Read Online Timpanogos by D. J. Butler - Free Book Online

attract any more attention than they were already at risk of doing,
just by the size of their party and the presence of the two big, clanking
fighting machines.   Someone’s crop
was getting trampled, Sam thought.   At least it was in a good cause.   Or maybe it was okay because it all belonged to Brigham Young.   Wasn’t this a kingdom, after all?
    “You’ve got us wrong, Mr. President,” Sam said.   “Missouri doesn’t produce
straight-talking men, it produces skeptics.   And what I mean to say is, I can see how our rescue might
tempt you into thinking the hand of Providence was upon you, but I would
suggest that there are other explanations.”
    “You mean luck,” Young guessed.  
    Young and Sam rode at the head of the horse-mounted middle
of the procession, together with Ambassador Armstrong.   Immediately behind them came Orrin
Porter Rockwell, slouched over his horse like he was a naturally inborn part of
the animal, and then Captain Dan Jones, with the boy John Moses in front of him
on his saddle.   The midget Coltrane
banged along on a horse far too big for him, and behind him came Absalom
Fearnley-Standish, his sister Abigail and Brigham Young’s fetching vixen-agent,
Annie Web, mixing in more or less among the crewmen of the Liahona .
    “Luck,” Sam agreed.   “The diligence of my associate and the persistence of your own loyal
people, despite, I would like to point out, your apparent orders to them to
stand down.   Your own cogs saved
you by jumping out of place.   I
also wouldn’t discount the incompetence of our kidnappers, or fail to mention
our own manful efforts at overcoming our captors and escaping.   Porter Rockwell deserves some kind of
medal.”
    “You don’t believe that God acts in the affairs of man,”
Young asserted.   When he wasn’t
snapping his teeth in anger, he had a kind of dignity that Sam found attractive
and also a little unsettling.   Young rode easily and upright even with his chest wrapped in a bandage,
like he expected people to look at him and respect him.
    He made Sam want to knock him off his pole, just a
little.   Not hurt him, but maybe
get him a little dirty.
    “I find that the victors in any contest are generally
persuaded that God is on their side,” Sam answered.   “The trodden down and beaten upon are not often so
optimistic.”
    Young was silent for a moment.   Sam listened to the creaking of saddle leather and the soft
jingling of stirrups and felt the cool night air on his face.   Having spent much of the day in
darkness and suffocated by the smell of apples, he experienced this as freedom,
pure and undefiled.
    “The best friend I ever had in this world,” Young finally
said, speaking slowly, “was Joseph Smith, Jr.”
    “The King of Nauvoo.”
    “Brother Joseph was the President, Mr. Clemens.   Jesus Christ was the King.”
    “No offense intended.   I only meant to identify Smith by his common nickname, so you know that
I’m paying attention and know the man to whom you refer.”
    “If you have heard of him, then you know that he was
executed by an illegal firing squad in Carthage, Illinois.”
    “I have heard various views on the legality of the action,”
Sam acknowledged that he knew of Smith’s murder.   “No offense.   Your kidnapping is not the first piece of mischief to be perpetrated by
men calling themselves Danites .”
    “Nauvoo was a kingdom dredged from the mud of the
Mississippi River, Mr. Clemens.   No
one wanted it when we went there, except for the mosquitoes, and without the
aid of Heaven, the blood-suckers would surely have driven us out.”
    “I’ve seen Nauvoo,” Sam said.   “It’s a pretty town.”
    “We made it so.   And once they had murdered our Brother Joseph, our enemies came for our
land.   They killed us, they stole
all our worldly goods, and they drove us across the Mississippi River into the
howling Lamanite wilderness.”
    “I don’t know what a Lamanite is,” Sam noted.