Alex Scarrow - October skies

Her jaw fell open.

‘Mr Shepherd, Mr Barns,’ said Julian, ‘this is Grace Simms, the National Parks ranger who’s going to take us out, and this is Rose Whitely, my business partner and cameraman.’

A brief exchange of clumsy handshakes filled the silence, and then Julian turned to Grace, still thrown by their guest.

‘Shall we make a move then, Grace?’

She stirred. ‘Okay, yes… you folks all ready to go?’

They nodded.

‘Mr Shepherd?’

He smiled warmly. ‘Ready when you are, Grace.’

‘Right then,’ she said, her voice finding its back-to-business gruffness, ‘it’s about a six- to eight-hour hike up into the peaks from here. We’ll stop halfway for a brief rest, and then press on. That should get us to where we want to go by about three in the afternoon. That gives us a couple of hours of daylight to set up camp.’ She turned around and pointed to a worn footpath that led through the deserted camp site and up into the lowest apron of trees running down to the edge of the camping area.

‘We’re heading this-a-way,’ she barked, turning round and setting off along the path at a brisk pace.

Julian looked up. It was a solid carpet of woodland as far as the eye could see, topped by the purple and jagged, slate-grey crowns of the nearest peaks. They looked deceptively close, towering over them like a gathering of curious giants.

Shepherd broke into a brisk walk, swiftly catching up with Grace. A few moments later he had her laughing loudly, the bray of her coarse voice bouncing merrily off the hillside. The Fed followed behind them, dutifully keeping close to Shepherd, but not crowding him.

‘Rose, what was that little thing between you and Grace?’

‘Uh? What?’

‘When we were getting out of the car. She gave you a look.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she replied.

‘Oh, there was definitely a look.’

‘You’re getting paranoid in your old age, Jules.’

Julian shook his head. ‘Pffft.’

1 November, 1856

Ben emerged from the trees and stumbled into the clearing illuminated by the flickering amber glow of flames. In several places around the barricade erected that afternoon, flames licked up from inside the tangle of branches and cannibalised lumber. He saw small faggots of kindling and flaming torches being hurled onto Keats’s defences by Preston’s people.

‘Stop! Stop it!’ he shouted. But his voice was lost amidst the sporadic crack of gunfire, the chanting coming from one side and the screams of fear from the other. Above all of that he heard the loud roar of Preston’s raging voice.

‘Burn them out! Burn out the servants of Satan, the evil imps, the evil ones in our midst!’

A musket fired through the flames from inside the barricade and he saw one of Preston’s men double over, grabbing his stomach. He looked back at the barricade again to see one of the Paiute frantically reloading a rifle. Several retaliatory shots rang out from amongst the Mormons. He saw half a dozen billowing clouds of blue-tinged smoke from the muzzle flash within, and showers of sparking gunpowder erupt from amongst them. The shots whistled through the smoke and flames and he heard the thwack and splinter of a shot finding wood somewhere inside the besieged enclave.

‘You’ll burn here and then in hell!’ He heard a woman’s shrill voice in a momentary lull.

This has gone too far to stop.

‘Surround them; don’t let them escape!’

It was Preston’s voice.

His followers began to move, thinning out in both directions, beginning to spread out around Keats’s small redoubt, dotted with small fires that were beginning to take hold of the dry wood and converge on each other.

‘Don’t let them escape!’ Preston called again.

This morning, he had made it clear they weren’t welcome in this place any longer. Now, Ben realised, Preston’s resolve had gone one step further.

Preston wants us all dead.

Standing where he was on the edge of the clearing, he realised that they were moving swiftly towards him and would soon be close enough that one of them might stumble into him and be sure to recognise his face by the increasing brightness of the dancing firelight.

Another couple of loud cracks signalled gunfire coming from the flaming middle. Both shots were aimed frantically and whistled high over their heads, lancing white-hot into the night sky like shooting stars. Above the increasingly ferocious flames amidst the barricade, the sky was filling with a host of bright embers climbing, fluttering and dancing like fireflies.

Ben slowly stepped back up the slope into the tree line, aware that any sudden movement would catch someone’s eye. Once there, he hunkered down behind the tall, straight trunk of a spruce, hidden enough for now, and watched with a growing sense of horror the fate that was awaiting all the others of his party out in the clearing.

They’ll burn to death in there, or die if they try to come out. ‘God help them,’ he whispered. ‘This is madness.’

The barricade was almost entirely alight now, a bright ring of flame whose heat he could feel on his face where he crouched. In the middle, the heat surely had to be unbearable, scorching. He could see a couple of the women — Mrs Bowen and Mrs McIntyre — shielding their young ones as best they could from the searing heat, scraping hard-packed snow from the ground with their hands onto the exposed, blistering skin of their children.

Then, inevitably, it happened: a section of the barricade collapsed amidst a shower of sparks. A few seconds passed, during which he heard the distinct bark of Keats’s voice shouting a string of commands from somewhere amongst the flames.

Then, through the burning gap, they emerged; a vanguard of the Paiute led by Broken Wing, their hand-me-down muskets from another era abandoned in favour of their tamahakan, now raised with savage readiness as they hurtled out towards the nearest, startled members of Preston’s party.

Keats, and several of the other men — he recognised Weyland, McIntyre, Hussein — fired a volley of shots past the Indians, a couple of which found a target, one knocking a woman to the ground, the other clipping the side of a young man.

The Paiute were almost amongst Preston’s people before the first crack of returning gunfire threw one of them off his feet and onto his back. Scrambling through the gap in the flames, the rest of the party tumbled out, some of the youngsters wrapped in smouldering blankets.

Keats and the menfolk emerged last, reloading rifles as they ran in the wake of their families, towards the ferocious melee being spearheaded by the Paiute.

Preston was quick to respond. ‘Over there! Stop them breaking out!’ he heard the man bellow. The Mormons, spread thin around the flaming redoubt, began to abandon the idea of surrounding it and instead converged on where the fight was happening.

Ben suddenly realised he was sobbing with grief, his cheeks stinging from the salt of his tears rolling down his winter-raw skin.

The screams of agony and the snarling of anger intensified.

He saw one of the Mormon women on her knees rocking back and forth, holding the still body of a teenage boy in her arms. He watched as one of the McIntyre children, Anne-Marie, the girl who had given Emily her doll, ran tearfully amidst the heaving bodies, calling out for her parents. She was suddenly caught by the vicious back-swing of one of the Indians. His tamahakan caught her neck as it swung, ripping a bloody chunk free before continuing its savage sweep and lodging itself in the face of a man he recognised as Mr Holbein, one of Preston’s quorum. Anne-Marie dropped to her knees clutching at her throat. Holbein spasmed, firing his musket at point-blank range, ripping a jagged hole out of the back of the young Paiute.