacks, and mush and beans.
When Ma was unpacking the cart at bedtime she found a beautiful pair of beaded moccasins and one of the fishing outfits tucked away in one corner. The moccasins exactly fitted Thisbe. The fishing tackle was to be like a gift of God to the whole company before it reached the Valley.
It was not long after Brother Hanks’ visit that the autumn storms set in. At first the Saints were bothered by occasional thunder storms. Later the storms were almost constant, and soon they turned to snow.
The company struggled along, sometimes making only three or four miles in a whole day. Captain Martin called the company together and explained that food was running low. From now on folks could have only four ounces of flour each day. After awhile he called them together to tell them that two ounces would be a day’s ration. “We’ll always have our milk,” Ma said; but food for the cattle was failing, too, and the milk got less and less.
One night one of the brethren tried to joke about the small food supply. “Me and Henry held the critter up while Robert killed it,” he said. “We ain’t hungry enough yet to eat dead animals.” No one laughed. Thisbe felt sick at her stomach and she saw Ma turn away. It wasn’t a joke, anyway. Everybody knew that the meat that was sometimes apportioned out with the spoonful of flour was probably cut from some wagon company ox that had dropped under its yoke. Whenever there was a stream someone used the fishing tackle Brother Hanks had left, and the fish were like manna to the hungry Saints.
One night as Ma and Thisbe and Alicia sat for a little while by their supper fire, Thisbe started the other two by saying, “Ma, I’ve got to thinking that it was God that lost Walter.”
Ma turned an inquiring gaze to her, but didn’t speak. Alicia said, “Why, Thisbe, that’s wicked.”
“It isn’t either wicked.” Then Thisbe spoke of something that no one talked about. “Ma, I know why you have kept Alicia and me busy about the cart in the mornings. I know about the burial squad that makes graves every morning for the folks that die at night. You’ve kept us busy so we wouldn’t see the burying.”
“That’s so,” Ma said in her lifeless voice.
“Well, who is it that’s been dying? It isn’t hardly ever the women. Women seem to be stronger than men. And sometimes it’s the little children – like Walter.”
“Apostle Richards said it would be the old folks and the young ones,” Alicia said.
Thisbe went on as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “I think of Pa with his broken arch. And Pa wasn’t big and strong like you, Ma.”
Ma was silent and so was Alicia. Thisbe finished. “As it is, we know Pa’s alive and can come on some other time.”
Ma’s voice was still lifeless. “Yes, we know Pa’s alive.” Then she said something strange to the girls. “I’m sure I’d know it if Walter was dead. Over and over I’ve asked God to let me know if he was, so I wouldn’t just keep on hoping, and I’m sure He’d answer that prayer.” She was silent for a long time and Thisbe thought she had finished before she said, “So I know Walter is alive, too.” Then her voice grew slow and duller, “But I sometimes wonder how much longer we will be.”
Thisbe rose to her knees and crawled a step or two to Ma’s side. “We’ll live to reach the Valley, Ma. I’m sure of it.” She laid her head on Ma’s lap for a minute. “Maybe we’ll come to another Laramie.” She remembered how all the folks of the company had taken what money they had to the gentile fort and traded for food supplies. Some had even traded their watches and clothing. She and Alicia had begged Ma to ask Captain Martin to give back some of the gold that Ma had given him the day Pa left them to hunt for Walter. Ma had closed her lips firmly and shaken her head. Later Captain Martin had visited them as they cooked their meager supper. He had offered Ma the gold but she had told him to buy what supplies he could with it and share them with the whole company.
Often when Thisbe and Alicia had been hungry they had thought of the special provisions that some of the Saints had tucked away in their carts and had almost blamed Ma. Almost – not quite. It was better that everybody should share the hunger as they shared other things.
Ma sat silent, stroking the hair away from Thisbe’s forehead, “You’re right, Thisbe,” she said, going back to what Thisbe had said a long silence before. “We’ll live. We’ll reach the Valley. Sometimes when I can’t go on at all, sometimes when it seems that I can’t pull another step, I feel someone beside me taking the load from me. I look around, wondering if I have been dreaming and if Pa is by my side. But he isn’t. Nobody that we can see with our earthly eyes is there. It is the spirit of God between the shafts.” Ma shook her shoulders as if to shrug off a dream. “Yes, Thisbe, we’ll be all right.”
“But if there isn’t another Laramie?” Alicia asked.
“God will provide.” From where she sat Ma poked at the dying fire with a forked stick. Ma’s voice was soft and very low as she picked up an old hymn in the middle.
“Though other helpers fail and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, Thou, abide with me.”
Thisbe thought of the song often as she struggled along the road, sometimes covered with fresh snow, sometimes boggy and muddy from snows that had melted or been thawed by sudden rain squalls. “If we’re not helpless I don’t know what we are,” she said to Alicia. “And if God’s going to help us I wish he’d hurry.”
“It says in the Bible that God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” Alicia said. “I don’t see why He doesn’t keep it from storming on us.”
“That isn’t in the Bible,” Ma called back. “That’s profane literature and I can’t blame God for not helping us if you girls complain all the time.” There was a sharpness in Ma’s voice that hunger and weariness had whetted a fine edge. Alicia didn’t answer, neither did Thisbe. It seemed to take too much strength to talk or even sing, nowadays.
So they trudged along, Thisbe thinking of the men who had ridden ahead to tell Brigham Young of their condition, and wondering if they had reached Brother Brigham, if they had died in the winter storms, or if they had been killed by Indians. “Other helpers” were certainly failing.
There was a real blizzard, with the icy snow being whipped about like bullets gone wild, when the cart company reached the crossing at the Platte River. It was almost sundown when Ma pulled her cart up to the river’s edge. She sank down on the snow and Thisbe and Alicia came up beside her, waiting for some word of weariness or despair to set them both to crying. But Ma was removing her shoes and stockings. “Just one more river to cross,” she said, tucking them in the corner of the cart beside the little bundle of dried sagebrush she carried for an emergency fire. “You girls better climb in the cart and I’ll pull you across.”
Both Thisbe and Alicia protested, but it was some one else’s strong voice that said, “No, Sister Read. You shouldn’t be pulling an empty cart, even.”
The voice was Captain Martin’s and he was sitting on his poor, bony horse. “I’ll take the girls over for you on horseback if you wish,” he offered. Thisbe gave Alicia a little shove and Alicia smiled shyly. Captain Martin dismounted and lifted her to a place in front of the saddle. “I’ll be back for you, Sister,” he told Thisbe and rode away. Ma picked up the shafts of the cart and spoke over her shoulder to Thisbe. ‘“Wait for Captain Martin.”
Thisbe nodded, wordless, as she watched her mother step into the icy stream, the cart bumping behind her. There were cakes of mush ice floating in the stream, and one poor man had sunk down on a sandbar in the middle of the river. Too weak to rise he sat there with the water milling around his shoulders while a woman waded out, helped him to his feet and half carried him forward. Thisbe recognized the woman – Sister Leavitt – so the man, half curtained from her by the flying snow, must be poor Brother Horrocks, Sister Leavitt’s brother-in-law. Sister Horrocks would be pulling the hand cart with the three children on top of it. Thisbe looked around to see if she could see the cart. If Pa and Walter had been along Ma would have been in the same condition. Pa never could have stood what Ma had gone through.
Thisbe’s eyes were attracted back to the river by a shout of alarm. There was a cart half overturned in the river. It was Ma’s cart. She was doing her best to right it.
Without hesitation Thisbe waded into the river, shoes, and all. She put her shoulder under the load, though the cold water lapped her face, cutting her breath off in a way that terrified her. Ma gave a great pull, some one else came quickly to help, and the cart was right side up again and climbing the far bank.
Before Ma even put her own shoes and stockings on, she undressed Thisbe and wrapped her in a blanket from the cart. After, Captain Martin had assigned the position for each cart, to break the wind as much as possible. Ma pulled her cart to its place and made a fire with the precious sagebrush she had carried for an emergency. She carried Thisbe over to a log that had been cleared of snow so she could bake it in the fire’s warmth. Still Thisbe shivered, and her teeth made fearful music as they chattered and chattered.
The wind blew harder. Snow, sand, sleet, and hail beat against the frail carts. Ma, Thisbe and Alicia huddled close together while Ma tried to keep the fire burning. Still Thisbe shivered and chilled. Sometimes she dozed and smelled apple sauce and roasting pork. Sometimes she dreamed that she was in England and Pa, handsome, well-dressed Pa with his smooth Vandyke beard and his sparking eyes, was lifting Alicia and her from the London train that had brought them home from boarding school for the weak end.
The bugle at sunrise awakened her from her confused dreaming. Ma said, “You’ll be all right, Thisbe. Alicia’ll keep the fire going while I get our morning food.”
While Ma was gone the woman in the next cart came over to inquire about Thisbe. “I thought you’d catch your death of dampness,” the kind-hearted woman said. “You was surely as wet as anybody and I hear that twelve of the company died last night.”
Thisbe turned away and put her face against Alicia’s shoulder. “Died.” That was an awful word. Thisbe hadn’t thought of it in connection with herself. Now – well, she’d have to think of something else. Her teeth were chattering again, but this time it wasn’t because she was cold.
Shortly Ma came back with flour for breakfast. There were three ounces each. Ma made gruel with flour, seasoning it with some of the precious salt from the Cart. “It’s been a hard night on the animals, too,” she told the girls. “They can’t pull the loads they’ve been under and, too, there are more folks who must ride. The wagons can carry just thirty pounds for us, now.”
“Have we more than that?” Alicia asked.
Ma smiled, a dreary, half-hearted smile. “No,” she said. “Remember when you girls wanted me to take back the gold I left with Captain Martin? It was back at Laramie and you wanted me to get some more supplies. If I’d have done that we’d have had more than our share to carry now.”
Before the company started its journey for the day the excess clothing and bedding was destroyed – burned. And the shivering Saints watched the fresh bright flames and the sultry smoke and started the endless walk with the acrid smell of burning wool in their nostrils.
Thisbe rode on the cart part of the morning, but in the early afternoon she insisted on walking again. Once in a while she would climb on the cart and ride for a time, then she would slip off and walk again. Ma was patient, and so was Alicia. They even offered Thisbe a part of their small ration of food, but Thisbe didn’t want even her own small allotment. While she walked she dreamed almost as if she were asleep and she wasn’t wallowing through the wet and the mud, she was safe and warm – and rested – back home in England; or maybe she was sitting by Brother Hanks on the bank of a clear storm in warm October sunshine angling for her first fish.
One morning Thisbe went into one of the dreams as she was walking along the road. When she wakened and realized that she was on the trail to Zion, she was riding in the cart. She tried to slip out, but she was closely covered with a blanket. When she tried to move the blanket, Ma spoke. “Stay in the cart for awhile, Thisbe. You better ride until you feel better.”
“Am I going to die, Ma?”
Ma dropped the shafts and came around to the side of the cart. As she stroked Thisbe’s head the child felt the blisters of her mother’s muscular, wind chapped hands. “No, Thisbe, you’re all right.” The next morning Ma turned the cart so Thisbe wouldn’t see the burying trench, but she saw it anyway – a long, shallow trench that other people who had gone to sleep dreaming of England were lying in, head to foot, for goodness knew how far across this lonely foreign plain.
And now the days were the same, one after the other. Thisbe drowsed and wakened and drowsed again. Each morning there was a burial trench, each more shallow than the last. One night the men were too tired and weak to raise the tents and the company spent the night under the icy vault of the open sky.
Now people hesitated when the morning bugle blew. It would be better, they said, to stay here and die comfortably than to push forward into the ice-bound mountains. Brigham Young, they said had never heard of their plight and even God was far away.
So the company moved slowly – not all together as they had at first, but strung out in a long line that made a needle and a trailing black line in the snow. No one sang, no one talked.
Folks just pushed along at their own pace and tried not to think of how the days might stretch into weeks and months before the last of them found a long sleep in a trench of snow.
And then, one evening, just before sunset a strange quiver like a thrill of hopefulness was communicated down the wavering line. Alicia climbed on the shafts of the cart to look ahead where everyone was pointing. Coming toward the train was a lone man leading two horses with great pieces of buffalo hung on each side of the animals.
Thisbe pushed at the covers and Ma helped her to stand up in the cart. “Why, Ma,” she said, “that’s Brother Hanks, coming like an angel of God through the snow.”
“How you talk,” Ma said.
But it was Brother Hanks and he had brought a fresh buffalo that everyone set to cooking at his own fire. But more than meat, he brought them hope. The advance scouts of a rescue party were just a day away, and behind them a day or two further down the road were food and clothing and a chance to rest.
CHAPTER SIX
Brother Hanks sat by Ma’s supper fire and Thisbe watched him with wide gray eyes as she sipped the bowl of bison broth that Ma had prepared from the strip of meat Brother Hanks had brought to her.
“It was like this, Ma’am,” he was saying, his large hands spread out to the fire. “No matter what I did or where I went I couldn’t forget you folks. I kept wondering how you were getting on, what with the early snows and everything.
“This night I was down near Utah Lake where I’d gone to fish.” He smiled at Thisbe and she, remembering the first jerk on her willow pole, smiled in return. “But I was after a load that time, not just a string for supper. Well, I was staying at Gerney Brown’s place, and though the bed was comfortable enough I couldn’t sleep. Finally I did drop off, but no sooner than I’d done it I was waked up again. Somebody said, ‘Ephraim.’ That’s my name, Ma’am, so I said, ‘Yes?’
“But it wasn’t Gerney that was speaking. No one was in that room. Then my name was spoken again. My heart was like to pound right out of my body, but I couldn’t see anything. The third time the voice said ‘Ephraim,’ seemed like it was sort of sharp and out of patience.
“I said, ‘Yes, yes. Is there something that I can do for you?’
“Then the voice said clear as if I’d been face to face with a neighbor, ‘Ephraim, that handcart company is in trouble. Will you help them out?’
“I got right out of bed. Gerney, he got my team hooked up and Sister Brown fixed me a bite and some food to carry along. I got to Salt Lake about daylight, and what should happen but I met a messenger from Brother Brigham, on his way to fetch me.”
“Why, Brother Hanks,” Ma said, and there was awe in her voice, “that’s prophecy!”
Brother Hanks nodded solemnly. “Yes, it is. Seems like since I was a boy, the Lord has always been willing to keep in touch with me if I’d keep in touch with him.”
Thisbe looked from Brother Hanks to Ma. Both faces were closed and inscrutable. “I’ve often wondered,” Ma said, “about those gifts of the spirit that the Bible promises will follow those who believe.”
“This is the way I have it figured,” Brother Hanks looked at Ma, and then at the two girls. “The Lord isn’t going to fool around with any of them gifts just to impress folks. I don’t hold for goings on in meetings like I’ve seen in some sects. I do know that when a body needs the Lord – needs something the Lord can do for him – so bad that there isn’t any other way out, – that is the time that the Lord will show His face or His voice and there’ll be healing, and tongues, and prophecy and all the rest.”
For a time no one spoke, then Brother Hanks said in a different, more jovial voice, “Yes, the Lord does do strange things, but I notice He always counts on human folks to help Him out. Now I’ve traveled this road time and again and at this time of year I wouldn’t ever have expected to meet a buffalo. But you folks needed meat and he was put in my way. Now, if I hadn’t been there, or if I couldn’t have brought him down – well, the way I figure, the Lord wouldn’t have bothered to have him there, that’s all.”
“Will you pray with us?” Ma asked after a long silence.
“I’m glad you asked, Ma’am. I’d like to say a special prayer for little sister, here.”
Thisbe looked up with another smile. Already she felt warmed and stronger, and happier. Ma said the broth would do her good, but it seemed like the food hadn’t made her half as happy and filled with the feeling that everything would be all right as listening to Brother Hanks had. If he’d anoint her she’d be all right. She knew she would.
Soon Captain Martin came along and the two of them, Brother Hanks and Captain Martin, put their hands on her head. “Dear Sister Thisbe Read –.” Brother Hanks’ voice sounded like the low tones on the organ back home in England. It seemed to her that from his gentle hands on her head she could feel wave after wave of hope and courage and health shimmering through her body.
When the prayer was over, Brother Hanks and Captain Martin went away. There were others who needed to be anointed and administered to, by God’s messenger of mercy. The next morning everyone in camp was talking about Brother Hanks, about his prayers for the sick, but even more the operations he had performed with his hunting knife. Many of the Saints were carrying frozen limbs which were endangering their lives. Brother Hanks amputated toes and feet and sometimes even legs. One of the sisters told Ma that first Brother Hanks anointed these folks and prayed that the amputation could be done without pain. Then when he took out his great hunting knife, held it in the fire to cleanse it, and took off the dying limb with its keen blade; many with tears in their eyes said they hadn’t “felt a thing.”
Thisbe wanted to be dressed at once, but Ma wouldn’t hear of it. “Why?” she asked.
“I want to see Brother Hanks again before he rides away.”
Ma laughed. Everybody in the company was laughing today, and for the first time since the storms closed down people were singing as they did their morning work. “Brother Hanks is going to ride with us now and bring us into the Valley.” Three days later three horsemen rode into camp. They had been sent in advance of the relief wagons. Supply wagons waited near Devil’s Gate. Joseph Young, Daniel Jones, and Abel Garr, the three horsemen talked with tears in their eyes, tears for the suffering of the cart company; but they said that the only way for the Saints to help themselves was to push in spite of cold and storm until they came up to the supply wagons. “Well,” Ma said in her practical way, “Devil’s Gate is closer than Zion.”
And everybody moved with a new hope, a new goal. The goal, now, wasn’t Zion, it was food – enough food to fill the stomachs and send strength through the weary bodies of those whose spirits were weakened from want.
Once Thisbe started to sing as the cart plunged on through the snow: “And if our lives are spared again –” but the song stopped almost before it started. Of course their lives would be spared again.
Two days – and the wagon train was reached. Now there was food, six wagons loaded with flour and staples, with warm clothing, even with clean pocket handkerchiefs. Having a clean handkerchief in one’s pocket made you feel like a “lady” again.
The next morning the girls stayed together while Ma went to a meeting Captain Martin had called. It was to be decided whether the company should spend the winter at Devil’s Gate or whether they should push on to the Valley. Thisbe thought of the meeting back in Florence. That seemed years ago, though it had been just two months. If they had stayed in Florence as Apostle Richards had seemed to counsel, there would have been none of the suffering of the past month.
And yet, Thisbe hoped as she lay in the wagon that the company would decide to go on. “It’s strange, isn’t it,” she said half to herself and half to Alicia, “that what Apostle Richards called the ‘spirit of gathering’ should be so strong in our hearts.”
“I don’t know whether it’s strange or not,” Alicia said. “It wasn’t strong in our hearts back by the Platte, but since we’ve had food –.”
And when Ma returned she said the decision had been made to go on. The freight wagons with their starving teams would be left to bring on later. The new wagons would go with them to the Valley.
Now Thisbe sang again as the cart company moved forward. Snatches of songs, never finished, sometimes not even begun – often picked up in the middle somewhere out of a shifting memory or a pleasant half dream.
But trouble was not over. The storms had lessened but the cold had increased and when the company reached the last ford of the Sweetwater, the river was covered with three or four inches of ice. The company camped and in the morning when they were ready to cross, hoping to pass over on the ice, a thaw had broken the surface into great cakes of floating crystal with knife-sharp edges, seeming to wait for those who must wade across.
When Ma reached the bank, one man, as weary as Thisbe, began to cry, “Must we cross this?” he asked.
“Yes,” was the answer.
“Oh, dear, I can’t go through with it.”
His wife came to his side. “Don’t cry, Jimmie,” she said. “I’ll pull the cart for you.”
Thisbe could see Ma and Pa in the forlorn man and his brave wife.
Ma pushed the cart across this – the last – ford, but Alicia and Thisbe went across on horseback. Ma’s leg was cut by a piece of floating ice, and though she tended it carefully it stayed bad. Whenever Brother Hanks rode into camp he visited the Read family. Thisbe suggested that Brother Hanks bless Ma’s leg, but Ma blushed and pooh-poohed the idea. “Nearly every grown up in camp had ice cuts,” Ma said.
The days went faster, now, and with the fresh teams, and most of the slowest folks riding in the wagons, more miles slipped under their wheels.
The ford over the Sweetwater was the last river – and at length the cart company came to the last mountain. Thisbe was walking part time, riding in the cart part time, sometimes even taking a lift in one of the wagons; but the day they reached the last summit overlooking the Valley she stood with the rest and looked to the west – to Zion.
The lake far to the west was a sharper blue than the winter sky, and pushing at its edges like fluted **pie crust was a great stretch of sun-tinted snow. Nearer, Salt Lake City, laid out like a toy town, cuddled for protection against the mountains.
For a moment Thisbe was disappointed. Salt Lake – City. The word city had made her think of London, of Liverpool with their great buildings, their teeming streets, their public buildings, their maze of streets and thoroughfares. This – this was only a village with streets as straight as if they had been laid off with a schoolboy’s rule, and with not more than a hundred low houses of logs or adobe or stone set in wide yards. But Ma’s voice drew her out of her own thinking. Ma lifted her two arms high above her head and her voice rang out as clear as a song. “The land of the living.” Ma cried, and on the word living her voice soared to the sky. Tears came to Thisbe’s eyes. She could see, as if it were stretched at her feet, the burying trench, at first deep and even – and short; then shallower, more wavering, longer as the days had gone on.
Mother’s voice had raised a song to other lips. “Let us thank God!” someone suggested, and everybody’s eyes were lifted, looking for God through the white billow of winter clouds.
Almost at once the travelers were surrounded by a welcoming horde. The shafts of the carts were seized by strong hands. Someone boosted Ma and Alicia into the cart beside Thisbe and with two men at the shafts the cart moved like the wind.
When they reached the town the streets were lined with the Salt Lake Saints, eager to greet the newcomers. There were songs and cheers and shouts. Anybody’d know, Thisbe thought, that all these good folks had been told about the cart company’s troubles. They were good folks, too; it was easy to see that.
In a few minutes Brother Hanks came and walked along by Ma’s cart. “You’re coming home with me,” he said. “And there you’re going to stay until you folks can get settled.
Thisbe’s heart jumped. She had just been thinking that Zion would be pretty nearly perfect if they just had some “close” kin in the Valley. Ma opened her mouth to object, but Brother Hanks said, “My wife, Harriet, sure will be glad to have you.”
So in less than an hour from the time the Reads had reached the Valley they were sitting in Brother Hanks’ comfortable log house, listening to the roar of the fire in the wide rock fireplace and eating the best biscuits that ever were baked in an open fireplace. Thisbe watched Harriet Hanks as she hurried from the fire to the table and back again, seeing to their comfort.
Harriet’s dark brown hair was soft and fluffy, her eyes, between blue and hazel in color, were heavily lashed and her mouth was mobile and quick to smile. What interested Thisbe most was the soft roundness of Harriet’s body. Most women in England were more spare. Never had Thisbe seen a woman who seemed to have no bones – just clear, fresh skin over firm flesh with dimples showing in the elbows above the pushed-up sleeves.
She’s beautiful, Thisbe thought. Beautiful and good. If Brother Hanks didn’t have a good wife I just couldn’t stand it! “Sister Hanks–” she said shyly.