About fifteen minutes later, a cry turned their heads in the direction of the wagon. “Mama! Mama!”
Mary started to get up, holding her stomach as she raised herself from the log. “She’s having a nightmare.”
Jim quickly put a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her down again. “I’ll go.”
They watched him climb into the wagon, then heard the whimpering stop as the murmur of his voice soothed his daughter. Mary, who had been anxiously watching the wagon, finally turned back. “He’ll tell her a story. She’ll be all right.”
David nodded, surprised at the sudden envy he felt. Mary, watching him closely, saw the look and guessed what it was. “David,” she asked, “why aren’t you married?”
The question so startled him that he just stared at her.
She flushed a little. “Sorry. When it comes to impertinence, I’m as bad as Eddie, aren’t I?”
“I . . .” He was still completely taken aback. “What made you ask that?”
She was teasing now. “Well, you’re devilishly handsome. If I were ten years younger and not madly in love with my husband, I’d go after you myself.”
“Gwan!” he scoffed.
Her laughter tinkled softly in the warm night air. “You rescue damsels in distress. You are wonderful with children.” She stopped, peering at him. “You’re what, twenty-two now?”
“I’ll be twenty-three next month.”
“And not yet married. That is strange indeed.” Then she waved a hand. “You don’t have to answer. It’s really not mine to ask.”
“Tell you what,” he said, having a sudden thought. “I’ll answer your question if you’ll answer one of mine.”
She gave him an appraising look. “Is it an impertinent one too?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
She didn’t hesitate a moment. “Of course. But you have to go first.”
And so he began to tell her of his life since coming to America, about how he had left Coalville to go on his own, about the various jobs he’d taken since then. “Aren’t many women in a railroad camp or on a cattle ranch,” he concluded. “And the few there are, are either married, grandmas, or allergic to men from Yorkshire. But anyway, that’s been my life. Not much chance for courting a girl.”
“Until Cedar City,” she said.
He gave her a sharp look. “Until Cedar City,” he agreed. “For all the good that did me.”
“David, I . . . we heard about you and Molly breaking up, just before we came up to Paragonah. I’m so sorry.”
“Nope,” he cut in quickly. “None of that. It’s my turn now.”
“Your turn for what?” Jim Davis said. They hadn’t heard him, but he was out of the wagon and coming back over to join them.
“Is she asleep?” Mary asked.
“Yes. She was barely awake.” He sat down by Mary again, looking at David. “So?”
Mary answered for him. “David was just about to ask me an impertinent question.” At his raised eyebrows, she smiled. “I asked him why he wasn’t married. So now it’s his turn.”
“Want me to leave?” Jim asked, looking at David.
“No, actually, I’ve changed my mind. It’s none of my business, really.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “Your marital status was none of my business, so ask away.”
He watched them for a moment, considering. With Jim here, he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask it now. But then, in a way it was as much a question for Jim as for her. “All right,” he said. “But if I cross a line where you are uncomfortable, you just tell me that this is a spot of bother, as we Brits say, and I’ll shut up and go to bed.”
“I think we’re sufficiently prepared,” Jim said easily.
David drew in his breath, trying to decide how to best start. Finally, he turned to Jim. “I was there that day in the meeting when you stood and said you were going to accept your call. I was sitting by Patrick McKenna, and he was kind of giving me a running commentary on who people were. To be honest, when he told me that your wife was with child and in poor health, I . . .”
“You thought it was just plain stupid? Is that what you’re trying to say?” Mary smiled.
David laughed softly. “I was looking for a little softer word than that.”
“I thought it was just plain stupid,” Jim said.
“And so,” Mary said, “your question is, why are we out here?”
“Not actually. Close, but not exactly. Before I ask it, though, it would be helpful if you understood something about me.” He managed a quick smile. “You see, I’ve been hiding the real me from you.”
She leaned forward, looking very much like Emily at the moment. “Oooh,” she murmured. “A dark side we don’t know about. Please, tell us.”
So he did. He didn’t go into all of it. He said nothing about his mother’s experience at Astle Manor, and only briefly talked about her problems caused by working in the match factory. “She just had a very difficult life,” he concluded. “I think that turned her sour on religion and made her quite skeptical about God. I’ll just give you one quick example, because it will help you better understand my question. On my first day in the mines—remember, that was just three days following my sixth birthday—there was one point where I was so terrified of the darkness that I started to cry. That night, Mum questioned me about my first day. She specifically asked me if I had cried, or if I had wanted to pray to God for help.”
He stopped, once again staring into the fire. “When I finally admitted that I had done both, she said, ‘David, there’s something you need to remember. I think that when we cry, God does not hear us. I think that when we pray, He does not answer. And if that is true, then we have to conclude that God does not care.’”
“Oh, David,” Mary whispered.
He brightened. “It’s all right. That was a long time ago. But over the years, I came to that same conclusion for myself. Watching the exploitation of children in the mines, I asked myself many times, if there really was a God, why didn’t He intervene in our behalf? I saw a young boy, no older than me, killed right before my eyes because he took a few minutes out of his miserable life to play a child’s game.” His voice caught for a moment. “And when my mother was dying, I begged God to spare her life.” He had to stop and look away.
“And that’s when you knew your mother was right, wasn’t it?” Mary asked.
“Yes.” He straightened, speaking quickly now before either of them could respond. “But all of that is just to give context to my question, which is this: Why aren’t you two bitter? You’ve lost four out of eight children, all while they were still babies. So why aren’t you shaking your fist at God like my mother did? Why would you continue to believe in Him? And yes, when the call came, and your situation was so precarious, why would you ever say yes?”
Husband and wife looked at each other for a moment. She nodded for him to begin, but he shook his head. “I think that’s really your question, Mary.”
For a long time she studied the ground, not looking at David. Then finally her head came up. “There is so much I would like to say, David. So many things that might help you to understand, but maybe that will come another time. I would only say this.”
He interrupted her. “Mary, if this is too much for you, just forget it.”
“No, it’s a fair question. Even if we answered the call, why come with the exploring party? Why not wait until the baby was born, make sure everything would be all right?”
“Exactly. Can’t good old common sense balance out revelation every now and then?”
She didn’t seem to hear him. Jim began speaking very quietly. “When we heard our names read out in conference, we were both stunned,” he said. “Mary’s health hadn’t been good for a long time. And losing one baby after another was . . .” He swallowed quickly. “It had been difficult for us.”
Now she picked it up. “As we talked about it on the way back to Cedar City the next day, we were—I was—ve
ry emotional. ‘How could they ask this of us?’ I kept saying. But then we talked about the blessings that have come to us when we have tried to be obedient.”
David shot her a skeptical look.
She ignored it. “We were so troubled by the whole thing that James and I decided to go to Bishop Arthur and ask him what he thought we should do. At first, he would only say that this had to be our decision, both whether to go and, if we did, when to go. He reminded us that President Lunt had said that people shouldn’t feel compelled to go, especially if they were facing unusual circumstances.” She pulled a face. “Surely, I thought, if ever there were special circumstances, we qualified.”
“Ten times over,” David murmured.
She barely acknowledged that. “But then Bishop Arthur asked if I wanted a blessing.” Her eyes half closed in remembering. “As he spoke, I could feel something in him change. At first he was very tentative; then suddenly he began to speak with more assurance. He told me . . .” She took a quick breath, fighting her emotions. “He told me that if I would go, if I would accompany my husband in answering this call, that my health would be restored, and that—”
A stifled sob rose up, cutting off her words. Her husband put an arm around her and held her for a moment. She wiped quickly at her eyes, then, head high, finished. “He told me that my health would be restored and that I would never again lose another child.”4
David rocked back. Suddenly he remembered her words from yesterday. “I am not going to lose this child. I am not.”
“And you believed him?” David found himself saying. The words had come out unbidden.
“No!” she said fiercely. “As Bishop Arthur spoke those words, I didn’t just believe him. I knew that what he was saying was true. I knew it with all my heart. I can’t explain that to you, David, but I felt it so strongly. I just knew.”
David said nothing. How could you question something like that? How could you scoff when she sat there right before your eyes, looking healthy and strong and happy? She wasn’t the same woman as the one he had climbed up beside that first morning to help with her team.
“Do you understand what I am saying, David? My heart just weeps at the thought of your mother and how she must have suffered. But I am here to tell you that God does hear our cries, He does see our tears, and He does care.”
As they watched David walk away five minutes later, James slipped an arm around his wife’s waist. “I thought for a minute you were going to tell him about Abby.”
She looked up at him. “I thought about it, then decided tonight wasn’t the time.”
“Tell me again what she said when she came to see you the night before we left.”
There was a long sigh. “She told me about what had happened with David and his father, and how Molly broke off their relationship the very next morning. She said he was deeply hurt and angry, especially because it all happened just hours after he had agreed to pray with Molly.”
“Oh?”
“Knowing we were going to be with him for the next several months, Abby wanted us to know the situation. She asked, if there ever might be a chance, that we would become his friend and let him know that he’s not been abandoned.”
“Interesting,” Jim mused.
“Yes, isn’t it.” She was smiling as she watched the dark figure disappear into the darkness. “Before we even left Paragonah, look who ended up sitting beside me in the wagon seat. None other than David Draper himself.”
James pulled her closer to him. “Very interesting indeed.”
Notes
^1. Moenkopi (also spelled in the journals as Moan Coppy or Moyancoppy) is located just a short distance south of Tuba City, Arizona. After two earlier attempts, a group of several families, led there in late 1875 or early 1876 by James S. Brown, finally succeeded in starting a settlement there. By 1879, when the exploring party came through, it was a small but thriving community (see Garrett and Johnson, Regional Studies, 141–45).
^2. Nielson Dalley’s account of the exploring party also mentions Thales Haskell as one of the guides. Since Dalley is the only one who mentions Haskell, Miller assumes that he didn’t go all the way to San Juan with them (Miller, Hole, 30). Therefore, he was not included in the novel.
^3. In his life story, James Davis records the following: “Crossed the Colorado at Lees Ferry, and stopped at a small village called Moencopi. . . . They advised us with families to stay there on account of the dangers ahead of us. And let the young men go and find a suitable country to locate” (in ibid., 156). The other details about the week’s layover to rest up and repair and the sore feet of the young cattle are supplied by Miller (ibid., 20).
I remind the readers again that the history of this company is not detailed enough to provide in depth character studies or personal conversations. These details, including the personalities of James and Mary Elizabeth Davis, are of my own creation. However, I have tried to be true to the situation, the circumstances, and the few recorded details about their lives that are available. I hope that the descendants of this wonderful couple will see that the liberties I have taken in depicting them in this story come out of my profound respect and admiration for them both.
^4. The account of this blessing from Christopher Arthur, bishop of the Cedar City Ward, comes from the “Life of James Davis” (Miller, Hole, 155).
Chapter 40
Tuesday, May 13th. I have determined that henceforth I shall keep a journal of my travels as a member of the exploring party to the San Juan River. Actually this was at the suggestion of Sister Mary Davis, wife of James Davis. They are one of only two families traveling with us. She strongly encouraged me in this endeavor because she believes our little expedition is making history & should be recorded. I find that a bit optimistic, but like the idea anyway. She helped me locate some paper & a small leather pouch to keep it in. Purchased it from one of the settlers here. So I begin. It was one month ago tomorrow that we departed from Paragonah. Wish I had thought to start then, but when I have time, I shall write a summary of the first month.
After exploring possible routes with three others—Kumen Jones, Robert Bullock, & George Hobbs—George & I returned to Moen Coppy to bring on the rest of the company. Had supper with the Davis family. Delightful time with the children. Hadn’t expected to see them again for several more weeks so this was a treat.
Left M. C. abt. 11 am with 9 wagons & a few loose horses. Started from home with 12, but George Hobb’s broke an axle & left it at Lee’s Ferry for pickup on return trip. Davis family’s two wagons remain with them. Cattle will stay in M.C. until we make a road & return for them. Traveled abt. five miles. Road that far already broken through thick stands of greasewood, some as high as Tillie’s head. M. C. settlers provided ox teams to help clear the road in return for us bringing bring back wood to the settlement. Trumpet blew at 9 pm. Lights out & bed.
Wednesday, May 14th. Again started at 11 a.m. Three yoke of cattle used to pull a forked tree through heavy greasewood to break open a road. Finally left greasewood for more elevated country—tall mesas on both sides. No wagons have gone through here before. Two men from M.C. helped break through last of the greasewood, but will not continue farther.
Thursday, May 15th. Delayed by lost horses. Company moved on while a few searched for them. Finally brought into camp by Wm. Gardner, an Indian interpreter. By then so late we made camp for the night. When horses were turned loose to graze, Niels Dalley’s horse & one of S. Smith’s horses took umbrage with each other. In the fight, Dalley’s horse broke the hind leg of Smith’s. He had to be put down.1
Friday, May 16th. First trouble with Indians today. Started at 9:30. Drove 5 miles to ranch of son of Navajo chief, named Po-ee-kon.2 This is one bad Indian. He openly brags he was the one who shot George A. Smith, an Indian missionary, some years back. According to our guides, he is a brother of the young Navajos killed in Grass Valley. P. is ugly, mean-tempered, & hates whites. Had several men with him. He had one rifle, the rest only
bows & arrows.
When captain asked for permission to water our horses, P. refused, saying there wasn’t enough for his flock. Some of us young bloods got a little hot under the collar at that. There was plenty enough water & our teams were pretty jaded by then. When we protested, he pulled out a club & savagely struck one of the boys. That was plain stupid. Abt. 20 of us had our guns drawn in an instant. For a moment, it looked like there would be blood. But our wise captain suggested we move away from the pool, & dig wells nearby. We dug several small wells & found water not too deep. After our animals drank & we refilled our barrels, Smith then presented the wells to P. That defused the situation, but he was still plain mean-ugly.
Monday, May 19th. Been several days since my last entry. Urgency is such that we drove all day yesterday, not stopping for Sabbath. Making good time, but learning that water is our greatest anxiety. The Navajos know this very well & resent our presence. (Haven’t told them that we have 200 cows coming later.) Whenever we find a damp place or anywhere there are green plants, we dig down &, as a rule, plenty of water is found. We then turn these wells over to the Indians, who gratefully receive them. This has eased our way a great deal. The news of our success has spread far ahead of us. Usually we are greeted warmly by small bands of Navajos. They even bring mutton to give us, or trade. The meat is much welcomed by all.
One interesting event associated with water. At one place, we were able to dig a few small wells, but these barely filled our urgent needs. Then one brother went to a sandstone ledge & drove his pick into the stone. To our astonishment, a small stream of water gushed out. This proved to be sufficient for our needs, & a blessing to the Indians after we left.3 Our captain says we are not a Moses in the wilderness striking a rock with our staff to get water, but we continually seem to find enough, even if it takes picks & shovels.
Robert Bullock, one of our scouts, & Seth Tanner, our guide, met us today. They have ridden 75 miles ahead & say the way is open before us. They found a large sandstone tank, or lake, with plenty of water ahead.