Three Mormon Boys

By Homespun [Susa Young Gates]

Chapter 2

Coming up over the high hill on the eastern side of St. George, the travelers halted the wagons and looked down on the scene spread out below. A dry, sandy valley, between two rocky walls on the east and the west, about four miles across, with another black hill on the north, at the northwest a gap or pass to the valleys beyond, and on the south the lazy, treacherous, shallow river of the Virgin ran from rocky point to rocky point; while beyond the river, still further south, rose a glorious panorama of pink, white and purple-red hills, the outlines of hills in the not far distant territory of Arizona being visible in this dazzling southern view.

In the center of the valley ran a small stream from a northern hill spring, and up and down this stream were collected a large number of tents.

“Oh, Pa, there’s the soldiers camped!” called out Bertie.

“No, my son, those are our own people, and we will have to live in just such tents until we can build us a house.”

No one could have enjoyed this free life better than Bertie Wilson. There were plenty of Indians here, and the great ambition of the boy’s life was to possess arrows and to go out and shoot quails. Potatoes, flour and provisions were begged and coaxed from Ma and kind Aunt Sarah, to trade for arrows with the hungry Indians. But these things were not always to be had. So Bertie and his friend. Will Harrison, often made their own arrows.

The general camp move, from the banks of the stream to the position now occupied by the city of St. George, had been made, and the Wilsons had chosen a site for their future home near the selected spot for a future meeting-house. Then Bertie had a chance to know how it felt to live in a Sybella ((Should be “Sibley tent,” named for/patented by military officer Henry Hopkins Sibley who, coincidentally, had come to Utah during the 1857-58 Utah War.)) tent for months together. It was all well enough when the weather was pleasant and dry. But the rain! Can anyone not so experienced tell what it is to house up a family of children within the narrow, damp confines of a tent? In Dixie the mud was a dirty, dull red color, and every drop of water in rainy seasons was of the same brick hue as the mud. Once it really rained forty days and forty nights. Not a dry thread was there in that whole camp, and lucky was she whose good new tent kept things underneath damp only. The water ran in under the tent poles, and of course shoes and stockings were of no use whatever.

Some time after this rain, it happened that the two boys were snugly ensconsed in bed one quiet summer night. Their bed was made on a low, rude trundle bed, and was placed in the outer tent, while mamma’s bed was made in the wagon box, with the front of the box turned to the opened doorway of the tent. It must have been after midnight, when Bertie woke up with the distinct knowledge that someone had hold of his throat, and that someone’s fingers were making an effort to strangle him. He felt how useless it would be to try to unloose these deadly fingers himself, and so with all the strength of his lusty young voice that he could command, he called out, “Mother, there’s someone in bed here; strike a light!”

It was only a moment before the mother was awake, but at first she did not understand what the child was talking about. “What is it, Bertie?” she called.

“Strike alight, mother,” he said, “there’s someone in bed.” He answered rapidly and with increasing excitement.

The mother got out of the bed and hurried into the tent. But she could not find the matches; tables were overturned, chairs stumbled over in her hurry and excitement, but the matches were not to be found. Meanwhile Bertie was in a perfect fever of fright and excitement, his voice arose to a yell, repeating, “Strike a light! there’s an Indian in bed trying to strangle me.”

The noise awoke Mark, and the words, “Indian in bed,” aroused him to a consciousness that there really was someone struggling in bed.

Like the quiet boy that he was, he said nothing, but straightening out his limbs he laid perfectly stiff and rigid, waiting in breathless hush for the long delayed light. At last, when Bertie was really exhausted with his excitement and Ma found some matches, she took the candle in her hand and went to the cot with a fear at her heart, but with a brave determination to save her boy, no matter what the cost to herself might be.

“Why, Bertie,” she cried, after a few moments, “there is no one in bed but yourself and Mark, but you have got turned round in bed, and Mark’s feet are at your throat, and it must be he who has been trying to strangle you. Get up and see for yourself”

Of course, you and I can laugh at the ridiculous situation. There was Bertie kicking Mark with all his strength, and Mark with his feet, as he supposed, firmly grasped by an Indian’s deadly hand, but holding to those deadly hands with all his boyish strength of toes; and there was Ma, the light in her hand, the bed-clothes thrown down so that she could see the whole performance, and laugh at it, while every chair in the tent had been turned over in the hunt for matches, and then the wild look of fear on the boys’ faces gradually changing to one of relief and then laughter. All this is funny to us, but it was not funny to the boys until they had forgotten the fear.

(To be continued)