The Hunger(49)

Hell, it seemed, was behind them.

The livestock tore hungrily at scrub grass and crowded three deep at the tiny watering hole. People tumbled out of their dust-caked wagons into the spring-fed creek, gulping down muddy water, pouring it over their heads. Lavinah Murphy and her family were on their knees, hands joined and eyes closed, thanking God for their deliverance.

Reed watched all this with satisfaction but also with a bruised ego. He’d taken over as leader, had gotten them through the worst trial of the journey, but did anyone think to thank him? Of course not. Instead, many found ways to blame him. The group’s loyalties, he’d come to realize, had little to do with fact and all to do with feeling. And once again, Reed was forced to accept that he did not inspire people to like him—hadn’t and perhaps never would. For many people did not like the truth, it seemed—thought it was a dirty and distasteful thing, impolite and complicated. They didn’t have the patience for it—for numbers, liters, rations, portions, reasons. Many simply preferred the sweet, momentary pleasure of hearing whatever they wanted to hear. Which was Donner’s skill in spades, or had been, before the once-jovial man had caved in on himself.

But whether the others appreciated him or not, it had been Reed’s careful eye on rations and his urging to start out earlier each morning than the morning before that had gotten them here mostly intact. Under Donner’s waffling supervision, they’d all have been dead long ago.

Now Reed had yet another unpleasant but necessary task in front of him: It was time to ask the families if there had been any deaths and tally their losses. He sighed and took up the reins. Leading the train were the Breen and Graves families, the ones who hated him the most, who irrationally blamed him for the route they’d taken because he was their leader at the time, because they were the kind of people who always needed someone to blame for their misfortunes.

Next came the families whose allegiances were shifting, or who chose not to take a side. This included Keseberg, the crafty German Wolfinger and his ragtag band of German emigrants, plus Lavinah Murphy’s sprawling clan. Will Eddy and his family rode with them, as did the McCutcheons.

At the end of the line were the families everyone eyed resentfully because they were wealthy, a fact that Reed acknowledged with perverse satisfaction because his family still counted among them. The two Donner families were surrounded by a small army of hired help and nearly a dozen teamsters between them, which made Reed feel a bit more secure. Too often now, he caught Franklin Graves and Patrick Breen muttering together, eyeing the Reeds’ store of food when it was unloaded.

But they would not break him, not the way they’d broken George Donner. Reed didn’t hide in his wagon. He stubbornly rode up and down the line, enduring their bitter stares, refusing to give them the satisfaction of letting them know he was afraid. These days he and Tamsen Donner had one thing in common: They were easily the most hated people in the party.

All in all, he tallied that they’d left a third of the wagons behind in the desert. No one had died. However, an awful lot of possessions had been abandoned and livestock lost.

But looking back, he knew, was a trap. They’d come this far. There would be no going back, not now, not ever.



* * *



? ? ?

THEY WERE MAKING THEIR WAY from Pilot Peak when they came on the Indian corpses. The two fragile-looking scaffolds were easy to spot given the dearth of trees. Reed and a few others went over for a closer look. The scaffolds stood about the height of an average man. The shrouded bodies were surrounded by objects that must have been left in tribute to them: an old knife with a dull edge and braided leather grip; necklaces made of carved bone and feathers striped black, white, and blue; a buffalo robe, the fur dulled by the sun.

William Eddy swiped his face with a forearm. “What do you think—Paiute?”

Reed shook his head. “Probably Shoshone,” he answered. “We’re passing through their territory.”

John Snyder was deliberately standing too close. Reed felt his presence like a slick of sweat on the skin. “What—you an Indian expert all of a sudden?”

“It was in a book I read about the Indian Territory.” Back in Springfield, after what had happened with Edward McGee, and the shame he’d narrowly avoided, Reed had for a time thought about becoming an Indian agent for the government. But appointments were hard to get. He now felt foolish about it, as though he’d been stubbornly pursuing some childish dream. Too late, he saw that this escape to California was a childish dream, too. He hadn’t learned his lesson with McGee. Snyder might have been big and mean, where McGee was slight and charming, but both were actors in a vision that had come crashing down.

Reed’s life was full of broken fantasies.

Keseberg stooped to pick up one of the necklaces. “Seems like a waste, leaving all this stuff for the dead.”

Reed tried to picture Keseberg’s pale wife wearing such a thing, but his imagination failed him. “It’s for the dead man to use in the next world,” he said. “Probably best to leave it alone.” The bodies bothered Reed. They seemed exceptionally thin for adults but too tall for children.

“I don’t see any Indians here to stop us,” Keseberg said.

“You shouldn’t mess with Indian graves,” Franklin Graves said. “The redskins are touchy about that.”

Keseberg ignored him, stepping forward to flip back a corner of the deerskin shroud. Now Reed understood why the bodies were small: They had been burned. All that were left were charred remains. Patches of cooked flesh still clung to blackened bone. The skulls were papered with bits of scorched flesh; empty eye sockets seemed to stare at them reproachfully. Several of the men quickly backed away. Eddy turned, coughing into his sleeve.