The Hunger(26)

“Where’s Edwin?” The words were out before Stanton knew he’d spoken. He just managed to keep from lunging at the boy when the boy did nothing but shake his head.

“He told us that Bryant decided to go ahead on his own and dismissed him from service,” Donner said. Hands buried in his pockets, he paced restlessly, and Stanton could tell that he, too, found that story unlikely.

Reed stepped closer to the boy, screwing up his face. “Bryant wouldn’t let you go unless you’d done something to make him. Did you try to steal from him? What was it, boy?”

The Indian pushed hair out of his eyes. “I didn’t steal nothing, I swear.”

“But he didn’t dismiss you. You lied about that, didn’t you? You ran away. You’re a coward,” Reed said. The boy hung his head again and muttered something indecipherable. Reed looked back at the others. “The only question that remains is what to do with him.”

“We leave him here, of course,” Donner said, and stopped pacing to stare at Reed. “What else is there to do? We can’t take him with us.”

Stanton thought of the wild man in Bridger’s makeshift stockade, the raw wounds on his wrists. Could they just hand the boy over to Jim Bridger?

“Why not take him with us?” Keseberg asked. “Coward or not, he knows the area and we need a guide. He can lead us to Hastings. That can be his punishment for deserting a white man in the wilderness.” It was one of the more reasonable thoughts Stanton had ever heard out of Keseberg’s mouth.

“You cannot make me work for you,” the boy said.

“We won’t cheat you,” Reed said. Although he and Keseberg despised each other, it was obvious he agreed with the suggestion. “But you heard these men: You can’t stay here. You have nowhere else to go. You’ll come with us or you can walk all the way to Fort Laramie.”

The boy looked from one of his captors to the next. Stanton thought for a moment that he might jump up and try to run away. “You cannot make me go with you. That way—that way is bad. There are bad spirits waiting for you ahead. You cannot pass. It is not safe.”

Bad spirits. Stanton thought of messages sent through dreams, of the little talismans of bundled sticks and lace he’d seen Tamsen carrying around with her when she thought no one was watching. When he shouldn’t have been watching.

He’d found a satchel of dried herbs beneath his pillow a week ago, after the last time they’d been together. When he burned it, it released a choking smoke, sweet and dizzying.

Stanton crouched so he could look the boy in the face. “Listen to me. What’s your name?”

There was a wary look in his eye. “Thomas.”

“Thomas.” That sounded familiar; perhaps he’d heard the boy’s name at Fort Laramie. “First thing in the morning, you’ll take me to where you left Edwin Bryant.”

The boy stiffened, terrified. “I cannot do that, sir. It was days and days from here. I don’t even know where he is.” He wasn’t going to let wild horses drag him back into the wilderness. That much was obvious.

Donner put a hand on Stanton’s shoulder. “Don’t waste your time worrying about Bryant. He’ll be all right. He knows about Indians and their ways. He stands the best chance of surviving out in those mountains, better than the rest of us.”

Stanton stood, twisting away from Donner’s hand. “Edwin is out there by himself, most likely lost. We can’t just desert him.”

“He left us, don’t you remember, when he headed out on horseback?” Donner said. “It seems to me he made his choice already. I have more than one lone man to worry about, Stanton. There are eighty-eight people in this wagon party, all of them depending on me. You can head out to look for Bryant if you want, Stanton, but the Indian is staying with us.”

Stanton knew, deep down, that Donner was right. Even if he managed to round up a search party, the wagon train couldn’t afford to wait. They’d lost too many days already.

And there’d been no letter from Bryant. Nothing at all.

He thought of Mary Graves scrambling backward in the dirt, the buck of his revolver as he shot her attacker, what would’ve happened if he hadn’t been there.

He thought of Tamsen—the fine line of her mouth.

He thought of loud Peggy Breen, too, teasing him along the trail, and of petite Doris Wolfinger, with her pale, delicate hands.

He thought of the countless children whose names he still didn’t have straight in his head, even after all this time.

He couldn’t head after Bryant, he saw that now. He couldn’t risk what might happen to the others if he didn’t return.





CHAPTER TEN




Springfield, Illinois

March 1846


Vertraust du mir?”—do you trust me?—Jacob Wolfinger asked his new wife, Doris, as they lay side by side in their narrow bed on the night before their journey.

Doris had been nervous to come all the way from Germany for a husband she’d never met, with whom she had only communicated by letter. But she’d been relieved to find that, though older than her by many years, Jacob Wolfinger was good-looking enough, and even though he was only the steward of a wealthy man in town, helping to run his many businesses, Jacob was richer than he’d even let on—and most exciting of all, he had a dream.