Joe looked over at Mike sympathetically. “Poor fellow.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” cried Mike. “I’m not as bad as that. I can take them or leave them alone.”
“That’s what they all say,” his father said. He turned back to Sandy. “But what’s this got to do with you knowing about the Mormons?”
“Well, I went to the library,” Sandy explained, “and looked up Mormon Crossing. I was just curious about the name.”
“What did it say?” Joe suddenly sat forward, looking watchful.
“It seems there was this party of Mormons on their way west from Ohio. They didn’t stop in Utah, as so many of them did. They pushed on farther west, planning to join the settlement in Nevada that was set up in 1849. It’s not clear whether they never got there, or whether they got there and turned back. The last anyone ever heard about them, they were in Idaho. Mormon Crossing was where they forded the Lost River.”
“What do you mean—the last anybody heard of them?” Mike wanted to know.
Sandy threw up his hands. “They vanished. The theory is the Indians massacred them. But nobody knows for sure.”
“They were massacred, all right,” declared Joe, staring off into space. “Every last one of them was killed.”
Sandy frowned in bewilderment. “How do you know that?”