The Hunger(77)

Mary still felt the burden of Charles Stanton’s confession on her own heart, too. She believed, powerfully, that she was in love with him, but this place seemed inhospitable to love, and she almost couldn’t bear the idea of telling him now. There would be another chance, later, she told herself. When they got to California. At least when the pass cleared and they made it over these peaks to the next ranch. It wasn’t that far. And love was like forgiveness—deep and patient. It would be waiting for her on the other side.



* * *



? ? ?

“WE’LL TRY TO FIND a pass through the mountains tomorrow,” Breen said now as they gathered around the fire. But he’d been saying the same thing night after night, and if this storm didn’t blow through soon, Mary didn’t know what they would do. Breen nodded in the direction of mountain peaks they’d been able to see just days ago, but which were now invisible. Mary thought he was delusional; the snow was coming down faster and heavier than she’d ever seen in Illinois. “Everyone try to get some sleep tonight.”

But in the morning, they found that one of the oxen had gone mad. At first, Mary thought its pained moaning was just the echo of snow dissolving into the lake.

The animals lowed like this every morning, bellowing their hunger, asking for grain that would never come. They were penned in a haphazard circle of the remaining wagons and had stripped all the grass to be found under the snow. Now, they had nothing left to eat. They bumped restlessly against the wagons, hoping for escape.

But then she saw it: There were gouges—open wounds—in the side of one of the beasts, as though it had been attacked by wolves in the night, yet somehow managed to live. Its eyes were bloodshot and a line of foam coated its lower lip. It lolled its big head menacingly as the men approached it, snorting and pawing the ground.

“Waste not, want not,” William Eddy said, and promptly shot it between the eyes.

“Damn it, Eddy,” Patrick Breen cursed. “That was my cow.”

The other cattle grumbled and shuffled away. Eleanor Eddy whimpered.

They harvested the meat and built up big fires, but Mary was one of many who hung back. She’d seen the way the beast’s eyes rolled in its sockets, heard its deranged bellowing. She knew stories of dogs and raccoons that could infect humans through a bite. True, she’d never heard of a cow getting sick that way, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. They still had rations enough; she refused to touch the animal’s flesh.

But many others—too many—were hungry. And the smell of the roasting beef that night drew them out, willing to set aside their caution for a taste of fresh meat.

There were no stories around the campfire, no laughter or songs or shared bottles of whiskey like in the early days on the trail. They’d run dry of all of that long ago. Now it was just the sound of ravenous eating, the smack of lips and teeth tearing flesh off bone.

All around them, the snow came so fast it blurred the world behind a veil, and swallowed the sound of the babies wailing in the cold.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE





Dawn broke pale gray and carried the taste of ash.

The sky was thick with clouds. Snow fell lightly; the storm wasn’t over yet. Sometime in the past hour, the accumulation had put out the bonfires. Thick black tails of smoke now lifted into the sky.

Stanton stamped feeling back into his feet and met the other men around the embers of the last fire, hoping the warmth would drive the numbness from his chest. Rumors reached him quickly; one of Patrick Breen’s boys, his namesake, had gone missing in the night. Patrick, his friend Dolan, and his oldest son, John, had set out to look for the younger Patrick at daybreak.

But midmorning, Patrick Breen and the other scouts returned. They had not found any trace of the boy, nothing but a slick of blood in the woods that seeped through the fresh snowfall.

Meanwhile, William Graves hadn’t woken since last night’s feast. “His forehead’s hot to the touch,” Elizabeth Graves, his mother, said through tightened lips. James Smith, a teamster who’d also partaken of the meal, sweated like he was in the tropics.

Thirteen-year-old Virginia Reed had run off, too, and no one could account for when she’d gone. They feared the worst.

And then there was teenaged Eleanor Graves: She took to dancing in the snow, claiming she was a fairy princess. Pink-cheeked, delirium in her eyes.

Stanton stood with others in the choppy snow outside the Graveses’ shelter, eyes downcast, no one knowing what to say to Franklin and Elizabeth, their family seemingly disproportionately afflicted, and so quickly. Inside the lean-to, Margaret Reed cried into Amanda McCutcheon’s arms for the loss of Virginia.

“It doesn’t make sense. How could William and Eleanor get ill so fast?” Elizabeth Graves murmured, her face blank with grief. “They were fine yesterday morning. Just fine.”

“What we’ve been through . . . it was bound to take its toll sooner or later,” Eliza Williams, the Reeds’ servant, said. She sat huddled on a stump next to her brother, Baylis.

“It’s just like when Luke Halloran got so bad so fast, don’t you remember?” Lavinah Murphy stood bundled with a shawl over her coat. She looked from face to face as though trying to convince them. “His fever spiked so high and he acted funny, like he had a brain fever.”