October skies

CHAPTER 35

23 October, 1856

Ben heard a voice cry out in alarm, then another. There was a commotion going on outside.

Broken Wing glanced up at him. ‘What isss?’

Ben shrugged. He leaned forward and poked his head out through the flap of their rabbit-hole-like shelter to see what was going on. He saw Mr Bowen’s head poking out from the shelter next door, and, further away, Mr Hussein’s — like curious prairie dogs.

He heard another cry of alarm and the challenge of a couple of male voices. The disturbance was coming from the far end of the camp.

Broken Wing kicked Keats, who was napping. ‘Keatttt!’ he shouted.

Keats grunted unconsciously.

Ben, meanwhile, reached for his medicine box, pulled himself out through the flap and quickly stood up, craning his neck to see what was going on. He could make out a gathering group amongst the far shelters, milling around something or someone. Ben automatically began to head towards them.

‘What’s going on?’ Mr McIntyre shouted out through the flap of his family’s shelter as Ben strode past.

‘I don’t know. I’m just going to see.’

Weyland pulled up alongside him as they crunched across the compacted snow and waded through ankle-deep drifts of fresh powder. The Virginian’s usual measured voice carried a tone of uncertainty as they approached the knot of people.

‘Thought I heard one of them Mormon gentlemen shout something about an Indian.’

They passed the oxen carcasses, entering the Mormons’ camp, weaving their way through the snowed-covered humps of shelters and pushing their way forward through the crowd.

Weyland made his way to the front and stopped dead. ‘Good God,’ he gasped.

Ben followed his gaze. The first thing his eyes registered was Emily, coated from head to foot in blood. She was cradled in the arms of a young Indian man. Ben presumed he was one of the Paiute hunting party encountered a week ago. He looked about the same age as Sam, seventeen or eighteen. The Indian was on his knees, holding as tightly to Emily, it seemed, as he was to life. From a deep, ragged gash that angled down from his left shoulder, across his chest and stomach to his groin, a tangled nest of his entrails had spilled onto Emily’s blood-soaked lap.

He gasped, short and shallow percussive breaths, his eyes glazed.

Mrs Zimmerman knelt down in front of him and reached out for Emily. The young Indian, wide-eyed and in shock, looked uncertainly at her. The woman offered a reassuring smile and nodded.

‘Let me take her,’ she said quietly.

The Indian glanced down at Emily before reluctantly releasing his tight hold of her. Mrs Zimmerman scooped Emily into her arms and stepped back.

‘Thank you,’ she uttered.

The Indian swayed momentarily before collapsing onto the snow, calling out something loudly. To Ben’s ears the words were unintelligible, but he noticed they were the same, over and over.

Keats noisily pushed through the crowd, barking at people to get out of his way.

‘The Indians are still out there,’ somebody in the crowd gasped.

The old guide emerged from the throng and knelt down beside the prone body of the young Paiute. Ben stepped forward to join him, crouching down quickly to examine the wound but knowing — as he had with the Zimmerman girl — that there was too much damage to save the young man. He looked at Keats and shook his head.

The Indian was still chanting something.

Somebody in the crowd muttered, ‘Those dark demons’ve killed the Dreytons,’ and there was a ripple of reaction through the crowd, followed by an outbreak of muttered, whispered prayers amongst them. Whether they were praying for Emily, her family, themselves or for the Indian, he couldn’t tell.

Keats grunted irritably at the growing cacophony of noise behind him. The young Paiute had stopped chanting and was now whispering. Keats crouched down close to the young man, who looked now to be only a few moments away from death, placing one gnarled cauliflower ear close to the Indian’s lips. Ben noticed tiny flecks of dark blood dotting Keats’s cheek as the Indian panted, and desperately whispered something.

‘What’s he saying?’ Ben asked quietly.

‘Can’t fuckin’ hear,’ Keats hissed. He turned to face the crowd. ‘Shut up!’ he barked angrily at them. The praying and hubbub of noise immediately settled down to a gentle rustle of breathing.

He dipped down again to listen to the dying Indian. The Paiute seemed to rally enough strength for his tormented and distant eyes to focus for a moment on Keats. He grabbed the old man’s arm and gasped something to him; a quick rattle of Ute that Ben wasn’t confident the old guide entirely understood. Then the young Indian’s eyes rolled, showing just the whites, and a last fluttering breath came from his mouth, flecking his lips with sprayed dots of blood.

They heard the distant caw of a murder of crows circling high above the trees some way into the forest, and the sibilant whispering of someone still praying amidst the crowd.

Ben reached out and closed the Indian’s eyes; even in death, the look of them unsettled him.

He turned to Keats. ‘So are you going to tell me what he was saying?’

Keats looked at him and shook his head, confused. ‘Didn’t seem to make much sense.’