The Hunger

by Alma Katsu

  Snyder turned back to him and Reed thought he had a knowing sort of look in his eye. Reed’s blood ran cold. Had anyone else seen Snyder’s face?

  But the others carried on; no one had seen. No one could know. “That’s right. George Donner’s captain, not you,” Keseberg said.

  “I’m only speaking common sense,” Reed insisted. This was important. Despite his discomfort, he would try one more time to make them listen. “Fort Laramie was the last outpost before California. From here out there are no more general stores, no grain depots, no settlers willing to sell a sack of cornmeal. Whoever lost their whiskey to these boys”—Reed pointed a finger at the pair, still flat on their backs in the dirt—“will wish they had been more careful a couple weeks down the road when there’s not a drop to be had.”

  The crowd quieted. Reed sensed a small victory.

  “Friends,” he continued, “by all accounts, the easy part of the journey is behind us. At Fort Laramie I spoke to men who have been down this cutoff. They say that the road ahead is more daunting than anything we’ve imagined. I urge you to take this time to make some difficult choices.” They were hushed now, waiting restlessly for him to speak. Even Snyder was watching him, his eyes nearly golden in the sun. “Many of us are burdened with possessions, hauling things from home that we thought we couldn’t bear to part with. I urge you to shed them now. Leave them here in this meadow, otherwise you will kill your oxen on the mountains ahead.”

  The crowd was silent. He saw too late that he’d overplayed his hand, even though they knew—they must know—that he spoke the truth. For miles, they’d been passing the possessions of other pioneers abandoned trailside. Furniture, trunks of clothing, children’s toys, even a piano sitting in an open field as though waiting for someone to step up and play a tune on it. He had watched young Doris Wolfinger, the German girl, finger the stiff white keys wistfully, and the sight had brought a deep ache into his chest, one he couldn’t quite name.

  But like many truths, no one wanted to hear it.

  “Look who’s talking,” Keseberg said. “You and that special wagon you got. Takes four oxen to pull it and that’s over even terrain.”

  “You sure don’t practice what you preach, do you?” Snyder asked, almost casually, picking over his filthy fingernails, not even looking at Reed. Still, Reed couldn’t help but notice how large and powerful Snyder’s hands were. Couldn’t help but wonder how they might feel tightened around Reed’s own throat. “We don’t need some hypocrite to tell us how to behave.”

  Before Reed could speak, George Donner came through the crowd, leading his horse by the reins.

  “We’re burning daylight, neighbors. Let’s get on with our business, chain up and move out. I want those wagons rolling in a quarter of an hour.”

  The crowd dispersed as Donner swung into the saddle. He looked pleased with himself, Reed thought. He supposed he should be grateful to Donner for his intercession but he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but resentment, even as the dark thoughts of John Snyder—that hard-looking jaw, those powerful, terrifying hands—began to subside.

  As the crowd broke up, Reed spotted his wife, Margaret. She was wrapped in a woven shawl, long tassels made of embroidery thread lifted by the breeze. Seeing her unexpectedly like this, he was struck by how old she looked.

  She turned away, but not so quickly that he missed the look on her face. It was pity—or maybe disgust. Reed hurried through the crowd to catch up to her, seizing her by the elbow. “What is it, Margaret? Do you have something to say to me?”

  She just shook her head and continued hobbling toward their campsite, moving slowly, as though in great pain. She seemed to be suffering more than she had in Springfield, if that was possible, as though her health was worsening. He was fairly sure, however, that she was doing this for show, to make him feel guilty.

  “Go on, Margaret. Tell me what’s bothering you now. Get it off your chest, whatever it is I’ve done to disappoint you so.”

  She trembled, and it hit him how hard she was trying to control her emotions. Her anger. Reed remembered what Margaret had been like when they were first married. A widow, she was experienced in marriage and understood the roles of husband and wife, their separate domains. She had struck him as dignified, diligent, and orderly. She always let him make the decisions in the family, always supported him in front of the children, servants, and the neighbors.

  “I don’t understand you, James. Why must you seek out these arguments with our neighbors?”

  “I didn’t go looking for an argument. Those boys came crawling out from under the wagon—they practically vomited all over my boots—”

  “Why do you do it?” She cut him off, clearly exasperated. “Act so superior, make everyone think you’re so much better? You make me a laughingstock in front of—” She stopped abruptly, squeezing her eyes shut tightly. “For the life of me, I don’t understand. Why you insisted we leave Springfield in the first place, sell a good business, a beautiful home?” She caught her breath. It was as if she were drowning in midair. “If I had known this, James, I don’t know that I would’ve married you—”

  “Don’t say that, Margaret,” he said mechanically. His wife didn’t even look up from the ground. Neither held any illusions about their union; they hadn’t married for love. Theirs was a common marriage of convenience, in many ways like brother and sister rather than man and wife. But how many of the people out here could say differently?

  “And what about the children? Did you even give a thought to what this is doing to them, taking them away from their friends, their neighbors, all the people they’ve ever known? You told me when you proposed that you would take care of us.”

  “And I am. That’s what the point of all of this is.” The kerchief was out and he was scrubbing again; he hadn’t even realized what he was doing. He shoved it back in his pocket.

  The truth, however, was more complicated.

  The truth was that he hadn’t done everything in his power to protect her and the children. He had made mistakes.

  One mistake in particular.

  His wife had met Edward McGee once, when she had paid an unexpected visit to see Reed at the warehouse one day. He’d thought then that she’d heard rumors and had come downtown to see for herself. But she had never spoken a word about it to Reed, had never voiced a single suspicion. She had even shaken hands with Edward. Reed could see it still, that strange, half-mocking smile on Edward’s lips as he took Margaret’s hand in his.

  But that was done. He had to put the past behind him. He had to put his fears and his guilt behind him. Had to push the idea of that teamster Snyder’s hands around his throat—or around his wrists—out of his head for good. He had to do better. Though it was irrational, impossible, some small part of him believed it was his own sin that caused the Nystrom boy to be killed—that attracted the devil to their camp in the first place.

  But no. He had to keep his head about him. Everything would be different once they reached California. Reed squinted up at the sky. The sun was inching higher. Soon they would be off again.

  He pulled out the list of inventory and began recounting everything. But no matter how many times he did, the truth kept coming back up. There just wasn’t enough.

  Something would have to be done.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Indian Territory

  Dear Charles,

  I write this letter lost in the wilderness beyond Fort Bridger—perhaps from the Wasatch Mountains? I am not sure—and with no idea whether you will ever see this. After the ordeals of the past few weeks, all I know is that I must make a record of what I’ve learned. If this letter finds you, Charles, do not try to follow me. What I do, I do in the interest of science and the truth.

  Right as I was leaving Fort Laramie I hired a guide, a young Paiute seventeen years of age, named Thomas. He was converted by missionaries (w
ho gave him his Christian name) six years ago, and has been living among whites ever since. He told me that he knew of the Washoe living near Truckee Lake that I am seeking and that, because there had been a Washoe orphan living with the missionaries who’d raised him, he could communicate with them. He had heard of the Anawai, too, though he didn’t seem to like to talk about them.

  You can imagine how delighted I was to secure a guide who knew the area and this tribe, and even spoke their language. Not five days out of Fort Laramie, Thomas got his first test as our small band came across a Paiute hunting party. The braves were friendly and shared a meal with us that evening around a campfire. They answered my questions about the Anawai. In fact, my interest made them quite animated. They tried to convince me not to meet with them, claiming this particular group was exceptionally dangerous.

  As best I could tell from Thomas’s interpretation, the Anawai had turned away from their traditional gods and now worshipped a wolf spirit indigenous to the valley in which they lived. The Paiute claimed that the Anawai could suddenly turn quite ferocious and be filled with an unquenchable bloodlust. They ascribed all sorts of atrocities to the group, but from here the story became difficult to follow and exceeded Thomas’s ability to translate.

  The fact that this strange information seemed oddly similar to Farnsworth’s story of human sacrifice made me all the more determined to press on. The rest of the group, unsurprisingly, was reluctant to proceed. You know these fellows—Newell, Anderson, the Manning brothers—big, strong men whom you’d never accuse of cowardice. I managed to convince them to continue on to Fort Bridger with me, pointing out that the wagon train would pass through there and they could always rejoin your group at that time.

  After I’d calmed the others, Thomas took me aside. I could tell that he was spooked as well. He told me that he wanted to turn back. I reminded him that I was paying him for his service and that it was an all-or-nothing deal; if he wanted to see one penny from me he would need to stay until the end. He wasn’t happy, as you can imagine, and said that given the danger he wanted to be given a gun. But he’d been so skittish, I wasn’t convinced he could be trusted not to fire off at any old target—myself included. Besides, I confess I had heard too many stories of Indian guides turning on their employers, even if Thomas appeared to be a good kid, and so I refused. I pointed out that he was surrounded by men with firearms and that we’d see to his safety. Still, he was skittish until we reached Fort Bridger.

  I was never so happy to see a broken-down little hole-in-the-wall like Fort Bridger in my life. As you will see, it is nothing like Fort Laramie. Jim Bridger, one of the owners, candidly told me that their fortunes had suffered when the Greenwood Cutoff became popular last year. Now, wagons bound for Oregon bypassed his fort completely. The outpost is like a ghost town.

  I learned just how desperate things were the next evening as we sat around a bottle of rotgut in Bridger’s office. In a moment of drunkenness, he told us of an incident that happened six years earlier, of a group of prospectors who became lost while traveling through the area now known as the Hastings Cutoff. Some said they had starved, others said they’d been massacred by the unpredictable Anawai. Bridger had gotten to know the prospectors when they’d passed through the fort and so he set out to find them. The situation seemed hopeless; the territory was vast and their resources too few. They were just about to give up when one of the prospectors stumbled into the search party’s camp. Unfortunately, the poor soul had lost his mind after living like an animal in the woods and was unable to tell anyone what had happened to the others.

  The story sat uneasily with me. It reminded me of an aside Lewis Keseberg had shared with me, that his own uncle had disappeared in this same territory a number of years back.

  I was forming a bad opinion of Bridger, in any case. His prices are outrageous, his stock poor quality (mealy flour, rotten meat, watered alcohol). The garrison was redeployed to the busier Fort Hall months ago, so Bridger and his partner, Luis Vasquez, are on their own. They are desperate men, I think.

  Between the experience with the Paiute hunting party and Bridger’s stories, I left the next morning uneasily, taking only Thomas with me. We quickly learned that the way is very bad. Bridger told me that Lansford Hastings had indeed been at the fort, but he left to escort a wagon party through the cutoff. They were about a week ahead of us, so we tried to follow signs of their passage, but the way was thick with forest and undergrowth. We occasionally stumbled across an old Indian trail only to find that it ended abruptly at a canyon or edge of a cliff. It was difficult going on horseback and would be nearly impossible with a wagon. It is imperative that you stop the wagon party from taking this route. You will find only hardship and disaster here.

  It took a week, but Thomas and I managed to get through the mountains. We had lost all signs of Hastings’s wagon party and spent every minute on edge, hoping to see signs that they’d been by or to hear a human voice—anything to know we were not alone. But the deeper we plunged into the forest, the more isolated we felt. Paradoxically, I had the strangest and strongest impression of being watched.

  At this point, Thomas was jumpier than a cat and I began to worry for the boy’s mental state. When I pressed him about it the last night we sat together by the campfire, he confessed that when he’d translated for the Paiute, he hadn’t told me the entire story. The Paiute had warned us to stay away from the Anawai tribe at Truckee Lake, that much was true, but there was a reason for their violence. The Anawai were kidnapping outsiders to sacrifice them to this wolf spirit.

  Thomas told me that he was sorry he hadn’t told me earlier, but he had been afraid I would insist on going to see for myself and we would end up being killed. Thomas plainly thought me crazy and impossible to reason with. He was so upset that I began to feel bad for having put him in this position. He is only a seventeen-year-old boy, frightened for his life.

  I was just about to dig into my pouch for his wages and release him from his contract when we heard a noise in the brush. We both snapped around. I reached for my rifle and Thomas pulled one of the burning branches from the fire.

  The brush crackled all around. Thomas held the branch overhead like a torch. There was a loud snap right in front of us, the sound of weight coming down on a branch and breaking it right in two. I raised my rifle squarely in that direction.

  “Show yourself!” I shouted into the void.

  Footsteps rushed toward me in the dark. I was about to fire but at that same moment, Thomas turned on his heel and ran into the forest. He was unarmed (he had even thrown the torch to the ground in a panic) and so I felt I had to go after him to protect him. I followed the sound of Thomas crashing through the woods ahead of me, and all the while heard someone following behind me. Within minutes I lost Thomas in the inky darkness. But the noise behind me was getting louder and closer and finally, out of self-preservation, I turned around and fired blindly into the blackness. The flash from my rifle illuminated something in the trees, and I fired again. This time I heard a yelp of pain, distinctly animal, and—my eyes having adjusted to the darkness—I saw the glimmer of yellow eyes and teeth, and then whatever they were, they were gone. I focused every bit of my attention on sound, trying to tell if they were circling around to attack me from another angle, but all the noises died away suddenly.

  There was no trace of them—or of Thomas, either. He did not make his way back to the campfire that night. I do not know what has happened to him.

  You know what a stubborn cuss I am, Charles, and so will not be surprised to learn that I am continuing to Truckee Lake. I’ve come too far to turn back now. You may think what I’m doing is rash and dangerous, and of course, it is. But I have been in similar situations in the past and survived. I go to search for Thomas but also to search for truths.

  God bless you and Godspeed, your friend, Edwin

  CHAPTER NINE

  It had to be the driest, hotte
st part of the summer when the wagon train at last rolled through South Pass into the area just north of Fort Bridger. The land was harsher than Stanton had expected. The green pastures abruptly gave way to burnt browns, the grass brittle and dirt like powder, and the Big Sandy River so dried up that it was hardly wider than a creek. The livestock nosed the sparse grass disinterestedly. The party would have to move quickly through this area and hope there were better pastures nearby. They couldn’t survive for long in conditions like these. But the plain stretched flat before them for what seemed like a hundred miles: a tortured place.

  Stanton’s muscles strained. Sweat gathered at his brow and ran down his back. His head hammered with feverish exhaustion. The past few nights, he had volunteered to stand watch over the livestock. It was his way of making sure he wouldn’t be in his tent if Tamsen came looking for him. A temporary solution—he would have to confront her eventually—and one that left him blindly fatigued during the day. Still, facing the temptation of her, and the consequences of her wrath, seemed worse.

  He was still reeling from the events of three nights ago, when Donner had confessed to Stanton that he knew Tamsen was up to something. It wouldn’t be the first time, he’d admitted; Tamsen was a fragile woman, and certain past “occurrences” were part of the reason for the move west. Her latest affair had been on the verge of going public, a scandal that would’ve made a laughingstock of him—and her. As they staggered home, Donner so drunk that he had to lean on Stanton for support, he swore that he would kill whoever Tamsen was seeing this time. Stanton was surprised by the ferocity with which Donner seemed to defend his wife, despite it all. Though he generally seemed like a harmless enough man, Stanton had no doubt Donner would do what he said.