each spring accompanied a great wagon train of two hundred, even as many as three hundred Saints, rolling east with Mormon-made goods to sell and barter for what Brigham Young’s faithful could not acquire in their own land of Zion. And with each year’s trip east, the Church Train found more and more immigrants from the States and other countries anxiously waiting for this annual journey, so that the newcomers could join in the return trip back—an anointed gathering of Israel in Brigham’s holy valley.
In 1857 Boothog had taken his first trip east since childhood. Already tensions had blossomed again among the people of Missouri, requiring Usher to exercise a firm hand on his Mormons, reminding them that these same proslavery Missourians had been the very Gentiles to turn their guns on Mormon brethren.
“We must have nothing but the most limited contact with these sinners,” Boothog had explained to some of his friends, unaware that Usher had been near enough to overhear his admonition during that trip east in fifty- seven.
That night Jubilee Usher had called Wiser to his tent and proposed to take the young man under his wing.
“You will make a capable officer, Mr. Wiser. More than that—” Usher stuffed a slice of game hen into his huge mouth. “You might even take over the reins of this operation from me one day.”
“I could never … never think of ever being as good as you.”
Usher had smiled. “That’s good, Wiser. Affecting the modesty as you have done comes off as quite genuine. It is good that you play the role so effectively.”
“But I—”
Usher waved his hand. “We have more important things to concern ourselves with than your sincerity. What matters most is your faith in Brigham and his prophecies from God Almighty. And how well you obey, without question, the orders of his military commanders. Don’t you agree, Mr. Wiser?”
“Yes, sir.”
So it was that every day Boothog had grown more convinced of the rightness in Usher’s might. No matter the cruelty of the man—Usher carried not only the seal of the Prophet, Brigham Young, himself, but Usher claimed he had been chosen by the Prophet to lead a rebuilding of Zion’s defenses.
Most Mormon men still smarted at the military occupation of Utah by Union troops under General Albert Sidney Johnston from fifty-eight to sixty-one, ending only when the war broke out and Johnston resigned his commission to fight on the side of his beloved Confederacy, and most of the Union troops were recalled east to fight the rebels down south. Never again, the Mormons vowed, would they allow anything like that immoral and illegal occupation.
Usher was all-consumed with rebuilding the might of Deseret’s army when he led Wiser’s military escort for the Church Train east in sixty-two. It was to have been Boothog’s sixth round trip. But in south central Missouri, the great wagon procession was surprised and stopped by an imposing force of proslavers operating under a self- appointed general named Sterling Price. The Confederates moved among the disarmed Mormon men, looking each one over and selecting the best as conscripts in Price’s guerrilla campaigns against the Union.
Price reminded the surrounded Mormons that his Missouri Confederates had not forgotten the problems caused by the Mormons in years past: “My men would love nothing more than to leave you all bleeding here on the road. But let’s see if you
With his new draftees and his ragtag army in tow, Price marched south from there, heading for a place called Pea Ridge, leaving behind the Church Train stripped of its mules, horses, firearms, and ammunition, along with supplies and every able-bodied young male.
It was with that army of Missouri proslavers that Boothog had learned to play poker. A game to this day that he loved to play with some of the men who rode with Usher’s guerrilla band raiding across postwar Missouri. Jubilee called many of the recent converts to Mormonism his cannon fodder. Boothog liked many of the simple, ignorant, fiery Southerners for no other reason than they provided some temporary diversion while the small army waited for Jubilee to decide on moving.
They always did a lot of waiting.
The cold rains of late November were turning to sleet outside the series of limestone caves where Usher’s advance scouts under Captain Eloy Hastings had found them a place out of the weather three days before. In the back of this main cavern was a long, dark drop at the end of which a man could hear the faint splash of any rock he threw off the ledge to amuse himself. Without a lantern to guide him to the edge, he might fall into what hell no man knew waited at the bottom of that deep, black cavern.
Picketing the horses in a nearby grove and stowing their supplies in another cave, Usher’s men had settled in for what they knew would be days of restless inactivity, waiting out the passing of the first winter storm rumbling across southern Missouri.
It wasn’t their first winter in this country.
And they weren’t new at waiting either.
“Who’s next?” asked one of the Danites as he emerged from a side cavern, buttoning the fly to his britches, yanking on his belt.
A man quickly stood, jostling the crate they were using as a card table these days of waiting. “Me. I want a poke.”
Just after leading Jubilee Usher’s band to this series of caves, Hastings’s scouts had been ordered back out into what was then a drizzling rain to ride farther south and see what they could rustle up in the way of women on the nearby farms.
“The men will need a little something besides cards to keep them happy,” Usher had reminded Wiser and Captain Hastings.
“Nigger or white, makes no difference to my loins right now,” Boothog had replied, that devilish grin crossing his handsome face.
So it was the scouts had found a black slave girl no more than sixteen and hurrying toward a Creek Indian farm located close by when the horsemen had surrounded her. From the moment she had been dropped from the horse at the entrance to the cave three days ago, the unkempt sprigs of her black hair dripping with diamonds of sleeting rain, the girl had had little rest.
Boothog had ordered her carried to an adjoining cave, where under lamplight a few of the soldiers stripped her, staked her out, and proceeded to rotate themselves on her body—Wiser claiming first go at their skinny captive. At first she had screamed and thrashed about, until gagged. No man among Boothog’s army minded the nigger girl thrashing in the least. It only added to a man’s fun, and enjoyment.
Wiser looked up from his cards and glanced over his shoulder as the man disappeared into the chamber where the captive lay.
As his eyes came back to the crate table, Boothog thought he caught a flicker of movement from the hands of another player.
He smiled grimly. “Lay your cards down, Billy.”
The man’s eyes grew wide as the rest of the players eased back from the oblong rifle crate.
“I didn’t do nothing wrong, Boothog. Major Wiser, sir.”
“Put the goddamned cards down.”
“Yessir.” He laid them down in a neat stack.
“Count them for us, Billy Baker,” Wiser demanded as he slowly pulled the pistol from his waistband.
The rest of the card players arose suddenly and backed away as the solitary man left at the crate chewed on the end of a finger. With his thumb, Boothog drew back the pistol’s hammer.
“I said—count your cards.”
“Just playing a little poker with you, Major. I fold. See? I fold. Hand’s all done.”
Baker started to shove his cards under some others when Boothog slammed his hand down onto the man’s wrist. With the pistol shoved under the soft underside of Baker’s chin, Wiser slowly spread the cards.
“One … two … three … four—and five.”
“See, Major? Just like I—”
“What’s this, Billy? Why, it’s a sixth pasteboard,” Wiser declared sinisterly as he slowly pulled free the extra card.
Things became a blur in that next heartbeat as Baker attempted to bat the pistol barrel aside and the
