Donners of the Dead (6 page)

You’re probably blaming it on the muskrats
, I thought to myself. A week ago I’d gone for a ride with Avery and came across a muskrat den close to Lake Bigler. My father had taught me to predict the winter by the thickness of the muskrat’s walls. I couldn’t really tell if the walls were thick or not, but it was a large den and planted that tiny seed of doubt that this could be a tough winter after all.

We eventually stopped in a small clearing by a stream just before night plunged us all into darkness. I helped Donna unsaddle the horses, feed them, and hitch them up for the night, while the men built quick lean-to shelters out of fallen logs, branches, and neighboring boulders. For a troop that appeared to pack so light they hadn’t needed a pack mule until now, I was impressed at the amount of items they had with them. Canvas tarps, muslin sheets, even pillowcases they quickly stuffed with foliage all emerged from their oilskin satchels. Soon, we had a temporary camp complete with shelter, roaring fire, and jackrabbits roasting over a spit.

It turned out that Jake was not only the resident hunter but the resident cook as well. Just as he had handled the trout, he was roasting the rabbits to perfection and boiling beans with pork fat until the mouth-watering smell was overtaking the camp. Donna even looked a bit put out as she sat beside Avery and me on a felled log, having assumed that she would have been the “wife” of the camp, I’m sure.

Tim must have caught me staring because he said, “Jake’s been keeping us well-fed most of the journey, though the deserts were mighty tough on us. You can expect him to take care of the party now that we’re back into fresh game.” He uncorked a bottle of what looked like moonshine and passed it over to Avery. “It would make me happy if you had some.”

Avery took the bottle and a huge swig, nearly coughing most of it up. The men laughed and even I couldn’t help but smile at how terribly enthusiastic he had been. Then he passed the bottle to me.

“A lady of God doesn’t drink,” Donna said, her voice chirping loudly like a bird.

I felt the eyes of all the men on me and Avery looked bug-eyed as he held the bottle out, second-guessing his hospitality.

But I took the bottle from him, looked Donna in the eyes, and said with a dry smile, “Then it’s a good thing I’m not a lady.”

I took a small swig, fully prepared for the burn. I’d had alcohol from time to time, usually Uncle Pat’s whisky that Avery and I used to pilfer from his hiding place in the barn on lonely nights. I managed to keep it down, though I was sure it belonged in a nurse’s kit and not in someone’s stomach, and neatly wiped my mouth. I could feel Donna staring at me in shock and Meeks let out a hearty clap.

“Seems like you got the right tracker, right Tim?” he hooted.

Well, I guess that might have earned me a smidge of respect among them, though I was sure Donna was quickly working out all the ways she could save me from damnation. As a joke I passed the bottle to her to which she staunchly refused and then handed it to back to Tim.

He raised the bottle to me. “There’s no greater woman than a woman that can hold her liquor.” Then he let out a grizzled old laugh.

That was most likely a Texas saying, but I took a strange pride from it anyway.

Everything was pretty upbeat and cheery after that. The jackrabbit tasted delightful and eased my aching stomach which wasn’t used to riding for so long. The fire was hot and bright, making the shadows of the dark forest look far away, and Tim had brought out his harmonica and began playing us a lively tune. If I stretched my mind for a second, I could have believed I was on a trip with a bunch of old friends and not strangers hell-bent on finding a hopeless search party.

Pretty soon, we all wound down for the night. The men had been kind enough to build a separate lean-to for Donna and me, complete with our own fire. From where our blankets were lain down on the soil, soft with pine needles, we looked straight off into the night, as if there were only two of us there. Though I loved my privacy, there was something a bit unsettling about not being able to see the men and their fire. I hoped Avery would have stayed with us, but I supposed that Donna wouldn’t have allowed something so scandalous anyway.

With the chill of night creeping along my bare flesh, I quickly got undressed and into my flannel undergarments and nightgown, and huddled under the layers of buckskin and animal hides. It was strange to have Donna sleeping right under the blankets beside me, even though she was keeping to herself and reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over again. Somehow, that made me feel alone.

I must have dozed off for a solid amount of time because when I came to, our fire had dwindled down to small, crackling flames and the darkness had crept in. But that wasn’t the reason I was awake.

I rolled onto my back, my nose exposed outside the blankets and growing cold as I breathed in deeply. There was a strange scent around us, like the smell of rotting flesh and something else I couldn’t quite pinpoint. I lay there, listening to Donna’s heavy breathing and wondering if that was the odd, sickly smell that had awoken me, when I heard Sadie whine softly, followed by the stamping of hooves.

Something was disturbing the horses, perhaps a bear or wolves. Maybe that was the smell. I knew it was unsafe for me to go out there, that I should have woken up Avery or Tim, but I wanted to make sure. I quickly climbed out of bed, careful not to let the chill in under the blankets, and slipped on my boots and my heavy wool shawl, wrapping it around my head and all around me so that only my hands were exposed. It was a pity that I didn’t have a knife to protect myself, or even a gun, though I never knew how to shoot one. I could only hope I knew how to scream loud enough.

I stepped out, my eyes quickly adjusting to the shadows beyond the fire, and slowly walked toward the horses, careful not to spook them.

I saw Sadie first. She was looking at me with her head raised high, pulling back on the lead as far as it would let her, the whites of her eyes shining wildly in the dim light.

“Easy girl,” I murmured, keeping my movements still and my voice low. She lowered her head slightly, though the uneasiness in her eyes never left. “What is it?” I whispered.

I started stroking her lightly along her neck, hoping to calm her, but she wouldn’t have any of it. I frowned at her, wondering how the rest of the horses were fairing or if my horse happened to be the neurotic one, and walked under her neck to the other side.

I collided with a large, hard man.

I’m not sure how I kept my scream from escaping and waking the whole camp, but I did. It sat frozen in my throat as I got a whiff of toasted pine and tobacco. It was none other than Jake.

“Going for a midnight stroll?” he asked gruffly. I backed away from him a step until I was up against Sadie’s shoulder. He struck a match and it illuminated his rugged face in orange as he lit the long cigar that was dangling from his lips.

He waved the match until it went out and flicked it into the woods before taking a large drag of the cigar. His face went back to being in the shadows, though I could still see the ember’s glint in his eyes and the way his dark, arched brows knit together in a permanent frown. At first I thought that was just the way he looked at me, then it became clear he looked at everyone that way. He viewed the world like it was a hostile beast.

He wouldn’t have been wrong about that.

“What’s a matter?” he prompted. His voice was very low and gravelly, like he smoked too many cigars in his life, and its roughness did funny things to the flesh at the back of my neck. I tried to place his age but came up empty-handed. Twenty-five, thirty, I didn’t know. He was strangely ageless. “Injun girl don’t speak English?”

No matter his age though, he was a rude bastard.

“Of course I speak English,” I snapped, refusing to be intimidated. “You’ve been hearing me speak all day.”

He scratched at his sideburns. “I tend to tune out when a woman’s speaking.”

I leaned further into Sadie, as if that would help me escape his chauvinism. “That’s probably because a woman’s never said a good thing about you.”

He let out a puff of cigar smoke directed at my face but a light breeze whipped it up into the forest boughs before it could engulf me. “You’re damn right about that.” He cocked his head and looked me over. “Except where it counts, if you know where that is, and judging by what you’re wearing to bed, I reckon you don’t.”

I peeked down at myself and noticed my thick flannel nightgown was showing. I quickly wrapped the shawl tighter around me. “No woman would be foolish enough to wear anything less than this to bed in these mountains.”

He grinned at me, his eyes deeply creasing. “Seems that you care what I think about your apparel.”

“I don’t care about what you think or anything about you,” I said hastily. I held my head high in the air but I couldn’t hide the shakiness that came through in my words.

“Careful, child,” he warned. “I may be the only one left to save you out here.”

I scoffed. “Save me? I don’t need saving. None of us do. Or will.”

He grew silent, taking another long puff. His eyes watched me in the darkness, the wheels in his brain turning. I noticed that without his hat on, he had thick, shiny hair that curled at the back of his neck. “You say that but I don’t reckon you believe that.”

I frowned at him. “This is a search party made up of capable people, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” He took a step closer to me. “Are you capable? If you ask me, I think inviting you along was the worst idea Isaac ever had, and the whole thing about you being a great tracker is a load of horseshit.”

I flinched. I rarely heard anyone use profanity. Oh, Avery sometimes had cussing contests with Uncle Pat, but that was entirely different.

“You more shocked by my mouth or what I just said about you?”

“Both,” I replied quickly. “Both were uncalled for. I never claimed to be a good tracker.” I was getting flustered and hated it. “I can’t help what the people in River Bend think of me. My father was the best, the one everyone used. I’m sure they all think I take after him. I’m sure they think I eat pine nuts for dinner, too.”

He let out a puff of smoke. “Interesting,” he said slowly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“How quickly you downplay the very thing that Tim and Isaac hired you for. If you ain’t a great tracker, then why you here?”

I swallowed thickly. “Because. I didn’t have a choice. My uncle wanted the money.”

“You always have a choice. Either you are a good tracker and believe you can help, or you’re being a lovestruck filly bent on keeping her man close to her.”

I blinked dumbly and he went on, “That Avery kid. You two betrothed or somethin’?”

“He’s just my friend,” I exclaimed in a hush, as if Avery could hear me. I could feel my cheeks getting hot. For pity’s sake, was I really that obvious?

“Well if that’s true, then I guess you are a good tracker. Did your skills bring you out here just now?”

It took a moment for me to remember why I’d gotten out of bed in the first place. “I heard the horses.”

“So did I. Thought I smelled something a little peculiar, too.”

“Rotting meat,” I said absently, thinking back.

He nodded. “Something like that.” He puffed on his cigar and watched the smoke sail up into the darkness. “Huh, I guess you have a lot more Injun blood in you than you look. Might as well be good for something.”

That did it. I was wasting my time talking to this loathsome man when I could have been sleeping. “I think I’ve had just about enough of you,” I told him as I started to leave.

“Oh, darlin’. You’ll never get enough of me, I promise you that.”

“I say goodnight,” I added curtly, leaving him alone with the horses like the animal he was. I crawled back under the hides and hoped my anger would dissipate enough so that I could get some sleep.

Instead, I lay awake till the air became fuzzy and grey, thinking about all the unladylike ways I wanted to punch Jake McGraw in the face.

“Y
ou look a
little tired, Eve,” Avery said to me the next morning as I helped him load up the mule. Ali flicked her long, fuzzy ears back and forth as if she felt just as agitated as I did.

“That’s not a very nice thing to say to a girl,” I said to him. He was right, I was tired, too tired to care much what I looked like. The lack of sleep was becoming a nuisance, and the heavy grey clouds that settled in overnight didn’t help either.

He smiled at me. “You’re still pretty, don’t worry.”

I bit my lip, trying to hide my grin. My gaze immediately went from Avery’s familiar and angelic face over to Jake’s craggy one. He was at his horse—turns out his name was Trouble—and intently packing gunpowder into the hollowed horn that hung from the saddle.

“What do you think of him?” I asked Avery as casually as possible.

He looked over Ali’s rump at Jake and shrugged. “I like him just fine. Ain’t nothing wrong with those strong silent types. Almost everyone here is all right, even though Meeks talks too much and Clark won’t talk enough.”

“Almost everyone?”

Avery’s eyes flitted over to Hank O’ Doyle who was polishing a Bowie knife against a rock, his face as mean as the blade. “I don’t particularly trust that man,” he said under his breath. “Something about him gets me the wrong way. My dad used to get that same look about him right before he’d beat my ma.” Avery’s father had left him when he was still a boy, hence why he worked at Uncle Pat’s in order to provide for him and his mother. After she died, he just stayed on.

“Then I’ll be staying as far away from him as I can,” I said solemnly. The fact that he shared my instincts about Hank was unsettling. It was hard to judge what people were like when you were isolated with them.

We watched him for a few moments until it became a risky game then quickly got everything else ready for the trip. Even though the skies hadn’t let loose with rain yet, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t. The weather in the mountains was unpredictable compared to the valley below. Tim came around, puffing on a long pipe, and handed me an oilskin raincoat to keep rolled up beside my pack.