October skies

CHAPTER 41

24 October, 1856

For a moment he stood stock still. It was too dark to make sense of his cluttered surroundings. He allowed a moment for his eyes to adjust.

‘Lambert,’ he heard Keats’s voice growl quietly, ‘over here.’

Soon he could pick out the dark shapes around him. He shuffled his foot forward, finding, to his surprise, two very steep steps taking him down.

The floor of the shelter was dug out of the ground.

Of course, that made sense. The shelter was more protected from the elements this way and that much more insulated. Ben had expected to be stooping uncomfortably as he made his way through the interior. Instead, having taken two steps down, he was standing erect. He reached a hand up and found a foot clearance above his head before his fingers brushed against branches and dried mud, crumbs of which rattled down through his fingers.

Thin beams of light speared down through slender cracks in the roof and front wall, dappling the uneven earthen floor with pin-pricks of light.

His eyes adjusted, he could make out some things he expected to see: bales of dried and compressed beaver pelts, traps hanging from hooks on the wall along with a few simple tools with which to work wood, and a bag of long iron lumber nails. On a crude workbench he saw skinning and gutting knives, a tub of salt…

He heard the shuffling of feet nearby. ‘This way, Lambert,’ Keats grunted again quietly.

He looked towards where the voice had come from and saw the shack was divided by a flimsy partitioning wall — no more than a row of stout branches standing vertically side by side from floor to ceiling, and a wattle of strips of bark woven through them. Keats stood in a gap in the middle of the partition staring impatiently at him.

‘In here,’ he said. ‘We found one of ’em.’

Ben felt his heart sink. ‘Which one?’

Keats offered him a weak smile. ‘It ain’t Sam,’ he reassured him quietly.

He made his way towards the opening, but Keats remained where he was, blocking his way. He leaned forward so that the bristles of his beard almost tickled Ben’s face. ‘You done a bunch of doctorin’… so I guess you’ll be readier than Vander was. It’s the Hearst fella.’

Ben felt a small rush of relief and then felt immediately guilty. ‘What condition is the body in?’

‘Well, it ain’t pretty,’ he whispered.

Ben nodded, took a deep breath and vowed silently that he’d remain calm and composed in front of the other two men. Keats stepped to one side and allowed him through.

This second half of the shelter was smaller. It was where the trapper once slept. There was a small gap in one wall, a deliberate hole — a window of sorts — that was almost entirely plugged by the snowdrift outside. It allowed enough diffused light in to the dark interior that he could immediately discern what he’d been called in to examine.

‘Oh my God,’ he whispered.

Nailed to the wall with several of the long lumber nails he’d seen on the workbench, was the naked body of Saul Hearst. He was pinned upside down in a parody of the crucifixion posture, his arms splayed, one nail through each wrist, and his feet crossed, a single nail through both of them. From his pelvis to his chest, a knife had been at work. He had been comprehensively gutted, and hung against the wall like a carcass of prime beef in a butcher’s shop. There was surprisingly little blood there, and no sign of the removed organs.

Keats looked at him quizzically.

Ben nodded. ‘Yes, I presume those organs would have to be his.’

For the first time he registered Preston. He was standing with his back against the partition wall and staring at the man, his deep eyes locked in a silent expression of fear. His lips moved soundlessly.

A prayer.

Over and over.

Ben took a reluctant step closer to the cadaver. And as he did so, his eyes registered something written along one of Hearst’s pale thighs. Closer still he realised the words were not written on the skin — they were carved into it… letters formed from the small, precise slashes of a sharp blade.

‘You can read it?’ asked Keats.

Ben nodded. He glanced at the left thigh. ‘For all his dirty sins.’

‘Anyone know what the hell that means?’ growled Keats.

Ben shook his head. They both turned to look at Preston. ‘You’re a preacher,’ said Keats, ‘an’ that sounds to me like God talk. Mean anythin’ to you?’

Preston’s eyes flickered off the corpse to look at them. He was about to say something, and then shook his head. ‘No, I have no idea what this could mean.’

Ben studied the intense stillness of Preston’s face, a rigid mask concealing a head full of secrets that clearly he was unprepared to share with them right now.

‘Well, one thing’s for sure,’ grunted Keats, ‘reckon it ain’t them Paiute. Not less they learned ’emselves to read an’ write all of a sudden.’

Preston’s eyes turned back on Hearst’s body. He looked like a condemned man taking the last few steps up a scaffold and catching his very first sight of the hangman’s noose.

The bastard’s holding something back.

Ben was about to ask Preston again what those carved words meant, when they heard raised voices coming from outside the shelter. Keats was the first to react, leading the way as they stumbled clumsily through the cluttered interior up the two deep steps and emerged outside.

McIntyre was striding towards them. ‘We found the others!’ he shouted breathlessly. ‘Through the trees over there,’ he said, pointing past the wooden hanging frames. They made their way there, McIntyre leading them around a thicket of twisted and tangled brambles and presently they stood before a recently dug grave. Poking through last night’s light snowfall could be seen the dark peaty colour of a mound of freshly turned soil. There had apparently been no attempt at concealing it — quite the opposite. The burial mound was topped with a cross; two short lengths of branch crudely lashed together with twine. The entire party of men crowded around the grave, as Preston, Keats and Ben pushed to the front.

‘So where’s the other grave?’ asked Keats.

‘Just one grave,’ said McIntyre. ‘They’re both in it together.’

Ben looked at him. ‘Both?’

McIntyre nodded. ‘Sorry, Ben.’ He pointed to the grave where two holes had already been dug into the freshly turned soil. ‘We had to dig to be sure who was here.’

Ben stepped towards the grave and saw what he recognised as the dark pattern of Mrs Dreyton’s shawl and the pale lace bonnet. Beneath the flowery trim of her bonnet he could see that her face had been slashed, dried blood caked her cheeks and the eyes, nostrils and mouth were plugged with soil.

Another hole had been dug on the other side of the mound and already he could see Sam’s forearm, his white shirt dirty and stained, one of his strong young man’s hands curled up like an old man’s arthritic claw and discoloured a dark brown by death. Ben recognised that as the inevitable pooling of immobile blood beneath the skin.

‘Please cover them over now!’ snapped Preston.

Ben nodded. He’d seen enough too.

McIntyre, using the butt of his rifle as a spade, began pushing the dislodged soil back into the holes.

‘Gentlemen, we also discovered the body of Saul Hearst in the shelter,’ announced Preston, more for the benefit of his men than Keats’s people. ‘There is now, I’m certain, an evil at work in these woods. The misfortune of our wagon, the early snow, the attack of the bear, the dark savages nearby… these are agents of the Devil, sent here to test us, to torment us.’

There were murmurs, whispers amongst the men. Ben saw several of them bow their heads in prayer.

‘You must trust me. God has a mission for us, a destiny for us, and the Devil does not like that. He has found us, and now tries his tricks and strategies. We will return to our camp and pray for the Dreytons. Tonight I will talk with God and seek his guidance.’

Preston waved at his men to move out. They turned away from the grave and headed across the clearing towards the shallow slope.

‘What about your man, Saul?’ Ben called out. ‘Don’t you want to bury him?’

Preston turned round. ‘We’ll not return here again. This is an evil place. Do you not feel it? We’re leaving. You’re best coming too.’

‘What about Saul?’

‘Saul is in the same place as Dorothy and Sam now, Lambert — a much better place than this.’ Preston turned back round and led his men up the slope, pushing knee-deep through the snow.

‘I… I’m leaving with them,’ said McIntyre. ‘I can feel it too. This is no place to hang around.’ He set off after the others.

Broken Wing nodded and muttered to himself, looking at the thick apron of foliage around the small clearing, then followed McIntyre.

‘What did he say?’ asked Ben.

Keats shook his head. ‘Damned superstitious Indian.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he could feel the white-face spirit watching us from the trees.’

Weyland grinned nervously. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I think I might join them.’

Keats snorted and spat. ‘Might as well. Ain’t nothing we can do for ’em now.’ He headed off after the others, leaving Ben alone.

Ben turned to look back at the grave. ‘I’m so sorry, Sam. I would have taken you with me come the spring. You, your mother and Emily.’

He turned to leave and then stopped and turned back round. ‘I’ll take care of Emily for you. She’ll come with me. I promise you that.’