The Tears of God

“What can happen? We’ll be in the open. If there’s another quake, it’s not as if the sky will fall on us.” Brother Calvin chuckled.

The dark hid Nate’s frown as he reined wide of a boiling pool. Behind him, strung out in a row, the Conestagos creaked and rattled. Three of the five were driven by men. Women handled the other two.

“I envy Sister Amelia and the others,” Brother Calvin remarked.

“You envy them being dead?”

“Oh, goodness no. I envy that when next they open their eyes, they will be in the throes of heavenly glory.” Calvin lifted his rapturous face to the stars. “They are the lucky ones. We are still earthbound.”

Nate looked up, too, and noticed that the roiling white bank was a lot lower and flowing a lot faster.

Chapter Seventeen

Brother Calvin didn’t like the first spot Nate picked. “It’s too near a hot spring. Those who come to pay their respects will have to put up with the stink.”

Nate’s uneasiness grew the farther they went. The fog or mist was a quarter of a mile above them when they came to a flat area within a stone’s throw of the base of the mountain and far enough from any of the boiling springs and bubbling mud pots that Brother Calvin said it would do.

The Shakers brought lanterns and set to digging. The two women helped, sharing the work equally with the men.

Nate dismounted. He offered to lend a hand, but Brother Calvin told him they could manage on their own. Nate held the bay’s reins and gazed down the valley at the lights and the activity. Jeremiah Blunt and the freighters were hitching teams and getting their wagons ready. In Nate’s opinion Blunt was smart not to wait until morning.

Nate wished he could persuade Brother Lexington to do the same. The Indians had been right. The Valley of Skulls was bad medicine. No wonder they stayed away.

A pale gleam caught Nate’s eyes. It was another skull. Larger than a buffalo’s, it had a hole near the end of the jaw that might have been a horn. He wondered what sort of creature it could have been and what it died of.

Brother Calvin and the others finished one grave and began another. They weren’t digging deep, only enough to keep scavengers from getting at the bodies.

Nate began to pace, the reins in his left hand. The bay clomped behind him, turning when he turned. He patted it and stared up the mountain. The ghostly bank was spreading ever lower.

Nate faced the Shakers. Almost too late he heard the smack of running feet, and whirling, he was just in time to raise his arm and ward off a blow that would have buried a knife in his chest. The Pawnee holding the knife howled and tried again.

Swiftly backpedaling, Nate leveled his Hawken. He thought it would be an easy kill, but the warrior knocked the barrel aside and was on him again in the bat of an eye. Nate drove the stock at the man’s face, but the warrior nimbly darted aside.

Nate hadn’t expected this. Not here, not now. He worried there might be more than this one warrior, that he’d get an arrow in the back, and had to resist the urge to look behind him. He focused on his attacker and only his attacker and when the Pawnee thrust at his stomach he unleashed a roundhouse that raised the man onto the tip of his toes and left him sprawled in an unconscious heap.

The Shakers ran over. Brother Calvin knelt next to the Pawnee and felt for a pulse. “He’s still alive. Thank God you didn’t kill him.”

Nate would just as rather he did. He pointed the Hawken.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing, Brother King?”

“Covering him while you tie him.”

Brother Calvin put a hand to his throat as if appalled. “Oh, I could never do that.”

“Why not?”

“It would be violence against my fellow man. We of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing don’t believe in violence. We are pacifists. Surely you know this.”

“If he comes around he’ll try to kill me again, and he might kill you while he’s at it.”

“I’m sorry.” Brother Calvin shook his head and the other Shakers, who had hurried over, nodded in agreement.

“Fetch me a rope, then, and I’ll bind him myself.”

Brother Calvin grinned in amusement. “Were we to do that, it would be the same as binding him ourselves. I am afraid that any tying that must be done is yours to do.”

“Don’t you get it?” Nate asked. “Just becaue you don’t believe in violence doesn’t mean he doesn’t. The world is full of men just like him who would as soon slit your throat as look at you.”

“Honestly, now, Brother King,” young Calvin said good-naturedly. “This is between the two of you. We have no quarrel with him or any of his tribe. To us, even the red man is our brother, and we will seek to live in harmony with them as we do with all living things.”

“Life isn’t the way you think,” Nate said.

“That’s beside the point. We live by our faith, not according to the ways of the world.”

Nate opened his mouth to say the ways of the world would get them killed when his gaze fell on the slope above. The mist—for now that it was closer he could see that it was a vaporous mist and not true fog—was only a few hundred yards above them, devouring everything in its path. As he looked on it swallowed a cluster of pines.

Suddenly the bay nickered and pulled at the reins. The mules started to act up, too. Some uttered loud whinnies that ended in brays. Some whimpered.

“What in the world?” Brother Calvin said, rising.

Nate hadn’t taken his eyes off the mist. It was like white beads of sand suspended in the air. He had never seen anything like it. It rose a good twenty feet into the air and formed an unbroken white wall hundreds of yards across. “Get on your wagons and get out of here.”

“What? Why? We haven’t finished burying our brothers and sisters.”

“That,” Nate said, with a nod.

Brother Calvin looked, and laughed. “That mist or whatever it is? What harm can it do? For such a big man you are awfully timid.”

One of the women anxiously wrung her hands. “I don’t like that mist, either, Brother Calvin.”

“You, too, Sister Edith?” Calvin chortled and moved toward his horse. “I’ll prove to the both of you that your fears are groundless.”

“Don’t,” Sister Edith said.

Nate echoed her. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Brother Calvin mounted and reined toward the mountain. “Watch and take heed.” He jabbed his heels and trotted up the slope. When he was close to the mist he shifted to grin down at them. Holding his arms out from his sides, he hollered, “Now you will see how silly you’ve been.”

One of the men said, “That’s Brother Calvin for you. He sure is a character, isn’t he?”

The mist swallowed more ground. Now it was almost on Calvin. They all heard his laugh as it closed over him like a shroud. For a few seconds there was silence. Then, from out of the mist, came a scream of pure bloodcurdling terror.

“My word!” a Shaker exclaimed.

“He’s playing a trick on us,” offered another.

“I’m not so sure,” Sister Edith said.

Nor was Nate. He swung onto the bay and rode up the slope. Calling out Calvin’s name, he came to a stop twenty yards from the mist. He thought he heard a soft hissing, but he wasn’t sure. The bay whinnied and shied.