Alex Scarrow - October skies

‘Sam?’

‘Vander once taught me… alone,’ he said eventually, more to himself than aloud to Ben, ‘when I was smaller.’

There was an uncomfortable silence. Ben had once experienced a similar faltering conversation with a very withdrawn first-year boy at boarding school. Unpleasant things had happened there from time to time that were best left alone and not raked over. You endured whatever treatment came your way and didn’t cry about it. That’s how the best schools turned boys into men.

At least, that’s what Ben’s father used to say.

‘Ben?’

‘Yeah?’

‘When we make it down from these mountains, in the spring, where will you go?’

‘I shall head for Portland eventually. Maybe I’ll explore a few other townships along the way. Then I fancy I shall spend some months enjoying the comforts of a hotel room in that fine-sounding town and write about the crossing and our adventure here in the mountains and see about getting it published.’

Sam smiled faintly. ‘Will Emily and I be in your book?’

‘Of course! How could you not be?’

Sam smiled. He liked that.

‘And what will you do after that?’

‘Then, I suppose, I ought to return to London. My parents expect me to one day come back, and if not become an eminent psychiatrist, to at least take over my father’s business affairs.’

Ben was resigned to that ultimate fate. It was waiting for him eventually, in a few years’ time. ‘I would miss the freedom out here in the wilderness, though, miss it sorely, but I owe my parents on a promise I made, to come back soon.’

He turned to Sam. ‘What about you?’

‘Preston will lead us someplace where we’re all alone, away from any other people, from outsiders,’ he replied cheerlessly and returned to the task of foraging for firewood, dipping down to pull a long, crooked branch from the snow and brushing it off. He snapped the dry wood with several loud and brittle cracks, tucking the shorter lengths into his bundle of kindling.

Ben resumed foraging and they worked in silence for a while, accompanied only by the crunch of their feet on the snow and the distant sounds of movement and chattering voices elsewhere in the woods.

‘You’re not happy in Preston’s church?’

Sam shook his head. ‘He frightens me.’

‘Frightens you? Why?’

The young man tightened his lips and shook his head. ‘He just does.’

‘Look here.’ Ben stood up straight and adjusted his bundle of kindling. ‘I suppose when you’re grown up you could leave, though, couldn’t you? If you’re so unhappy with them, you could find your own way, couldn’t you?’

Sam shook his head. ‘Not without Emily. I’m all she’s got.’

‘She has her mother.’

Sam looked at him. ‘They’d never let her go, anyw-’

They heard a raised voice ahead of them — an unmistakable cry of surprise or alarm, then other voices, including Preston’s, calling out.

Something had happened.

Ben and Sam dropped their bundles and headed towards the exchanged shouts, Ben unslinging his rifle and Sam following suit. They pushed through a tangle of undergrowth and briar poking up out of the thick snow, dislodging clouds of powder from the low-hanging branches above them.

‘This way!’ said Ben, leading Sam up a steep incline, stumbling over buried knots of tree roots, rocks and sapling stalks. At the top the incline levelled off, revealing a small glade nestling below in a dimple of land in the hillside. The glade had been hacked clear of wood — from the look of the old, weatherworn tree stumps that poked up through the blanket of snow, a task carried out by someone many years ago.

In the middle there was a crudely constructed shelter, clearly not the work of any trained artisan; there was no carpentry to be seen. It was a ramshackle structure of stacked boughs, held together with hide strips and the gaps between them daubed with packed mud.

Ben and Sam made their way down the slope towards the clearing to get a closer look. The entrance to the shelter was a low, arched gap in the uneven, knobbly wall, covered over by a tattered buffalo hide. In the small clearing in front of the shelter, frames of wood had been erected. Ben noticed the dried and leathery carcasses of skinned forest hares dangling in an untidy row from several of them. They’d been dangling for a long, long time by the look of it. The hares seemed more fossilised than rotten.

Preston and three other Mormon men stood in the clearing before the shelter, surveying the scene. They noticed Ben and Sam as they emerged into the clearing.

‘Mr Lambert… Samuel,’ Preston called out. ‘It appears we’re not the only ones out here in these woods.’

Ben made his way over. ‘What is this? Is it an Indian camp, do you think?’

Preston casually scratched the dark beard beneath his chin. ‘Is it more likely a trappers’ camp?’ he replied, pointing towards a wall of the shelter, lined with an arrangement of different-sized skulls, their smooth yellow ivory boiled and scrubbed clean by somebody long ago, or perhaps merely worn away by the elements. Ben couldn’t identify with any certainty what animals they had once been; one or two of them might have belonged to deer or stags, another might have belonged to a horse or a pony.

‘Actually, it looks like it’s been abandoned for a while,’ said Ben.

Preston nodded. ‘Yes, it would seem so.’

‘Should we look inside, William?’ asked Hearst, one of the men with Preston.

He nodded. ‘Perhaps, to be sure.’ He held out his hand. ‘Your gun please, Saul.’

The man passed him his rifle and Preston pulled back the hammer to half cock and slotted a percussion cap in, the weapon now ready to fire.

‘You men best stay back,’ he said as he stepped towards the entrance. He lifted aside the tattered flap of canvas and called out. ‘Is there anyone inside?’

There was no answer. Ben watched Preston stoop down low and step into the dark interior, admiring the confidence and courage of the man. The others stood in silence, their rifles held ready, listening to the whispering wind in the trees and the hiss of disturbed snow cascading down through shifting branches. From inside the shelter they heard a shuffling of movement, then after a few moments the canvas flapped to the side and Preston emerged.

‘This is some poor soul’s grave,’ he uttered solemnly. ‘By the look of it, quite a few years ago.’

Preston turned round to look at the shelter. ‘He died in his cot, so it seems.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘A lonely death for this man.’ Preston bowed his head. ‘Let us pray for his soul.’

Ben watched the men and Sam remove their broad-brimmed hats and lower their heads. He took his own felt hat off out of respect, and listened to Preston’s sombre words. He finished and the men chorused amen.

Ben nodded towards the shelter. ‘We could use the wood.’

Preston shook his head. ‘We’ll not strip this place for firewood. Let it remain, to mark this unknown soul’s grave. There’s plenty enough kindling lying on the forest floor. Come on.’

He led them away from the clearing, up and out of the dimple. Standing for a moment on a small ridge of high ground and looking through a break in the trees, down the sloping hillside, Ben could see in the distance the large clearing in which their camp nestled. Amidst the churned dirty white of mud and snow, he spotted the small shapes of sluggish movement among the shelters, the tan mass of huddled oxen stirring in the centre and the pall of a dozen wispy columns of smoke snaking up into the heavy sky.

Ben turned to look back down into the dip at the long-dead hunter’s shelter, a forlorn sight, and wondered how it must feel to die alone, and not be missed by anyone.