by Alma Katsu
Then we have James Reed, the owner of a large furniture business in Springfield. Physically, he is the opposite of George Donner: shorter and slight with a narrow, drawn face. He frequently worries at his hands with his handkerchief, which cannot help but make me think of Lady Macbeth (Out, out, damned spot). But, disagreeable and argumentative as he can be, he seems a model citizen, as he himself never misses the opportunity to point out. He is married to an older woman, a widow with a number of children by her late husband. Those from Springfield say that the marriage was the salvation of Margaret Reed, who is thin and sickly and honestly could be taken for Reed’s mother. The Reed party resembles nothing so much as a traveling circus, with their three large wagons loaded up with fancy furniture (his company’s handiwork, one imagines) and all manner of creature comforts. There are servants, including a young woman to do the cooking and wash, and even ponies for the children.
I’ve saved my favorite new acquaintance from the Springfield contingent for last. Charles Stanton, a bachelor traveling alone in his own Conestoga wagon, is unlike most all the other single men in the party—either hired hands or near-penniless drifters—and I think for this reason we quickly became friends. We were both raised by ministers (though unlike my county preacher father, his grandfather is a prominent Anglican minister, so famous that even I’ve heard of him) and bear similar scars to prove it. I was flattered when he told me that he’d read the articles I wrote for the Washington Globe on that revivalist fraud Uriah Putney.
For a quiet man he has lived a life of extreme color: He was born in Massachusetts and apprenticed to a lawyer in Virginia before running off to fight under General Sam Houston in the battle of San Jacinto. Seeing that he fought in the war for Texas independence even though he has no ties to that territory, he might be either a romantic or idealist. From what I saw of him, I’d say he’s a little of both—which means he’s doomed to an unhappy life, I’m afraid. He has hinted at some terrible event that drove him from Massachusetts but refuses to speak of it. He isn’t sure what he would do once he reaches California, another sign of the restless spirit that keeps him on the move.
A strange mix of souls and, despite the sometimes politicking and intrigues, I will be reluctant to leave them all when I separate from the wagon train tomorrow morning. I decided to commit to that scheme I wrote to you about, joining a small party of men without families on mule and horseback to make better time. I could not convince Stanton to leave with me and I suspect it’s because he feels he can be helpful to the larger party, which can be fractious. I am in some ways relieved—at least they’ll have one sensible man in the group—and in other ways anxious to leave the group before they have successfully decided on a leader.
Fort Laramie is an honest-to-goodness frontier fort, just as the newspapers describe them. You get the sense of being at the very edge of civilization, that beyond the fort’s adobe walls is a land nearly untouched by the white man, where nature reigns. I’ve been told that this year alone, several thousand wagons rolled through this checkpoint, and by all estimates that number will soar next year, barring war with Mexico or hostilities with the Indians. The fort shows all the signs of prosperity: In addition to the small garrison stationed here, there is a good-sized trading post, blacksmith’s shop, livery stable, and a bakery. There are several two-story houses inside the adobe walls, presumably for the fort’s owners, families, and staff.
Even though this wagon party is among the last of the season, on our arrival the fort was bustling. A knot of trappers unloaded their packhorses in front of the trading post, the men dirty and unkempt in their old buckskins and coonskin caps. Children ran through the street, shrieking with laughter. A half-dozen Indians mounted on fantastically colorful Appaloosa and paint horses rode slowly through the dusty streets, men dressed in Western garb accented with the feathers and beads of their people lounged in the sun outside the stables.
Unsurprisingly, word spread quickly of a bar at the trading post. But I was most interested in a hot meal. I am already so tired of my own cooking. I had barely settled at one of the scarred tables in the dining hall with a tin plate awash with runny stew when I noticed a man dressed like a trapper or mountain man in the characteristic well-worn buckskins, his hair long and white and his wrinkled face as tanned as leather. His name was Lionel Farnsworth. Unlike everyone else, he was headed east, not west. What’s more, he was traveling alone, a dangerous proposition in such sparsely populated territory. He told me he’d already journeyed once to Oregon and twice to California and knew the trails better than nearly anyone.
Farnsworth’s opinion of the Hastings Cutoff—the route Donner plans to lead the party through—was quite dismal. In Farnsworth’s opinion, the terrain was too rough for wagons and inhospitable to livestock. Donner happened to be with me and he was not pleased to hear that Farnsworth thought the route a waste of time. He proceeded to try to persuade Farnsworth of the error of his thinking, explaining that Hastings himself was going to meet them at Fort Bridger and had promised to guide them all the way to California, but the old man was not swayed. He told Donner in no uncertain terms they should keep to the old route. But he would have had better luck trying to talk a teapot into singing an aria.
In fact, when Farnsworth found out that I planned to take the same route (albeit without wagons and a much smaller party) he tried to talk me out of it, too. After much prodding, it came out that the harsh terrain wasn’t the only, or even the main, reason for his hatred of the route. He admitted that he’d seen one other group of Indians, the Anawai, in his travels near Truckee Lake, but he warned me not to meet with them. When I told him I’d never heard of the Anawai, he said that wasn’t surprising as the tribe was small and thought to be quite isolated. He claimed that they were particularly savage, and in fact engaged in a terrible tradition, which he had seen with his own eyes: human sacrifice.
I was stunned. Human sacrifice is extremely rare among the plains tribes. Ancient cultures to the south, the Mayans and Aztecs, are known to have practiced ritual human sacrifice, but from what I’ve read it’s virtually unheard of north of the Rio Grande. I asked him to describe what he’d witnessed exactly. For obvious reasons, I assumed he had simply misinterpreted what he’d seen.
He told me he’d seen about a dozen Anawai warriors take one of their braves into the woods. The brave fought to get away, but they held him tight. They took him far from their camp and tied him to a tree, binding him hand and foot, and then left him to his fate even though he had screamed out after them. Farnsworth thought that he had been begging them to let him go.
A profoundly disturbing scene, no doubt. I could understand why Farnsworth had been spooked. Still, it didn’t sound like a sacrifice ritual to me. From my readings on the topic, I knew that those chosen to be sacrificed often consider it an honor and go willingly to the altar.
I told Farnsworth that what he’d seen sounded more like punishment. It was extremely likely this brave had done something to get himself banished from the tribe. But Farnsworth insisted that that was not the case. He claimed to know why they did it, too: The Anawai were afraid of “the demon that lives out by Truckee Lake” and were making a sacrifice so that it would leave the rest of them alone.
Farnsworth knew nothing more about the folklore but had heard stories this past year of Indians disappearing from villages not far from where the Anawai lived, usually the sick and the old and children, plucked from their beds or gone out for firewood or berries, never to return. Of course such folktales recur in almost every culture, but I was strangely moved, perhaps because of the poor Nystrom boy—he, too, plucked from his bed, never to return.
Farnsworth had been reluctant to tell me his story, afraid I’d think he was insane. He only relented after I assured him that I did want to know, that this was the very reason I was headed into Indian Territory, to investigate their strange and mythic beliefs and try to correlate them to some observable reality. He co
uld tell that I was set on heading to Truckee Lake, but he begged me to convince Donner and the others not to go that way, too.
I fear, however, that I have had little sway over Donner thus far, and will not in this. As for myself, I can only admit that Farnsworth’s warnings have had the opposite of their intended effect. I can think of nothing now but of the chance to meet this singular tribe and of his tale of the spirit—the demon—of Truckee Lake.
That and of you, my dear. And so I will end my letter here, before you rethink your rash decision to marry such a garrulous old windbag. I sometimes doubt my good fortune, that a woman such as you—so intelligent and wise and beautiful—could have agreed to marry this strange, stubborn fool. For as much as I love you and miss you and wish to be with you, I also know that, now that I have heard about this rumored beast of Truckee Lake, I will not rest until I go there and find out what is going on to my satisfaction. No doubt you are not pleased to read of my intention, but you know this story will plague me to the end of my days if I do not attempt to resolve it. Do not worry for me, my dear Margie, and know that I intend to return to you as soon as it is possible.
Your loving Edwin
JULY 1846
CHAPTER SIX
Good-bye, good-bye.
The words still rang in Stanton’s ears even though the rest of the wagon party, those bound for Oregon, had rolled away hours earlier, leaving the smaller group on the banks of the Little Sandy River. The wagons, over a hundred total, had raised a choking cloud of dust as they departed. Had Stanton imagined how eager they were to leave? Eager to put bad luck and the memory of the butchered Nystrom boy behind them? Eager to separate themselves from the fractious Donner party, as the California-bound group had come to be known? They’d said good-bye to Edwin Bryant and the small party of men who had elected to go with him a few days earlier, back at Fort Laramie, and already, Stanton missed his only friend.
Clouds floated in the sky, fluffy as cotton still on the stalk and so low that you would swear you could reach up and touch them. The plain stretched to the horizon, great patches of green and gold, and Little Sandy snaking through it. A gentle river, and, true to its name, not wide at all. It was hard to imagine anything bad happening here.
The rest of the wagon train was getting ready to have a feast, a kind of communal picnic. It had been Donner’s suggestion—of course—to celebrate the last leg of their trip. He’d plumped their egos good, told them their bravery in electing to take the Hastings Cutoff would be rewarded. They were intrepid pioneers, about to blaze a new trail through the wilderness; their names would go down in history. Stanton suspected the picnic was nothing more than a distraction to keep the others from questioning the decision. There was a rumor circulating up and down the line of aggressive wolves troubling the Indian populations in the territory ahead. The source was a prospector of questionable reliability, but given that there were still no answers in the Nystrom boy’s death, the story had everyone on edge.
“Shouldn’t we head straight out, like the main party?” Stanton had asked Donner when he’d heard about the plans for a picnic.
“It’s the Sabbath, a day of rest,” Donner had said, in a patronizing tone. “God will take care of us.”
“We can reach Fort Bridger inside a week if we push,” Stanton said. “We can’t count that we won’t be delayed down the road.”
“The teamsters say we need to rest the oxen,” William Eddy said, giving him a one-eyed squint. Stanton knew it for a lie. They’d barely covered six miles yesterday.
“You know what your trouble is, Stanton? You’re too cautious.” Lewis Keseberg was smirking, too, fingering his belt. One hand a couple of inches away from his revolver.
Eddy had laughed. “Cautious like an old schoolmarm.” He wouldn’t normally laugh at him, Stanton knew, but with Bryant gone, and Donner self-appointed captain, the power was shifting. Eddy and Keseberg, part of a pack of men Donner had made a point of befriending, were now acting like Donner’s unofficial deputies. And Stanton wasn’t one for taking on men who were looking for a fight, especially when the odds were so uneven.
Now, Luke Halloran’s fiddle started up in the distance. To Stanton it sounded plaintive, like a child’s voice calling out in need. It all seemed wrong: separating from the larger part of the wagon train, heading down this unknown trail, stopping for a picnic as if this were a church event when they should be moving as quickly as possible.
And of course, even though it was long-since buried by now, he still couldn’t shake the nauseating image of the dead boy’s mangled body, flesh picked down to bone, from his mind. It made the idea of a picnic feast all the more grotesque.
But still he forced himself across the encampment. He dreaded seeing Tamsen and wanted to see her, too; from a distance she seemed even more beautiful to him now, but also frightening, like a newly sharpened knife. In the darkness she softened beneath his fingers; she came to him like a kind of smoke that clung to your hair, your clothes, the inside of your lungs. Two nights ago he’d asked her if she was a witch, to have bewitched him so, but she only laughed.
Backboards set on trunks covered with gingham cloth made impromptu tables. Families dipped into their larders to make pies and carved up extra ham. Later, there would be dancing, storytelling. He accepted a bowl of Lavinah Murphy’s chicken stew—he didn’t think he could stomach any ham, he was so sick of it—and used bits of biscuit to sop up the gravy.
“You eat like you haven’t had a meal in a week,” Lavinah Murphy teased him. The Mormon widow was leading her brood—which included married daughters and sons-in-law all the way down to her own children as young as eight—west in search of a new homestead among those of her faith. “But perhaps you haven’t, with no woman to cook for you. Aren’t you tired of being a bachelor, Mr. Stanton?”
“I haven’t had much of a chance to find the right woman,” he said, forcing himself to swallow his impatience. There was no other way to win friends—and he had no hope of standing up to Donner if he could get no one on his side.
His answer only made the women laugh. “I find that hard to believe, Mr. Stanton.” It was Peggy Breen, a hand shielding her eyes against the sun. Doris Wolfinger stood behind her, like a pretty duckling shadowing its mother. Peggy was a big woman, sturdy as a draft horse, who had given birth to a half-dozen sons. Doris, on the other hand, was barely out of her teenage years, spoke almost no English, and smiled uncomprehendingly whenever someone spoke to her. He had to wonder what she was really thinking.
“You know what they say about men who remain single too long, Mr. Stanton,” Peggy Breen said, mischief in her eyes. “They start acting strangely.”
“Are you saying I’m unsociable, Mrs. Breen?” he asked, mock offended. “And here I thought I was being right friendly.”
“I’m saying you’re in danger of becoming one of those sour old bachelors,” Breen said, as the other women laughed. “It’s better to be neighborly, don’t you think? To get along?” Stanton thought he detected a certain shift in Peggy Breen’s tone: not an observation, but a warning.
Lavinah Murphy jumped back in, seemingly oblivious to the point Breen was trying to make. “I’ve been married three times. Where’s the fun in being alone, I always say? Better to have someone to share the journey with you. Peggy’s right, Mr. Stanton. It would be a shame to waste a man as fine as you.”
More laughter. He even caught Doris Wolfinger eyeing him shyly.
“I don’t imagine many women would put up with a man like me,” he said, to make the women laugh, although he knew, deep down, that it was true. He didn’t deserve a good woman, not after what he’d done, or rather failed to do.
“I would bet there are women—even in our little caravan—who think otherwise, Mr. Stanton, and would prove it to you, if you gave them half a chance,” Lavinah Murphy said. “Spent less time off by yourself and more time with the rest of us.”
> He didn’t like the subtle implications in her words, in the way Lavinah squinted at him, appeared to study him beneath long lashes. The women had their own kind of power, he knew. All it would take was one accusation and they would be at him. It was the same as it had been before. No one had doubted what Lydia’s father had said about him back home, even though he was the grandson of one of the most prominent ministers on the East Coast. It had happened over a dozen years ago, yet it still made his heart seize with a kind of panic.
“I try to steer clear of women I can never have.” He stood up, all too aware of how hypocritical the words were and was just grateful Tamsen wasn’t there to hear them.
“Then perhaps you’ll find a sweetheart on the trail,” Lavinah Murphy said. “The good Lord wants us all paired up.”
“Soon all the best girls will be taken,” one of the younger women chimed in. Sarah Fosdick. She was only recently married herself, and obviously a little drunk. “You’ll be left with an old sow.” She laughed.
“You’ll have to forgive my sister, Mr. Stanton,” a voice behind him said. “I think she’s had a touch too much spirits.”