For all the imagining he’d ever done in his life, Scooter never imagined meeting such a stunning young woman on the road to Bannack City. He couldn’t help but stare at the blonde Mormon girl so he could store away the memory. Her traveling companion more closely fit his perception of Mormon women—ruby-faced and plump. But the woman sitting next to him was a gem of gems: tall but not too tall, slender but not too slender, skin as smooth and sweet as cow’s cream. Her natural, wholesome beauty didn’t need the paint of a saloon girl. She reminded him of a curious cat with her slender white neck, sleek yellow hair, and the kind of hypnotic green eyes that started wars. Half the time she seemed unaware of how good she looked, and half the time she seemed a little bashful about it. She moved with a kind of agile economy, strong and athletic. Wet clothing and all, she had swept the Indian boy off his feet, thrown him effortlessly into the wagon, and then hopped in herself as if the wagon were flat on the ground.
Why a young beauty like her would consider marrying a man twice her age was beyond his imagination. Where he was from, old horses waited at the glue factory gate. Why she would adopt an Indian boy was also beyond his imagination.
He aimed to tease out details about her. “You haven’t told me your name.”
“I’m sorry. It’s Abigail.” Her head was tilted up and away from him. Her throat curved and sloped gently to her shoulders with grace and beauty, but if she’d been warming up to him before, she’d returned to acting chilly.
“I suppose friends call you Abby,” he said, hoping she’d count him as such. It seemed the bond they’d just forged at the crossing warranted a first-name basis.
“Abigail, to you. Abigail Butterfield Browett.”
The Butterfield name sounded familiar. The Butterfield Overland Mail Company was now known simply as the Overland Mail Company. It operated out of Salt Lake City and in every other major thoroughfare in the West. His eyebrows shot up in pleasure at the thought that the two of them might have something in common. “Butterfield? That was a big name in the overland stage and mail delivery business.”
“That was my father’s cousin. John W. Butterfield.”
He wondered how she provided for herself, being single. “You inherit any of John W. Butterfield’s money?”
“Of course not. He was a distant cousin—very distant. Wouldn’t even know me.”
He couldn’t shake his curiosity. If family money wasn’t the answer, then perhaps old man Jacobs was. “The old gentleman back there will take some time to heal. Will you be taken care of until then?”
“Mormons take care of each other,” she said. “Isaac and I will reschedule the trip as soon as he heals. You have a real name?”
He smiled, pleased that she’d finally asked. “David Perkins.”
“From where?”
“St. Louis.”
She studied him for a moment, which made him uneasy. He hoped she couldn’t see through his fib. He hadn’t gone by his real name—Jesse Kemp—since he left Virginia, not St. Louis. But his mother had nicknamed him Scooter as a baby for the way he scooted around the floor. That part of his answer was true.
“Never been to St. Louis,” she said. “I’ve heard it’s a bad place.”
“In what way?” he asked.
“An utter disregard for God’s commandments,” she said sharply.
He closed his eyes. Every Mormon he’d met seemed to have a low tolerance for the kind of behavior he’d seen in St. Louis. “You may be right about that,” he said. He could tolerate such behavior better than the average Mormon, but when drink and women made a man rude and sloppy, Scooter figured it was time for that man to leave the saloon.
Except for the rattling of the wagon and the clopping of the horses’ hooves on the soft road, they rode in silence for a while. He tipped his hat back and looked ahead. Tiny brown pinpricks blended into a cluster of small buildings. As they drew closer, he could also see flat fields recently stripped of their harvests.
“I see your settlement,” Scooter said. He looked back at Isaac, whose skin was even paler than before. “Unless you’ve got a good doctor, your man may never walk behind a plow again. Then who’ll take care of you?”
She folded arms across her chest and gave him a defiant look. “Bones mend. Bodies heal. And I have faith. Isaac will be fine.” But there was worry in her eyes. “When we get there, pull right into the town square, next to the corrals.” She stirred her boy awake. “Look, Yahnai. We’re almost home.”
Franklin was not the first Mormon settlement Scooter had passed through in the sparsely populated Cache Valley. It looked similar to the hardscrabble settlements of Wellsville, Providence, Mendon, Logan, Richmond, and Smithfield. All had looked as though they’d been built in some kind of a burst of Mormon pioneer enthusiasm by people who somehow believed in a promising future. If the future meant prosperity of any kind, prosperity looked to be twenty or thirty years away.
There was nothing much to see. To protect themselves from Indians, the settlers here had built their dour-looking small log sanctuaries in a large rectangle facing a town square. There were more than twenty homes on each side, not too close to each other but not far away either. Each home looked to be pretty much identical—same vintage, same construction, same type of logs hewn from trees out of canyons similar to the one where the Mormon girl had lost her husband. The largest structure was a log meeting house located right in the center of the square near the corrals. Probably used as a school and a church. There were herds of cattle and horses and sheep and pigs and chickens. He could smell wood smoke curling from nearly every cabin.
The return of the sodbuster’s wagon caused a big hullabaloo. Settlers swarmed around him, more women than men, curious as to why he was driving the team. They wanted to know why their friends were wrapped in blankets. Why the old man was flat on his back in the rear of the wagon. They shuffled in place and clucked and pursed and fussed, quickly and clearly understanding the gravity of the situation.
Winny jumped from the wagon as soon as it had stopped, and she brought back with her a man whose neck was thicker than his head.
“The gash in his forehead is bad,” Winny said to the man. “It’s laid back some of the skin. The leg will need to be set.”
The man jumped into the rear of the wagon, looked at the sodbuster’s cuts and bruises, and grimaced. “Yahnai, fetch Brother Stanley. Be quick about it.”
When the Indian boy hit the ground, a brown-and-white dog jumped up and down and licked the boy’s hand. Abby’s dog, probably.
“Come on, Riddle,” Yahnai said. The boy darted through the converging crowd and then ran like a deer.
Scooter climbed out of the wagon and stood for a moment, rolling his shoulders, stretching his back, trying to work out the stiffness. He wondered if the Mormons would mind if he camped nearby. The creek crossing incident had cost him time, and now night was not far off. He hoped to make it to Bannack City and back to Salt Lake before winter clogged the passes with too much snow.
The way people bustled around to help the old man gave Scooter the impression that Isaac Jacobs was an important man in this Mormon community. Abby had climbed from the wagon, and she hovered near the action, her eyes locked on Isaac.
“He doesn’t look good, does he?” Abby asked as Scooter approached her.
He didn’t, but Scooter wasn’t about to tell Abby that. “Is this fellow you call Brother Stanley the doctor here?” he asked instead.
“Casket maker,” she said. “But he’s good at setting bones.”
The answer struck Scooter as funny. He wondered briefly if old man Jacobs would die. At least the casket maker would be handy for a proper measurement. He would have said the joke aloud, but Abby stared at Isaac with concern so deep it lined her face. He bit his tongue for her sake.
The man with the thick neck regarded Scooter with probing eyes. “So this is the man who rescued you?”
“I apologize,” Abby said. “This is Mr. David Perkins. His freight wagons will be along shortly. Mr. Perkins, this is Carl Davis. Winny’s husband.”
The man extended a thick, meaty hand at him. It had been his experience that Mormons squeezed the hand more vigorously than other men during a handshake. Carl Davis’s handshake was just that, firm and vigorous.
“Pleased to know you, Mr. Perkins,” Carl said.
“Likewise. I go by Scooter, if you don’t mind.”
Just then Yahnai returned with John Stanley, who quickly examined Isaac’s leg. The casket maker grimaced and told the men of the settlement to take the injured man to his cabin. Isaac groaned the whole way, as if being carried in a sling made of several woolen blankets was even more jostling than the wagon ride had been.
“He’s awake,” Scooter said as they formed a small procession of curious people moving toward the cabin. “It’s a good sign.”
“Yes.” Abby’s face relaxed. “Thanks again. I don’t know how to repay you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “I’m glad we could help. Anything else I can do?”
“Not unless you’re good at making crutches.”
The girl’s humor made him laugh. “Will the folks around here mind if we set up camp just outside the settlement?”
“Not as long as you stay far enough away from the town square so the children can’t hear your men when they curse.”
There was that low tolerance again. He wondered how many children there were in the settlement. Herds of them, if these Mormons were like the others he’d met. He’d already seen several gawking at the wagon as he’d pulled into the square. He supposed that people who valued children so much had a right to shield them from the world whenever possible. “Agreed,” he said. “We’ll stay near the river bottom.”
“Abby’s good at doughnuts,” Winny said. “We’ll make a large batch and bring you a treat later tonight. We need to thank you for your kindness.”
“Umm,” he said. “I know the men would appreciate it. I’d be beholden to y’all.”
Yahnai seemed to know all about doughnuts. A happy smile came over his face.
“You like doughnuts?” Scooter asked the boy.
The boy nodded.
“Better than candy?”
The boy shrugged.
“When you come to my camp tonight, I’ll give you some candy. I have a lot of things in my wagons to sell to the miners up north. Candy included.”
“Say thank you,” Abby said.
“Thank you,” the boy replied.
Somehow the sodbuster raised an arm. He spoke in short bursts, still in pain but not enough to keep him from expressing an opinion. “Doughnuts?” Isaac Jacobs said weakly. “Just remember . . . the settlement . . . only has a limited supply . . . of wheat. . . . The Indians . . . expect us . . . to practically feed them too. . . . We have to make . . . our supply last . . . until next summer.”
“I’m sure we can spare a little,” Winny protested. “We owe Scooter and his men that much for helping us.”
The casket maker moved near Isaac’s feet and began directing some of the other men to stand at his head. “Take a deep breath, Brother Jacobs,” he said. “We’re going to pull on your leg and shoulders to straighten out that bone. Brother Davis, hold on to his shoulders. Have the teamster help you.”
The casket maker handed Isaac a small stick. “Bite down on this.”
Scooter moved into position with Winny’s husband. He placed his hands on the sodbuster’s shoulders. So did Carl Davis. Fear gripped Jacobs’s eyes.
Abby crossed her arms and squeezed herself.
Scooter looked down at the old man’s face, which was now red and beaded with sweat. “If this doesn’t work,” he told Isaac, “we can always stretch you using your team of horses. I reckon that would hurt worse.”
Abby stomped her foot, and Scooter looked at her. Her glare was nasty enough to cancel the offer of doughnuts.
When the casket maker gave a powerful tug on Jacobs’s leg, the sodbuster gave out a mournful howl and bit hard on the stick, but Scooter wasn’t worried about the old man. His mind was still on Abby.