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  Trimble’s revolver never wavered, its muzzle squarely on Skye, even as Peacock bulled toward the man, the tails of his frock coat flapping.

  Then everything happened at once. Manville stepped forward, brought that brutal fist up into Peacock’s gut, just under the ribs. That diverted Trimble long enough for Skye to land on Trimble, slug him even as a shot sailed by, wrench Trimble’s good arm and spill the revolver, and then kick Manville, who was aiming another blow at the toppling Peacock.

  Let them see a limey seaman in a brawl. He snatched the Dragoon revolver and hammered Trimble’s head with the barrel, lashed at Manville, who was no longer smiling, and landed another blow on Trimble’s ear and another on his bad shoulder, which set Trimble howling. He lowered his head and battered that handsome Manville with it, knocking Manville over even as the guide tried to wrestle a weapon out of his pocket. Skye’s moccasin smacked Manville’s hand. Skye heard something crunch. Manville quit, lay on his back panting, his handsome face gazing at evening stars.

  Trimble sat stupidly, holding his ruined shoulder and sobbing.

  But Peacock was on his back, his face distorted into a horrible grimace, unable to breathe.

  Skye yanked a Navy revolver from Manville’s pocket, checked the other pockets, and then handed it and the big Dragoon to Victoria, who rushed to the scene, a nocked arrow in her bow.

  Mary collected Manville’s and Trimble’s horses and led them away.

  “You’ve just donated your horses to my company,” Skye said. “And the two won’t repay the loss of the Morgan. Now clear out of here.”

  But both of the guides were too battered to move.

  Watching them warily, Skye turned to Peacock, whose paralyzed body writhed on the ground. Skye leaned over him. “Breathe?” he asked.

  Peacock couldn’t. Skye remembered what Manville’s punch had done to him back at Fort Laramie. Peacock stared up, bug-eyed, desperate. Skye squeezed Peacock’s chest, and again, rhythmically, until at last Hiram Peacock coughed and breathed, the air sucking in and out in desperate convulsions. Manville’s fist had very nearly killed Hiram Peacock.

  Skye turned to the two guides. “Start walking. Don’t come back. Expect worse if you do.”

  Manville shakily got up. Trimble didn’t. He sat holding his ruined arm, whining. Skye yanked him up, amid a long wail.

  “Go,” he said. “Or die.”

  nineteen

  Skye didn′t dare to move Hiram Peacock. The merchant hovered on the knife-edge. His breathing quit for long stretches, only to spasm to life, a desperate sucking and expelling of air. Manville’s fist had torn something to pieces in the old man.

  Victoria and Mary stared, ready at any instant to pump the merchant’s chest, squeeze air out, and hope his desperate lungs sucked more in.

  Somehow the sick ones at the other campfire absorbed the events, and soon Sterling Peacock appeared out of the gloom, staring at his father sprawled over meadow grass.

  “Pa!” He turned to Skye. “Pa’s hurt!”

  Hiram Peacock coughed blood.

  “What happened?” Sterling whispered.

  “Manville and his flunky, Trimble. Tried to get the Sharps back. I dealt with them. But Manville got to your father. It’s bad,” Skye said roughly.

  “How bad?”

  “Manville’s got a trick. Fist up that pocket below the ribs. It kills. It almost killed me, and I was watching for it, but I never thought Manville would use it on an old man.” Skye saw the shock in Sterling’s face. “I’m bloody sorry, mate.”

  Sterling knelt beside his father, watching the older man struggle for each breath.

  “Can’t move him,” Skye said. “We’ll cover him up and he’ll stay right here. We’re going to have to watch tonight, and hope he starts breathing right.”

  “I could help you lift him into a wagon, Mister Skye.”

  “If it rains, I’ll ask you. You can help by taking one of the watches. If he struggles for air, you’ll need to press on his chest.”

  Victoria emerged from the gloom with Peacock’s bedroll, which she laid out, and then stepped back from Sterling. Skye and Sterling gently slid the merchant onto one blanket and folded the other over him. Peacock convulsed, coughed, and caught some air.

  Sterling settled beside his father, two lonely figures at the edge of firelight.

  Skye and his women and his little boy rested quietly around their own fire. The women had not erected the lodge this mild night but soon they would. The nights were lengthening, and they could expect autumnal rains anytime.

  Enoch Bright showed up. “I’ve fed the sick, and now what do you want me to do?”

  “Pump his bellows,” Skye said.

  “The scum,” Bright said. “I’ll bring them to justice.”

  “Pump,” Skye said. Bright gingerly reached over his employer and pressed on the lungs. Peacock convulsed, gasped, sucked in air, and coughed.

  “That’s it. Keep him going, and pray that nature takes over,” Skye said.

  “I wish I had a galvanic battery to shock him,” Bright said. “I’d give him regular shocks.”

  “Stay here two hours. Then we’ll get someone else,” Skye said.

  The Jones brothers took the next watch later in the evening, after Skye had come to them with his request. First Lloyd, and then David, stared at the desperate man, whose irregular breaths were alarming. Skye taught them not to permit the silences to go too long. Contract the man’s lungs and keep on doing it if they quit.

  Skye drifted over to the other campfire, where they gazed solemnly up at him. No one had gone to bed. He saw fear in every face. The man who would take them all to a healing place was in trouble.

  “Hiram Peacock’s in grave condition,” he said. “We need to keep him going. We think he’ll be better in the morning.”

  “What happened?” Anna Bennett asked.

  Skye told her as forcefully as he could. It never helped to soften reality. He needed to prepare them for the worst.

  She absorbed it quietly. “I’ll pump his lungs all night,” she said.

  “I’ve arranged watches. If I need you I’ll certainly call on you.”

  “You don’t trust a woman,” she said.

  Skye felt worn-out and ignored her. He doffed his top hat and returned to his campfire, where Peacock lay in his bedroll.

  The wounded man was conscious, staring up at Skye. Beside him sat Enoch Bright.

  “Take me to the summit,” Peacock said. “Show me the desert. Let me see the desert, the healing place, and I will find peace.”

  “You’ll be well soon, Mister Peacock.”

  “Let me see the desert before I die.”

  Skye knelt beside the man. “I will,” he said.

  Peacock spasmed again and closed his eyes.

  Enoch Bright wept.

  By turns they watched over Hiram Peacock that night, several times pressing his lungs to work, restoring breath to him when it faltered. Manville’s fist had done terrible damage, and now Peacock hung by a thread to this world.

  But dawn came, and he lived, and with the dawn the last of the watch, David Jones, stood and stretched. There were the usual morning duties, and a meal to prepare.

  Faintly on the breeze, they heard the other wagon party hitch up and plod west. Skye did not hasten to follow. He had not yet decided how to carry Hiram Peacock. Probably the gentlest place would be a nest hollowed out of the supplies in the large wagon. Maybe the steady rocking of the wagon would induce breath in Peacock. Or maybe it would kill him. But for the moment, the man who had formed this mission of mercy still lived.

  Quietly they yoked the oxen, put packsaddles on ponies, prepared to head west once again. Skye and Bright made a pallet in the supply wagon for their stricken leader, and gently lifted him into it. Peacock coughed, and a film of blood slid from his lips. There was some sort of internal bleeding. And yet he lived. Anna Bennett slipped into that wagon beside him, ready to press the man’s chest anytime she thou
ght he was too long comatose. And then they were ready.

  Skye headed back to the sick young people.

  “We’re going now,” he said. “We have Mister Peacock on a pallet, and he’s being watched every moment. He wants us to keep on going. He told me so. I want you to keep on going, for his sake as well as your own. Soon we’ll reach the desert.”

  None of them spoke. Skye knew they were recoiling from the possibility of Peacock’s death, finding themselves out here, far from everything, without their protector.

  Skye clambered onto Jawbone, but was stayed. The horse’s ears were rotated backward, and then Jawbone craned his long neck around. There was something approaching from behind.

  Skye turned to meet whatever was toiling up the grade, and was met with the sound of harness jingles, all of them making a merry tune to the rhythm of the draft animals. Here was a whole wagon company, but unlike any Skye had seen. A couple of gents in slouch hats were leading the parade, which consisted of a dozen freight wagons with high sides, or flatbed wagons. Only one had a bowed canvas top. And poking from these wagons were all sorts of furniture and household goods.

  The lead man halted.

  “You’re Mister Skye,” he said. “Recognized this outfit.”

  “I am, and who am I addressing?”

  “Pete Hunsaker, Great Salt Lake City. I’m in the furniture business. Call it the scavenger business.”

  “You’re harvesting the debris from the trails, I take it.”

  “That’s it. It’s worth a fortune in my town. Good furniture’s rare in the desert, a thousand miles from anywhere else. So’s most everything else. I make a good living at it.”

  “So I see,” Skye said.

  There were half a dozen men involved in this enterprise. No doubt all of them Saints.

  “You got a bunch of sick with you,” Hunsaker said.

  “Consumptives, sir. We’re taking them to the desert. There’s some evidence that dry warm air heals them.”

  Hunsaker grinned. “From what I heard, you’re spreading the Black Plague hither and yon.”

  “It’s not transmitted that easily, and the sick keep their own mess and stay apart.”

  Hunsaker eyed the company. “You’ve got trouble here,” he said. “Two wagons hooked to three span.”

  Skye nodded. “Plenty of trouble.”

  “Those saddle horses. Seems to me I saw them recent.”

  “It’s a long story,” Skye said. “We acquired them as compensation for some losses we suffered.”

  Hunsaker was grinning broadly, baring gapped teeth. “Entertain us, Mister Skye. I want to hear it. Those two nags right there were, last I knew, the property of a pair of bung-hole guides.”

  Well, why not? Skye motioned them off their horses, and Hunsaker and some of his men collected around him. The story came easily. Enoch Bright contributed some indignation of his own. But then they turned somber when they found out about Hiram Peacock’s condition.

  “That gut-punch is a sure killer. I’ve seen a man die of it, and I heard all about Manville. He’s just ahead, you say?”

  “With a big company, two divisions of them, Arkansas and Missouri people.”

  “Pukes,” Hunsaker said. “That’s Captain Fancher’s outfit. They ain’t friendly to the Saints, I’ll say.” He eyed Skye and Bright. “I think you ought to travel with us.”

  “I think we should too,” Skye said. “But we’ll slow you down.”

  “Not if I put my spare mule team on that light wagon.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “I reckon I’d help folks in trouble, like you.”

  twenty

  It all looked mighty good to Skye. Swiftly, Hunsaker′s men hitched two stout mules to the light wagon, while the Jones brothers mounted the newly acquired saddle horses, and Sterling rode his father’s Morgan. Enoch Bright preferred to walk, and teamstered the oxen.

  Hiram Peacock was soon settled in the supply wagon, where Anna Bennett was ready to help him. He would breathe awhile, convulse, fall into ominous quiet, and then she would start his respiration again, with firm pressure on his chest. Skye peered in at Peacock, lying in a nest there, and felt as helpless as he had ever felt.

  Skye and Hunsaker rode ahead of the rest, leading the combined train into the mountains.

  “Is there a summit? A place where we’ll see the desert?” Skye asked him.

  “No, we’ll be in valleys and canyons the whole way. It’s like a plow cut a crooked furrow through the Wasatch Range.”

  “Maybe that’s good,” Skye said. “Peacock said he had one last wish. He wanted to see the desert. He asked me to show him the desert. It’s his Promised Land, I guess.”

  “He thinks he’ll die?”

  “One last look is what he wanted. It’s keeping him alive. The vision of the desert, where all those people might be healed. But maybe if there’s no last look, he’ll keep on going.”

  “There’s no place I know of,” Hunsaker said. “And if he’s going to the Virgin River country, like I hear, he’s not going to see any of it from up high. That’s a long way.”

  “It’s what’s keeping him going,” Skye said.

  “How far ahead are those Pukes? I want to be ready for them if we bump into them.”

  “They left at first light. They ate breakfast before dawn. Half a day?”

  “If we tangle with them, too bad for them,” Hunsaker said. “If they’ve got forty wagons, we’ll probably catch up,”

  They pushed through a peaceful green notch, beside a tumbling river that plunged over boulders. Skye sensed they were climbing, though he scarcely felt it. Arid slopes vaulted upward into a dry highland. This was the rain-shadow side of these mountains, and only the valleys were grassed.

  But they saw nothing of the big train ahead, and as the morning unwound, they wrestled up a steady grade, passing muddy potholes. The oxen drawing the big supply wagon were the slowest of the teams, slowing down the whole combined company.

  “What’s in those wagons, Mister Hunsaker?” Skye asked.

  “Call me Pete. I’ll call you Mister. Oh, chests of drawers, bedsteads, highboys, barrels, dressers, stuffed chairs, dining tables, wooden chairs, flour bins, coffee mill, cast-iron pots, a few books, some cotton mattresses, an empty coffin, a lot of castoff clothing and worn-out shoes, harness, saddles and tack, ox yokes, a grist mill, some family Bibles, half a dozen plowshares, hoes, spades, pitchforks, harrows, a double-bottom riding plow, you name it, I’ve got it. The whole of it pitched out beside the Oregon Trail. I’d have a lot more if the pilgrims didn’t chop up half of it for firewood.”

  “Valuable in Great Salt Lake?”

  “You have no idea. I can sell these things for ten times what they’d bring back East. But the Saints haven’t much cash, so there’s a lot of bartering.”

  “Saints do a good business from the migrants.”

  “If it weren’t for the wagons passing by, the Saints would still be poor.”

  “What’s this trouble about?”

  “Marriage. The Saints say the more wives the better, the government says cut it out or we’ll come in and stop you. And that’s what’s happening. The blueshirts are on the way, I hear. Or will be soon. There’s been some troop movements and the federals are sending a column our way.”

  “And what are the Mormons doing?”

  “Making a lot of noise.” Hunsaker′s grin told Skye a lot.

  “Will there be a fight?”

  “Some will fight, no doubt of it. If old Brigham says so, there’ll be some real battles. And he’s sure sounding like a bull moose pawing the ground.”

  “Is my company in any danger?”

  “Anyone not Mormon, I’d say, could get into trouble. But you’re not Pukes. That company ahead of us, the Missouri one, now that could get itself starved in Utah.”

  “They’re Arkansas people, they tell me.”

  “Missouri and Illinois too. That’s just asking for trouble. The Saints, they don
’t forget. They don’t forget the killing of Joseph Smith. They don’t forget Independence, Nauvoo, getting driven out, and dying all winter long from exposure. No, Mister Skye, they haven’t forgotten one bit of it.”

  All that morning and afternoon they ascended the eastern slope, their view cloistered by valleys and canyons. But late that afternoon they reached the summit, and began a descent. That’s when Anna Bennett hurried up to Skye and Hunsaker.

  “Sir, Mister Peacock begs a halt here.”

  “All right,” said Hunsaker. “The stock could use a rest.”

  Skye headed back to the wagon, and found Hiram Peacock gazing up at him. Pete Hunsaker joined them.

  “That flat there. Take me there, Mister Skye.”

  The little flat wasn’t far, maybe a hundred yards, but they were steep yards. It actually was a west-facing bench, beneath a craggy red cliff.

  “Sir, in your condition …”

  “Take me.”

  Skye knew at once it must be done; it was one of those commands that no man could thwart or he would regret it all of his days. He glanced at Hunsaker, who was experiencing the same thing.

  “Very well, sir. But there is no view west anywhere near here,” Hunsaker said.

  Peacock simply nodded.

  Some swift commands brought a doubled-up canvas, which Hunsaker’s men laid on the ground. Several of them gently lifted the merchant out of the wagon and onto the canvas. Then three on each side—Skye, Enoch Bright, Pete Hunsaker, the Jones brothers, and Sterling Peacock—lifted Hiram Peacock and struggled up the rocky slope, all of them trying their best to ease the journey for him. It seemed far more of a climb than Skye had imagined from the wagon road. But at last they struggled over a lip of rock onto the boulder-strewn flat.

  And there, to Skye’s astonishment, was a sharp vee to the west, and beyond it a bright glimpse of another country, arid and dazzling, sharp blue and white and gray. The Promised Land.

  It was not difficult to pull Hiram Peacock into a sitting position, with his back against a great red rock. A hush fell over them all. Somewhere, still an infinity away, but there in the Great Basin, was the Virgin River.