The Hunger(76)

A hand came down on her arm and she nearly screamed.

But it was just Jacob. He had given his heavy coat to George, piled it on top of his brother’s blankets, though it did nothing to stop the shivering. Now he wore only a filthy shirt. The cold had turned his nose red already.

“What are you doing?” He shook his head, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “It’s as bright as daylight out here. Go on,” he said, to Solomon and William. “Go get some sleep.”

She saw that the boys were pale with cold and exhaustion. She had lost track of how long they’d been outside.

“There’s something out there,” she said, once they were alone. “Something watching us. You can hear it.”

They both stood still, listening. Sure enough, within minutes, a murmuring rose above the lowing of the oxen.

“Do you hear it?” she whispered.

When Jacob nodded, she nearly wept. She had almost begun to wonder whether she was going crazy.

“It sounds human,” Jacob whispered. “Perhaps some of the others, looking for us?”

Tamsen shook her head. “No.”

They stood together in silence, and after a minute they saw dark figures moving between the trees, caught behind the haze of smoke from the fires. They appeared and then vanished, then reappeared again. Circling, pacing, stalking.

“There,” she whispered.

Jacob was quiet. “Those are mere shadows cast by the flames, Tamsen,” he said gently. “And the whispers—it could just be the wind. Or our minds playing tricks on us.” But she heard the tremor of doubt in his voice, saw the way he shivered, listening hard.

“Maybe. Or maybe something’s been following us. Ever since the basin,” she said, emphasizing the last word only slightly.

Jacob turned to her. “Tamsen,” he said quietly, placing his big hands on her shoulders. He looked into her eyes. “What is this really about?”

She wanted to cry, or scream, or tear at her brother-in-law’s face. How dare he keep questioning her?

“We’re isolated from the rest of the party,” she reminded him, “and I bet they—the creatures, the monsters—they know we have an injured man in the tent.” She paused, even as the truth she’d already known sank in deeper, thudding into her gut. Her voice dropped to a hard whisper. “We’re going to die. After everything—after everything. We made it this far. And now they’re going to get us.” She was shaking so hard she thought she’d fall.

“There’s no such thing as monsters.” But Jacob lifted his rifle to his shoulder. His eyes watered from the dense wood smoke, but he didn’t falter. “Go wake the men. We’re going to bring the oxen in, to be on the safe side.” So some part of him did believe her. “Tell them to bring their rifles.”

“The oxen aren’t worth dying over, Jacob. Let them have the cattle.” Maybe they’ll be satisfied, she nearly added, but then stopped herself.

“With no oxen, we can’t get the wagons out of here even when the snow recedes.” Jacob didn’t look at her. He didn’t take his eyes off the figures moving behind the scrim of smoke. He had to see them, too. See how their forms moved with an animal hunger. Shadows didn’t move that way. “If we lose the oxen, we’ll be trapped.”

She knew she didn’t have to remind him.

They already were trapped.





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO





Mary gazed around her at the snow-covered cabin and the makeshift lean-tos nearby, which stood like crumbling sugar cubes, and thought how quaint they looked, almost inviting, if one didn’t know better. Instead they were a kind of purgatory.

It was William Eddy who’d spotted the abandoned cabin first, nearly a week ago now, and it had indeed seemed like a vision under the pine trees: a log cabin in the middle of nowhere, undoubtedly built by an earlier family of settlers that had tried to make its way through the mountain wilderness.

The first flakes of snow were already falling by then. The children, tired as they were, ran around trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues.

Except for the Donners, the wagon party had maneuvered successfully into the hollow, past the inky black lake scattered everywhere with boulders. The place was dark and still as a mausoleum.

“We rest here for the night,” Patrick Breen had said then, though that had been days ago. They had left the Donners behind, and already Patrick Breen had taken on the role of captain.

The Eddys had dragged their meager possessions into Breen’s dwelling, but Breen had pushed them out. “I got more children; we should get the roof,” he’d argued.

Meanwhile, the Murphys had claimed a second cabin. Its roof had fallen in and weather had beaten its walls to a state of collapse, but they propped it up as best they could to keep the weather out. It shared no clean line of sight to the Breens, which was fitting; a feud had broken out between the two families and they hadn’t spoken a word to each other in a week.

The rest had found shelter where they could. The Graveses had joined the Eddys in a tent pitched under a large pine and invited Margaret Reed and her little ones to join them. As for Charles Stanton, he kept to himself in a tiny tent on the outskirts of the area, with a view of the lake’s dark surface.

They sheltered their fires from the snow as much as possible, building them up near the cabin and the lean-to, then gathered to try to warm their hands. And since then, the snow had just kept on coming. Everyone was growing restless, and worried.