Donners of the Dead

Page 23

This time I carried the pack, the axe, and the rifle. As dirty and tired and hungry as I was, I wasn’t about to let him shoulder all the weight.
We went off into the woods, at first walking as fast as we could, but over time Jake grew tired. His pace slowed, his long legs tripping him up. A few times he started to pitch one way or the other, and it took all of my minute strength to keep his massive body from both falling to the ground and crushing me.
We were moving into new terrain, I could feel it in the air around me. The smell of sweet pine and decaying leaves, the freshness to the ground that was untouched by snow and sprinkled with light rain. The ground beneath our feet became more level and the path wider. The carved-in ruts of wagons appeared. Here and there I could make out horse tracks in the dirt, some of them even heading in our direction. There was no time to check on how fresh they were though, there was only time to get us home.
It was early afternoon when Jake collapsed.
I wasn’t positioned well enough to get a good hold on him. He buckled to his knees and then fell face forward with a thump.
“Jake!” I screamed, and dropped to the ground beside him. He was completely motionless—dead weight.
Frantically, I tried to turn him over but he was too heavy. I put my fingers to his neck, and despite him being cold as stone, I could find a faint pulse. He was alive but that barely did anything to abate the pinch in my heart. How was I going to get him out of here? How could I make him better?
He was going to die out here from the burn and I was going to be forced to watch. It wasn’t fair. After everything, it wasn’t fair.
I spied the trees alongside the path and put my pack and weapons down over there. Then I went back over to Jake. I would drag him over to the tree and sit him up with what little resolve I had left.
I grabbed under his shoulders and tried to pull, both sorry and relieved when he gave out a small moan of pain.
Then I froze.
The quiet snap of a branch behind me.
Oh dear Lord, no.
I eyed the weapons that were so close and yet so far and slowly turned around, afraid to let go of Jake.
An Indian man was standing in the trees, his bow raised and arrow aimed right at me.
I didn’t know what to do. The man just stared at me, his eyes yielding nothing. He kept the arrow pointed in my direction. He was obviously Paiute but wasn’t one of the two men we had met on our way up.
“Please help me,” I said in English before trying to find the word in Paiute. I could only say “Please.” I hoped the pleading in my eyes and the futility of the situation would be enough to convey the rest.
I waited, holding my breath, not wanting to let go of Jake if this was to be the end. I’d never been so afraid of my own kind before, but then I’d never had an arrow aimed at me. I wished more than anything that my father was here.
Finally, the man lowered the arrow. He turned around and walked back into the forest until he was swallowed by the trees.
I watched and waited, thinking he would come back and shoot me. Then I was afraid he wouldn’t come back at all. He could help heal Jake better than I could.
I carefully placed Jake’s upper body back on the ground and took off into the trees after the man. I ran, tripping over roots, my hair wild in my face, as I searched for him. Despite the cowhide smell from his clothes, I couldn’t track him, couldn’t follow his path. I turned around, feeling lost and trapped, and realized I was alone and had left Jake undefended.
I began to panic and tried to follow my tracks back the way I came, my senses warped and frayed. Just when I thought I was following the right trail, I heard another snap behind me.
I whirled around and waited, my breathing short and tense, my nerves fried. I felt like something was watching, but who? The man? Or something else?
“Hello?” I said, trying to sound forceful. “Is anyone there?” I tried to repeat the same thing in Paiute as best I could.
Only silence. Was there an arrow to my head or was it all in my imagination?
I breathed in deep, expecting to find traces of rotten death in the air but instead there was something else. Something I’d smelled before yet couldn’t place for the life of me. My heart was racing too fast, the whoosh of my blood too loud in my ears for me to pick up anything but my own fear and desperation.
Another snap came rattling through the deep woods.
Then another.
In the shadows something was moving, coming toward me at a steady pace.
I had no weapons. I had nothing.
With my heart in my throat, I turned around to flee.
“Eve?”
Someone called my name.
Not just any someone.
I stopped and looked over my shoulder.
Stepping out from between the pines were the two Indian fellows I had originally met, the ones that looked the same. They had their hands raised in peace with concerned looks on their faces.
And behind them was a tall white boy with golden hair.
“Avery!” I cried out, unable to believe it. I blinked a few times before I started running toward him. He ran to me and caught me just as my legs gave out, my whole body succumbing to the relief and exhaustion.
“Careful,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m not one hundred percent yet.”
“You’re alive,” I sobbed into his chest as he held me up. “How are you still alive?”
“With a little help,” he said. “But we’ll get to that later. Where is everyone else?”
I shook my head. “There is no one else. There’s only Jake and I. I had to leave him when I saw the other Indian. He needs help, Avery. His arm is burned. I think it’s infected and killing him.”
He patted my head. “If you want these Indians to fix him, they can.”
“Of course I do!” I cried out and looked up at him. Tears welled in my eyes. “Please, Avery, I’d do anything for him.”
He gave me a funny look then said to the others, motioning forward, “There is another man. Needs help.”
Though they probably understood the gist of it, I repeated “man” and “help” to them in their language. Finally they got it and started off the way I had come, their tracking skills far better than mine at this point.
I watched them go, and then Avery patted my head again. “It’s nice to see you again, Eve. Jake will be good as new when they’re done with him. Then we’re almost home.”
I nearly cried from relief. Then I plumb fainted.
*
I came to when a vile stench filled my head. My eyes burst open to see a cup of ammonia-scented liquid being swayed underneath my nose. I looked up to see Avery holding it.
“I reckon it’s like smelling salts,” he explained with a shrug. “They haven’t worked on Jake though.”
I sat up, my head woozy, and looked around. We were gathered in a long but low-ceilinged cabin that looked as if pioneers had built it. Now it was taken over by the Paiute Diggers. I was lying on a bed of animal hides by a fire that burned in the middle of the room. On the other side of the fire was an old man with deep, wrinkled grooves in his old face and long white hair. The jewelry around his neck and the wise look in his eyes as I stared at him across the fire told me he was a respected elder, perhaps even a chief. To the side of him were the two familiar Diggers and the straight-faced one that had the arrows. Nearest to me was Jake, who was also lying on animal hides.
He was bare-chested and his arm was covered in something black and shiny, as was the wound on his shoulder. He looked as if he was out cold, his breath slow and laborious.
“Is he going to be okay?” I croaked. The sight made my heart bleed.
Avery nodded and put a bowl of dried meat in front of me. I couldn’t stand the thought of eating it, but he only put the bowl closer to my mouth. “It’s dried venison, Eve. Nothing else. You must eat.”
Gingerly, I took a piece and sighed in relief when I realized it was venison. Still, it took a lot of effort to keep it down. I kept thinking about the monsters.
When Avery was satisfied with the two pieces, he handed me some roasted pine nuts which I managed to eat with more enthusiasm.
“Slow, slow,” the old man across the fire said in a rich voice. I looked to him in surprise. He smiled kindly. “You have been starving. You must eat slow or you will get sick.”
“You speak English?”
He gave a simple nod.
I eyed Jake. “Is he really going to be okay?”
He nodded again. “Yes. Bad burn but he will heal. So will his bullet wound.”
I felt myself tearing up. “Thank you, thank you so much.”
A small smile teased his lips. “My name is Brave Dicutta. Your friend here has told me what happened to you in the mountains.”
I placed a small amount of the pine nuts in my mouth and closed my eyes, savoring the taste. I just wanted to think about food and the relative safety around me. I wanted to think about Jake and how he was going to be all right. I didn’t want to relive what happened to us.
So I asked about Avery instead.
“Well,” Avery said, drawing his knees up to his chest, “I couldn’t tell you what exactly happened other than I was ambushed from above. One minute I was riding hard and the next one I was nearly knocked off my horse. I fought back but the creature was strong. Took a few bites of my side and back.” He lifted his arm to point out the area. I could now see there was bandaging underneath his shirt. He shivered from the memory. “I did what I could to fight back and I guess it was enough. It fell to the side and I somehow stayed on. My horse kept going like mad, but eventually I fell off too. I don’t really remember. I was just certain I was going to die. Then I woke up to see our old Indian friends here. They took me back, healed me up.”
I looked to Dicutta. “What were they doing so far up in the mountains?”
“They were worried about you,” he said. “They told me they saw you and your men heading up. We knew what was up there. They tried to warn you. I do not blame you for not believing them. It is almost impossible to believe. But, as you know now, it is very true.”
“How long has this been happening?” I asked.
He motioned for the arrow man to come over. The arrow man did so in silence, bringing with him a long pipe. He gave it to Dicutta who nodded in thanks. Arrow man went back to the Diggers’ side.
As Dicutta dipped the pipe into the flames to light it he said, “Do not mind him. He doesn’t say much but he meant no harm to you or your friend. As you know, we have to be careful out here. When they found Avery, they weren’t sure if he was still man.”
I shot Avery a look. His face was grim in the dancing light.
“To answer your question, Eve,” Dicutta went on, putting a gentle emphasis on my name, “we do not know for sure how long this has been happening. In these parts there has always been the story of the Chinoka, a man who became stranded in a snowstorm with his family. When his youngest son died from the cold and Chinoka was starving, he ate him. After that, Chinoka became so much stronger that he became insatiable for the taste. He killed his wife and other child, ate them, then ran off into the woods where he stayed. He survived the storm but knew he was no longer welcome with his tribe, so he lived in these mountains, preying on those unlucky enough to get in his way.”
“We were told a similar story, about a monster called the Wendigo.”
He puffed on his pipe in thought. “I have not heard of Wendigo, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this exists elsewhere in the world. To consume another human being is one of the greatest taboos—now we see there is a reason for this.”
“So the Chinoka is what killed the Donner Party?”
“I don’t believe so. Chinoka, so far, is just a story, but the Donner Party was real. Faced with the hardships they had gone through, I am not surprised that some of them may have resorted to cannibalism to survive. I suppose many that were accounted for as dead were never really dead at all—but missing.”
“Now they can be accounted for as dead,” I said gravely.
Dicutta raised his brows. Taking in a deep breath, I recounted what had happened to us after Avery and I had been separated. Aside from the occasional grimace or swear from Avery, both of them were silent as I went through every grim and startling detail. It goes without saying that I left out the more private moments between Jake and I. I could already tell Avery was having a hard time with the fact that I cared so much about saving Jake’s life. It wasn’t as if Jake had been all that honorable when Avery and I had taken off in the night.
“You have certainly been through a lot,” Dicutta said. He looked at me with scrutiny. “Tell me, you have Paiute blood in you?”
I nodded. “Yes. My father was Paiute.”
“He is no longer around?”
I looked down at my hands. “No. I believe him to be dead.”
“What was his name?”
“My mother, she would call him Yanny. His real name was Yahuski.”
Dicutta’s eyes went wide. The Diggers began to murmur something.
Avery squeezed my arm with comfort as I looked to Dicutta. “Do you know him?” I asked excitedly.
“Yes,” he said, but his smile was sad. “Even though he was from a neighboring tribe, I knew him.”
My lungs felt as if they were seizing. This was the moment I had been waiting for, the chance to find out the truth. Only now, after all I’d seen, I was afraid of the truth. I was afraid that he’d tell me that my father had disappeared in the mountains and become one of them. Every time I saw the monsters, I kept thinking that one of them would be my father, that I’d recognize his humanity among the animals.
“Can you tell me what happened to him?”