He was a man of flying tatters.
I remember, at his waist, dangled dirty tufts of hair that, far back in the journey, after a shower of rain, were wont to show glossy black.
These I knew were Indian scalps, and the sight of them always thrilled me.
“It will do him good,” father commended, more to himself than to me. “I’ve been looking for days for him to blow up.”
“I wish he’d go back and take a couple of scalps,” I volunteered.
My father regarded me quizzically.
“Don’t like the Mormons, eh, son?”
I shook my head and felt myself swelling with the inarticulate hate that possessed me.
“When I grow up,” I said, after a minute, “I’m goin’ gunning for them.”
“You, Jesse!” came my mother’s voice from inside the wagon. “Shut your mouth instanter.” And to my father: “You ought to be ashamed letting the boy talk on like that.”
Two days’ journey brought us to Mountain Meadows, and here, well beyond the last settlement, for the first time we did not form the wagon-circle.
The wagons were roughly in a circle, but there were many gaps, and the wheels were not chained.
Preparations were made to stop a week.
The cattle must be rested for the real desert, though this was desert enough in all seeming.
The same low hills of sand were about us, but sparsely covered with scrub brush.
The flat was sandy, but there was some grass—more than we had encountered in many days.
Not more than a hundred feet from camp was a weak spring that barely supplied human needs.
But farther along the bottom various other weak springs emerged from the hillsides, and it was at these that the cattle watered.
We made camp early that day, and, because of the programme to stay a week, there was a general overhauling of soiled clothes by the women, who planned to start washing on the morrow.
Everybody worked till nightfall.
While some of the men mended harness others repaired the frames and ironwork of the wagons.
Them was much heating and hammering of iron and tightening of bolts and nuts.
And I remember coming upon Laban, sitting cross-legged in the shade of a wagon and sewing away till nightfall on a new pair of moccasins.
He was the only man in our train who wore moccasins and buckskin, and I have an impression that he had not belonged to our company when it left Arkansas. Also, he had neither wife, nor family, nor wagon of his own.
All he possessed was his horse, his rifle, the clothes he stood up in, and a couple of blankets that were hauled in the Mason wagon.
Next morning it was that our doom fell.
Two days’ journey beyond the last Mormon outpost, knowing that no Indians were about and apprehending nothing from the Indians on any count, for the first time we had not chained our wagons in the solid circle, placed guards on the cattle, nor set a night-watch.
My awakening was like a nightmare.
It came as a sudden blast of sound.
I was only stupidly awake for the first moments and did nothing except to try to analyze and identify the various noises that went to compose the blast that continued without let up.
I could hear near and distant explosions of rifles, shouts and curses of men, women screaming, and children bawling.
Then I could make out the thuds and squeals of bullets that hit wood and iron in the wheels and under-construction of the wagon.
Whoever it was that was shooting, the aim was too low.
When I started to rise, my mother, evidently just in the act of dressing, pressed me down with her hand.
Father, already up and about, at this stage erupted into the wagon.
“Out of it!” he shouted. “Quick! To the ground!”
He wasted no time.
With a hook-like clutch that was almost a blow, so swift was it, he flung me bodily out of the rear end of the wagon.
I had barely time to crawl out from under when father, mother, and the baby came down pell-mell where I had been.
“Here, Jesse!” father shouted to me, and I joined him in scooping out sand behind the shelter of a wagon-wheel.
We worked bare-handed and wildly.
Mother joined in.
“Go ahead and make it deeper, Jesse,” father ordered,
He stood up and rushed away in the gray light, shouting commands as he ran. (I had learned by now my surname.
I was Jesse Fancher. My father was Captain Fancher).
“Lie down!” I could hear him. “Get behind the wagon wheels and burrow in the sand!
Family men, get the women and children out of the wagons!
Hold your fire!
No more shooting!
Hold your fire and be ready for the rush when it comes!