The Hunger(45)

Margaret wept when they unloaded their wagons and sorted through their things for the valuables to keep. The children were silent and uncomplaining, and dutifully piled their toys on the ground to be abandoned. At the very bottom of the pile was a saddle he’d had made special for Virginia when she got her first pony. The buttery leather was tooled with flowers and vines on the skirts. It had nickel conchos on the latigos like a fine adult’s saddle. It had once made him proud. It proved that he’d been a good father, capable of bringing his children joy.

Now, staring at it, he could hardly make sense of its shape or the life it had belonged to.

“Even Addie?” Patty Reed asked, holding her doll up for her father to see. It was a rag doll with a bisque head, dressed in fabric scraps and a bit of lace tied around its waist as a sash. The doll might only weigh ounces, but ounces added up. Eight ounces of cornmeal versus eight ounces of calico snippets and bisque. Ounces, grains of sand, seconds falling through an hourglass: Life was all accounting, and at the end of it, the same tab for all.

“I’m afraid so,” Reed told her. He was surprised to feel a sudden tightness in his chest, watching his child place her doll in the dirt, carefully, as if it were a true burial.

The transfer was done in an hour. Already the wagons to be abandoned were no more than ghosts. Reed shot the remaining oxen in the head so they wouldn’t suffer any further, and he imagined, though he was not fanciful, that he saw in their eyes a final flicker of relief.





CHAPTER NINETEEN





The sandstorm started innocently enough. White flakes swirled on the air, and Stanton thought they were almost pretty in their delicacy. But by dusk on the sixth day in the desert, the wagon party was forced to stop. Traversing this great emptiness was bad enough under clear skies. Trudging through a blizzard of hard sand was suicide.

The cloud of sand and salt had shaken the wagons like the swells of an angry sea. No one bothered to try to pitch a tent or set up a campsite; everyone bunkered in the wagons. Stanton wrapped a blanket over his shoulders and wedged himself between barrels inside his wagon, where he would have to sleep upright in the tightly packed space, full of household belongings. He hadn’t bothered with a lantern. There was nothing he wanted to see. Outside, bullwhips of sand hissed where they scraped over the canopy. The day had covered him in a fine crust of salt. It was on his skin, his lips, even in his eyelashes. Salt lined the inside of his nose and roughed his throat so that it hurt, even, to swallow.

Suddenly, Stanton heard the crack of a gunshot at the same time the board behind him shuddered. The wood exploded into splinters inches to the left of his head. He dropped to his stomach as best he could in the cramped space, trying to figure out which direction the shot had come from, the front or back of his wagon. From the back, surely. He picked out the sound of rustling, now that he knew to listen for it. Whoever had shot at him was still out there in the dark, cowering by the left rear wheel.

Stanton moved carefully toward the front of the wagon, hoping the sandstorm would conceal the noise of his footsteps. He slipped over the side and dropped, landing in the tangle of empty harness on the ground.

The sandstorm absorbed the moonlight. All Stanton could see was the silhouette of a man headed toward him. He hadn’t made many friends in the party, but this was more than hatred, Stanton knew. This was hunger. He was an easy target, with a wagon of his own and no children. Whoever it was wanted to raid his remaining supplies and didn’t care if he left Stanton for dead in the process. The storm provided the perfect cover.

Before Stanton could pull his gun from its holster, the man tackled him, knocking him to the ground. The whirling sand obscured details and made Stanton feel as though he were wrestling a faceless phantasm—one, however, who reeked of whiskey. Stanton managed to jerk aside when the man plunged a fist toward his face, and heard a knife blade strike loose sand beside him.

They rolled over and over in the sand, scrabbling for advantage, fighting not just each other but the wind, a giant hand hurling them through the dark. The man was insanely strong but slowed by alcohol, and Stanton got two punches in for every one he took. But his sides ached and he felt like he’d swallowed a pound of grit. He caught the man good in the ribs, though, and heard him cry out, and then Stanton was sure he recognized the voice. Lewis Keseberg.

Maybe he knew he was caught, or maybe he’d just had enough. He stumbled backward, reeling, and staggered off into the storm.

Stanton, exhausted, went down on his knees when another gust buffeted him off balance, and his hand hit something hard in the sand. It was a palm-sized gun, too small for a man as big as Keseberg. He struggled to his feet and managed to claw himself back inside the wagon, feeling his way on his animals’ leads.

Once inside, Stanton lit a lantern. He loaded his rifle first in case Keseberg came back and only then looked at the pistol. It had a singular mother-of-pearl inlay he recognized immediately. There was probably not another like it west of the Mississippi.

He felt a stab of disbelief and also disappointment. It was Tamsen Donner’s gun.



* * *



? ? ?

IN THE MORNING, Stanton rode up to James Reed. Reed looked as if he hadn’t slept. His clothes were streaked with salt and his fair Irish skin was so red that he looked burnt.

Reed gave him an appraising nod. “Looks like you came through the sandstorm all right.”