The Hunger(22)

The story sat uneasily with me. It reminded me of an aside Lewis Keseberg had shared with me, that his own uncle had disappeared in this same territory a number of years back.

I was forming a bad opinion of Bridger, in any case. His prices are outrageous, his stock poor quality (mealy flour, rotten meat, watered alcohol). The garrison was redeployed to the busier Fort Hall months ago, so Bridger and his partner, Luis Vasquez, are on their own. They are desperate men, I think.

Between the experience with the Paiute hunting party and Bridger’s stories, I left the next morning uneasily, taking only Thomas with me. We quickly learned that the way is very bad. Bridger told me that Lansford Hastings had indeed been at the fort, but he left to escort a wagon party through the cutoff. They were about a week ahead of us, so we tried to follow signs of their passage, but the way was thick with forest and undergrowth. We occasionally stumbled across an old Indian trail only to find that it ended abruptly at a canyon or edge of a cliff. It was difficult going on horseback and would be nearly impossible with a wagon. It is imperative that you stop the wagon party from taking this route. You will find only hardship and disaster here.

It took a week, but Thomas and I managed to get through the mountains. We had lost all signs of Hastings’s wagon party and spent every minute on edge, hoping to see signs that they’d been by or to hear a human voice—anything to know we were not alone. But the deeper we plunged into the forest, the more isolated we felt. Paradoxically, I had the strangest and strongest impression of being watched.

At this point, Thomas was jumpier than a cat and I began to worry for the boy’s mental state. When I pressed him about it the last night we sat together by the campfire, he confessed that when he’d translated for the Paiute, he hadn’t told me the entire story. The Paiute had warned us to stay away from the Anawai tribe at Truckee Lake, that much was true, but there was a reason for their violence. The Anawai were kidnapping outsiders to sacrifice them to this wolf spirit.

Thomas told me that he was sorry he hadn’t told me earlier, but he had been afraid I would insist on going to see for myself and we would end up being killed. Thomas plainly thought me crazy and impossible to reason with. He was so upset that I began to feel bad for having put him in this position. He is only a seventeen-year-old boy, frightened for his life.

I was just about to dig into my pouch for his wages and release him from his contract when we heard a noise in the brush. We both snapped around. I reached for my rifle and Thomas pulled one of the burning branches from the fire.

The brush crackled all around. Thomas held the branch overhead like a torch. There was a loud snap right in front of us, the sound of weight coming down on a branch and breaking it right in two. I raised my rifle squarely in that direction.

“Show yourself!” I shouted into the void.

Footsteps rushed toward me in the dark. I was about to fire but at that same moment, Thomas turned on his heel and ran into the forest. He was unarmed (he had even thrown the torch to the ground in a panic) and so I felt I had to go after him to protect him. I followed the sound of Thomas crashing through the woods ahead of me, and all the while heard someone following behind me. Within minutes I lost Thomas in the inky darkness. But the noise behind me was getting louder and closer and finally, out of self-preservation, I turned around and fired blindly into the blackness. The flash from my rifle illuminated something in the trees, and I fired again. This time I heard a yelp of pain, distinctly animal, and—my eyes having adjusted to the darkness—I saw the glimmer of yellow eyes and teeth, and then whatever they were, they were gone. I focused every bit of my attention on sound, trying to tell if they were circling around to attack me from another angle, but all the noises died away suddenly.

There was no trace of them—or of Thomas, either. He did not make his way back to the campfire that night. I do not know what has happened to him.

You know what a stubborn cuss I am, Charles, and so will not be surprised to learn that I am continuing to Truckee Lake. I’ve come too far to turn back now. You may think what I’m doing is rash and dangerous, and of course, it is. But I have been in similar situations in the past and survived. I go to search for Thomas but also to search for truths.

God bless you and Godspeed, your friend, Edwin





CHAPTER NINE





It had to be the driest, hottest part of the summer when the wagon train at last rolled through South Pass into the area just north of Fort Bridger. The land was harsher than Stanton had expected. The green pastures abruptly gave way to burnt browns, the grass brittle and dirt like powder, and the Big Sandy River so dried up that it was hardly wider than a creek. The livestock nosed the sparse grass disinterestedly. The party would have to move quickly through this area and hope there were better pastures nearby. They couldn’t survive for long in conditions like these. But the plain stretched flat before them for what seemed like a hundred miles: a tortured place.

Stanton’s muscles strained. Sweat gathered at his brow and ran down his back. His head hammered with feverish exhaustion. The past few nights, he had volunteered to stand watch over the livestock. It was his way of making sure he wouldn’t be in his tent if Tamsen came looking for him. A temporary solution—he would have to confront her eventually—and one that left him blindly fatigued during the day. Still, facing the temptation of her, and the consequences of her wrath, seemed worse.