October skies

The pass was little more than a modest gulch, hacked like the very first cut of an axe into a tree trunk. It was just about wide enough that a 4x4 might have made it through, if it weren’t for the many fractured boulders and slides of rubble that clattered noisily and shifted unnervingly beneath their feet.

The sun was high in the sky as they emerged and looked down on a much broader valley.

‘Anything now?’ asked Rose.

Julian snapped his phone shut and shook his head. ‘No.’

She scanned the world below looking for some sign of civilisation — even an empty road would have been worth heading for. Then she spotted it.

‘Look!’

Julian followed her finger. ‘What is that?’

A wide, shallow, slow-moving river wound its way westward down the valley, and on a major horseshoe bend in the river, they could see a row of squat wooden buildings.

‘Looks like some kind of logging camp,’ said Rose. ‘Abandoned, though, do you think?’

‘Yeah.’

‘We should still make for that. There might be something there. There might be someone there.’

Julian nodded.

CHAPTER 82

2 November, 1856

‘My God! Keats, you’re alive!’ cried Ben. The old guide clung to the shoulder of Broken Wing as they hobbled out of the woods into the open. Ben rushed towards them, the gut-wrenching, plummeting sensation of fear he’d been experiencing a moment earlier replaced by an energetic surge of relief.

‘Oh bloody Christ!’ he yelled with a grin smeared across his face, as his feet carried him across the snow towards them. ‘I thought only the three of us had managed to esc-’

Then his eyes took in the pertinent detail. A broad strip of Keats’s long-faded, polka-dot shirt was crudely wrapped around his waist, soaked with his blood and almost as dark as ink. Keats looked up at Ben; his face, normally the rich golden tan of worn saddle leather, was now ashen.

Broken Wing helped him across to the fire, then gently laid him down. Keats groaned with the pain, holding his hands protectively against the front of his body. Several new dark blotches of crimson bloomed across the material, as beneath the wrap a large wound flexed and opened.

Ben looked up at the Shoshone, his face a question mark. Broken Wing understood and uttered a rapid burst of Ute, gesturing back at the dark apron of trees from which they’d emerged, his hands telling a story Ben couldn’t quite decipher.

Something back in there did this to Keats.

Ben needed to know more. ‘Keats, what happened?’

The old man breathed deeply, gathering his wits and what was left of his failing strength. ‘I seen it, Lambert. I seen the fuckin’ thing,’ he gasped desperately. His eyes, normally narrow flinty slits, were wide and dilated with fear. They flickered from Ben to the trees then back again.

‘Seen what?’

Keats puffed clouds and clenched his eyes shut, grimacing at the pain from his torso. Ben noticed there was even more blood coming down his left leg, soaking through the deerskin. A torn gash in the worn hide above his knee revealed a protruding tatter of bloodied skin.

Ben knelt down beside him, knowing instinctively there was not a lot his medical knowledge could do for the old man.

‘Let me have a look at this for you. The bandage needs re-wrapping. ’

Keats shook his head vigorously. ‘Leave it be!’ He held a hand out. ‘Only thing holdin’ me in one piece is this here bandage. ’ He looked down at it and grimaced. ‘You loosen that an’ everythin’ inside’ll come tumblin’ out.’

Ben suspected it was the same kind of wound he’d seen on the Paiute boy who had carried Emily into the camp. The same deep, horizontal gash that would have lacerated the organs, opened up the stomach lining and intestines, spilling digestive acids and faecal matter inside him. Even if he could completely staunch the flow of blood now, Keats was going to die painfully from the internal damage.

Looking at him now, however, it was obvious most of the dying was done.

‘What happened to you?’

Keats licked his lips, dry and chapped. ‘We heard them Mormons durin’ the early mornin’,’ he wheezed. ‘The ones followin’ after us. There was screamin’ an’ shootin’ behind… every now an’ then. Kept happenin’ through the dark hours. And we got to seein’ less an’ less of their torches. Until eventually there was none.’

Keats opened his eyes again, scanning the tree line. He panted like a winded beast, struggling with the effort of talking. ‘Me, Broken Wing and Weyland… kept movin’ uphill. Thought maybe it was others of our group… who had escaped, was fightin’ back or somethin’.’

Broken Wing squatted down and muttered something in his language, nodding towards Emily. Keats replied in the same language, falteringly, slowly.

‘What? What did he say?’

Keats shook his head, ignoring the question. ‘We was near the pass

… when it happened… when it came right out the darkness at us.’