October skies

Preston casually scratched the dark beard beneath his chin. ‘Is it more likely a trappers’ camp?’ he replied, pointing towards a wall of the shelter, lined with an arrangement of different-sized skulls, their smooth yellow ivory boiled and scrubbed clean by somebody long ago, or perhaps merely worn away by the elements. Ben couldn’t identify with any certainty what animals they had once been; one or two of them might have belonged to deer or stags, another might have belonged to a horse or a pony.

‘Actually, it looks like it’s been abandoned for a while,’ said Ben.

Preston nodded. ‘Yes, it would seem so.’

‘Should we look inside, William?’ asked Hearst, one of the men with Preston.

He nodded. ‘Perhaps, to be sure.’ He held out his hand. ‘Your gun please, Saul.’

The man passed him his rifle and Preston pulled back the hammer to half cock and slotted a percussion cap in, the weapon now ready to fire.

‘You men best stay back,’ he said as he stepped towards the entrance. He lifted aside the tattered flap of canvas and called out. ‘Is there anyone inside?’

There was no answer. Ben watched Preston stoop down low and step into the dark interior, admiring the confidence and courage of the man. The others stood in silence, their rifles held ready, listening to the whispering wind in the trees and the hiss of disturbed snow cascading down through shifting branches. From inside the shelter they heard a shuffling of movement, then after a few moments the canvas flapped to the side and Preston emerged.

‘This is some poor soul’s grave,’ he uttered solemnly. ‘By the look of it, quite a few years ago.’

Preston turned round to look at the shelter. ‘He died in his cot, so it seems.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘A lonely death for this man.’ Preston bowed his head. ‘Let us pray for his soul.’

Ben watched the men and Sam remove their broad-brimmed hats and lower their heads. He took his own felt hat off out of respect, and listened to Preston’s sombre words. He finished and the men chorused amen.

Ben nodded towards the shelter. ‘We could use the wood.’

Preston shook his head. ‘We’ll not strip this place for firewood. Let it remain, to mark this unknown soul’s grave. There’s plenty enough kindling lying on the forest floor. Come on.’

He led them away from the clearing, up and out of the dimple. Standing for a moment on a small ridge of high ground and looking through a break in the trees, down the sloping hillside, Ben could see in the distance the large clearing in which their camp nestled. Amidst the churned dirty white of mud and snow, he spotted the small shapes of sluggish movement among the shelters, the tan mass of huddled oxen stirring in the centre and the pall of a dozen wispy columns of smoke snaking up into the heavy sky.

Ben turned to look back down into the dip at the long-dead hunter’s shelter, a forlorn sight, and wondered how it must feel to die alone, and not be missed by anyone.

CHAPTER 22

10 October, 1856

I share this small space with Mr Keats and Broken Wing. I have to admit they have built a very robust and surprisingly snug shelter. There is no room, of course, to stand upright. One enters on hands and knees, and at best, in the very centre of the shelter, may stand, but only if stooped over. At the top, where the saplings converge in a knot of coerced boughs, there is a small gap that frequently needs a stick poked up through it to clear the snow. This small hole in our roof allows for us to burn a modest fire inside, the smoke being very efficiently sucked away through this improvised chimney. Not every shelter, I notice, anticipated this luxury, and I have often seen less fortunate people spilling out of their shelters coughing and spluttering.

I have much to be thankful for, having such experienced and knowledgeable shelter companions. However, I do find many of Keats’s personal habits quite repulsive at such close quarters. His incessant ritual of snorting and spitting, whilst tolerable outside, is utterly unforgivable inside. So much so that I gifted him with one of my own fine linen handkerchiefs — a present from mother. I imagine she would be mortified at the unimaginable material that gets deposited into it every hour of every day. But as a small consolation, now at least my hands are less likely to find congealing, tar-stained globules of mucus on the floor of our shelter.

Ben looked up at them. Broken Wing was absorbed in carving an intricate pattern of criss-crossing lines into the bark of a log. Keats was smoking his pipe silently. Ben wondered how much tobacco the man had brought with him, since he seemed to be always either at the point of filling his pipe or emptying it.

Keats looked his way and took the stem of the pipe out of his mouth. ‘What the hell you scribblin’ ’bout in there anyway? I seen you doin’ it enough. Been meanin’ I gotta ask.’

‘My journal. I…’ Ben shrugged self-consciously. ‘I have always aspired to be a writer.’

‘Thought you was a doctor.’