October Skies Read online

  Sam grinned guiltily at Ben’s casual profanity.

  ‘So, where’s Emily today?’

  He turned and glanced back through the trees towards the camp. Several pale columns of smoke rose lazily up into the featureless white sky from within the clearing below. ‘She’s at a prayer meeting in the temple.’

  Preston’s people had put a lot of effort into constructing one shelter that was larger than all the others in the camp. From the outside, it appeared to be big enough to allow room for the Quorum of Elders, a committee of twelve, who met several times a day in there. They also used it for prayer meetings and scripture studies for the younger ones. It was their church . . . or temple, as they referred to it, as well as Preston’s shelter.

  ‘Vander, Hearst and Preston take turns teaching scripture to some of the children directly.’ Sam picked up a branch then turned to look back down at the snow-covered mound of the temple. ‘Vander’s teaching her right now. Teaching her on her own.’

  Ben detected something in his voice.

  ‘I don’t like that,’ said Sam after a while.

  ‘Why?’

  Sam didn’t answer at first, instead busying himself with searching for twigs and small branches.

  ‘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 Ben had once experienced a similar faltering conversation with a very withdrawn first-year boy at boarding school.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 liste
ned 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.

  CHAPTER 22

  10 October, 1856

  I share this small space with Mr Keats and Broken Wing. I have to admit they have built a very robust and surprisingly snug shelter. There is no room, of course, to stand upright. One enters on hands and knees, and at best, in the very centre of the shelter, may stand, but only if stooped over. At the top, where the saplings converge in a knot of coerced boughs, there is a small gap that frequently needs a stick poked up through it to clear the snow. This small hole in our roof allows for us to burn a modest fire inside, the smoke being very efficiently sucked away through this improvised chimney. Not every shelter, I notice, anticipated this luxury, and I have often seen less fortunate people spilling out of their shelters coughing and spluttering.

  I have much to be thankful for, having such experienced and knowledgeable shelter companions. However, I do find many of Keats’s personal habits quite repulsive at such close quarters. His incessant ritual of snorting and spitting, whilst tolerable outside, is utterly unforgivable inside. So much so that I gifted him with one of my own fine linen handkerchiefs - a present from mother. I imagine she would be mortified at the unimaginable material that gets deposited into it every hour of every day. But as a small consolation, now at least my hands are less likely to find congealing, tar-stained globules of mucus on the floor of our shelter.

  Ben looked up at them. Broken Wing was absorbed in carving an intricate pattern of criss-crossing lines into the bark of a log. Keats was smoking his pipe silently. Ben wondered how much tobacco the man had brought with him, since he seemed to be always either at the point of filling his pipe or emptying it.

  Keats looked his way and took the stem of the pipe out of his mouth. ‘What the hell you scribblin’ ’bout in there anyway? I seen you doin’ it enough. Been meanin’ I gotta ask.’

  ‘My journal. I . . .’ Ben shrugged self-consciously. ‘I have always aspired to be a writer.’

  ‘Thought you was a doctor.’

  ‘I am, at least . . . I was studying anatomy before I changed to psychiatry.’

  ‘Si—what?’

  ‘Study of the malaise of the mind. But to be a writer of tales, like Charles Dickens - that’s my dream.’

  ‘Never heard of ’im.’

  The fire in their shelter had died down to little more than a bed of embers, which every now and then sprouted a flickering flame.

  ‘That’s why I came across to the Americas. To explore the wilderness, to have an adventure to write about.’

  Keats chuckled. ‘Reckon you got more ’venture than you bargained for, eh?’

  Ben smiled. ‘I console myself with the thought that my journal will turn out to be far more interesting than I could have hoped.’

  ‘Aye,’ grunted Keats.

  ‘I think I’ve used enough candle tonight.’

  Ben closed the lid of his inkpot, noting as he did that it was approaching half-empty and that he’d need to weaken the mix with some water to let it stretch further. He snuffed out the small candle beside him, instantly throwing the shelter into complete darkness save for the occasional guttering flame from the middle that illuminated them with a staccato amber light.

  It was then that they heard the first sound of disturbance. A moan that was a note deeper than the wind. Then they heard the muffled scream of a woman.

  ‘The hell was that?’ growled Keats.

  Another, more intense scream.

  ‘Come on!’

  The flap to their shelter swung open, letting in an icy blast. Keats scrambled out, followed by Broken Wing. Ben reached for his poncho and crawled outside. A gusting wind was carrying small, stinging, powdery granules of ice.

  The scream came again.

  ‘Over amongst them Mormon shelters!’ said Keats, immediately setting off across the clearing, pulling out his hunting knife. Broken Wing followed, instinctively pulling out his tamahakan from a sheath strapped to one thigh.

  Ben looked down at his hands.

  And what did I bring? A bloody writing pen.

  He shook his head, chastising himself for not reaching for his gun, then set off after them.

  They scrambled through knee-deep snow, around the huddled mass of oxen baying pitifully in the cold, towards the more congested end of the clearing - almost a village-worth of ramshackle shelters clustered around the only construction that looked remotely like a building: their church.

  Ben could see movement in between the shelters. The glow of their communal campfire provided enough light to see a confusing melange of fast-moving silhouettes but nothing he could make sense of yet.

  They heard the deep moan, and even Ben’s untrained ears identified what he had heard.

  ‘Bear!’ shouted Keats. ‘Goddamned bear!’

  They saw it, reversing out of a shelter, its powerfully muscular hindquarters back-pedalling, its head and shoulders angrily shaking off the pine branches and snow that had tumbled onto its back as it probed inside through the low entrance.

  The shelter shook violently as it pulled out and turned round to face the gathering circle of people. Immediately it reared up on its back legs, bellowing furiously and waving two enormous paws in front of itself, claws protruding and glistening like knife blades.

  ‘Anyone with a primed gun?’ shouted Keats.

  There was a confusion of panicked responses from those gathered. Already a dozen men had emerged, most clasping a rifle, but none, it seemed, loaded and ready to fire.

  The night was alive with cries of alarm, dancing half-light from the nearby campfire, shadows darting in fear, and the towering form of the bear in the midst of it all. Ben saw Preston’s tall frame emerge from their church and quickly join the crowd.

  ‘Who’s the night watch?’ Preston called out.

  ‘Aye!’ a voice called out from the growing cacophany.

  ‘Can you fire?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then do so!’

  Ben saw a man emerge from the confusion and take several fearful steps towards the bear. He saw the long barrel level horizontally, wavering for only a moment before discharging with a deafening boom amidst a cloud of powder smoke.

  The shot missed.

  The bear dropped down onto all fours and then, with terrifying speed, charged across the snow towards the man, who remained frozen to the spot with fear. Too late he gathered his wits and turned, but the bear was on him, swiping both legs from beneath him with a casual blow of his forepaw.

  The man fell on his front and flipped round onto his back to fend off what he knew was coming, his hands held out before him - a pitifully futile gesture. The bear’s jaw snapped open and closed on one hand. The man’s voice became a scream of terror as the bear swung its muzzle ferociously from side to side, snapping bones and tearing off the man’s hand and forearm, leaving a tattered and ragged stump at the elbow.

  The man showed surprising prescience by taking the fleeting opportunity to try and escape as the bear mauled for a moment on its prize. With his one good arm he hurled the spent rifle at t
he creature, then attempted to pull himself to his feet.

  There were screams of encouragement from those gathered.

  Short-lived.

  The bear again swiped at his legs, and this time collapsed its heavy weight onto his back, driving the wind out of him - more than likely crushing his ribcage. Without any hesitation this time, the bear’s long muzzle closed on the man’s head with a sickening crunch.

  It was then that Ben noticed Preston stepping quickly forward from the crowd, a smoking branch in one hand.

  ‘Get away!’ he roared angrily, charging the last dozen yards forward and poking the smouldering end of the branch into the bear’s flank. It let go of the man’s head and turned to face Preston, roaring with wild rage at the intrusion and swinging a claw at the branch.

  Get back, you fool, Ben found himself urging Preston.

  ‘Away!!!’ shouted Preston, taking a step forward and jabbing the creature in the flank again. The second jab was enough. The bear abandoned the man on the ground who, Ben was surprised to see, was still moving. It advanced on Preston, rearing up on its hind legs and baring teeth red with blood, from which dangled tatters of flesh.

  ‘Can anyone fire?’ Preston called out over his shoulder, his voice broken with fear.

  Ben looked around to see at least half a dozen men frantically and shakily priming their guns with powder and shot.

  The bear dropped down on to all fours.

  ‘Can anyone fire?!’ Preston shouted again, backing up slowly. There were screams of alarm, people begging Preston to turn and run while he still had a chance. But he stood his ground, bending his knees in readiness, holding nothing but a smoking, fragile branch.

  Then the bear charged.

  One paw swiped aside the pitiful stick. The other swiped across Preston’s chest, hurling him a couple of yards across the snow, where he landed heavily and almost immediately began to stain the snow dark.

  The bear was astride Preston when another shot rang out, this time punching the bear heavily in the side. It reared up in rage and agony, losing its balance and tumbling over. It recovered its footing, but the shock of the wound seemed to have been enough to change its agenda. With surprising speed, it raced away on all fours from the baying crowd, out of the pall of light from the fire and into the darkness.