Corn Creek, Utah
September 1857
Awan was back.
Awan was alive.
I wanted him to wrap his arms around me. To kiss me like he had the night he left. To show me the shy smile he saved for me when he looked up through that long black hair.
There were no smiles, though. Not from Awan, not from the other men who returned with him.
Their faces were drawn, their eyes blank. They looked like ghosts of their former selves.
After a few minutes, their mothers and sisters’ cries of delight went quiet. I didn’t understand. Almost all of the men had returned to camp, including a stone-faced Kanosh. But not because they were injured.
The men had a few more of the gentiles’ cattle with them, but nobody seemed victorious. The village hummed with an unspoken tension.
I desperately wanted to pull Awan aside and ask him to tell me everything, but there was nonstop work to be done preparing food and tending the horses that had returned dusty and shaking from a hard ride.
All day long, I took animals to water with the other women, careful not to let the horses drink too much. It wasn’t until the sun began to sink in the west, and I made my final trip to the churned-up, muddy creek that Awan found me.
He wouldn’t look at me at first, even when I reached out a hand to place it on his arm.
He flinched at my touch. When he finally turned to face me, there were tears brimming in his eyes.
In a voice so soft I could barely hear him, he said, “You were right. They weren’t troops.”
Then he told me everything.