The Hunger(66)

Certainly she couldn’t trust Elitha, who babbled about the voices of the dead to anyone who would listen, or the younger girls, to support her claims. They didn’t know what they’d seen, either—it had all been a cloud of movement and panic that ended in an eruption of smoke and flame.

There was a giddiness in the air now, but it unsettled her—it was the high of a drunk gambler down to his last coin. Hope, Tamsen realized, could be a very dangerous thing, especially when dealt to desperate hands.

The Sierra Nevada, already holding open their arms to the first temptations of winter, were yet before them, looming in evergreen and rich purple, topped in white. She was continually shocked by the fact that the others seemed to forget the obvious: that the mountains, like most beautiful things in this world, were deadly.

Tonight she strained to listen for every stray noise. She was tossing fretfully under her wedding quilt, lying on the hard ground, in a tense half sleep when she heard raised voices near the tent. She jostled George’s shoulder—how did the man manage to sleep so soundly?—as she reached for her dressing gown. George stumbled on her heels as she exited the tent.

To her surprise, she saw Charlie Burger, the teamster who’d been guarding their tent, on the ground wrestling with William Pike, Lavinah Murphy’s son-in-law. Tamsen had been nervous about traveling with Mormons, having read newspaper accounts of the fighting for control of townships in Missouri and even in Nauvoo, Illinois, not that far from Springfield. But Murphy’s brood was friendly and well behaved and hadn’t tried to convert anyone. William Pike, the riverboat engineer married to one of Lavinah’s daughters, was one of the last people Tamsen would suspect of thievery. But how else to explain him being restrained outside their tent in the middle of the night? Did it have to do with supplies? Everyone’d been paranoid about their rations.

When Pike saw Tamsen, however, he ripped free of Burger and lunged for her. Burger had just managed to restrain him a second time when a warm gob of Pike’s spittle landed on Tamsen’s cheek.

“Where is he? What have you done with him?” Pike shouted at her. If Tamsen didn’t know better, she would’ve thought Pike was drunk. His hair was wild and his face tear-streaked and red. This entire scene didn’t make sense. The Murphys and Pikes had no reason to steal food, she realized; as far as anyone knew they still had a decent supply, all things considered. And he was shouting at her as though she were the one who’d taken something from him.

“What in the world is he talking about?” George asked, rubbing fists in his sleepy eyes. George’s brother Jacob and Jacob’s wife, Betsy, were emerging from their tent, Betsy whispering to an unseen child to go back to bed.

Pike twisted against Burger’s grip as he made for Tamsen a second time, his feet struggling for purchase in the sand. “I know you’ve witched him away, like you’ve done with the others!”

“Not this nonsense again,” Jacob muttered.

“God is punishing us for sheltering you in our midst.” Heaving against Burger, Pike managed to free his right arm. He fumbled for his pocket. “‘You shall not suffer a witch to live,’ that’s what it says in the Bible!”

He grabbed his small snub-nosed pistol and aimed it at Tamsen.

The next thing she knew, she had thudded to the ground, dirt in her mouth. I must be shot, she thought, though she felt no pain. Her husband stood over her. Slowly, it came to her: George had shoved her out of the way to face Pike, unarmed and in his nightshirt. A thrill of feeling alerted her to what was happening. She was under attack. Her husband had come to her defense without hesitation. All of his usual bluster seemed gone.

Tamsen had been attacked before, of course, but only ever verbally. Only with suspicious eyes and cold shoulders and harsh whispers. Nothing had ever gone this far, and she was shaken.

Pike’s gun was still drawn but apparently unfired, Pike confused and blinking at the sudden turn of events. But before anyone could speak, a shot rang out: Charlie Burger put a bullet in William Pike’s back.

A look of pure astonishment bloomed over Pike’s face as he dropped to his knees. A patch of red spread across his white shirt from where the bullet had come through his chest.

Tamsen gasped, scrambling to sit up. The girls were awake now and crying. “Stay inside!” she screamed as a couple of their faces appeared in the flap of the tent.

“What the devil?” Jacob roared at the same time, as both Donner men rushed to Pike, easing him to his back. The young man’s eyes were glassy, staring sightlessly up at the night sky.

Tamsen heard others rushing from their tents in answer to the gunshot. In another moment there would be crowds and angry shouting and more accusations. Meanwhile, William Pike scrabbled spastically with his right hand for the pocket of his trousers. What was he searching for so desperately—another gun? Did he mean to kill her even if it took his last breath?

Tamsen watched, frozen, as he reached into the pocket—and drew out a rosary. Wood beads on string, so well used that the varnish was worn off. So he had remained a Catholic in his heart, even in Lavinah’s strict Mormon household. He breathed a sigh of relief when Tamsen placed it in his palm and closed his fist around it. “I hope Lavinah will forgive me,” he gasped, bringing the rosary to his heart. Then he was still.

Tamsen sat back on her heels, faint. What had driven the man to come after her? Pike seemed the last man in the party to shoot someone in their sleep. She wiped the spittle from her cheek and looked up to see Mary Graves standing in the crowd, staring at her in astonishment.