Winter Rain

The boys he had sold into slavery to the comancheros. Bound for Chihuahua, likely they were already somewhere in northern Sonora, Mexico, where they would be worked hard to repay the handsome price paid Usher for them. And the girl, ready any day for womanhood, was herself traveling with another company of Danites, commanded by his chief lieutenant, Major Lemuel Boothog Wiser. Tidy now, things were. Which left only the woman for Usher to concern himself over. He had a passion for her—that blond hair and those pale eyes a blue he had never before seen. Those eyes seemed to grow all the more pale with each passing day, as if the light behind them were flickering out, ever so slowly—as one would roll a lamp wick down until the lamp’s glow grew ever so faint. And finally snuffed itself out.

Still, he did not underestimate the woman. Jubilee allowed nothing sharp to be brought around her. Nothing that could be used as a weapon. Not that he feared she would use it on him. Far from it. He was, instead, afraid the woman would use most anything to kill herself. Clumsily she had tried it twice before and had to be constantly watched when he was not with her.

“Thank you, George,” Jubilee said to the Negro who poured him his coffee. Around them the camp buzzed to life with men loading wagons, finishing breakfast, saddling horses.

Sweeping some of the long black curls from his shoulder, Usher sipped at the thick, steamy brew and gazed off through the trees to the south. It would not be that many more days before they would march into the streets of Deseret—a homecoming after lo, these many, many years of self-enforced exile in the border states. Doing God’s bidding.

So it was with bitterness that Jubilee again recalled how a dozen of Jim Bridger’s old fur-trapping companions had held off Brigham’s well-armed band of Danites back in fifty-three, until a blizzard had settled on the land. In their hasty retreat back to Salt Lake City, Usher had vowed he would never allow himself to be that cold again, nor allow his pride to suffer such a stinging wound as he had suffered at the hands of those smelly old trappers.

“Damn them,” he now said quietly over the lip of his white china cup. “Damn their heathen souls to hell.”

He heard the rustle of blankets and cloth inside the tent. A moment later Jubilee recognized the sound of the woman at her chamber pot. At least she was taking care of herself again. For a time there after Major Wiser had been ordered to take the girl off with his company, the woman simply gave up all moving on her own and was constantly wetting the bedding. Making for a smelly mess Negro George had to tend to every day.

But for the past few weeks now, the woman seemed to be pulling herself back together. There was an admirable strength to be found in her, this beautiful woman wasting her life away on a farm, married to a man who sweated over the soil, grunted over the animals, dirt and worse forever caked beneath his fingernails.

Strange that Jubilee always thought of the farmer’s woman in that impersonal sense, even after these past four years. She had a name. Wiser had discovered it in a family Bible found in the cabin they ransacked at the homestead there in Missouri. Her folks had come from Germany, settling in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Her name was Gritta Moser. Married to a man named Jonah Hook. Mother of three live births. All three children gone now the way of these blasted prairie winds.

He had cleaved the wheat from the chaff, much to his own liking. He smiled for it again.

“Rider coming in, Colonel!” announced one of the camp guards as the sentry loped up to Usher’s awning. He flung an arm east.

“He alone?”

The picket nodded. “Appears to be.”

“Bring him on in when he arrives.”

The horseman proved to be one of Lemuel Wiser’s men—sinking wearily from his mount, winded and wind-burned, gaunt from the miles and weeks.

“You’ve been on the trail for some time, my good man,” Usher cheered as he rose, dusting both hands off on his flowered silk weskit, tugging on the points of the embroidered vest. “What news do you have from the major? I trust he’s not lollygagging far behind you?”

The man swallowed, his tongue flicking at his cracked, bleeding lips, greedily accepting a canteen of water from one of the pickets, with a half-done nod of appreciation. “Boot—… Major Wiser’s dead, Colonel.”

Jubilee sensed something seize him cold and low. “You joke with me, man—I’ll feed your heart to my hound!” Usher growled, instantly alarmed by the news. He took a moment to turn away from the rider to let this unfortunate disclosure wash over him.

Then Usher wheeled on the courier suddenly. “How did this happen? A card game? Perhaps a jealous husband? Such a dandy that Wiser thought himself to be.”