The Hunger(19)

“Chain up!” he shouted. His big face was pink from exertion. “Time to move out!”

How he hated the sound of Donner’s voice.

But just as Reed turned to say something, he saw two of the Breen boys crawling on hands and knees from under one of the wagons. They were pale and unsteady on their feet, moaning as though they’d been beaten.

Reed’s heart jumped in his chest. The boy killed a month ago came to mind, that pale face frozen as though in sleep, the terrible image of a torn-up body. Were the Breen boys sick? Suddenly one and then the other threw their heads down and began to heave violently. The smell was medicinal, overpowering, and unmistakable.

“Hey. You.” Reed crossed the distance between them before they could run away. “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you? Don’t try to deny it. I can smell it on you.”

Both boys—they couldn’t have been older than ten—turned sullen faces toward him. “It’s none of yer business,” said one.

The smell of vomit and whiskey was so foul that Reed resisted the urge to hold his handkerchief over his nose. He doubted the boys had gotten the liquor from their father: Patrick Breen would whip them to within an inch of their lives. “You stole the whiskey you drank away, didn’t you? Who did you steal it from? Out with it.”

They glowered at Reed. “We ain’t telling,” the scrawnier, dirtier one said.

Reed was tempted to give them the back of his hand but thought the better of it. People had started to stare.

“Why you bothering them kids?” Milt Elliott, a teamster for the Donners, shook his head.

“It’s none of your nevermind,” Reed said.

“You ain’t the boys’ father.” This from another of the Donners’ men, Samuel Shoemaker.

“Their father’s probably lying facedown in a ditch himself.” The words came out before Reed could stop himself. He cursed his sharp tongue. He could imagine how he must sound to this crowd, many of them hungover themselves from dancing half the night away. His palms started to tingle. He could feel dirt gathering in his eardrums, in his nostrils, beneath his fingernails. He needed to bathe. “Look, I’m only trying to find out where the boys got the alcohol.”

“Are you saying it’s our fault the boys got themselves drunk?” Elliott said, raising an eyebrow.

“No. I’m just saying that we must do a better job keeping track of all our supplies.” He shook his head. He would try again. “We might want to lock up our spirits, for example—”

Tall and angular, always hovering like an ominous scarecrow, Lewis Keseberg pushed his way through the crowd. Reed could’ve predicted it; Keseberg always seemed to be spoiling for a fight. “You’d like to take our liquor away, wouldn’t you? You’d probably chuck it in the Little Sandy when nobody was looking, every drop of it.” He jabbed a finger into Reed’s chest. “If you try to lay so much as one finger on any of my bottles, so help me God—”

Sweat began to collect on Reed’s upper lip. He glanced around but didn’t see Keseberg’s wife or child anywhere. Seemed Keseberg kept anything humane about him behind closed doors, and there’d be no plying him with reminders of family and decency. Still, Reed couldn’t let Keseberg push him around in front of all these other people; they’d decide he was a coward. But Keseberg was notoriously unforgiving. No one gambled with him anymore, because he never forgot who cheated, who liked to bluff, and who always held pat. Remembered which cards in the deck had already been played, calculated which were likely to come up. He apparently had a memory as sharp as a blade. He was also a half foot taller and thirty pounds heavier.

He was standing so close that Reed was sure Keseberg would notice that he was not right.

Reed imagined that his own secret—the badness in him—was so strong that it could be seen or smelt if you got close enough. It was like the fine trail dust he could never quite be rid of, traces of his sins on his hands or his face, seeping up from under his clothes, no matter how hard he tried to wipe it away.

He reached for his handkerchief again.

“Keep your hands off me,” he said, hoping his voice wouldn’t shake. “Or—”

“Or what?” Keseberg only leaned closer. Sharp as a blade.

Before Reed could answer, a huge slab of a man stepped between them: John Snyder, Franklin Graves’s hired driver. Probably the last person any reasonable man would want to tangle with.

Snyder narrowed his eyes but there was a playfulness in his smirk. “What’s going on here? This little man trying to tell everyone what to do—again?” Snyder liked to call him little man, a reminder that he could push Reed around whenever he felt like it. “I thought they told you last night that you’re not going to boss us around.”

Snyder turned back to him and Reed thought he had a knowing sort of look in his eye. Reed’s blood ran cold. Had anyone else seen Snyder’s face?

But the others carried on; no one had seen. No one could know. “That’s right. George Donner’s captain, not you,” Keseberg said.

“I’m only speaking common sense,” Reed insisted. This was important. Despite his discomfort, he would try one more time to make them listen. “Fort Laramie was the last outpost before California. From here out there are no more general stores, no grain depots, no settlers willing to sell a sack of cornmeal. Whoever lost their whiskey to these boys”—Reed pointed a finger at the pair, still flat on their backs in the dirt—“will wish they had been more careful a couple weeks down the road when there’s not a drop to be had.”