Mountain Meadows, Utah
September 1857
49 days to California
Dawn broke cold in the Meadow, filling the ravine with a thick mist that draped the wagons like a shroud.
I woke early, while the light was still pewter gray. My stomach felt sick and sour from what I’d heard from the Mormon refugees by the campfire the night before. Coffee would only make it worse, but the comforting trickle of bitter warmth called to me all the same. Louisa and Uri would have a pot brewing already, since baby Triphena still woke at the crack of dawn.
I tucked the quilts closer around Nancy, who hugged Mary in her sleep. A few feet away, James and William were snuggled together in their own pile.
I promised myself that today I would smile for them. Maybe even wade in the inlet of the Santa Clara river and splash like my wild children.
I’d ask James to teach me how to yoke the oxen properly—since I still couldn’t do it. I resolved that I’d learn to drive the wagon with confidence while we crossed the Mojave.
Maybe today I’d braid Mary and Nancy’s fresh-washed hair into new braids. Then I’d take stock of the provisions we had left and pick blackberries to dry.
Maybe the Meadow could be a place to rest and begin again.
Then I looked at my lone bedroll and missed Peter with a ferocity that closed my throat and made me hurry away from the wagon. For the briefest moment each morning, I still expected to find him next to me. The remembering that followed was like another death every time.
My children needed their father. So did I.
What good was I out here without him?
I told myself, for the hundredth time, that when we reached California, I’d be the mother my children needed again. Like I had been back in Arkansas. For now, I just needed to get us there without coming apart at the seams.
We’re nearly there.
I twisted the wedding band on my finger, feeling the grooves where the two loops fit together as one. Peter had worn one part of the gimmel band during our engagement—on his pinky. When we married, he gave me back the other half of the gimmel ring so that the two loops locked together on my finger.
I was supposed to bury him with his half of the gimmel ring. But I couldn’t bear the thought of it being ripped from his finger when the coyotes dug into the shallow grave. So I kept it on my finger instead, twisting it round and round at night until exhaustion won over grief.
The wagon creaked a bit as I pulled on my dress and stockings then wrapped a shawl around my shoulders.
James’s eyes fluttered open, and I shook my head. Sleep, I mouthed. Stay. It was too early for chores. Too early to carry on like we hadn’t been driving through endless hostile territory at a dead run without supplies.
James nodded and closed his eyes.
I moved through the fog, past silent wagons hulking in the growing light. They looked as scattered and exhausted as I felt.
A stone’s throw away, the soft clink of tin and the crackle of the first rekindled fires came from other early risers. Other than that, the Meadow was strangely silent. I peered in the direction of the river’s soft burble, but through the mist, I couldn’t see any of the cattle. As if to set my mind at ease, a deep lowing chorus came from farther up the canyon.
I found Louisa and Uri tucked around their small campfire with baby Triphena, huddled over steaming tins of weak coffee. A spit strung with a fat rabbit carcass hung across the flames. The smell made my stomach growl. A few feet away, another family—Uri and Louisa’s neighbors from back in Arkansas, the Dunlaps—gathered around an identical spitfire, roasting what looked like quail.
I raised my hand in greeting. The Dunlaps’ daughter, seven-year-old America, pointed excitedly at the small lumps of meat hanging from her family’s spit sticks. She’d tucked herself so close to the fire that flakes of white ash dotted her dark braids.
Uri gave me a tired smile and motioned for me to sit. His beard had grown into something of a bird’s nest, making him look slightly less like my Peter. Little droplets of coffee clung to the patch beneath his bottom lip. “I set a few snares last night and woke up to three cottontails. Finally some decent hunting.”
I nodded my appreciation. Anything other than dried beef, hardtack, and beans was a welcome change.
Louisa shifted the baby to the ground and patted the dirt beside her. Then she leaned over to dip an empty mug into the pot on the fire. “I haven’t milked the cow yet, but—”
Boom.
I flinched. The sound of a gunshot came from close by.
Boom, boom.
Two more in rapid succession. My hands curled into fists.
Then a flash of movement from the neighboring wagon drew my eye. I watched in horror as little America Dunlap—who had grinned and shown me her breakfast just a moment ago—toppled over, headfirst, into the campfire. The spit-stick broke and the flames hissed.
Boom, boom, boom.
The gunfire ripped through the quiet Meadow so unexpectedly that for a few moments, we all stayed exactly where we were. Louisa kneeling by the fire with the fresh tin of coffee. Baby Triphena wide-eyed and frozen. Me reaching toward her with outstretched fingers.
Uri was the first to react. He scrambled to his feet and snatched up the baby. Then he seized Louisa’s hand, pulling her roughly to her feet and knocking the coffee into the dirt.
America Dunlap’s mother frantically tried to pull her daughter’s body from the fire. Louisa grabbed hold of my arm, took the baby from Uri, and we dove toward the wagon a few feet away.
Uri’s rifle was propped against the nearest wheel. He lunged for it, wheeled around, and was swallowed up by the mist before Louisa or I could make a sound.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
More shots fired. What was happening? Who was attacking us?
My children’s names ripped through my mind in time with a volley of cracks that drowned out the wails: Nancy, Mary, James, William.
Nobody was there to protect them. Not me, and certainly not Peter.
The shots came again and again. The majority from a gully due west.
Louisa’s grip on my arm tightened.
Baby Triphena screamed.
A man still wearing his nightclothes barreled out from one of the silhouetted wagons several yards away. I couldn’t see his face through the mist, but his rifle looked like an extension of his body in the fog.
Boom.
He stopped running and doubled over at the stomach.
Then he dropped the rifle with a soft thud and crumpled beside it.
“Josiah!” The cry came from the dark wagon behind him. My mouth was cotton. My eyes burned. But I didn’t dare blink.
Nancy, Mary, James, William.
They needed me. But what could I do?
“No,” Louisa choked. “No.” Wailing rose from the wagon, where Josiah’s wife Matilda and their four children had been sleeping a few minutes earlier.
Josiah didn’t move.
Louisa thrust the baby into my arms and tried to get to her feet. “Uri,” she gasped. “There’s another rifle in the wagon. I can help—”
“No, Louisa. No.” I tugged her roughly to follow me, then worked to wedge my body farther beneath the wagon.
I wanted to run, too. Dash the short distance to where my children lay sleeping, and tuck them under my arms like a coyote protecting her pups. At least be there with them.
They need you, my brain screamed. But even through the terror and guilt, I knew I couldn’t help them by running through the bullets.
I yanked harder on the back of Louisa’s dress and pulled her to me and the baby. The fabric tore in my hand with a sickening rip, but I clawed to keep hold. Triphena screamed louder, a siren in my ears.
Nancy. Mary. James. William.
Why hadn’t I stayed with them a little longer?
Because you’re not the mother they need, my mind roared.
Were they cowering on the wagon floor? Or were their bodies as motionless as Josiah’s?
As America Dunlap’s.
As their father’s.
I put the awful thoughts out of my mind. The children would duck their little heads and hide. The bullets wouldn’t find them. I pulled Louisa and the wailing baby tighter, praying I was right.
I thought of the rifles stockpiled in the larger supply wagons. We had plenty of weapons, but we’d never been ambushed like this. Never needed them this quickly.
Boom, boom, boom.
One of the bullets struck the dirt an arm’s length from Louisa’s face. She flinched and coiled against me and the baby, then went rigid.
At first, I thought the bullet had hit her. Then I followed her gaze.
A stone’s throw away, in the mist giving way to the breaking dawn light, the silhouettes of several men hunched low in a tangle of sagebrush. With a deep-throated howl, they leaped from their cover and rushed toward our wagon in a dead run.
I caught a flash of a bare chest smeared with something black. Arms and legs slathered with red and white paint. Eager rifles roared to life with each step in a volley of sparks and smoke.
Indians!
Could they see us? I stifled the scream that rose alongside hot bile in my throat.
Boom, boom, boom.
The ground beneath me shook like thunder. Between gunshots, the bellows of our cattle, loud whoops, and a growing rumble of frantic hoofbeats filled the air.
The Indians were stampeding the cattle.
Louisa pulled Triphena to her. I pushed my face into the grass, willing it to swallow me up.
BOOM.
This time, the scream that followed the deafening chaos came from right in front of me. From the men just a few feet away from the wagon. I looked up in time to see the man with the red and white paint all over his body fall backward.
“Attack!” A familiar, deep voice sliced through the chaos.
Captain Alexander.
His command was followed by another volley of gunfire.
Only now, the shots came from inside our haphazard group of wagons, zipping through the mist to find our attackers.
My heart pounded hard, this time with desperate hope.
Alexander and some of the other men must have made it to our stockpile of guns. And not only were they still alive, but they were fighting back.
Please, I prayed. Please, God, protect them.
Our attackers drew back into the mist as quickly as they had appeared, retreating toward the walls of the ravine to take cover among the brush and boulders.
Within seconds, the trampled grass in front of the wagon was empty, except for several dark pools of blood.
“I have to find Uri,” Louisa gasped, rolling away from my vise-tight grip and taking the baby with her.
This time I let her go because I understood. I was already scrambling out from under the wagon to run headlong back the way I’d come only a few minutes earlier.
Nancy. Mary. James. William.
Please, God.
The prayer died on my lips when I circled back past America Dunlap’s body.
She lay splayed on the ground a few feet away, where her mother had been forced to leave her. One of her arms still reached into the coals of the smoldering campfire, the flesh curling red and black.
The rising bile in my throat fought harder for release, and I swallowed it back.
Another blast of gunfire sounded, farther away.
My stomach heaved.
I tore my eyes away from little America, ducked low, and ran for my wagon as fast as my legs would take me.