The Mormon Road

THE "MORMON" ROAD By Dr. Raymond Weeks [Note: The author is connected with the Columbia University, City of New York. In writing to Dr. James L. Barker, of the University of Utah, and forwarding this articles to him, he says: "You will find in this envelope a sketch from my memoirs, which I call 'The "Mormon" Road.' * * * The history of this sketch is accurate. I am certainly the only person who ever looked down on the strange and beautiful sight I describe.. Last Summer, I went all over that part of Jackson county, Missouri. It is now right in Kansas City, and I found it impossible to locate just where the ' "Mormon" Road' ran." The article is a beautiful piece of literature; just such a writing as one would look for from a teacher of romance languages. — Editors.] , \ I found it in one of my lonely walks — I nearly always went alone — but the oldest inhabitants could not tell me what it was, except Louis Turgeon, an aged and intelligent Frenchman, some of whose descendants still live in that favored region. He had heard about it when he came there in the early days, while a young man. He told me that all that beautiful country had been stolen from the Indians, that the "Mormons" had possessed it for some time, but were robbed of it by the "Gentiles," who in increasing numbers sifted in around the "Mormons," harried them and finally attacked them with firearms. The "Mormons," he said, made a stand near Independence. While the hostile forces were in presence, a tornado swept through the "Mormon" camp. I pause to say that the tornado must have passed through our section, on a line slightly northeast by southwest.- We lived about nine miles from Independence and two or three miles from Westport. I had noticed that all the oldest trees in a zone many rods wide had evidently lost their tops long ago. The southern line of this zone passed what is now the intersection of Linwood Avenue and Prospect Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri. Well, Mr. Turgeon said that the Christians say in the destruction of the "Mormon" camp the hand of God attacked them, and defeated them. The "Mormons" fled westward, in the direction of Westport. Now, the Christians had seized the few roads which existed, so the "Mormons" cut a way through the virgin forest, south to Brush Creek, and on up the opposite hills to the prairies. It was this "road" which I had found. At this late time, I cannot locate this "Mormon" Road, but it ran somewhere within half a mile east of the street on which the Linwood school now stands. We children, who lived on the rich "Mormon" holdings, were, strangely enough, in sympathy with the "Mormons." All that we knew, up to the time when I discovered the "road," was that the "Mormons" had been robbed of their land, and many of them killed,

960 IMPROVEMENT ERA but that was enough. We were interested in all that recalled the "Mormon" occupation, and we knew and wondered at the marvelous "Mormon" spring or pool, which boiled up a few rods west of the old Holloway house, at a point which at present is just within the limits of Spring Valley Park. The cupidity of unscrupulous specu- lators destroyed and buried this wonderful spring. We used to dig up fragments of charred wood, at a point down the brook, just beyond the present northern line of Spring Valley Park, which should have been called "Mormon" Park. As for me, my imagination was still further fired by finding some "Mormon" papers in the attic of an old house. I still remembered some verses which I read in those papers. But what was the "Mormon" road? Imagine in the dense woods a strip about thirty feet wide, where all the trees were visibly younger than those on either side. Not only were the trees in this strip smaller, their foliage was of a somewhat paler green. A lesser differ- ence would have caught the eye of a boy accustomed to wander over that wild region. It was my fortune to discover, near the top of the hill, at the edge of the strip, an immense basswood tree, whose trunk inclined slightly over the zone of younger trees. The basswood had no branches for eighteen or twenty feet, but from its fork descended a large and still vigorous grapevine, up which I climbed with clinging hands and bare feet. High above the fork was another crotch. When I reached this, I found that the tree was decaying at the crotch, and that a great horned owl had made its nest there. The nest had been abandoned. It was not difficult for me to enlarge the niche into the rotten wood, and provide me a seat where I could sit at ease. I used to sit for hours in this nook under the forest eaves, my feet hanging in the leafy sunlight. Below me ran the "Mormon" road, as no other mortal eye, of those dead or now living, ever beheld it, for I did not tell anyone of my nook in the tree, and there is no possibility that anyone else discovered it. The "Mormon" road, looked at from above, was a long corridor of leaves, which hang straight down the slope to Brush Creek, and up the opposite hills to the great prairies, whose horizon line quivered and danced in the Summer heat. Long sighs of the breeze passed almost continuously up the hollow way, accompanied by a soft bending of delicate branches and a waltitudinous sound of leaves. Birds, especially wild pigeons, flew up and down the hollow way, as men use a beaten road. Some- times these birds passed so close to me that I heard the whistle of their wings. After a few moment in my leafy heaven, I became as much a part of the wild solitude as a tree, a branch, a leaf. I heard, as it were without hearing, the intimate sounds of the woods — the twitter

THE "MORMON" ROAD 961 of birds, the moaning of doves, the chatter of squirrels, the fall of a dead branch or of an acorn. I saw without surprize the lofty secrets of the forest. As I sat there, it seemed to me that things would never be different — that I should remain seated there forever, that the trees would continue unchanged for all eternity, that the gossamer thread swaying from a near-by leaf would sway for a million years. Finally, a shiver ran over me. It had grown cooler, and in the depths below me shadows were gathering. Then the perilous descent and the long walk home. The visit to the "Mormon" road which remains clearest in my memory took place in my sixteenth summer, probably late in August, several years after I first discovered it. I remember the Summer, because it was the first since the covering snows had known me to be an orphan. I glided through the woods like a hunted creature; my bare feet made no noise. The seasons were at the pause: glad Summer was about to merge into genial Autumn, but it seemed to me that Winter stood ready to grab me and keep me for ever in its frozen fingers. I climbed to my nook, wondering if that was the last time. I had sat there for more than an hour, plunged in memories of my bereavement and dread of the future, when the sound of young voices reached me. Never had I seen a human being in that wilderness. Soon there came into sight among the huge tree trunks a boy and a girl of about my age. They walked with their arms around each other's waist, and they were laughing and chattering, but what their language was I could not tell. She wore no hat, and looked as if she had never worn one. Her black hair hung in braids down her back. I knew all the boys and girls for miles around, but these I had never seen, nor did I ever see them again. They stopped at the foot of a not-distant tree, looked at each other without speaking, then kissed. My face burned. Did such things exist? Could they exist? After a second kiss, they touched cheeks tenderly for an instant, and started on, still without speaking. I watched them disappear and reappear through the screen of leaves, as they crossed the strip of the "Mormon" road and finally passed entirely from sight. And still my cheeks burned. A few moments later, there flitted by me in playful flight a pair of wild pigeons, touching and billing as they flew. I followed with my eyes their veering, happy course down the long corridor of leaves. Perhaps an hour went by, and still I sat there, and words began to pass strangely through my mind, as they had never done before — words that jingled, that answered one another, that caressed one another. From that first harmony of words which you, O boy, repeated to yourself in the years that followed, I, a man and workman in words, transpose a little your melody in accordance with the cunning of books, and here it is:

962 IMPROVEMENT ERA THE "MORMON" ROAD The wind is weighing the oriol's nest Where elm-tree steel-yards swing, And counting the spotted eggs that rest Under the oriole's wing. Like the sound of myriad sheaves Which many arms upraise, The multitudinous voice of leaves Sighs through the forest maze. * * * One little, two little Indian boys, Where have they gone with their charming noise, The dusky boys and their dusky mates? The forest wonders — the forest waits — The trees have taken the "Mormon" road And raised on their finger-tips its load, Till I look adown from the forest eaves On a road of earth and a road of leaves. The road of earth is a road no more, And the road of leaves, a corridor Where long, long sighs of the breeze are heard, And the whistling wings of a homing bird. Yet through these woods there swept one night The awful scenes of the "Mormon" flight — Chopping of axes, trees that crash, Plunging of horses neath the lash, The screams of women, oaths of men, And crack of rifles down the glen. But now the lazy sunlight sifts Among the lofty timber rifts. Hushed birds twitter, breezes sough, A squirrel leaps from a bending bough, And here, of a leaf the prisoned Sways in the sun a gossamer — One little, two little Indian boys, Where have they gone with their charming noise, The dusky boys and their dusky mates? The forest wonders — the forest waits. Manakin, Virginia. O God, I Pray Let me live for the simpler Lips that pray; hearts that feel, Things of life; Hands that are hard and rough: The old, the worn, or the new. Sons of toil, daughters of care; Homely faces, homespun smiles, Children of God, who have Words that are common all the while, Played life fair, Eyes that are kind and true. And — that is enough. Salt Lake City. OWEN WOODRUFF BUNKER.