Gone to Glory Page 13

  “Not in Utah.” She widened her smile and beckoned him inside. As he passed close to her, the smell of lemon soap came from the shapeless shirt that hung loosely over faded jeans.

  The inside of the house surprised him. Usually the Gothic Revival style squeezed its bedrooms up under the roof where the attic belonged. By so doing, the downstairs ceiling would be too low for a man Traveler’s height. But in Kate’s house, the upstairs had been torn out, with only the cross-beams left behind. They cleared the top of Traveler’s head by an inch, while she had at least a foot to spare. She had added new obstacles, however, a maze of potted plants hanging from the beams by heavy ropes.

  The reconstruction had reduced the floor plan to one large room, with a living room/bedroom area on one side and kitchen space on the other. All the surfaces in the house, except the oak plank flooring, had been painted a cheerful white.

  She steered him to rattan chairs grouped around a small glass-topped table in the kitchen area. Once they were seated she said, “I know about Pepper’s trouble in Salt Lake. A friend of ours, Hap Kilgore, called to let me know. If he hadn’t, I’d still be waiting dinner for Pepper. He also said I could trust you.”

  Despite her wrinkles, Traveler decided she had to be at least fifteen years younger than Pepper Dalton.

  “Poor Pepper,” she said. “Poor Prissy, too. She didn’t have much of a life these last few years, living out in the mountains the way she did. I asked her about it once, why she put up with it. Do you know what she said? That I was the one who wasn’t living. That God was with her, not me. What do you think about that, Mr. Traveler?”

  “I’m not a theologian.”

  She stared intently at him before continuing. “People said Prissy and I looked like sisters. I never could see the resemblance, though.” She sighed. “Living like a pioneer the way she did, with no modern conveniences, ages a woman fast.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might have a reason to want her dead?”

  “Other than Pepper, you mean?”

  “Preferably.”

  “Pepper’s the one you ought to talk to about that. I tried to get through to him myself, but the police weren’t very helpful.”

  “Your fiancé has a lawyer. A man named Howe. He ought to be able to put you in touch.”

  “I’ve already spoken with him. Hap gave me the name, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. Is he a good lawyer?”

  “Sam Howe handles church business. That makes him one of the most important people in Salt Lake.”

  “I’d better do what he suggests, then.”

  ‘“And what is that?”

  “Don’t misunderstand my motives, Mr. Traveler. I love Pepper and would do anything to help him. But I also know he isn’t a killer. In any case, Mr. Howe says it would be a good idea if we got married as soon as possible.”

  “To keep you from testifying?”

  “Nothing was said about that. But that would be all right with me. Unfortunately, I don’t know anything worth testifying about. Besides, in a way we’re already married.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” he said with more force than he’d intended.

  “It’s hard to explain. You have to know about a man named Zeke Eldredge to understand what’s going on out in those mountains I was talking about.”

  “I know him, by reputation at least.”

  Her eyes narrowed, causing the wrinkled flesh around them to quiver slightly. “He once pronounced us man and wife, for what that’s worth.”

  “Are you a member of his church?”

  “I’m not the kind of woman to share my man. Why Prissy put up with living in a harem, I don’t know.”

  “Then why seek out Zeke Eldredge?”

  “I don’t see what this has to do with helping Pepper.”

  “I’m after information, anything that might give me a way to help your fiancé.” And Hap, he added to himself. “I need to understand the people involved.”

  “I see.” Kate rose from her rattan chair and ran a finger along a bookshelf that protruded from the stone wall next to the table. After progressing a foot or so she checked her fingertip for dust. “Pepper and his sister own an old coal mine in the Pavant Mountains. And the town that goes with it. A place called Glory. But I’m sure you know this already.”

  Rather than stop the flow of words, Traveler smiled encouragement to continue.

  She did. “For a long time nobody thought Glory was worth anything. Even the Indians wouldn’t go near it. They have legends about it, that it’s the home of evil spirits. I guess because of the coal fires underground.”

  She wrinkled her nose as if she could smell the smoke. “I’m not superstitious, Mr. Traveler. I’m a schoolteacher, an educated woman, but that place gives me the creeps.” Traveler urged her on with a nod.

  “You’d have to see it yourself to understand. Anyway, when Prissy took up with Zeke Eldredge, she moved Zeke and his followers into Glory. Pepper didn’t raise much of a fuss at the time. But then there was no reason to, since you couldn’t give the land away. Of course, Pepper wasn’t happy about his only sister taking up with a polygamist. But what could he do? Besides which, a lot of Mormons around here, Mormons in good standing, have more wives than the law allows.”

  She paused to straighten a pair of scrapbooks that were sandwiched between bookend replicas of the Mormon temple in Salt Lake. “Where was I? Oh, yes. When the offer for the land came, Pepper drove to Glory to try to talk sense into his sister. He took me with him, with instructions to be nice, even to Zeke Eldredge. So when the Shepherd—that’s what he calls himself—said he wanted to save our souls by marrying us into his, the one true, church, we went along.”

  She tilted her head in Traveler’s direction. “There are some who would call what we did sacrilege. Are you among them, Mr. Traveler?”

  When he failed to respond she closed her eyes momentarily. Her wrinkles smoothed away until her eyes opened and she started speaking again. “You don’t have to tell me. I’ve often been sorry for going along with a man like Eldredge. Besides, you should have seen the gleam in Pepper’s eye when Zeke said he was now eligible to take more wives. That it was his duty, in fact. That Joseph Smith had laid down the law in the beginning and there was no getting around it.”

  She made a scissors motion with her fingers. “I told him what I’d cut off if he tried anything like that.

  Her face flushed with color. She touched a hand to her cheek. “You’d think a woman my age wouldn’t blush.”

  She withdrew one of the scrapbooks. “It’s Pepper’s. Would you like to see it?”

  “Very much.”

  She brought the book to the table and placed it before Traveler. As he turned the pages, newspaper clippings brought Pepper Dalton to life, the Pepper Dalton Traveler remembered from his own boyhood. A tall, lean shortstop, all elbows and knees, who looked damned awkward in photos, but who could field and throw like a big leaguer. According to the clippings, he’d come to the Bees straight out of high school. Fillmore High. Where Traveler had played King of the Mountain less than an hour ago.

  “He was my favorite player when I was a boy,”

  Traveler said. “I went to every game I could when he played for the Bees.”

  “Pepper gets the same look you do when he talks about those days. Past glories and all that. Did you play baseball, Mr. Traveler?”

  “Some.”

  She shuddered suddenly and rubbed her arms as if trying to erase the gooseflesh that had sprouted there. Traveler fought back the urge to help her.

  “I told Pepper then and I’ll tell you now. I don’t believe in living in the past. Using that money to buy a baseball team won’t make any of you young again. Not you, not Hap Kilgore, not Pepper either.”

  “Are you against the sale of Glory?”

  “There’s a lot of mone
y to be made. All things being equal, I don’t mind being rich. But that’s not why I’m marrying Pepper.”

  “Will there be anything left over after he buys the Salt Lake Saints?”

  “That’s Pepper’s dream. A woman should know better than to stand in the way of a man’s dream.”

  “And your dream?”

  She smiled. “To get married, in jail if I have to.”

  Traveler pretended to study the scrapbook. “I understand that Zeke Eldredge accompanied Priscilla to Salt Lake.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Hap Kilgore said he saw you there, too. In the hotel with Pepper.”

  “People in this town think Pepper and I live together, Mr. Traveler. But they’re wrong. We go to bed together, yes. But he never stays the night. And he won’t until we’re man and wife. That’s my rule.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “I was there, yes, on a visit. But I did not spend the night with him in a hotel. The fact is, I never set foot in his room.”

  “What about his sister’s room?”

  “I wasn’t there either.”

  “There are witnesses who say otherwise. That a woman was there.”

  “I’m one of them. Her room was right next to Pepper’s. I was in the hall when I saw a woman go in.”

  “Did you recognize her?”

  She shrugged. “She was the maid, I think. She was wearing a white uniform. I didn’t pay much attention.”

  “Could you identify her?”

  “Probably.”

  Traveler thought that over for a moment. Something seemed out of place. Was it her or him? Was she lying or was he asking the wrong questions?

  He generalized. “Can you think of anything at all that might help me?”

  Her eyes closed. Beneath her eyelids Traveler saw rapid movement, as if she were searching for something only she could see. Finally, she nodded her head. Her eyes reopened.

  “I can’t help blaming everything on Zeke Eldredge,” she said. “It wouldn’t be the first time that man tried to foist one of his women on Pepper. Anything to get a hold on my man, to force him to deed the land over to that so-called church of his. Imagine. Calling themselves the Flock of Zion. Sheep to be shorn, that’s what I call them.”

  She went back to rubbing her arms. “Men can be so foolish when it comes to women. Zeke offered to recruit as many wives as Pepper could handle. Those were his words. Handle! Zeke didn’t think I could hear what he was saying, but I did. The old fool.”

  She wet her lips. “I’m more than enough woman for a man Pepper’s age.”

  Traveler went back to the scrapbook, where Pepper was watching him from a photo.

  “What about you, Mr. Traveler? How many wives do you think a man can handle? A man like yourself for instance?”

  “My father always said my eyes were bigger than my stomach.”

  For a moment he thought she was going to ask him to leave. Then suddenly she began to laugh. When she caught her breath she said, “Would you like a piece of homemade pie, Mr. Traveler? What is your first name, by the way.”

  “Moroni.”

  “My God, Hap Kilgore has sent me an angel.”

  “I’m named after my father.”

  “Who art in heaven,” she added, and started laughing again.

  “A man shouldn’t go to Glory on an empty stomach.”

  She sobered quickly. “Don’t joke about something like that.”

  “I have to go there. It’s my job.”

  “We all end up in glory soon enough, without going out of our way to find it.”

  “Pie would be fine,” he said.

  “A typical man, changing the subject to suit himself.”

  He started to protest, but she turned her back on him to fetch the pastry. Five minutes later they were eating apple pie with butter melted under the crust. Only then did she resume their talk. “You can’t drive to Glory at night. I know the road and I wouldn’t try it.”

  “I’m planning to leave first thing in the morning.”

  “Do you have someplace to stay?”

  For an instant he thought, hoped, that she was inviting him to stay with her.

  “I’ll call the Paradise Motel and get you a room,” she said.

  “That’s quite a choice, Paradise or Glory.”

  She ignored the comment and made the reservation. “Paradise is on Main Street,” she said as soon as she hung up the phone. “Like everything else in this town.”

  “I don’t think it’s as far away as that.”

  Her cheeks flushed. “You be careful when you talk to Zeke Eldredge. He’s crazy.”

  “How crazy?”

  “Just don’t look at his women, that’s all. And don’t take a woman out there with you.”

  “I was hoping you’d be my guide.”

  Her head shook, almost a twitch. “I’ll give you directions, but you won’t catch me up there again. Not ever.” She shuddered. “Right after marrying us, Zeke tried to make a trade with Pepper. For me. Two of his wives and a draft choice to be named later was the way he put it, like a baseball trade. Pepper laughed like hell at that. But I was scared right up to the moment we left. I had the feeling that if Pepper had accepted the deal, I would have been a prisoner in that hellhole for the rest of my life.”

  24

  Traveler checked out of the motel after breakfast and was on the road by nine. He drove north on Interstate 15 to the town of Scipio. There, he topped off the gas tank and checked the water himself before turning southeast on Highway 50 toward the Pavant Mountains.

  The sky was clear, the temperature heading into the seventies if the radio was to be believed. But the radio didn’t say anything about the thunderheads piling up over the mountains.

  About the time he ran out of blue sky, he found the unpaved road that Kate had told him about. He turned off the highway, leaving farming country behind, and began winding his way up onto the Pavant Plateau. The thunderheads looked closer now and more menacing. According to Kate, Glory itself stood at an altitude of 9,000 feet.

  He drove cautiously, raising only a small rooster tail of dust. As he gained altitude the clouds darkened. Yet even in such muted light the rocky landscape dazzled him. Out-croppings of red, yellow, and white sandstone reminded him of the Grand Canyon.

  By the time the grade changed from steep to moderate, a roadside marker said the altitude was 8,500 feet. Rain looked imminent. Or maybe snow, judging by the way the temperature had been dropping.

  When he was twenty miles from the highway on the odometer, Traveler slowed to a crawl. Kate had warned him that the cutoff to Glory was easy to miss. He wouldn’t have found it at all if it hadn’t been for the old wall she’d mentioned.

  When he got out to take a look, the air smelled of ozone and pine. Because of the altitude, jogging the twenty yards to the wall left him panting. He bent over at the waist to catch his breath and read the inscription on the pioneer monument’s plaque:

  This wall was erected in 1888 by Mrs. Horace (Aunt Libby) Rockwell to shelter the graves of her beloved dogs, Jenny Lind, Josephine & Bonaparte, and Bishop & Toby Tyler, companions in her lonely, childless vigil here from 1866 to 1890.

  Traveler straightened up and looked around. He saw no sign of a house, nowhere an old woman could have lived. The rutted track that led to Glory curved around a stand of altitude-stunted trees and disappeared from sight. He squinted back the way he’d come. No sign of life that way either. He hadn’t seen another car since leaving Highway 50. That was more than an hour ago.

  Rain began to fall. By the time he reached his car, the rocky landscape glistened as if it had been polished. For a moment he sat there, staring through the windshield and hesitating. If it kept on raining, the road leading to Glory would turn to mud. Or wor
se if the rain turned to snow. Even a four-wheel-drive like his Jeep might have trouble getting out of there.

  He stepped out of the car again and walked along the ruts to the point where they disappeared behind the trees. From that vantage place the track ran downhill. It also smoothed out after a hundred yards or so, looking compact enough to have been used by heavy vehicles recently.

  “What the hell,” he said. No sense turning back now that he was already cold and wet. He trudged back to the Jeep.

  Ten minutes later he topped a rise. Below him, the landscape changed abruptly. All sign of color ended, replaced by a valley of black soil and rock. The Glory Mine—it could be nothing else—was an isolated reef of coal, an anomaly of nature.

  A shroud of dingy fog hovered over the landscape, trapped between earth and sky by the storm clouds. He sensed the town of Glory rather than saw it. It was no more than a flickering smudge of light at the center of the reef. Around it, smoke vented from a maze of underground fissures.

  His foot came off the accelerator without conscious thought on his part. The Jeep continued to roll forward, but without gaining momentum because of the wet track.

  The flickering beacon disappeared abruptly. His foot, still acting on its own, tapped the brake. He overrode his instinct and drove on by force of will.

  As soon as he entered the smoky fog his eyes began to water. The air tasted bitter. The rain on the windshield darkened. He switched the wipers to maximum and leaned forward, straining to keep sight of the narrow trail.

  Suddenly flame erupted from a nearby fissure. Then another vented its fire along the same fault line. And another. Like battlefield flares, they lighted the landscape of Glory. He saw weathered buildings, as dilapidated and dreary as purgatory. Charred piles of rubble where houses and barns had collapsed into fire-hollowed chasms. A pioneer cemetery, its crosses and monuments scattered by the angry earth.

  The light failed. The road ran out. Traveler stopped the Jeep and exited warily, using his flashlight to check the immediate area for signs of instability. Satisfied that the vehicle was as safe there as anywhere in Glory, he headed for the nearest building. The faded lettering on its clapboard front said: glory mine 1881.