| Show A RAM IN THE THICKET Dana Ekins 1044 Austin Avenue Salt Lake City UT 84106 Non-Professional Division First Place Short Story Lay not thine hand thou anything unto thou fearest God held thine only son upon the lad neither do him for nowknow that seeing thou has mot withfrom me Genesis 22 12 Walker Hannah whispered the name anxiously to herself as she walked slowly from the cradle of the napping baby to the door of the cabin She pulled it ajar and peered apprehensively into midday The view wasmixture of winter and spring--internittent splotches of mud and snow marred the landscape Smoke from Indian canpfires drew her eyes westward toward their crescent-shaped village where dozens of wickiups of poles ard deerhide pointed ironically heavenward One could hardly describe these Ute barbarians as anything but the devil incarnate she thought to herself They call him Chief Walker her husband had explained and they say he once tried to kill his old withered mother by stabbing her in the head withknife Hannah quickly shut the door turned and placed her quivering body against the cabinentrance Wnere is my faith Hannah whispered silently relaxing and dropping her hands to her side disgusted with her feelings of helplessness since her arrival in the new settlement It was the first of March in the year 1850 three short nmonths since the caravan of Formons had reached the Sanpitch Valley with instructions from Brigham to feed the Indians rather than fight them Hannah Blaixley Morley the only living plural wife of Issac Morley leader of the colony feared she would never be comfortatle in the cottage of mud and logs surrounded on three sides by seven hundred Ute savages It was their leader Chief Walker his tall bronze body adorned with ebony lock who most unnerved Hannah Or perhaps it was those constant tales of scalps and alien squaws taken prisoner that nade Hannah shndder more frequently than she dared admit ies from the baby interrupted Hannanthoughts as if the could read her troubled mind infant She walked |
