The Hunger(56)

When he woke, he expected to find the hunting party gone. But they were waiting for him, the horses packed and the fire smothered. The senior man wore Bryant’s vest over his buckskin tunic, which made Bryant smile. One of the men offered an arm to Bryant and helped him swing up behind him on horseback, and Bryant gladly accepted. With a grunt, the man in Bryant’s vest turned his paint mare west, to follow the trickling stream toward the snow-capped mountains looming in the distance. He would live, it seemed, a few days more.

He was glad to ride out of the clearing, which still lingered with the faint sweet smell of burned flesh.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR





It had to end.

Meet me, James Reed had whispered as he passed by John Snyder. Eight o’clock, at the cottonwood down by the watering hole.

Reed wished he could remain with his family after dinner, reading a story to the children by the light of the fire while Margaret mended clothes and Eliza Williams scoured the dishes. Ironic, when you considered how many nights he’d sat at the family dining table in Springfield, wishing he could steal away to meet Edward McGee.

But he had a reckoning coming with Snyder, one he couldn’t put off any longer.

He hadn’t forgotten the advice Snyder gave him the last time they’d met privately—don’t forget what kind of man I am. Beneath the veneer of civility, John Snyder was a wild beast, and Reed had foolishly given this man the power to destroy him. Reed could barely stand to be in Snyder’s presence any longer, fearing what he might do. If this journey had become a trek through hell, the episodes with Snyder only made it more so, a punishment that, incomprehensibly, Reed seemed to have designed for himself.

At quarter to eight, Reed kissed the children on the head and bade them good night, each in turn. He told his wife that he had to speak to the Breens about some trivial matter; she especially disliked the family, so there was no chance she might ask about the visit later. Once he was out of sight of his wagons, he pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed sweat off his forehead. Once, twice, three times. He stopped himself from overdoing it—lately he noticed his hairline had begun to recede from the habit.

But for good measure, he wiped his mouth three times, too.

He shouldn’t have kissed those children, not with his filthy mouth. He was too unclean. They were innocent, those children. The only good, innocent thing in his life. He didn’t deserve them.

He arrived at the appointed place well before Snyder and saw him from a distance, lumbering down the slope in his unhurried way. On the horizon, a brilliant band of orange and yellow dissolved into a thick, nighttime black. Snyder came to an abrupt stop in front of Reed.

As Snyder reached for him, however, Reed stepped backward. He’d played the scene in his head a hundred times but had never gotten past this moment.

“No.” Improvisation would have to do. “Listen. I came to tell you it’s over between us. It has to end.”

Snyder reached for him a second time, more aggressively. “What makes you think you get to call the tune? You’re done when I say you’re done.”

Reed managed to avoid him a second time. “Listen to me. I’m serious. I won’t do this anymore.” Snyder’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. He would be angry now. “I was unhappy, looking for a way to escape. But I don’t have that luxury anymore. I’ve got a role to play. People still look to me—some of them, anyway. If I should fail them, what will become of the wagon train? They need me.”

“Don’t you have a high opinion of yerself,” Snyder said. He took a heavy step toward Reed. “I could tell ’em about you, about what you let me do to you. That you asked for it, you wanted it.”

Reed tried to swallow but found he couldn’t. “You’d be implicating yourself, too,” he finally said. But he no longer knew whether Snyder cared. He felt sick—how could he have let himself fall prey to a man like Snyder? How could he have wanted him so badly?

How was it possible Reed wanted him still? The strong bulk of his shoulders. The moments of hard, rough, frantic forgetting.

“It don’t matter what I done,” Snyder said. “I’m not the one who’s a pervert.”

“Some of those men won’t feel the same way, you can bet on that. They’ll never look at you the same.”

“What about your wife?” Snyder’s expression was pure, vicious glee. “How do you think she’s gonna look at you after I tell her what you done, on your knees, how you begged for more?” He laughed when Reed’s face crumbled.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Reed said. He was light-headed with fear. This was surreal, a bad fever dream. “You don’t have it in you.”

Snyder punched him in the face. The blow landed so hard that Reed nearly blacked out. The next he knew, he was lying on the ground. Snyder straddled his chest. The pain was a relief—it brought him out of the sticky, anxious heat of his thoughts and into the present moment. He gasped for air. Another blow ground the back of his skull into the sand. He was being crushed under Snyder’s weight. He’s going to kill me, Reed realized, struggling to comprehend the notion, even as it was happening.

“Fucking faggots,” Snyder said. But he sounded calm. “I hate fucking faggots . . .”

He wanted to kill me all along.