BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 29

MAY 1897

THE UNITED AND THE SKEENS

"'Preciate you coming up, Lewis," says Lyman Skeen.

"Tis an honor," McCandless says. "It would be hard for me to turn my back to a Skeen."

McCandless had ridden with Joseph Skeen when he was an Angel, knew him as trustworthy and duty bound. He suspected, and hoped, his boys were of the same stuff, though he'd heard different about Moroni.

They are at the First Terminus, an easy find for McCandless. It was nearly a straight shot west from the Blackfoot bridge. He'd not been on this exact route before but he'd been near enough, having crossed the plain numerous times from Meek's Ferry. He'd crossed at Baugh's Ford downstream, too, before the Reservation was created, but the trail to the Big Southern Butte, his typical beacon point for travels further north or west, missed this spot considerably.

"I think we can talk Cluff into a compromise." Lyman's horse looks directly east, and Skeen's arm stretches out in a southeasterly direction. "Roughly from Ross Butte northward for the United." He reins his horse around to face southwest. "We get the remainder. We take the tough go through the rocks, the United gets the easy."

McCandless's horse copies Skeen's movements. He has a rough idea of the territory. Its terrain varies somewhat in its composition, ranging from farmable to hellish even to walk across. He has seen its difficulties, starting at swampy but generally ending at an oversupply of rocks. "Now that Chapman's is down, I take it Cluff is of a more contrite nature."

"Maybe not contrite, but along those lines. Call it amenable."

"Too bad about Chapman."

"A sad day when a man takes his own life."

They give the thought a moment.

"He had much to consider," McCandless says. "The scrip situation may have toppled him but his other dealings soon would have done the same, in any case."

Lyman had read the papers—Chapman made fictitious stock price collaterals to borrow on, watering the stock. Now it was coming out that he signed over his life insurance policy, paid for by the bank, to his brother-in-law when a New York company actually held it. "He apparently thought Hell's accommodations better than those in Idaho prison. His choice. He will have another chance from the other side."

McCandless leaves it be at that, gives the conversation a rest. "You want my support."

"It would be auspicious. Your word counts a great deal to the citizenry. We would be grateful."

"There are concerns."

"Best speak them."

"Your brother. And Bostaph. There's a good deal of talk about them skimming."

"He's family, but he's overly interested in his own earnings. It's true."

"I'm talking well beyond that."

"I know. Embezzlement. Entirely possible."

"Are you willing to help usher them out? They would have to be gone. Their presence, guilty or not, is a hindrance."

"It will be bad blood but I am with you."

"And McConnell—he said you spoke with him, came to an agreement."

"He laid it out for us. The Chapman receiver is sitting on worthless scrip. Even the brethren won't buy it back, Thum said, given the canal situation being neither here nor there while it's in the courts. And the United can't buy it back, they have no money. It would look bad anyway, them buying at half from the very people they issued the scrip to. Another company might get away with it, the Mormons, being what they are, can't avoid censure in such an instance." Lyman paused, took a big long breath. "Moroni would like to starve 'em out, he'd like to hurt John Griffiths, but I want this over. Cluff will accept the abbreviated version of the United and we have no problem letting it go."

"Brother Parkinson has agreed to throw his support in, then. He has forty teams ready to work. I have no assets along those lines but I do have capital. And I will summon what I can from my connections."

"There's been a consensus drawn," says Lyman. "There's interest in you becoming the President of the Board."

"It would make a good show, I suppose."

"That's the thinking. Your wards will buy up the scrip, settle the land, help them finish and we might just pick a few of them off ourselves once the United runs out of land."

McCandless holds out his hand, Lyman shakes it. "May the next stage go more smoothly," he says.

"Amen," Skeen replies.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston