October skies

Shepherd was beginning to become newsworthy, a candidate that some of the news shows were quietly predicting might be worth ‘watching for the future’. Beyond his core audience of Latter Day Saints worshippers, beyond those that tuned in regularly to the Daily Message, his name was beginning to register; his message was beginning to hit home.

But, unlike the other running candidates, there was no party for him to hide behind, no ranks of fellow Democrats or Republicans to close formation around him like a Roman testudo, to shelter him from the sticks and stones of politics.

There was just his name, his reputation… and the message.

I have to be whiter than white. I have to be so careful. I cannot afford a single skeleton in my closet.

CHAPTER 17

29 September, 1856

Ben watched another of the heavy conestogas slide uncontrollably along the churned narrow trail, one wheel clunking and splintering against a jagged rock. It held, but even he could see it was a wheel now fit to break on the next stubborn boulder or sudden rut in the track — either of which could arrive unannounced at any time beneath the thickening carpet of snow on the ground.

The snowfall had started with a light dusting yesterday morning; a feathery weak-willed attempt by the winter to window-dress the peaks a fortnight too early. But it was enough, Ben noticed, to put the fear of God into Keats.

And he’d been driving them hard since — driving them relentlessly towards this pass of his, the one he swore would claw back for them days if not weeks and lead them out onto gentle valleys that sloped mercifully down the rest of the way towards the promised land.

Keats convinced Preston that a last hard dash was required, a run through the night by the light of oil lamps, and now, through an ever-thickening curtain of snow. A dash for the pass because, hampered by snow, the final assent would be impossible for the big wagons and more than likely be too much for the small traps as well.

They had pushed on almost thirty-six hours straight, with only two short stops for cold food. In that time, they had made painfully slow progress uphill, along a winding trail through dense woodland. Trees that had further down the trail held their distance either side of them now brushed against their canvasses, and stung their cheeks with swipes of needles and cones.

Not for the first time, Ben found himself wondering if the old guide had lost his way in the dark, and led them up a dead end.

He led his two ponies, the first bearing his personal things, the second his medicine box and several sacks of cornmeal and oats. He didn’t trust their footing now to ride, instead choosing to feel his way forward through the three or four inches of snow to the uneven and rutted ground.

Keats likewise was on foot ahead, pulling his animal behind him with a vicious determination.

Have you bloody well lost us, Mr Keats? He wanted to call out. This trail of his seemed to be little more than a narrow artery of steeply ascending ground on which the trees had mutually elected not to grow. It certainly didn’t feel like wagons had worn a path this way

… ever.

Beside him, an ox lost its footing and stumbled, causing the beast behind it to step to the side, pulling the conestoga askew. It slid in the trampled mush and thudded into a sapling, splintering its trunk and sending a shower of snow down on the canvas. The oxen, and the man leading them, struggled to get the wagon on the move again, up the incline. Behind them, well… he could barely see the glow of the oil lamp of another man leading his team of oxen, through the thick veil of feathery snowflakes. The train was halted.

Ben looked uphill towards Keats. The old man was pressing on regardless.

‘Keats!’ he called out. ‘Hey, Mr Keats!’

The guide glanced back, quickly noting the temporary snarl-up. He gestured forward, and said something that Ben failed to understand. Then he carried on, leading the other wagons with him uphill, until Ben could barely see the faint bobbing glow of the lamp swinging from the back of the rearmost wagon.

He wondered whether to hurry forward to catch them up, or remain with the wagon here, still struggling with the weary team of oxen.

‘Keats!’ he called out again, but his voice bounced back off the trees either side, and was quickly smothered by the heavy descending blanket of swirling snow.

‘Are the others not waiting?’ called the man with the wagon, one of the Mormons.

‘It seems not, Mr Larkin.’

‘What? They can’t leave us all here.’

‘Let me run ahead. He may not understand you’ve stopped.’ Ben tied his leading pony to Larkin’s wagon, and then trotted forward, stumbling as he tried to catch up. As he made his way ahead, the lamp at the front of the wagon behind him grew faint, and within a dozen more faltering steps he found himself alone in complete darkness, and wary that not being able to see anything he might veer away from the grooves in the snow and become lost in the pitch-black wilderness.

‘Dammit,’ he whispered.