The farther we get away from Salt Lake the more likely they’ll sell us provisions.”
“And if they won’t?” the same woman persisted.
“Then we’re quit of them,” said my father. “Cedar City is the last settlement.
We’ll have to go on, that’s all, and thank our stars we are quit of them.
Two days’ journey beyond is good pasture, and water.
They call it Mountain Meadows.
Nobody lives there, and that’s the place we’ll rest our cattle and feed them up before we tackle the desert.
Maybe we can shoot some meat.
And if the worst comes to the worst, we’ll keep going as long as we can, then abandon the wagons, pack what we can on our animals, and make the last stages on foot.
We can eat our cattle as we go along.
It would be better to arrive in California without a rag to our backs than to leave our bones here; and leave them we will if we start a ruction.”
With final reiterated warnings against violence of speech or act, the impromptu meeting broke up.
I was slow in falling asleep that night.
My rage against the Mormon had left my brain in such a tingle that I was still awake when my father crawled into the wagon after a last round of the night-watch.
They thought I slept, but I heard mother ask him if he thought that the Mormons would let us depart peacefully from their land.
His face was turned aside from her as he busied himself with pulling off a boot, while he answered her with hearty confidence that he was sure the Mormons would let us go if none of our own company started trouble.
But I saw his face at that moment in the light of a small tallow dip, and in it was none of the confidence that was in his voice.
So it was that I fell asleep, oppressed by the dire fate that seemed to overhang us, and pondering upon Brigham Young who bulked in my child imagination as a fearful, malignant being, a very devil with horns and tail and all. * * * * *
And I awoke to the old pain of the jacket in solitary.
About me were the customary four: Warden Atherton, Captain Jamie, Doctor Jackson, and Al Hutchins.
I cracked my face with my willed smile, and struggled not to lose control under the exquisite torment of returning circulation.
I drank the water they held to me, waved aside the proffered bread, and refused to speak.
I closed my eyes and strove to win back to the chain-locked wagon-circle at Nephi.
But so long as my visitors stood about me and talked I could not escape.
One snatch of conversation I could not tear myself away from hearing.
“Just as yesterday,” Doctor Jackson said. “No change one way or the other.”
“Then he can go on standing it?” Warden Atherton queried.
“Without a quiver.
The next twenty-four hours as easy as the last.
He’s a wooz, I tell you, a perfect wooz.
If I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d say he was doped.”
“I know his dope,” said the Warden. “It’s that cursed will of his.
I’d bet, if he made up his mind, that he could walk barefoot across red-hot stones, like those Kanaka priests from the South Seas.”
Now perhaps it was the word “priests” that I carried away with me through the darkness of another flight in time.
Perhaps it was the cue. More probably it was a mere coincidence.
At any rate I awoke, lying upon a rough rocky floor, and found myself on my back, my arms crossed in such fashion that each elbow rested in the palm of the opposite hand.
As I lay there, eyes closed, half awake, I rubbed my elbows with my palms and found that I was rubbing prodigious calluses.
There was no surprise in this.
I accepted the calluses as of long time and a matter of course.
I opened my eyes.
My shelter was a small cave, no more than three feet in height and a dozen in length.
It was very hot in the cave.
Perspiration noduled the entire surface of my body.
Now and again several nodules coalesced and formed tiny rivulets.
I wore no clothing save a filthy rag about the middle.
My skin was burned to a mahogany brown.
I was very thin, and I contemplated my thinness with a strange sort of pride, as if it were an achievement to be so thin.
Especially was I enamoured of my painfully prominent ribs.
The very sight of the hollows between them gave me a sense of solemn elation, or, rather, to use a better word, of sanctification.
My knees were callused like my elbows.