There’s a story I know of a group of early pioneers who were trekking their way across the prairie to settle in the west. This group was one of the handcart companies, a collection of families who traveled with everything they owned crammed inside a small handcart. The poorest of the poor, their handcarts were so small that a single man could push them as they moved across the prairie and even up the mountains. There were no horses in the company. No ox-drawn wagons to help them with their loads. Things didn’t go well for this group of pioneers. For one thing, they didn’t start their journey until late in the season. Some people told them to wait until the next year, but they had nowhere to stay for the winter and so they pressed on. After their late start, they had a series of problems along the way. In October, they were still on the open prairie when an early winter settled in. It was bitter cold, with snow and freezing temperatures making travel almost impossible. They were already critically low on food, and completely unprepared to survive out in the open against the elements. They trudged along at a backbreaking pace, trying to make their way to the Salt Lake Valley, all the time getting lower and lower on food. The weather got worse. One by one, they started to freeze or starve to death. Every morning, it was the same thing: Wake up. Gather up those who had not made it through the night. Fathers. Mothers. Little children. Families were devastated, with broken dreams and broken hearts. The survivors would try to hack a shallow grave where they could bury their loved ones, but many times the ground was so frozen that it was impossible to dig. So they’d pile rocks over the graves in hopes of keeping the wolves and other scavengers away. Throughout the day, others would die of starvation or exhaustion. But the company could not afford to stop to bury them. Too many dead and too little time. In these cases, they’d be forced to leave the bodies of their loved ones underneath any kind of marker they could find: a lone tree, a bare shrub, a small pile of rocks—anything was better than leaving the bodies lying atop the bare ground.
Traveling in this company was a little girl whose shoes had completely worn out, leaving her to cross the prairie barefoot. Her frozen feet got so torn up that she’d leave a trail of blood in the snow behind her. She’d wrap her feet in burlap, old cloth, anything she could find to protect them. Night after night she’d pray for a pair of shoes.
One morning, she woke up to find a miracle on the ground beside her. Underneath a small bush, next to the place where she’d been sleeping, was a brand-new pair of shoes. Pulling them on her bloodied feet, she found that they fit her perfectly. But where had they come from? No one in her company had given her the shoes. Certainly, none of them had such a luxury within their possession and if they had, they would have given them to her already.
The little girl realized that she had been given a gift from heaven.
Now, I don’t mean in any way to compare my plight to the horrible experience of this little girl. She was in a life-or-death situation and her suffering was much more acute than mine. But one night I had a similar experience. And it taught me an important lesson.
*
I’m not sure how long it was into my captivity. More than a couple weeks, but not quite a month, I guess. We had gone a long time without going down to the stream to get any water. Maybe Mitchell was just lazy, but I don’t think that was the reason. I think something may have spooked him, causing him to be afraid to go down to the spring. Maybe he was worried that someone had become suspicious of him on one of his trips into the city. He might have seen someone down in the canyon. I don’t know what it was, all I knew was I was thirsty.
Down in the valley, the search efforts were still under way. Though weeks had now passed, my parents were working hard to keep the story of my kidnapping in the press. They knew it was vital to make sure that people were still aware, to keep the search efforts going and my picture in the news. From what Mitchell had told me, my posters were still up everywhere. The first time Mitchell had seen these posters, it had made him very proud, but I don’t think he expected the search efforts to keep going for so long. And though he tried to hide it, I could see that he was worried.
Which meant that we weren’t getting any water until he was certain it was safe to head down to the spring.
Mitchell started to ration what little water we had left, but eventually we reached the point where we only had a few cups remaining in the bottom of one of the plastic containers. Mitchell drank, then poured a cup for Barzee, then poured the last few drops for me. Though it didn’t even fill my cup, I drank it eagerly. The water was warm, having been sitting in the sun, and it tasted like melted plastic. I drank it in one gulp, then put the cup down.