The Hunger Read online

  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.

  “Savages,” Keseberg said. “What am I always saying? They’re all savages.”

  Reed had no love for the Indians, per se, but he hated Keseberg and his ignorance more.

  Still, at the moment he was most bothered by the corpses, more than he could say. It didn’t make any sense. He had heard how the Indians cared for their dead during the Black Hawk War from one of the scouts.

  “Something must have happened,” he said. Under the blazing sun, the blackened faces appeared to grin horribly. “I never heard of a tribe burning bodies like this.”

  “Maybe they were sick,” Franklin Graves said. “Had some kind of disease and didn’t want it to spread.”

  Disease. The word lingered in the air like a hiss. The group stared at the scaffolds in silence. He knew they were all thinking of Luke Halloran. Had he gotten some kind of disease—the same one that might have struck these two Indians?

  “What are these?” It wasn’t until Mary Graves spoke up that anyone realized she had arrived behind them. Elitha Donner, too. Reed had heard she was plucky. Reed thought, however, there might have been something wrong with her; he sometimes saw her walking by herself, murmuring, seeming to argue with the air.

  Franklin Graves’s face darkened with anger. “Go on,” he told his daughter. “Get back. This is no sight for a woman.”

  But she sidestepped him when he looked as if he might grab her. Reed had to credit her: The girl had spirit.

  “There are carvings here,” she said, and brought her hand to the bark of a nearby tree. There were squares within squares, slashes that looked like lightning bolts. Stick figures of men but with strange, heavy heads. “Perhaps there’s a story here as well.”

  “It isn’t a story.” Thomas, the boy from Fort Bridger, spoke up. Reed had almost forgotten him. He was always hiding under one of George Donner’s wagons in the evenings, and who knew where he got to during the day. He’d been no help at all during the desert crossing; Reed had half expected that he would run off, as he had done with Bryant.

  “These are charms against bad spirits.” Thomas spoke as though he were surrendering each word against his will. “Protection from the hungry ones.”

  “For the dead?” Breen moved a hand almost unconsciously to his rifle. “Hell, why do the dead need protection?”

  Reed thought back to what Hastings had said when they’d found him cowering in the wagon. Something’s out there eating every living thing.

  “So is it spirits that been clearing out all the game from the woods, is that the idea?” Snyder asked. Thomas looked away. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

  To Reed’s shock, it was Elitha Donner who answered. “They don’t just eat animals,” she said, in a soft singsong. Her eyes were clear and blue and troubled. “They eat men.”

  Reed felt a current of unease travel across his skin. “You’ve been filling her head with tall tales,” he said to Thomas.

  “He’s trying to help us,” Elitha barked back, spinning away from Reed. “He’s been trying to help us all along but you won’t listen to him.”

  Snyder leaned over Elitha, sneering at her. “You don’t understand, girl—he’s not one of us. He ain’t trying to help you, he’s just trying to get under your skirts.”

  “They burned the bodies so the hungry ones wouldn’t get them.”
Thomas’s voice was even, but he was obviously struggling to maintain control. He pointed to the basin opening before them and to the mountain in the distance. “We’ve entered the place where the evil spirits live.” He tapped the trunk of one of the trees, pointing to the symbols carved into the bark, then gestured to the bodies. “You may not want to believe me, but the proof is right before your eyes.”

  “Proof?” Patrick Breen rolled his eyes. “I don’t see no proof, just a lot of ignorant heathen nonsense. I trust in the Lord—you hear that, boy, the Lord—to guide and protect me.”

  At that, the young man stepped back from the crowd, arms raised in surrender. He shook his head slowly as he backed away, a sad smile creeping across his face. “Then the Lord must be mightily displeased with you, because he has led you into the valley of death. Make peace with your Lord before it is too late, because the hungry ones are coming for you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Tamsen felt herself changing, hardening. They’d left the great white desert only to descend into an endless sagebrush plain of the Great Basin. The sun had eaten away at her beauty, ruined her skin and her hair, melted away her graceful curves, leaving her bony and sinewy. Beauty had been her armor. Without it, she’d grown afraid.

  Why hadn’t she gotten George to take some of the Nystrom boy’s hair, the boy killed at the beginning of their journey? That would’ve made powerful talismans to protect her children, but she’d been afraid of anyone finding out. She worked secretly because even George didn’t like her dabbling in what he called “heathen practices.” Now there was nothing she could do to help her children, and she was taken aback by her own dread for their well-being. She’d never thought of herself as maternal, exactly, but maybe she’d been wrong.

  Perhaps she’d been wrong about everything.

  * * *

  • • •

  LATE SEPTEMBER AND the mountains were closer still, white-fleeced and rutted with shadows. But down on the plains, it was hot. She was more grateful than usual that evening as they made camp. She had walked the entire day to spare the oxen and couldn’t wait to take off her boots, though she dreaded it, too, because the first moments of relief were always followed by an ache so deep she might never stand again.

  Tamsen felt ill as she sat down on a rock and took a bit of willow bark powder to ease her pain. She knew she wouldn’t eat her dinner tonight. Over the past few weeks, she had taken to skipping meals whenever possible so there was more for the children. The two families were top-heavy with men. Nearly as many teamsters as family members, plus Betsy’s teenaged sons from her previous marriage. Men had big appetites and Tamsen was afraid the girls would be edged out. It was easier, in a way, to put her girls first. Sometimes she thought her own hunger was too much, that if she were to eat a full meal again it would kill her. The wanting of it was so bad it erased her completely—she no longer knew herself.

  Sometimes she forgot to respond to her own name.

  And then there was Keseberg. She was doing her best to avoid him after he did a strange thing shortly before Stanton left. He had found her in a rare moment alone, one of the few times she was away from the wagon, where George now spent most of his days, as well as from all of her children. “I know you want him gone,” he’d hissed at her, speaking not of Stanton at all but of her own husband. Somehow he had been able to tell she was tired of the tedious discontent of her marriage. “And I can make it so we’re both happy.”

  She had recoiled from him—his reeking breath, his leering smile, and worst of all, the look of knowing in his eyes. “You don’t know me,” she’d replied, as calmly as possible. “You don’t know what I want. If you did, you’d know that I don’t want you.”

  It was enough to send him slinking away, muttering, “This ain’t the end of it,” over his shoulder. It seemed she’d made another enemy without meaning to.

  She’d been racked with nerves to find her pistol missing the next day, and further confused when Stanton accused her of conspiring against him. It was only later that she figured it out: Keseberg had meant to kill Stanton and pin his death on her, as some sort of petty vindication for her dismissal.

  She had been disappointed, yet relieved, to have Stanton gone for a time. He had insinuated, even briefly, that she had made Lewis Keseberg her latest lover, which was outrageous on many counts. Keseberg revolted her, for one thing—physically, morally, in every way imaginable. But what sickened her nearly as much was the readiness with which Stanton had leapt to the conclusion. It only proved to her that Stanton couldn’t and never would understand her at all.

  No, none of these men could, and it was a fact Tamsen was coming to grasp more clearly by the day; even as hunger ravaged her from within, it seemed to carve out space for her to see things plainly.

  She took more of the willow bark, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath, listening to the evening routine: Samuel Shoemaker and Walt Herron unhitching the oxen and driving them to the riverbank; George and Jacob setting up the tents; Betsy getting ready to make dinner. Through it all floated her daughters’ high-pitched voices. Frances, Georgia, Eliza, Leanne—she ticked off the names in her head as she heard them speak.

  She opened her eyes. Where was Elitha? She jumped up, nearly crying out at the pain in her feet, and rushed over to where the girls were playing beside the cookfire and Betsy was starting to set up the tripod. As always, they’d set up at a distance from the rest of the wagon train, far away enough to pretend the others didn’t exist, close enough for safety. The four girls were playing cat’s cradle with a bit of string, but there was no Elitha.

  “Where’s your sister? Why isn’t she with you?” Tamsen demanded. She hated the worry that had wormed into her heart.

  Their innocent little faces tightened suddenly. “She went to look for something,” Leanne said, cowering in anticipation of her mother’s wrath.

  “You’re coming with me. We’re going together to look for Elitha, do you hear me? Hurry along now.” They had to come with her, there was no alternative. She didn’t trust anyone to keep them safe, not even Betsy. No one else understood that evil was only an arm’s length away, waiting to swoop down on them, whether animal or spirit—or man.

  They swept through the camp. Anyone she asked about Elitha only shrugged or gave her a blank look. They wanted nothing to do with her and, besides, were anxious to put the long dusty day behind them.

  Keseberg: She saw him from a distance, swaggering like he always did, and leering at her with a look of narrow dislike. A sudden certainty coiled in the bottom of her stomach: Keseberg knew where Elitha was. Hadn’t she caught him staring in her daughter’s direction on other occasions? And he wanted to hurt Tamsen, he’d made that clear.

  “Go back to the wagons,” she told her children. “Quick, now.”

  “I thought we weren’t to leave your side,” said Leanne.

  “Don’t backtalk me. Just do it.” She had to push Leanne in the direction of the wagon, but still she merely ducked away under the Breens’ baseboard, hanging back with her three sisters.

  Keseberg loped casually toward her, hitching up his belt, smiling with long, gray teeth. He had a colorful shawl yoked around his shoulders. She had never seen it before, but dimly it registered some association.

  “Mrs. Donner.” Keseberg tipped his hat. The name sounded like an insult in his mouth. “What a surprise.”

  “I’m looking for my daughter Elitha,” she said.

  “The girl done run off, did she?” Keseberg barely turned his head to spit. “Can’t help you, I’m afraid. I ain’t seen her. And believe me”—he turned to grin at her again—“I been lookin’.”

  A black revulsion moved through her, like a serpent uncoiling deep in her blood. Then she realized where she had seen the shawl before. “You stole that,” she said. “You stole it from an Indian grave.”

  He only shrugged. “So what? I
take what I want—just like you. You act like we’re different, Tamsen. But we’re exactly the same. We are two of a kind, you and me.”

  Without warning, he grabbed her wrists and pulled her to him. Her daughter Leanne shouted and started to run to her. But she yelled at her to stay back.

  She had put out of her mind how disgusting he was, but it was impossible to ignore up close. He smelled rancid, as though he never bathed or washed his clothes. The skin under his scraggly beard was inflamed and scabby, his teeth gray from neglect. He might have been thin but he was strong and used his height to his advantage. “You’re not thinking, Tamsen. A man like me could be useful. You have enemies. You need someone to be your friend.”

  “Is that why you went after Charles Stanton? You wanted to make it look like I killed him to punish me?” She tried to push away from him. “Let go of me.”

  “It don’t pay to refuse me. It’s better to be my friend. Besides, I know what you did with Stanton.” Keseberg spat the words at her. “I heard what you did in Springfield, too, all those men you been with, so don’t pretend that you don’t like it.”

  He had to be talking about Dr. Williams. Jeffrey. She thought the story hadn’t gotten out, that George had managed to keep it contained. She’d been lonely and Jeffrey Williams, though he was more than twice her age, was intelligent and far more cultured than George. But, like Charles Stanton, Jeffrey Williams had been a mistake. She had been looking for comfort but all she found in these men was a temporary distraction. It wasn’t the kind of thing a man like Keseberg would understand, however.