The Tears of God

It was the smile that did it. As eloquently as any words, it said that Nate was not only a liar but a fool and a simpleton. It nearly sent Nate berserk. He shook Lexington harder and drew back a fist to strike him, but at the last instant he shoved the man to the ground in disgust and turned to the startled and stunned Shakers. “Listen to me!” he cried, raising his arms. “You’re in great danger.” He pointed at the approaching pall of death. “That mist is poisonous. Breathe it and you die. I don’t know how or why except maybe it comes out of the ground when the ground shakes. It will kill you if you don’t flee. Get on your wagons. Get on your horses. Now.”

Not one budged. They looked at one another in amazement or doubt and looked at the mist in puzzlement and finally one woman cleared her throat and with a sheepish grin said, “Is this a joke, Brother King? We know the Lord would never let anything like that happen to us.”

“Please,” Nate pleaded. “You’re running out of time.” The mist seemed to have slowed, but it was still inexorably advancing. “Brother Calvin and those who went to bury the bodies are dead. Do you want to end up like them?”

A man gazed up the valley. “Dead? Brother Calvin?” He faced his brethren. “There’s only one way to prove if this man is trying to make a mockery of us.” He went around the building and when he reappeared he was riding bareback. “I’ll investigate,” he announced, and brought his animal to a canter.

“Don’t get too close!” Nate shouted. It was awful to stand there knowing the Shakers were squandering the precious minutes they needed to escape. He wanted to yell, to scream, to pound and prod them into fleeing.

The man on the horse wasn’t much of a rider. He flapped and he flopped, but he stayed on. Then he was at the leading edge of the mist. Nate figured he would stop and call out to Brother Calvin and the others, but to Nate’s astonishment the man did no such thing; he rode into the mist and was swallowed from view.

Nothing happened.

Nate waited for the scream sure to come, but none did. The Shakers were giving him looks that suggested they didn’t approve of his jest. Then a big man with a voice that could carry far cupped a hand to his mouth and thundered, “Brother Simon! Have you found Brother Calvin?”

There was no answer.

Uneasiness began to spread. Nate took advantage by saying, “Now will you believe me? He doesn’t answer because he can’t. I beg you. Leave before it’s too late.”

Some of them started to move, but they stopped when Arthur Lexington strode past Nate and shouted, “Brothers! Sisters! Don’t listen to this man. There is no such thing as poison mist. He wants us to leave because he thinks our coming here was a mistake.”

“But the earthquake—” a man said.

“What about it? There might never be another here.” Lexington moved among them, smiling and touching arms. “Are we to give up after so much effort? After we have come so far? After we worked for weeks to build our cabins? Are we to forsake Second Eden because of a quirk of Nature and this outsider?” He pointed at Nate. “Look at him. He’s a mountain man. He has an Indian wife. He’s lived among them for so long he’s become part Indian himself. He thinks as they do. He takes their superstitions as true, but we know better, don’t we?”

Nate barely held his simmering fury in check.

“The Indians think this is a bad place, so he thinks this is a bad place,” Lexington had gone on. “He wants us to leave. The quake only made him more determined, so he concocts a ridiculous story about mist that kills.” Lexington laughed merrily. “Have you ever heard anything so silly in your life?”

The mist had reached the green belt. Trees, grass, brush, all were being devoured.

Nate tried one last time. “I’m not the fool here. This man is. As God is my witness, I swear to you that what I’ve said is true. Please, please, if you value your lives, flee.”

Lexington laughed louder. “Brothers and Sisters, do you know what I think? I think we should show our mountain man that he can’t make fools of us. I think we should show him that our faith is the true faith.” He gripped a woman’s hand and held it high. “Do as I am doing. Link hands and form into a line. Hurry now, so we can prove him wrong and be shut of this nonsense.”

To Nate’s dismay, they did.

Arthur Lexington beamed and nodded and said words of encouragement, and when the line was formed, they stood facing the approaching mist, all with the same beatific smiles.

By then the mist was only a few hundred feet away. A mule that had strayed from the broken corral was nipping at grass and was covered in a matter of moments.

“See?” Lexington crowed. “Did that animal act panicked? It did not. Do we hear its death cries? We do not.”

Nate ran to the bay and swung up.

“Raise our voices in song, brethren!” Arthur Lexington urged, and launched into “Rock of Ages.”

Nate brought the bay to a gallop and didn’t look back until he was past the cabins and the parked Conestogas.

The Shakers were still singing. Above them loomed the creeping shroud. They sang, and the mist flowed over them. For a few seconds the singing went on and then it abruptly stopped. From out of the mist came cries and yells and then the screaming began.

“The horror,” Nate said. He stopped looking. The screams and shrieks went on and on. He would never forget them, not for as long as he lived.

The freight wagons had stopped outside the valley. Jeremiah Blunt and Maklin and Haskell were waiting. Blunt stared at Nate, the question in his eyes, and Nate shook his head.

“Damn.”

“I tried my best. They wouldn’t come.”

“Don’t blame yourself. Some folks just can’t be reasoned with. Especially when they think they are right and the rest of the world is wrong.” Blunt gave a toss of his head. “Well, then. Are you coming with us or going your own way?”

“My own,” Nate said. He had his reason.

Each of them offered his hand in parting and when it was Maklin’s turn, Nate glanced at his palm and said, “For me?”

“I have an extra and you might need it.” Maklin smiled. “If you ever get to Texas look me up. My folks live in San Antonio.”

“I just realized. You’ve never told me your first name.”

“Marion.”

“Marion Maklin?” Nate grinned.

“It’s worse than that. Marion Maurice Maklin.” The Texan sighed. “My pa was half drunk when he named me.” He touched his black hat. “Take care, mountain man.”

The freighters and their wagons melted into the night.

Nate watched until they were out of sight. He was suddenly lonely. Reining into the forest, he rode until he came to a clearing. He climbed down, stripped the bay, and spread out his blankets. He lay on his back with a pistol in each hand and tried to sleep, but he kept hearing the screams and shrieks. An hour or so before sunrise he finally dozed off.

The chirping of finches woke him. Nate’s stomach growled, but he ignored it and saddled the bay. He headed south, knowing it could happen at any time, the Hawken always in his hands. Noon came and went. By the middle of the afternoon he was having doubts until sparrows took noisy flight behind him.

Nate rode on. He was deep in the mountains he loved, the mountains he knew as well as he did the back of his own hand. The mountains were part of him and he a part of them. He was as much at home here as a city dweller on a city street. Here, he had the edge over the warriors out to count coup on him.

A ground squirrel scampered from his path, its bushy tail erect. A horned lark and its mate stared at him from a branch, the yellow of the male’s throat as bright as a sunflower. A little farther on a hare went jumping in flight. In the winter it would be white, but now it was brown and blended into the brush.

Nate climbed until he was among white-bark pines. The nuts were a favorite with bears, both grizzlies and blacks. Squirrels cached them in cold weather. The trees grew to a height of sixty feet and were spaced well apart, exactly as Nate wanted. He ascended until he came to a boulder that jutted out of the earth like the jagged prow of