The Hunger

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.”

He turned and saw a girl he recognized vaguely as Mary Graves. She was sharp-featured and very tall for a woman. He’d never seen her up close before. Her eyes were extraordinary, the gray of an early dawn.

“You’re Franklin Graves’s daughter, then?” he said, although he knew it. He had noticed her before but it seemed she was always with her family, surrounded by her parents or a horde of little children clamoring for her attention.

“I am,” she said. “One of them, at least.”

The women’s chatter died off as the two began walking together almost unconsciously, simply drifting away from the others to head toward a stand of pines on the edge of the encampment.

“I hope you don’t think me presumptuous giving you advice, Mr. Stanton, but you should just ignore them.” Her skirts fluttered with every step, grazing the wild prairie grass. She walked with a long, loping stride that reminded him of a young mare, fine and athletic. “They’re only teasing you. Married women don’t like to see a man by himself. I think it makes them nervous.”

“Why should a single man make them nervous?”

She laughed. “It is one of the mysteries of the world, I suppose.”

“Edwin Bryant—did you meet Edwin?—had a theory about this. He thought it appeared to be a kind of rebuke, choosing not to marry.” As they walked, the picnic shrank to a miniature circus in the distance, a blur of movement and color, until all that was left was the faint drone of Halloran’s fiddle carried on the wind and the occasional shriek of a child’s laughter. People would talk, of course, if they walked too far together. But Stanton didn’t care, and anyway, he wanted to get away from the other women before he said something he regretted.

It appeared that Mary Graves wasn’t concerned about gossip, either.

She frowned in concentration. “Rebuking women, or the institution of marriage?”

He hesitated, thinking it over. He liked the quick, easy way she spoke. So many women seemed to turn their words over in their mouths like sugar cubes, until you could never be sure of the shape of the original thought. “Both, I think.”

“Some women might find it insulting, but I don’t. Not everyone is meant to marry,” she said. “Did you know that Lavinah Murphy married her fourteen-year-old daughter to a man she’d only known for four days? My stepsister was right about one thing. There aren’t many eligible women left in the party,”

He shook his head. “Does this mean you’re spoken for, Miss Graves?” He had meant it mostly as a joke, but when her face clouded, the words took on a sudden, hollow seriousness.

“My fiancé died recently. That’s why my family is headed west,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He felt as if she had been swept suddenly beyond a veil. “Leaving bad memories behind, then?”

“Something like that.” She was still speaking casually, but for a moment he saw beyond the carefully arranged look of unconcern, and knew she was truly unhappy. “That could probably be said of nearly everyone in the wagon train.”

“You’re right about that—still, I’m sorry,” he repeated. He had the wild and inappropriate desire to take her hand.

“It’s all right. I didn’t know him very well.” So if she was unhappy, it was for some other reason. Mary Graves brought a hand quickly to her mouth. “That sounds even worse, doesn’t it? I’m always saying the wrong thing.”

Stanton smiled. “That makes two of us. You’ll have to tell me the whole story now.”

She ducked her head to pass under the low branch of a small pine. “It’s not a very good story, I’m afraid. As a matter of fact, it’s terribly common. I’m sure you’ve heard it before: dutiful daughter agrees to an arranged marriage to a rich man to pay off her father’s debts.”

“Maybe you’re lucky things turned out the way they did, then,” Stanton said, and then, realizing how that sounded, hurried on, “I hope they picked a nice man for you to marry, at least.”

“He was sweet enough to me. Everyone says we would’ve had a good life together. Still, who knows?”

Her voice had a low, musical quality that made him wish she would never stop talking. “What happened?” he asked. When she hesitated, he added, “If you don’t want to tell me…”

“No, that’s all right.” She snapped a twig off the nearest branch and crushed the pine needles absently between her fingers, releasing the smell of resin. “Two weeks before the wedding, he went out deer hunting with his friends and was accidentally shot. The friends carried him back but there was nothing anyone could do for him. He died the next day.”

“That’s terrible.”

She turned. Stanton knew the expression on her face; it was guilt. “Do you know something even worse? The friend who was responsible, he was torn up with grief. Practically went insane with it. I was shocked, yes, but I barely cried. Do you want to know the God’s honest truth, Mr. Stanton? I was relieved. Relieved.” She mustered a tiny, bitter smile. “That makes me a perfect monster, don’t you think? I should have been upset—for my father, if not for poor Randolph or his family. Without the money that would have come from the marriage, my father was ruined. We had to sell everything. Father couldn’t stand the thought of starting over in the same place, proving himself to the same people all over again. I put the idea of moving to California in his head. So whatever happens to us, whatever waits for my family in California, riches or ruin, I’ll be responsible.”

“You, a monster? Nonsense. I think you’re a remarkably honest person,” he said, and she smiled again.

“Perhaps. Or maybe I feel the need to confess my sins to someone.” She turned and continued walking.

“Are you always so forthcoming with strangers?” Stanton asked, as he followed her. The camp was far behind them now, the voices and music faded away to almost nothing.

“I’m still in mourning. When you’re in mourning, people will let you say just about anything—haven’t you noticed?” She turned briefly, raising one eyebrow. Her profile was long and sharp, like something that might have been formed with a scalpel. “Now it’s your turn. There’s a reason you’re not married already, Mr. Stanton. Are you going to tell me why?”

He fell into step beside her. “Like you said, it’s a common tale. Barely merits repeating.”

“I told you my story. It only seems fair.”

He wasn’t sure he could manage as well as she had. “I’ve been in love once.”

“Were you engaged to be married?”

Even after all this time, thinking of Lydia still brought an ache to his chest, like the first deep breath of cold air. “Her father didn’t like me. Nor could he bear to lose her, as it so happened.”

She stared at him with those wide, gray eyes. Like the sky heavy with clouds, or the flint-gray of a Boston ocean. “Did he want her to end up an old maid?”

“I don’t know what he wanted for her,” Stanton said shortly, realizing too late that they were on dangerous ground, edging too close to the truth. “He never got the chance to find out, in any case. She died at nineteen, far too young.”

Mary drew in a breath. “I’m sorry.”

His conscience would let him go no further. He’d made a promise when he was young that he would never tell anyone Lydia’s secret. As pointless as the promise seemed from a distance of fifteen years—to a dead girl, no less—he couldn’t bring himself to break it. Besides, there were things he had done that he regretted, a long and twisted chain of deceit dragging behind him all these years, impossible to explain to anyone else without seeming like a monster. His heart seemed to be beating five times its normal rate. “It was terrible,” he said. “I’m afraid I still can’t talk about it.”

Mary looked troubled. “I didn’t mean to cause you pain,” she said. Her hand skimmed his arm, like the touch of a passing bird.

“It’s all right,” he said, but it wasn’t. His throat was closing, the memory choking him.

Mary was looking at him very closely. “What’s this?” she asked at the same time her hand passed from his arm to his neck. Her fingers landed briefly on his neck, on the scratches he knew were there: Tamsen’s newest marks. “You’ve been wounded. It looks as though you’ve been attacked—”

This time her touch wasn’t pleasant. It burned. Without thinking, he pushed her hand away.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Please don’t.”

She took a quick step backward, as if a wall had come up suddenly between them. Before he could speak, before he could say a word, her name rang out on the air, clear and clean as a bell.

She spun toward the sound and, with one last look over her shoulder at Stanton, darted back toward camp. She moved with surprising quickness, flashing between the trees like a shaft of sunlight, and then gone.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Four barrels of flour.

James Reed pried the lid off the barrel with dusty handprints and peered inside. Half full. A knock on the side of the next three barrels confirmed that they hadn’t been touched yet. Five hundred pounds of flour, then, give or take. An anxious knot formed in his gut. They’d started out two months ago with nearly eight hundred pounds.

He made a mark on the scrap of paper in his hand.

He looked into the next barrel. Sugar, nearly half empty. Eliza Williams, the hired girl, was making too many pies and cakes for the children.

When he finished taking inventory, he climbed over the backboard and dropped to the ground. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the dust off his palms, then after a second’s hesitation scrubbed both hands hard. Gave the handkerchief a sniff before putting it away.

Only then did he squint at the full list of figures, forcing his hands to be still and firm. He’d been checking on his family’s stores every few days since they’d set out from Springfield. They were going through their supplies at an alarming rate. But no good ever came of worrying, unless there was an action to be taken.

So. First thing, he’d have a talk with Eliza. No second helpings for anyone, not even the children and certainly not the teamsters, who didn’t think twice about wasting food. He skimmed the numbers a second time. Had he miscalculated how much they’d need for a family of seven? It was the six servants who threw off his math: the men were gluttons, eating for the pleasure of it without a care to how much it cost their employer.

Still, he knew they were better off—far better off—than many of the families on the trail. Publicly, everyone acted as though there was no problem, but he suspected that secretly some people were beginning to panic. Even those who had taken on more provisions at Fort Laramie had counted on there being more game along the trail. After Fort Laramie, everything seemed to have disappeared, from rabbits to prairie dogs. They were at the end of the traveling season and perhaps earlier pioneers had picked the surrounding area clean.

More likely they figured they could depend on the kindness of their trailmates if they ran out of supplies. Well, they’d be disappointed if they came to James Frazer Reed for a handout. Christian charity could only go so far.

He’d tried to talk Donner into putting him in charge of provisions for the entire party last night. But of course no one listened. No one understood how much danger they’d be in if food ran out higher up in the mountain passes. The signs were all there, if anyone would bother to see.

“Give you authority over my supplies?” William Eddy had only laughed, spitting tobacco a few inches from Reed’s boot. “I don’t think so. If we let you tell us what we can eat and how much and when, we’ll all end up skinny as skeletons. Skinny as you.”

Reed had ignored Eddy but he’d been tempted to pull out his piece of paper and shake it in Donner’s face. “We’re down twenty-five beef cattle since Fort Laramie and that was less than three weeks ago. If we didn’t eat all of them, somebody is stealing them. At this rate we won’t have two dozen head among us by the time we get to California.”

Foolishness and pleasure, that was what the members of the wagon train wanted. Look at the Donners’ big barge of a wagon, stuffed with feather mattresses and all manner of unnecessary comforts. The hired men gambled their wages away every night around the campfires, losing their pay before it was even earned. People danced around the roasting carcasses while Luke Halloran played the fiddle. And a picnic, what was the reason for that? An excuse for George Donner to stand on a tree stump and make a speech to get elected new party captain. Two cattle slaughtered just for that, to reassure them there was nothing to worry about: Look at how much there is to eat, plenty for everyone.

It was meant for a diversion, too, Reed suspected: It was whispered up and down the wagon train that Tamsen Donner had been seen wandering at night, caught in places she shouldn’t have been. She was a witch, some of the other women said, could vanish and then reappear in a different place, could fly on currents of air like the fluff of old dandelions, could charm a man just by breathing on him. Reed didn’t believe in that nonsense, but one thing was clear: She was stepping out on her husband, and making George look foolish just when he needed the wagon train behind him.

Reed straightened up, sore from crouching in the wagon among the barrels and big burlap sacks filled with bran and dried beans, hogsheads of vinegar and molasses. As he stretched, Donner trotted by on his horse, waving his hat in the air.

“Chain up!” he shouted. His big face was pink from exertion. “Time to move out!”

How he hated the sound of Donner’s voice.

But just as Reed turned to say something, he saw two of the Breen boys crawling on hands and knees from under one of the wagons. They were pale and unsteady on their feet, moaning as though they’d been beaten.

Reed’s heart jumped in his chest. The boy killed a month ago came to mind, that pale face frozen as though in sleep, the terrible image of a torn-up body. Were the Breen boys sick? Suddenly one and then the other threw their heads down and began to heave violently. The smell was medicinal, overpowering, and unmistakable.

“Hey. You.” Reed crossed the distance between them before they could run away. “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you? Don’t try to deny it. I can smell it on you.”

Both boys—they couldn’t have been older than ten—turned sullen faces toward him. “It’s none of yer business,” said one.

The smell of vomit and whiskey was so foul that Reed resisted the urge to hold his handkerchief over his nose. He doubted the boys had gotten the liquor from their father: Patrick Breen would whip them to within an inch of their lives. “You stole the whiskey you drank away, didn’t you? Who did you steal it from? Out with it.”

They glowered at Reed. “We ain’t telling,” the scrawnier, dirtier one said.

Reed was tempted to give them the back of his hand but thought the better of it. People had started to stare.

“Why you bothering them kids?” Milt Elliott, a teamster for the Donners, shook his head.

“It’s none of your nevermind,” Reed said.

“You ain’t the boys’ father.” This from another of the Donners’ men, Samuel Shoemaker.

“Their father’s probably lying facedown in a ditch himself.” The words came out before Reed could stop himself. He cursed his sharp tongue. He could imagine how he must sound to this crowd, many of them hungover themselves from dancing half the night away. His palms started to tingle. He could feel dirt gathering in his eardrums, in his nostrils, beneath his fingernails. He needed to bathe. “Look, I’m only trying to find out where the boys got the alcohol.”

“Are you saying it’s our fault the boys got themselves drunk?” Elliott said, raising an eyebrow.

“No. I’m just saying that we must do a better job keeping track of all our supplies.” He shook his head. He would try again. “We might want to lock up our spirits, for example—”

Tall and angular, always hovering like an ominous scarecrow, Lewis Keseberg pushed his way through the crowd. Reed could’ve predicted it; Keseberg always seemed to be spoiling for a fight. “You’d like to take our liquor away, wouldn’t you? You’d probably chuck it in the Little Sandy when nobody was looking, every drop of it.” He jabbed a finger into Reed’s chest. “If you try to lay so much as one finger on any of my bottles, so help me God—”

Sweat began to collect on Reed’s upper lip. He glanced around but didn’t see Keseberg’s wife or child anywhere. Seemed Keseberg kept anything humane about him behind closed doors, and there’d be no plying him with reminders of family and decency. Still, Reed couldn’t let Keseberg push him around in front of all these other people; they’d decide he was a coward. But Keseberg was notoriously unforgiving. No one gambled with him anymore, because he never forgot who cheated, who liked to bluff, and who always held pat. Remembered which cards in the deck had already been played, calculated which were likely to come up. He apparently had a memory as sharp as a blade. He was also a half foot taller and thirty pounds heavier.

He was standing so close that Reed was sure Keseberg would notice that he was not right.

Reed imagined that his own secret—the badness in him—was so strong that it could be seen or smelt if you got close enough. It was like the fine trail dust he could never quite be rid of, traces of his sins on his hands or his face, seeping up from under his clothes, no matter how hard he tried to wipe it away.

He reached for his handkerchief again.

“Keep your hands off me,” he said, hoping his voice wouldn’t shake. “Or—”

“Or what?” Keseberg only leaned closer. Sharp as a blade.

Before Reed could answer, a huge slab of a man stepped between them: John Snyder, Franklin Graves’s hired driver. Probably the last person any reasonable man would want to tangle with.

Snyder narrowed his eyes but there was a playfulness in his smirk. “What’s going on here? This little man trying to tell everyone what to do—again?” Snyder liked to call him little man, a reminder that he could push Reed around whenever he felt like it. “I thought they told you last night that you’re not going to boss us around.”

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

CHAPTER NINE

It had to be the driest, hottest 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.

And so he kept the night watch, even though it meant barely being able to keep his eyes open during the long, hot, dusty days.

When he first caught sight of Fort Bridger, he imagined it might be a mirage. There were the roofs of a few log cabins, and buildings on the verge of collapse. Stanton hadn’t realized how eager he’d been to get here—to find a little relief from his own thoughts—until their party approached the fort. Now he was surprised by the weight of his disappointment. This place could almost be mistaken for deserted.

Unease grew and spread: Stanton could feel it like a wind touching down, rippling through the group. This couldn’t be Fort Bridger, they told each other. Where was the stockade fence, the stout gate, the cannon? In the distance, a handful of smaller outbuildings cowered together. Two Indians chopping wood in a muddy courtyard looked up as the wagon train rolled past but quickly returned to their work.

They found Jim Bridger, the proprietor, inside one of the dilapidated log cabins. It was dim and so smoky that you could barely see. The cabins were low and long, with few openings for windows, though chinks between the logs let in plenty of drafts. The floors were packed dirt, covered here and there with ragged hides. Two Indian women sat in the corner, hunched over baskets and seemingly oblivious to the smoke from the fireplace. A child played at their feet, scrubbing a thumb in the dirt.

Stanton had heard about Bridger at Fort Laramie, stories of his temper and impatience, all blamed on the many years he spent alone in the wilderness. He had been a mountain man roaming the area for a decade before setting up the fort with his partner, a restless Mexican named Luis Vasquez. Paranoid, prone to take the law into his own hands, was how he’d been described by one of the men at Fort Laramie.

Bridger might once have been strong, even intimidating, but now he was wizened, hollow-cheeked, diminished, as if something had sucked out a good part of his insides. He was dressed in tattered and filthy buckskins. His hair was long, thin, and gray. When he looked up, there was no mistaking the strange brightness in his eyes; the man was crazy.

Donner was so tall compared to Bridger that when he thrust out his hand, he nearly struck the man in the face. “I need to speak to the proprietor of this establishment,” he said in that expansive, confident tone that Stanton had come to know as completely false.

“You found ’im,” Bridger said, without glancing up. Next to him behind the counter was a short, younger man with skin the color of caramel and a dirty apron tied about his waist. They appeared to be taking inventory.

“We’ll be staying here for a couple days to rest the animals,” Donner explained after they’d exchanged names.

“That’s fine. Let us know if you need anything. We got pretty good stocks of supplies,” Vasquez said, wiping his palms on the greasy apron, streaked rust-red and brown as though he had been butchering. “Which way you planning to go? North or west?” Both men seemed keenly interested in the response.

“West, of course,” Donner said. “We’ve come to meet up with Lansford Hastings. He said he’d be waiting here to guide settlers down the cutoff.”

Bridger and Vasquez exchanged a look that Stanton couldn’t decipher. “Hastings was here, but he moved on,” Vasquez said. “A wagon train come through two weeks ago and he set off with them.”

“Two weeks ago!” Donner repeated. “But he promised to wait.”

Stanton resisted the urge to point out to Donner that he’d been warned. Donner had convinced the party to make the journey down Hastings Cutoff, said that Hastings would wait for them. Now everyone would see that they’d taken a gamble—and possibly lost.

“No need to fret,” Bridger said, squinting in a way Stanton assumed was meant to suggest a smile. “Hastings left instructions. Said any wagons that came through should follow their trail. They’re marking it. You won’t be able to miss it.”

Donner frowned. “And what’s your opinion of this trail? Is it any good? We have ninety people in our party, most of them women and children.”

Stanton wasn’t sure why he bothered to ask. Fort Bridger’s fortunes depended on the success of this trail. He hoped Christian decency would keep these men from lying to them outright, but he’d been disappointed by Christian goodness in the past. Few men valued the lives of strangers over profit.

Both Bridger and Vasquez hesitated. “Well, that route is pretty new,” Vasquez said finally.

“That it is,” Bridger interrupted, his tone brighter than Vasquez’s. “But Hastings is keen on it. He’s been down it with Bill Clyman, you heard of him? Clyman is probably the most famous mountain man in this territory, and old Bill give it his stamp of approval.”

Donner beamed stupidly. Undoubtedly he would repeat this endorsement to everyone in the party. “That’s good enough for me.”

“Tell you what, I’ll saddle up myself and take you to the start of the pass,” Bridger said. “But you’ll want to take a few days to rest up, make sure your animals are well fed and in good shape. We got oats, a little feed corn, too. Nothing between here and John Sutter’s fort in California. This here’s your last chance to fatten ’em up before you head into the mountains.”

“And we’ll make the best use of it, too, sir, you can count on that,” Donner said, beaming at each man in turn as he departed.

Stanton let Donner go alone. He turned to Vasquez. “Do you have a letter for me from Edwin Bryant? He should’ve passed through here a week or so ago.”

He thought he saw a flicker in Vasquez’s dark eyes before Bridger spoke up. “What was that name again?”

“Bryant. A few years older than me, wears spectacles most of the time. A newspaperman.”

Bridger shook his head. “Don’t recall anyone by that name came through this way. There’s nothing here for you, anyway.”

Stanton felt a quick seize of dread. “He was just ahead of us on the trail,” he said. When Bridger said nothing, he went on, “He intended to stop here. He told me so himself.” He didn’t want to think about what could have waylaid him: Bryant injured, dead, or dying.

“No, no, you’re right. He was here, I remember him now,” Vasquez said slowly.

Stanton was relieved to hear that Bryant had come through the fort after all. But there was something that rang false about the way the two men were acting. “Bryant was going to leave a letter for me. Are you sure there’s nothing?”

“Nothing, sir,” Vasquez said. Stanton knew that he was lying.

“Well—you heard Donner. We’ll be here for a few more days. I’ll check back just in case something turns up,” he said as he turned to leave. But Bridger only gave him a stony smile, showing all his teeth.

A GRAY RAIN SETTLED OVER them for the next two days. It would help with the drought so no one complained, but it was just heavy enough to make life miserable. Fires sputtered and smoked; families hunkered down in their tents, shivering out their evenings in mud-spattered clothing and boots, scratching at lice and other vermin that seemed to have infested half the wagon party’s bedding and clothes. It was hardest on the older members of the party like Mathis Hardkoop, an elderly Belgian traveling on his own. Hardkoop, no judge of character, had (inexplicably, as far as Stanton could see) come to depend on Keseberg for help, but Keseberg had tired of the old man and—against his quiet wife Philippine’s wishes—thrown him out of his wagon. Weakened by the demands of the trail, Hardkoop quickly developed a bad cough and could be found slinking around the fort with his near-empty satchel and bedroll, looking for a dry place to sleep.

A couple of families escaped the wet and mud by renting rooms from Bridger and Vasquez. James Reed moved his large brood into a bunkhouse that had stood unused since the garrison had moved on the year before. George and Jacob Donner went one better by offering Vasquez enough money to move his family out of their log cabin. The two Donner clans would escape the drizzle, be able to enjoy hot meals and boil water in Vasquez’s big copper cauldron for hot baths. Stanton was still too much of a Yankee to spend good money when he had a sturdy tent at hand.

Finally, on the third morning of their stay, the rain cleared. Stanton knelt by the river, stripped to the waist, his clothing piled nearby. The water was so cold it took his breath away. Punishingly cold, but again something he had a perverse liking for, no doubt thanks to his grandfather. He washed quickly, only the exposed parts. Donner had promised that it was to be their final day at the fort and everyone was hurrying to get through the last of their chores. He had a long list: inspect the axle and wheels for signs of wear or weakness; clean the harnesses, which had become stiff with sweat; check on the oxen’s and his saddle horse’s hooves. A beast of burden was only as good as its hooves, and no one could afford to lose one of their animals.

He felt the scream as much as he heard it. He knew her voice, felt her cry in his body, as if it were a message meant for him. He reached for the pistol lying on top of his clothing but didn’t stop for anything else. He sprinted in the direction of her voice.

Mary Graves.

She was on her back in the dirt, scrabbling backward. The shock of seeing her that way was nothing compared to the surprise of seeing a man standing over her. He was filthy, his skin nearly leprous from neglect, his eyes red and wet. The stink coming off him was overpowering and nearly made Stanton choke.

These thoughts passed through Stanton’s mind in an instant. Later he would remember nothing but a vision of two scabrous hands gripping Mary’s shoulders, before he drew a bead and squeezed off two shots automatically.

The bullets caught the man—if he could be called that—in the back. He released his grip on Mary, then toppled forward. Mary had to shove him hard to keep him from rolling on top of her. She tried to stand but sank down in the dirt again. She was very pale, and Stanton could see she was doing everything not to cry.

Stanton was surprised that the man was still alive; he was pretty sure that he’d put both bullets in him. He crouched next to him to see if there was anything he could do. “Don’t thrash, you’ll only bleed more,” he ordered, but when he held a hand out to get the man to lie still, the stranger lunged toward him, nearly taking off Stanton’s fingers with rust-colored teeth. Stanton struck him hard in the face; his bones felt spongy, almost rotten.

The man fell backward in the dirt and Stanton resisted the urge to shoot him again. Instead, he turned to Mary, who was still on the ground. “Are you okay? You weren’t hurt, were you?”

She shook her head. She was so pale he could see the tracery of veins in her cheeks. “I’ll be all right.”

There was a bright slash of red on her shoulder. “What’s that?” Stanton asked.

She touched the spot with a trembling hand. “It’s nothing. A scratch.” She lifted her chin in the man’s direction. “I was going to see what was keeping my brothers—we’d sent them for a bucket of water—when he came rushing out of the woods. The next thing I knew he had grabbed me and—” She stopped, drawing in a deep breath, and once again Stanton could see that she was trying not to cry.

“He can’t hurt you. I’ll put a bullet between his eyes if he so much as tries to get up off the ground.” Already, the man was twitching again. Not unconscious, then.

But she didn’t seem to be paying attention to him. She tried to get to her feet again. “My brothers—have you seen my brothers?”

“Take it easy. I’ll look for them just as soon as I get you back to camp.” He started to help Mary off the ground when he heard shouting. Just then, several men from the party crashed out of the woods.

“What’s going on here?” George Donner was the first to arrive, a hand clamped to his hat to keep it from blowing off his head. William Eddy and Jim Bridger were steps behind him. Bridger had leashed up a fierce-looking dog. It snarled at the blood in the dirt. “Who fired a gun?” He stopped short when he saw the man on the ground. “Dear God, what in the name of heaven…?”

Bridger held the dog back with difficulty when it lunged for the stranger. Funny, Stanton thought; the old man didn’t seem surprised at the scene.

“I heard Mary scream,” Stanton said. Mary leaned heavily against him, and Stanton was all too aware of Eddy scowling. “I found this man attacking her.”

Donner looked repulsed. “His face…” Donner shook his head. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Take it easy now, everybody.” Bridger kept his tone friendly. He handed the dog’s lead to Eddy and crouched next to the man, binding his hands with a piece of rope. Stanton noticed that the man’s wrists were chafed nearly raw. He had sat up but didn’t resist; Stanton could tell he was frightened of Bridger’s dog, but Bridger handled him carefully nonetheless. “This here man is that prisoner I was telling you about. Must’ve got out.”

“Prisoner?” Donner obviously knew nothing of the stories Bridger had been telling his new visitors over the last couple of rainy nights. Stanton himself had only caught whispers of it. “What did he do?”

“He didn’t do anything,” Bridger said with a shrug. “Leastways not like you’re thinking. Was one of ’em prospectors got lost out in the woods a few years back now. He got a fever in his brain and went off his nut. You see the way he’s acting. We’ve been holding him for his own good, so he won’t hurt hisself.” Bridger gave Stanton a contemptuous look. “I’m doing this out of the kindness of my heart. I coulda left him to wander in the woods forever, y’know.”

“I’m sure your Christian charity is an inspiration to us all,” Stanton said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm from his voice. Whatever had chafed the man’s wrists nearly raw, it wasn’t the kindness of Jim Bridger’s heart. Why would he insist on keeping a dangerous man locked up when there were women and children around? And not for weeks or even months but for years? Stanton got a chill thinking about it—as though this monstrous prisoner had been some sort of a pet to Bridger.

Donner and Eddy offered to help Mary Graves up to the wagons. While Bridger forced his prisoner to his feet, Stanton stood, troubled for reasons he couldn’t explain, watching Mary moving clumsily between her two escorts, still troubled by the memory of her scream. When she was nearly out of sight, she looked back over her shoulder at him. Her pale gray eyes were the same color as the sky.

NEAR NIGHTFALL, Stanton packed his things. He was ready to leave Fort Bridger and its madmen and its secrets behind. Chaining up couldn’t come a moment too soon.

Without warning, Lewis Keseberg stuck his head inside Stanton’s tent. “Donner wants you to come with me.”

Not so long ago, Donner would have come directly had he wanted to talk. Maybe even brought a bottle of whiskey to share. Stanton wasn’t sure when things changed between them, and why.

Stanton looked up from the knife he was sharpening, whetstone in his lap. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”

“You’re going to want to come. He’s questioning an Indian boy who crawled out of the woods.” Keseberg’s rotted teeth gleamed wetly in the dark. “Said he was traveling with Edwin Bryant.”

Stanton was on his feet and outside within seconds. At the barn, a handful of men stood in a circle around a skinny dark boy, sitting on a bale of hay and draped with a dirty horse blanket. Only his head was visible, his black hair hanging in filthy tangles. This had to be the Indian guide Bryant had hired before departing from Fort Laramie. Stanton had heard of him, a Paiute orphan converted by missionaries, but hadn’t met him. He seemed far too young to be leading men through uncharted territory.

“Where’s Edwin?” The words were out before Stanton knew he’d spoken. He just managed to keep from lunging at the boy when the boy did nothing but shake his head.

“He told us that Bryant decided to go ahead on his own and dismissed him from service,” Donner said. Hands buried in his pockets, he paced restlessly, and Stanton could tell that he, too, found that story unlikely.

Reed stepped closer to the boy, screwing up his face. “Bryant wouldn’t let you go unless you’d done something to make him. Did you try to steal from him? What was it, boy?”

The Indian pushed hair out of his eyes. “I didn’t steal nothing, I swear.”

“But he didn’t dismiss you. You lied about that, didn’t you? You ran away. You’re a coward,” Reed said. The boy hung his head again and muttered something indecipherable. Reed looked back at the others. “The only question that remains is what to do with him.”

“We leave him here, of course,” Donner said, and stopped pacing to stare at Reed. “What else is there to do? We can’t take him with us.”

Stanton thought of the wild man in Bridger’s makeshift stockade, the raw wounds on his wrists. Could they just hand the boy over to Jim Bridger?

“Why not take him with us?” Keseberg asked. “Coward or not, he knows the area and we need a guide. He can lead us to Hastings. That can be his punishment for deserting a white man in the wilderness.” It was one of the more reasonable thoughts Stanton had ever heard out of Keseberg’s mouth.

“You cannot make me work for you,” the boy said.

“We won’t cheat you,” Reed said. Although he and Keseberg despised each other, it was obvious he agreed with the suggestion. “But you heard these men: You can’t stay here. You have nowhere else to go. You’ll come with us or you can walk all the way to Fort Laramie.”

The boy looked from one of his captors to the next. Stanton thought for a moment that he might jump up and try to run away. “You cannot make me go with you. That way—that way is bad. There are bad spirits waiting for you ahead. You cannot pass. It is not safe.”

Bad spirits. Stanton thought of messages sent through dreams, of the little talismans of bundled sticks and lace he’d seen Tamsen carrying around with her when she thought no one was watching. When he shouldn’t have been watching.

He’d found a satchel of dried herbs beneath his pillow a week ago, after the last time they’d been together. When he burned it, it released a choking smoke, sweet and dizzying.

Stanton crouched so he could look the boy in the face. “Listen to me. What’s your name?”

There was a wary look in his eye. “Thomas.”

“Thomas.” That sounded familiar; perhaps he’d heard the boy’s name at Fort Laramie. “First thing in the morning, you’ll take me to where you left Edwin Bryant.”

The boy stiffened, terrified. “I cannot do that, sir. It was days and days from here. I don’t even know where he is.” He wasn’t going to let wild horses drag him back into the wilderness. That much was obvious.

Donner put a hand on Stanton’s shoulder. “Don’t waste your time worrying about Bryant. He’ll be all right. He knows about Indians and their ways. He stands the best chance of surviving out in those mountains, better than the rest of us.”

Stanton stood, twisting away from Donner’s hand. “Edwin is out there by himself, most likely lost. We can’t just desert him.”

“He left us, don’t you remember, when he headed out on horseback?” Donner said. “It seems to me he made his choice already. I have more than one lone man to worry about, Stanton. There are eighty-eight people in this wagon party, all of them depending on me. You can head out to look for Bryant if you want, Stanton, but the Indian is staying with us.”

Stanton knew, deep down, that Donner was right. Even if he managed to round up a search party, the wagon train couldn’t afford to wait. They’d lost too many days already.

And there’d been no letter from Bryant. Nothing at all.

He thought of Mary Graves scrambling backward in the dirt, the buck of his revolver as he shot her attacker, what would’ve happened if he hadn’t been there.

He thought of Tamsen—the fine line of her mouth.

He thought of loud Peggy Breen, too, teasing him along the trail, and of petite Doris Wolfinger, with her pale, delicate hands.

He thought of the countless children whose names he still didn’t have straight in his head, even after all this time.

He couldn’t head after Bryant, he saw that now. He couldn’t risk what might happen to the others if he didn’t return.

CHAPTER TEN

“Vertraust du mir?”—do you trust me?—Jacob Wolfinger asked his new wife, Doris, as they lay side by side in their narrow bed on the night before their journey.

Doris had been nervous to come all the way from Germany for a husband she’d never met, with whom she had only communicated by letter. But she’d been relieved to find that, though older than her by many years, Jacob Wolfinger was good-looking enough, and even though he was only the steward of a wealthy man in town, helping to run his many businesses, Jacob was richer than he’d even let on—and most exciting of all, he had a dream.

And though California seemed so far away from the American cities Doris had heard of—Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—it also seemed impossibly exotic. Doris was not afraid of a journey. She was only nineteen. Her whole life lay ahead of her.

“Ja,” she answered, taking Jacob’s hand in hers. Slowly, she placed it beneath the hem of her nightgown, so that his fingers trailed lightly against her knee. She felt herself flush at the boldness of it.

Though she had been timid when they’d first wed, she had by now come to enjoy her husband’s affection. It made her feel as though the matchmakers back home had been right all along, that they’d known far more about love than she did. Shivers tickled up and down her legs and torso as he touched her. Her stomach fluttered with anticipation. She had given herself up to the unknown, had trusted in the future, had allowed the ocean waves to carry her west, and into this man’s life. And that trust had been rewarded.

But that night, after he had lost his hands in the tangle of her hair and gasped quietly in her ear, neither of them could sleep.

He rolled toward her. “Du solltest dies über mich wissen.” You should know this about me.

Doris stiffened at the words. She disliked moments like this one, when she was reminded suddenly of how little she really knew about him. But especially now, when they were just on the brink of heading off into the wilderness together.

He had already used their savings to commission a wagon complete with a big canvas canopy, two pair of oxen, two sets of complicated harnesses. He’d already given the general store a list of the provisions they would need. The money had been spent. There’d be no going back.

But Jacob insisted that he could not bring her along with him until he had confessed all his sins. He sat up, pulled out a bottle of local-brewed obstwasser from a drawer by the bed, and began to tell her the story of Reiner, the confession tumbling out of him haltingly.

“Reiner?” She had never even heard him mention the name before.

It had happened six years earlier, almost to the day, Jacob said. He met a fellow German immigrant passing through town. The man, called Reiner, had come to Springfield to visit his nephew, whom he had not seen in a long time. Reiner knew how to make folk remedies from the old country, he’d told Jacob. He was a bit of a snake oil peddler, Jacob supposed, but he’d seen an opportunity. All Reiner needed were the ingredients… If Jacob helped him, Reiner promised to give him a generous cut of the profits.

It was easy, Jacob explained to her now, since his employer had trusted him with keys to all his establishments, including the apothecary.

“You stole from him,” Doris said. The truth sank in her gut. This was her husband’s sin—and perhaps an explanation for his unexpected wealth.

“We took very little,” he assured her. “A few packets of powders and a few dozen glass bottles. Nothing that would even be missed.”

“So what was the sin, then?” Doris asked.

Jacob paused and would not meet her eye. “Reiner sold the tonics to people in Springfield,” he explained, “and then he disappeared. Some say he went prospecting out west. But the people who took the tonic started to get sick. One of them died. A young woman.”

“Well,” Doris said with a tremulous voice, “the woman had been sick to begin with, right? Maybe the illness was responsible for her death, and not the medicine.”

Perhaps, Jacob agreed. Perhaps. “The woman who died… Her family was furious. They tried to find the peddler who’d sold her the fatal tonic, but with no luck. No one knew of my involvement, of course.”

“And no one ever shall,” she said, taking his hand again and squeezing it.

“Except,” he said quietly. “Except that I believe—I believe there may be a connection between the woman who died and one of the families traveling west with us. I live in fear of being discovered on our journey.”

“A connection?”

“George Donner may not have known the woman who died, but I am fairly certain his wife, Tamsen, did.”

Doris considered the man next to her. She was disappointed, suddenly and cruelly. And the fact that they would be traveling with a family he had wronged—that seemed a bad omen, a very bad omen.

“Don’t worry, Jacob,” she said, though it was as much to ease herself as him. “Try to put it out of your head.” But Doris herself could not do so. She had always been taught that the punishments for one’s sins worked in mysterious ways. That sometimes even small misdeeds could have great, unforeseen consequences. A lie—and a person’s life—hung over her husband’s head like a dark, spreading shadow. It was a very bad omen indeed.

But complete faith had rewarded her so far in her short life. So she lay awake that night, looked at the stars through their little apartment window for one last time, and resolved to have faith still.

After all, what other choice was there?