| Description |
a fair one, but these sneakin' Indians fooled him into this one. They knew his horses couldn't run in harness! "Cap said he'd felt he was being watched and he'd felt uneasy all the way to Manti. He had been right. These tran-sients who passed through on their way to the coast for the winter, were renegades, or those who had been kicked out of other tribes because of their lazy ways. They spotted Cap's fat and fast team soon after he left Ephraim, and they knew how much money they would bring or how many ponies they could get in a trade." Just then one of the neighbor men burst through the door, "Old Sal is dead. She never got up from where she first dropped. We did everything we could for her, but we couldn't even get her harness off to make her more comfortable!" At this news, Lula crouched lower, whispering, "Don't leave me, Cap, please don't leave me." She coaxed and kept trying to make him hear her. She was glad he had not heard what they said about old Sal. Aunt Lucy went on with her story. "There wasn't room for both Cap and me on the floor of the buggy." She looked down at her ample figure as she said this. "So Cap crawled out on the buggy tongue between Sal and Sol, to give me room to get way down on the floor. He gave his old girls the reins and said, "Take me home old girls, take me home. We've got to save that little girl whose givin' birth for the first time, we've got to!"' Cap sounded different to Aunt Lucy. Lucy was crying now, "He's comin' round! He's comin' round!" she exclaimed. She said this excitedly, but in great relief too, but Cap drifted back into blessed unconsciousness again. Sal and Sol had objected to not having the bits taken from their mouths, to not even being given an oat bag nor a little rubdown or rest after such a chase! Father Morley, Cap's dear friend for many years in pre-Nauvoo days and head of the first company of settlers to Manti, begged Cap to sit a spell and eat and let his sweating, tired horses rest. "They need to get their wind, Cap," but all -62- |
