Chapter One:
Ramaeumptom
The little boy ran out of the twilight, stomping clouds of
dust from the road.
“Scoot ‘em, Pa!” he yelled as he ran. “Scoot ‘em, Pa!”
He ran it seemed at random, weaving, bouncing from one side
of the street to the other, here turning a block, there returning, darting down
a side street, reappearing on the main, darting again, all the time calling
“Scoot ‘em, Pa!” he shouted into cellars, through open kitchen windows, through
the half-moon on the privies.
And where he shouted, where he had been, men slipped from
shadow to shadow, hastily donning hats, hastily shucking shirts on over their
nightgowns.
The sunset, a smear of light behind the hills, brighter at
the end of the long valley.
Other small boys – and even small girls, tucking their hair
into caps borrowed from older brothers, took up the call, running through town
until from above it appeared as if the crickets were invading, little bodies
darting all over town, shouting into every barn and rain barrel.
More footfalls, more explosions of dust. Quieter, heavier
footfalls. Men. Men with bundles, leaving homes, latching gates catching eyes,
speaking in nods and shrugs and feet.
Men with dark lanterns, some running, some walking swiftly;
walking, running from the town, up to the canyon, up to the canyon called
Skutumpah.
From the direction the first boy came, two men rode into the
town.
“You hear it, Thomas?” one asked the other.
At the other end of the tiny town, voices still shrilled in
the darkness: “Scoot ‘em, Pa!”
“Damn,” the other said. A badge on his lapel caught a bit of
moonlight.
“They run like rats,” the first said. “Ever chased them?”
“Yeah,” the other said. “Doesn’t do much good. They know the
land. Chased one up the canyon a few weeks ago. Was on horseback and lost him
in a stand of brush you couldn’t hide your mustache in.”
I leaned against the side of the Fort, in shadow provided by
the roof and rain barrels. The two men sat on their horses not thirty feet from
me. From where I stood I could see two, no, three, men of the order also hiding
in shadows. Priddy Meeks hunched on the porch of the Big House. President
Chamberlain watched the Big House – his house, home to his five wives – from
the Relief Society Hall. Why he had not fled I could not know – but he’d been
giving Harlow Wilcox a blessing and said even the devil himself couldn’t stop a
man performing God’s will. And Alma Porter lay in the shadows near his forge. From
the smell of it, his leather apron was beginning to char.
“Ready here, Amos.”
That was HK – H. Kimball Leithead, my best friend in the
priesthood and in devilry. We blessed the Sacrament on Sundays and the rest of
the week, well, did things. That tonight’s thing should involve white robes we
made from linen we stole from the laundry and a few pounds of gunpowder
probably should tell you something about the things we did.
I pulled the robe from my vest, put it on. The men on
horseback moved to the far end of the square, chasing shadows. From other odd
corners I could hear the flap of linen and a few immature bits of stifled
laughter.
Then I heard the snap of a crackling fuse. HK, of course. No
one else would handle the gunpowder. No one else had eyes like his that caught
the spark of the fuse.
I clambered to the top of a barrel of flour HK and I had
moved to the square. The marshal with the mustache must have heard my feet
scrape the barrel as I climbed it, because he turned to look at me about half a
second before HK set off the first pile of gunpowder. They turned their horses.
“Holy, holy God,” I shouted – it would have been better had
my voice not cracked, but the marshals didn’t seem to notice – “we believe that
thou art God, and we believe that thou art holy!”
The burst of gunpowder rattled the glass in the Big House
windows, and I could feel the heat of the fireball on my hands and arms, raised
to the sky.
“Holy God, we believe that thou hast elected us that we
shall be saved, whilst all around us are elected to be cast by the wrath down
to hell; for which holiness, O God, we thank thee!” I shouted.
More gunpowder. More balls of red and black fire. The
marshals’ horses were jumping in panic. They tried to rein them.
“Hell’s bells!” the marshal with the mustache shouted as his
horse whinnied and pranced, backing slowly out of the square. “Thomas, we –“
Marshal Thomas’ horse had already bolted. The marshal with
the mustache wheeled his horse around and they pounded out of the square.
The air was full of smoke, and there were smaller explosions
still going off.
“Amos,” HK said.
“Wait, HK, wait until we know they’re gone!”
“Amos!”
“Shut up, HK!”
Someone pushed me violently from behind. Rough arms grabbed
me by the armpits and dragged me across the square.
An explosion that would have woken Alma the Younger a day
early blew the three of us off our feet. Bits of charred wood rained from the
sky.
I turned to look.
The barrel I had been standing on was shattered in pieces,
most of them burning.
“Sorry, Amos,” HK said. “That last bit of gunpowder caught
the barrel on fire. Flour inside it blew up.”
“Fire! Fire!”
President Chamberlain and Priddy Meeks appeared in the
square with buckets. They doused some flames, calling “fire!” all the while,
and soon others came with buckets, forming a line from the well to the square,
dousing flames. A few of those with buckets, I noticed, had white robes stuffed
into the backs of their trousers.
I still had my white robe on when President Chamberlain
stomped up and ducked me with a bucket of water.
“Amos Cox,” he said, “That was a foolish thing to do. And
nigh on blasphemous! The Rameumptom speech! Amos, if those marshals knew the
rest of it, why, they’d think we’re more devils than they think already!”
I smiled despite his anger, despite the water dripping from
my hair.
“They’ll tale more wild tales, down in Kanab!” he shouted,
angered a bit by my smile. “‘Those wild
Mormons in Orderville, they’re the worst of the bunch! Polygamists and
devil-worshippers besides!’”
“Don’t they say that already?” I asked.
President Chamberlain sucked in a great breath of air and
his face grew even redder. Then he expelled his breath and a smile cracked the
corners of his round face. “I suppose they do,” he said. Then laughed, slapping
me on the back. “Yes, I suppose they do.”
