BIG SOUTHERN (PART 3)

©2025 RALPH THURSTON

1863

URIAH AND LOUISA

From the rear of the wagon, overlooking the sickly girls, Louisa's voice cut like the shrill slash of a crow's cry. "I cannot stand the shame of misbelief!" She has been haranguing Uriah for days, from the moment they brought up the rear of the Morrisites, accompanied by General Connor to the Fort named after him. It worsened after they parted ways, seemingly unnoticed, with that party before it reached its destination, for her diatribe was no longer tempered by nearness to those she might offend.

Uriah fights the instinct to cower, but his posture nonetheless shrivels. His back turned to his wife, he attends to the small fire warming their dinner by the rubble of Fort Hall. Earlier he watered the mules, tethered now to a cottonwood and eating contentedly at the tall grass at the river some forty yards away, so he has no reason to shift away while her ire dissipates.

Pride, he wants to say to her, only pride. There is only shame if there is pride. But he doesn't voice his understanding, knowing better than to fuel her anger. There is no shame, there is only honor, in following your heart, however wrongly it directs you—that is God's way of measuring your faith, just as he did Abraham's when he took his son to the sacrificial altar. Pride—it is only her pride in her standing, her fear of how others might think less of her, when we are all as nothing before God, no man better than another.

The girls, Emma the older, named after Joseph Smith's young wife, and Josephine, the younger, named after the Prophet that would lead them away from the polygamous darkness Young had taken the Church to, had taken ill three days ago just after they left the Morrisite company, and both girls moan in the shade of the wagon's cover. The day will be hot, already he sweats, and the path ahead, long and uncharted, goes he knows not where, only that Louisa insists, he drives.

"To leave a country to follow a polygamist—"

His reflexes cannot let her remark go. He yells back. "I did not know. None of us knew. You did not know!"

She ignores him. "—then to give up our belongings for a crazed prophet who has the Lord coming! Coming now! This minute! Did the Lord save him?" she screams. Her hands raise to the sky, her eyes, too, reach toward the sun,"'He is coming!' Morris said. 'Rejoice!' he said. So soon was the Lord coming that we planted no crops, did little but pray, and what has come of it but Brigham Young slaughtering the misbelievers with his own pack of righteous hoodlums." She drops her hands, walks toward Uriah and glares. "Where, pray tell, was the Lord for Joseph Morris, His true and only prophet?"

She knows his answer so he will not say: the Lord works in mysterious ways of which we are not yet developed enough to understand. He slows himself, hoping the tempo hypnotizes her, alters her fury. There is a cry from the wagon, a croak, really. "Josie," he says, and already Louisa's attention passes to their child and away from him.

The hash of beans, potatoes and soaked jerky is ready so he goes to the creek for water to dowse the fire. He draws out his steps to take longer than necessary. Fort Hall, flooded last year and the water demolishing the adobe buildings, lies in ruins, somewhat of a path snaking through the rubble, fashioned by others who came through in the past year. They had shifted poles, once a part of the stockade walls or roofs, to make a trail traversable by man and beast. Chunks of adobe lie scattered, the flood current hauling some downstream and others moved by passers-through for unknown reasons.

When he turns back, his bucket filled with water, he sees two shapes to the southwest at the horizon. At first he thinks they might be herons or raptors but their low flight, near ground level, and their swiftness soon reveal them as horsemen in a hurry, on a line directly towards Louisa and him. Soldiers, he thinks.

The rhythmic pounding of hooves details a speed generally not used save in emergency, but it slows as the men approach. They pull up along the camp, both tipping their hats, the horses frothing at the mouth and sweaty, the men grubby, unshaven, and breathing heavily. They are not soldiers. "Ma'am," says the larger man. He looks to Uriah, who has made it back to the fire and is dowsing it. "Sir."

Quell trouble with kindness, the Prophet Morris proscribed. "You come well-timed. We were just fixing grub," Uriah says. "I believe there's enough for you both if you care to sit." He swings his head to one side. "Creek's over there, if your horses need water. You can tether them in the shade, there's plenty of forage."

"Dirk?" The large man looks to his partner. Jake Willoughby shows perplexity, a new name having been bestowed upon him.

Jake thinks a minute, trying to invent a moniker for his partner, Ed Long. "William," he settles with,"If you think we got time, I got the hunger." Willoughby was the smaller man, not just shorter but gaunt, his eyes sunken and deep crevices drawing down in cheeks into his rusty beard. He seems pleased by his creativity, so Ed Long thinks.

They dismount, Louisa introduces herself and Uriah as Lorenzo and Harriet. As they pass the back of the wagon, the two men see the girls. "Sick?" Ed asks.

She nods in a stricken manner. "The fever, I fear."

He shakes his head, hands the reins to his horse to his partner. "There's been a spell of it," he says. His eyes turn to her. "Mormons, I assume."

She pauses, seemingly asking herself a question, perhaps the same one. "Yes. Of a sort. Or were."

He ignores her qualifier. "Thought so. You have the look." He directs her attention to his own self. "We, I think you'd agree, do not."

Though she does not smile at the intended jest, her face slackens. "No, sir, on that we agree."

"English?"

"That, I imagine, was easy to guess."

He laughs. "Twas. Likely Morrisites, then, at least half a chance, anyway." The Morrisites, mostly Mormon converts from the British Isles, shied from polygamy, something the missionaries in England had hidden. Those who emigrated to Deseret found themselves amidst polygamists, were thus ripe for Morris's revelations that claimed to return the Mormon Church to the entity they thought they had been converted to.

She nodded.

"You're a ways away from your party."

"We are heading to the mines, no part any more of that blasphemy."

The girls, still except for a twitch now and then to indicate life or discomfort, sprawl on blankets amidst meager belongings—two chests, some rudimentary farm implements: a shovel, a scythe, a hoe.

"Let's eat, fixins' on, as the cowboys say," Uriah's voice spreads out in what Louisa recognizes is a false way.

"Ain't heard that phrase with that particular accent," Jake says, having returned from tethering the horses.

Uriah takes some boxes and buckets out the back, enough for them all to sit, spoons out their dinner on plates and passes them around.

They are talkative, in an odd way, Uriah thinks. Inquisitive, too. Louisa livens, stung from her angry torpor. She makes them laugh, having mined stories from Salt Lake and before that, Birmingham. When she asks where they are from, the two exchange glances. After a pause, Jake speaks,"Virginia City, of late," he says. "Afore that, Texas."

"Cattle," she says, knowingly.

"Cattle, you are right," Jake says, grinning at Ed, who kicks the ground in front of him, jarring some grass from its roots. "Cattle. We aim to find work over to Rock Creek. Or Goose Creek. Big herd over that way, so we hear."

Ed raises his eyebrows, unnoticeably except to Louisa.

The men finish their meal and Louisa takes their plates. "Sit for a spell," she says,"While I wash up. Lorenzo could use a word with some other men for a change."

"Just a moment, then," Ed agrees. "We are somewhat in a hurry. As you might have noticed. But we can sit just a bit."

Uriah, curious about Texas, engages the men with questions that they seem humored by, moreso as the conversation goes on. It doesn't last long, Louisa back with clean plates dowsed in the creek. "Horses seem rested and happy," she says. "Fine specimens."

"Indeed, they've been fine companions," Ed says. Jake looks at him and avoids exposing his amusement. The horses are stolen.

The two men rise, again tip their hats. "Then we best get going, ma'am. 'preciate the hospitality and we wish you well in the mines. Ain't that often we see Mormons aimin' for that trade, it's a good thing to see, those miners could use some civilizing and lordliness."

Jake laughs loudly. "I have to thank you folks, that's the best grub we've had in some time. And the nicest company by a sight."

They shake Uriah's hand, head to the creek, mount their rides and come back by through the shambles of Fort Hall to pass by them. "Best of luck with the girls," Ed says,"Our prayers are with them." Jake stifles a grin, then kicks his horse and they are off to the southwest. But then Ed stops, turns. "You can cross up here," he points northwest, "but it's a long ways to water once you cross. Stay east of the Big Southern Butte, there's a spring there." He paused, "Be better if you went north along the river, though, cross at Meeks' Ferry. Keep goin' north, follow the foothills west to the Lost once you see the trail. You won't miss it, there's a few thousand travelers ahead of you left their tracks. It's longer by a good deal that cutting through the desert, but you'll always be near water." He swing his hat by its brim from east to west. "You won't see much water on the Shanghi if you go that way. So load up your barrels when you hit the next stream, there won't be any more. Maybe a pond someplace if you let your mules direct you to it." He turns to catch up with his partner, and together they follow the river, from the sound of the horses hooves picking up speed until they are specks at the horizon and then gone.