by Barbara Wood
Five days later they reached a mountain lake, beyond which lay the pass through the Sierras. They tried to cross but snow thwarted their efforts, forcing them to retreat to the shore of the lake, where there was level ground, timber, and the prospect of game. Here they built makeshift shelters constructed from tents, quilts, buffalo robes, and brush. One hundred fifty nine people huddled in the crude dwellings, hoping that the early snow would melt and they would be able to cross the pass. While they waited and prayed, they made an accounting of all that they had, and found they still had a few wagons with cattle and horses, and some provisions: beans, flour, coffee, and sugar. It was decided that everything would be pooled, including the Benbows’ chickens and Sean Flaherty’s potatoes, and distributed equally among the families.
That night, when Albertina Hopkins protested that the unmarried girls, her eyes going pointedly to Emmeline Fitzsimmons, should all sleep in a separate shelter, her husband quietly said, “Shut up, woman,” and she did.
Matthew was unable to sleep. A chill wind cut through the cracks and crevices of the tent, making it impossible to get comfortable. But something else kept him wakeful as well: the nagging presentiment that had followed him in the ten weeks since leaving Ft. Bridger, that something was terribly wrong.
Stepping over sleeping bodies, he shook Amos Tice awake and demanded in a harsh whisper to see him outside where, by good fortune, a clear sky and bright moon illuminated the snowy landscape. In unaccustomed assertiveness Matthew insisted he be allowed a look at Tice’s map, saying that this was not the easy trail Tice had promised.
The wagon master grumbled but produced the map, which he secretly hoped Matthew could not read well in the moonlight. But as the paper snapped in his hands, and his own icy breath clouded his vision, Matthew could see well enough. And what he saw was something he had not noticed back at Ft. Bridger: that this was an amateurishly drawn map and not to scale.
“Where did you get this, Amos?” he asked suspiciously.
Tice didn’t meet his eyes. “Got it at Ft. Bridger.”
“You mean where that old mountain man was telling everybody to ignore rumors about a shortcut? You saw this map and you believed it? Why, it’s fake, Amos! Anyone can see that!”
Something flared in Tice’s eyes, a glint of power in a weary face. He laughed in a way that alarmed Matthew, and said, “Guess it don’t matter now.” He reached inside his fringed buckskin jacket and brought out a thick, tattered paper that, unfolded, turned out to be a poster announcing the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Sawmill.
Matthew stared in shock. “You should have asked the rest of us if we’re interested in gold!”
But Tice only laughed again and returned to the shelter. The next morning, the wagon master and five other men were gone.
The emigrants had been abandoned.
They broke camp, loaded the remaining wagons, and slogged on, determined to crest the mountains. But they encountered more snow and suffered more unsuccessful attempts to cross the Sierras. The weather was getting colder with heavy clouds hanging low over the ponderosa pines. The emigrants’ clothes were cold and damp as they shivered in their bones, panic and despair were barely held in check, and everyone prayed that the weather would hold.
When a surprise downpour drenched the party, some said the rain was a good sign, but Matthew was reminded of something he heard Jim Bridger say back at the fort: “Rain in a Sierra valley means snow at the pass.”
For the first time in his life, Matthew felt genuine fear. He had dealt with the dead many times in his young life, both in his father’s mortuary and at his mother’s séances, but he had never had to face his own mortality before. And it terrified him. He recalled how brave he had felt, sitting atop his wagon as they had left Independence, Missouri, an exodus of courageous people off to conquer the wilderness. But he saw now, through freshly bleak eyes, that there had been no real bravery among them for they had all regarded the trek as a lark, a merry adventure with picnics along the way.
No one had anticipated this.
As they made a new camp with makeshift shelters, their spirits low, the emigrants prayed that the rain would beat down the drifts, but they awakened the next morning to see the snow even deeper.
The mountain ahead was daunting but they knew they must press on. The oxen were weak from a diet of pine branches, and yet more wagons had to be abandoned. They piled what they could onto the remaining oxen and carried the rest themselves, with even the children shouldering small burdens.
The snow was now three feet deep.
They tried to press on but the last mountain peak rose before them like a white wall. Dispirited and exhausted, the weary band could go no farther. So they retreated to a small lake where, during another snowstorm, they again constructed shelters out of wood from the wagons, canvas tops, even adding quilts and buffalo hides to keep out the cold. They lit fires within and were quickly overcome by smoke and fumes, requiring them to scramble outside, coughing and gasping, to cut ventilation holes in the hides, which also let the cold in. Hunting was poor here. Matthew managed to snare a coyote, and the stringy animal was devoured along with an owl boiled down to a broth that was given only to the young and the ill. Hunting for deer proved futile as the deer had gone to lower elevations. Beans and flour were stretched out and apportioned in meager mouthfuls. The last of the Benbows’ chickens were eaten, and Sean Flaherty’s potatoes were all gone. Despite this, they still elected to say grace before each meager meal.
At seven thousand feet above sea level, they struggled to kindle fires and keep them going. The weaker members were having difficulty breathing at this altitude. And the poor newly wedded Hopkins girl, five months pregnant, suffered a miscarriage that nearly cost her her life. The fetus was given a Christian burial and Albertina Hopkins, lighter now by many pounds since Independence, and more quietly spoken, grimly nursed her stepdaughter.
After seven straight days of snowfall, the sun came out and the heartened emigrants voted to send a party on to the pass in the hopes they would make it across and down to Sutter’s Mill, from where rescue relief could be sent. The eight strongest men were chosen, but when Matthew Lively volunteered to go, everyone agreed that the “doc” should stay with the women and the sick. The party was dressed in the warmest clothing and given packs of dried beef. Everyone tried to give them a cheerful send-off.
They were back at sundown. There was no advancing, they said. The snowstorms had blocked all paths.
Someone reckoned it was around the fifth of December when the emigrants began to slaughter their remaining cattle, but many animals had wandered off in the storms to get buried in the snow. And the men had such little success hunting that a new, chilling thought began to infiltrate the emigrants’ minds: if they were stranded here for the winter, there would not be enough food to go around.
Charlie Benbow’s wife Florine was found frozen in her sleep. As the ground was too hard to dig a grave, she was wrapped in a shroud and laid between two planks and then covered with stones.
Another escape attempt was made, this time with women in the party, but they were again driven back by a snowstorm. They sat huddled in their flimsy shelters, frozen and bitten, trying to draw warmth from fires that were growing smaller as dried wood became harder to find. Bibles that had been used for spiritual comfort were now put on the fire for physical comfort, as was anything that couldn’t be worn or eaten. They watched in bleak despair as Psalms, the Song of Solomon, the Gospels and the letters of Paul went up in smoke. The children were given the thickest blankets and slept with the few remaining dogs for warmth. Fresh snowfall during the night buried their cache of meat and it took a day of searching with long poles to find the beef. The next morning, the cached meat was gone altogether, wolf tracks leading away.
In an unaccustomed fit of heroic inspiration, brought on mostly by hunger, Silas Winslow decided to strike off for the summit on his own, determined to bring rescuers to the camp. He was found two days l
ater, still alive but snowblind. When they carried him back, they wrapped his eyes in calico to prevent further damage to them. His spirits were high enough for him to quip that he hoped the loss of sight was temporary because of what use was a blind photographer?
Emmeline did her best to try and keep the company cheered. She led them in songs and stories, and asked each to talk about their plans for Oregon. The first evenings were successful, but as the cold deepened and everyone shivered with teeth chattering despite the fire and blankets, they grew less inclined to talk.
Matthew’s fears heightened, along with everyone else’s, for there was an unspoken horror hanging in the air. The landscape—including boulders, pine trees and the little lake—was now completely white. There was not a bird, a fish, a pine nut to be found. When the supplies ran out, other things were going to have to be eaten.
And when even those—the remaining dogs, the Schumanns’ apple seeds, boiled leather—had been consumed, something else was going to have to be found.
Matthew clutched the blue crystal in his mittened hand night and day as he stared into the hollow eyes of his companions. Starvation was drawing closer. They were all suffering from frostbite. When Daisy, the last dog still alive, was slaughtered for food, Sean Flaherty dashed out of the shelter in a paroxysm of grief and tried to hang himself from a tree. But the frozen branch broke and the men were able to bring him back inside.
The Blessing Stone held no answers, no matter how hard Matthew gazed into it. He felt none of the spirit power it was supposed to possess, he heard no answers whispered on ghostly breath.
More people began to suffer from fever and pneumonia. Two young men, Freddy Hastings and Abe Waterford, with mothers back home anxiously awaiting letters from Oregon, plunged to watery deaths when they tried to cut a hole in the lake ice for fishing. The others were too weak to haul them out and so they were left there for the spring thaw. When the Schumann brothers managed to catch mice, which they scorched on hot coals, there was an obscene fight for the food—bones, tails, and all. Nonetheless, Osgood Aahrens managed to lead the gathering in grace before they forced down the repulsive meal.
Finally there was no food left. They boiled leather and ate the residual glue that formed at the bottom of the pot. They baked leather shoelaces among the embers and ate the crisp strings. For the first time, they did not say grace.
They grew weaker. They dreamed of food. One man, mad with hunger, ran out of the sodden tent and was found hours later, dead in the snow. They left him there, to be covered by drifts. Charlie Benbow began to hold conversations with his dead wife, Florine.
Matthew and Emmeline slept entwined in each other’s arms. They entertained no thoughts of romance or physical intimacy, but simply drew warmth and touch and love from each other.
The dawn of Christmas Day brought a new blizzard. The wind cut through the tents like swords and howled like pain-racked phantoms. The glassy-eyed occupants of the frail shelters had difficulty getting and keeping fires lit. They ransacked their possessions, searching for anything edible. They tossed away gold and money, for these no longer held value or meaning. They had now gone for two weeks without any food whatsoever, subsisting only on melted ice that they drank in sips.
Rebecca O’Ross, not a strong woman to begin with, was the first adult to die of starvation. Her husband Tim was so beside himself with grief that he had to be dragged off her grave by four men, for fear he would freeze to death there. His son, Dickie, curled up in a corner of the shelter and wept until he was silent, glassy-eyed, and staring.
When, a week later, one of the Schumann brothers died of pneumonia, there was, for the first time, hesitancy among the survivors over his burial. The words weren’t spoke, and people could not meet each other’s eyes, but the terrible, unspoken thought hung over them all the same, as loud as the howling wind that never let up its ceaseless torment.
Here, in the person of Helmut Schumann, lay fresh meat.
“My God, no!” cried Matthew when the full meaning of their silence struck him. “We are not animals.”
“But we are,” Mr. Hopkins said softly, sadly. “Humans, perhaps, and God’s children. But animals all the same, and we need to eat.” His wife, Albertina, was sobbing with her face in her hands. One would not recognize the skeletal creature in the loose-fitting dress as the same domineering woman who had departed Independence eight months prior. But her two children were dead, her spirit broken.
“And what will I eat?” cried Manfred Schumann. “I cannot eat my own brother!”
Another silence filled with meaning answered him: Helmut was only the first, more were sure to follow.
Matthew ran outside, stumbling in the snow, tears freezing on his cheeks. He fell to his knees and wept with great heaving sobs. When Emmeline joined him, he drew her into his arms. Despite the layers of clothing, her coat made from a blanket, he felt the skin and bones beneath. She was no longer a robust young woman. But there was still life in her eyes as they searched his face with anguish and compassion, and life in her lips as they sought his and kissed his mouth.
“We cannot do it,” he sobbed into her neck. “We cannot reduce ourselves to that!”
“Have we a choice? Should we let ourselves die? Matthew, we are trapped here. And we shall be here until the spring. There is no food. There is no—” Then she too broke down weeping, and they held each other in the snow, rocking back and forth, their wails of despair rising up to the frigid, indifferent sky.
Finally, taking control of herself, Emmeline drew Matthew to his feet and said, “They need a leader. They need someone to hold them together in body and spirit. They respect you.”
“I am not a leader. You’re the brave one, Emmeline. You have been from the start, back in Independence when you were determined to make this journey on your own.”
She looked at him with hunted eyes. “I am not brave, Matthew. Not any longer. I am frightened out of my wits. All that courage—it was all talk because it was so easy. But now that I am faced with the necessity for real bravery, I find that I have none.” She said, “You are lucky, you have the Blessing Stone to guide you. I have only myself and I am a very weak guide indeed.”
He took the crystal out of his pocket and tried to see the Guiding Spirit his mother had always seen in it. Suddenly, all hope and pretense of belief in the stone gave way to hunger and despair. “It’s a fake! A humbug!” he cried, and he flung the stone with a mighty throw.
“No!” said Emmeline, for though she herself did not believe in the crystal’s magic, she knew that Mathew still did. She stumbled through the snow after it, frantically searching for the crystal.
“Wait,” Matthew said, going after her.
When they found it, and Emmeline was bending to pick it up, Matthew saw something in the snow. He frowned. He squinted and bent low. He rubbed his eyes and blinked. There was no mistake: they were bear tracks.
“What is it?” Emmeline said when she saw the look on his face.
Matthew drew up straight and looked around. The landscape was blinding white and nearly featureless. He watched for movement.
Then he wrinkled his nose. “Do you smell that?”
She sniffed the air. “What an awful stink!”
“I think I know what it is.” He took off through the deep snow and Emmeline followed.
They came to a small pile of bear scat. It was still steaming, which meant it was fresh—the bear was nearby.
“We have to tell the others!” Emmeline said. “We can kill it! We’ll have food—”
“No! A group of people will scare the beast off and then we might never find it. If I can sneak up on it with a gun…”
“Matthew, you’re no huntsman.”
But he knew that this was something he had to do, alone, and quickly. His heart pounding with fear, he dashed into one of the shelters and quietly grabbed Charlie Benbow’s gun. He wouldn’t tell the others, who were too listless and lethargic anyway to notice or care that he was taking t
he rifle. It would be too cruel a thing to get their hopes up. He told Emmeline to wait for him inside, in the warmth. And to pray.
Matthew knew it was folly for a man to face a bear alone with only a muzzle-loading gun, but reason was not part of his thinking right now. He cocked his rifle and tucked the only other rifle ball into his mitten for quick reloading. Then he followed the bear tracks with great difficulty, for the snow was blinding and his sight grew blurred. Each intake of breath stabbed his lungs, and he no longer had sensation in his feet. He stopped every so often to listen; but the snow-white forest was silent.
He grew desperate. He had to find the animal! He had to stop the others from going through with the unthinkable act they were contemplating. Matthew had been raised to respect the dead. Desecration was an abomination. The dead couldn’t defend themselves; it was up to the living to protect them.
But the people back at the camp were barely living now; they were walking corpses themselves.
Suddenly he froze. There it was, about a hundred yards ahead, an enormous grizzly bear digging in the snow. Matthew moved slowly forward, then he crouched behind a tree, cocked his rifle, took careful aim and fired.
The bear gave out a roar and reared up on its hind legs. Seeing Matthew, it charged. Matthew hurriedly poured powder into the gun and rammed the second lead ball home. He leveled the rifle and fired again. The bear bellowed and staggered. Then it fell to all fours and ran away. “Wait,” Matthew said weakly, not believing that he had been so close and was now going to lose it. “Please!” He began to weep. All that food. He could have saved everyone. But his aim had been poor. He had failed.
Then he saw the bloody trail in the snow.
He ran back to the camp as fast as he could, stumbling and falling in the snow. He found several men gathered around the corpse of Helmut Schumann, Mr. Benbow holding a butcher knife. The women were crouched around the fire, sobbing. “Stop!” Matthew cried.