Sarah, Emma, and Maggie came up. Emma greeted Olaf brightly and immediately began to pester him with questions about how they were doing. Sarah watched them for a moment, then smiled shyly at Eric. “Good afternoon.”
“Hello, Sister Sarah.” He turned a little. “And Sister Maggie.”
“How about just Maggie?” Maggie said sternly. She had been trying to get him to call her Maggie since they had first started English class on board ship. He stubbornly refused to do it, and she wasn’t sure why.
He nodded, his eyes grave. “Hello, just Maggie.”
Sarah laughed lightly as Maggie threw up her hands. “Hello, Brother Pederson.”
“How are you?” Sarah asked.
Eric shrugged and held up his hands. “Like you. Very good.”
Sarah and Maggie both laughed ruefully at that, holding up their own bandaged hands. Emma, hearing that, turned and showed hers as well. “I used Papa’s gloves today, but it didn’t help much.”
“Only because you waited until you had the blisters before you put on gloves,” Sarah retorted.
“Well, yes.” She seemed puzzled that Sarah would even bring that up.
Maggie watched Sarah for a moment, seeing how alive she had become when Eric appeared. “By the way, were you and Olaf translating today?” she asked. “I saw you standing up and speaking during the meeting.”
“Yah.” Eric seemed pleased that she had noticed. “We make three groups. Olaf did one. I do one. Elder Ahmanson did one. We did the whole meetings.”
“He means we did both meetings,” Olaf suggested.
“Yah, we did both meetings.”
“That’s wonderful,” Maggie said.
William James and his children were going back toward the tents, but Mary McKensie and Jane James had seen the boys and come over to join them. “Hello, Olaf. Hello, Eric,” Mary said. “And how are you two today?”
“We are fine, thank you,” Olaf said. “And you?”
“We are both fine,” Jane answered.
“Eric and Olaf served as translators today for both meetings,” Maggie said to the two women.
“Yes, I saw,” Jane said. “Good for you. Your English is getting very good now.”
Eric looked at Maggie, coloring slightly. “We have our teacher to say thank you. Without her, it is not possible.”
Maggie was deeply pleased. She nodded slowly. “Thank you, Eric. I wish we had time to continue our classes, but . . .” Without thinking, she looked down at her hands. She had a rag wrapped around each one, which hid the angry red sores. When they left Iowa City she had vowed that they would continue with the English classes, but as yet they hadn’t held even one. By the time supper was finished and cleaned up, the only thing anyone wanted to do was to climb stiffly into bed.
“It is all right. The trail is good teacher too, I think.”
“Yes. I’ll bet you get to use your English a lot.”
“Yes. But trail is good teacher for more than English, I think. Some are failing, no?”
Now Mary looked puzzled. “Failing?”
“Sister Baker,” he said softly.
“Ah,” Mary said, understanding now. Yesterday afternoon, after the twelve-mile push to the campground, a sister from the Southampton Conference in England, a Sister Adelaide Baker, had decided she had endured enough and left the camp. This morning she had come for her luggage and her children and announced she would not be going further with them. When they asked why, she simply shook her head, collected her children and her things, and left, heading for the nearest settlement.
“There were three more who left after worship services this morning,” Sarah said sadly.
“More?” Eric said in surprise.
“Yes. Two sisters from the Bedfordshire Conference and a Sister Smith from Bristol. They all turned back.”
“It is hard teacher. Worse than Sister Maggie.”
Maggie’s mother laughed at Maggie’s attempt to look offended. “Yes,” she said. “The trail is a hard teacher. Much harder than Maggie.”
Now Jane came in. “That’s what Captain Willie was talking about when he referred to leeks and onions in his talk this morning.”
Eric snapped his fingers. “Oh yah, I’m glad you remind me. What is this leeks and onions? Olaf and I did not know how to translate.”
“Onions is the vegetable?” Olaf asked.
“Yes.” Maggie was carrying her scriptures under one arm. She quickly opened her Bible, thumbing the pages to the back. She let her fingers run down a column of words.
Curious, Eric stepped closer to look. “What is this?” he said, touching the page.
For a moment she wasn’t sure what he meant, then saw him examining the page. “Oh, this? It’s an abbreviated concordance. It’s like a dictionary.”
“It tells you what words mean?” he asked, totally focused on the page now.
“No, it tells you where a word is used in the Bible. Here, let me show you.”
He moved closer so they were standing shoulder to shoulder.
“Look, here it is. See? It is the word leeks. That’s what we want to know.”
He was nodding thoughtfully. “So what is num one one five?”
“That means the word is used in the book of Numbers, chapter eleven, verse five.” She turned quickly until she found it. She pointed with her finger. “See? Here it is. This is what Elder Willie was referring to today. Moses is dealing with the children of Israel, who are rebelling as usual.”
Eric got a wry smile. “Like maybe they were unhappy about their blisters.”
She laughed at his quickness. It was so easy to think that because he and Olaf could not speak fluent English, they didn’t understand things. “Yes, exactly. Even though they are being fed miraculously from heaven with manna, they’re still complaining.”
Her head bent down. “Listen. This is what it says: ‘And the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick: but now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.’ ”
She stopped and looked at him. He was watching her closely now, and she flushed a little under the intensity of his gaze. “Do you see what they were saying, Eric?”
“What is cucumber?”
Olaf spoke one word in Norwegian and Eric grunted. “Ah.” He bent over, reading the verses again. Finally he looked at her in wonder. “They had bread from heaven but they wanted more.”
“Yes. They were murmuring. They wanted to be back in Egypt, where they could have all the fruits and vegetables they wanted.”
“Even though Egypt was not good,” he said slowly.
“Exactly.”
Suddenly Maggie remembered that they were not alone and that they were not in class. She looked around. Emma was quietly trying to explain it to Olaf, who was still looking a little puzzled. Her mother and Sister James were watching Eric, pleased that he had seen it so quickly. But Sarah was looking at Maggie strangely.
A little flustered that she should have gotten so caught away in the teaching moment, she closed the book. “That’s what Elder Willie meant when he said that the people who decide to turn back are going after leeks and onions.”
If Eric was aware of the others watching them, he seemed not to notice. He was still looking at Maggie steadily. “They wanted that more than the bread from heaven?” he finally asked, shaking his head in amazement.
“Yes, Eric,” she said, impressed that he had seen beyond the words to the message they held.
“Just like today,” Sister James said. “It’s been a difficult few days. We all know that. And it’s easy to understand why these people decided to turn back. But . . .” She shrugged. “But if you want to go to Zion, you had better be prepared for blisters.”
That sobered every one of them, for their hands and feet bore the marks and their bodies felt the p
ain of the price that was required of them.
“I wonder how many more will leave,” Maggie said quietly. She was thinking about how close she had come to choosing to stay behind in Egypt.
No one answered. No one had to. It was very unlikely that they had seen the last of those who would be turning back.
After a moment Maggie’s mother straightened. “Well,” she said, putting a cheerful lilt to her voice, “all this talk about fish and cucumbers and leeks and onions has made me hungry.” She looked at the two brothers. “Eric? Olaf? How would you two like to join us for supper this evening?”
Maggie turned in surprise, as did Sarah. Emma reacted immediately. “Oh, yes, Olaf, come have supper with us.”
“Yes!” Robbie cried. “Do it! Do it!”
Eric was startled by the invitation. “We . . . I don’t know. We share supper with the Nielsons each night.”
“They won’t mind,” Olaf said. “Sister Nielson will not have started cooking yet.”
“Come on,” Emma said, tugging on Olaf’s arm. “I’ll go with you to tell them.”
Eric glanced quickly at Maggie, who clearly was as surprised as he was at this unexpected turn of events. “We’d like that,” she said.
To Maggie’s surprise, Sarah only nodded. She had thought Sarah would be tugging on Eric’s arm by now as well.
Finally he nodded. “All right, I guess. But you go and tell the Nielsons, Olaf.”
As Emma and Olaf started away, Robbie grabbed Eric’s arm. “Yea!” he shouted. “Come on, Eric. Brother James has been teaching me how to make a whistle out of a willow stick. Come on. I’ll show you.” He dragged him into a trot.
As they started back toward the tent, Maggie fell in beside her mother and Sister James for a moment, then noticed that Sarah was walking behind them. She dropped back to join her. “Well, that was interesting, wasn’t it?”
Sarah gave her a strange look. “It certainly was.”
“I thought I was going to have to spell the whole thing out to him. But did you see his eyes? how quickly they understood?”
“Yes,” Sarah responded quietly. “I did see his eyes.”
Something in the way she said it made Maggie stop. “What?”
Sarah kept walking and Maggie ran quickly and caught up with her again. “What, Sarah? What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No.” It came out too quickly.
“Tell me.”
Now Sarah stopped. “You mean you honestly don’t know?”
“Don’t know what?”
For what seemed a long time, Sarah searched her face. Then finally she shook her head in wonder. “I don’t think you do.”
“Know what?” Maggie burst out, exasperated now.
Sarah didn’t stop, nor did she look at her friend. “Did you see his eyes, Maggie?”
“Of course. I told you. You could see how the lights came on and how he saw almost instantly what Elder Willie meant.”
“And that’s all you saw?”
Maggie threw up her hands. “What else was there?”
Sarah smiled that faint, slightly sad smile again, then put her arm around Maggie’s shoulder. “Nothing. I’m just being me today. Forget I said anything.”
Chapter Notes
The James G. Willie Handcart Company, the fourth handcart company of 1856, left Iowa City, Iowa, on 15 July. It was seventy-eight days after they had left Liverpool on the Thornton and twenty days after their arrival in Iowa. The official count says they had 500 emigrants, 120 handcarts, 5 wagons, 24 oxen, and 45 beef cattle and milk cows (see Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, p. 93).
One of the difficulties with getting an official count on the handcart companies is that the numbers were constantly changing. Some stayed in New York and Boston to work until they could get enough money to continue. Others decided to winter over at Iowa City. Some, as shown in this chapter (and this was true of both companies), dropped out after they got under way. In a few cases, settlements in Iowa and Nebraska were started by Latter-day Saints who decided they would go no farther. There is an indication that a few in the Willie Company, who evidently were too ill or too weak to continue but who still had a great desire to go to Zion, were picked up later by the Martin Company or the independent wagon companies as they came along.
Several sources provide lists of the emigrants in both the Willie and the Martin Companies, though the lists generally seem to have been drawn from the same basic sources (see, for example, Turner, Emigrating Journals, pp. 59–78, 141–64; Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, pp. 289–302; Remember, pp. E-1 to E-23; Susan Arrington Madsen, The Second Rescue, pp. 107–37). Those who dropped out are included in some rosters but not in others, and the different lists are not all exactly the same. Because of that, it is difficult to know whether the 500 was the count when the company started or when the numbers finally stabilized.
In his journal Elder Jesse Haven, who captained part of the last company along with Edward Martin, wrote of his approach to those who left the company:
30 July 1856: This morning at prayers, we disfellowshiped Emma Batchelor, who left us yesterday and went out among the gentiles to tarry there. . . . Brother Robert Evans and Sarah White, came to me and wished to be excused from going any further because he, Robert Evans, was out of health. I excused them.
1 August 1856: This morning, I learned that 3 or 4 left the camp last night; one woman and her child and other children, whose mother died since we started on our journey. . . . Two families talk of leaving and wish to get my counsel. To do so, at the last, I told one of them he might do as he thought proper, and I would not disfellowship him for it. I had established the rule, if any left the camp without counsel, they should be disfellowshiped from the church. Brother Moses left today with his family, also Brother Hunter and his family. (In Turner, Emigrating Journals, p. 94)
The reference to Elsie Nielson’s shock at looking at herself in a mirror was inspired by a reminiscence of Susanna Stone Lloyd, who was a twenty-five-year-old single woman at the time she traveled with the Willie Handcart Company. “We were near Fort Bridger when they [members of the rescue party] met us, and we rode in the wagons the rest of the way, but we had walked over one thousand miles. When we got near the City, we tried to make ourselves as presentable as we could to meet our friends. I had sold my little looking glass to the Indians for buffalo meat, so I borrowed one and I shall never forget how I looked. Some of my old friends did not know me. We were so weather beaten and tanned” (in Carol Cornwall Madsen, Journey to Zion, p. 634).
Chapter 11
Brushrow Creek, Iowa
to
Florence, Nebraska Territory
I
Friday, 25 July 1856
Maggie McKensie plodded along, her head down low enough so that her bonnet shaded her face from the western sun. She swallowed and licked her lips, then instantly regretted it as the gritty taste of dust filled her mouth. She had kept a handkerchief over her mouth and nose since early morning, but that didn’t stop it from penetrating everywhere. The Woodward hundred, the third hundred of the Willie Handcart Company, was in second position in the column today, and so the dust could have been much worse. Three days before, they had taken the last place in the column, and for nine straight hours they had choked on the great clouds stirred up by the passing of five hundred people and several dozen animals.
Today had been another brutally hot day. Even now, at five o’clock in the afternoon, she guessed it was hovering near one hundred degrees. Every inch of her body was bathed in sweat, and though she kept the neck of her dress and the sleeves around her wrists tied shut, the dust managed to work its way inside her clothing. The wrinkles around her neck and beneath her arms were thick with a gritty paste. The band of her bonnet seemed like sandpaper on her brow. She had long since given up trying to keep the sweat from running in her eyes and simply blinked quickly when the salt began to sting too much.
> Ten days. They had left Iowa City just ten days ago. It felt like ten years.
Captain Willie said they had come about seventy-five miles. They were long, hard miles, but at last the emigrants were toughening up. The blisters of the previous week were still red and tender, but the skin was hardening into thick calluses, and new blisters were rare now. Also, the bottoms of their feet were thickening. How wise it had been for the Church agents to have the children go barefoot when they first reached Iowa City! By afternoon the dust of the trail could get hot enough to burn bare flesh, yet the children walked on it without complaint. One boy had even stepped on a prickly pear by accident. They had taken out three long spikes with pliers, but he said he had barely any pain. And no wonder. The soles of his feet were nearly half an inch thick. Maggie wished she had been wise enough to do the same. But like her hands, her feet were tougher now, growing thick skin as tough as dried leather.
The crossbars of each handcart were now polished to a dark sheen. Clothes were stained with sweat and dust. Lips were cracked, cheeks sunburned, eyes wrinkled at the corners from squinting long into the sun. But they were moving steadily westward now. Twelve-mile days were now considered light travel days and came only when they had to stop to make repairs. Just as Chauncey Webb had predicted, the green lumber used to construct the carts was drying and warping in the blistering heat, and time and again they had to stop and put them back together. When there were no delays, sixteen-mile days were common, and they had once gone twenty-one. They were trail tough, and the murmuring had mostly ceased.
But those first few days—a nightmare that she would never forget—had taken their toll. Almost a dozen of their number had turned back or simply stopped where they were. Some promised to wait a season and then come on when they were better prepared. Others made no promises at all. Zion had lost its luster. And two days ago they had suffered their first death. Sister Mary Williams from England, an older woman of about fifty, had died of a severe stomach ailment. They placed her body in one of the wagons and carried her until they found a burying ground in one of the small towns they passed.