Alex Scarrow - October skies

31 October, 1856

It has been snowing constantly for three or four days now. Several feet of it has covered the old trampled snow. The gutted ribcages of the oxen now lie mercifully beneath a thick carpet. The remaining untouched carcasses were hauled away by Preston’s people at some point during the last few days. As we shivered in our shelters listening to the buffeting wind, they must have all been out there working in conspiratorial silence to drag them to their end of the clearing.

There were those in our group who suggested we march across, en masse, to reclaim a fair share of the meat. But Keats was not amongst them. He advised caution.

I must say I agree. They number more than a hundred; thirty or more of them, men able to wield a weapon of some sort. We, however, including our new guests, the Paiute, number less than a dozen who could fight. We still have packing oats to eat, and the Indians have managed to bring in small amounts of foraged food: hares, a few birds, some root bulbs that are barely palatable after being boiled interminably. It is hardly enough. Without the meat, I believe we will eventually starve.

Ben looked at the ominous words he had just scribbled on the page. The diluted ink was a pale blue and hard to read against the page by the flickering light of the small fire inside. Broken Wing placed another small branch thick with fir needles on, and almost immediately the fire crackled and roared to life, the smoke sucked effectively up through the hole at the top by the wind gusting outside.

Three Hawks shared the warmth with them, there being just enough squat room for the four of them.

Keats worked his knife on the inside of his pipe’s bowl, scraping away a residue that was building up and blocking the stem. Ben could tell he was doing his best to catch one word in ten as Broken Wing and Three Hawks talked fluently in Ute, but by the frustrated frown on his face, was failing miserably.

‘Grey hair trapper called Keeet,’ answered Broken Wing.

‘You travel with him?’

‘Yes. Two seasons.’

‘Why?’

‘White-faces pay dollars.’

Three Hawks nodded. He knew dollars were much better to trade with than beaver pelts. ‘Grey hair is friend?’

Broken Wing regarded Keats silently for a while. ‘Yes.’

Three Hawks studied the old man, his eyes drawn to his bushy salt and pepper beard, and then to Ben, his chin framed by a dark blonde fuzz of hair.

‘Why do white-faces grow tails on their mouths?’

Broken Wing shrugged. ‘The Great Chief gave them only to white men.’

‘Ah, I think I know why.’ Three Hawks raised his finger. ‘So they can tickle their bossy wives.’

Broken Wing looked at him, confused, then Three Hawks stuck his tongue out and waggled it. Both Indians dissolved with laughter.

‘What’s so funny?’ asked Ben, roused from his writing by their snorting.

Keats shook his head. ‘Some dumb-ass Indian joke,’ he muttered grumpily.

He watched them both rocking on their haunches, their dark faces split with carefree schoolyard grins. There was an assurance about them he envied, a cool fatalism in the way they squared up to face death that he wished he could emulate.

They don’t fear it.

That was something Keats had told him — that they didn’t have a concept of death. To them it was a journey, just a transition to another place. In their minds, it was a much better place. Ben supposed that kind of belief could make any man brave.

‘I’ve not seen a single one of the others for a while now,’ said Ben. Snow had been coming down heavily since the Paiute had arrived, a heavy blizzard that had reduced visibility through the thick, silent curtains of flakes, to a distance of yards.

Keats nodded. ‘I can see their fires at night. They’re still there, all right.’

‘It’s been three days since we’ve had any kind of contact with them.’

The guide nodded solemnly. ‘That ain’t so good.’

‘What do you think is going on over there?’

‘Hell if I know.’

‘Maybe Preston’s writing his new faith, his new bible?’

‘Sonofabitch is as mad as a mongoose.’

Ben nodded. That much was for sure.

‘That kinda crazy ain’t what you need out in the wilds.’

‘Keats?’

The guide looked up from cleaning his pipe.

‘What are we going to do? The food we have won’t last us until spring.’

‘We sit tight for now, Lambert. Whatever killed ’em folk gonna come back an’ do it again, I reckon.’ He smiled. ‘An’ if it’s happy killin’ them, not us, I ain’t complainin’.’

Broken Wing translated for Three Hawks. The Paiute said something and Broken Wing nodded.

‘What’s that he said?’ asked Ben.

‘Three Hawks sssay… white-face devil came with others. Will kill others.’

As the fire settled to embers, Three Hawks left to rejoin the Paiute, no doubt to exchange bemused observations on the white-faces. Broken Wing and Keats wrapped themselves tightly in blankets and hides and were soon asleep, Keats with his thick and irritating nasal rumble, Broken Wing soft and even like a woman.

Ben lay awake, troubled by what the Indian had said.

Whether a devil or, as Keats said, craziness, he knew somehow that Preston was going to bring death to this clearing. And he realised with certainty that there was perhaps only one way it might be prevented. If he wasn’t already too late, that was.

Ben stepped out into the gusting night, immediately blinking back soft, clotted flakes of snow blown across the ground and into his face. He could hear the clatter and whack of something loose amongst their shelters being bullied by the wind, and the muted roar of trees around the clearing sounding very much like a restless sea as they swayed in unison.

He could see virtually nothing, just the next few yards in front of his feet, which disappeared through the new snow, down to the older, compacted and ice-hard layer below. Ben oriented himself and headed for the far side, stooped low and leaning into the freezing blasts, tears welling in his eyes and freezing on his cheeks. He decided to give the oxen’s graveyard a wide berth, wary of tangling his feet amidst the ribcages and creating a commotion that might be heard above the restless weather.

He suspected they would still have a man or two on watch at night, but with visibility down to little more than the stretch of an arm amidst the swirling flurry, it would be for no more reason than to guard the appropriated meat.

She’s up ahead. Not far.

Ben was familiar enough with the lie of the land, perhaps more so than any other person camped here, having made plenty of visits across this no-man’s-land to care for Preston and Emily.

The first of their shelters lay ahead of him, a hummock of snow, the entrance marked only by a corner of tarpaulin flapping noisily like a pennant. Beyond it, another and another — all looking like identical mole hills.

If she can talk… tell them whom she saw… who killed her mother and Sam…?

Ben wondered if that would be enough, though. He had no idea, for sure, how tightly they were holding on to the idea that Preston might be some prophet — that only by his side lay salvation and the way out of this wilderness.

I can tell them about the laudanum, the fevered confession, Dorothy coming to me.

Even as he considered that, he knew the odds were against him, especially if there had already been suspicions voiced that he might have been responsible for killing the Dreytons.

The thought filled him with an intense anger and revulsion. There had been nothing inappropriate in his friendship with Sam. He had merely seen himself in the boy; a younger version of himself, a curious young mind questioning the world, yet being suffocated inside Preston’s bizarre religious strictures.