The Hunger

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Biscuits. He was sure to want biscuits. Everybody liked biscuits.

Elitha Donner paused, her hand poised above the cold Dutch oven. How many could she take before someone would notice the missing leftovers? Two, three? Father was always blaming missing food on the hired hands—nothing but stomachs on two legs, he called them—so there was probably no need to worry. She settled on two and placed them in the center of her calico square. Next to them she put a hard-boiled egg from breakfast and ham trimmings. The ham was a bit moldy but still edible if you were hungry enough, and poor Thomas was surely hungry.

She tied the fabric into a little bundle, nice and neat. She’d have liked to give him something good to drink, too, but they’d run out of cider weeks ago. Her eye fell on the hogshead of beer. She wondered if she could carry a cup all the way to the shed where he was being kept.

Then: a burble of voices outside the door. The words were masked but she could make out the speakers by tone: Father was talking to Tamsen, Aunt Betsy trying to be the peacemaker the way she always did.

She slipped past the door to the parlor. It was funny living in someone else’s house. Everyone acted as though it was normal to be sitting on the Vasquezes’ furniture, using their linens and blankets, eating off their tin plates and cups. Treating everything as though it belonged to you, while the real owners were just on the other side of the fort. Elitha heard Mr. Vasquez had moved his family to one of the empty sheds. All those little kids sleeping in a chicken coop, and here they were pretending to be so grand.

It felt like they’d been at Fort Bridger for decades, though in truth it had been only a few days, not even a week. But in that time it had gone from July to August and the nights were hotter than ever. Both Donner families were packed under one roof. You were always running into someone, squeezing through doorways, sleeping four to a bed, and woke drenched in sweat. There was barely room to breathe. It was even worse than it was on the trail. At least living out of the tents you could move about as you pleased and let the dry air cool your skin in the evenings.

And then of course, there were the voices. She’d always heard them, but they had taken on more urgency in the past month, first at Fort Laramie, and now here. Not the voices of the other members of the wagon train laughing and arguing at all hours. The voices no one else heard. The ones that had told her to read those letters at Ash Hollow in the first place. The same ones that told her to avoid the wild man in the chicken coop, chained up like a dog—the one who’d attacked Mary Graves.

But even from afar, she heard him, too. He had a voice, just like the other invisible voices, that reached her in moments of stillness and shook her to her core.

Tender thing, the man’s voice whispered in her mind, from afar. Come here, his voice whispered.

Though she was curious, she kept away. The others may have thought Elitha was a dummy, but she was not.

No one noticed Elitha slip out. No one ever cared what the stepdaughters did—that’s what she and Leanne were called, even by Father. As long as they didn’t embarrass Father and Tamsen and their chores were finished, they were free to do what they pleased. They were supposed to be invisible. And Elitha had gotten very good at it.

So good she was able to slip unnoticed between wagons, in and out of the woods, even walk among the livestock left to graze at night, petting their wet noses and their sleek hides. She reckoned that she probably knew more about the other people in the wagon train than anyone else. She knew that Patrick Breen got drunk and fought with his wife nearly every night, and the widow Lavinah Murphy paid an awful lot of attention to her sons-in-law, in a way that made Elitha uncomfortable. She knew which hired hands lost the most money at cards and which went off to the woods by themselves to pray for their safety before the wagons started off in the morning.

She’d seen her stepmother clamber out of Stanton’s wagon all by herself, with Father nowhere in sight.

She hadn’t told Father yet about what she’d seen. He might choose not to believe her, after all, and she couldn’t help but be scared of her stepmother. Besides, it didn’t matter. Any half-wit could see that Mr. Stanton was in love with Mary Graves.

It was a clear night. The moonlight bathed the courtyard in blue-gray light. A crisscross of whispers tickled at her mind, and she knew they were not really whispers but voices. She tried to clear her mind and focus. From the buildings she heard the sound of muffled voices—real ones—the occasional stab of a voice raised in anger. Another argument, perhaps between the Eddys and the Reeds.

Quickly, she made her way to the barns, where most of the men had decamped to get out of the rain. She saw the glow of lanterns through the gaps in the boards, heard hoots of laughter. Put any two young men together and before long they’d be questioning each other’s smarts, whether they’d ever been with a girl, the size of their peckers.

This, too, she had noticed and observed.

Thomas the Indian was being kept in the next building, little more than a shed, dark and lonely looking. He’d been banished there by Jim Bridger, the man who owned the fort. You’d think Mr. Bridger would be impressed after what the Indian boy had suffered, making his way back all by himself, but no, Mr. Bridger had been as mad as if he’d caught Thomas trying to burn the place down. Cuffed Thomas hard on the head a couple of times until Mr. Stanton stepped between them. The boy had looked lean, almost fragile, his long dark hair falling over his glittering eyes. But when he’d glanced up and caught her gaze, she saw that he was anything but frail. The intensity in his eyes, in the way he held his jaw firm, in the tautness of his muscles, stopped her totally, as if she were the one who’d been hit.

He made her think of a storm in summer, and though others might say it was a fool-headed thing to do, she wanted to run out into that storm, to feel its raindrops that, she somehow sensed, would fall gently against her skin.

She peeked around the corner. William and George, two of Uncle Jacob’s boys, were guarding the shed. The boys were only meant to call the alarm if Thomas tried to escape, but William, twelve, and George, eight, took their jobs seriously and carried sticks and switches. Elitha knew they’d be easy enough to get rid of: William had started to show interest in girls—even his own cousins—and George could be counted on to go wherever his brother went.

So she walked straight for them, not even bothering to conceal the calico square in her hand. “Hello,” she said. “Mary Graves is taking a bath at the water trough. She’s stripped down to her bloomers.”

That was all it took. They were off with hardly a backward glance.

She was alone now with the boy, and her pulse thudded in her ears. She pushed the narrow barn door open and stood in the doorway while her eyes adjusted to the dark. It smelled of old hay and chicken feathers. “Hello?” The blackness remained still as the surface of a pond. “I—I brought you something to eat.”

Something stirred. Slowly, she blinked, and Thomas emerged from the shadows, though he kept half hidden, staring at her in a way that was both curious and aloof. Something in Elitha’s chest fluttered.

“My name is Elitha Donner.” She held out the package she’d brought. “I thought you might be hungry.”

He didn’t move. She put the bundle down on a bale of hay and backed away. After a long frozen minute, he approached. But he didn’t leap out or creep forward like some wild thing, the way she imagined he might. Instead he stepped politely toward the bundle and opened it with careful, practiced fingers. His posture was as straight as a governess’s.

“I made those biscuits myself. I would’ve brought some honey to go with them but I couldn’t think how…”

He had already started to eat, studiously, though his hands shook, betraying how starving he must have been. His politeness made Elitha want to squirm. Maybe one day, she thought, she’d invite him to join the family for a meal. Neither Father nor Uncle Jacob liked to skimp on food (though for the servants it was another story). Sunday dinners back at the farmhouse meant chicken stew and dumplings, buttered green beans and corn bread, fresh cold milk and cream over berries for dessert.

But she knew it was a fantasy. Tamsen had called Thomas a filthy heathen. He would never be one of them.

But looking at him now, she thought the opposite. He stopped eating and glanced up at her, his eyes two dark pools. Something flickered across them, and she felt suddenly embarrassed by the way she’d been staring at him. She was so used to watching people, to being ignored. It was unsettling now to be seen back.

Unsettling and wonderful.

She blushed at him and smiled. He gave her a slight nod. She took the tankard when he’d drained the beer—she tried not to look at the way his throat bobbed as he drank. She was pretty sure Thomas smiled, just a little, when he handed the jug to her. That was her reward.

It was enough.

That and her realization that, for a moment or two, the voices in her head had gone silent.

CHAPTER TWELVE

They found the note pinned beneath a small rock on the top of a boulder, fluttering like a white flag of surrender. Stanton felt something in his own chest rise and then gutter in response.

Donner read it out loud: “Way ahead rougher than expected. Do not follow us into Weber Canyon.—Lansford Hastings, Esq.” The wind tugged at the paper in Donner’s hand, as though a ghost were trying to snatch it away.

“What the devil does that mean? I thought this man knew the trail.” Keseberg spat. “He named it after hisself, for crissake.”

A strange mood had infected the party since Fort Bridger. It was understandable, given the bizarre incident with Bridger’s prisoner and the stories told by the Paiute boy, Thomas, but still, it left Stanton uneasy. They were teetering on a knife’s edge: He feared that without Hastings’s help, they would soon turn on each other. Impatience crackled in the air. Everyone knew they were racing time now.

The weather would turn soon enough, even if the heat was so oppressive at the moment that they could hardly imagine it ever letting up.

Stanton’s gaze skipped over the ground. “Their tracks are plain enough. Despite what he says, it should be easy enough to follow them.” They led to a pass completely obscured by forest, dark and impenetrable, the trail swallowed up behind a wall of growth. Above the ranging forest was a wall of imposing white-capped mountains. The majority of the wagon party came from the plains and had never seen mountains like these. “California must lie right behind,” Patrick Breen had said breathlessly, unable to imagine that the country could go on for much longer. Stanton knew that the few existent maps, sketchy as they were, said Breen was wrong. But he wasn’t going to be the one to say so.

“Is that smart?” Franklin Graves asked. Everyone turned instinctively in his direction; people seemed to listen to Graves. It might’ve been because of his imposing size; Graves was a large man, made broad of back by long hours in the fields, building up his farm. “Not if Hastings says it’s not safe. He must’ve had a reason for warning us off.”

“We can’t just sit here on our asses waiting for his permission.” That was Snyder, the Graves family’s teamster. Stanton noticed that Reed flinched at the sound of his voice. Odd.

Donner’s eyes moved nervously from Keseberg to Eddy, to the wheel tracks in the dirt. “We have an Indian boy who knows these parts. We could keep going,” he said, testing the idea before the crowd. Stanton didn’t care for the look on Donner’s face, like a man who had swallowed a pebble but would rather choke than cough it up and reveal his mistake. Donner had fought hard to make himself party captain, seemingly without thinking about the difficult choices that came with the position.

“I been having trouble with the axle on one of my wagons like it is,” Graves said. “Can’t risk it.”

“We should send a couple men ahead to find Hastings and bring him back,” Reed said. “He got us into this mess, he can damn well get us out of it.” Reed squared his shoulders. He was sweating in the sun. Stanton didn’t know why he always suited up like he was going to a courthouse. “I’d like to volunteer.”

“You? What makes you think he’s gonna listen to you?” Keseberg called out. “Hell, nobody listens to you.” This got some easy laughs. Keseberg reminded Stanton of the schoolroom bullies who’d made games of plucking wings off dragonflies or crushing ants beneath their feet.

“I’ll make him listen.” Reed tried his best to sound confident. “Though I’d like another man to ride with me. Safety in numbers.” No one needed to be reminded why.

A wind turned over dry leaves in the silence. Last night there had been poker games, drinking, storytelling, and who knew what had gone on inside the tents. Few men would want to leave such comforts to ride blind through unknown territory.

The cowards. They were only too happy to let Reed shoulder all the risk. He couldn’t let Reed head out on his own with no one to watch his back. Stanton stepped forward. “I’ll go.” He deliberately avoided Keseberg’s eyes; he knew well enough what Keseberg thought about him. “I’ll ride with Reed.”

LATER THAT EVENING, Stanton tethered his saddle horse at his campsite and built a fire. Then he unhitched his oxen and drove them to the meadow to graze with the other livestock, nodding to the men who had taken up watch for the night. In the distance, Franklin Graves and one of his boys drove their oxen through the meadow, and when Franklin turned and caught sight of him, the look on his face reminded Stanton of the rumors he’d caught wind of back in Fort Bridger, the unpleasant speculations whirling about him. Keseberg had given him the truth—you could count on Keseberg for the truth if it was unpleasant—that there were some in the wagon party wondering whether Stanton might not be just a little off, a little lonely, a little crazy, a potential danger to the others. When Bryant had warned that the Nystrom boy’s murderer might be some twisted individual living among them, little did Stanton imagine that he’d be a suspect. No one had gone so far as to accuse him—no one was willing to take it that far, it seemed. But still, Stanton knew the human mind was susceptible to insidious influence, especially when people were hungry, tired, and afraid. He remembered how his neighbors had been only too willing to believe the worst about him when Lydia died… Had these people, the ones who knew him from Springfield, finally discovered the story of Lydia? And if they had, how long would it be before they began to turn on him?

Edwin Bryant had given him good advice and he’d ignored it. He should’ve made more allies when he had the chance. The other single men had made themselves useful to one household or another, finding a place at family campfires or a seat in their wagons, like sickly Luke Halloran or the old Belgian, Hardkoop. Out here, you couldn’t afford to be on your own.

And then, of course, there was still the problem of Tamsen, whose thin smile cut into him with a chill whenever they passed, the unspoken power she held over him lingering in her wake long after she’d gone.

A stand of cottonwood striplings bordered the meadow, the farthest outcropping of the dark woods into which the previous wagon party had disappeared. Stanton imagined their wagons simply swallowed up, like sunlight absorbed by so many leaves. He pushed into the ragged little grove to search for enough dry wood to keep his fire going through the night.

But he had only gone a few steps when he startled: Mary Graves was moving among the trees, having clearly had the same idea, and he was so pleased and surprised to see her he almost doubted she was real. But she turned when a twig cracked under his boots. In the half dark, he couldn’t read the expression on her face. But she nearly dropped the sticks in her arms.

“Miss Graves.” He drew in a deep breath. “What a pleasure to run into you. I hope I didn’t startle you.” In truth, he was alarmed to find how often he thought about Mary Graves lately, as if all of his other thoughts were fallen leaves easily scattered.

Mary still hadn’t spoken to him since her attack at Fort Bridger. But he was sure he’d caught her looking in his direction more than once.

“Only a little,” she admitted now. “I’m afraid, after what happened…”

“I’m so glad to see you looking well,” Stanton said quickly. She’d gone pale, and he hated to think he’d reminded her of the monstrous man at Fort Bridger. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to call on you.” Her father had been tailing her day and night.

Her smile was tight but seemed sincere. “No need to apologize. I understand.”

“Are you feeling better?” He wondered about the wound on her shoulder. It had been slight, but the man who’d attacked her had been filthy; it would be so easy for the wound to become infected and to fester.

“Yes, thank you. It was nothing, a graze. Once my mother saw that horrible man’s condition, she made me bathe in vinegar and soda ash! I feel as though I’ve been scrubbed raw.” She laughed, running her hands over her arms self-consciously. “Actually, I’m glad to see you, Mr. Stanton. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I would’ve come earlier, but my father…” She stopped, blinking, and a sour taste rose in Stanton’s throat. So it was as he suspected. “Thank you for what you did that day, rushing to my rescue like that. It was very brave of you.”

“It was nothing.” He had spent days thinking about her eyes and now he could barely meet them. “I felt almost sorry for him. There was something about the way Bridger handled him, the way he talked about him, that made me think of an animal in a zoo. It made me think…” His blood pulsed a little faster. He remembered the night Lydia’s father, drunk on whiskey, had joked about looking through the keyhole of his daughter’s bedroom to watch her undress. Stanton didn’t know why the association had come to him now. Maybe only that he sensed Bridger liked the power he had over his prisoner, liked to watch him chained up in that dark room, going slowly insane.

The thought was so vile and so strong that he was momentarily afraid that he could transmit them to her, like a kind of contagion.

“What is it?” Mary asked. “What’s wrong?”

Before he could make up an excuse, he heard a shout. They turned to see Franklin Graves crashing through the brush. He looked first at Stanton but then turned to his daughter. “I told you I didn’t want you talking to him.”

Although her father towered over her, Mary didn’t flinch. “And I told you he’s done nothing wrong,” she said evenly. “Besides, I meant to thank him for saving me. He did save me, as you recall.”

Graves’s face was dark with anger. “Believe me, Mary, this man is no one’s savior. Now take that firewood to your mother, she’s waiting on you. Go on,” he added, and raised a hand as if he might hit her. Instead he pulled her roughly in the direction of the wagon train. “Get.”

Stanton felt his anger rushing down to some deep, sharp point, as if it were flowing down the blade of a knife. Another father who hated him, resented him—and maybe even envied him. “I don’t know what I’ve done to give you cause to dislike me—”

Graves didn’t let him finish. “I don’t ever want to catch you talking to my daughter, do you hear me? I know all about you. I know what you did in Massachusetts.”

Massachusetts. A word like the first hiss of flame, ready to flare up and consume him at any moment.

At least Mary was too far off now to hear it.

Graves smiled narrowly. “I see you know what I’m talking about. You can’t lie your way out of it, not with me. George Donner knew that girl’s father, you see. That girl you got pregnant and deserted. He told me you ran off in shame after she killed herself.”

Stanton felt as though he’d been hit. This was the moment he’d been dreading and, perhaps, waiting for since they all left Springfield. Sometimes he wondered if the rumors would follow him to the ends of the world. Maybe he would always have to carry them along, like a shadow. A horrible twisted lie that was his burden to bear to the end of his days.

It was his fault, after all. He’d known that Donner and Knox were associates. It was how he’d ended up here in the first place, caught in an endless spiral that seemed determined to keep his past alive. It was just that he hadn’t expected George Donner to tell anyone about Lydia. And, of course, Donner didn’t know the whole story; he only knew what Knox had told him, which was, of course, the whole problem.

Emboldened by Stanton’s silence, Graves took a step closer. Stanton could smell his breath: close and wet and rotten. “How old was that girl, anyway, when you got her that way?”

He wanted to throw a punch at Graves but somehow managed to stop himself. He couldn’t speak. The words swelled in his throat to close it, until he felt as if he might choke—long ago, when he made his promise to Lydia, he had gotten into the habit of swallowing the truth. He hadn’t said anything when it had happened, hadn’t let himself be moved by the vicious things his Massachusetts neighbors said about him.

“So you won’t even try to deny it?” For a split second, Graves looked almost disappointed, as if he’d been angling for a fight. “I don’t want you near Mary. She’s not going to throw herself away on a no-account like you. If I ever see you talking to her again, I’ll tell her what I know about you.”

So he hadn’t told Mary already. One small mercy.

And in this world, Stanton thought, that was increasingly the only kind of mercy to be found.

THE TRAIL HASTINGS HAD BLAZED was ugly, barely wide enough for a single wagon. As he and Reed followed it past a landscape of felled trees and jagged stumps, Stanton fell into the rhythmic sway of his horse’s back and tried to keep his mind from swinging back to Mary, to the fight with Franklin Graves, and to the memories he’d resurrected of Lydia. Maybe, after all, Graves was right about him. He was hardly an ideal suitor. He doubted he knew the first thing about pleasing a young woman. After Lydia, it seemed he couldn’t keep away from new widows and unhappy wives. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to stop himself, as if the need to bury his misery in them over and over again was the only way for him to survive.

And besides, he certainly couldn’t provide Mary with the kind of wealth and prospects her father was apparently seeking.

He recalled Lavinah Murphy teasing him at the picnic about taking a wife. Don’t you get tired of being alone, Mr. Stanton?

She had no idea. The aloneness ate a hole through him. Sometimes he worried that the loneliness had taken everything, that there was nothing left of him at all on the inside.

They stopped the first night to make camp as the sun was sinking behind the hills. Stanton was surprised when Reed came back with a rabbit. It was scrawny and small but it was meat. “Where’d you find that?” he asked, impressed that Reed was able to catch anything, let alone manage to do it so quickly, when they’d seen so little game since Fort Laramie. Even in the thick cover of the woods, there was little birdsong. It was as if the lush growth were a painted setpiece, a convincing impression of life built out of sawdust and paint.

Reed smiled faintly as he flayed it, jerking the skin off the carcass in a couple of tugs. “Lucky, I guess. Found a spring down by those boulders, too. I’ll get water for the horses once I get this rabbit over the fire.”

Stanton had been wary of heading out with Reed, whom he suspected of having his own reasons for wanting to take a break from the party: Stanton knew a man with a secret when he saw one. But now that they were away from the fray, Stanton relaxed a bit.

The two men caught up with Hastings’s wagon party the next day, following their meandering trail through the trees. It looked to have been charted by a drunk, spur after spur ending abruptly at a cliff. Standing at the edge, Stanton could see the canyon far below them, which promised a way through the mountains. But there was no apparent path down to reach it.

They rode up on the wagon party halted dead in the woods. The scene was of frenetic work, the men either swinging axes to clear a path or using the oxen to haul the felled trees out of the way. The wagons remained in a line backed down the trail, bottled up in place. Oddly, there were few women and no children about: no campfires burning, no cooking or clothes washing taking place. A couple of men stood lookout, too, perched high on rock outcroppings, rifles nestled in the crook of their arms. Maybe, Stanton thought, they’d had trouble with Indians along the way.

A big, red-faced man, stripped to the waist, lowered his ax in midswing when Stanton and Reed rode into the clearing. Stanton didn’t like the way the men on lookout notched their rifles into their shoulders.

“We’re looking for Lansford Hastings,” Stanton called out, when they were still far enough away to make for a difficult target. “Is he with you?”

The men exchanged wary looks and didn’t answer.

Reed spoke to fill the silence. “Our wagon party is a couple days back. We took the cutoff, just like you, but all we found was a note from Hastings, warning us not to follow.”

One of the men laughed darkly. “Then he done you a courtesy, friend. Count yourself lucky and turn around.”

“We have nearly a hundred people waiting back at the trailhead,” Stanton said. “We need him to guide us.”

“Look.” The red-faced man hefted his ax. “He ain’t good for much, but we need him to get us out of this goddamned forest. We ain’t about to let you have him.”

It was a strange thing to say. Stanton and Reed exchanged a look.

“We only want to talk to him, that’s all,” Reed said. Finally, the men gestured for them to come forward, and the sentries lowered their rifles. They walked single file between the long string of wagons. Stanton peered through gaps in the canvas and saw small frightened faces, children huddled together, silently eyeing him in return. Something had happened. That was clear.

“So, why the sentry?” Reed asked, his voice friendly. “Have you had trouble with Indians?”

The red-faced man wiped his brow with a bandana. “We got trouble, but it ain’t been Indians. We got an animal tracking us, maybe more than one. Been on our tail ever since we left Fort Bridger.”

“Surely you don’t have to worry they’ll attack in broad daylight?” Stanton asked. But almost immediately he realized that the tree canopy was so thick it could’ve been dusk.

“Mostly they been picking off our livestock at night, and we can’t afford to lose any,” the man said. “But now some of the dogs have gone missing, too. Maybe they run off, hard to know.”

Stanton was uneasy. He scanned the trees pressing close on either side of them.

Reed cleared his throat. “You said Hastings wasn’t worth much—what did you mean by that?”

“He’s lost his nerve, is all,” said the man with the ax. “You’ll see for yourself.” He jerked his chin toward a wagon set a way back from the others. The canvas opening had been laced together with leather strips. It looked as if Hastings had sewn himself inside. Stanton had never seen anything like it. He gave Reed a questioning look, but Reed just shrugged. It was clear their escorts didn’t intend to go any farther. The man planted the ax between his feet and leaned on the handle, looking faintly amused.

Stanton went forward, wishing he could shake the feeling that they were being watched—not just by the other men, but by the forest itself.

“Lansford Hastings?” Stanton climbed over the toe board. A scuffling noise came from inside the wagon. “Don’t shoot. My friend and I have come to speak with you. We just want a few minutes of your time.” There was no reply, but no further noises, either, which Stanton decided to take as a sign of acquiescence. He had to unlace the leather strips to climb under the opening in the canopy. Reed followed him.

The first thing Stanton noticed was that it smelled smoky but not of wood smoke. It was as though Hastings had been burning herbs or flowers, and the smell recalled Tamsen sharply to him, the smell of her hair on his fingers, the way her skin tasted. Hanging from wooden pegs were dozens of Indian charms made of feathers, twigs, and string. The wagon looked as though it had been ransacked, the floor a hodgepodge of barrels and chests and hogsheads. As his eyes got used to the dark, Stanton saw a bulky figure cowering at their approach, crouched behind a leather-strapped trunk. A rifle barrel glinted in the dim light.

Under different circumstances, at a different time, Lansford Hastings might have been handsome; he had a square jaw, a strong brow, and dark, sharp eyes. Now his face was powdered with trail dust. His hair was roped in dirty strands.

Stanton came forward cautiously, all too aware of the rifle pointed at him. “Lansford Hastings? We represent another wagon party. We saw your handbill and expected you would be at Fort Bridger to lead us down the cutoff. But when we reached the trailhead we found your note.”

At this, Hastings’s eyes came to life and settled on Stanton. “Why didn’t you listen? You shouldn’t have come.”

“Look here, Hastings, we came all this way after reading your book,” Reed spoke up suddenly, ignoring the look Stanton gave him. “I don’t mind telling you that it was quite a shock to get to Fort Bridger only to find you’d gone. And that note. I suspect you’re nothing but a charlatan,” Reed said. “How could you write those things in your book if the route—”

“It isn’t the route that’s the problem,” Hastings said shortly. “The cutoff is a difficult passage, but it can be done. I’ve done it.” He shook his head. “It’s something else entirely. There’s something following us.”

The charms tacked to the walls stirred faintly, as if a phantom hand had passed along them.

Stanton frowned. “We know. The men told us. Animals—”

“They don’t know.” Now that Hastings was standing, Stanton could smell him; he smelled like something sick and terrified, a wounded animal. “It’s not an animal, at least, not any kind of animal I’ve ever seen.” His voice kept skipping into a higher register. “There’s no game in these woods—have you noticed? That’s because there’s nothing left. Nothing. Something’s out there eating every living thing.”

“A pack of wolves,” Reed said. But he sounded uneasy. “That’s what we’ve heard, as far back as Fort Laramie.”

“No,” Hastings insisted. “I know wolves. I know how they hunt. This is different. The Indians know it, too.” Hastings let out a laugh that sounded as if he were choking. “They took a boy, no more than twelve, I swear, and left him tied to a tree out in the woods back over the ridge. They just rode off and left him there. Left him for whatever’s out there, feeding. I can still hear him screaming.”

Stanton had heard of men unhinged by the wilderness, by too many years fighting the dark encroachment of the natural world. He wondered whether Hastings had simply come undone. But despite his filth and the way his hands trembled, Hastings didn’t seem crazy.

Terrified, yes. Crazy, no.

“Right after we left Fort Bridger, a little girl went missing,” Hastings said. Now his voice had dropped again, to almost a whisper. “Every man in the party went out to search for her to no avail. And then a couple miles into the woods, we found her body, ripped to pieces, nothing left but the skeleton.”

Stanton thought of the Nystrom boy, and the horrible mess of his body. The face turned sideways, as though he’d just lain in the dirt to rest. This girl had been found miles ahead of the wagon train, the same way they’d found Nystrom. The hairs on the back of Stanton’s neck lifted. The charms stirred again in the stillness. He was sweating. Being surrounded by Hastings’s trinkets agitated him, reminding him of Tamsen. This junk can’t protect you; nothing could protect them. He didn’t know where the thought had come from. But it was true.

“You need to tell your wagon party to turn around. Head for Fort Hall and the northern route as fast as you can. These men won’t let me go or I’d beg you to take me with you. Save yourselves.”

Reed didn’t speak until he and Stanton were well away from the stranded wagon party. “The devil take Lansford Hastings. I’ll never trust another lawyer for as long as I live.” Reed spit on the ground. “Has the man lost his mind, do you think?”

“No,” Stanton said slowly. “No, I don’t think so.”

Reed stared at him. “So you believe this story of monsters in the woods?”

“I don’t believe in monsters,” Stanton said. “Only men who behave like them.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Three days after the conversation with Hastings, they came across the remains of the boy he’d told them about—the twelve-year-old Indian, tied to a tree.

Reed’s hands were raw and so was his patience. It had been a bad passage. He and Stanton had returned to the group and, despite the warnings they conveyed, the group had decided nevertheless to continue on the trail. Patrick Breen and Franklin Graves didn’t like the trail from the start and complained to anyone who would listen, and soon enough Wolfinger and Spitzer and then the rest of the Germans took up the refrain. Reed suspected it was in part because they simply didn’t like the idea of him as captain.

But he’d had little choice but to step up. The news about Lansford Hastings blew all the bluster straight out of George Donner. He had simply looked blankly from Reed to Stanton when they told him, as if he hadn’t understood.

“We’ve made a terrible mistake,” Reed had said bluntly. “We were depending on that man and he’s deserted us. He lied to us. We’ll die out here…”

But Donner only shook his head. “I don’t know the way to the Humboldt River from here, none of us does. Perhaps we should turn around. We could take the northern route…”

“There’s no time for that,” Reed said. “If we try to take the northern route at this late date, we’d need to winter over at Fort Hall.” It would be ruinous for most families. Few had the money to sustain them over the season, not with the high prices the trading posts commanded. A dollar fifty for a pound of flour, and a family could easily eat a pound of flour in a day. Half the families would starve before spring.

Donner had turned away from them, sweating and trembling, refusing to decide. And since then, Donner hadn’t spoken a word to anyone outside his family. Reed was convinced that Donner’s breakdown was only temporary and got Stanton to agree to keep mum. Jacob Donner, his brother, had agreed to keep him out of sight, and the story going through the wagon train was that he’d fallen ill.

So Reed took charge of the route. Within a day, the forest choked up around them the same as it had done to Hastings’s group, and then the ground broke uphill sharply. On the morning of his second day as captain, one of Reed’s oxen had come up lame, setting his temper on edge. He ended up being a little too terse with Keseberg, the wrong man to provoke, and they fell into a shouting match that ended when Keseberg drew a knife and had to be pulled away by the arm.

The atmosphere up and down the line quickly turned tense and jumpy. Reed sent brothers-in-law William Foster and William Pike ahead to scout the way and got everyone else started chopping down trees, terrified in his heart that they would end up trapped in the forest like the other party. Reed suggested that everyone start pooling and rationing their food stocks, but he was quickly shouted down, and some men threatened to string him up if he ever raised the idea again.

A small hunting party went out after the wagon train had halted for the night, making the best of the last hour of light left before it would be too dangerous to hunt. Fresh meat was in short supply and no one was willing to slaughter any livestock, so every able-bodied man in the party with a rifle—and even some less-than-able-bodied ones, such as Luke Halloran—ventured out to look for game.

Reed trailed a small group, behind Milt Elliott and John Snyder in the lead. His rifle weighed heavily, his arms aching from swinging an ax all day. He was still puzzling over what Snyder had told him last night—what he’d followed Reed into the woods to tell him.

You know what your trouble is, Reed? You don’t understand them people at all.

Only sheep will follow you meek like. The rest of them don’t think they need your help.

They’re not going to listen to you unless you make them.

Snyder was a twenty-five-year-old drifter who’d never done anything more difficult than bully and whip livestock. Reed had built a furniture business from nothing, led a company of men against Sauk and Kickapoo Indians in the Black Hawk War.

And yet Snyder was right—Reed didn’t understand people. The light was nearly gone and the whole time they’d seen nothing, not so much as a prairie squirrel or a single quail, but no one dared say anything out loud for fear it might further jinx them. Reed listened apprehensively to the idle chitchat of the men ahead, worried that Snyder’s exchange with Elliott was getting increasingly risky. Snyder knew Reed could hear what was being said and liked to bait him; it was the bully in him. Had he been trying to warn Reed last night?

There’s two kinds of men. Sheep and the men that bleed ’em. Don’t forget which one I am.

If there was one thing Snyder knew, it was how to make people do what he wanted. All it took was a look from those hooded eyes, a flex of one of his hands.

If Reed could go back in time, he never would’ve started up with him. He’d been reckless. But he’d been unable to get the feeling of Snyder’s hands out of his mind, and the thought of them—big and rough and powerful—had gone somehow from one of dread to one of intense need.

It was stupid. Worse than stupid—deadly.

Say the wrong word to the wrong man and you could find yourself in a jail cell waiting for the circuit judge. Reed had heard such a tale from Edward McGee. You had to be ready to act on offers when they occurred.

Snyder’s voice suddenly broke out angrily. “For crissakes,” he shouted, then let loose a string of cusswords. Halloran’s little dog yipped. Reed picked up his pace. Maybe they’d found game.

What Reed saw as he rounded the turn made his stomach lurch. Hanging between two trees were the remains of a corpse: wrists caught tight with rope, shoulders stretched spread-eagle, head lolling on the neck, but below that—nearly nothing. The spinal column ended abruptly in midair, its vertebrae suspended like beads on a string. Nearly all the flesh had been stripped away from the bone. On the ground: long leg bones, cracked pieces of rib. The spot beneath the body was churned into a frenzy and black with old blood.

“What in the blue blazes is this?” Milt Elliott asked, and nearly tripped over Halloran’s little terrier as it sniffed at the bones.

Reed couldn’t stop looking at the head, worried to a bloody mess by insects. Something—birds?—had gotten to the eyes. It had to have been a monstrous death, though whether it was worse than starving or dying of thirst high in the mountains, he couldn’t guess. He had to speak up before Snyder and Elliott and Halloran brought the news back to the wagon train and all hell broke loose. “We heard about this from Hastings,” he said. “The Indians did it. A ceremony of some kind.”

“A ceremony?” Snyder growled. He took out his big hunting knife and sawed at one of the ropes until it gave. The corpse swung to the left, so that one hand trailed on the ground. “What kind of fucked-up ceremony is this?”

Reed said nothing. He and Stanton had agreed they wouldn’t tell the rest of the party of Hastings’s fears. Something’s stalking the wagon train. It would only spook them worse. Snyder didn’t seem to expect an answer, however; like many, he feared the Indians and didn’t try and make sense of anything they did.

“Don’t it look kinda like that kid we found on the plain, before we got to Fort Laramie?” Snyder asked. He kicked at Halloran’s terrier when the dog began to chew at a wrist bone. “Quit that! That ain’t right. You can’t have a dog eating human flesh. He’ll develop a taste for it.”

“Quincy, come here.” Halloran looked green. Consumption had whittled him down to his bones. It would be a miracle if he made it another month.

Snyder reached down to pull the bone away from Halloran’s dog. Suddenly, the dog leapt up and bit him. Red welled to the spot immediately.

“Stupid dog.” Snyder brought the wound reflexively to his mouth. He swung a boot at the dog but missed and the terrier lunged for his boot again. Without warning, Snyder leveled his rifle at the dog and squeezed off a bullet, catching the dog in the stomach. The sound the dog made when it was struck was the eeriest thing Reed had ever heard, a high twisted note of surprise and pain that was almost human.

Halloran was a timid man—a sheep, in Snyder’s terms—and wasted by illness, but anger propelled him toward Snyder. His hands found the big man’s shirt front, but Snyder pushed him back easily. “What the hell? What the hell did you do that for?” He looked to the others for support, but Reed averted his eyes. No one was going to challenge Snyder, least of all Reed. He knew how Snyder could get, knew the power in those hands, and had the bruises to show for it.

“That mutt bit me,” Snyder said. “I got my rights. If a dog bites me, I shoot him.”

“He barely broke the skin,” Halloran said. Blood dribbled down his chin from the last bout of coughing. “Maybe I should shoot you.”

Snyder’s open-handed slap caught Halloran on the side of his face and sent him sprawling in the dirt. Reed flinched. Snyder only laughed.

“Quit crying,” he said. “It’ll only land you in trouble.”

What else had Snyder said to him last night? You think you know how the world works, but you don’t know shit. Men like you make me angry. You’re so fucking stupid that you don’t even know how stupid you are.

Halloran rolled off his back onto his hands and knees, his whole body buckling under the force of his coughing fit. Ribbons of bloody phlegm hung from his mouth. Reed was disgusted, and sick with himself, too; he should have stood up for Halloran, but he was too afraid.

Snyder and Elliott started back the way they’d come. Reed stood there, watching Halloran pawing through the dirt to his dog’s side. “Come on, Luke. Leave him.” It was almost dark, and Reed had no desire to fall too far behind the others.

Halloran didn’t even lift his head. “We got to bury him. I can’t just leave him here. Would you help me? Will you at least do that?”

Reed’s disgust twisted into anger. The ground was hard as rock and they had no shovel. Did Halloran expect they would dig with their hands? And there was tomorrow to think about, another day of backbreaking work clearing a trail, and who knew how many such days they had in front of them?

“Leave the damn dog.” Reed shouldered his rifle. “Or you can stay out here by yourself in the dark, see whether there really is something following us.” He was relieved when Halloran got to his feet, and felt a heady rush of guilt, too, which brought the taste of sick to the back of his mouth.

All the way back to camp, he pretended not to hear Halloran crying.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Everyone said it was a miracle. It was God’s grace, and proof that they had not been abandoned.

Tamsen didn’t blame them; grace was in short supply, like everything was. And how else could you explain, really, what had happened to Halloran? If she had really been a witch, as everyone said, she might have had an answer. Signs, augurs, charms to keep away the devil, ways of reading the future in the drift of the clouds: There was no power in what she practiced, only attention—increasingly, of the unwanted variety.

But some power had touched Halloran, and healed him.

For a week, ever since his little dog got shot, he had barely been able to lift his head. It was a shame about the dog, but Halloran had let himself get too attached to it. He’d even let the dog nip and bite him for fun, like a parent that doesn’t know how to discipline his children. Halloran was coughing up blood regularly now, though he tried to hide it, and would struggle for breath for hours at a time.

Tamsen had tended to him, even taking him into their wagon since he was too weak even to stay on a horse. She didn’t know why she felt sorry for him; maybe only because he was an outsider, and lonely, and despised, as she was. She’d spoon-fed him broth brewed from mushrooms scavenged by her girls, the only thing he could keep down. She’d made sure from the time the girls were little they knew the difference between a lacy yellow chanterelle and the deadly parasol, and they knew to try nothing before bringing it back first for her approval. (She gathered the poisonous mushrooms herself, when she needed them; she had a good handful of the deadly parasols, carefully cleaned and dried, waiting to be mixed with her homemade laudanum—all of her supplies hidden and stashed away, kept secret from the wagon party.)

Why Halloran had tried to make the trip west, Tamsen couldn’t guess. Halloran hadn’t let on how sick he’d been at the outset, knowing that he wouldn’t be allowed to join, especially as a man with no wagon or oxen, traveling alone, no family members to take care of him. Then again, no one had imagined the journey would be this difficult. Tamsen didn’t know if they were suffering bad luck especially or if everyone who’d made the trip before them had lied: lied in the newspapers, lied in their books like Lansford Hastings (vile, vile man, and mad, too, as it turned out; another reason to resent her husband, who had believed every word Hastings had written). Lured out west to die in the wilderness.

But then: Halloran’s breathing eased, the sweats dried up. By the end of the first day of his recovery, he could walk around without help, though not for too long. His coughing went away. The next night he fiddled for over an hour after supper. Previously, on his good days, everyone loved to hear him fiddle. People would crowd around and for a few moments, everyone would forget their grudges and disagreements. No one fought, no one bickered. Most people preferred lively tunes, jigs and reels, something they could dance to, but Tamsen liked the sad songs; melancholy was better suited to the land around them.

But that night he played a reel so fast that his bow was a blur and dancers dropped to the ground, exhausted trying to keep up.

“If this goes on, I’ll be able to move my things out of your wagon and go back to my mule,” Halloran said. “I won’t have to be a burden on your family no more.”

“But don’t rush things,” Tamsen said. She was happy for his health—of course she was. But frightened, too, for reasons she couldn’t say. It was as if he had not just gotten his life back but a new life altogether; he was more talkative, feverishly happy, newly optimistic. “You want to make sure that you’re good and strong first.”

The truth was, too, she’d gotten used to having Halloran around, either in the wagon, tucked in behind the backboard, or propped up with quilts near the campfire at night, keeping an eye on the cooking. George had thought she’d lost her mind when she had insisted they make a place for him in their wagon, but Halloran turned out to be uncommonly easy to care for. He was effusively grateful for every kindness, played with the little ones for as long as his strength would allow, and, when his energy was spent, would listen to Tamsen talk about her early days as a schoolteacher in the Carolinas. Those hadn’t been her happiest days—she had been a young childless widow, trying to make her own way—but so different from her life with George that she sometimes marveled that it had happened at all.

At twenty-five, he reminded her, a little, of her Jory. He’d always been a kind of compass for her. She hadn’t seen her brother in years now, though, and sometimes she thought her mind made any sort of excuse to look for him in others.

There were even times when Halloran felt like the most courteous of lovers, with a shy smile and gentle ways, though she supposed she was imagining this, too.

His hands were beautiful and graceful—fiddling to thank for that, she supposed. Sometimes, sometimes, she imagined what it would feel like to have those hands on her body.

Did she seek them out or did they find her, these dark brooding men with their secrets? They never stayed, but their effect on her remained, leaving a need for more, like certain addictive herbs that can cause trembling and dizziness when a dose is removed too quickly.

And Halloran’s sweetness only seemed to stir up that addiction, served to rejuvenate her hatred of George, the way the gaze of her own husband left her feeling itchy and stuck. She had the familiar urge to do something rash, to lash out, to free herself.

Almost as soon as he was better, however, Halloran removed his things from the Donners’ wagon. Of course there was talk about his miraculous recovery. She should have known there would be. That Tamsen had witched him, that she had cast a spell on him. Betsy Donner reported it all, pretending to be shy about it, while obviously relishing the opportunity to lord it over Tamsen.

Tamsen, however, had been called far worse before.

Few people survived consumption when it had gotten as bad as it had with Halloran. Yet he was often the first to step out at the call to chain up and the last to bed down in the evening. He fetched water and firewood for his neighbors after he’d taken care of his own needs, as though he had energy to burn.

Tamsen should have been happy, but she was afraid.

Halloran was different. She couldn’t say how, but she knew that he was.

One morning, he started bundling his things for the pack mule, intent of being back to his own, and when she advised him to wait another day or two, he told her brusquely that he knew what he was doing. Halloran had never snapped at her before, no matter how badly he’d felt. She was so surprised that she said nothing to him the rest of the day, only watched as he buzzed about madly, like an insect caught in glass, hitting hard for an exit.

Since then, it had only gotten worse. Halloran argued with one of the Reeds’ teamsters when he took his mule through a narrow pass before the Reeds’ big wagon, insisting that the oversized vehicle was going to get stuck in the soft ground (he was right, however; they had double-teamed the oxen and managed to pull it out).

Worst of all, the next evening, he had smashed his fiddle against a rock when someone asked if he wouldn’t give them a tune after supper. He was sick to death, he said, of being pestered to play for them.

Everyone was shocked into a long silence, but Tamsen had, unaccountably, felt tears burn her eyes. Luke Halloran loved that fiddle like a child. Again the idea came to her that this was not Halloran, that Halloran had died and this was somebody else.

But that was insane, obviously. Far more likely that the weeks of illness had changed him in some way. Or perhaps he’d always been this way, and the illness had obscured it.

When she had imagined the journey, she had imagined hardship, and hunger, and dirt that clung everywhere, like another skin, and could never be sloughed off. But she hadn’t imagined this—the people, that she would be surrounded by so many other people, unable to escape their strange, inexplicable prejudices and their sudden, violent changes of mood.

They’d been walking in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountain range for a week and it was hot, even after dark. Tamsen wanted a bath; she wanted to feel clean, even if she knew that by morning she would be crusty with dirt again.

She waited until the rest of the family had settled by the tents so she might have a bit of privacy. Jacob read aloud for the children; George puffed on his pipe, eyes closed, as he had sat in his favorite chair so many nights at home. But now, sitting in the dirt beneath a bowl of unfriendly sky, the ritual seemed incongruous, almost desperate. As if he might, with his eyes closed, be trying to think himself back home, or all the way to California.

With one of the wagons between her and the rest of the family, she filled their largest pot with water and set it to heat over the dying embers. Sounds from the rest of the wagon party carried lightly on the wind, but they were far away. The Donners were not pariahs, exactly, but they had fallen from their rank as the most prominent and influential of the families in the party. And whatever the others thought of her, Tamsen knew only one thing would make her feel better: a bath. She laid aside her blouse and skirt and stockings, stripping down to corset and petticoat.

Using a washcloth dipped in the warm water, she wiped herself with long wet strokes. Around her throat, the back of her neck. Lifting the petticoat to address each of her long legs in turn. It was a miracle what a wet rag could do. She nearly cried with relief as the breeze touched her thighs and calves. She had just started to loosen her corset when she froze. Something had changed.

Something had moved.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She couldn’t have said whether it was a sound that alerted her, or a shift in the darkness, but she knew: Someone was watching her.

Her eyes went to the bushes, to the dark ragged shadow of the trees. Nothing.

She relaxed. The stories of prowling monsters, of wolves the size of horses, were infecting her as well. She went for her corset again, her fingers slick and clumsy with the laces. It was so quiet. Surely Jacob hadn’t stopped reading already. Surely the others hadn’t gone to bed.

Surely she was not alone. The sun had only set an hour ago and people were up and about, driving their livestock out to the meadow, cleaning up after dinner.

She got the laces unknotted. She opened her corset to expose her breasts, but this time the wind carried a bite, and she shivered. And then she saw it—a silhouette moving through the shadow of the trees, moving quickly, moving upright.

With one hand she reached instinctively for her blouse, anything to cover herself. But with the other hand she snatched the lantern and lifted it high, so the light bounced off the trees and made a lattice of the leaves above them. He ran off almost at once but not before the light seized him, his face pale and narrow and hungry.

Halloran. Watching her.

Before she could shout, he was gone.

She dressed with shaking hands. That look—it wasn’t desire, but something deeper, something raw and animal. She tried to think where she had last seen her girls, her innocent trusting girls who had come to love and trust Luke Halloran. Leanne had been sitting with the little ones, sucking on rock candy while listening to Jacob. Had Elitha been among them?

She hurried back to the campfire, startling the others from Jacob’s reading. George blinked at her as if he couldn’t imagine where she’d come from.

“Have a nice bath?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. Elitha wasn’t with the others.

She knew it was silliness. Paranoia. Elitha had probably lost track of time. She was probably wandering in her usual dreamy way, looking for tadpoles in the creek or climbing trees to find abandoned birds’ nests. One time, not long ago, Tamsen had caught her whispering to herself, and when Tamsen had asked what she was playing at, Elitha had gone white-faced and angry. It’s not playing, she’d said. The girl would have to be broken of these habits, for her own good.

Still, she didn’t want Elitha wandering tonight.

Tamsen plunged into a thicket by the creek first. It was just the kind of place Elitha would like, a wild tangle of cattails and sedge, the air sweet with birdsong. “Elitha Donner! Are you out here?” There was no reply. It was quiet as church. Too quiet, everyone said, and Tamsen agreed. It was as if everything living had fled, even the birds. “Elitha, you answer me this minute.”

Something rustled in the rushes. Tamsen’s heart knocked hard against her ribs.

“Elitha?” This time, she couldn’t keep the fear from her voice.

“Just me, I’m afraid.” It was only Mary Graves, loping into view on her stalklike legs. “Has Elitha gone missing?”

“Not missing,” Tamsen said sharply. Though she had been thinking in just those terms, she resented Mary for using the words. “Just out for a walk, I’m sure.”

The two women stared at each other. It was the first time that Tamsen had ever really gotten a look at Mary. She might have been attractive, but her jaw seemed a bit too square, and her eyes were certainly too large for her face. Though only a few years younger than Tamsen, she was probably a virgin.

Maybe that was what appealed to Stanton; Tamsen hadn’t missed the way his attentions had moved on. Maybe he wanted an inexperienced woman who’d be easy to impress. It was funny how men would have a fling with an experienced woman—a whore, in their eyes—but settle down with someone who would submit to them, like calves under a yoke.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Mary said. “I saw you headed this way. I’ve—I’ve been meaning to speak to you in private.”

“I don’t have the time right now.” She offered no explanation. Mary Graves didn’t deserve one.

When she tried to pass, however, Mary stepped in front of her. “Please. It will only take a minute,” she said. She looked as if she might put a hand on Tamsen’s arm and then thought better of it. “I only wanted to know why you’ve taken a dislike to me.”

For a moment, Tamsen was speechless. She almost—almost—felt sorry for the girl. Mary looked baffled, like a child who has watched an apple fall up instead of down. At the same time, she felt a rush of hard anger: Mary believed that Tamsen owed her an answer. An answer that a less naïve girl would’ve figured out in an instant.

If Tamsen had been in a different mood, she might have laughed. She might even have explained the way things were. Charles Stanton had chosen Mary, but that did not mean everyone else had to love her, too. Mary had stolen Stanton away from her without even trying. It wasn’t even clear that she wanted him.

Tamsen had every right to hate her.

Of course, she could say none of it. She lifted the hem of her skirt and clambered over the high tufts of grass, cutting around Mary Graves. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said lightly. “And I’m sure we both have more important things to worry about.”

Mary didn’t let up. She started after her and immediately caught Tamsen, easily matching her stride. “You don’t like me,” she insisted. “I can tell from the way you avoid me. I only want to know why.” She bit her lip. “Does it—does it have to do with Mr. Stanton?”

Tamsen couldn’t help but flinch at the sound of his name in Mary’s mouth. “What does Mr. Stanton have to do with it?” she asked, and heard her voice sound cold and thin, as if filtered through a layer of thick ice.

Mary hesitated. For a second, Tamsen thought she wouldn’t be brave enough to say it. But finally she cleared her throat. “I heard stories,” she said simply.

Stories. Another word for wrongheaded lies, like the ones told about her in North Carolina, before she moved to Springfield.

If you’re so sure that I’m a witch, Tamsen had responded to the preacher’s wife who had hectored her so mercilessly all those years ago, do you think it wise to taunt me? It had given her a stupid, momentary pleasure to see the fear curdle on the woman’s face. That was the problem with women like Peggy Breen and Eleanor Eddy: They were afraid, always afraid, always of the wrong things.

Now, the temptation to tell Mary the truth was almost overwhelming. She could tell her things about Stanton that she wouldn’t expect, set her straight. He was strong and smart, yes, but careless with feelings, his own and other people’s. He was made to be a loner; he was made to let people in only halfway.

You don’t want to lose your heart to that kind of man, virgin.

But Tamsen knew that Mary’s unhappiness would come to her, whether Tamsen told her how to see it or not. There was a small, mean part of her that was even glad.

“You shouldn’t listen to stories,” she said only.

Before Mary Graves could respond, someone shouted Tamsen’s name.

Tamsen turned, mistaking the voice at first for George’s. But it was Halloran. He stumbled through the brush holding his stomach. Hunched, he looked like he had been shot.

All his new strength, energy, and health had vanished; she was shocked by the sight of him, shocked and horrified. He was obviously dying. His eyes bulged in his head. His lips, pulled back in a grimace, exposed inflamed gums and rotting teeth. Tendons stood out on his neck, hands, and arms.

“Mrs. Donner,” he said again, reaching out for her. Unconsciously, she stepped back, though they were still separated by a narrow creek. He stumbled on the uneven ground and landed on his knees in the water. But rather than stand, he began to crawl. “Help. Please help.”

She forgot in that instant the man she’d seen watching her from the trees, and responded instead to the man she had nursed by her own campfire. She splashed into the creek, ashamed of her first impulse to get away from him, scooping water in her two hands, bringing it to his mouth.

“Go find help,” she told Mary. “We need someone to carry him.” To Mary’s credit, she didn’t shriek or argue or faint. She turned and ran in the direction of the wagon train.

He refused to drink. He moaned in agony and seemed not to hear her when she begged him to open his eyes. This close to him, she nearly gagged; the smell of him was already that of a corpse.

As soon as Mary was out of view, however, Halloran opened his eyes. He grabbed Tamsen’s wrist with unexpected strength. “Mrs. Donner—Tamsen,” he said, pulling her close to his face, so close that she felt his breath on her cheek. “You’re still my friend, aren’t you? You were so kind to me, the only one to help me when I got sick…”

“Shhh. Easy, now. Of course I’m your friend,” she said.

His eyes were huge and bright. Even in the dark, they seemed to glow. She thought again of possession, of someone else inhabiting his body, making him act like a stranger.

She tried to ease his hand off her arm, but his grip was too strong. Not like a dying man’s strength at all. A pulse of fear traveled her spine.

“The rest of them, they’d let a man starve even when they got food enough to get by. They’re only out for themselves. If it were up to them, I’d be dead already.”

“Please, Mr. Halloran.” The pulse transformed to a single, unifying rhythm. She was afraid. She could hardly breathe for the smell of rotting. What had happened to him? She had known disease to come back but not like this, not so quickly it would hollow a man in an hour. “You’re not well. Be calm, now. I’m going to get you help.”

“No one else can help me.” His smile ended in a grimace of pain. “I’m dying, Tamsen. That’s why I come to you. You were my savior before—will you be my savior again?” He seemed to have difficulty breathing. She had to wait for him to gasp more air. “Will you do something for me?”

“Of course I will,” she said. Her voice sounded thin. Why had she left her lantern up on the bank? The darkness was so thick it felt like the pressure of a hand.

His eyes were closed again. His fingers relaxed against her wrist. Yet he was still trying to speak—he whispered something too quiet for her to make out, and whispered it again. She could see the effort it required; he was forcing out these broken words with the very last of his strength.

His beautiful hands, his soft brown eyes, his quiet humor—all of it gone, ravaged by whatever sickness was devouring him. She was surprised to realize she was on the verge of tears.

He was still trying to speak. “I can’t hear you,” Tamsen said softly. Then, “Be still, Luke.” But she watched him struggle to be heard.

She leaned closer—so close that his lips, when they moved again, moved against her cheek. Finally she could make out what he was saying.

“I’m hungry.” Again and again: a whispered note of agony. “I’m hungry, Tamsen.”

He opened his eyes again, and she saw nothing but a deep pit, and she saw, too, that he was smiling.

He knocked her backward. He leapt, or sprang, pinning her easily, and she knew in a wild way that the rest of it had been a trap, a lure to get her close and unguarded. He was on top of her, holding a knife. Where had it come from? “I won’t ask much.”

“Please,” she said. Her voice broke. She was no longer thinking straight. It was a dream, it had to be, a nightmare that would wake her up with a scream lodged in her throat. This madman was not Halloran. “Please, let me up.”

But he only gripped her harder. “You don’t know what it’s like, to be starving. The pain of it. It hollows you. It’s all I can think about. Even my blood is starving.” He bent to put his face against her neck—he inhaled, he breathed in the smell of her body, he moved his tongue across her sweat, as a dog would. This broke her; it was as if some invisible barrier had been irrevocably breached, as if with a single movement he had undone God’s work, and turned her from a woman to a sludge of flesh.

“I could take it if I had to, from you or one of the others. You see, don’t you, how easy it would be for me to take it?” He was everywhere and all over her. There was no end to him, to his weight and his stink and his hunger. “But I don’t want to do that. I’d rather you gave it to me freely, like a friend would.”

The pain in her wrists where he held her helped her focus. Mary had gone for help. She must have gone for help. She simply had to humor him, to play along until someone arrived. “Of course,” she said. “Of course. Like a friend would.” She wasn’t even sure if he heard her. “I’ve always taken care of you, haven’t I?”

She could gasp out the words—he was heavier, stronger than he should be. Madmen, she knew, were said to possess incredible strength. She was nearly blind with terror. If she got free, could she outrun him? It was a risk. And if he chased her down? He still had her pinned beneath him, though he was no longer leaning on her neck with one arm.

“You promise to help,” he said finally. “You promise you won’t let me go hungry?”

She could only nod. And after a moment, he eased his weight off her—and she managed to grab the knife out of his hand.

Just as her fingers closed around the handle, there was a commotion behind her, the rustle of reeds and the snap of dry wood and voices. She heard Mary Graves shout, “This way. Over here.”

Tamsen almost cried out with relief. She was saved.

But in that second, Halloran changed. At least she thought he did; she saw his whole being twist, contort, as if it had been winched around some broken internal dial, tethered down to hell. Broken apart and changed into something else. He wasn’t himself; he wasn’t even a man. His eyes were full black, as blank and featureless as the bottom of a well. His face seemed to have narrowed. She smelled blood on his breath. It was as though an animal inside him had erupted at that very moment, breaking through his human shell.

He bared his teeth. Give me what I want or I’ll take it… I’m starving.

The face she looked into wasn’t human anymore.

And just as Mary hurtled into the clearing, just as he drew back, showing his teeth, and she knew, in a single instant of calm, that she would die, Tamsen drove the tip of the blade into his throat and yanked it sideways, feeling the resistance of the tendons and the windpipe, snapping them, her hand quickly drenched in a gush of warm blood.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It wasn’t me, Elitha. Tell your stepmother it wasn’t my fault.

Halloran’s body hadn’t yet been returned to camp before she began to hear him—faintly at first, carried to her in snatches, as though on bits of phantom wind. Then louder, more insistent.

Please. Tell her. Tell her I’m sorry.

Elitha put her hands over her ears and she didn’t care who saw. She tried bargaining with Halloran when she was alone, but he didn’t seem able to hear.

She couldn’t speak to the voices. She could only listen.

Please. That monster that wrestled Tamsen to the ground wasn’t me. I couldn’t stop it, but it wasn’t me.

The voices had only gotten worse since Fort Bridger. The only one she knew clearly was the voice of Luke Halloran, who for a week had moldered in the wagon, hovering between life and death. She knew now that the others were dead, and they mostly spoke gibberish. Only once in a while could she make out a word. Sometimes it was like coming in on the middle of a conversation, as if she were the trespasser in her own head and not the other way around.

She had tried to confide in Tamsen. She knew her stepmother believed in strange things, things beyond nature. She had seen Tamsen carefully braiding together stems of rosemary for protective charms, and muddling wolfsbane and lavender to daub behind her children’s ears, to keep demons from preying on them.

But when she said Halloran’s name, Tamsen’s face hardened. She seized Elitha by the shoulders.

“You must tell no one of this,” she said. “I never want to hear a word of it again. Swear it.”

Elitha had sworn, because she was frightened; Tamsen had gripped her so hard, she left bruises. Tamsen was frightened, too: because of what had happened with Halloran in the woods, and because of what people said about her now. Before Halloran’s death there had been whispers, hisses that followed Tamsen and even Elitha. But now the whispers, like the ones inside her head, had grown into a clamor. That she had bewitched him with her potions, turned him into a demon, made him her lover, turned him mad. She had killed him so she could collect his blood and drink it.

No one would speak to Tamsen now. Even Elitha felt the weight of everyone’s hatred. People drifted away when they saw her coming. None of the other girls, except for Mary Graves, would do their washing when Tamsen went down to the river, and when Elitha went in her place, she had to endure snickering and muttered insults.

Every bad thing that happened to the wagon train was laid at Tamsen’s feet, it seemed. Tamsen was good at pretending that it didn’t bother her, but at night, Elitha sometimes heard her weeping.

Elitha couldn’t pretend. She burned with shame. And still the voices crowded her head, whispering terrible things and leaving a deep tunnel of loneliness, as if their words were sharp and physical things hollowing out her center. She was desperate for quiet, for peace, for silence.

But Halloran’s voice was relentless—a low and nearly constant rhythm submerging her in a place of terror and guilt. He told her in detail things she did not want to hear. He told her of hunger that lodged not in his stomach, but his blood, an excavating hunger that festered like an unclean wound. He told her of the sweet smell of human skin, the deep flinty richness of human blood, the need for it that pulled at his whole being. He claimed to be ashamed but spoke of Tamsen’s body with longing, and in his darkest, angriest moments he whispered perverse, gross things to her that she couldn’t afterward forget.

I wonder what you taste like.

I wonder what it would be like to eat you.

I would start very small, a toe, or one of your soft, soft ears.

She began to think, increasingly, of wading into the river to drown herself. She began to dream of the cool dark silence of the water folding over her head.

AND THEN, SHE DID IT.

Tamsen had sent her to the river to do laundry when everyone in the family was busy unchaining the oxen and setting camp for the night. She had not planned to kill herself that night, but standing in the shade of the bank, watching the late sun play over the river, trying to ignore the continued abuse of phantom voices, she realized suddenly that there was only one solution, and it lay before her. The river looked to her like a bed made with clean linens. It looked like home.

She thought briefly about leaving her boots on the bank; footwear was expensive and there was no sense ruining them when her sisters might get some use out of them. But she was afraid that if she paused she would change her mind. She stepped off the rocks into the gently rushing water. It was colder than she expected but she kept walking. She kept going, to her waist now. She wondered whether she should have filled her pockets with rocks, but already her skirts were so heavy even walking was difficult. The current tugged at her. Farther out there were whitecaps; that was where the current was stronger. With any luck it would sweep her off her feet and carry her downstream.

It would not, then, be her fault. It would not be her choice. Her death would be in God’s hands, and she could still receive his mercy. She asked God to make it happen quickly.

The water reached her breasts and made her gasp. It was harder to keep her balance; the current kept snatching at her skirts and her ankles. Suddenly all of the voices in her head went silent, and in their place she felt a rush of panic. She thought of her little sister’s face, and Thomas. But it was too late for regrets; she was too deep, and could not make it back to the bank of the river, not in her sodden skirts, and the bodice that squeezed the air from her lungs. She thought of turning to call out for help but slipped on a rock. Her feet went out, and a rush of ice-cold water filled her nose and mouth and blinded her.

She could not kick out from the tangle of her skirts. She didn’t know which way the surface was. She was tossed in the currents and couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t at all like she imagined; it wasn’t peaceful, or like sleep. Her lungs cried out for air. Her throat closed around breaths full of nothing but water. Her whole body screamed in protest. She was in pain everywhere.

And the voices came back now, more furious than ever, an angry rush of them, until she knew they were the ones pulling her legs, drawing her under, turning her under the whitecaps.

Under the water, the voices were all that was left.

You’re mine now, girl. A stranger’s voice.

Join me, Elitha. Halloran, almost weeping. Tender sweet Elitha.

Then, suddenly, hands seized her. She came up gasping to the surface in Thomas’s arms. She had been carried downstream a hundred yards; he had edged out along a fallen tree to intercept her and now pulled her up beside him, grunting with the effort, as she cried and spit up water and the taste of vomit.

He didn’t say a word to her, not until they had inched along together back to the riverbank, not until she had finished shivering and coughing. He didn’t touch her, either, and didn’t look at her while she cried. But finally she was finished, and when she needed a handkerchief, he gave her a rag—wet, but clean—from his vest.

“Why?” he said simply.

She was exhausted, and her throat was raw. He had bundled her in his coat and she felt like going to sleep in his arms, but she didn’t see any way to answer him except with the truth. “I can hear the dead speaking to me,” she said. “They say awful things. I wanted quiet.”

When he lifted his head, a sweep of black hair fell across his face. He needed to have his hair cut; Elitha couldn’t help but think this, even in the middle of this chaos.

“When I was a boy”—Thomas always said that when he talked about his days with his tribe, never before I was made to live with whites—“they told me spirits could talk to us. Through the wind, water, even the trees.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean.” She took a breath. “I mean… actual dead people.” She took a long breath; it seemed to cut her lungs open. “You probably think I’m crazy.”

He was quiet for a moment. “When my parents were killed, I thought I saw them sometimes, watching me. But they never spoke.”

Elitha remembered that her real mother came to her once and only once, the day her father remarried and Tamsen moved into their house. She was only a shadow hovering at the foot of the bed, but Elitha knew it was her. Don’t be sad, her mother had said. Your father needs her.

“The priest said I only saw them because I wanted to.” Thomas shrugged. “He said it was all in my head. After that, I never saw them again.”

“So you think it’s all in my head?” That meant she was going crazy.

Thomas shook his head. “No,” he said simply. “I think the priest was wrong. I think my parents stopped visiting me because they knew I was okay. They knew I had to go on by myself.”

Elitha had felt sorry for herself when her father married Tamsen, thinking her whole world had been turned upside down, thinking he had betrayed their mother. What must it have been like for Thomas to lose his family, his tribe, everything he knew? She couldn’t fathom it. She couldn’t see how he would have the strength for it.

“So, you believe in spirits, and dark things like that?” she asked.

He didn’t seem embarrassed or afraid of what she thought. “Yes.”

“I do, too.”

He moved a little closer to her, and she shivered when their knees touched. “I am going to tell you something that I haven’t told anyone else.” He was quiet for a bit. She waited, holding her breath. “When I was with Mr. Bryant in the woods, we met a tribe of Washoe. He couldn’t understand them, but I could.” His voice was hoarse. He was very close to her, and when they accidentally touched, Elitha could feel how cold his skin was. As if he, too, was afraid. “They told me about a demon—a spirit that is very restless, very hungry. It has become many. They have taken on the skins of the men they have consumed.”

Spirits prowling the woods, dressed as men. My name is Legion, for we are many. Mark 5:9.

Thomas shook his head. “I think you are right. I think the dead speak when they are angry, or restless. I think there are spirits. I think there is reason to be afraid. Maybe the dead are trying to warn you.” He nodded toward the darkness. “Something’s waiting for us out there.”

She thought, then, of the Nystrom boy. She hadn’t been allowed to see the boy—hadn’t wanted to—but she’d heard the rumors. She thought of the hunger Luke Halloran’s voice had described. But Halloran couldn’t have been the evil spirit of the Washoe tribe. It didn’t make any sense.

“Is that why you ran?” she asked.

Thomas hesitated. Then he nodded. “I was frightened,” he said.

She took a deep breath, then reached out and placed a hand on his arm, letting the blanket fall away from her. Now he didn’t feel cold. He felt hot, burning hot. “I don’t blame you,” she said.

He turned to her. They were very close in the dark. “Are you frightened?” he whispered. He placed one finger on the inside of her wrist, and she shivered now for a different reason. His breath brushed her cheek. His eyelashes were long and soft-looking, like the feathers of a bird.

His lips felt funny against hers—not bad, just unexpected. A little wet, a little cool, and soft. Her first kiss. Her heart jumped in her chest at the thought. It seemed harmless; why did preachers and parents get in such a tizzy about it? He kissed her again, as though he knew she wanted another. This time, he was more assured, and something lifted inside her. She pictured her soul like a bird, a soft-breasted robin trying to take flight.

They remained in each other’s arms for another minute, Elitha basking in a secret happiness that she wanted to last forever even as she knew it wouldn’t, and then she slipped away from him.

If she was gone too long, her father or stepmother would come looking for her.

HER SKIRTS WERE STILL WET from the river and slapped against her ankles as she pushed back through the woods, but she didn’t care. She didn’t even care if Tamsen yelled at her for mucking them up.

As she came into a clearing, she nearly ran into John Snyder and Lewis Keseberg, two of her least favorite people in the entire wagon party. Just as quickly as it had come, her good feeling was snuffed out, like a flame extinguished by a hard wind.

Both men were carrying shovels. Before she could pivot, they’d spotted her. Snyder got directly in her way. He was as solid as a buffalo and he had the same wild eye, rolling it so you saw a lot of the white. “Well, if it ain’t Donner’s girl running wild around the camp.”

Keseberg looked her up and down in a way that made Elitha uneasy. “What you doing out by yourself, girl?”

Watch out. Halloran’s voice occurred suddenly and strongly in her head, and for the first time it felt not like an intrusion, but a friend. She remembered what Thomas had said. Maybe the dead are trying to warn you.

She decided to sidestep Keseberg’s question. They wanted to think she was just a dumb girl, so she’d act like one. “What are you two doing with them shovels?” she asked.

“We just finished burying Halloran,” Snyder said. “Can’t leave him around to stink up the place.”

Keseberg took off his hat. There was something wrong with his face, though she couldn’t say what, exactly. It was like a sculpture of a face, made all of hard stone. But in certain lights, you could see the cracks.

“Oh, I was just coming to say a prayer for him,” she said.

“Trying to make up for what your mama did?” Something ugly showed beneath Keseberg’s smile. “You’re too late, anyway.”

“It’s never too late for prayer,” Elitha said, trying to pass around them. But Keseberg grabbed her by the forearm.

“You’ll do no such thing. Your mama wouldn’t want me to let you go off by yourself at this hour,” he said. His grip was strong, and damp and too warm.

“Let go of me.” She tried to pull away but he held on a minute longer, twisting it just enough so that she let out a little yelp. Snyder liked that. He laughed. Keseberg, too.

“You ain’t a child, you know. You’re as good as a woman. That means you shouldn’t be out by yourself. There are men might take it a certain way, might think your blood is running hot.”

She was just about to call out for help—maybe Keseberg’s wife was in shouting distance, though of course it wouldn’t matter if she had been, the woman seemed helpless—when Keseberg let Elitha go. He gave her a little push so she stumbled before regaining her feet. “If you ever want a nighttime stroll, you just let me know and I’ll come and take care of you,” he said.

That made Snyder hoot again, and the sound of their laughter burned in her ears as she ran.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The bite of cherry pie leaked its scarlet juices down Lavinah Murphy’s chin, and she quickly reached for a napkin. Undercooked, it was—too thin and too red. She’d have done better but wasn’t about to tell Mabelle Franklin that. They were throwing this going-away picnic for her, after all.

She’d only hauled her whole clan up to Springfield a year and one month ago—just after her husband’s death—but in that year, she’d grown restless.

The Franklins understood. They felt it, too. The fear in the eyes of people in the market, sometimes, even here in Springfield, where people were said to be more tolerant. She heard the whispers. Though people pretended this country could be home to anyone willing to make their own way, it wasn’t true. They treated you differently if you didn’t share their beliefs. Same God, but a different book. They looked at you funny; they didn’t trust you.

Well, Lavinah didn’t trust them, either.

“Another piece, Mrs. Murphy?”

She shook her head and looked down to see that the pie had stained her hands. A coldness gripped her momentarily. For when she’d looked at her hands she’d seen not the cherry filling, but blood. Her husband’s.

“You must be mighty nervous for the journey?” Mabelle went on. “I don’t know how you do it. You’re so brave.”

She didn’t just mean the preparations for the trip, Lavinah knew. She meant all of it.

A woman raising a large family on her own was a curiosity in a town like this. But she couldn’t very well have stayed in Nauvoo. Not after what happened. Menfolk killed, family driven out of their homes. And Joseph Smith’s assassination. These days it seemed wherever Mormons lived together, somebody was trying to drive them out.

“It just seems a shame,” Mabelle said. “Not to be among your own people.”

Didn’t she understand? It was safer that way. Other Mormons meant more trouble.

“I’ll have my family,” she replied. “And that will be enough for me.”

As soon as it was seemly, Lavinah slipped away. She wasn’t upset with these people, but she knew what some of them thought. That she was choosing her own safety over God.

As she strolled the pasture, she looked back at the Franklins’ yard. Smiled to see all her friends gathered there—what she saw made her heart full to bursting. The golden fields, the pale blue sky. Women’s skirts billowing in the afternoon breeze, full like the sails of ships on the horizon. Children—including five of her own, and three her grandchildren—playing hide-and-go-seek in the corn field. Springfield was a lovely town, a peaceful town—and in just a short time, it had come to feel like home. But who knew how long the peace here would last?

Urgency moved her to the far side of the hayfield, away from the merriment and noise. She spied a farmhouse just beyond a rise, weathered gray and sagging. The family that lived there was also leaving with the wagon party on Wednesday. Lavinah had met the husband once or twice. A disagreeable man, only recently married. Funny name, what was it—Kleinberg? No, Keseberg, that was it. She shivered beneath her shawl, remembering the perpetually angry scowl, eyes that could make your blood stand in your veins.

She’d heard stories of an older man, too, the man’s uncle, who years earlier had stayed for a while with his nephew. People in town had been afraid of him. They made him seem like a monster in their stories, saying he’d been involved in some kind of mysterious tragedy at sea, and had even suspected he had some role in the death of a poor consumptive woman who’d been taken in by a tonic-selling con. They said the older man had always smelled faintly of blood, like the way it lingered in the shed after you’d done your butchering.

Lavinah tucked her head down and headed home to resume preparations for Wednesday. A long journey was waiting. And freedom, like the kind the founding fathers had written and dreamed of, freedom from fear, lay on the other side.