Mountain Meadows, Utah
September 1857
Day 3 in the Meadow
The raw need for water eclipsed everything else, except one thing.
Fear.
As the third day drew to a close, the number of gunmen tucked along the other side of the river—and the amount of gunfire—had doubled.
Just before the sun slipped behind the rim of the basin, a bullet struck three-year-old Sara Baker in the ear. She was sitting on her father’s lap in the trench, just a few feet away from Mary. John Baker had just laid down his rifle for a few hours’ sleep beside his wife and daughters.
It happened so fast, a burst of sound then blood, that none of us—including little Sara—reacted to at first.
The top of her ear was simply there one moment and gone the next.
Her tearless, hoarse scream echoed off the canyon walls. It lasted only a moment before a frenzy of gunfire from our side of the trench drowned it out.
Nancy, William, and baby Triphena, who had been lying listless on the ground at my feet, scrambled upright in horror. James, who sat beside me with his head on my shoulder, opened his mouth in a wide O as John Baker wrapped Sara in his arms and rushed for the wagons at the center of the field, bullets be damned.
Louisa tucked herself closer around Triphena and Uri, unable to hide the sound of her sobs.
I wanted to open my mouth and promise my children I would keep them safe. But the lie was so bald, I couldn’t force it past my lips.
As the sobs in the trench turned to quiet wails, I opened and closed my mouth again.
Give us some words, Kit.
Peter’s voice.
I swallowed my tears. How many times had Peter said that to me, at the end of a long day, to take his mind off the ache in his back from sorting peaches.
Give us some words.
“‘The mind is its own place’,” I rasped loudly into the near-silence, ignoring how my mouth felt like sandpaper.
My cheeks burned hot. They were words I’d memorized a lifetime ago, before we started West. John Milton’s Paradise Lost. I’d learned parts of it by heart when I was younger than Mary. The long, winding poem was so achingly beautiful, the words had swept me up and made me want to turn them over and over in my mind.
All four of my children, Louisa and Uri, and even baby Triphena looked at me, waiting for more.
I almost lay back down and pretended I hadn’t spoken. What was I thinking?
But I remembered the way the poem—like all the words I loved—had transported me to another world outside my quiet bedroom. We needed another world right now. I couldn’t get us out of this trench or beyond the Meadow. I couldn’t stop the bullets. I couldn’t do anything about the horrors surrounding us. None of us could. At least, not our bodies. This was what I had to offer. Maybe we could disappear somewhere else together. Maybe I could pull us out of this trench, if only for a moment, if only in our minds.
“‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.’” I looked my children in the eyes even though my face burned red from the audacity of what I was saying under the circumstances. Bullets whizzed and weapons clamored from the riverbank.
Still, I continued with the lines Peter loved.
“‘Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild, then silent night
With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heav'n, her starry train:
But neither breath of morn when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun
On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glistering with dew, nor fragrance after showers,
Nor grateful evening mild, nor silent night
With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon,
Or glittering starlight without thee is sweet.’”
Uri had closed his eyes, but there was a smile on his lips. James sighed against me, and Nancy pulled Triphena into the shifting shade of Mary’s body.
“Talk more, Mama,” she said, reaching out a hand to twist the ring on my finger. Then she popped her dirty thumb into her mouth.
So I did.
* * *
Hampton and Thomas hadn’t returned by the time we moved through all the words I could remember from “Nature.”
Any time the sound of clattering rocks came from the far side of the valley, Mary’s eyes popped open and Louisa murmured, “It must be Hampton and Thomas.”
Each time, those few seconds of hope hurt more.
Uri had stopped opening his eyes at all, though the knit of his brow each time Louisa spoke told us he was still conscious. For now, at least. By the look of his red cheeks, fever meant infection was setting into the wound.
None of us had the energy to brush away the flies that tormented the living and covered the dead like crawling black dirt.
When darkness finally fell, we heard another trickle of rocks clatter in the distance.
“It’s them,” Louisa whispered in a rasp.
I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to see the hope on Mary’s face. But just fifteen minutes later, a subtle commotion stirred from the center of the wagon fort.
A dark figure ducked between the supply wagons.
My heart beat so hard it felt like it might burst. Had Hampton returned? Had they found the Duke wagon train? And if so, was help on the way?
Mary struggled to her knees and moved to stand beside me, her breaths fast and shallow. I glanced back at Louisa, who cradled Uri’s head on her lap. She pursed her sunburned lips and tried to smile.
We waited in silence until the dark figure reappeared at the edge of the supply wagons and darted toward our section of the trench.
Mary’s fingers found mine. I blinked hard, barely able to believe what I thought I saw until the figure ducked safely into the trench next to Mary.
She flung herself into the shadowy figure’s arms without a word. It was Hampton, carrying a bulging leather pouch strapped against one shoulder. My eyes prickled with fresh tears that somehow hadn’t dried up. Mary’s fiancé was alive. And if I wasn’t mistaken, he was carrying water in that pouch.
“Let me pour a little into your bucket,” he whispered, nodding to the dirty tin pail that lay on its side next to Uri.
At the sound of water pouring, all of the children were suddenly awake and alert. “Oh, oh, oh,” Nancy cried, her tiny voice high and cracked. “Oh, look, Baby Tri!” The last time I’d heard her this animated was when she got her toy horse.
“Just a little bit now,” Hampton whispered. “I’m sorry there’s not more. My daddy—Captain Alexander—said to make sure everybody got just a sip. I’ll go back for more when it’s gone. There’s a trickle of a stream that way.” He nodded toward the other side of the canyon, where he’d disappeared with Thomas the day before.
While the children clamored to drink and Louisa helped Uri move to sitting upright, I studied the intricately stitched pouch that Hampton poured carefully, a little at a time, into the bucket.
It wasn’t one of ours.
I waited to ask the questions burning behind my thirst until I’d taken a swallow of water. It was still cold and ran down my blistered throat like dew from heaven. By the time I’d had my drink and passed the filled bucket down the trench, the children were already curled together and falling asleep again. It had become the only escape from the horrors that pressed in from every side.
But at least, for the moment, we had a little water.
“Where did you get this, Hampton?” I asked him softly, running a hand over the big leather pouch.
He stared back at me, eyes huge in his pale face, but didn’t answer at first. “It took me and Thomas maybe an hour to climb to the top of the basin rim,” he said quietly after a moment. “Then we ran. I thought we’d made it.”
I closed my eyes. Mary had traded my hand for his and leaned against him while he rested his back on the wall of the trench.
“It was slow going in the dark. We got maybe three miles. Headed along the Overland Trail the way we came, toward Cedar City, hoping we’d find the Duke train.”
He drew a painful-sounding breath. “Finally, we saw campfires in the distance. Heard voices when we came around the ridge. It wasn’t the Duke wagon train. But there was a whole camp. Maybe thirty people. A few cattle and lots of horses.”
“White or Indian?” Uri choked out. I felt him stir behind me. Hampton glanced at him and set his mouth in a firm line.
“We couldn’t see much, but we could hear some English. One of them said something about ‘innocent blood.’ He sounded angry.”
Hampton was talking faster now, the story tumbling out of him. Already, the night felt different. Full of sparks ready to set everything ablaze, and I only prayed they would light the powder keg in our favor.
“I stayed back and kept watch while Thomas went down to the fires. We couldn’t get past them, not easily anyway. We thought maybe it was another group trying to get out of Utah Territory. That maybe we could approach them.”
He closed his eyes and dropped his voice. “Everything happened so fast. Someone started shouting when Thomas got close to the fire. He … he tried to turn around and run. Then he fell. They shot him in the leg.” He paused to gather his composure. “He got up and kept running toward me. Then they shot him in the back. That time, he stayed down.” His voice shook. “I wanted to help him, I did. But I couldn’t do anything but watch.”
The swallow of water in my stomach sloshed like it might come back up. I drew in a breath. “What happened next?”
“I was sure they’d seen me. I ran back the way I’d come.” He looked up at the night sky, blinking. “Then after just a few seconds I ran smack into a boy. A Paiute. He looked to be about me and Thomas’s age.”
None of us spoke. Hampton kept going. “He was holding a rifle. He looked shocked to see me. We stared at each other for a few seconds, both holding our guns. Then he fired his weapon in the air and shoved this pouch at me.”
My mind went blank trying to understand what he’d just told us.
“He seemed as scared as I was, like he’d seen a ghost,” Hampton choked out. “Why didn’t he shoot me? He must have told the others I was dead, because nobody came after me. It doesn’t make sense why he would do that.”
“What did your daddy say about that, Hampton?” I asked gently.
Hampton coughed, or it might have been a groan. Then he fixed me with a look. “He just said to tell you that he knows what we have to do now. He wants one man from each household to come to the wagons in the center of the circle.” He paused. “And you too, Katrina.”