Donners of the Dead

“Picking anything up, Pine Nut?”

I ignored my new nickname. “Just that smell again.”

“According to the map,” Isaac shouted from behind Tim, “we should be close to Alder Creek, the first camp for the Donners.”

I’d seen Isaac’s map. It was little more than a few squiggles drawn on crudely-shaped mountains. Still, I had a feeling he was right. Though the rotting meat smell was gone, there was something else. I studied the nearby trees closely and noticed that here and there, the branches were hacked off at eye level. Someone had been collecting them, either to make a roof for a shanty or to burn as firewood.

“I think we’ve already found it,” I said. I nodded at Jake. “Keep on riding.”

From the look on his face I could tell he hated being told what to do by a woman, let alone a half-Indian one. That’s why I said it. I liked seeing his upper lip snarl and those deep, dark eyes narrow into cold slits. I liked that I made this very grown man as ornery as a mule. I liked that I seemed to bother him as much as he bothered me.

We rode for another minute until the trees opened up into a tiny meadow of fawn-colored grass that spread out to the golden alder trees that bordered the edge of the forest. From here you could see the wide expanse of the mountains, their tops covered by low clouds. While the drizzle had stopped where we were, the air had gotten colder and I knew that snow was falling higher up.

A flock of geese suddenly rose from the grass and Jake was quick with his plains rifle, bringing down one with his only shot.

“Another good meal,” Tim commented cheerily. “Well, I suppose we should take a look around here and see what we can find.”

“I reckon we keep going,” Jake said, twisting in his saddle to face him, the leather squeaking against his raincoat. “We can’t stay here, and we have to reach proper shelter before dark.”

“We’re staying here,” Isaac countered, “until we find what we’re looking for. You might be leading us but you’re not in charge of this expedition, Jake. You’re not funding it. And if you want your money, then you’ll have to sit tight and keep your mouth shut.”

I’d never heard Isaac talk so much in one go before, nor mouth off to Jake. The air suddenly rippled with tension, adding to the weighty, eerie quality that the valley was already giving off.

“Eve,” Tim said in his most diplomatic voice, “why don’t you take Isaac around this valley here and see if you can find anything. I think there should be a creek nearby and hopefully remnants of the Donners.”

I raised a brow. When he said remnants of the Donners, did he mean discarded belongings—or discarded bones of the men who died in the snows? I shivered at the thought but dismounted Sadie all the same.

Meeks also wanted to take a look around, and as soon as Hank indicated the same, Avery was joining my side. Tim was already pulling Jake away, wanting to talk to him far from the rest of us. Only Donna remained on her horse, pretending not to be slighted.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Avery asked, arms folded across his chest.

Isaac eyed him carefully before he spoke. “Just signs of civilization. Why don’t you and Hank and Merv take the south end over there? Eve and I will take the north.” He jerked his skinny face to the mountains where the alders thinned out and the grass was lost to trees.

I could tell Avery was apprehensive about leaving my side, but as long as he was with Hank—who was staring me down like a prized buck—I wasn’t bothered. Isaac was strange and pushy but he didn’t give me the same feeling as Hank did.

So I walked with Isaac toward the north end of the field, the rain-wet grass brushing against my dress and soaking the hem. I was grateful for the boots I was wearing, especially as the ground grew soft and marshy, and we eventually came across a creek that snaked just inside the last crop of alders.

“So this is Alder Creek,” Isaac said as if I wasn’t there. He started looking around him for signs. But for me, the signs were obvious. That rotten smell had returned again, albeit fainter, along with the light but still horrid smell of human waste. Isaac obviously couldn’t pick up on it, or he would have remarked something fierce. I suppose I really was starting to prove my worth.

I gestured to the trees on the other side of the gurgling creek. “I believe if you’re looking for anything it will be over there.”

He didn’t look as suspicious as I had imagined he would. “You reckon?”

“Let’s go see.”

The creek wasn’t hard to cross with a few large stones in the middle, and I was glad that we’d found something to appease him.

However, as soon as we came across faded hoof marks and footprints that led us into a small glade, my gladness took a sharp turn towards horror.

There were two small huts composed of felled logs and branches with some mildewed quilts thrown on top. Beyond that was a small semi-circular cabin with a missing roof and fire pit in the middle. Even if I had just seen those two sights, I would have known something was wrong. It was more than a sense or a smell, picking up on who was here before. There was a feeling that something terrible happened here and that feeling was snaking up my body, intent to drown me in it.

Of course it only took me a few steps over to the right, so I could see beyond the makeshift cabin, to see what was causing my hairs to already stand on end. There was a large pile of human skeletons—some men, some women, some children. Some were almost whole, some were missing almost every part of them, but none of them were completely intact. As if that wasn’t odd enough, some of them had what appeared to be bite marks on them and yet the area hadn’t seemed disturbed by animals at all.

“I think we found them,” I managed to say before I realized that any of the bodies could be Isaac’s uncle. “I’m sorry. Do you think that George was one of them?”

But Isaac was paying the skeletons no attention. Instead he went into the cabin, turning over fallen logs and canvas, turning over empty boxes and emptying out an iron pot that was filled with a foul-smelling sludge that caused Isaac to recoil in disgust. Still, he continued on, going to the huts next and disappearing inside. He had wanted me to lead him here but apparently that was as far as my services went.

Finally, when I had grown tired of standing next to the poor, expired bones of pioneers, their sorrowful stench filling my nostrils until I couldn’t imagine what fresh air smelled like, I asked Isaac if I should go and get the others.

He was quick to respond to that and hurried out of the hut, the canvas flapping against him like a wet wing. “No,” he said, his eyes momentarily too wide, a dirty smudge across his face. “No, it’s fine. I’m ready to go on. George wasn’t here. These people were part of the Donner party, if not the Donners themselves. We must move on.”

And as quickly as we had come here, we were leaving. Though puzzled, I couldn’t say I wasn’t glad. The sharp air from the mountains swept toward me and cleared my head as we flocked back to the party. Everyone except Jake and Tim were mounted on their horses and looking bored.

“We were getting plumb worried about you,” Tim said, directed more to me than Isaac. “We were just about to set out after ya. Find anything?”

Isaac shook his head and quickly got on his horse. “No, nothing. Better luck at the next stop.”

I frowned at him while I mounted Sadie. “Well, I wouldn’t quite say we found nothing. There’s a heap of skeletons out there behind some of the huts the parties must have built.”

“Skeletons?” Jake repeated and I caught an odd exchange between him and Tim.

“Yes, yes, the poor souls,” Isaac said quickly. “But it wasn’t George’s party and that’s all I care about.”

“How do you know it wasn’t his party?” Avery spoke up. “If they’re just bones, how can you tell?”

Isaac narrowed his eyes at him before pulling his hat further down on his head. “I can just tell, you understand?”

Avery did, but just like me, there was a flicker of disbelief in his eyes. Of course, there wasn’t much we could do about it except try and argue with him and that was the last thing any of us wanted. The sky was growing darker by the minute, not only with nightfall but with thickening clouds that swarmed toward us from the crests. I knew in my soul that they would be carrying snow and a lot of it. The Indians were bound to be right.

After Alder Creek, we rode as fast as we could, trotting with every open expanse we got, which wasn’t very often. Just as things seemed too dark to see anymore, we came to a large clearing and a proper log cabin in the middle of it. All of us seemed to breathe a huge sigh of relief, and together we made quick work of getting the place outfitted for us.

The cabin itself was damp and cold, as to be expected since it had been abandoned for so long, and the two front windows had cracks in the glass that let in the rapidly cooling air. But Donna, bless her soul, lit a few candles she had brought with her and went about sweeping the place with a makeshift broom made out of pine branches. It was a double cabin that had obviously been constructed long before the Donners, perhaps by some other travelers who wanted to stay awhile. It still had a partition of canvas and a few logs that stopped at the fire pit in the middle, where a fire that Avery had built was burning.

Unfortunately, with the space so evenly split, there would be no such thing as a “ladies only” side. Donna looked like a blonde tomato when she found out Avery and Meeks would be sharing our side of the cabin. Normally I would have felt the same about Avery, for different reasons of course, only tonight, I didn’t really feel anything. The only thing that got to me was the way Jake smirked at me when Avery started making his bed near me.

I was also extraordinarily tired. I barely made it through the goose stew—as delicious as it was—before I crawled over to bed. I promptly passed out even as I heard the moonshine being passed around and the harmonica starting up.

When I woke, I was certain I’d only been asleep for a few minutes. I could hear the fire crackling and feel the heat outside the blanket, the cabin doing a great job of keeping everybody inside warm and protected.

But like the night before, I hadn’t awoken by accident. There was a reason, and while my confused, sleep-deprived brain struggled to figure out what it was, I was hit with the intense aroma of rotting flesh, carried on a hot burst of air.

I opened my eyes.

A pair of pale blue eyes, lit by firelight, were leaning over me. A bloody mouth sneered.

I screamed violently, my voice carrying loud, and quickly tried to push the person off of me. But they were already retreating, making a strange growling, snapping noise like a hungry dog. It ran awkwardly across the cabin, as naked as a jaybird, as blue white as snow, and jumped out through one of the front windows, shattering the glass all around it, before disappearing into the night.

All at once the cabin was plunged into chaos. Donna was screaming her head off and Meeks seemed to be hyperventilating. Avery was at my side and holding my shoulders, trying to speak to me, while Jake grabbed his shotgun and ran out the door in his long johns.

“I don’t believe it,” muttered Tim, pulling on his coat and boots, grabbing his gun and following Jake out the door. Hank and Isaac were silent, sitting up in their beds. They both had the most unsettling, matching smiles across their faces, as if what had happened was a good thing.

“Are you hurt, did he do anything to you?” Avery kept repeating until I brought my attention back to him.

I shook my head. “Was it a he?”

“I think so. It was dark. It was hard to tell. What was he doing?”

I blinked a few times, trying to get my bearings. “I don’t know. He was just staring at me. I…you know, I don’t know. I don’t know.” I kept saying it because I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. Someone had been in the cabin with us, and while Donna was already muttering something about crazy local Indians, I knew that was no Indian. The man was extremely pale, more white than white; he was almost transparent. His eyes had this milky blue quality, and because of his skin tone, I couldn’t recall if he was white blonde or didn’t have a hair on his head. I’d heard of albinos before, people without pigment, and I wondered what the odds were of finding one up here. What were the odds of finding anyone up here?

While Donna moved on to saying her prayers, Avery took on her theory about the local natives. But I knew it wasn’t true, and judging by the looks on Isaac and Hank’s shadowed faces, I knew they didn’t think it was true either. I didn’t know what they thought at all, but you can bet I was dying to find out.

Soon, Jake and Tim came back into the cabin. I tried to tear my eyes off Jake and his long johns that conformed to his massive body, but it was hard. It was the only thing that momentarily took my mind away from what happened.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Jake and Tim had formed the same opinion as Donna and Avery, though both of them couldn’t fathom why someone would come in here and not hurt anyone, not steal anything, and jump out the window. The glass would have hurt—why didn’t he just go through the door? Was he mad?

And just when they were staring at his escape route, I was hit with another smell. I got out of bed and looked at the window. There was a thin trail of blood leading from the broken glass all the way to my bed. I looked around and saw a few drops of blood on the hides and quickly examined myself to see if I was bleeding. I wasn’t.

“What the dickens?” Avery exclaimed as we saw the trail lead away from my bed and over to Meeks. We all stared at the jolly, plump man in horror as he lifted up his arm. Soon his eyes were just as wide as ours as rivulets of shiny blood ran down his sleeve.