Corn Creek, Utah
August 1857
60 days to California
Like most of the women in our wagon train, I’d had soft hands and a soft bed all my life.
Marrying my Peter was the first wild thing I’d ever done.
This arduous journey was the second.
I’d grown up practicing the piano, reading poetry, and learning to manage a home. He’d grown up with his hands in the dirt, tending to peach trees in his family’s small orchard near the tupelo gum swamps—and selling them at a roadside stand on the main road through Benton. I loved peaches, and I loved Peter from the first day I saw him sitting there surrounded by all that ripe fruit with his dark, curly hair and baby-blue eyes. When he asked if I’d like to walk with him through the orchard that evening, I said yes.
I’d been saying yes to him ever since, even when it meant walking halfway across the country in the dirt.
Part of me envied him and the children for how easily they’d shed their skin and become wild here. A bigger part of me just wanted to cook a meal over a real stove and sleep in a real bed again. Every day on the trail to California felt like holding my breath. But every day, I watched Mary breathe a little easier. Even with all the dust. It was just enough to keep me moving.
I watched as Mary whispered something to Nancy and waggled her fingers at the poor snake. Nancy squealed in delight—then suddenly shrieked.
Like a ghost materializing through the dust, nine-year-old William brushed past me and dashed toward his sisters. Then he yanked on one of Mary’s braids before darting just out of her reach. “Better watch out, or the Mormons will get ya both!”
Before I could open my mouth to scold him, Mary had snatched the dead snake out of Nancy’s hands and lobbed it after her brother as hard as she could throw. “You leave us alone, William Huff, or the next one will be in your bedroll!”
The snake hit William squarely in the chest. He howled and thrust out his hands, pitching the poor dead creature into the sagebrush, where it disappeared.
Nancy stopped walking. “My rattler! Mary, my rattler!”
“It’s all right. It had a small tail anyway,” Mary soothed, glaring at William.
I sighed. “William Thomas Huff, leave your sisters alone. I won’t have that kind of talk about the Mormons, either.”
He pushed out his lower lip. “But Uncle Uri said—”
“I don’t care what Uncle Uri said,” I insisted, rolling my eyes.
The farther we moved into Utah Territory, the more Peter’s brother Uri had been filling the children’s heads with stories about Mormons. I’d heard some of the rumors back in Arkansas. A dozen wives to each man, a militia that planned to overthrow the government and place their prophet—Brigham Young—as king of the entire country. There was even talk about human sacrifices in their temples. I suspected that some of the rumors were meant to keep children from wandering too far from their wagons. For instance, the stories about Mormons kidnapping young women in order to hypnotize them into becoming polygamous wives.
Mary took Nancy’s hand and gave William a withering look as she fell back to walk alongside me. I stifled a laugh. With the girls’ dust-caked hair and clothes, they practically faded into our surroundings. The only color they had to set them apart was their wide blue eyes. If Mormons were roving around looking for young women to kidnap, my children would be passed over if only for how well they blended in with the earth itself.
“Listen to your father—and Captain Alexander. Not Uncle Uri,” I insisted.
According to Captain Alexander, who had led another wagon train through Utah just a few years earlier, the Mormons were friendly people and eager to trade. It was part of the reason we’d taken the Overland Trail this way. With nearly one hundred and forty travelers in our group, two hundred and fifty head of cattle, and wagons loaded for a new life in California, all of us valued safety over speed. The local Indians had been some trouble, but everyone traveling west knew to expect that. We’d already had three cattle raids so far since crossing into the territory. The cattle hands we’d hired to defend the animals did their best, but our herd was so big that we were still vulnerable to careful thieves at night.
A breeze cleared the dust for a few moments to show the molten horizon, where the earth sizzled in the heat. My shoulders hunched in relief when I saw that the dots I’d caught sight of earlier had taken shape into horses, cattle, and the first wagons circling up near the shimmer of a stream—Corn Creek. With fifteen more minutes of walking, we’d be there. But now that I could see the creek more clearly, it was smaller than I’d hoped. And I knew that by the time the cattle finished tromping around, it’d be mostly mud.
My neck itched at the idea of fresh water and a bath. Even little Nancy, who could hardly ever be bothered to bathe anymore, had started asking when she’d be able to swim again. The lakes and ponds we’d taken for granted in Arkansas, then Kansas, had long since disappeared. The water we gathered came from muddy ponds and the occasional shallow river now.
I tried to pick out my Peter’s lanky shape and dark curls before the breeze and the wagon wheels kicked the relentless dust skyward again. He’d ridden ahead with the cattle hands hours ago. Once the steers had smelled water, there was no holding them back. Weary as they were from the drought and poor forage, they’d flared their nostrils at the scent of water then lifted their tails like calves and ran.
“Just a little farther,” I called to the children, wondering how many times I’d repeated those exact words. Even Bright and Belle, our little red oxen, seemed to understand me from the way the wagon wheels rolled a little faster.
Two more months until we reached California.
Sixty more days of one more mile, feral children, and the cursed dust.
I followed Bright and Belle’s cue and picked up my pace, eager to see Peter again—and eager to find the end of another endless day. I’d tucked away my parents’ efforts to raise a woman of society just like the first editions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights I’d wrapped in quilts and brought along. Beautiful, but frivolous compared to our spare wagon axles, food, and clothing.
I could recite poetry by Emerson. I could turn fabric into a quilt with my confident stitches. I could teach my girls the proper way to set a table. But there were no tables to be set anymore. No spare fabric for quilting. And all the Emerson in the world couldn’t fix a broken wagon axle or deliver a calf.
When I said this in tears to Peter one night, a week into the trek, he fixed me with a look so serious I was afraid I’d convinced him. Instead, he said, “If I wanted somebody who could deliver a calf, I would have married one of the cattle hands.”
When I refused to laugh, he pulled me to him and kissed me, tasting like leather and sweat. “What was the line from that poem—the one about the honey you recited on our wedding night? I need that a whole lot more than I need a wagon axle right now.”
I finally softened, leaning closer to his ear to whisper, “Come nigh to me limber-hipp’d man. Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you. Fill me with albescent honey …”
I let that memory carry me twenty more minutes until the wind lifted the swirling brown clouds in a gust that sent the girls—and William, who was walking a few paces behind his sisters—laughing as it made their loose shirts billow. Mary’s cough drew my ear like it always did, but the sound was dry. Nothing like the terrifying wet rattle from before.
When the dust settled, I could finally see the circling wagons, riders, and cattle right in front of us.
A smile softened the set of my jaw.
We’d made it one more day.
We’re safe.
We’re together.
We’re nearly there.
My eyes found Peter just as the wind set the dust back down.
Then the smile died on my lips.
He stood over one of the steers. The black-and-white animal was sprawled on its side, unmoving.
Peter’s rifle lay on the ground, at his feet. I darted my eyes to the blood pooling from a bullet hole in the steer’s stomach.
At first, I thought maybe he’d shot it for meat, but that didn’t make sense either. Butchering a steer would take time we didn’t have. There were nearly two hundred head of cattle that needed grass and more water—and we wouldn’t find much of that for another hundred miles when we reached Mountain Meadows.
When my eyes locked on Peter again, I saw what I’d missed at first glance. There was a stricken look on his face—and a bit of red dripping through the curls at his neck.
I picked up my skirt and ran past the wagon, where James had pulled the oxen to a stop.
“What happened? Are you all right?” I couldn’t get the words out fast enough.
Peter shook his head, still staring at the dead steer. His hand went to his neck. “I’m okay. I didn’t expect him to charge. Caught me with his horn.” He kept his eyes locked on the animal. “Poor forage and bad grass is making them crazy.”
My heart stayed in my throat until I got close enough to verify for myself that Peter truly was all right, and grateful to see it was just a nasty scratch across his neck. Just a little blood.
“Daddy? Daddy, I had a good little rattler earlier, but William made me lose it,” Nancy called from behind us.
I turned to tell Mary to take Nancy and William to collect sagebrush, so we could start a fire.
Before the last word left my mouth, Peter dropped to his knees.