Donners of the Dead

Chapter One

Pre-Nevada Statehood, 1851

The dreams never start the same, but they always end the same.

In death.

My father’s death.

Sometimes I am six years old again and playing in the Truckee River, throwing up the cold mountain runoff with my tiny hands and shooting shy glances at him as he watches me, the smile spreading wide on his auburn face. Sometimes we are walking hand-in-hand down the dusty dirt road toward Mrs. Young’s homestead where he’ll leave me for a few hours to learn maths while he enquires at Barker’s General Store whether there are any hunting requests for him. And sometimes we are just sitting on the rickety porch back at our old place, watching the insects gather around the lantern as he tells me the Washoe names for them. They always sounded so poetic coming from his native tongue.

No matter how the dreams start though, how wonderful the memories are, I can never enjoy them. I know they are about to be ripped from my heart. In a matter of seconds, the picture changes. In the river, he jumps into the water to join me, but never surfaces again. On the road, he drops my hand and runs away into a cloud of dirt. The worst one is what happens to him while we spend the evening hours on the porch. A low, guttural growl emerges from the surrounding pines, as if the trees themselves have unfinished business with him. Pa gets to his feet slowly, hesitantly, and walks straight into the forest. He doesn’t even send me a backwards glance. Then the pines shake, their silhouettes frenzied against the moon, and I hear him for the last time.

One final scream.

Like always, I wake up covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

As I poured my bedside water jug onto my rag and wet my face, the reality sinks back in. I’m alive, in my bed, but my father is not. He really is dead, and the irony is that I sometimes wish those nightmares were real. At least then I would know what happened to him. Either he drowned, or ran away from me, or the trees ate him. I’d take any of those to at least have an answer of why he left on that tracking expedition and never came back.

This night though, I had no time to feel the heaviness in my heart. Far away hollering interrupted my sleep and I stood without thinking. I fumbled to light the candle in my stall-sized bedroom then quickly slipped on my cloak and opened the door into the main room. It was dark and no one else in my uncle’s house was stirring.

I paused, feeling slightly foolish at my impulsiveness and listened for a few beats, trying to catch my ragged breath.

The hollering started again, coming closer to us. My uncle’s ranch was on the far outskirts of the settlement. Whoever was out there was in serious trouble.

I gathered my cloak closer to me and made my way to the front door, about to open it, when someone on the other side started pounding on it wildly. I nearly screamed. I waited for a break before I opened it and saw our neighbor, Ned Kincaid, on our porch, looking like he’d seen something worse than a ghost.

“Eve!” he managed to croak out before collapsing into a coughing fit. I put my arm around him and began to lead him inside the house. He shook his head and leaned against the doorframe. “No, it’s still out there.”

“What’s still out there?” I looked past him but only saw darkness cloaking the nearby acres and the pinpricks of stars in the sky. There was a strange pounding noise though, faint but wicked, off in the distance. Like Ned had, it was also coming in our direction.

“Nero!” he yelled and glanced behind him, his eyes glowing white from fear.

Nero was Ned’s horse. A magnificent coal-colored stallion that I’d often see trotting proudly in his pasture.

“Evie, what are you doing, who is that?” my Uncle Pat’s voice boomed from behind me. He was standing at the foot of the stairs, lantern in hand, my frail Aunt June cowering behind him and holding onto his long johns.

Ned stepped clumsily into the house and looked at my uncle imploringly. “It’s Nero. He’s sick, Pat. He tried to kill us!”

The corner of my uncle’s mouth turned up at Ned’s outburst.

“Now, Ned, let’s calm down a bit here before we—”

“I’m serious!” he screamed so sharply that Pat’s mouth was replaced with a hard, thin line. I sucked in my breath and took another look outside.

“Perhaps we should close the door,” I said quietly, reaching over for the handle. Whether Nero was actually trying to kill Ned or not, the late September night brought a chill with it.

“No,” said Ned, turning around and placing a wet hand on mine. I looked down. It was covered in blood. “I need you to see this, I need you to believe me. Martha didn’t, she didn’t, and now I don’t know where she is, my God, I don’t know…”

There was a loud, solid thunk on the porch, followed by another. The house shook slightly. I kept my eyes trained on the outside but couldn’t see anything.

But I could smell it. And knowing my tracking skills, I should have smelled it before. It was blood and sweat and hay and horse and something unfathomable. Nero was here, a few feet away from us, hidden by the black night, halfway onto the porch.

A severe chill threaded down my back. My lungs refused to exhale.

I thought about throwing Ned’s hand off mine and quickly shutting the door, but everything happened so fast.

Nero snorted.

Ned gasped.

A flash of red eyes and the horse lunged forward towards the door, his long muzzle snapping at us like a wolf, all white, powerful teeth.

Uncle Pat dropped the candle in surprise and joined me at the door, trying to shut it on the horse who was trying wildly to fit inside the frame, his wide girth only allowing him to come in halfway.

Ned covered his eyes and shrank to the floor while June scooped up the candle before it managed to catch on the nearby rug. Pat and I kept trying to slam the door in Nero’s face, something that, naturally, only made him angrier.

The sides of the doorframe began to crack under the horse’s pressure, the wood splintering. Between my uncle’s grunts, Ned’s childlike wails, and June’s quiet repetition of the Lord’s Prayer, I kept focused on Nero’s head. It should have bothered me to be beating a horse in such a way, but this was no horse. Its eyes were blood red and surrounded by yellow discharge; its mouth was a foaming, angry mess, and its only intent was to do what Ned had said. To kill him. To kill all of us. No, this was no horse. It barely even smelled like one. My father would have known what it was.

Finally, Pat and I made one powerful heave in unison, and the result appeared to shatter the bones in Nero’s once handsome head. He screamed, a mix of anguish and frustration, and then retreated, almost taking the door with him as he went. We slammed it shut and locked it, as if that would prevent Nero from coming in again.

“June!” Pat yelled. “Go wake up Rose!”

“I’m already here,” was his daughter’s reply. I looked to see Rose standing beside June, staring at us in horror.

He nodded, both of us keeping our bodies against the door. “Good, now go get the piano and move it over here. We have to make sure he doesn’t try and get in again.”

June and Rose scampered over to the grand piano that rested in the corner of the room. Rose loved to practice on it after dinner in the evenings, and you could see the reluctance on her fair face as she and her mother leaned against the piano and slowly pushed it toward us until it was in place.

We stepped back and watched the door carefully, our breaths held in our mouths, our fingers twitching nervously. The piano was barely moveable to June and Rose, but they were both small women and Nero was a thousand pound animal. He could easily destroy it in a few seconds.

We waited for a good few minutes, all of our ears tuned carefully, none of us making a sound. Even Ned had stopped his blubbering and was listening in between sniffs. Rose made her way to him and placed her arm gently around his shoulders. I breathed in deeply through my nose and closed my eyes, concentrating on the animal. I couldn’t smell him anymore.

He was gone.

“I don’t think he’s coming back,” I said quietly, my voice sounding deep in the stillness.

“How do you know that?” Pat asked scornfully. “Don’t tell me it’s your half-breed mumbo jumbo.”

That was precisely why, but of course I didn’t say that. I learned a long time ago that talking back to Uncle Pat got you nowhere, and if it did, it was usually a slap across the face.

Pat looked down at Ned on the floor, who was now staring mindlessly at his bloody hands, and calmly said, “Now Ned, let’s start from the beginning.”

“Yes,” I said. “What on earth were you feeding that thing?”

The next day was hot enough to make my thick braid stick to the back of my neck, taking more than a few minutes for the dry desert air to whisk away the sweat. Even then, I knew that it would be one of the last hot days in September. Autumn was at our doorstep and winter was lurking in the darkness behind it.

After the excitement and horror of last night, I was unable to go back to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I’d see the wretched face of Nero trying to eat me alive, all red eyes and snapping muzzle. I’d never seen a horse behave like that in all the world, and the more I wanted to dwell on it, the more I ended up scaring myself. I wasn’t one to scare easily, either.

Unfortunately, as I helped Avery shovel manure from the pig’s pen, he kept bringing it up.

“So tell me again, what did the fella look like?” Avery asked, leaning on the end of his shovel, the sun glinting off his golden hair.

“Who? The horse or Ned?” I asked.

He smirked, his dimples coming out, and wiped his hand across his brow. “The horse, you old biddy. I know what Ned looks like. I know that weasel face anywhere.”

I glared at him playfully. “I think I might take offense to that old biddy comment. If I’m old at eighteen, then you must be ancient.”

He continued his smirk, which was always handsome and never mean-spirited. It was one of the reasons why I liked Avery so much. For the last five years, ever since Avery started working at Uncle Pat’s as a ranch hand, he’d been making my daily chores more bearable. In fact, I actually looked forward to them every day, except for Sundays when we were dragged off to church and seated on opposite sides of the aisle.

He was also one of the few people I could actually call my friend, someone who didn’t care what I looked like or what blood was in my body. When you grow up being half Indian and half white, you figure out pretty soon that you’re not really welcome anywhere. Ever since my pa died, I’d spent a lot of time trying to figure out where exactly I fit in. With Avery, none of it mattered. I was just Eve Smith.

“Fine,” he said. “But if you won’t spare me the details again, at least tell me what happened to Martha.”

I shrugged and tucked a few loose strands of hair behind my ears. I honestly didn’t know what had happened to Ned’s wife, though I was quite certain she was alive and well somewhere. She’d gone missing during the Nero incident and once daylight broke over the valley, Ned and my uncle went out in search of her. I knew I could have been of good use with my tracking skills but my uncle would have never…humored me like that. Regardless, I could sense that she was fine, out there alone and scared, but likely to find her way home eventually.

Though I thought this to myself, I didn’t say anything to Avery. I knew he wouldn’t think any less of me with my “half-breed mumbo jumbo” as my uncle said, but I never wanted to press my luck with him. He liked me and I never wanted to lose that.

“I’m sure Martha will turn up,” I said, and resumed shoveling the smelly manure, keeping focused on the task. I could sense he was studying me the way he often did when I tried to keep the native side of me quiet, and I hoped my cheeks weren’t burning red. If they were, I could blame it on the sun, not the fact that lately my thoughts about Avery were becoming more and more inappropriate.

Eventually, I dared to look at him. But instead of looking at me like I had assumed he was, his gaze was directed over the fence at the road where Rose was walking home from school, dust clouds rising up behind her like brown cotton. I felt a sharp pang of envy in my chest, something I often felt when I thought about my cousin. It wasn’t that she was beautiful and polite, but that she was able to go to school every day and I never was. That was the reason Avery had to teach me secretly a few times a week. When my father disappeared and my mother became little more than a mute, Uncle Pat ruled my life and he saw I was unfit to attend school with the proper folk.

All I’d ever wanted to do was learn, to fill my mind with knowledge and wisdom, while Rose seemed to abhor everything about learning, except when it came to the piano.

And now Rose had something else that I hadn’t—the rapt attention of Avery. Oh, I’d be fooling myself if I hadn’t picked up on it before, but I’d never seen him be so obvious about it.

I cleared my throat and that pang grew deeper when he didn’t break his stare. Rose, as usual, was completely oblivious to the fact that we were out in her farm, toiling away under the hot sun, let alone that Avery was eyeing her like a smartly-wrapped gift on Christmas Day. Rose was never mean or cruel, but the way she usually tolerated me was to pretend I didn’t exist.

“Avery,” I said under my breath, my tone sharper than I would have liked.

Finally he looked at me, caught off-guard. He blinked a few times. “Pardon?”

“I said, I think that Martha will be fine.”

“Oh, good,” he said. If the sun’s glare hadn’t washed out his face just so, he might have been blushing.

I really wanted to say something, something that put him on the spot, just to witness his reaction. But besides being unladylike, I wouldn’t have been a very good friend. I took in a deep breath, rubbed at the knot that was forming in my shoulder, and decided to ignore it all. It was quite ridiculous, at any rate, that I would ever have a chance at Avery courting me. To just be friends with a half-breed was already scandalous enough.

We both went back to working in a silence that was strangely awkward, making the hot air seem thicker than it was, a soup of sweat and dust. It was only by the time we’d started moving around some hay bales up in the loft to make room for the meager harvest at the end of the month, that he asked if I wanted to go over some of the French he’d been teaching me.

With Avery’s help over the last few years, I had learned everything there was to know about history, not just in America, but worldwide; I’d learned proper grammar and penmanship; I’d improved on my mathematic skills and even learned a bit about science. The last thing there really was to learn (at least from Avery) was French. Avery only knew the rudimentary basics, having learned it from his Louisiana grandmother when he was young. I figured French wouldn’t help me here in Washoe or the Utah Territory, but there wouldn’t be harm in it, either.

Twenty minutes later, the hay had been restacked, and Avery and I were sitting on top of a scratchy bale and enjoying the late afternoon breeze while going over nouns. I loved that his full attention was on me as I grappled with pronunciation, even though I sounded quite stupid half the time. Perhaps I was nervous because his eyes were often centered on my lips, which naturally made me think about kissing him, to wonder what it would be like. I didn’t even have anything to compare it to.

“Believe me, you’re a natural at this,” he said to me as I messed up a few more times. “It’s a right shame that your father never taught you your native language before he died.”

I looked down at my hands and brushed the hay from my plain brown dress. Pa had taught me some things, but it seemed the moment he left, everything I knew and understood was whisked away with him.

“I’m sorry, Eve,” Avery said quickly. “I meant before he disappeared. I didn’t mean to imply—”

“It’s okay.” I forced a smile and met his clear blue eyes. “What’s past is past. The language would be no use to me now that he’s gone. I’m quite content with English.”

“Et Français, aussi,” he said.

“Oui.”

He patted me on the hand and a delectable current brushed up my arm, making my heart swell. Oh, he had to know the effect he had on me. As inappropriate as it was, I wondered what it would be like if I kissed him. I feared I was bull-headed enough to do it.

But before I could dwell on it any further, my thoughts were broken up by the rhythmic thump of hoofbeats outside the hayloft, maybe four or five of them traveling in a group. I closed my eyes and concentrated, breathing in deep. I could smell the horses and the smell of steel and leather and sweat. There was something almost foreign about the smell, making me think that the horses and their riders weren’t from around here. After all, the River Bend settlement only had about thirty townsfolk, even with the California gold rush still drawing in pioneers and prospectors.

Avery heard it too, and we got up, edging over to the open side. From up here we could see the road clearly, and a group of five men on horseback, heavily loaded, with packs and guns strapped to their mounts. Their hats were drawn down over their eyes, casting them in shadows and they rode like they owned the ground in front of them.

One of the men was plump like a pregnant sow, another skinny as a birch tree. One was an elderly man with a long grey beard, another was scar-faced and suspicious with a wicked glint to his mouth. The fifth man at the back of the party was built like an ox, with broad shoulders that were rivaled only by the massive brown steed he was riding on. While all the men were looking around with interest, the man at the back faced forward, his posture strong and straight. Then, as if he sensed us, he looked up and over his shoulder, straight at me and Avery.

I gasped and instinctively hid myself back into the shadows of the barn. Even then, the man’s dark eyes were still on mine, locked in like an eagle on a mouse. I quickly appraised his face: black arched brows and sharp cheekbones, slim nose, broad, masculine jaw, and a trimmed beard. If you asked someone to tell you what a “man” was, I was certain he’d be their description.

That was until his lip curled up in a snarl, directed right at me.

“Who the blazes are those men?” Avery asked, seemingly oblivious to the bearded man. Sometimes I forgot that my vision was better than most people’s. The man turned his attention back to the road, so all I could see was the back of his neck and the black handkerchief knotted behind it.

I carefully crept out into the light, and we watched as the men kept riding. Beyond Uncle Pat’s and the Millers’ farm on the opposite side of the road, there wasn’t much more to this end of River Bend.

I breathed out a queer sigh of relief, believing them to be on their way. “I guess they’re just passing through,” I said to Avery. “Looks like they’re well packed, they’re most likely heading across the pass to Sacramento.”

“Looks like,” he agreed. “They better hurry if they want to beat the snow.” But as soon as he said that, the skinny man at the front of the group slowed his horse and raised his hand. They all came to a stop in the middle of the road.

“What are they doing?” Avery asked.

I shushed him, not caring if it was rude, and tried to listen.

“Well, I reckon this here be the end of the road,” the skinny man said. I tried to place his accent. Sounded like just another man from Missouri.

He nodded at Uncle Pat’s and at the Miller’s small farmhouse. “And I reckon one of these here houses oughta be the one we’re looking for.” He looked to Mr. Scar Face and Mr. Grey Beard. “Hank, Tim, you take this one here.” He shrugged in the direction of Uncle Pat’s. “Rest of us, we’ll take this purdy house over there.”

“I’d like to take this one,” the snarly man said, his head tilted ever so slightly toward Uncle Pat’s. I sucked in my breath, so certain that he was going to turn around and look at me again.

The thin man shrugged. “Suit yourself.” The party split into two groups, with this Hank, Tim, and Snarly heading right toward Uncle Pat’s—my—front door.

Avery quickly turned around, trying to look calm and in control, but I could see the tension in his temples and hear the quiver in his voice as he said, “I better go see what these men want. I certainly don’t want any trouble, and your uncle’s still out with Ned. You wait here and stay safe.”

Any other girl would have done as they were told. But besides the fact that I wasn’t like any other girl, I wanted to make sure Rose and my aunt June were okay, as well as my mother, who, thanks to her condition, rarely left her small room upstairs. If these men were up to no good, Avery couldn’t handle himself and protect the women at the same time. He was strong and a good shot, but he’d never been truly tested before.

Avery climbed halfway down the ladder and jumped the rest of the way, running stealthily through the pigs and dairy cows before going in through the pantry’s screen door. I followed behind, hiking up my dress so my boots wouldn’t trip on it, and moved quickly. I got to the screen door just as I heard June and Rose from inside, asking Avery what was wrong, their voices bewildered.

“It’s fine,” I told them as I carefully shut the door behind me. Still, it probably didn’t assuage their fears when I picked up a butcher’s knife from its place on the wall. Their eyes widened at the sight. Rose huddled under June’s arm as Avery scampered over to the front door just as a knock sounded from it. There was no time for me to run upstairs and warn my mother to stay in her room, I just had to hope she’d be smart enough to do so. She never spoke and she was a little neurotic, but she wasn’t stupid.

“Who’s there?” June asked, her voice breaking. “What is it now? Is the rabid horse back?”

I made the motion for her to be quiet, and then stepped in front of them, keeping them confined to the kitchen while Avery grabbed the shotgun off the wall before putting his hand on the knob. “There are a few men here,” I whispered. “We don’t know who they are or what they want.”

“Are they Indians?” Rose asked with big green eyes.

“No,” I said, gazing at her coldly, wondering why I wanted to protect her and her ignorance again.

I turned back to see Avery opening the door a crack, keeping the shotgun behind his back and out of sight. Thank heavens the damage that Nero did last night didn’t affect the door as a whole.

“Yes?” he asked.

I could only see Tim, the older, grey-bearded fellow clearly, though I sensed the other two were right behind him.

“Good afternoon, pardner,” Tim said in a thick Texan drawl. Ooh boy. I’d only met a couple of Texans in my lifetime, and both of them had been trouble. Up close, his eyes were a deep blue and possessed a startling clarity that contrasted with his lined face. “I was wondering if I could speak to the master of the house.”

I could see Avery flinching slightly, wondering if he should lie or not. Though Tim gazed directly at him, I knew he’d seen us in the background. Those kind of eyes saw everything. They reminded me of my father.

“He’s out yonder,” Avery said, and I winced when I heard the warble in his voice. “I work for him. I’m Avery Packwood. How may I be of service?”

Tim smiled, displaying a few missing canines that looked like black piano keys. I could hear Rose suck in her breath behind me, as if people in River Bend were known for perfect teeth.

“Do you know when you expect him back?” Tim was being polite, but I knew the other men behind him, Mr. Scar Face and Mr. Snarl, were otherwise. I didn’t know what these men wanted but I knew it wasn’t trivial.

Avery squared his shoulders, and as he did so, the muzzle of his shotgun tapped against the door. Tim looked down and raised his brow but didn’t say anything.

“He should be back for supper,” Avery said.

“Is that your supper cooking in there now?” a lecherous voice said from the porch. I could hear the man sniffing, Mr. Scar Face, and I immediately felt disgusted, as if he were smelling us—the women. “Maybe we could all have a feast.”

“Ease up, Hank,” Tim warned, his mouth turning grim. He looked apologetically at Avery. “Sorry about that, pardner. We’ve been on the road for an awful long time and it’s been a while since we’ve had a hot meal.”

While I started cursing Avery inside my head if he dared to invite them in, Tim continued. “No matter, we’re used to the lack of hospitality up north here. You see, we only need to ask Pat Smith a question, that’s all. Get his permission for something that we’re doin’. See, who we really want to talk to, who we’re really here for…is a half Injun’ girl called Eve Smith.”

Tim looked past Avery’s shoulder and met my eyes with an air of victory. They were here for me.

Aunt June gasped.

My blood ran cold.

I tightened my grip on the knife.