Virgin River Page 16

  “I’m an East Ender,” Skye said.

  “It makes sense, that it does,” the skinny fellow said. “Do what ye will then, get out the’ammer and knock me over the noggin. There’s not a tuppence in me britches, so the joke’s on ye, ye scum.”

  Skye started laughing. “East End, all right. How’d you get all the way from London to here?”

  “Wouldn’t ye want to know, before ye knawk me on the noggin.”

  “I’m Mister Skye, and I know your parish, friend.”

  “Friend, is it? Don’t call me a friend until this savage puts that arrer back in the bag.”

  Skye nodded to Victoria, who eased the drawn bow and restored the arrow to the quiver.

  The gent watched all this with plain relief. “East End? You don’t make the right noises.”

  “It’s been a long time. I was a seaman in the Royal Navy, courtesy of a press gang.”

  “Now ye be talkin’.’Alf the queen’s navy gets pressed from the East End. Now, by God, ye make some sainse.”

  That was true.

  “You’re a long way from London,” Skye said. “I’m Barnaby Skye. And you?”

  “Mickey, Mickey the Pick.”

  “A noble profession, Mister Pick. Most of the citizens of East End could pick a pocket before anyone found it out.”

  “Well, that’s me. On’y thing was, the bobbies was swarming all the whiles, a-lookin’ for me, the cutpurse. and if I got snatched, it’s transportation to Australia. So I ware looking for something, anything, and here’s this Immigration Society, it’s run by the Saints, the Mormons, steerage across the sea and passage to this Americer if I join up. So all of a sudden, me, Mickey the Pick, ain’t I a Saint, and here I yam.”

  “A Saint?” Skye marveled.

  “Most of the time, matey, most of the time.”

  “This is your place?”

  “Yep, the elders, they said Mickey, laddie, we’ve got a nest for ye, and showed me this piece of ground, and I like it, mate, I plumb like it. They start me with some hogs and ducks and geese, and that’s it. I’m a hog man, a pig-sticker.”

  By now a crowd had collected. Mister Bright listened, the Jones brothers studied, the invalids clustered shyly, Victoria squinted, Mary smiled uneasily, and Jawbone jammed his snout into Mickey the Pick and whoofed.

  “By blawdy’ell, Skye, ye got a party here. These here dusky women, they belong to you?”

  “I belong to them, you might say. They’re my wives. Behind you is Victoria of the Absarokas, named in honor of our monarch, and Mary of the Shoshones, named in honor of the Virgin.”

  “Well,’ell, the elders promised me a wife or two, myself, but they ain’t shown up with none yet, because ever’ time they see a comely one, they snatch her for themselves. Been three years now, since they promised me one, and I’m getting a little testy about it, blawsted bishops. I should have me two or three by now.”

  “You have breakfast yet, Mister Pick?”

  “Mister Pick! What sort of talk’s that, eh? Mister Pick, me arse.”

  “A notion of mine, sir. In this New World, I want to be Mister, not just Skye. That’s what’s here, a chance for ordinary people to get ahead.”

  “Where do I know that name, Skye, eh, matey?”

  “My father was an importer and exporter. He had an East End warehouse and offices.”

  “I know the place, I do! Once they left the doors unlocked and I nipped a few bolts of nankeen and got a few quid for′er.”

  “That still your business?” Skye asked.

  Mickey the Pick sighed. “I could make more quid with a rock in a sock than raising hogs and ducks. But the Mormons, they don’t much go for sapping the wayfarer. You know what I was doing when this here mean ol’ savage woman aimed that arrer at my arse? I was praying. Each day I go to greet the dawn, and go to tell Gawd I like this pretty land, and how He’s treated me right. That’s what I do, this old East End laddie.”

  Mickey the Pick said it so softly Skye had to strain to hear the man.

  “You’re a Saint, then, a real Saint?”

  “I don’t know whot else to be. No bloke’s got a purse to pick around here. They got lots of things, but not a quid in their britches. So I’m giving’er a chance. By Gawd, this here Mormon outfit, they’re collecting the likes of me from all over the world and settling us here.” He eyed his silent auditors. “Now, laddie, tell old Mickey what you’re doing here? So far from the road, eh? Up to no good, are ye?”

  It would take some explaining.

  “We’re taking these young people to the desert to heal, Mister Pick. They’re from the East Coast. They’re consumptives, and we think maybe the dry desert air is what heals them.”

  “Croakers, are they!’Arf the East End’s sick with it. They say’ardly a soul lives beyond forty in East End, and most don’t make thirty. My ma and pa, it sent them to their grave. Sisters too. Me, not me. I’m too mean.”

  Skye introduced the whole party and told what happened. “Armed men stopped us. Turned us away. We just wanted to pass through. They called us Lamanites. What’s that?”

  “Ye air Lamanites all right. Dark-skinned. The Indians, they’re Lamanites. Rebelled against God. Sons of Laman. God gave’em dark skins as a curse. They’re the Antichrist, them Lamanites.”

  “We’re the Antichrist?”

  “Or spies or Missouri Pukes or people from Independence or Nauvoo, Illinois, causing trouble.”

  “You’ve learned Mormon history, then.”

  “I’m tired of the’istory. I live right now, not yesterday. They don’t just tell us, they say’ere’s how ye got to think. Ye gotta believe this or that or some other they tell you. But old Mickey, he does his own thinking.”

  “I should warn you, Mister Pick, that we’ve been shadowed.”

  “That don’t scare no East End laddy none. I’ve seen’em in town, all’ot-eyed and suspicious. But any East End lad could show’em a thing or three. I don’t have no regular sap, but a rock in a sock, it’s just dandy, and I could lift their purses without half trying.”

  “We’re looking for a way around town, some way that would put us back on the road a few miles below town without anyone knowing.”

  The skinny fellow stared. “Gawd sent you here, I think.”

  “We could give you something for it,” Bright said.

  “Give me something! What, consumption? Me, I’m joining up this here outfit. You just pressed me.”

  Skye started laughing. The others were puzzled.

  “You have to know the East End of London, mates,” Skye said. “We’ve added to our company. Mickey the Pick is joining us.”

  Pick doffed his formless hat. “I’m fetching you to this place in the desert, that’s what this bloke’s up to. I’ll bring some ducks and geese in my cart, and maybe some suckling pigs, sell off the rest, and’ere’s to you Lamanites.”

  This was a brave and impulsive man, Skye thought. And an asset. They stood around staring, as the day brightened and the sun climbed over the eastern hills.

  “I’ll hike to my’ouse if this savage don’t put an arrer in my arse. It’s that way, maybe a’arf mile. By the time you get there I’ll have a skillet full of eggs ready for some serious eating.”

  “I’ll walk with you and help,” Victoria said.

  “Sure enough, your majesty,” he replied.

  That puzzled her, but she gamely collected her pony and led it as she started off beside him.

  When they did reach his farmstead, Skye was astonished to discover a thatched cottage with stucco sides. It was the first thatched roof he had seen in North America, and Pick had used river sedges for the thatch. Fowl wandered everywhere, chickens, ducks, geese, but Skye saw no hogs. Still, this place was not far from the river bottoms, and he surmised that the hogs made their living down there.

  A battered cart sagged into the ground, and a pair of burros yawned from a pen.

  Bright took one look at that cart, pulled out his tools, and set
to work. Pick eyed him warily at first, and then began smiling as Bright anchored a loose iron tire, splinted the cracked singletree, and greased the axles.

  Mickey the Pick and Victoria soon had a mountain of eggs and porridge ready, and the invalids ate a meal such as they hadn’t had in months.

  “Now, I’ve been scheming, Skye. It’s a shifty thing, getting you blokes around the town, and I’ll have to guide you. Don’t try it yourself; you’ll be spotted. It’s wartime and they got themselves a militia. There’s a place where we’ll be right across the river from town. I’ve got to load up my cart, get some breeding pairs into cages, drive some’ogs to market, and fetch a few quid. It’s a big job. So you go on ahead, and I’ll fetch up behind ye in a day or two. I’ve got a bit of business, maybe sell the place’ere and tell the elders they owe me a couple of women. Then, whiles they’re thinking about their sins, I’ll come along behind ye and we’ll get these blokes to the desert.”

  That sounded like a plan.

  twenty-nine

  The bloke took over. Skye watched, flabbergasted. Mickey the Pick collected two breeding pairs of squealing piglets from a sow and stuffed them into a slat-sided cage. Then he snatched ducklings from their mother and stuffed them into another cage.

  “There’s some meat, guv’nor,” he said, and dropped the cage into the supply wagon. “Feed’em or eat’em. Now, youse get yourselves ready whiles I git you a few eggs for a supper, and I’ll steer the outfit roundabout those hills. This little trip will take most of a day, and it’ll drop ye at a ford a few miles below town, and ye can cross her, watch out for a swampy spot, and git onto the road. I’ll cut back here and close down this bloomin’ bedbug castle and catch ye down the trail somewheres.”

  Soon they were off, Mickey the Pick leading them through hills until Skye scarcely knew where he was. But then Mickey halted.

  “We’ve come past town, matey, and now you’re all by your lonesome. I’m going to ship out. Drive meself to town, sell the lot, load my stuff in my cart, and get me arse outa there.”

  Skye extended a weathered hand, and Mickey the Pick clasped it, grinning like a monkey.

  All that autumnal day, Skye’s party worked south along a faint two-rut trail, probably cut by Mickey’s own cart. Skye rode ahead, looking for trouble, but Mickey’s route wove around quiet juniper-dotted slopes and Skye never found a spot where he could see the river from the trail, much less the main road beyond it.

  Then the trail veered down a gully toward the little river, and Skye could see the silver glint of water ahead, and beyond that, the main road on the far side. So they had dodged the little settlement. But he thought to cross that creek under the cloak of darkness, so he called an early halt well out of sight of travelers. This was good grassland, and the horses and oxen would profit.

  They had skirted town but what about the next settlement, and the next and the next? Skye wished he could find an alternative route, but he had invalids with him, and that meant the main road where wagons could go.

  They feasted on eggs cooked on a tiny fire Victoria built from dead juniper limbs. The invalids seemed somewhat better, having had some changes in diet the last few days. Skye thought maybe their scurvy would be conquered if they could get enough cabbage and potatoes. But now he was seeing in them a deep weariness. They had traveled too long and were too worn out to go much farther. They were a long way from the Atlantic coast. Even David and Lloyd Jones, the strongest of the invalids, were plainly at their limit. And Skye had no help for them.

  But there was this, he thought: the air had changed. They had passed some invisible line between climates, and this air of southern Utah was different, dry and mild, with the scent of sun-pummeled cedar in it. Cactus and creosote bush and juniper abounded. This air had pungence, a balm for lungs. It was an odd thing, this change in the air. He could not fathom why this air was different, why this air seemed to come from some other corner of the world. Where had it changed? Maybe there was something to the idea that lungers could heal in the desert.

  Skye saw his son lying on a robe, and he picked up the little one, who was still a feather in his hands but gaining a little weight at Mary’s breast. The infant was enjoying the balmy air, and stared up at Skye with bright brown eyes. Skye felt a great wave of tenderness. Here was a son to take his name, his nature, and Mary’s nature into the future. But only if this little one escaped sickness and the thousand things that befell children as they grew.

  Mary was cooking some of the potatoes. He handed the child to Victoria, whose face reflected joy and pain at once; the pain of being barren, the joy of being a mother to this child, even if it was not the issue of her loins. Then, at last, she set the boy back on the robe, with a small caress of the boy’s black hair.

  “The sick people, they are pretty damn sick,” she said.

  So she had noticed too.

  “No one wants them. This new sickness, it is because these Saints don’t let them pass. I do not understand this. Damned paleskins. I’m glad I’m me,” she said.

  After a hearty meal for man and beast, Skye and Bright started the wagons down the last grade to the meandering river, found what looked to be a crossing, and Skye took Jawbone out into it. But the horse hit a pothole and floundered toward the far bank. Skye held a big hand to the horse’s neck, quieting him. Then Jawbone tried again, upstream twenty yards, and found shallow footing all the way across.

  “We need to stay upstream, here, a little,” Skye told Bright.

  That was all it took. Mary and Victoria took the travois ponies across, along with the Morgan mare, while Bright watched, and then the wagons came along, and just at twilight they were all safely back on the main road and riding south in deep silence. Skye planned to ride into the night if he could. And maybe find some sheltered spot to camp. He wondered about Mickey the Pick, an East Ender who knew little of the wilds. Where and when would this little Londoner find them? If ever?

  They camped on a flat below the trail, next to the Sevier River, and met with no trouble that night. The following day they made their way south without hindrance, and Skye thought maybe there would be no more difficulty. But then they came to a hamlet called Aurora, a farming community drawing its irrigation water from the little river. It seemed a peaceful place. There were people in the village, farm wagons, women with wicker baskets under their arms, bearded men in brogans and rough trousers and homespun shirts. They stared as Skye’s party approached, studied Skye on Jawbone, squinted at Skye’s wives, the ponies and the travois, examined the two small wagons, the oxen and mules, and the young people riding the tailgates.

  Then, shockingly, they all turned their backs. Some giant hand had spun each citizen of this hamlet around, children too, so that not a face was visible to Skye’s party. They were being shunned. It was a grave insult. It was the opposite of a welcoming. It needed no explanation. Skye and everyone in his company understood. Skye’s women stared back, flinty of eye, angry at this reception.

  Bright hastened forward. “I’ve a mind to stop right here for a spell,” he said. “Let’em keep their backs turned for an hour or two.”

  That was Bright for you, Skye thought. But it could not be. Their obligation was to the invalids; get them safely to the desert. And provoking these people would gain them nothing. These farm people were not armed and had not formed a militia. So keep on going, never pause, and show no fear.

  “They knew we were coming,” Skye said. “I imagine we’ll see more of this.”

  “I’ve never seen so much backside,” Bright said. “It’s like viewing the world from behind a one-bottom plow.”

  They wove slowly past the half-dozen whitewashed commercial buildings, a general store, a smithy, livery barn, feed and implement dealer, and something that looked like a temple rising on a hilltop. What looked to be a school stood near the temple.

  But then they were free of that place and moving slowly through stubble fields. These people had long since harvested their grains. A few
cattle and some hogs roamed freely, gleaning a living after the harvest.

  “Is it my imagination or is this air different?” Bright asked.

  “It’s different. I’ve been thinking that somehow Hiram Peacock knew the air would be different. Maybe he even would have an explanation for it. It feels like velvet.”

  “I’d like to invent a machine that tells me why this air is more to my liking than the air a hundred miles back.”

  David Jones joined them as they walked. “I think they didn’t much care for us,” he said. “Maybe I don’t care much for them.”

  Something in the young man was spoiling for a fight. He and the others had been insulted and shunned once too often.

  Skye smiled. “We’re in the desert now, Mister Jones. It won’t be long before we’ll be building a home for you and letting the sun do its healing.”

  The answer obviously did not satisfy the young man, but he drifted back to the mule team. If his thoughts were those of the rest of the invalids, there was bitterness riding the wagons.

  Skye took them south well into the night, and then found a riverside flat for a camp. But even before they had unhooked and watered the teams or completed their chores, teamster music filled the air.

  “Bloomin’ burros, move your butts.” The familiar voice rose out of the darkness. A cart with squealing wheels howled through the night.

  Skye clambered up a grade and intercepted Mickey the Pick, and steered him to the campsite.

  The cart was alive. Crates of something or other filled it, along with a bedroll. These creatures, fowl apparently, flapped and fluttered in their containers, and squawked now and then.

  Mickey steered his howling cart straight into camp.

  Bright listened to the squeal, headed for the grease pot hanging from his wagon, and set to work on Mickey’s axles, even before greetings had been exchanged.

  “I’ll not listen to that hour after hour, day after day,” he muttered.

  “Skye, my bruvver, I did it. Sold the’ogs on the hoof; got a few quid and a few more for my croft. Sold the whole lot to a widower I know, lost three wives in a row, and prefers’ogs and’ens.”