Donners of the Dead

Chapter Nine

I tried to kick again at the ugly, demonic face but it was no use. My boot was jerked off, ice cold nails dragging along my foot. I shut my eyes and prepared for the slaughter.

A loud blast ricocheted through the forest, vibrating through my bones. The hands let go of my foot and I lifted my head to see a gaping red hole taking over the top half of the creature’s head, brains visible through the bone and muck.

I quickly twisted around to see Trouble thundering toward me with Jake astride him, rifle pointing right at the creature’s mangled face and passing through a puff of grey gunpowder that was hanging in the air. Jake vaulted off his horse and expertly reloaded his gun as he ran toward me.

I gazed up at him, for a moment thinking he meant to shoot me dead too. But he just placed the muzzle of the rifle into the mouth of the creature and pulled the trigger. With a giant explosion that crackled through the trees and made my ears ring fuzzy, the creature’s head came right off, scattering onto the snow like mutilated rose petals.

Jake holstered his rifle down his back and looked at me. He was breathing hard and his eyes were slightly wild, but he looked in complete control, dressed up like he was going for a long ride. He put his hand out for me to help me up, but as soon as he saw my shoulder he quickly dropped to his knees.

“Are you okay, did he get you?” he asked gruffly, his hand hovering above the wound as if he wasn’t sure it was okay to touch me or not.

I shivered away from his fingers and could only nod. I was afraid if I said anything, I’d cry instead. I couldn’t process anything that had happened and my brain felt like a lightning storm. On top of that, I was feeling ashamed that I’d run from him and scared because he’d found me.

“We’ll get you back to the cabin,” he said, lifting me up under my good arm. “Though you should be fine. I reckon he didn’t get you bad, though had I not shown up, you’d probably be missing your foot right now.”

He brought me over to Trouble, his grip on my arm firm but gentle. Before I could try to get on the horse, he picked me up and propped me on the saddle as if I weighed nothing more than a feather. Then he swung his leg up and around until he was pressed right against my back, his arms around my sides, his mouth at my ear.

“I’ve got you safe but we’re going to have to go fast for a bit, just to get out of here. I don’t want to see if he has any buddies hanging around.”

He clucked Trouble into a smooth gallop, the horse all too eager to leave the carnage behind. The movement rocked my body back against his. I closed my eyes, taking small pleasure in feeling safe.

“What happened to Avery?” he asked in a low voice, his breath tickling me.

I could only shake my head.

“Fair enough. Come on, I found Sadie further up the path and hitched her to a tree.”

I turned my head, nearly meeting his lips dead on. “Is Donna okay?”

His mouth ticked up. “She’s still on the horse, if that’s what you mean. You sure tied her tight. Knocked her right out, too. You musta given her something much stronger than you gave me.”

My eyes widened frightfully. “It was Avery.”

He gave me a subtle nod. “I reckoned it was. I guess he didn’t give enough of the funny stuff for my height and weight. Tim was still out last I checked.”

“He doesn’t know?”

“That you and Avery took Donna and some gold and hightailed it out of there? No, he doesn’t.”

“Are you going to tell him?” I asked weakly.

“Don’t see why I should,” he said. “Though I’ll have to tell him what Avery did. I’ll leave you out of it, no worries there, Pine Nut.”

We came around a bend and I could hear Sadie whinny. She was tied up to a low branch, Donna still lying across her shoulders. I held my breath, wondering if she was still alive, and then exhaled noisily when I saw her back rise and fall. In hindsight, my desire to take her with us was nothing but foolish. I wondered how much of it was to ease the guilt that kept eating away at me.

Back at the cabin, Tim was still asleep and snoring away. I was so tired and relieved to be alive that I was delirious. I tried to change Donna’s bandages but Jake insisted he fix me up first, calling me his number one priority. My shoulder wound ached, and though I passed on having the opium, I did swallow a few burning shots of moonshine to ease the pain. Luckily—if I even had luck anymore—the bite wound was fairly shallow.

“Do you think I’ll have rabies?” I panicked at the sudden thought.

“Hard to say,” he said grimly. He had cut through the cloth around the wound and taped the last strip of muslin gauze on top of it. “There we go. All done. Sorry I ruined your dress.”

I let out a dry laugh. My dress was already covered in dirt, blood, and who knows what. The rare moment of lightness only lasted a moment though before the fear was back to plague me. “What if I’m infected?”

“You know, I’m not too sure if that’s what’s going on here,” Jake said, his fingers gently tracing the edge of the gauze, making sure it was flat. My skin danced in response, a reaction that still surprised me. “This seems much more than a case of rabies. This is far, far worse, I reckon. This is a danger unlike any I’ve ever seen. And believe me darlin’, I’ve seen a world of horror.”

I was too afraid to ask if I’d be okay from the bite. It seemed lately all I’d known was fear.

My eyes went to his face, the firmness of his jaw, the little scar that caused a slash through the dark hair on his chin. “If it’s so dangerous, why did you come after us?” I whispered. “To get your gold?”

“No,” he murmured. “To get you.” He gently ran his hand down my arm and then met my eyes. “You’re worth much more than gold.”

I stared at him, lost in the coffee brown depths of his eyes, clamoring onto the words that just came from his lips. I could have stared at him forever. It pushed my reality behind me in a haze.

But he cleared his throat and gave me a sad smile. “You need to rest, Pine Nut. I’ll take care of Donna here. You just get some shut-eye. In the morning we can head back to River Bend. Find Avery. And leave this mad world behind.”

I didn’t fall asleep feeling invincible, but there was a tiny ember of hope burning somewhere deep inside.

“Well, well, well, lookee here. A right Injun Sleeping Beauty.”

My eyes snapped open to see Hank standing right above me. He looked unharmed but dirtier and a bit more crazed in the eyes.

“Give her some room,” Jake said, appearing at Hank’s side and pushing him away from me.

I snapped upright, bringing the animal fur blanket to my chin. Hank and Isaac were peering down at me with disdain while Tim was standing over Donna and sipping from a steaming cup.

“What time is it?” I asked. I felt like I’d been sleeping all morning.

“Time to answer a few questions,” Tim said, his voice hard. “Mainly, what the heck happened?”

I quickly glanced at Jake. His eyes were imploring me to lie, to tell him that Avery forced me to leave. With only him on my side it seemed I had no choice.

But as Jake once said, I always had a choice.

“Avery wanted to go, get out of here and get back to River Bend. Back to safety. I suggested we take a gold bar each as payment that was owed to us.”

Jake let out a small groan of disappointment. I went on, ignoring him, “I couldn’t leave without Donna though, so we brought her along too. Not too far in I got separated from him. Those same monsters we saw yesterday, they were back, but different ones this time. If it wasn’t for Jake finding me, I’d be dead.”

Tim glared at Jake. “How courteous of him. I suppose you never found Avery and I suppose Avery has the gold.”

I nodded. “We only took three—one for me, for him, and Donna. That was it. We only took it because it was fair.”

“That’s horseshit!” Hank yelled, spittle flying out of his mouth. “You’re an untrustworthy little tramp. We almost got ourselves killed out there trying to find these beasts and meanwhile you’re trying to rob us blind. That gold is my gold.”

“Actually,” Isaac said from his position against the door, “that’s my family’s gold. But I feel just as slighted.” He eyed Tim. “What do you plan on doing with her?”

“Now wait a minute here,” Jake said, raising his palms. “There is nothing to do. She won’t do it again.”

Hank spun around, getting in his face. “And you of all people trust this redskin here? I’m starting to think you’ve been compromised by the savage.”

Jake cocked his head, his lip snarling. “She’s just a young girl. She is no threat to us. She helped us find the gold, whether she meant to or not, and it’s only fair we bring her back to her home safe and sound.”

“Nuh-uh,” Hank said, shaking his head back and forth like a dog. “No can do, McGraw.” He pointed at me, his finger shaking. “I suggest we get rid of her right here, right now.”

I gasped, my eyes growing large. Hank looked ready to pounce and Jake grabbed hold of his arm before he could do so.

“You lay a finger on her and I’ll kill you,” he sneered in his face.

“I’d like to see you try,” Hank said right back.

“Fellas,” Tim said in a low voice. “No one is killing anyone yet. Let’s not be irrational. Let’s talk like men. Jake is right. She’s just a girl and she’s injured on top of it. We have bigger fish to fry here. We’ve all seen what’s out there, we’ve all seen what they can do.” Everyone’s eyes flew to Donna, who was looking hours from death. “And we’ve all found what we’re looking for. I say we pack up and go.”

“If we go to River Bend, she’ll tell,” Hank said, sounding as insolent as a little boy.

“Then we go somewhere else,” Tim said. I couldn’t figure out then if he meant to take me with them or not. Lord, I hoped not. I had never wanted to see Uncle Pat and Rose so much in my life. At least I knew where I stood with them.

“Can’t trust a savage,” Hank said, spitting on my bed. “Especially can’t trust one that’s already tried to steal from you.” A vicious smile spread across his face, a smile that struck fear in me like a bolt of lightning. “I’ll just make it impossible for her to leave. She can’t leave without her horse.”

He ripped himself out of Jake’s grasp and headed to the table where he’d hung his holster, clearly intent on putting a bullet through Sadie’s head.

“No!” I screamed and jumped to my feet. I ran straight to him and tried to wrestle the gun out of his hands but I was weak in the shoulder. Hank brought the butt of his gun down on my head and I immediately fell to the floor in a dizzying mess. The cabin spun around, stars of pain bursting in my skull, as Hank ran out of the door with Jake yelling after him and in pursuit.

“Please,” I cried out in pain, a fist where my heart was. He couldn’t kill my horse. That was all I had left of my father. I staggered to my feet, stumbling to the door, the faces of Isaac and Tim blurred and out of focus, a hot sticky fluid running down my head.

A gunshot rang out.

Sadie.

I screamed again and flung myself out the door and barefoot into the snow, the world tipping. Sadie and Isaac’s horse peeled out of the shanty and galloped off into the woods. Sadie was alive. Gone but alive.

But Jake was a different story. He had been standing between me and the cabin, and a red stain began to spread on his arm. He looked at me in surprise as he collapsed to his knees.

Hank stood behind him, smoking revolver in his hand. “I told you to watch your back, Jake.”

“Jake!” I cried out and ran over to him, falling to my knees beside him. Hank had shot him in the back, where the arm met the shoulder.

“Might as well finish her off too,” Hank said from behind us, his boots crunching in the snow as he came closer.

Before Hank could reload his gun, Jake’s eyes flared and he quickly twisted at the waist, barely lining up his sight, and pulled the trigger. The bullet went right into Hank’s stomach.

Hank cried out, dropping the gun as his hands flew to his gut where blood began to leak onto the white snow. “You,” he snarled at Jake before he keeled over face first.

“And I told you I wanted you gone,” Jake said gruffly. “This will just be a slower, more painful way for you to leave.”

I knelt beside him, unsure of what to do. My hand went to his face, caressing it gently, his stubble rough against my skin. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be right as rain,” he said, giving me a winning grin. Then he winced, eyes shut hard from the pain.

“Tim!” I yelled toward the cabin. “Jake needs help.” I tried to help him to his feet but he was so heavy and unsteady, and it wasn’t like I was feeling one hundred percent.

I looked up to see Isaac standing in the doorway and thought he was coming to help me get Jake to his feet, but he just stood there with an absolutely macabre look on his pinched face. He smiled wide at the sight of Hank’s body then spun around and went back in the cabin.

I exchanged a worried look with Jake.

“Tim!” Jake yelled.

Suddenly there was the sound of a scuffle inside, a chair being knocked over, Tim grunting something, followed by the sharp, metallic smell of poisoned blood. Before we could say anything, Isaac came back outside, holding something red and dripping in his hand.

“You’ve gone mad!” Tim yelled from inside. “You’ve all gone mad!”

Jake and I watched as Isaac walked right past us with a trail of crimson dots behind him. He stopped by Hank and kicked him in the side. He moaned, still alive. Then he crouched down and rolled Hank over onto his back.

“Hey, Hank, buddy,” Isaac said to him with that terrible smile on his face. “I reckon this is the time to see the truth. He put his hand on Hank’s mouth and forced it open.

“What are you doing?” I exclaimed. Jake tensed beside me as we watched Isaac stick a bloody, fleshy object into Hank’s open mouth. I didn’t even want to dwell on what I thought it looked like.

Another gun blast boomed, this time from the cabin. Our heads swiveled to see Tim coming out, a revolver in hand, shaking his head sadly.

“What in damnation is going on?” Jake demanded.

Tim glared at Isaac in disbelief. “Isaac has gone crazy! He just went and sliced off Donna’s nose. I had to put her out of her misery.”

So it was exactly what it looked like. I swallowed down the vomit that was fighting to come up. I never thought the horrors could get any worse, but they were, day by day. I gingerly eyed the gruesome scene again as Isaac moved Hank’s jaw up and down and leaned over him, hands bloody on his face.

“That’s it,” Isaac said. “Swallow the flesh. The flesh will give you life.”

He turned to smile at us. “We’ve had our theories, ever since Dale Thompson showed up at my door, hollering about the living dead and cannibals and bars of lost gold. He said that George and the others had died at the hands of a wild mountain man, then died at the hands of each other. He refused to eat the flesh of another, so he ran. I guess he thought if he told me, I’d do something about it.” He looked at Hank who was now very slowly chewing Donna’s cut-off nose. “And I did. I shot him and made sure no one else knew about the gold or the…side effects. You, Eve, of all people should have known about the Wendigo.”

I eyed him with panic. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I managed to say.

“The Algonquin Indians out east believe in the Wendigo, that you become one if you eat human flesh. You will have power and eternal life.”

“The Wendigo is a myth,” Tim told him, disgust ripe in his voice, “so that people don’t resort to cannibalism, to what you’re doing right now. Damn it, Isaac, this is going too far. You’re acting like a goddamn maniac!”

“The Donner party did it to survive.”

“Then the Donner party turned into raving cannibals. This isn’t survival. Hank got shot fair and square. He pulled on Jake first. Let him die.”

“And what if I’m right?” he asked quietly, smiling once he saw Hank had swallowed.

“If you’re right and it’s not a myth, you didn’t just give Hank life. You gave him an insatiable thirst for human flesh. You saw the bones in the cabin.”

Isaac rocked back on his haunches and stared down at Hank who had finished chewing and was lying still. “Now we wait.”

My grip tightened on Jake’s good shoulder. We may have not had this Wendigo legend in my culture, but I’d seen more than enough already to know that it was more than a myth. We could not afford to dismiss this as one of Isaac’s crazy rants. Maniacs often told the truth.

“Jake,” I whispered. “I think you need to reload.”

“Already on it,” he answered. “Can you grab my powder horn?”

I reached down and pulled up the horn all while keeping my eyes on Isaac and Hank.

“He’s lost his damn mind,” Tim said from behind us, going back into the cabin.

Isaac had lost his mind, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t telling the truth. Jake took the horn then asked me to reach out and grab his rifle from his back holster. I did so, accidently brushing it against his wound. He ground his teeth in pain but didn’t say anything.

Meanwhile, Isaac hadn’t noticed that Jake was loading his rifle. He was in a daze, like a mad scientist, waiting to see if his creature would rise.

“I really oughta show you how to shoot and load the proper way,” Jake said in a low voice, gritting his teeth as he had to reach forward and jam the ball down the muzzle.

“I can use your revolver,” I whispered.

“Pine Nut, a revolver won’t do shit when the time comes. Can you reach into my vest pocket and pull out a piece of flint rock?”

Though he was speaking calmly, there was an urgency to our actions. I felt like a clock was ticking down, the hand moving closer to either Hank’s death or resurrection.

The clock struck quicker than a snake.

I closed my fingers over the sharp piece of flint when Hank gave out an ugly scream and sat straight up. He opened his mouth and went for Isaac’s jugular but Isaac had at least predicted this.

Isaac pistol whipped him across the face and then kicked him right in the stomach where his gunshot appeared to be healing itself before our eyes. Hank flew backward, snow flying up in the air, a savage cry escaping his bloody lips.

Jake swiped the flint out of my hand, and in the most frantic yet controlled manner I’d ever seen, fixed it to the hammer. Before he could aim it properly however, Hank was scrambling to his feet and running in the direction of the woods.

Isaac got to him first. He fired, shooting Hank in the arm. Jake propped himself on one knee and took aim. He got Hank’s calf just as he disappeared into the trees. It did not kill him, it did not slow him down, but at least he was running away from us.

Question was: would he come back?

“You all right?” Jake asked Isaac, the reluctance heavy in his voice.

“Oh, I’m all right,” Isaac said with twitching eyes, getting to his feet. “I’ve never been better.”

He headed toward the cabin, leaving me and Jake together in the snow. The reality of the moment began to seep in with the cold. If I didn’t get both of us inside soon, we were going to get frostbite, but the last place I wanted to go was in the cabin with a total madman.

I stood up, wincing at the burning sensation of the ice on my soles, and hooked my hands under Jake’s good arm. “Come on, we have to go in.”

He stared at the woods for a moment before he looked up at me and frowned. “After all that’s happened, I’m surprised you’re not leaving me out here to die.”

“I’m not a savage.”

He smiled handsomely and with a shake of his head said, “No, you aren’t. And you’re not a lady either. I reckon you just might be perfect.”

My heart skipped a beat. I blamed it on waning adrenaline.

Our eyes met for a thick moment before I helped him to his feet and got him inside. Tim had already covered Donna up with an animal hide so none of us had to see her. Not that Isaac cared—he was sitting on a stool in the corner and staring down at his hands, his crazed eyes deep in thought. What were we going to do with him?

I wanted to patch up Jake but Tim was insistent that I take care of myself and warm up my frozen feet by the fire. I wondered about his change of heart and the way he’d reversed to being the caring, fatherly type but I guessed that after everything we just saw, I really was the least of their problems.

I sat down by the fire and did my best to ignore Isaac. There was something so unbelievably unsettling about the way he was staring so intently and at absolutely nothing. He must have felt like God with what he did to Hank but that was no act of God at all. God didn’t slice the noses off of dying women. God didn’t create monsters. Monsters created themselves.

Jake sucked in his breath and I swiveled my attention to him instead. He was sitting completely shirtless on the table as Tim poured iodine on his wound. The gunshot didn’t look too bad but then again I was distracted by his body. I felt deeply ashamed and slightly animalistic to admire Jake’s chest at a time like this, but it couldn’t be helped. My eyes were drawn there like it was instinct. Sure, I’d seen bare-chested men before but none of them had ever appeared so…sexual. None of them were built like a house, strong and firm and wide, with muscles that didn’t end and a dusting of hair that screamed he was nearly a beast himself.

To make matters worse, Jake caught me staring at him. I quickly looked away, turning back to the fire, hoping he wouldn’t draw my behavior to anyone’s attention. He may have saved my life but he wasn’t exactly a gentleman.

But Jake only hissed as Tim pulled the bullet out of him and patched him back up. I stole peeks at the scene, both horrified and fascinated.

“You’ll be good as new in a few days, I reckon,” Tim said. He poked his finger at a raised scar on Jake’s abdomen. “Remember how long this one took?”

“Forever,” Jake groaned. “Damn Mexicans.”

“And this won’t take as long. It was a clean shot. You’re lucky Hank wasn’t shooting a rifle or we’d be singing a different tune.”

Jake looked over at Donna’s lifeless body underneath the hides.

“I reckon we should bury her,” he said.

“With what shovels?” Tim asked.

“Well, we can’t just haul her out to the woods to be pecked on by animals. Or worse—Hank. She deserves better than that. She had no idea what she was getting into.”

“Neither did we,” Tim said. “Not for true.”

“And I would be lucky if I would be treated the same if I died.”

So as the day wore on and Isaac stayed motionless inside, the three of us went out to bury Donna. Tim and I took on the task of carrying her since the bite on my shoulder was pretty much nothing compared to Jake’s wound, and we brought her out to a pretty patch by the lake. The ground here was easier to penetrate, and though she might not stay buried for long, it was the act and the final respects that actually counted.

The three of us dug what we could with axes and our hands. Tim did most of the work since he was the only one uninjured, and even though it took a long time, it was worth it. We placed Donna in the shallow grave and sprinkled the first dirt on her, each of us reciting something nice about her.

I didn’t really know Donna at all, but she liked me and treated me as an equal. She may have been God-fearing but she saw the good in everyone, no matter the cost. Perhaps that was what cost her her life.

When she was finally buried in a thin layer of frozen soil, we looked out to the lake. A goose was calling in the distance and a flock of them flew overhead through the gauzy mist that was hovering around the shore. Jake made a measured movement to grab his gun, but I put my hand out and steadied him. It would only aggravate his wound more and Donna deserved the grace of animals more than we deserved our supper.

That evening Jake and I went to sleep as soon as the sun went down. No one wanted to eat, no one wanted to talk. There just wasn’t much to say. All most of us wanted was for the morning to come so we could be back on our way to River Bend.

Isaac was on one side of the room, and Tim was nearby and staying up as long as he could. I was alone in my bed with Jake in the bed next to me. It felt strange for him to be sleeping there all hurt and shot up and so close to me but not close enough.

I rolled over and stared at him in the flicker of the fire, my eyes drifting over his striking profile—the slight bump on his nose where I was sure it had been broken once, probably in a bar brawl, the way his lips looked inviting even when in sleep. I could tell Tim, who was propped up by the door with a rifle, was watching me, wondering what to do with me when this was all over.

I could only wonder what Jake thought. There was nothing between us and so many bigger issues to worry about, but I felt an odd pang of fear in my chest, this hollowness carved out, when I thought about saying goodbye to him. To get out of these mountains alive was all we could wish for.

And yet, for some reason, I lay on the floor of that cabin and watched Jake sleep—wishing for more.