Destroying Angel by Michael Wallace

tormented my soul. I would do it again if I had to, but three months have passed and I still see the man’s dead eyes when I lie awake at night.
    The marshal’s name was Frederick van Slooten. He was a strongly built man with a clean-shaven face that would have beenhandsome if not for the white scar that ran from his right ear to his chin.
    The first thing he did was urinate in the cistern. Then he gathered the women at gunpoint and made us sit shoulder to shoulder in front of the fire, told us who he was and why he’d come, then questioned and threatened. When the women said we had no idea where our men were, he started in on the children. After another hour of bullying, the women began arguing back, but he shouted us into silence.
    “Now listen up,” he said at length. He paced back and forth with his rifle cradled in his arms and an unlit cigar chomped in his jaw. “You polygs thought you was real clever hiding out here in the desert, didn’t you? But I ain’t no fool. I can see with my own eyes what’s going on. Now where are they?”
    “We told you,” Laura said in her English accent that sounded so proper and civilized next to this brute of a man. “We haven’t seen them in two weeks.”
    “Is that so?” Van Slooten tapped her forehead with the muzzle of his rifle, and she shut her eyes and trembled. “And who dug them ditches? Who cut the stones?”
    “We did,” I said.
    “Was I talking to you?”
    “No, but you should be.”
    He strolled over, bent down, and pressed his cigar into my face. “Oh, and why is that?”
    “Because I’m in charge.”
    “You?” His smile turned into a grin. “All these wagons, this camp you’re turning into a town. And you’re giving orders.”
    I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to fade into the background. Maybe he’d threaten and bully for a spell and then leave us alone. IfI kept my mouth shut, he wouldn’t single me out for special abuse. But it would get out anyway, when one of the more timid women talked. And maybe I could relieve the pressure from the others. It sounds foolish to write it now, but I wasn’t afraid—not like the others, at least. Every one of them was terrified, I could see. I was angry. This was more of the same persecution that drove us into the wilderness in the first place. This man, stinking of sweat and tobacco, was every man in every mob that had tormented the saints since the days of Joseph Smith. I refused to be intimidated.
    And so I gave him my name and told him who my husband was, and about the other leaders, and explained how they had left me in charge.
    He sat on the ground while I talked, elbow propped against his saddle. His expression turned smug when I finished, and he lit the end of his cigar in the coals at the edge of the fire. “So you’re married to Brigham Young’s nephew? Why, looks like I hit the mother lode of polyg hideouts here. Where are they now?”
    “We told you already. They haven’t come yet.”
    “And I told
you
,” he said, voice hard, “that I ain’t no idiot.”
    “We did this ourselves. It matters not a whit if you believe me or not. And I know what you’re about. You have no commission to arrest women and children. So I suggest you leave our camp before we take up arms and drive you off like a wild animal.”
    He stared. His mouth opened and the cigar dangled at the corner. For a moment I dared hope. He would decide we were more trouble than we were worth, would saddle his horse and ride off to look for our husbands in other parts. But then his expression hardened and he shook his head. “No, I think I’ll stay right here. You say you ladies built all this yourself? This I’d like to see.”
    I rose angrily to my feet to demand that he leave. But he lifted his rifle and shook his head. “Sit down or I will put a ball in your g—d—head. Good. Now, you all listen up. I ain’t just the lawman in this camp. I am the judge and I am the executioner. If any of you steps out of line, I