BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 23

FEBRUARY 1896

THE SKEENS AND THE UNITED

"Just how do you figure?" Moroni's voice cuts, accusatory and thwarting.

John Griffiths stiffens his already staid posture. "The settlers have been working for a year, for the government to take their land and efforts is an abomination."

"Squatters, you mean," Moroni says, looking away. "Not settlers."

Griffiths bristles. "They come here under the guidance of God," he says.

Moroni laughs, darkly. "You put frosting on a dog turd, don't make it a wedding cake."

"You are a foul man," Griffiths says.

"I am an honest man, you mean. Honesty being a foul word to a Mormon. You left out a step."

"We live by the truth, whatever your aspersion be."

"Truth as you twist it. You forget my proximity to the Church. As if I haven't see its workings."

"There has never been one so far from it."

"Far," Moroni laughs. "It is," he says, pausing, "A difficult thing to get far from the grasping fingers of your so-called Lord." He holds his right hand out dramatically and spreads his fingers, wiggles them. "Up through Cache Valley, down from Lewisville, over to Raft River. Like water seeking the lowest point, moving wherever not dammed." He pauses. "Let this at least be one place it was dammed."

"Damned you are, Moroni Skeen, Your father would be disappointed."

"I think not. He would take what he could and pretend he wasn't taking, having learned his lesson well from old Brigham. Let righteousness spew from one end and wickedness from the other and let neither know of the other." His speech halts as he pretends to ponder. "How does that passage go, 'let the right hand not know what the left hand is doing?'"

"You contort the meaning, as usual. Your father served Brigham well, you cannot taint his name in my eyes."

"Course not. He did the dirty work you wouldn't do and once the dirty work was done he and the other Angels were spurned as villainous. 'A different Church now,' they say. Modern."

He pauses. "Back to business, John. Your canal can keep the ground southeast from your so-called First Terminus, we are fair in that matter. We've been cheated, but we lack the time for revenge. But we have surveyed the remainder of the tract clear to American Falls and claim it ours as the government has agreed."

"Wrongly," Griffiths inserts.

Moroni turns to his brother. "Doesn't righteousness seem awful comfortable, Lyman?" He looks at John Griffiths. "Just being in its presence here loosens me up. I may have to run for the sagebrush to do my business." He releases a big sigh of surrender. "It was the Federal government's ground, they gave it to the state, the state didn't give it to your people, they gave it to us not to have but to distribute. Your concern is not for your brethren but for the Church, and you promised the Saints what wasn't yours to promise and now wish to blame us for you doing so. A handy ploy, if predictable."

"There were those with prior claims. Before we came."

Moroni nods. "That, my dear John, is true, and those few will have legal standing if you but compromise and take our offer. A reasonable one, by any standard save possibly Mr. Woodruff's. But nary a one of those prior claimants is of the brethren, by my reckoning." He squints. "Particularly your new ally, Senator Dubois." He looks off, harvesting amusement. "Funny," he adds, "How one's most adamant foe becomes friend when a convenience appears." His brow furrows and he eyes Griffiths, staring. "And vice-versa."

An insinuation hangs, the air pregnant.

Griffiths knows he refers to their parting years ago in Plain City, an old argument regarding the canal they shared, the two taking opposite sides on how its water would be appropriated.

"You will lose," John Griffiths says. "The Lord shall always win."

Skeen looks about, looks about again, turns to Lyman. "You see the Lord here, Lyman?" he asks.

Uneasy, Lyman shakes his head minimally, more as a point of loyalty than agreement.

"We will tie you up in the courts," Griffiths says. "No investor will touch you so long as he knows he is fighting the Mormon Church."

"There are different ways of scratching out a living," Moroni says. "You scratch out your way and we'll scratch out ours. We, at least, will be upfront with our investors, with no need to invoke the Lord."

The Skeens turn and ride off, toward the headgate. Griffiths watches them leave, takes his way to his own shack, it being in view. He should pray, but he is too distraught to do so. While he held his tongue and anger, for the most part, his animosity still roils inside him, creating havoc of his better inclinations. It will take an hour in silence and prayer, in the protection of his meager hovel, to settle him to where he can work, free before the Lord.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston