On The Ragged Edge - The Life and Times of Dudley Leavitt

The closing years

13 The Closing Years B >Y THIS TIME Dudley was getting to be an old man. His hair had turned gray years before; some of his younger children say that they cannot remember when their father's hair was not snowy white. To the end of his days it was unusually thick. He had powerful arms and shoulders, but his legs became bowed, as though they had bent under the weight of his great trunk. He had the habit of sitting to work. He would take a home­made chair wherever he went, carrying it in one hand and a cane in the other. He sat to clean ditch, working right along with young men, reaching far out to the end of his shovel handle before he moved his chair. He sat to chop wood, cutting piles of green cottonwood poles into stove lengths and splitting them. His one outstanding physical characteristic was his teeth, for they were perfect until his death. There is a story that he could and did bite a ten-penny nail in half. He did take pride in cracking hard-shelled almonds with his teeth. There have been many conjectures as to why they were so well preserved. Some of his children say it was the pine gum he chewed that gave them exercise and kept his mouth free of acids. Others claim that it was his diet, the whole grains and molasses and vege­tables, and the fact that he loved to eat the bones of ani­mals as well as the flesh. Whenever they cooked a chick­en he always crunched the softer bones and the joints of the larger ones, sucking out the juices. He never used 152 The Closing Years a tooth brush, but he always picked his teeth after every meal and polished them off with a stick. His home was always open to the traveler, whether stranger or friend. Of his hospitality his daughter Nora says. We always fed everyone who came along. A great many tramps were moving through the country, and it used to make us out of patience sometimes because the people at Littlefield would send them on to us to feed. "The Leavitt family always takes in everybody," they would tell them. I remember that one morning we had four, one right after another and when the fifth came, mother told him she hadn't anything to give him. He turned and started away, but her conscience got the best of her and she called him back. We fixed a meal, and he certainly was hungry. Of all the men we fed, he seemed to appreciate it most. He couldn't get through thanking us. But it was not only tramps, it was the visiting au­thorities; it was cowboys on the drive; it was freighters. We could never keep light bread enough on hand. I re­member one night after we had been in bed and asleep we had to get up and get a meal for hungry cowboys, baking big pans of hot biscuits. Aunt Mary always kept the missionaries. She was an excellent cook and a good manager. At one time when they came, she had no white pillow slips clean. She had colored ones that she used on her beds, but she thought they were not good enough. So she took two white shirts and put them on the pillows, folding them neatly and buttoning them on the under side. Then she worried all night for fear her guests would turn their pillows over or shift them around. But it was the best she could do. There are many stories of how the family took in visitors. At one time when a full load came from St. George and Salt Lake, including Eliza R. Snow and Zina D. Young, the women gave their own bed to their guests while they fixed one for themselves in the cotton bin on top of the unginned cotton. The next morning the oldest son at home, Dudley Junior, presided and led in the fam- On the Ragged Edge 153 ily prayer in the absence of his father. The visitors were much impressed with the home setup. Ed Syphus told how he and his brother were taking a load of rock salt to St. George. They had to cross the Virgin River some twenty-two times and had some trou­ble with their outfits. When they arrived at the Leavitt ranch, they were out of provisions both for themselves and their teams. Dudley walked out to meet them when they stopped. "Unhitch and put up your teams," he said, and they knew that meant that their horses would be well cared for. Then looking at the boys closely, he said, "You're hungry, too, aren't you? Come right in and I'll have the women fix you something." "That was the best thing I had heard for a long time," Brother Syphus said as he told it. "We were hungry, but we were just big, bashful boys and wouldn't have dared to ask for anything. One of his wives baked a pan of biscuits, and we had hot bread and butter and molasses and milk. I think I never tasted a better meal. And when we left, we had another pan of biscuits to take along with us. Soon after we were on the road, we killed a rabbit with a rock, so we fared very well until we delivered our load." When the family left Mesquite, Mary had protested against having to start all over again. "I have done nothing but pioneer new places all my life," she said. "We just get a comfortable place established and have to move. I'm through pioneering. This is the last move I will make." She lived at Tunnel Point and later with Mariah in the big rock house at Leavittville. Then in 1893, her Frank's wife, Malinda, died, leaving him with two small boys, so she went to live with him and take care of the children. She spent the last years of her life in Frank's home. Mariah was a midwife who served throughout all the southern country. Sometimes she went out as far as Clover Valley, traveling in a wagon and staying until the mother could be up and around again. In her early married life she had been "called" to this work by 154 The Closing Years Sisters Eliza R. Snow and Zina D. Young, who blessed her and set her apart to do it. They suggested that her fee for the delivery of a child be three dollars, a price which she kept all her life. Even after she became quite an elderly lady, people sent for her because the women had such confidence in her. She said once that she always prayed silently as she worked, and she always felt that God heard and helped her. Whenever the people saw a team tearing through the streets with Aunt Mariah holding on to the spring seat, they knew that some woman was in labor. Dudley had taken all his wives but Janet to the En­dowment House or to the Temple at Salt Lake City and had them sealed to him. After the St. George Temple was completed, he had this ordinance performed, taking Janet and nine children there on June 2,1882. During their later years, both Janet and Martha lived with their children, Janet with her daughter, Jane Bar­num, and Martha with hers, Lydia Hughes. For many years Thirza and Mariah lived together in the rock house at Leavittville. Each had a large rock liv­ing room with a kitchen behind and an upstairs bedroom. Of their arrangements at this time, Nora says: Theresa and I were little girls about the same age. We went to school at Littlefield, three miles away, and as we had to walk, we always got up early and ate breakfast by lamplight. When father was not there, we each slept with our own mother, but when father was home we both slept with my mother one night and hers the next. Father changed regularly and we slept with the wife he didn't sleep with. We were very friendly. I don't have a sister who is as dear to me as Theresa, because we were together so much. This same thing seems to be true throughout the fam­ily. The children who were the same age and who grew up together were more attached to each other than were those of the same mother who were widely apart in age. Everyone with whom I have talked says the same thing; their best friends were their brothers and sisters by the On the Ragged Edge 155 other wives. Their father never let them be referred to as half-brothers. Since they were all his children, they were all brothers and sisters. Late in his life Dudley received one thousand dollars from the government for his services among the Indians. It came unsought and unexpected. His first thought was to put it where it would do the most good. His wants were few and simple; his children were all married and established. All his life he had spent in helping to build up "The Church and Kingdom of God," and this seemed an opportunity to do more for it. He went with the mon­ey to his bishop and asked where he thought it would do the most good. First he paid an honest tithing from it, one hundred dollars. Then he donated seventy-five dol­lars to the temple and sent some to help the missionaries who were out before he would use any for himself or his wives. This is typical of the way in which he always put the interest of the church before his own private interest. By 1905 it was thought by many of the children that their father and his two wives were getting too old to stay on the ranch at Leavittville, since it was so far from any neighbors, and nearly all their children were mar­ried. Accordingly they divided the cattle and sold the ranch. Mariah went to live with her son Ira at Mesquite, and Dudley and Thirza moved back to a rock house in Bunkerville, near their children. This was his home until his death. As the family grew older and married, they still turned to their father for counsel. Especially did they depend on him in times of sickness. Many of them tell incidents of their father coming to them when they were in trouble, of how through his administration and blessing one or another of their babies had been healed. They seemed to feel that he had a sort of sixth sense by which he dis­cerned things. Clarence tells how, when he was younger, the boys tried to deceive him by killing a calf while they were on the drive and then telling him that it got its leg broken and they had to kill it. He listened to then-story and then said, "The next time you want to kill a 156 The Closing Years calf, you drive it home and kill it. It will be easier to take care of the meat. And you needn't bother to break its leg, either." Of her father's ability to almost read minds, Lena said: One time I planned to leave my husband. We were living in polygamy and I got discouraged, and maybe a little jealous. With two families, it seemed like we could never get ahead. So I decided to leave the three older children with their father and Mary Ellen and take the baby, Edward Washington, to St. George and leave him with my mother, while I went on to Salt Lake to take a nursing course. I thought that if I got that nursing course I could make my own way better alone. I did not say a word about what was in my mind to a soul, but I had thought about it and planned on it for quite a while. So when father came down, I asked if I could go to St. George with him to visit my mother. I got ready and left, never letting on that I was not plan­ning to come right back. Father didn't say anything until the second day out. Then as we were riding along he put his arm around my shoulders and said, "Lena, you are feeling bad and dis­couraged, but I promise you that if you will stand by Orange and stay with him, the Lord will bless you and you will be better off than if you do what you have on your mind." At first I denied it. "I don't know what you mean. I don't have anything in my mind," I said. "What makes you think I have?" "You plan to leave your husband and take up nursing to support yourself," he said. "But don't do it. You will be happier if you stay with your husband." He talked to me just like I was a little girl instead of a married woman with four children. He advised me to do my duty and said that was the path that would have the fewest regrets for me. I went on to St. George and stayed a few days with my mother. Then I came back home and even my husband didn't know a thing about it. Father never mentioned it again. On the Ragged Edge 157 Dan tells an incident which shows how literally and fully his father trusted the men who were over him. He said: You know father had a perfect set of teeth, the finest I ever saw in my life. I was always joking him about his teeth, until as he grew older, he used to ask me nearly every time I came in if I didn't want his teeth. One day I went to see him and found him sitting and looking into the fire. Instead of joking as he usual­ly did, he looked up and said, "Dan, you don't believe it, do you?" "Believe what?" I asked. "What the prophets have said." "Well, it all depends," I parried. "No," he said. "You don't believe what the ancient prophets said, and you don't believe what the modern prophets have said." "What do you mean?" "Well, you don't believe what President McAllister prophesied that there will be a paved highway running for miles down through this country." "Oh, father," I laughed. "Don't be silly. How could anyone believe that? What is there here to ever bring a paved street?" "Now let me tell you, son, the Lord never spoke any­thing through the mouths of his prophets, either an­cient or modern, that he will not bring to pass. I may not live to see it, but you will. There will be a paved highway as straight as an arrow running for miles down this flat. And don't you forget it." He was so earnest and so impressive that I didn't forget it, and I often think of it today when I drive over Highway 91, which runs right down the street he pointed. Then it was only a stretch of sand filled with mesquites and chaparral and cactus, with a wag­on road winding in and out among them. We made a joke out of the idea that there would ever be a paved road there. The move to Bunkerville was the beginning of a new lease on life for Dudley. This solid, two-room rock house 158 The Closing Years was in every way sufficient for their needs, while the vineyard in the back was a constant joy from pruning the vines and clearing the ditches to eating the grapes, pickling some of them, and hanging large bunches from the rafters in the cellar to be brought out at Christmas time or for special company. Dudley was expert at cutting up the cottonwood tim­ber that was always trimmed in winter. He not only cut it in stove lengths, but ricked it up neatly against the house. All this was done sitting on his chair. He also cleaned the ditches, expertly doing each stint in three strokes: one along each side and one on the bottom. But his greatest pride was digging the cistern for Henry. It was a large, round hole twenty feet across. With his chair in one hand and his cane in the other, he would hobble along down the block between their homes. Then he would shovel until noon, taking only one or two brief rests between. He would be served a hearty meal at noon and rest an hour on the bed in the out-of-door, screen bedroom. Up and at it again by two o'clock, he would shovel again for three hours, at the end of which time he always carried home his wages in hard money - two dollars in silver coin. If Henry was away with the mail, his wife had it ready. For a while, Dudley went down the ladder into the cistern, but as it grew deeper, he was persuaded to let younger men fill the bucket which the horse drew up with a pulley. Even after he had stopped digging himself, he would come down every afternoon to see how the work progres­sed, and when at last the water was running in, he sat by, saying that it was music to his ears. Because he could not walk any distance and it was so hard for him to get in and out of a wagon, some of his sons or grandsons made a set of steps to get him into the light wagon in which he traveled. By taking out the endgate they could put the steps at the back of the wagon, steady him as he went up them, and then let him sit in his chair close behind the spring seat. On the Ragged Edge 159 On one occasion they took him to visit his children from one end of town to the other, stopping briefly at each place, and inviting the folks to come out and talk with him. Thirza's oldest son, Wier, lived in the last house to the west, with Marian's daughter, Sadie, just across the street, and in the next block, Alonzo, and Dudley, Jr. a block away. On the other end of town at the far east lived his daughter Nora with her husband, Nephi Hunt. Counting them all, he had a total of twelve children and their families in Bunkerville, and he stop­ped briefly at every one. "Well, Father," Henry said, "You thought you came out on the short end when the United Order broke up in Bunkerville, but twelve of your children are raising fine families here. And across the river at Mesquite there are even more, if you count the married grandchildren. Fact is, they need to get out - they are getting out, go­ing to the Muddy Valley, Las Vegas, and ranches be­tween, then in the Delta-Hinckley area, and on into northern Utah. It is well that they leave." Dudley was regular at church, and at the Old Folks' Party he sat proudly with his wives on either side. Dudley's repeated moves had kept him always ahead of the modern improvements. When he saw the first binder, he was astonished. After all the grain he had cradled, to see it cut and bound so easily was like a mira­cle to him, especially the tying of the bundles. "The Millennium is not far off," he said. "When man can in­vent a machine that has fingers, there isn't much left to do." With the telephone it was the same. Totally unbeliev­ing when his sons tried to tell him about it, he refused for a long time to try to use it. At last they persuaded him to come to "Central's" office, the one telephone in town and had him talk to his wife in Mesquite, five miles away. When he recognized her voice his wonder knew no bounds. He never rode in an automobile; he knew nothing of the conveniences which have developed from the use of electricity. His reading was limited to the Scriptures. He 160 The Closing Years clung to the homely, elemental things of life. He repre­sented them. As he grew older he talked to his children more and more of the value of owning their own homes, keeping out of debt and having a store of food on hand sufficient for two seasons, against the time when "you can't buy a barrel of flour with a barrel of gold." He spoke often of the time when "war will be poured out upon all nations," and told them that they would live to know the truth of his words. "My mind is still active, but my feet drag," he told one of his sons. "If my feet would follow the dictates of my head, I could get over the ground like a mountain sheep." "These old, useless, crippled legs," he said one day. "How glad I will be to be rid of them. There are so many things I want to do, if I were not chained to this old worn-out body. I'll be glad to lay it down. Maybe then I can accomplish something again." During the summer he lagged a little. He spent more time indoors, musing over the past or just sitting in that semi-blank state which he called "studying." One evening he began to sing. That was not unusual, for he often sang Indian songs, hymns, and rollicking folk ballads. But this was different. It was "Come, Let Us Anew," but sung with a new feeling. When he came to the last verse: "I have fought my way through/I have finished the work Thou dids't give me to do," it was like the death chant of a warrior, an announcement of the end. With the next lines his voice rose in the assurance that his Father would approve of his life's work: "And that each from his Lord/Should receive the glad word/ 'Well and faithfully done/Enter into my joy and sit down on my throne.' " He knew that he was near the threshold, but he had no fear. All his life he had walked by faith; by faith he would take his last step. He had faced death many times from exposure, heat, starvation, and Indians. Now it came as a release, or, as he said, a promotion. On the Ragged Edge 161 The next morning he did not get up. During the day the word went out that father was not well, so most of his family called on him. For several days he still had visitors, and seemed to enjoy them, though he was fail­ing fast. He knew everything until he fell asleep on the evening of October 15, 1908, when it soon became evi­dent that he would not wake up. There was something dignified about his passing. No hysterical weeping, no shaking him and calling him back, no nurses punching needles into him or poking oxygen tubes up his nose. His family accepted the inevitable calmly, as he would have wished. He had lived a good life; he was ready to go. Why should they hold him? They gathered in the yard or wept quietly in an adjoining room, but where he lay, all was peace. A son sat by his bed, felt his pulse, touched his lips with water, or shifted him slightly. Death crept up so slowly that it was hard to tell when the end came. A tired old man had passed, and his going marked the end of an era. It was as if the curtain had fallen on another act in the great drama of the West. Without edu­cation, without culture in the common meaning of that word, without wealth, he still had left his imprint upon the whole of the section in which he lived. He had blazed the way for the conquering of the desert; he had helped to establish friendly relations with the Indians. Most of all he had left in the hearts of his many children a stan­dard of conduct which would include honesty, integrity, Christian fellowship toward their neighbors, and an unwavering trust in God. At the funeral the next day, his family gathered - his four surviving wives (Janet had died in June 1907), his children, his friends - to pay tribute to him. The crowd that gathered and the spirit of the occasion were evidence of the esteem in which he was held. He was buried in the cemetery at Bunkerville, Nevada. Of his surviving wives, women who had stood shoul­der to shoulder with him through the years of pioneer hardships, one, Martha, died the next year, in June 1909. The other three, Mary, Mariah, and Thirza lived on for 162 The Closing Years quite a number of years. Mary went first on January 31, 1922; Mariah, her sister, followed in six months, July 30, 1922; while Thirza lived until August 27,1927. A full biography could be written on the lives of each of these women, but from their early girlhood then-fortunes were so closely bound to Dudley's that it would seem enough to tell his story in full.