From the Relief Society Magazine 1947-48 –

Where Trails Run Out

By Anna Prince Redd

[The incidents of this story are true, and the characters authentic. The information has been carefully gleaned from diaries, journals, and personal interviews. –Ed.]

Chapter 1

Shivering in the thin daylight air, Captain Silas S. Smith put on his coat, buttoned it up to his bearded chin, and stepped over the left front wheel of his wagon to the frost-covered ground. With his feet propped, alternately, on the wagon tongue, he tied the buckskin laces of his shoes; then, straightening his long frame, he recovered his Stetson hat from beneath the wagon seat and took a first day’s inventory of the camp.

The twelve circled wagons of the San Juan Mission Exploring company were intact, bows solid, covers stretched tight and fastened to the wagon beds. He looked over the camp ground – a grassy ben don the west band of the Sevier River, not far form the town of Panguitch – and counted, by twos and tens, the eighty horses hobbled or staked between the river and the circled wagons. He took note of the two guards, erect before their fire. He threw a rock to bestir the herd of thirty cows bedded within the circle. Then he gathered his breath and gave a long summoning cry that was as clear and cold as the morning itself. It rose, fell, then leveled off, breaking into a thousand splinters that hit the hills to the east, ricocheted to the west, and then to the north, dying of their own rivalry.

The company of twenty-four young men and two families awoke, shook itself, and yawned, then began shouting jovially.

“Mrs. Harriman!” Parley Butt called, slapping the canvas of the wagon next to his. “If you’ll hand down those tenderfoot pioneers of yours, we’ll toughen ‘em up a bit. Bayles, here, has the ice all cracked from the top of the water buckets, just right for a morning face wash.”

Elizabeth Harriman threw back the flaps of her wagon and beamed at the young scouts. She was as starched and clean as though she had just left her own bedroom. Her brown hair was knotted in a soft coil at the nape of her neck; her eyes sparkled in the early light.’

“Yours, and welcome!” she laughed, shoving her two protesting boys into their upstretched arms. “I hope you survive the encounter!”

“Bayles and Butt, Boy Washers, incorporated,” Hans Bayles wheezed, collecting the failing arms and legs of his particular charge. “Hey, Bub,” he admonished, “you’re not a cub bear climbing a tree!”

“Our fee,” Parley chuckled, equally involved, “is a stack of those Dutch-oven biscuits of yours, Sister Harriman.”

“There you are, young fella,” Hans said, dumping his boy on the wagon tongue. “now, sit still and nice till we get the rest of our clients done.”

From the next wagon, Mary Davis, who was the only other woman in the camp, looked on with laughter on her golden face.

“We’ll be at your wagon in exactly three minutes, Sister Davis,” Parley said, and deposited his charge next to the boy Hans had set on the wagon tongue. “Breakfast smells like it’s nearly ready, boys. You be good, and we’ll let you ride to the table on our shoulders!” he promised them.

There was a duet of agreement from the delighted boys, “Um-m-m. smells good,” they said, and sat obediently still, waiting for the promised ride.

Having missed none of its good-natured activity, Captain Silas s. Smith, the president of the company, directed and approved, as each man went to his assigned work. Then he called the company to order. The chorister led in the singing of a hymn, and the chaplain offered the morning prayer, concluding with a blessing on the food.

Seated in groups around small, warming fires, fussed over by the two motherly young women, the men had their meal, then were out after their teams, harnessing them and hitching them to the wagons, reloading supplies and bedding. The Davis and Harriman families were to stay in San Juan; their wagons groaned with their belongings. the other members of the company were to stay in the newly located area only long enough to help the two families get settled, and were then to return to southern Utah to help bring on the main company, which was to follow. Their wagons were loaded with tools, blasting materials, implements, and grain for planting.

Like others of the company, James L. Davis and Harrison H. Harriman drove four-horse outfits. Their wives drove the only single teams.

Each of the twenty-six men of the company had his special brand of loyalty, curiosity, and love of adventure. Not one but had been tested in other missions. Young as they were, averaging in age but twenty-three years, they were still seasoned explorers and trail blazers. But, always before, they had known where they were going and, in general, what advantages or difficulties to expect. Now, their mission was to “hunt up” the place first, and explore it afterward. Taking the call of their Church literally, through the word of President John Taylor, they were to scout a route and build a road into San Juan County, an almost unknown wilderness of sand and stone, and there to gain the confidence of the Ute and Navajo Indians, and cultivate their friendship, winning them to ways of peace and the gospel, as taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The call was pointed and brief: They were to explore and settle the almost uninhabitable region along the San Juan River in Southeastern Utah. They were to note the climate, the vegetation, the water sources, and the depth and quality of the soil. they were to plant crops and leave them to be harvested by a larger company that should follow them to San Juan in the fall. Second only to their own subsistence was the task of making peace with the Indians, who for years had made war upon the Southern Utah settlers, pillaging and plundering at will.

Through their own, and the Catholic missionaries, they had gle4aned the little information they had about the place and, from jubilant or dubious speculation, it had come to be considered the most mysterious, the most fantastic country imaginable. A few wandering trappers had reported it to be weirdly beautiful, rich in gold and silver, furs and fish. Sketchy and inaccurate as these accounts were, they were sufficient to fire the blood and the imagination of men who lived by their courage, men who placed a call from their church above their own fortunes or their lives.

Now, with a zest as keen as that of the April air, on the third day of their adventurous journey, in the year 1879, they reloaded their cumbersome wagons, rounded up their teams and stock, and took to the road again, singing and jesting as they went.

But the two women, used as they were to pioneering, strangers to each other until now, had no delusions as to the dangers and difficulties of the mission, and they had talked of little else in the three days of slow travel since they had left their homes in Parowan. Now, as their light wagons creaked along behind the heavily loaded ones of their husbands, they had time to think of the things they were leaving behind; of the friends and relatives they would probably never see again; of the comforts they had been able to achieve in the few years since they had been settled in Southern Utah. Against this unfriendly country, to which they were going, they weighed the joys of the things they were leaving behind. where there had been friendly pioneer roads from town to town, and neighbors who shared with each other the good things of their pantries and the labors of their hands, there would be no roads at all, and no friends, and no neighbors.

Few men knew what lay behind the stone and sand of San Juan. They only knew that it was cut off from Utah by the yawning Colorado River, that the Utes and Navajos held undisputed claim to it, and that outlaws, eluding pursuit, had only to lose themselves in the vastness of its walled canyons to be beyond the law, one with the savage in his stronghold.

Yet these twenty-six men and two lonely women were to find their way into it, and go where white men, in numbers, had never gone before, and there, in a country unique unto itself and different from any other section of the United states or the world, were to make new homes – where even the staunchest trails ran out.

They knew that there were but few friendly towns along th3e way – small colonies of Mormon pioneers, who, like themselves, were fulfilling missions and making settlements on the frontiers. And, after that, the trail led deeper and deeper into Indian territory, where the warring Utes and Navajos jealously guarded their sheep and goats, in a country all their own, and as impenetrable as the workings of their hostile minds. some missionaries, the pioneers knew, had gone into it, and had not lived to return.

But, surely, the women told each other, as they cooked the meals and tended their children, no country could be as bad as San Juan was painted. Most of the tales were just bloodcurdling yarns, designed to stop the advance of peaceful white men into its desirable, wholly beautiful, and mysterious acres.

By this sort of reasoning, they were, at times, as carefree and as adventurous as the young scouts who treated them with such deference and respect. After all, they told each other, it was a great honor to be the only two women in such a company! And, already, they were a little breathless at the grandeur of scenery that was unfolding before them. If San Juan were better than this, it would not be bad at all. The canyon that led from the town of Panguitch to the top of an irregular divide was one of continuous surprise. The soil was a beautiful rust-red, and, out of it, grew tall pointed evergreens that clung in terraces to the very top of the ledges that formed the canyon walls. from the red of the canyon floor and lower sides, the soil gradually faded to deep lavender and on into blue, then to white, as the canyon gained altitude. At the top of the divide, the road broadened and wound in and out through the pines, fragrant with resin, and soft with needles and fallen cones.

Suddenly, the company halted abruptly. The rear outfits, wondering at the unaccountable silence at the head of the line, made a quick movement toward the front. Cattle, no longer prodded, sank gratefully into the shade. For one breath-held moment, there was no sound, even in nature. Then, as awed whispers joined the sighing of the pines, far below them, and barely ten feet beyond, lay a giant vermillion bowl, cupped to hold a thousand slender spires that rose like smoke wraiths from their purple base, thinning to

Slender stems, paling to lavender, changing to alabaster in the sun. A spectacle that blurred before their unbelieving eyes. A thousand Pisas, ready to fall, fading, reforming from the mist, clear, then indistinct, glowing to steadiness, and becoming real, the great bowl challenged their credulity. In rapt wonder, they stood upon its brink. Detail led to detail: a goblet of Venus, a flag on a steeple, a chariot, a flotilla of ships, a temple, a cowled monk, a gray-cloaked nun — Bryce Canyon in all its glory!

“And the morning and the evening were the first day,” Kumen Jones quoted reverently, and, like the rest, stood with uncovered head.

The camp was unusually silent that night. They were too close to the majesty of the Creator for lighthearted banter and songs. They sang a quiet hymn, offered up their silent prayers, and went to bed.

In the morning, they turned south to Johnson settlement and on, to cross the Buckskin Mountains at Ylouse Rock Springs.

George Hobbs, the alert, easy-riding, loud-singing official scout of the company, and a brother of Elizabeth Harriman, led the way. Disdaining the popular beard of the day, he looked younger than the rest of the men in the company, younger than his own twenty-five years. I’ll take on the responsibility of a beard when I do a wife,” he had told the girls in his home town of Cedar City. “The minute, you see stubble on my chin you’ll know I’m in love.”

Riding hard ahead now, he sang his loudest, for he had smelled water. He pulled up his horse, turned him on two legs and dashed up a ravine. He sized up the terrain to see if wagons could make the climb, then, satisfied that they could, he followed the trickle until it became a clear stream that finally headed in a small spring.

This would do. A bit of digging and they could slake their thirst, rest a few hours, and then move on to a regular stop after it got cool. The temperature had risen steadily since they had left Kanab Creek, and teams and stock were feeling the change.

This hunting up of new country stimulated him immensely. Though they had been settled in Southern Utah only a few years, he was already beginning to feel restless. others might chafe at the call of the Church to this strange, wild mission, but he liked the thought of the dangers and responsibilities ahead. it was time the Indians were stopped in their tracks. Their depredations were ruinous. To beard them in their own strongholds was the thing. Through peaceful ways, of course, but beard them just the same.

Beard. What a lot of possibilities that word conjured up. As he rubbed his lean fingers over his smooth cheeks, he smiled at the remembrance of what he’d told the girls back home. His hard muscles relaxed, and he sat dreaming. That new Welsh girl … Again his hand sought his beardless chin. If only she could speak English – or he could speak Welsh!

Pivoting his horse again, he swung back down the trail to the road, where he waited for the wagons to come up.

After a few hours of rest at the spring, the company pushed on into the desert, toward Moan Copei, Arizona, a Moqui Indian village that harbored a few white people. Mile after mile they plowed ahead, making good progress, for it was cooler, and the rest and the water had refreshed the stock and teams. But Hobbs, riding ahead of the line, was unusually silent. There was a harsh dryness in the air that was not compatible with the night or the season. He knew there were but few natural stops – places where there was forage and water – and these were far apart. They would have to push the stock to the limit of endurance while there was enough coolness to allay thirst.

A drowsy silence took the place of laughter and song. The two women had put their children to bed in their wagons. This was their first experience at night driving and they were enjoying it. The noises of the day were distracting, but, here, in the desert night, even the dust seemed less active. The wagons caught mesquite and chaparral. Dry leaves, loosened by new fronds and buds, swished to the warm sand. Desert Moths, drawn by the white covers of the wagons, beat against the waxed canvas. And, above their muted thuds, came the sawing of the crickets, suspended at the approach of the wagon train, and resumed at its passing. The sweet smell of night lilies drugged the air. Tall cactus shadows grouped and regrouped in lonely converse.

Elizabeth Harriman looked searching in all directions. Back of the beauty of the night and her enjoyment of it, was the perpetually cautious fear that the frontier had engendered. what a vast unknown lay ahead! She and Mary Davis were taking their little children and going farther and farther into its bewildering dimensions. It seemed to her that the night’s very beauty was a menace, a drug to lure one’s senses into forgetfulness of danger. Quiet and vast and dry, the desert seemed to tolerate their intrusion, but never to welcome it. There was no hurry, it seemed to say. It could wait, its thorns concealed, as claws are couched in a furred paw. It would wait. Two women and a handful of men were not important in its existence. Two women and their little children … twenty-six men and their presumptuous courage. these were as nothing in its unwalled domain. It could rise now and strike, or lie quiescent until the company, lost in its sand and heat, perished.

Suddenly, Elizabeth sat bolt upright, fear overmastering all other feeling. she had heard no unusual sound of man or beast or desert, yet she knew that strange eyes were measuring her, weighing her courage. She was not asleep, and this was no bad dream. She did not need to turn her head to know that a strange horse and rider were close to her front wheel, waiting for her to move or speak or scream – whatever women do when they can look straight ahead and can breathe quietly no longer. The beat of moths against her wagon cover was as measured and aimless as before; harnesses creaked with the same homely assurance; nothing had changed except the beat of her heart, measuring the beat of the alien hoofs beside her. And the desert waited.

(To be continued)