by Alma Katsu
“Can you blame him for wanting to make his wife happy?” Stanton asked. He wanted to think of George Donner as a friend, but he couldn’t. Not knowing of Donner’s connections.
And now, to make matters worse, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes off Donner’s wife. Tamsen Donner was a good twenty years younger than her husband and bewitchingly beautiful, possibly the most beautiful woman Stanton had ever met. She was like one of those porcelain dolls you saw in a dressmaker’s shop, modeling the latest French fashions in miniature. She had a cunning look in her eyes he found himself drawn to, and the tiniest waist, so small that a man could circle it with his two hands. Several times, he’d had to stop himself from thinking about how that waist would feel in his hands. It was a mystery to Stanton how George Donner had won a woman like that in the first place. He assumed Donner’s money had something to do with it.
“A group of us are heading out tomorrow,” Bryant said, more quietly. “Why don’t you join us? You’re your own man, no family to worry about. That way, you could get to . . . wherever you’re going that much quicker.”
Bryant was obviously fishing again, trying to learn the reason why Stanton was making the trip west. Most people were only too eager to talk about it. Bryant knew Stanton had owned a dry-goods business and a home back in Springfield, but Stanton hadn’t shared with him—hadn’t shared with anybody—why he’d decided to walk away from it all. His partner, the one with the business sense, had died unexpectedly, leaving Stanton to manage the store on his own. He had the head for that kind of thing but not the spirit for it—waiting on the endless stream of customers, haggling with the ones who didn’t like his prices, trying to stock the shelves with products that would appeal to the citizens of Springfield, neighbors he barely knew and certainly didn’t understand (exotic toilet waters? bright satin ribbon?). It had been a lonely time and was certainly one of the reasons he’d left Springfield.
But not the only reason.
Stanton decided to hedge. “What would I do with my wagon and oxen? I can’t just abandon them on the trail.”
“You wouldn’t need to. I’m sure you can find someone in the group to buy them. Or you can hire one of the drivers to see to your wagon and make sure it gets to California.”
“I don’t know,” Stanton said. Unlike Bryant, he didn’t mind traveling with families, the noise of the children, the high-pitched chatter of the women on the trail. But it was more than that.
“Give me time to think about it,” he said.
At that moment, a man on horseback came galloping up, his arrival announced by a swirl of dust. George Donner. One of his jobs was to get the wagon train started on its way in the morning. Normally, he went about it cheerfully, urging the families to pack their campsites and get their oxen hitched up so the great caravan could get under way again. But this morning his expression was dark.
Stanton hailed Donner briefly. It was time to go, then, at last. “I was just about to chain up—” he began, but Donner cut him off.
“We’re not moving just yet,” he said gravely. “There’s been a mishap up the line.”
A tremor of misgiving moved through Stanton, but he swallowed it back.
Bryant squinted up at him. “Should I fetch my medical kit?”
George Donner shifted in his saddle. “Not that kind of mishap. A young boy is missing. Wasn’t in his tent this morning when his parents went to wake him.”
Stanton felt immediately relieved. “Children have been known to wander—”
“When we’re on the move, yes. But not at night. The parents are remaining here to search for their son. Some of the others are staying to help them, too.”
“Are they looking for more volunteers?” Stanton asked.
Donner shook his head again. “They’ve got more than enough. Once they pull their wagons off the trail we’ll get the rest of the train moving. Keep your eyes peeled for any sign of the boy. God willing, he’ll turn up before too long.”
Donner rode off again and a finger of dust lifted behind him. If the child had wandered off in the dark, it was unlikely his parents would ever see him again. A young boy might be swallowed up in all this vastness, in the unrelenting space that stretched in all directions, in the horizons that yoked even the sun down to heel.
Stanton hesitated—maybe he should go after them. A little extra help wouldn’t hurt. He put a hand to his neck, considering mounting his horse. His fingers came away red. He was bleeding again.
CHAPTER TWO
The wagons stretched across the plain in front of Tamsen Donner for as far as she could see. Whoever had first thought to call the pioneers’ wagons “prairie schooners” was quite clever; the canopies did look like the sails of ships, blazing white under the brilliant morning sun. And the thick clouds of dust kicked up by wagon wheels could almost be mistaken for the swell of waves carrying their miniature ships across a desert sea.
Most of the pioneers walked rather than rode to spare the oxen the added weight, taking to the fields on either side of the trail to avoid the worst of the dust. The stock animals—dairy and beef cattle, goats and sheep—were kept on the grassland, too, herded along by switch-wielding boys and girls, the family dog keeping any stragglers in line.
Tamsen liked to walk. It gave her time to look for herbs and plants she needed for her remedies; yarrow for fever, willow bark for headache. She was keeping track of flora she found in a journal, tucking in snippets of the unfamiliar ones for study or experimentation.
Besides, walking gave the men an opportunity to admire her figure. What was the point of looking the way she did and having it go to waste?
And there was something else, too. When she was confined in a wagon all day she began to feel that clawing, discontented restlessness rise up inside her like a trapped animal, the way it used to back home. At least outside, the beast—the unhappiness—could roam and give her space to breathe and think.
That morning, however, she soon regretted her decision. Betsy Donner, who had married George’s younger brother, was barreling toward her. She didn’t dislike Betsy, exactly, but she certainly didn’t like her, either. Betsy was as unsophisticated as a fourteen-year-old girl, not at all like the friends Tamsen had known in Carolina before marrying George: the other schoolteachers, especially Isabel Topp; Isabel’s housemaid Hattie, who taught her which plants to use for healing; the minister’s wife, who could read Latin. Tamsen missed them all.
That was the biggest problem. They’d been on the trail for a month and a half and Tamsen was agitated. She’d imagined the farther they moved west, the freer she would feel—she hadn’t anticipated this trapped sensation. There’d been distractions for the first few weeks: The novelty of living out of a wagon and camping under the stars at night. Keeping the children engaged day after day on the endless trail, inventing games, turning games into lessons. It had started out as an adventure, but now all she could think about was how tiresome it had become, and how much they’d left behind.
How much she’d left behind.
How the dark nag of want only grew with distance, instead of subsiding.
Tamsen had been against the move west from the start. But George had made it clear that he would make all the decisions about the family’s livelihood. He’d come to her the owner of a large farming concern, hundreds of acres under cultivation and a herd of cattle. I was born to be prosperous. You leave it to me to manage our family business and you’ll never know want, he’d promised. His confidence was appealing; she’d been alone and tired of fending for herself after her first husband died of smallpox. She told herself that she’d come to love him in time. She had to.
It was the only way to blot out the wrongness in her heart, the brokenness.
And besides, whatever else she felt, she knew she could always trust Jory. Her brother had thought George was right for her; she’d been inclined to believe it. Had willed he
rself to.
Then George came to her with the idea to move to California. It’s the land of opportunity, he’d said after reading books written by settlers who’d made the journey. We’ll be rich beyond our wildest dreams. We can acquire thousands of acres there, far more than we’d ever be able to buy in Illinois. We’ll start our own empire and pass it on to our children. He talked his brother Jacob into going in with him on a huge spread. When she asked about the rumors she’d heard about trouble in California—weren’t there already Mexicans living there? They weren’t going to just hand over their land. And what about this talk of a coming war with Mexico, the way it had been in Texas?—he dismissed her questions. Americans are moving to California in droves, he’d argued. The government wouldn’t let them go there if it were dangerous. He had even pulled out his favorite book, The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California, written by Lansford Warren Hastings, a lawyer who had made the journey, to prove it. And though she’d still had many more questions, part of her wanted to feel the same hope he did . . . that maybe things would be better in California.
But so far she was just stuck on an endless journey surrounded only by the people she cared for least. Her husband’s family.
“Good morning, Betsy,” she said as her sister-in-law approached, forcing a smile. Women were always forced to smile. Tamsen had mastered it so well it sometimes frightened her.
“Good morning, Tamsen.” Betsy was a square woman, broad in the shoulders and hips with a doughy middle that a corset couldn’t control. “Did you hear the news? A boy farther up the line went missing.”
Tamsen was not surprised. The wagon train had already suffered misfortune after misfortune: signs, all of them, if you knew how to interpret them. Just last week, she opened a barrel of flour to find it infested with weevils. It had to be thrown out, of course, an expensive loss. The following night, a woman—Philippine Keseberg, young wife to one of the less savory men on the wagon train—had delivered stillborn. Tamsen grimaced, remembering how the darkness of the prairie seemed to enfold the woman’s wailing, trapping it in the air around them.
Then there were the wolves following them; one family lost its entire supply of dried meat to them, and the wolves had even carried off a squealing newborn calf.
And now, a boy was missing.
“The wolves,” Tamsen said. She hadn’t meant to connect the two incidents, but she couldn’t help it.
Betsy’s hand went to her mouth, one of her many affected habits. “But there were other children asleep in the tent,” she said. “Wouldn’t they have woken up . . . ?”
“Who knows?”
Betsy shook her head. “It might have been Indians, of course. I’ve heard stories of Indians taking white children after they’ve attacked settlements . . .”
“Goodness, Betsy, have you even seen an Indian these last twenty miles?”
“Then what happened to that boy?”
Tamsen just shook her head. Terrible things happened to children—and women—all the time, in their own homes, by people you knew, people you thought you could trust. If that wasn’t bad enough, here they were living in close quarters with hundreds of strangers. Odds were that at least one of them was guilty of terrible sin.
But she herself would not fall victim to tragedy, not if she could help it. She had means, limited though they were: charms, talismans, ways to persuade evil to pass by your door.
Unfortunately, however, these were not capable of easing the evil within.
Nearby, a man Tamsen recognized as Charles Stanton was herding cattle with a switch. Younger than George, Stanton had the look of a man who spent his days working hard in the field, not in a shop somewhere. He glanced up and caught Tamsen staring. She looked quickly away.
“The truth is apt to be far worse than we could imagine,” Tamsen said, somewhat enjoying the way Betsy looked at her in shock.
“Where are your girls this morning? I only see three,” Betsy said. Her voice was filled with sudden agitation.
Usually Tamsen had her daughters walk the first half of the day, hoping it would keep them fit and slender. Beauty could be a problem for a girl, but it was one of the few weapons a grown woman had, and she wanted them to preserve theirs if they could. The older girls, Elitha and Leanne, George’s daughters by his second wife, would watch after the younger ones: Frances, Georgia, and Eliza. Today, however, only the teenagers walked ahead, with Frances weaving around them like a frisky calf, full of energy and happy to have both girls’ attention to herself. Betsy’s seven boys and girls were a distance in front of them, heads down, trudging together as mindlessly as oxen.
“There’s nothing to worry about. Georgia and Eliza are in the wagon,” Tamsen said. “They woke with fevers this morning and were fussy. I thought it best to let them rest.”
“Just so, yes. Little ones tire out so easily.”
Sometimes Tamsen was amazed to think that she was a mother. It didn’t feel possible that she and George had been married long enough to produce three children together. Their babies were lovely, the spitting image of herself as a child, thank heavens. Elitha and Leanne, on the other hand, took after their father: big-boned and a little horse-faced.
But she didn’t regret motherhood. Maybe it was one of the only things she didn’t regret. She was proud of her girls, in fact: had placed honey on their tongues when they were babies, as the Indian servant in Tamsen’s childhood home had taught her, so they would grow up sweet; had braided ropes of balsam fir and tucked it in their blankets so they would grow up strong.
They would always have options; they’d never be yoked into marriage, as she had been not once, but twice.
But Tamsen had her way of getting even, as some might call it.
Stanton met Tamsen’s eyes again. Betsy had gone ahead to catch up with her children, and so this time Tamsen didn’t look away, not until he did.
She reached out and let her fingertips dance over the wildflower blossoms. For a moment, she thought of the yellow coneflowers that dotted her brother Jory’s vast wheat fields, untamable and abundant. She knew home was ahead of her and not behind, that she should banish memories of Jory’s farm—and all thoughts of her life before—from her mind, but she couldn’t just now.
The blossoms bent and swayed at her touch, so delicate they almost tickled.
CHAPTER THREE
Mary Graves knelt in the grass and set down her metal tub beside the river. It was a peaceable stretch of the North Platte, slow and gentle, but maybe that was because summer had taken a bite out of it already. The land had all the earmarks of a coming drought.
Doing the washing for the large Graves family was one of Mary’s many responsibilities. Twelve people—her mother and father, five sisters and three brothers, not to mention her older sister Sarah’s husband—meant a lot of dirty clothes and linens, and Mary preferred to do a little every night rather than let it pile up. It was one of the few times she could be by herself. Her entire day, it seemed, was spent in the company of her family: minding her younger siblings, preparing meals alongside her mother, sitting with her sister by the fire in the evenings to mend clothes. From the minute she rose in the morning until she took to her bedroll, she was surrounded by a clutter of other people, assailed by voices and needs, stories and complaints. Sometimes it made her feel as if she were constantly standing in the middle of a hard wind, blown in every direction. Even from this distance the sound of raucous laughter and shouting carried to her from the encampment.
Normally she escaped just for the sheer pleasure of standing in silence, listening to nothing but the soft rustling of tall weeds in the breeze. Tonight, however, the reminder of the wagon line nearby didn’t bother her so much. The missing boy had left everyone spooked, even her. Poor Willem Nystrom. His family was part of the original wagon party and because there was little mixing with the newcomers, Mary had only ever seen him from a distance. Bu
t he seemed like a sweet boy, always playing and laughing, six years old and hair so blond it was almost white. Her brothers Jonathan and Franklin Junior were right around that age, and her heart jumped up in her throat at the thought of one of them simply vanishing from the middle of the camp. It was like one of those old fairy tales, of children suddenly whisked away into a netherworld, taken by angry spirits.
She took comfort in the campfires visible in the distance. The men were driving the cattle out to the taller grass to graze for the evening, hobbling horses so they wouldn’t wander off. They inspected axles and wheels for signs of wear and checked over the harnesses so all would be ready for the next day’s march. Children were returning to camp with armloads of firewood and kindling. She’d left her little brothers drawing the figure of a wheel in the dirt for a game of Fox and Geese. As much as possible, everyone was keeping to routine.
Mary had just started scrubbing the first item of clothing—her brother William’s shirt, stiff with dried sweat—when she saw two young women, Harriet Pike and Elitha Donner, coming toward her through the high grass, carrying washtubs. With a sense of relief that surprised her, Mary waved to them.
“Good evening, Mary,” Harriet said stiffly. She and Harriet were close in age but barely knew each other. Mary thought Harriet acted far older than her twenty years, which she attributed to the fact that Harriet was already married with children. It was strange to see her with Elitha Donner, who was not only seven or eight years her junior but, most people said, acted even younger.