BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 24

MARCH 1896

THE SKEENS

"It's going to take more outside money. Lots." Moroni Skeen looked to his brother, Lyman, then let his eyes vacantly draw an imaginary line from their position southwestward into the horizon. "Sixty miles is a stretch beyond our means. 'Less you got some hidden away."

Lyman's eyes positioned off in the same direction, but his mind collected the additional obstacles that were staggered along the way. Ten miles down, the rocky stretches north of Danilson Spring. The tough go five miles further over Spring Creek, not a creek at all but a drainage for spring runoff. That stretch would require a substantial flume or fill, just which was yet to be decided. Some easier miles until the sands north of American Falls—seepage would be a problem, soil that would actually tamp enough to make a bank a considerable distance away, a long way to drag. Completion was years down the road, depending on the money coming in. "Doable," he said, a little war between the excitement of the project and the impediments to be encountered playing yet again in his thoughts. "More doable if it weren't for our Plain City friend, Brother Griffiths."

"The blunt instrument of the Church, he is," Moroni said. "And he don't even know it, they got him so full of the Lord." His countenance took on distaste. "Just like our father, cowering to Brigham Young." It was a mixed bag, loving your parents but knowing their weaknesses, traits you'd have no tolerance for in any other human being. "I don't blame him for believin', that's understandable enough. Other than he'd not say shit if he had a mouthful. And yet, he will swallow that particular substance if the Church feeds it to him."

They stood near the last untouched remnant of Griffiths's plow line, a short stretch of land as yet undisturbed by shovel or scraper. It followed exactly along where the Skeens, along with their engineer Clyde Bostaph, had surveyed two years before, and Moroni sometimes wondered if leaving it wasn't a Griffiths taunt. Griffiths had just made visible what Bostaph had graphed out for the Land Board months earlier, then claimed the United was first.

"Church ain't necessarily against us," Lyman said, "We're just in the way." He had repeated that to Moroni for the last two years, though he too believed that revenge of some sort was part of the goings on. The Church didn't forget.

"I recall this discussion taking place on another occasion," Moroni said, unswayed, his animosity evident. "If it's not against us, if it's just part of that ole 'bigger plan,' it's still robbery. We did the survey work. We filed the papers. And when we didn't kowtow to Woodruff he just set the brethren free upon us. Like foxhounds on the fox." He spat. "Nothin' personal, Mr. Fox, just part of the bigger plan."

Lyman did not argue. They had been looking at this project since 1883, even while they were starting a smaller canal downstream. That had been just four summers after the railroad first came through. The Saints were pouring thick into the country thirty and forty miles north. But Blackfoot, the shipping hub for the Lost River and Wood River mines, had almost nary a Mormon. Lyman dug the headgate just upstream from the city, on the Snake's west side, but the Skeen pocketbook was slim and investors were few. Fewer after the railroad put a track in from Twin Falls up north to the mines and the stage trade from Blackfoot shriveled up. Even the mail switched allegiance, the stage trip across the Shanghi Plain not known as either pleasant or easy. Any alternative was welcome to those who had suffered that journey.

The Skeens' Mormon background didn't help them at Blackfoot. There'd been bad blood for twenty years and no Mormon, even lapsed, was trusted by Gentile. But the few Mormon faithful shied away from even a half-hearted allegiance, too. The Church members brought no loyalty, no money—despite their father's service decades prior. Had they known, when they started the project, that Dubois' polygamy witch hunt would start up but a year into their work, that the government would confiscate the Church holdings under the guise of the law, they would have held back from their efforts. As it was, they'd been caught in the crossfire between political enemies, the State and the Church. They went bankrupt, the ditch just partly done and ending up in Isaac Ericson's hands, a capable man now working the United. Ericson was the United's savior, Lyman believed, and the rest of the United crew didn't know it. His experience was invaluable, but it was hidden to the men he worked with, all of them thinking more of their talents than was due, being unacquainted with the kind of work a ditch needed. But his Church status was unquestioned so they listened to him as they wouldn't have to others.

The Skeens failed at that first enterprise but even as they were floundering their eyes were on the bigger prize lying now at their feet. They had let their intent out into the public too soon in 1893, but what better way to attract investors than through the press? They hadn't taken into account their neighbors' willingness to so boldly snatch their idea, nor had they imagined the Mormon Church, in financial straits as it was from the government's war, being so willing to back Griffiths. They thought the Church's age of colonization was over, but it had just become unofficial, quieter and more full of subterfuge.

They'd been fools, Moroni thought. One look at the map would have told them so. Mormons from ten miles north of Blackfoot clear to the Montana border, thanks to the railroad. The LDS population creeping up from the south, too, having spread for three decades from the corner of Idaho. Their family had been a part of the movement, so had Griffiths's not five years later. Joseph Skeen came through the midwest in the 1850s in one of the early Mormon companies, had made an exodus shortly after north to Plain City. The Mormons were spreading fast at the time, polygamous unions generating an expanding population on a finite land, emigrants from the British Isles adding to those numbers in the tens of thousands. Another decade and the Mormons were colonizing Franklin, then up to the Gentile Valley, then to Chesterfield, their settler's barbed wire and religion overtaking the cattlemen's reign almost to Pocatello. The railroad concerns there gave them resistance as they always did, Gentiles and foreigners more inclined to the single life that railroad work entailed. Italian, Greek and Asian laborers, plus the general riffraff you'd expect. The Fort Hall Reservation was a buffer, too, against Mormon expansion, filling the space between the two Gentile strongholds of Pocatello and Blackfoot.

And then the Panic of 1893 hit nationwide, making things difficult for all.

Moroni waited for Lyman to speak, then waited some more. "It appears to be a race," he finally said. "Between the righteous and even more righteous." He spat, Griffiths's demeanor a near memory he despised, a greasy, feigned smile pasted over a mind involved in dastardly acts. The Skeens had been doing the Church's dirty work for decades, but since Brigham Young died in '78 the family's lack of sophistication had fallen out of favor. The new leadership wanted to look appealing in order to achieve statehood, Woodruff's "revelation" ending official polygamy in 1890 to usher those hopes closer. Every Church utterance pulled back from its earlier antagonism toward the government. The Skeens, having roughed up too many opponents, including those associated with the U.S. military, didn't fit the new image of Mormonism that Woodruff wanted presented to newspapers and government officials.

"We just have to do it different," Lyman said, trying to calm his brother. "Than last time."

"You mean succeed. Instead of fail. What a revelation. Perhaps you should make a run for the Quorum."

Lyman ignored his dig. "I mean we don't have the Church behind us like they do, can't expect any help from the membership. We have to drum up some outside money."

Moroni mulled that over and silently agreed, as he had before. They go over and over this discussion, but its effect barely registering at all. After some time, he asked, "Is Foulks good for more? Is Malcom?"

"Malcom's about played out, I think, but we can ask. Foulks is running a crew up ahead of Spring Creek, trying to find a way through the rocks. He's got horses and equipment but his money is tied up back in Illinois with family. He's sorting through it. Seems committed. He isn't fatigued like some, not yet, still got the Wild West in his mind. Sees himself as a frontiersman."

"Don't they all." A light disdain filled Moroni's reply. He wished instead it were wistfulness, he recalls his own heightened sense of anticipation that comes at the beginning of not just this project but any other. He recalls more, though, the disappointment that follows as details interfere with the dream. Part of getting old, he thought, and he didn't like it all that much.

"Well," Moroni said. He kicked his horse's ribs, "Bostaph's waiting."

***


 Lyman followed Moroni, three lengths behind. Bostaph, their engineer and partner, was going to meet them at the first of the three halting points where they intended to slow the United's progress. They had the right-of way at Judge Rounds' place, at Lula Gibson's property, and the ace-in-the-hole, Malcom's homestead where there was only room for one canal. The United would be forced off-line permanently there—if they hadn't already been sufficiently discouraged before then.

Once aware of the United's competition, the Skeens' worked these crucial places first to establish rights, intending to connect the spots later. That plan served well, for the United now had more work done but the Skeens' ditch was finished through the nexus points for a quarter mile each way. Had they not forced the United into an extra four miles of work, the government would have seen it as further advanced, maybe given the United, instead of the Skeens, the segregated land—which they might yet do, the initial January segregation rescinded just weeks later. That rescission, according to their Boise lawyer's telegram, was just voided yesterday. He had successfully protested having been given no response in the matter. Idaho's Supreme Court agreed.

Now they had work to do to prove themselves capable. More capable than the United. And work had to come quickly.

Skeen crews were on the job, Griffiths's crews were, too, not far and in sight to the north. The Skeens did the best they could to avoid violence between the Mormon crews and their own—some of whom, though Mormon, were betting on the Skeens. Those men were eager to get water on their land twenty, thirty, even forty miles away. The Skeens didn't discriminate against them, they hired anyone with a team of horses and a wagon, hired dozens of men who had naught but a shovel. Sometimes the Skeens bought the shovel. The only restraint they had on hiring was "no Asians," a Carey Act restriction that hindered progress immeasurably.

Lyman and Moroni trotted through the crews as they worked. The laborers nodded and they nodded back. The dust was already flying though it was only late March. It had been a dry winter, snowpack was light, all the more reason for settlers to back the project—better to depend on a canal rather than rain and snow.

One scoop at a time, the Fresnos pulled dirt from neighboring land to the line Bostaph had drawn. From time to time Bostaph checked on the crew here, took his measurements, then rode up to Rounds', did the same, then to Gibson's, keeping things apace. Bostaph rode toward them now. "Jones is wantin' paid," he announced without preamble when he neared.

"Get right down to business, don't you?" Moroni said laconically, then leaned toward his brother, indicating his support. "Give Jones half, we're off to Ogden tomorrow, do some proselytizing with some Chicago men."

Bostaph didn't look happy. "We're behind a half to him already."

"What's he going to do," Moroni scoffed. "Hit the mines?" The mines had all but shut down, the silver market glutted and the Panic taking its toll.

Bostaph looked to Lyman, trusting his word over his brother's. "Work's short," Lyman told him. "Jones has no real choice. He'll complain and be glad to get half." Lyman was a subcontractor for Utah Construction. The railroad work they depended on had diminished since '93, track expansion having dwindled to near nothing nationwide.

"And what do I tell Reilh?" Reilh's forty team crew was working Malcom's at the last nexus, which the United was boldly proclaiming their First Terminus.

"Let me talk to him, we're headin' there now," Moroni said. He jerked his reins and the horse responded. Lyman followed.

The United crew was skirting the lavas to the north, in order to take in five square miles that the Skeens were abandoning—in favor of the bigger prize, the land much further downstream. The Skeens were in a hurry, the Carey Act deadline, which was impossible to meet, looming ahead of them. In three years, when they failed to meet the deadline, they could work for an extension—what choice would the government have? The secret in dealing with the State, Moroni knew, was the same as in dealing in the private sector, get far enough into a project that the partner can't back out.

The land didn't look like much unless you did a little dreaming. Unless you looked ahead, turned the rock and sagebrush into irrigated, green fields in your mind, imagined a house on every eighty acres, horses and kids making their random excursions until they became paths, harvests heading to town in wagons. The Danskin area, which they started on and failed, looked the same as here ten years ago, if maybe a little less rocky, but now it was all field save the spots too elevated for water to reach. When the Skeens brought investors out, they took them to their incomplete ditch first, and once their disappointment sank in rode them over to the Danskin to lift their spirits and imaginations back up. The last impression, not the first, was what stuck in their minds. Except for the minds of the cautious and the clever, that is, who knew they were being worked.

"What are the chances they get their ditch?" Lyman asked, riding up alongside.

"Never underestimate the brethren," Moroni said. "If they're told to do something they will do it."

"How long will they work for scrip, though, that'd be my question."

"They ain't just working for scrip so much as from hope. They're in it far enough now they don't have much choice. The only ones givin' up is the ones with their women hounding them. Or ones still havin' property back where they come from." He paused. "Be nice to have a backup plan."

"I wouldn't want to be the last one holding scrip. Be like having Confederate money."

"Musical chairs," Moroni laughed. "A shell game. I'm thinking a few have considered that. Those that have, they have a plan. They'll be dumping scrip like it was on fire, and they'll be the loudest stating the worthiness of holding that paper."

They loped along, minds paced at a greater speed than that of their horses. Both had lists, sequences of actions to take. Both were scratching the corners of their minds for ideas.

"They have a leg up on us by considerable," Lyman said worriedly, witnessing the work the United crews were completing.

"Hard to compete when you're paying help full wages. We got four times as much money going out."

"Where's it all going? The scrip. They can only buy so much beans and flour. Someone's gonna be holding paper."

"Biethan and Chapman are betting on the Mormons. They're both taking it for harnesses. Fresnos. Doubletrees. Hell, I heard it being traded to the undertaker. They're all eager for business since the Panic." Moroni spat to the side. "Chapman's in all the way, he's taking scrip at his bank on the sly, not just his store. Word is the United owes him on a loan, too—he's funding them, essentially, on the County and State money he's holding. Which works to our advantage. If we need a hole card, we have it."

Lyman assimilates what was said, questions circling. From the swirl, he picks a vague one. "How so?"

"Hammon knows an LDS teller. Who likes to talk. He brags there's more scrip than money at the bank. Worst comes to worst, we'll let the state in on it. They go in for a withdrawal that Chapman can't provide—" he makes a slow cutting motion upon his throat "—the bank collapses."

Lyman mulled that over. "And how does that help? Seems like it might hurt us, too."

"We don't keep our accounts with Chapman, they're in Utah. The United will have to scramble elsewhere to borrow money. We won't. Their work will stop. The Mormons will toil away for mostly hope but not for only hope. Faith has its limit."

Lyman looked off. "Of course."

They rode the canal bank where there was canal, rode the scraped line between those spots where there wasn't. The United swung north along the lavas for a while and then came close enough for the Skeens to see the faces of the men operating its teams. Synchronized, one set of horses with a Fresno scooped a load and then moved up a ramp, dumped its load, while another team did the same a minute or two behind them.

Both canals were coming to an area that required extensive fill. It would be some time for either enterprise to finish the work. At the end of the fill area the canals abutted, close enough to wonder whether the center had two banks or one. For nearly a mile this held true. Ahead, a large number of men and horses congregated without movement, milling at a standstill. The Skeens came to them. Two men afoot moved toward them, Lyman could see they were brothers, so near in looks they were. One was bigger and swarthier, though, and looked five or ten years older. "Problem?" Moroni asked.

The darker brother, more weather-beaten and slightly taller, answered. "They beat us to their First Terminus," he said, taking his hat off with one hand and wiping his brow with the other. "Not sure how to proceed."

The somewhat stouter and shorter of the two steps forward. "We're the Reilhs. I'm John, this is Charles. We've been running this crew since early February." He offered a hand.

Lyman shook it, nodded to Charles who hasn't proffered his own hand. "Well, their grade is lower, common sense is they'll just have to flume under. Just cut through it, keep a couple men on guard tonight." He turned to Moroni. "That work?"

Moroni's slight grin was not much more than a twinge. "Should do the trick." He eyed where the two canals would cross. "No doubt add a court date, too. Be better that it not be for murder—better to be phrased as a fixable disagreement."

John Reilh signaled to the waiting crews and they recognized his windmilling gesture, commenced work. The men without horses smoothed areas with their shovels and those with teams either scraped, leveled or used a Fresno. One team cut at the United east bank to take a load from it, made a quick turn and rode up onto the Skeens' ditch, dumped its haul near where the other canal passed. The men with shovels, aware of the shadiness of their action. and their amusement obvious, got to work fast, prepared a ramp so future loads could build a bank without being shoveled.

"Any chance of payment soon?" Charles said. "Promise ain't hard to swallow but it's not been very filling, neither."

Moroni contorted his face into a gesture of respect. "It will be tight," he said,"I admit, but things are improving as for money. Some fellows from Chicago are on their way to Salt Lake within the week."

'That's good news."

***

In a few minutes they were at Malcom's, where, while work didn't legally have to be done to prove their right-of-way, they weren't relying on the law. They had Livingston's crew cutting between two hills, each of them rising thirty feet above grade. The Skeen canal banks there hugged the hills, the distance between them wider than elsewhere. There was no mistaking that no room was left for the United to share.

Malcom was at the cut, afoot, to greet them, breaking from his farming tasks that included, from the looks of things, scratching some wheat and oats in and hoping for rain to bring them up. "You hear?" he asked.

Their faces said no.

"Government took the segregation back."

The Skeens eyed each other. They were surprised that the news traveled so fast. The segregation of eighty thousand acres of public land, though, had been a piece of gossip with some heft, and its severance would lend some drama to every onlooker. Senator Dubois threw his voice in, influencing the situation, pandering for votes, and drumming up outrage. No mention in the court of public opinion, of course, that he held a key section of ground, 640 acres, that the United would irrigate. He'd filed on it two years before, right after Bostaph made their formal proposal, complete with map. It wasn't hard to imagine that a Land Board member had rushed the information to Dubois. It's handy to know people inside the government.

"Our appeal's already in court," Moroni said. "We're one step ahead of you."

"Still," Malcom said—somewhat forlornly, his news trumped by newer news yet.

"It's a long fight," Lyman sighed, commiserating. "We're suing. They're suing. The government moved the case up the ladder, it's in Washington now. Interior Department. They can't just decide without an argument from us, they knew that. Or should have. Hard to understand why they rushed that decision knowing they was going to have to unrush it. Somebody's looking to profit from keeping our hands tied."

From the several teams working the canal a man came walking. He strode with a lackadaisical pace, his attention on something other than his path. The Skeens and Malcom stared as he made his way. A slight breeze was up, about every other step of the man kicking up a small cloud of dust that feathered out and dissipated. "You come with cash, I expect," Livingston said when he arrived, his voice infused with an irony that disguised a background of hope. It made Moroni Skeen, at least, laugh. The others expressed uneasiness.

"Had it. Left it at the hotel," he said.

"Figured."

"About the segregation," Malcolm interjected, eager for an explanation. He had his life savings, a hundred thousand dollars, invested in the campaign.

"We'll win," Lyman said, thinking that straightforwardness, which his brother lacked, to be in the interest of all. "We incorporated first. The Act is clear. They went ahead and dug a canal without the proper procedure."

"Politics trumps law at times," Livingston observed.

Moroni glared at him. "If it's the court of public opinion, if you haven't forgot, they're Mormons and the Mormons haven't been faring so well."

"Looks to me like Dubois switched sides, that's faring alright, seems to me," Livingston said.

"Dubois is such he may switch sides again," Moroni replied.

"We've been talking to the Senator about a compromise," Lyman revealed. "The United can take the land from here east and most of the way south to Meek's Ferry and we get from here to American Falls."

"First I heard," Malcom said. "Could I ask to be better apprised?"

He was ignored. "That means we're still another five years down the road," Livingston mused, performing calculations in his head, situating his own plans into the altered possibility. "For first water on the land."

"Or more," Malcom added.

Lyman, in an attempt to calm, said, "We'll have water to the next rock cut within a couple years. Won't be a lot of land under cultivation then but enough to bring more investors in."

"What's the timeline?" Malcom asked.

"Hope to get to the basin—" Livingston nods toward the southwest "—by June. it's but a mile or so. Not much more."

"Still doing it like we discussed?" Bostaph asked.

"Just do the south bank, let the basin serve as a reservoir. At least temporarily."

Malcom harrumphed. "Speed," he said, "Appears to be of the essence given the court proceedings."

Livingston and Lyman both looked at the crew working behind them. "Hard to imagine speedy as a way to describe the process," Livingston said. Lyman Skeen's lips spread slightly outward, registering a restrained grin.

"Bostaph have a blaster in mind for further on?" Lyman asked him.

"There's just the one area, two miles further up. From there—" he shook his head, indicating ignorance.

"We'll come to that when we come to that," Moroni said. "Now, we'll let you get back to work." He turned to Malcom. "And you, you have a crop to plant. Make us legitimate, will you?"

"I think I may have more to lose, Mr. Skeen, than you," Malcom said. "So if I seem overly concerned, be assured I am not. Not overly, but concerned."

"I have a reputation, E.T., that I must protect. I must not lose."

"That reputation might be better lost," Livingston mused. "Skeen isn't always synonymous with uprightness." He tipped his hat as he turned toward Lyman. "No offense, Lyman."

"None taken." He knew his brother's reputation. His father's reputation. His dead cousin's reputation, shot as a horse thief, not the horse borrower he was.

"We're off then." The Skeens turned and headed back up the canal. Livingston and Malcom exchanged glances once they left. "Will it work?" Livingston asked him.

"It better, it's all I got now."

© 2025 Ralph Thurston