October Skies Read online

  Julian wondered if any of these kids would one day walk into a high school dressed in black and packing an assault rifle in their shoulder bag ready to do God’s work. Perhaps not. Whilst Julian was not a big fan of religion he conceded that it seemed to hold communities like these together like a sturdy glue. It always seemed to be the loners, the kids who’d floated off into their own lonely parallel universe, who ended up blowing their classmates away.

  He leafed through the printed pages of the journal, looking for something. Finding a reference to the preacher’s first name, he tried again: ‘William Preston’ . . . and for good measure he added ‘+Missing Wagon Train’.

  The search was too specific. It gave him only one hit. He was about to have another go when something about the brief thumbnail description caught his eye.

  . . . account of a Mormon wagon train on their way to Oregon that went missing . . .

  He hit the link and was immediately presented with a simple page, a black screen topped with a banner that read ‘Tracing William Preston’s Party’. Beneath that was a rather dry and blandly written block of text laid out in a small and tiresome font that described little more than the early history of the Mormon church. If Julian hadn’t had a particular interest in the subject, this drab-looking web page would have had him clicking away very quickly.

  The solid block of text started out by briefly describing how the Church of the Latter Day Saints was founded by Joseph Smith; then the subsequent troubles in Nauvoo; the unpleasant in-fighting of the church; the schisms; how the Mormon church was rounded on by non-Mormon Christians; the outbreaks of violence; and then, finally, describing the Great Mormon Exodus across the Great Plains.

  Further down the page, there was a little detail on a minister by the name of William Preston who had formed one of many breakaway Mormon groups and was delivering his flock from the decadent United States into God’s untamed wilderness to set up their own Eden. The short article concluded that Preston’s party set out from a place called Council Bluffs, Iowa, in the spring of 1856 and stopped off at an outpost named Fort Kearny. From there they set out into the wilderness, never to be heard from again.

  Julian noticed an email address at the bottom. That was it; there were no other links for further reading, no hyperlinks to other related pages, just this one page of text written by someone who clearly needed to work on his writing style.

  There was a comment beside the email address.

  I am working on a book about this. If you have information, or wish to share information, please contact me at [email protected].

  Julian hovered over the link, tempted to bash out a quick email to see if he could pump the person behind this page for some quick and easy details. Maybe if he suggested he had some - loose - association with the BBC, the author would be flattered enough to open up and share everything with him.

  He clicked the link and started to write an introductory email and then stopped.

  Hang on. Maybe I should finish up on the Lambert journal first?

  Yes. It would make a lot more sense if he knew how the story of the Preston Party was going to go before hooking up with anybody else. He decided this might be someone worth contacting at a later stage, if he needed to fill in some details. But not right now. Whilst this page was most likely authored by some retired old enthusiastic amateur, it might just be another journalist or, God forbid, another programme researcher with the scent of a story in his nostrils.

  Instead of emailing the person, he bookmarked the page.

  ‘We’ll talk in good time,’ he muttered.

  He poured himself another glass of red, settled back in his bay window which was rattling with spots of rain, and picked up the pages of Lambert’s journal.

  CHAPTER 16

  Sunday

  Haven Ridge, Utah

  William Shepherd looked out of the tall bay windows of his study, over the manicured lawns of the campus, kept a lush green by the regularly spaced sprinklers that stirred to life in synchronicity every evening.

  Several classes were sitting in the warm mid-morning sun on the lawn, noisily debating scripture, or silent in prayer, all of them young and earnest people, radiant with purpose and God’s love. Such a contrast to the surly groups of teenagers he noticed on every street corner these days - soulless, mean-spirited creatures with dead eyes, clustered together like cancer cells.

  Shepherd shook his head sadly. There was a knock on the door to his study. ‘Mr Shepherd, studio three is ready to record your mid-week sermon.’

  ‘Thank you, Annie,’ he called out. ‘Tell them I’ll be along presently.’

  He heard the squeak of Mrs Wall’s sandals on the wooden floor outside, dutifully hurrying off to inform the studio team.

  I have things to think about.

  He had almost missed it because it had been buried amongst all the other email he received daily. Shepherd had almost deleted it out of hand as a piece of spam mail. The message was automated, mailed by ‘SiteDog’ software that monitored the accessing of a nominated web page and reported back on details of who and when and how long they had been studying the page. He got these notification emails very rarely, one every couple of months at most. The web page that SiteDog was set up to monitor had deliberately been designed to be as unappealing as possible, tedious for any casual surfer who might by accident stumble upon it. Only someone looking for something very specific would be enticed to stay a while.

  He opened the notification mail.

  One visitor, several hours ago, had loitered around the page for ten minutes and thirty-seven seconds and then clicked on the contact email link.

  ‘Who are you, then?’ asked Shepherd curiously.

  Someone else interested? Or just a passing surfer?

  Someone interested might just mean someone with a little information. If he wanted, he could find out more about this person who had stuck around on this page longer than anyone else had ever done, who had even clicked to send an email, but apparently decided against it. SiteDog presented him with an IP address. With a little - not entirely legal - effort he could get a postal address out of that, if he wanted to.

  Be cautious.

  Yes, he needed to be that for sure.

  I can’t afford to make any silly mistakes now.

  Shepherd was beginning to become newsworthy, a candidate that some of the news shows were quietly predicting might be worth ‘watching for the future’. Beyond his core audience of Latter Day Saints worshippers, beyond those that tuned in regularly to the Daily Message, his name was beginning to register; his message was beginning to hit home.

  But, unlike the other running candidates, there was no party for him to hide behind, no ranks of fellow Democrats or Republicans to close formation around him like a Roman testudo, to shelter him from the sticks and stones of politics.

  There was just his name, his reputation . . . and the message.

  I have to be whiter than white. I have to be so careful. I cannot afford a single skeleton in my closet.

  CHAPTER 17

  29 September, 1856

  Ben watched another of the heavy conestogas slide uncontrollably along the churned narrow trail, one wheel clunking and splintering against a jagged rock. It held, but even he could see it was a wheel now fit to break on the next stubborn boulder or sudden rut in the track - either of which could arrive unannounced at any time beneath the thickening carpet of snow on the ground.

  The snowfall had started with a light dusting yesterday morning; a feathery weak-willed attempt by the winter to window-dress the peaks a fortnight too early. But it was enough, Ben noticed, to put the fear of God into Keats.

  And he’d been driving them hard since - driving them relentlessly towards this pass of his, the one he swore would claw back for them days if not weeks and lead them out onto gentle valleys that sloped mercifully down the rest of the way towards the promised land.

  Keats convinced Preston that a last hard dash was required, a run th
rough the night by the light of oil lamps, and now, through an ever-thickening curtain of snow. A dash for the pass because, hampered by snow, the final assent would be impossible for the big wagons and more than likely be too much for the small traps as well.

  They had pushed on almost thirty-six hours straight, with only two short stops for cold food. In that time, they had made painfully slow progress uphill, along a winding trail through dense woodland. Trees that had further down the trail held their distance either side of them now brushed against their canvasses, and stung their cheeks with swipes of needles and cones.

  Not for the first time, Ben found himself wondering if the old guide had lost his way in the dark, and led them up a dead end.

  He led his two ponies, the first bearing his personal things, the second his medicine box and several sacks of cornmeal and oats. He didn’t trust their footing now to ride, instead choosing to feel his way forward through the three or four inches of snow to the uneven and rutted ground.

  Keats likewise was on foot ahead, pulling his animal behind him with a vicious determination.

  Have you bloody well lost us, Mr Keats? He wanted to call out. This trail of his seemed to be little more than a narrow artery of steeply ascending ground on which the trees had mutually elected not to grow. It certainly didn’t feel like wagons had worn a path this way . . . ever.

  Beside him, an ox lost its footing and stumbled, causing the beast behind it to step to the side, pulling the conestoga askew. It slid in the trampled mush and thudded into a sapling, splintering its trunk and sending a shower of snow down on the canvas. The oxen, and the man leading them, struggled to get the wagon on the move again, up the incline. Behind them, well . . . he could barely see the glow of the oil lamp of another man leading his team of oxen, through the thick veil of feathery snowflakes. The train was halted.

  Ben looked uphill towards Keats. The old man was pressing on regardless.

  ‘Keats!’ he called out. ‘Hey, Mr Keats!’

  The guide glanced back, quickly noting the temporary snarl-up. He gestured forward, and said something that Ben failed to understand. Then he carried on, leading the other wagons with him uphill, until Ben could barely see the faint bobbing glow of the lamp swinging from the back of the rearmost wagon.

  He wondered whether to hurry forward to catch them up, or remain with the wagon here, still struggling with the weary team of oxen.

  ‘Keats!’ he called out again, but his voice bounced back off the trees either side, and was quickly smothered by the heavy descending blanket of swirling snow.

  ‘Are the others not waiting?’ called the man with the wagon, one of the Mormons.

  ‘It seems not, Mr Larkin.’

  ‘What? They can’t leave us all here.’

  ‘Let me run ahead. He may not understand you’ve stopped.’ Ben tied his leading pony to Larkin’s wagon, and then trotted forward, stumbling as he tried to catch up. As he made his way ahead, the lamp at the front of the wagon behind him grew faint, and within a dozen more faltering steps he found himself alone in complete darkness, and wary that not being able to see anything he might veer away from the grooves in the snow and become lost in the pitch-black wilderness.

  ‘Dammit,’ he whispered.

  ‘Keats!’ he called out, stepping quickly forward through snow that was ankle deep.

  Up ahead, he saw the reassuring faint glow of light from the rear wagon, and puffed with relief.

  As he approached, he sensed the incline of the ground lessening, each step growing easier. The light burned more clearly, surrounded by a bloom of illuminated tumbling flakes. The wagon had stopped, and beside it he saw the shadowy outline of several people.

  Oh, what now? Another mishap?

  He drew closer and recognised the outline of Keats and his Indian, Broken Wing. They were talking with others, the men from the wagons, gathered together in some sort of impromptu meeting.

  ‘. . . up ahead. Not far,’ Keats was saying.

  Ben joined them. ‘What’s not far? The pass?’

  ‘Nope,’ Keats shook his head sombrely. ‘Ain’t gonna make the pass now.’ He looked up at the dark sky, and squinted at the thick flakes settling on his face. He brushed them irritably away. ‘No way we gonna get through that now. Broken Wing found us a space big enough we can camp up in for tonight.’

  ‘We’re stopping?’

  He nodded. ‘We’re stopping.’ He spat into the snow. ‘Can’t see for crap in this, anyhow. We’ll see what kind of a mess we’re in in the morning.’ He turned to the men gathered around. ‘Follow Broken Wing. It’s just up ahead.’

  As the men moved off to return to their wagons he stepped towards Ben.

  ‘You head back down the hill, Lambert, and tell the others there’s a big clearing up ahead, and we’re makin’ camp there right now.’

  Ben nodded. ‘I suppose this is it, then?’

  Keats shrugged. ‘Snow’s come real early. Might just be a warning, an’ it’ll melt off in a day.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Might be the winter’s gone an’ beat us to the mountains. I’ll see better in the mornin’.’

  CHAPTER 18

  30 September, 1856

  It seems Keats was right. We should have left that crippled wagon behind and moved with greater haste.

  Now with the morning I can see what sort of a predicament we are in. To my inexperienced eye, this doesn’t look like snow that will melt away under a few hours of sunshine.

  Ben looked up from his journal and out through the open canvas flap. The pale morning sun was a pitifully weak glowing disc in the white sky. The forest surrounding the clearing was uniformly white, the tall Douglas firs and spruces each bearing their own thick burden of snow. Against many of the wagons thick powdery drifts had piled up, almost completely burying their wheels.

  Last night, as the snow came down in gusting diagonal streaks - enormous flakes the size of a child’s fist - Ben had hurriedly tried to improvise a bivouac. It was too dark to hack branches from the trees around the clearing. The best he could manage was to roll himself up snugly in his poncho, inside his bedroll and canvas tarp, moisture-sealed with linseed oil, and shelter beneath the trap of Mr McIntyre’s conestoga, whilst his two ponies shivered together out in the open. But McIntyre wouldn’t have it when he heard Ben shuffling around beneath their cart and insisted he come in with them for the night.

  The otherwise uncomfortable squirming of fidgeting children was pleasantly comforting and, more importantly, warm. The McIntyres were kind to have offered him a space, but with three children in the back of the wagon, the arrangement could only be for the one night.

  There was a stirring in the wagon and a chorus of croaky ‘good mornings’ exchanged, amidst plumes of condensation. Outside, Ben could see there was already a flurry of activity. Keats was already up and taking note of the downfall. His flinty old face, normally frozen into its one and only expression of tired sufferance, was now drawn into a stretched scowl of concern. Ben watched him talking quietly with Broken Wing, both looking up repeatedly at the featureless white sky. Other people were rising, emerging from their wagons, pushing cascades of snow off their laden canopies, dropping out of the back into knee-deep drifts and yelping with surprise.

  Keats nodded firmly, the discussion with Broken Wing concluded and a decision made. ‘Goddamned snow’s here now!’ he bellowed angrily. His voice echoed back off the trees a moment later. ‘There’ll be no going anywhere now!’ He stamped snow off his boots and deerskin britches. ‘Damn it!’

  Ben put away his writing things.

  ‘C’mon! Everyone up! We’ve got work to do!’ Keats was barking out orders to everyone, his people and Preston’s, to get up, to get to work.

  ‘That’s it! C’mon! Everybody up! Your wagons ain’t wagons no more. They gotta be turned into winter shelters!’

  Ben thanked Mr and Mrs McIntyre for taking him in last night. Considering how deep the snow was, he realised he would have had
to dig himself out - if he hadn’t frozen to death in his sleep. McIntyre was already sorting through his tools. Mrs McIntyre flashed him a smile. ‘Well now, we’re all in this together, Mr Lambert, aren’t we?’

  ‘Everyone up! C’mon! There’s work to do! Plenty of it!’ Keats’s voice echoed around the clearing. ‘Get up and grab your tools!’

  Ben disentangled himself from the splayed limbs of the still-sleeping children and climbed out through the canvas opening, shuddering as a blast of freezing air enveloped him - a contrast to the warm fug of body heat built up in the McIntyres’ wagon overnight.

  He dropped off the trap, knee-deep into the snow, and found himself wincing at the bright, upward-reflected glare all around him. Looking around, he hadn’t realised how big the clearing was. Last night, the wagons had limped into this place after dark, with snow reducing visibility to just a few dozen yards. There had appeared to be space enough to spread out off the track and corral the oxen together, and so they had, expecting that with first light, they would hitch up again and be moving on.

  Ben watched as men obediently stirred from every wagon - Preston’s people as well as Keats’s - each brandishing a saw or an axe. They waded through the snow towards Keats. He saw the tall, slender frame of Preston amongst them, almost a head taller than most of the stocky men of his church.

  ‘Gentlemen, join us here in the centre!’ Preston’s voice boomed across the clearing. ‘With your tools, if you please!’

  Ben made his way towards Keats. Broken Wing stood silently beside him, his head covered with a red woollen cap.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Ben.

  ‘What’s good about it?’ spat Keats angrily.

  Men gathered about him. Preston pushed his way through them. ‘Mr Keats, it appears then that the weather has let us down.’

  ‘You could say that,’ the old guide replied dryly.