The Hunger(34)

Donner had turned away from them, sweating and trembling, refusing to decide. And since then, Donner hadn’t spoken a word to anyone outside his family. Reed was convinced that Donner’s breakdown was only temporary and got Stanton to agree to keep mum. Jacob Donner, his brother, had agreed to keep him out of sight, and the story going through the wagon train was that he’d fallen ill.

So Reed took charge of the route. Within a day, the forest choked up around them the same as it had done to Hastings’s group, and then the ground broke uphill sharply. On the morning of his second day as captain, one of Reed’s oxen had come up lame, setting his temper on edge. He ended up being a little too terse with Keseberg, the wrong man to provoke, and they fell into a shouting match that ended when Keseberg drew a knife and had to be pulled away by the arm.

The atmosphere up and down the line quickly turned tense and jumpy. Reed sent brothers-in-law William Foster and William Pike ahead to scout the way and got everyone else started chopping down trees, terrified in his heart that they would end up trapped in the forest like the other party. Reed suggested that everyone start pooling and rationing their food stocks, but he was quickly shouted down, and some men threatened to string him up if he ever raised the idea again.

A small hunting party went out after the wagon train had halted for the night, making the best of the last hour of light left before it would be too dangerous to hunt. Fresh meat was in short supply and no one was willing to slaughter any livestock, so every able-bodied man in the party with a rifle—and even some less-than-able-bodied ones, such as Luke Halloran—ventured out to look for game.

Reed trailed a small group, behind Milt Elliott and John Snyder in the lead. His rifle weighed heavily, his arms aching from swinging an ax all day. He was still puzzling over what Snyder had told him last night—what he’d followed Reed into the woods to tell him.

You know what your trouble is, Reed? You don’t understand them people at all.

Only sheep will follow you meek like. The rest of them don’t think they need your help.

They’re not going to listen to you unless you make them.

Snyder was a twenty-five-year-old drifter who’d never done anything more difficult than bully and whip livestock. Reed had built a furniture business from nothing, led a company of men against Sauk and Kickapoo Indians in the Black Hawk War.

And yet Snyder was right—Reed didn’t understand people. The light was nearly gone and the whole time they’d seen nothing, not so much as a prairie squirrel or a single quail, but no one dared say anything out loud for fear it might further jinx them. Reed listened apprehensively to the idle chitchat of the men ahead, worried that Snyder’s exchange with Elliott was getting increasingly risky. Snyder knew Reed could hear what was being said and liked to bait him; it was the bully in him. Had he been trying to warn Reed last night?

There’s two kinds of men. Sheep and the men that bleed ’em. Don’t forget which one I am.

If there was one thing Snyder knew, it was how to make people do what he wanted. All it took was a look from those hooded eyes, a flex of one of his hands.

If Reed could go back in time, he never would’ve started up with him. He’d been reckless. But he’d been unable to get the feeling of Snyder’s hands out of his mind, and the thought of them—big and rough and powerful—had gone somehow from one of dread to one of intense need.

It was stupid. Worse than stupid—deadly.

Say the wrong word to the wrong man and you could find yourself in a jail cell waiting for the circuit judge. Reed had heard such a tale from Edward McGee. You had to be ready to act on offers when they occurred.

Snyder’s voice suddenly broke out angrily. “For crissakes,” he shouted, then let loose a string of cusswords. Halloran’s little dog yipped. Reed picked up his pace. Maybe they’d found game.

What Reed saw as he rounded the turn made his stomach lurch. Hanging between two trees were the remains of a corpse: wrists caught tight with rope, shoulders stretched spread-eagle, head lolling on the neck, but below that—nearly nothing. The spinal column ended abruptly in midair, its vertebrae suspended like beads on a string. Nearly all the flesh had been stripped away from the bone. On the ground: long leg bones, cracked pieces of rib. The spot beneath the body was churned into a frenzy and black with old blood.

“What in the blue blazes is this?” Milt Elliott asked, and nearly tripped over Halloran’s little terrier as it sniffed at the bones.

Reed couldn’t stop looking at the head, worried to a bloody mess by insects. Something—birds?—had gotten to the eyes. It had to have been a monstrous death, though whether it was worse than starving or dying of thirst high in the mountains, he couldn’t guess. He had to speak up before Snyder and Elliott and Halloran brought the news back to the wagon train and all hell broke loose. “We heard about this from Hastings,” he said. “The Indians did it. A ceremony of some kind.”

“A ceremony?” Snyder growled. He took out his big hunting knife and sawed at one of the ropes until it gave. The corpse swung to the left, so that one hand trailed on the ground. “What kind of fucked-up ceremony is this?”

Reed said nothing. He and Stanton had agreed they wouldn’t tell the rest of the party of Hastings’s fears. Something’s stalking the wagon train. It would only spook them worse. Snyder didn’t seem to expect an answer, however; like many, he feared the Indians and didn’t try and make sense of anything they did.