Donners of the Dead (8 page)

Isaac shook his head and quickly got on his horse. “No, nothing. Better luck at the next stop.”

I frowned at him while I mounted Sadie. “Well, I wouldn’t quite say we found nothing. There’s a heap of skeletons out there behind some of the huts the parties must have built.”

“Skeletons?” Jake repeated and I caught an odd exchange between him and Tim.

“Yes, yes, the poor souls,” Isaac said quickly. “But it wasn’t George’s party and that’s all I care about.”

“How do you know it wasn’t his party?” Avery spoke up. “If they’re just bones, how can you tell?”

Isaac narrowed his eyes at him before pulling his hat further down on his head. “I can just tell, you understand?”

Avery did, but just like me, there was a flicker of disbelief in his eyes. Of course, there wasn’t much we could do about it except try and argue with him and that was the last thing any of us wanted. The sky was growing darker by the minute, not only with nightfall but with thickening clouds that swarmed toward us from the crests. I knew in my soul that they would be carrying snow and a lot of it. The Indians were bound to be right.

After Alder Creek, we rode as fast as we could, trotting with every open expanse we got, which wasn’t very often. Just as things seemed too dark to see anymore, we came to a large clearing and a proper log cabin in the middle of it. All of us seemed to breathe a huge sigh of relief, and together we made quick work of getting the place outfitted for us.

The cabin itself was damp and cold, as to be expected since it had been abandoned for so long, and the two front windows had cracks in the glass that let in the rapidly cooling air. But Donna, bless her soul, lit a few candles she had brought with her and went about sweeping the place with a makeshift broom made out of pine branches. It was a double cabin that had obviously been constructed long before the Donners, perhaps by some other travelers who wanted to stay awhile. It still had a partition of canvas and a few logs that stopped at the fire pit in the middle, where a fire that Avery had built was burning.

Unfortunately, with the space so evenly split, there would be no such thing as a “ladies only” side. Donna looked like a blonde tomato when she found out Avery and Meeks would be sharing our side of the cabin. Normally I would have felt the same about Avery, for different reasons of course, only tonight, I didn’t really feel anything. The only thing that got to me was the way Jake smirked at me when Avery started making his bed near me.

I was also extraordinarily tired. I barely made it through the goose stew—as delicious as it was—before I crawled over to bed. I promptly passed out even as I heard the moonshine being passed around and the harmonica starting up.

When I woke, I was certain I’d only been asleep for a few minutes. I could hear the fire crackling and feel the heat outside the blanket, the cabin doing a great job of keeping everybody inside warm and protected.

But like the night before, I hadn’t awoken by accident. There was a reason, and while my confused, sleep-deprived brain struggled to figure out what it was, I was hit with the intense aroma of rotting flesh, carried on a hot burst of air.

I opened my eyes.

A pair of pale blue eyes, lit by firelight, were leaning over me. A bloody mouth sneered.

I screamed violently, my voice carrying loud, and quickly tried to push the person off of me. But they were already retreating, making a strange growling, snapping noise like a hungry dog. It ran awkwardly across the cabin, as naked as a jaybird, as blue white as snow, and jumped out through one of the front windows, shattering the glass all around it, before disappearing into the night.

All at once the cabin was plunged into chaos. Donna was screaming her head off and Meeks seemed to be hyperventilating. Avery was at my side and holding my shoulders, trying to speak to me, while Jake grabbed his shotgun and ran out the door in his long johns.

“I don’t believe it,” muttered Tim, pulling on his coat and boots, grabbing his gun and following Jake out the door. Hank and Isaac were silent, sitting up in their beds. They both had the most unsettling, matching smiles across their faces, as if what had happened was a good thing.

“Are you hurt, did he do anything to you?” Avery kept repeating until I brought my attention back to him.

I shook my head. “Was it a he?”

“I think so. It was dark. It was hard to tell. What was he doing?”

I blinked a few times, trying to get my bearings. “I don’t know. He was just staring at me. I…you know, I don’t know. I don’t know.” I kept saying it because I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. Someone had been in the cabin with us, and while Donna was already muttering something about crazy local Indians, I knew that was no Indian. The man was extremely pale, more white than white; he was almost transparent. His eyes had this milky blue quality, and because of his skin tone, I couldn’t recall if he was white blonde or didn’t have a hair on his head. I’d heard of albinos before, people without pigment, and I wondered what the odds were of finding one up here. What were the odds of finding
anyone
up here?

While Donna moved on to saying her prayers, Avery took on her theory about the local natives. But I knew it wasn’t true, and judging by the looks on Isaac and Hank’s shadowed faces, I knew they didn’t think it was true either. I didn’t know what they thought at all, but you can bet I was dying to find out.

Soon, Jake and Tim came back into the cabin. I tried to tear my eyes off Jake and his long johns that conformed to his massive body, but it was hard. It was the only thing that momentarily took my mind away from what happened.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Jake and Tim had formed the same opinion as Donna and Avery, though both of them couldn’t fathom why someone would come in here and not hurt anyone, not steal anything, and jump out the window. The glass would have hurt—why didn’t he just go through the door? Was he mad?

And just when they were staring at his escape route, I was hit with another smell. I got out of bed and looked at the window. There was a thin trail of blood leading from the broken glass all the way to my bed. I looked around and saw a few drops of blood on the hides and quickly examined myself to see if I was bleeding. I wasn’t.

“What the dickens?” Avery exclaimed as we saw the trail lead away from my bed and over to Meeks. We all stared at the jolly, plump man in horror as he lifted up his arm. Soon his eyes were just as wide as ours as rivulets of shiny blood ran down his sleeve.

Mervin Meeks was missing his pinky finger.

T
he silence stretched
out until it was shattered by Meeks’ scream. Avery and Jake jumped to attention, rushing over to him, trying to calm him as he launched into hysterics. I couldn’t move, couldn’t take my eyes off of him. My brain filtered through the last five minutes and brought up the image of a bloody mouth inches from mine.

My Lord. That person, that pale
thing
, had bitten off Meeks’ finger. He must have been in shock when it happened. How on earth could something like
that
even happen in the first place? It was unheard of.

“Savages,” Jake snarled, holding up the hand and inspecting it while Avery and Tim were now trying to hold him down. He eyed me with hate. “Your kind of savages.”

I was too dumbstruck to care what he said about me or my kind. As savage as some Indians could be—believe me, I’d been exposed to all the stories—I also knew that none of them would do such a horrible, inhuman thing. Indians would never consume part of another human being. I couldn’t imagine anyone doing so, no matter what color they were or what they believed. They were people, not animals.

Donna finally snapped out of her religious daze and started helping them tend to Meeks’ hand. Tim had poured a lot of moonshine down his throat, so the thrashing calmed, and soon he was passed out. I sat on my bed with my knees drawn to my chest and watched until I noticed Isaac and Hank get up and head outside, blankets wrapped around their shoulders, rifles in tow.

Curiously I got up, slipped on my boots, and followed them out the door. Everyone else was so preoccupied with the disfigured Meeks that they didn’t even notice.

Outside it was crisp and cold, and I wasn’t surprised to see a few flakes of snow starting to fall from the sky. It wasn’t very heavy—just sprinkles—but I knew come morning there would at least be an inch or two on the ground. I was grateful for the ramshackle lean-to on the other side of the cabin where the horses were being kept, sheltered from the elements. I should have gone over and checked on them, but on this moonless night, I stayed by the dim glow of the cabin.

Isaac and Hank were nowhere in sight, but I had a feeling they were trying to track the way the person went. I could smell the person’s boots rising up from the scuffled footprints on the ground along with the scent of Meeks’ attacker, a mixture of blood and rot.

I went as far as I could into the forest without losing sight of the cabin and then stopped. I was better off with the horses than with Isaac and Hank in these dark, unending trees. As much as I wanted to find out what happened, why the pale man had attacked Meeks (and why he hadn’t done the same thing to me), my curiosity needed to be reined in before I did something idiotic.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” Jake said from behind me, his feet crunching on the fallen twigs, the air around me becoming more earthy and pleasant as he came closer. “It’s dangerous.”

I turned around to see him a few paces back, still in his long johns, and with a cigar in his hand. I quickly turned my head away—he was not leaving anything to the imagination. His body was massive, broad lines and hard muscle that seemed like it was going to burst out of the red wool.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked, wishing I felt less embarrassed.

“Naw. You ain’t ever seen a man in his drawers, have ya?”

“A proper lady shouldn’t see that until she’s good and married,” I replied, wondering what wanton, caveman town he was from where folks were seeing each other in their undergarments. Texans were something else.

“You’ve said many times you aren’t a lady.”

He started walking toward me until I shot him a warning look to stay right where he was.

“I only said that once,” I retorted indignantly.

He puffed on his cigar, a few sprinkles of snow coming through the boughs of the trees and settling in his dark, lush hair. “True, but you’ve demonstrated your word many times before. No proper lady comes running out into the forest after she’s been nearly attacked by a savage.”

I glared at him, keeping my focus on his craggy face that looked strangely handsome in the burning glow of his cigar. “The man wasn’t a savage.”

“If that’s the case, then who was he?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted stupidly. “I only saw him for a second and there was barely any light. He was pale though, white as a sheet, with eyes bluer than a robin’s egg. But the same smell that I’ve been picking up the last few days,” I gestured ahead into the forest, “it’s coming from him.”

He frowned, eyes glittering with thought. “Interesting.”

“I thought so.”

“You know what the smell is?”

I shook my head. “Something rotten. But familiar.” I don’t know why I kept on talking, divulging information to him. “The other day, I smelled it on our neighbor’s horse that went rabid and tried to kill us.”

He coughed, his eyes bugging out. “I beg your pardon, Pine Nut?”

I sighed and quickly told him what happened with Nero, knowing it would be met with disbelief.

I turned to face him and was surprised by his silence. In fact, his mouth was set in a rather grim line. “Rabies is Latin for madness.”

I raised my brow. “I didn’t know that. Is it possible that whatever infected the horse had infected this man? He did look rather mad.”

He snorted. “You have to be more than ‘rather mad’ to bite someone’s finger clean off.”

I cringed and looked back at the cabins. “How is Meeks?”

He took in a large drag of his cigar and let the smoke slowly trail out from his full lips. “He’s alive. Unconscious. I don’t know what else we can do for him.”

“Surely one of us will be going back to River Bend tomorrow with him.”

“Won’t be you. Won’t be me.” A smirk tugged at his lips. “Mayhaps it’ll be Avery. I’d hate to see you cry though.”

“Oh, you’d love to see me cry,” I countered. “And I wouldn’t cry over Avery.”

“You two seem awful close for being just a couple of pals.”

“I don’t see how this is any of your business, nor how it could possibly interest you,” I told him. I lowered my voice. “Besides, he is my only friend in this world.”

“I see. That explains it then,” he said, another puff of smoke rising up to the trees.

“Explains what?” I asked defensively. “And why are we always out here sparring in the middle of the night?”

He shrugged casually. “Last night you came out to spar with me, Pine Nut.”

Before I could say anything to that, the faint crackle of crushed ground came from the woods. Isaac and Hank appeared first as shadowy dark forms before I could see them clearly.

“Find anything?” Jake asked them.

Isaac shook his head while Hank’s cold eyes fixed on me.

“Perhaps we need to take the tracker with us,” Hank said, reaching for my arm. I took a step back into a tree, trying to escape his grasp.

“Think it’s a bit late for that,” Jake said to him, his voice taking on an edge. “We’ll have a look around in the morning.”

Hank scowled at him but dropped his hand. “You really think you’re in charge of this, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “I don’t, but I do know better than you. Technically Merv’s in charge cuz Merv has the money.”

“Too bad Merv is in there dying,” Hank said without a hint of remorse.

Jake took in one last puff before he flicked the cigar at the ground between Hank and I. “Tomorrow will figure itself out. Merv may have lost his finger but he hasn’t lost his life. If he seems worse by morning, we’ll get someone to take him down to River Bend.”