Cry of the Hawk

Boothog remembered now when Jubilee first began to lose his hair, early in life for a man. Before one of those first trips east with the Mormon handicrafts for sale in Missouri and other points east. For a time, Usher felt ridiculed for this early receding of hair, then eventually learned to admire his balding head himself. He took to growing what hair there was down past his shoulders—thick and black as sin. And only in recent years had he begun to wear a mustache that curled down into a neat Vandyke beard every bit as glossy black as the boots he had one of the men shine with lampblack and grease each night in camp.

Young Wiser had yearned to take his horse and carry his new rifle along with Usher’s military escort that 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 Saints are men enough to fight the Yankees invading from the North.”

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.