October skies

CHAPTER 55

28 October, 1856

Snow cascaded down; giant feathery flakes that tumbled from the heavy sky above and settled with a whisper. The afternoon was almost as dim as night, the weak and lethargic sun hidden away from sight behind the surging grey blanket of cloud.

The gathering around the fire in the middle of the Keats party camp was well attended, the flames licking high, pushing out an undulating envelope of warmth that embraced the small gathering. The flickering light of the fire glinted in the eyes of everyone, intense and wide with anxiety, as they listened to the burning crack of damp wood and fir cones, and considered what needed to be discussed.

In silence they stared at the six Paiute who, in turn, warily stared back.

‘So, their leader, the older-lookin’ one’ — Keats gestured towards him — ‘is called somethin’ like Three Hawks. That’s if I was understandin’ him right.’

Mr Bowen regarded them unhappily. ‘See, ’ow do we know we can trust ’em? I got a wife and little ’uns to worry about. These ’ere bastards were going to do for us last time we ran into them.’

‘But they didn’t, though,’ said Ben, ‘did they?’

Bowen curled his lip uncertainly. ‘They’ll do us in our sleep. Take what we got and disappear, just you see.’

‘Fact is,’ said Keats, ‘they’re here because somethin’ out in those trees scared ’em into our camp, Bowen. Maybe they’re wonderin’ whether they can trust us, eh?’

Bowen said nothing.

Ben looked at Broken Wing. ‘Can you ask them whether they’ve actually seen what’s out there?’

Broken Wing asked the question. Three Hawks listened and then nodded and conferred quietly for a moment with the younger ones sitting either side of him.

‘Mr Keats, can you tell us what they’re saying?’ asked Weyland.

‘Dunno, they’re talkin’ too fast. Wait a minute… let ’em talk it out.’

After a few moments, it seemed some consensus was arrived at. Three Hawks turned to Broken Wing and Keats, speaking slowly and signing at the same time.

‘None of them have seen it clearly,’ Keats translated. ‘But one of them’ — he nodded towards one of the younger Paiute — ‘said he caught a glimpse of it in the woods. He was the one who found their elder, White Feather.’

Three Hawks spoke again with Broken Wing. Keats waited until they’d finished, then asked Broken Wing in Ute what the man had said.

‘He ssssay… demon, large…’ said Broken Wing, his hands gesturing around his head, ‘isss… like bone…’

‘A skull?’ offered Ben.

Broken Wing nodded. ‘Ya! Ssskull, large ssskull. And, bonesss.. ’ Broken Wing’s hands mimed protrusions all over his body. ‘Like ssspines.’

Keats spoke quickly with Broken Wing in the Shoshone dialect, scowling with disbelief before he repeated what he’d heard. ‘They said it is a giant, three men tall. Yet moving silently like a spirit.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I can’t believe he saw that.’

Keats waved a hand dismissively. ‘Hell, you’re right not to. Damned Indian folk have a habit of exaggeratin’ everythin’.’

Ben remembered reading the journals of an explorer in Africa. He had made the same observation of tribes he’d encountered. It was not that these savages were deliberately exaggerating their tales, it was simply that they didn’t have an agreed metric for measuring and comparing. Big basically meant anything bigger than the storyteller. Big could mean any size. And stories that passed from one teller to another had a habit of inflating.

Keats was listening to Broken Wing again. Then, when the man had finished, he relayed what had been said.

‘They believe it’s a white man’s devil. A devil that came into the woods with us.’ He looked across the clearing at the shifting silhouetted figures on the far side of the camp. ‘He believes it came from amongst the others.’

Ben nodded and muttered. ‘That, I can believe.’

Keats pulled on his pipe, sending up an acrid puff of tobacco smoke. ‘Fact of the matter is, I don’t think it’s no demon. One of them people’s gone bad in the head. That’s what it is, I reckon.’

‘Not bad,’ said Ben, ‘but mad. Quite insane.’

Keats wiped his gnarled nose. ‘Reckon you’re talkin’ ’bout Preston?’

Ben nodded. ‘Yes, maybe.’

Keats shrugged. ‘Same difference. Could be him, could be any other. It’s one of ’em Mormon folk.’

‘What worries me most,’ said Ben, ‘is what Preston’s telling his people. Their devotion to him is fanatical.’

Weyland nodded gravely and tossed a branch on the fire. ‘They sure looked ready to use their guns today. If he’d told them to, they would have fired. Of that I’m sure.’

‘Not necessarily just on these Indians,’ added Ben. Everyone around the fire looked at him. ‘I think if there’d been shooting, those guns would have been turned on us just as soon as these Paiute had been dealt with.’

‘Yup,’ muttered McIntyre, ‘that’s how it looked to me, too.’

It was quiet for a moment, the crackle, pop and hiss of burning twigs and cones filling the silence.

‘Something’s changed in Preston,’ said Ben. He wondered if it would be wise to tell them that the minister had most probably been pushed over the edge by the laudanum he’d helped himself to. That it was his fault for allowing him enough doses to become addicted to it. ‘He’s become unstable. His mind is playing tricks on him. The bear attack, the fever he’s been through, the burden of leading his people; I believe these things have combined to send him quite mad.’

‘These Indians,’ said Bowen. ‘He said they was evil demons.’

Keats shook his head. ‘Preston been lookin’ at us different since them people was killed. We’re all outsiders to ’em, all evil to ’em — including these Paiute.’

‘It’s not just about survival, fear of what they think’s out there,’ said Ben. ‘It’s about manifest destiny. Preston and his people are out here for a reason.’

‘What reason?’

‘They weren’t just travelling west for a new life. They’re on a mission. Preston’s led them on what he believes is a divine mission.’

‘I have to admit, I’ve never come across religious folk as peculiar as these,’ uttered Weyland.

‘They’re Mormons,’ said McIntyre with distaste, ‘what else do you expect? That’s no form of Christianity I recognise.’

‘They’re not Mormons,’ said Ben. ‘They’re something else. Something of Preston’s creation.’

The others looked at him.

‘That’s what’s happening. He’s led them away to write a new faith, a new book of God.’

Mr Hussein shook his head and spoke quietly in Farsi to his family.

‘What’re you saying there, Mr Hussein?’ asked Bowen.

He stopped and turned to the others around the fire. ‘I say… man cannot rewrite words of Allah.’

The words hung on a silence, broken only by the spit and hiss of a log in the fire.

‘I’m not sure I’m happy with the idea of some madman so close to us,’ said Weyland, glancing at the distant glow on the far side, ‘conjuring up his own religion from nothing.’

Keats grunted in agreement. ‘Well, whatever crazy hokum that Preston’s come up with, reckon we gotta now consider them folks as somethin’ of a problem for us.’ He tapped the embers of his pipe out into the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. ‘Them oxen lyin’ between us and them will be gone long before spring, long before any one of us can think of makin’ our way out of here.’ He locked his gaze on them all. ‘There’ll be fightin’ long before then, I can assure you.’

He looked towards Three Hawks and the five other young men sat with him, watching the discussion dispassionately. ‘Hell, that’s why we need these Paiute folks with us ’cause if… when… the fightin’ comes, we’ll need every able-bodied man we got.’

Mrs McIntyre grasped her husband’s hand tightly. ‘Mr Keats, will it really come to that? A fight between us and them?’

The old man’s wrinkled face softened with pity. He could see the woman, and the children whose arms were wrapped around her, were trembling. ‘Fear makes people do some terrible things, ma’am. It’s what folk like Preston use to make the rest of us do exactly what they want.’

Ben turned and looked towards the distant flames of the other campfire, and the indistinct silhouettes of people moving around it.

‘You frighten a bunch o’ people enough,’ Keats continued, ‘I mean really, really put the fear of God into them… reckon they’ll do just about anythin’ for you.’

‘If you’re right, Mr Keats,’ said Weyland, ‘then we should be asking ourselves what it is Preston might ask them to do.’