Nate halted. The last person he wanted to talk to was Lexington. “Make it quick. I’m lighting a shuck.”
“Are you indeed? That’s a pity. I had a favor to ask.” Lexington wagged the lantern he was holding toward the row of bodies. “We need to bury the departed as soon as practical.”
“What’s stopping you?”
Lexington leaned so close their shoulders brushed. “Have you ever heard the expression out of sight, out of mind? I prefer to bury them down the valley a ways. Since you were down there just the other day with Brother Maklin, I thought perhaps you would escort some of my people to a suitable spot.”
Nate was puzzled. “You and the others must know this valley better than I do.”
“To the contrary. We have been so busy organizing and building that there has been precious little time for exploring. I was to the end of the valley once, but that was months ago and I don’t remember a blessed detail.” Lexington lightly took hold of Nate’s sleeve. “Please. It would only take an hour or two of your time and we would be ever so grateful.”
Nate hesitated.
“I would ask Brother Maklin, but you’ve seen how he is when he’s around me. I very much doubt he would help.”
Nate heard himself say, “All right. Throw the bodies over horses and tie them so they won’t fall off.”
Lexington reacted as if he had been prodded with a sharp stick. “You can’t be serious. That’s no way to treat the departed. We’ll load them in wagons. It won’t take long, I assure you.”
While the freighters were hitching their oxen, the Shakers hitched their mules. One by one the bodies were reverently carried to Conestogas and carefully placed inside. Nate figured one or two wagons was enough, but Lexington insisted on only putting three bodies in each. “After all, we don’t want to cram them in like stacks of firewood, now, do we?” In all, it took five wagons. Lanterns were hung from each to help light the way.
Nate no sooner took the lead and bellowed for the drivers to head out than a young Shaker with curly corn-hued hair and white teeth came up alongside him, riding a sorrel.
“I’m to go with you, Brother King. I’m Brother Calvin. I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Nate grunted.
“Brother Lexington wants me to sing over the bodies,” Brother Calvin explained.
“Won’t reading from the Bible do?” Nate wanted to get it done and get out of there.
“Oh, we’ll do both. We must honor our brothers and sisters by showing the respect they deserve. After Brother Benedict reads, I’m to raise my voice to heaven, as Brother Lexington put it. I have a fine singing voice if I do say so myself. I should think four or five songs would be appropriate. Have you any suggestions?”
“It’s not smart to stay there too long.”
“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.